Here’s hoping you don’t own a condominium in New York. A Manhattan Supreme Court ruling has decreased the real estate value of every condo in the state by holding that individual condominium unit owners can be held personally liable for all or part of the damages awarded to people injured as a result of defects in common areas of a building. Lawyers for Michael Taratura, injured by a fence that fell from a roof of a condo, sued each owner in the 11-unit building individually in the hopes of getting damages above and beyond the $2 million insurance coverage; the court allowed the case to proceed. Justice Heitler’s ruling is being appealed. (Jay Romano, NY Times, Feb. 29).
Archive for February, 2004
States stomp on substitute smokes, cont’d
As we noted Jan. 13 and Jan. 23, the structure of the great 1998 tobacco robbery puts state governments under financial pressure to restrict or suppress the activities of maverick cigarette makers that do not participate in the settlement fund. Vice Squad, which has been following this issue, has recent posts detailing how this is happening in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Florida (Feb. 23) and Pennsylvania again (Feb. 26)(Florida is one of four states with their own settlements with the tobacco majors paralleling the 46-state main settlement).
Lurid murder trial
According to Susan Wright’s attorney in her Houston murder trial, her husband Jeffrey pulled a knife on her, she wrestled it away from him, and killed him in self-defense. Unfortunately for this theory, the medical examiner testified that the autopsy shows that Mr. Wright was stabbed more than 200 times while his arms and legs were tied down to the bed; melted candle wax was also found on the body. (The defense admits that Ms. Wright tied her husband’s arms to the bed with neckties, but says this happened in the midst of the stabbing.) Ms. Wright’s attorney explains that the former topless dancer’s painting and bleaching the bedroom, dismantling of the bed, and burying the body underneath the backyard patio (before it was unearthed by the family dog), was a reflection of “post-traumatic stress syndrome”; it’s not clear if he also claims this for Ms. Wright’s application for money from the state crime victim’s compensation fund two days after the killing. (Andrew Tilghman, “Doctor: Man tied down in Wright attack”, Houston Chronicle, Feb. 27; KHOU, Feb. 27; Andrew Tilghman, “Wright jury hears 2 sides of `terror'”, Houston Chronicle, Feb. 26; Andrew Tilghman, “Jury selected for woman’s murder trial”, Feb. 25; KHOU, Feb. 24; video of courtroom reenactment) (via Daily Legal Newswire).
March 5 Update: Guilty. (Andrew Tilghman, “Wright gets 25 years in prison for murder,” Houston Chronicle, Mar. 4).
Karma ran into her dogma
“Wisconsin’s state Attorney General [Peg Lautenschlager], who pushed hard for a .08 BAC limit in the state, was arrested for drunken driving Monday night. We don’t know what her BAC was, because she refused to take a breath test (by the nature of the accident, I’d guess it was far higher than .10). Wisconsin is one of 37 states to adopt a measure championed by MADD that’s truly one of the most hysterical drunk driving laws on the books — the state actually imposes a harsher sentence for refusing to take a roadside breath test than it does for taking one and failing it.” (Radley Balko, Feb. 25) See Phil Brinkman, “Lautenschlager gives emotional apology, takes no questions”, Wisconsin State Journal, Feb. 27; Steven Elbow, “AG cited in drunk driving”, Capitol Times (Madison), Feb. 24 (in 1981, state’s then-AG was picked up driving with BAC above legal limit; was easily re-elected the next year); Elbow, “AG’s alcohol level was 0.12”, Feb. 25.
IBM cleared in clean room trial
Two plaintiffs, Alida Hernandez and James Moore, had claimed that the chemicals used in the “clean rooms” by IBM had led to “systemic chemical poisoning” of themselves and other IBM workers, and that company executives knew about the hazard and concealed it. (The latter allegation was necessary to get around California worker compensation law, which doesn’t permit recovery merely for a hazardous workplace.) IBM protested that rubbing alcohol and acetone, the main chemicals the workers handled, weren’t dangerous unless ingested; that there was no such thing as “systemic chemical poisoning” that led to disparate diseases of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and breast cancer; further, the plaintiffs “had a host of health problems, including diabetes, smoking and obesity, that defense experts said may have contributed to the development of cancers.” (Moore smoked two packs a day.) The Santa Clara jury agreed, unanimously finding that the plaintiffs did not suffer from “systemic chemical poisoning.” Plaintiffs’ lawyers now go to New York, where they hope to blame birth defects of a woman who was six months’ pregnant when she started at IBM on the company (see Sep. 25). “Because of the heart-wrenching anecdotes from cancer victims and relatives, many companies settle such cases out of court – sometimes for hundreds of millions of dollars. Several IBM chemical suppliers initially named in Moore and Hernandez’s case reached settlements last year.” (Shannon Lafferty, “IBM Cleared in Toxic-Exposure Trial”, The Recorder, Feb. 27; Elise Ackerman and Therese Poletti, “Jurors rule for IBM in toxics suit”, San Jose Mercury News, Feb. 27; Chris Gaither and Terril Yue Jones, “IBM Found Not Liable for Ex-Workers’ Cancers”, LA Times, Feb. 27; Matt Richtel, “I.B.M. Wins Ex-Workers’ Cancer Suit”, NY Times, Feb. 27; Benjamin Pimentel, “IBM case goes to jury”, San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 25; Rachel Konrad, “Jurors debate whether IBM lied about cancer-causing chemicals”, Canadian Press, Feb. 24; Peter Aronson, “Wave of IBM Suits Reaches Trial”, National Law Journal, Feb. 13; Therese Poletti, “Final witness testifies for IBM”, San Jose Mercury News, Feb. 12; Michael Santarini, “Allergist refutes chemical poisoning claims against IBM”, EE Times, Feb. 10; Rick Merritt, “Chemical exposure did not cause IBM-ers’ cancer, says expert”, EE Times, Jan. 30; full EE Times IBM trial coverage).
U.K.: Fathers stage law firm protest
Fifteen members of a group called Fathers 4 Justice stormed the offices of solicitors Parker Bird in Huddersfield, England, citing the firm’s “major contribution in the pouring petrol on the flames in divorce and childcare cases”. Locking the door behind them, chanting and waving flags until police arrived, the men said they had bestowed a “Golden Petrol Can” award on the law firm and a spokesman said “We feel that many solicitors manipulate family law against fathers.” (“Angry fathers in law firm protest”, Huddersfield Daily Examiner, Feb. 26)(via Law.com). David Giacalone comments (Feb. 26): “I’m surprised this sort of protest hasn’t happened more often in the USA.”
Stuart Taylor, Jr. on Sen. Edwards
He reviews Edwards’s autobiography, Four Trials, which “provides a window into the faux-populist pretenses and other flaws of the system that made this millworker’s son into a multimillionaire.” Aside from Edwards’s cerebral palsy wins, much discussed in this space, there was the punitive damages award he obtained after a truck crash, against the trucking company for having paid its drivers by the mile: the justice of this $4 million award is open to much question as a matter of blame-fixing, aside from which it “ultimately came out of the pockets of the same ordinary, hardworking Americans whose champion he purports to be — and a big chunk of it went into the pockets of John Edwards. … Edwards’s business-bashing, anti-free-trade, us-against-them campaign rhetoric, unlike John Kerry’s, seems sincere. Edwards sounds as if he believes in his bones that behind every misfortune there must be a wealthy villain.” (Stuart Taylor, Jr., “John Edwards: The Lawsuit Industry Puts Its Best Face Forward”, National Journal/The Atlantic, Feb. 25).
Steve Bainbridge, noting Edwards’s jobs-jobs-jobs economic rhetoric, wonders whether the Senator pauses to worry about certain jobs destroyed by some of his main backers (Feb. 25). Edwards’s latest fund-raiser in Houston was hosted by John O’Quinn, who as the impresario of the breast implant litigation that bankrupted Dow Corning knows a thing or two about destroying jobs (Rachel Graves, “Fund-raisers bring Edwards to town”, Houston Chronicle, Feb. 24; Ken Herman, “The 2004 Election”, Cox/Palm Beach Post, Feb. 25). And on the Edwards-and-cerebral-palsy controversy that we and several other webloggers were pursuing earlier this month, Franco Castalone (The LitiGator) has added a pair of posts clarifying and extending his earlier comments, the first of which (Feb. 15) relays a wealth of information about no-fault birth injury compensation programs and the litigation they would replace, and the second of which (Feb. 16) makes some valuable points about civility in disagreement, and also says generous things about this site.
Senate nixes OB relief
State medical societies have expressed considerable ambivalence about proposals to proceed specialty by specialty on malpractice reform, starting with the hardest-hit areas such as obstetrics and emergency medicine, fearing that such measures might serve to divide the profession and allow politicians to say that they had “done something” after addressing only the most obvious crisis areas (“AMA vows united voice in battle for tort reform”, American Medical News, Jan. 5). At any rate, it seems the choice of such a compromise won’t be available at the federal level, since opponents have no seeming interest in it. This week the Senate’s Republican leadership brought back malpractice reform in a pared-down version intended just to address obstetric litigation, but no go: the 48-45 vote was pretty much the same as that by which omnibus reform had failed, falling far short of the 60 needed to overcome an expected filibuster by Democrats.
The Associated Press report on the vote (Jesse Holland, AP/DailyNews.com, Feb. 25) reported that “some conservatives” opposed the bill, but the conservative it quoted turned out to be Ken Connor, former head of the religious-right Family Research Council. What AP didn’t add is that Connor is not exactly your typical conservative, having made his fortune in Florida as a plaintiff’s lawyer suing nursing homes and having served as a tenacious legislative advocate for the interests of the trial bar before his stint at FRC (see Mar. 2-4, 2001).
NYC bar association event tonight
This evening at 6 p.m. I’ll be speaking at a panel discussion sponsored by the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, on the impact of possible federal tort reform on New York. (more)
Mom sues daughter over driveway mishap
The Michigan Court of Appeals has ruled that Carla Allen of Warren is not entitled to collect damages from her daughter for failing to maintain her property in a safe condition. Mrs. Allen tripped and fell “on a raised slab of concrete on her daughter?s driveway”. The “court ruled that when an average person with ordinary intelligence can discover a danger on casual inspection, as the mother could in this case, he or she cannot blame someone else for injuries.” The editorialists at the Detroit News say the case “speaks volumes about the absurd state of the U.S. judicial system” and suggests the need for more frequent sanctions. (“Fine Filers of Frivolous Lawsuits” (editorial), Detroit News, Feb. 24)