Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Archive for December, 2007

Extra-judicial punishment?

Jacob Sullum (of the often excellent Reason Magazine) makes note of a prosecutor in Arizona who places DUI offenders’ names, mug shots and BAC levels online. Sullum concludes that the prosecutor is “imposing extrajudicial punishment, based on his unilateral conclusion that the penalties prescribed by law for DUI offenses provide an inadequate deterrent.”

Publicizing records that are, by nature, public is normally fine by me. But the prosecutor seems to have created, in a sense, a DUI offender registry. Appearance on sex offender registries is a matter determined by law, not the whim of prosecutors. Also, Mothers Against Drunk Driving won’t endorse the idea:

“Some parts of the Web site are good because they are informational and trying to provide the victim’s perspective,” said Misty Moyse, the spokeswoman for the group. However, she said, “M.A.D.D. would not want to be involved in calling out offenders. We are interested in research- and science-based activities proven to stop drunk driving.”

(crossposted at catallaxy.net)

Filed under: , , ,

California town grapples with judgment 3x its budget

“Half Moon Bay is wrestling with unpleasant options for responding to a court ruling that officials say threatens the ‘very existence of our city government’ – a $36.8 million judgment against the city for turning a proposed housing development site into wetlands.” The town’s annual budget is $10 million. The property in question had become unbuildable when protected wetlands appeared on it, as a result, the owner contended, of negligent town policies affecting water flow and retention. The plaintiff had bought the property in 1993 for $1 million. “Under the worst-case scenario, officials say, Half Moon Bay would become the first Bay Area city forced to dissolve, and the coastal town’s land would become an unincorporated part of San Mateo County.” (John Coté, San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 18).

Filed under: ,

Frank on NY Times on Edwards and Romney

To the Editor:

Re “Two Candidates, Two Fortunes, Two Distinct Views of Wealth” (front page, Dec. 23):

There is a critical distinction between Mitt Romney’s and John Edwards’s wealth. Mr. Romney, as a businessman, made investments that created wealth. Mr. Edwards, as a trial lawyer, made his money through lawsuits that merely took from one pocket and gave to another, and probably destroyed wealth in the process. (Mr. Edwards’s multimillion-dollar medical malpractice verdicts almost certainly hurt the quality of health care in North Carolina.)

Little wonder that Mr. Romney understands that to improve the economy, one needs to expand the pie, while Mr. Edwards’s policy proposals focus entirely on the redistribution of the existing pie without thought for the future adverse consequences to the size of the pie.

Theodore H. Frank
Washington, Dec. 23, 2007
The writer is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.

More on the question of pie-sharing and pie-growing at SSRN. More on John Edwards’s trial-lawyer record: the Valerie Lakey trial; Edwards on the failure to warn; Edwards on stacking juries; and Edwards’s cerebral palsy cases (also: April 11 and links therein).

Filed under: , , ,

Assignment Desk: Alliance for a New America, Rachel Mellon, Alexander Forger, and John Edwards

The Alliance for a New America is an “independent” campaign organization running television ads in Iowa on behalf of John Edwards—whose ability to spend money himself in Iowa is restricted because he is taking taxpayer money as campaign funds (all while bashing other candidates for taking money from “lobbyists”, even as he takes millions from trial lawyers and his finance chair is the former head of lobbying group ATLA).

Via Kaus, though Paul Krugman calls the Alliance for a New America a “labor 527”, it turns out that a third of its money comes from Rachel Mellon, of the Mellon family fortune. (Though one wonders why Krugman is willing to defend the 527 as a labor 527. It’s not like SEIU, which also heavily funds the Alliance for a New America, doesn’t lobby the government for special-interest legislation. If, as Edwards says, lobbyists are bad, they don’t suddenly become good because you agree with them. And if lobbyists you do agree with are good, then why isn’t the issue the underlying policy proposal rather than the fact of the lobbying, as Edwards tries to demagogue?)

Here’s the thing: Mellon is 96 years old. There are certainly competent 96-year-olds out there, and it’s possible that Mellon really likes John Edwards. But what we do know is that a New York trust attorney who holds the power of attorney for Mellon and the Mellon-related LLC that is fronting the money is a big fund-raiser for Edwards. Does Mellon know that she’s funnelling hundreds of thousands of dollars to John Edwards through her attorney through multiple 527s? Or is there something else going on? One expects Obama to complain:

According to the available records, which go back to 1980, she has never donated to a political candidate until a contribution was made in her name to John Edwards this year. Mellon’s involvement in the decision to donate to the Edwards campaign is unknown. The Washington Post reported yesterday that Alexander Forger, who has power for attorney for Mrs. Mellon, is a major supporter of John Edwards’ candidacy. Crain’s Business Journal reported in February that Forger and “a group of prominent New York lawyers” hosted a fund-raiser for Edwards at Essex House — the Central Park South address where his office is located. Forger has also personally donated $4,600 to Edwards’ campaign, according to FEC records. This is not the first time Forger has used Oak Springs Farms to support Edwards; in 2006, he made a $250,000 contribution to Edwards’ One America 527 group.

And even Daily Kos is asking questions.

(If there is something fishy, it wouldn’t be the first time lawyers have engaged in campaign finance shenanigans for John Edwards. See the case of Tab Turner. There’s the pending Fieger indictment, though Edwards and Fieger profess innocence. And Edwards still hasn’t returned all of the Milberg Weiss money, despite several guilty pleas and a pending indictment.)

Speaking of Edwards and demagoguery: he’s dropped references to the Mellons from his stump talks.

Filed under: , , , ,

Best Buy: sorry for sending that nastygram

First the giant retail chain sent a nastygram to an improvisational troupe that staged an unannounced performance at one of its stores and then sold parody T-shirts that imitated the retailer’s graphics. Then it sent a nastygram to a blog that had reported on the incident. Then, as p.r. disaster loomed, it apologized for sending the nastygram — the second one, at least, the one to the blogger. (Laughing Squid, Dec. 12)(via Turkewitz).

Filed under: , , , ,

Bush nixes defense bill, cites Iraq-suit provisions

In a setback for the conduct of foreign policy by way of entrepreneurial private lawsuits, President Bush, exercising his pocket veto, has

rejected the defense spending bill passed by Congress earlier this month.

The president has concerns over a provision that would let victims of Saddam Hussein’s regime with legal claims in U.S. courts seek compensation from the Iraqi government….

If enacted, the White House said, the act would have permitted “plaintiff’s lawyers immediately to freeze Iraqi funds and would expose Iraq to massive liability in lawsuits concerning the misdeeds of the Saddam Hussein regime.

The provision in question would have reactivated litigation, disapproved by a federal appeals court, by which 17 former American POWs from the Gulf War had demanded $959 million from the post-Saddam Iraq regime over their treatment. “They were opposed by the Bush administration, which argued Iraq has reformed and needs the money to rebuild.” (” Defense spending bill to die without becoming law”, CNN, Dec. 28).

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), who inserted the provision, says its language is not specifically tailored to Iraq but would instead sweep more widely in empowering lawyers to go after foreign sovereign governments’ commercial assets in suits charging past support for terrorism. The proposal has had support from a few Republicans as well as Democrats. (Politico “Crypt”, Dec. 28).

Report: Apple to auto-limit iPod volume

Was the litigation a factor? The UK’s Daily Mail is reporting that Apple is developing a way for future iPods and iPhones to turn down volumes automatically after a certain period of use to protect users from endangering their hearing. One columnist predicts that the feature if implemented “will be hacked in a matter of minutes” by users who don’t want the protection. (Christopher Breen, “Auto-volume may be a turn-off for some”, MacWorld, Dec. 26).

Filed under: , ,