Possibly bringing to an end an odd door-swing case that we last blogged two years ago [Madison County, Ill. Record]
A Houston Chronicle article claims that discipline is too infrequent and too secret (via WSJ Law Blog)
- AT&T sued for $1 billion for allegedly misclassifying managers [Hyman, American Lawyer]
- Shaken-baby-syndrome angle deserved more attention in Baucus-girlfriend-for-U.S.-Attorney flap [Kos, Freeland, earlier]
- Awful: “Holocaust Denier Sues Survivor” [South Florida Sun-Sentinel via Faces of Lawsuit Abuse "worst lawsuits of 2009" poll which you can take here]
- Bizarre new twist in rogue Philly cop unit story [Balko, earlier here, here, etc.]
- More on the first “Bruno” lawsuit against Sacha Baron Cohen [Lowering the Bar, earlier]
- False accusation as academic career booster: “The Rot at Duke” [Stuart Taylor, Jr., National Journal]
- Claim: Netflix recommendation algorithm contest exposed a subscriber’s privacy to her detriment [Singel, Wired]
- No “Continuing Duty to Investigate Accuracy” of Newspaper Article Posted on Web Site [Volokh on Jenzabar case, earlier here and here]
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Sean Higgins’ article quotes me today on the lameness of the Reid health bill’s allocation of $50 million to liability demonstration projects carefully screened to avoid anything that might bother the trial bar. (Earlier here and at Point of Law.) I also joined Mike Rosen on his radio show today to talk about the provision’s political role as a fig leaf for Democratic members who feel they need to say back home that they made some gesture on this topic.
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They’ve contributed to a recommended three-year suspension for San Francisco attorney Philip Kay. “Kay rose to fame with the Baker & McKenzie suit, earning him a reputation as the go-to plaintiff lawyer for sexual harassment suits.” [Mike McKee/The Recorder, California Civil Justice]
More: Via a commenter, this is said to be the official statement released by the office of Philip Edward Kay:
“This decision admits it used default, as punishment, in violation of Business & Professions Code §6068(i), because I asserted constitutional and statutory rights of attorney client privilege and work product before answering questions, and demanded the right to have these issues heard and determined by an article VI court of general jurisdiction to determine whether the questions sought privileged information, pursuant to State Bar Rules. The State Bar Court did this knowingly to allow the Office of Chief Trial Counsel the ability to lie about what the Superior Court, Court of Appeal and Supreme Court found in their orders and opinions regarding these important civil rights cases.
In these matters, only after the trial judges were reversed on appeal and disqualified, pursuant to Code of Civil Procedure §§170, et seq., did they claim misconduct. So, either these judges lied in their orders denying misconduct, pursuant to Code of Civil Procedure §657(1) – “irregularities in the proceedings,” OR they lied in their testimony in the State Bar trial. This will create an uncertain and chilling effect by allowing unfit and disgruntled judges to lie about the record and impugn lawfully obtained civil rights verdicts, which have been upheld by the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court. The State Bar Court has allowed these disqualified judges to attack and undermine the very verdicts, which, they could not touch in the trial court under statutory and case law in California.”
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“Two Alaska Airlines flight attendants who were injured when a 2007 flight from Seattle to California encountered turbulent air have filed a legal claim against a national weather forecasting service and against the U.S. government.” [Seattle Times/Belleville News-Democrat]
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Perhaps the most urgent question raised by this Atlanta Journal-Constitution story is not: how did Elijah Anderson manage to emerge from such a collision sufficiently unscathed to resume life as a normal kid, aside from a scar? Nor is it: why is his mother, represented by attorney Fred Lerner, planning to sue railroad CSX despite an investigative report exonerating the railroad and the general principle that right of ways are not for trespassing? No, the real question is: whose idea was it to take that camera shot of him on the tracks?
More on railroad trespassers here, here, here, etc.
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A suit against Princeton is the latest in a long succession to make headlines. [Kerr, Volokh]
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- “CBO Stands By Its Report: Tort Reform Would Save Billions” [ShopFloor; our weekend post on what actually wound up in Reid bill]
- “Indianapolis Tacks on Steep Fines for Challenging Traffic Tickets” [Balko]
- “Fugitive Located Inside Homeland Security Dept. Office” [Lowering the Bar]
- Assumption of risk? New York courts field legal complaints over mosh dance injuries [Hochfelder]
- Company claiming patent on Ajax web technique is suing lots of defendants [W3C, ImVivo via @petewarden]
- Why Arizona voters still back Sheriff Joe [Conor Friedersdorf/Daily Dish, von Spakovsky/NRO (deploring "persecution" of Arpaio), Greenfield]
- “Are Breast Implants and Donated Organs Marital Assets?” [Carton, Legal Blog Watch]
- “Disbarment Looms for First Attorney Convicted Under N.J. Anti-Runner Law” [NJLJ]
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“To those prospective law students applying to law school as a fallback in a bad economy, or because you want three more years to figure out what to do with your life: please save yourself time, money, and a huge amount of stress.” [Aaron Street, Lawyerist]
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More about the toy-in-chocolate Kinder Surprise [CanWest via Free-Range Kids; earlier, related]
P.S. In comments, Moriarty notes an instance in which various brands of American soda pop turned out to be illegal to sell in Canada (even aside from their lack of French-language labeling).
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The famed test pilot and sound-barrier-breaker continues to obtain courtroom traction for some debatable legal theories: “U.S. District Judge Frank C. Damrell dashed AT&T’s hopes of avoiding a trial in a decision that inexplicably grants a historic achievement the same legal protection as an artistic work or a consumer product.” [Matthew Heller, On Point News; earlier here and here]
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They can serve prosecutors as a versatile weapon, notes Harvey Silverglate, guestblogging at Volokh.
No word about reconciliation coupons, though, in this promotion by a London law firm. [Ananova, The Lawyer]
Watch what you say about Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) [Adler/Volokh, WeaselZippers, Orlando Sentinel]
A source on Capitol Hill who asks not to be identified writes:
The “tort reform” section of Senator Reid’s substitute amendment is not merely meaningless, but is actually a significant giveaway to the trial lawyers. It is essentially a 5-year, 50-million dollar grant program to encourage states to develop more plaintiff-friendly alternatives to the current medical liability system.
Section 10607 (p.344 of the Manager’s) establishes a 5-year grant program. The program is administered by the HHS Secretary (Sebelius), in consultation with a review panel. The review panel is structured to ensure that trial lawyers are amply represented, with seats specifically reserved for “patient advocates,” “attorneys with expertise in representing patients,” and “patient safety experts.”
Grantee states will merely be required to “develop an alternative to current tort litigation” that:
(A) allows for the resolution of disputes over injuries allegedly caused by health care providers or health care organizations; and
(B) promotes a reduction of health care errors by encouraging the collection and analysis of patient safety data related to disputes resolved under subparagraph (A) by organizations that engage in efforts to improve patient safety and the quality of health care.
Nothing about this language requires that the “alternative to litigation” decreases litigation costs. And many of the “patient safety” organizations who will collect data under subsection (B) will likely be trial lawyer ["consumer" or "patient-safety"] front groups…
The conditions tied to the grants ensure that the “alternative to litigation” established under the grants will, in practice, increase doctors’ liability and trial lawyers’ paydays. Most importantly, the grantee-State is required to “provide[] patients the ability to opt out of or voluntarily withdraw from participating in the alternative at any time and to pursue other options, including litigation, outside the alternative . . . .” If the plaintiff has a unilateral right, at any time, to pull out of the “alternative” and pursue litigation, then the “alternative” will only be used when the plaintiff’s lawyer believes that the “alternative” is more plaintiff-friendly than the litigation system.
The demonstration project also cannot “limit or curtail a patient’s existing legal rights, ability to file a claim in or access a State’s legal system, or otherwise abrogate a patient’s ability to file a medical malpractice claim.” This language means that damage caps and statute of limitations reforms would likely be off the table in any “alternative to litigation” established under the grants.
The closest that the bill comes to implying that these “reforms” reduce rather than increase litigation costs is by listing “encouraging the efficient resolution of disputes” and “improv[ing] access to liability insurance” among the goals that grantee-States are supposed to advance. But other goals include “increasing the availability” of dispute resolution, and “the disclosure of health care errors.”
In conclusion, Sen. Reid’s bill spends 50-million taxpayer dollars on a grant program run by trial lawyers for the benefit of trial lawyers. The money will be spent to establish “alternatives to litigation” that are even more lucrative for trial lawyers and costly for doctors than the current broken system.
More: Point of Law. And welcome Coyote, For What It’s Worth, Darleen Click/Protein Wisdom, TigerHawk, ShopFloor, Point of Law, Cultural Offering readers.
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Don’t phony up invoices in order to pay for an unauthorized off-site Christmas party for your staff. And if you do, and get fired, don’t file a lawsuit claiming it was all the fault of age discrimination. [Gorman v. Missouri Gas Energy, W.D. Mo., via Siouxsie Law]
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Beware brunch. [Richard Goldfarb, Food Liability Law Blog]
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