Chronicling the high cost of our legal system
From the monthly archives:
And testing and testing and testing: “This item has been tested I don’t know how many times. Many times in many forms. Every test was a pass. This latest $4,000 test told us NOTHING we didn’t already know.” [Rick Woldenberg] Plus: “It’s raining paper… again,” and who is CPSC going to get to test the test testing testers?
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Lawyers in a class action seek a high appeal bond to insulate their fee award. [CCAF]
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At his highly interesting QuackWatch site, where he is scathingly critical of many alternative therapies, Stephen Barrett has expressed the view that some tests frequently prescribed by “chelation” practitioners (who address a variety of ills through techniques designed to remove heavy metals from the body) are inaccurate and misleading. Now a laboratory of which Barrett has been critical has sued him and several related entities, demanding $10 million [QuackWatch, Respectful Insolence]
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“Let’s just charge more for auto insurance and homeowners insurance to keep the only two malpractice insurers in New York from going bankrupt.” [White Coat; Greg Davis, Crain's New York Business]
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Kevin at Lowering the Bar spots a San Francisco lawsuit premised on the idea that a stationary escalator needed to have a sign posted with a warning to that effect.
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Comedy.com rounds some up.
Some collateral damage of white-collar prosecution. [David Glovin, Bloomberg]
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Brooklyn mother Villona Maryash spills tea on her five-month-old infant, infant burned, sues Starbucks. But the complaint is not that the beverage was too hot, but that Starbucks should’ve served it on a tray and with a sleeve. Of course, protective sleeves are in ready reach of customers at every Starbucks I’ve been in, and it’s likely that Starbucks doesn’t insert the cups in sleeves automatically for environmental reasons. [NY Post; Gothamist commenters are not impressed]
Provenge is in scarce supply: “The shortages stem from Dendreon’s uncertainty about whether the U.S. Food and Drug Administration would approve the drug.” [Bloomberg via Stoll]
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“The case illustrates the complexities — and some would say, the inanities — of the debate over gender and college athletics. … the official approach to gender parity now requires more than half of college athletic slots going to women.” [Minding the Campus] Plus: “Title IX: Coming to a High School Near You” [College Sports Council]
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Unless you can truly offer a good reason for doing so, argues Heritage’s Brian Walsh. Heritage issued a joint study last month with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and no, that is not as odd an alliance as it may sound. [Insider Online]
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Few of our readers will be surprised at the new survey published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, but since some in the litigation lobby seem to go on denying the reality of defensive medicine problem year in and year out, it’s probably useful to keep piling on the evidence. [AP/WaPo]
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A hedge fund accumulates foreign debt and then maneuvers in Albany to make it more collectible. [Felix Salmon]
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Most curious angle, as reported in the Tulsa World:
The plaintiffs alleged that the bike was “inherently defective and dangerous” because of the defective front fender bracket, which broke within the first week the bike was used.
Pacific Cycle countered that it had designed and manufactured an ordinary “pedal powered” bicycle but that a third party had retrofitted it with a motor.
The company claimed that the mounting of the motor was “unforeseeable misuse and modification” of the bike.
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Something about fruit-flavored snack foods seems to get the class-action lawyers going. A Brooklyn woman is now suing General Mills, saying its Fruit Roll-Ups, popular with kids, are not as healthy as buyers might think from its marketing. [California Civil Justice Blog, Reuters, New York Daily News]
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