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ARCHIVE -- JUNE 2001
(III)
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June 29-July 1 --
Crowded drugstores illegal? For years lawyers have warned
that cramped retail store layouts may violate the Americans
with Disabilities Act because of the way they impede "access" by customers
with wheelchairs and other mobility impairments. Now an advocacy
group for the disabled has sued the Duane Reade drugstore chain, charging
that many of its outlets in Manhattan are in violation, especially those
with multiple levels and obstructed aisles. One plaintiff says some
nonprescription medicines are placed on shelves too high for her to reach;
another says she feels her privacy is compromised when a store employee
assists her to the pharmacy area. In crowded locations such as midtown
Manhattan, mandates for uncrowded drugstores will probably lead to the
closure of some locations -- thus making everyone go farther to get their
prescriptions filled -- and higher prices at the rest, given that rent
per square foot is a major element of overhead cost. The law firm
Fish & Neave is representing the disabled group, in conjunction with
the not unironically named New York Lawyers for the Public Interest.
(David W. Dunlap, "Tight Retail Spaces Prompt Suit by the Disabled", New
York Times, June
27; "Duane Reade Stores: Disability-Impaired", VisualStore.com, June
27) (& letter to the editor, July
6).
June 29-July 1 --
Ohio auto insurance wreck. The trial-lawyer-backed 4-3
majority on the Ohio Supreme Court has been doing creative things to expand
the scope of coverage of auto insurance in the Buckeye State, with the
unfortunate consequence that the price of it is soaring. "The court
says that the insurance policies a business buys on its fleet of automobiles
covers its employees and their families when driving their personal cars
on vacation or on any other personal matter -- from taking the kids to
school to driving out for groceries." ("Liability unlimited? This is not
your father's car insurance", (editorial), Columbus Dispatch, June
3; "Court extends uninsured coverage beyond belief" (letter to the editor),
Columbus Dispatch, June 2)(& letter to the editor, July
6). Update Nov. 2-4: bill
to reverse court decision goes into effect after being signed by governor.
June 29-July 1 --
Domain-name disputes are busting out all over. A
site called BaseballProspectus.com thinks a site called BaseballPrimer.com
is infringing on its intellectual
property, right down to its initials "BP", which we regret to inform
them British Petroleum got to first (Sean Forman and Jim Furtado, "Unexpected
Reader Mail", BaseballPrimer.com, April
4 -- includes lots of reader reaction). The Fox television network
this spring sicced its lawyers on a science-education web site created
by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, "The
Why Files", whose title it says infringes on the trademark of its series
"The X-Files." "I'm not sure if Fox is trying to get a legal hammerlock
on the alphabet or what their motives are, but that's what it seems," said
the "Why" site's editor. ("Fox aims to shut down acclaimed science
web site", ESchoolNews, March 1). And the Tata Group, a diversified
industrial group on the Indian subcontinent, has obtained a ruling from
the World Intellectual Property Organization closing down a sixually* oriented
website by the name of bodacious-tatas.com; Marc Schneiders, a commentator
from the Netherlands who says he is not connected with either party in
the controversy, has put up a (clean) site called bodacious-tatas.org
explaining why he thinks this ruling is madness. (Tata Group's view:
"Tata Sons evicts porbographic* cyber squatter", Aug.
28, 2000).
* Misspelled deliberately, to dodge filters.
June 29-July 1 --
Cell phone follies. "The New York assemblyman who drafted
a bill that bans the use of cell phones while driving is pushing a bill
that would punish offenders of the law as if they'd been driving drunk."
In Connecticut, a bill introduced in the state senate "also makes eating,
tuning the radio and reading in the car an offense." (Elisa Batista, "Car
Phone Ban Author Wants More", Wired News, June
28).
June 29-July 1 --
Now we are 2. Overlawyered.com began publishing
July 1, 1999, which makes us two years old. Drop us a line with testimonials
about how you first learned of the page, what your favorite feature is,
stories that got picked up by the wider press after running here first,
unlikely people who read us -- all that sort of thing. We'll publish
some highlights and keep the rest as souvenirs.
June 28 -- "Colorblind
Traffic-Light Installer Gets Fired, Sues County". Former
traffic-light installer Cleveland Merritt is suing Palm Beach County, Fla.,
"for firing him because he is colorblind and couldn't distinguish between
red and green wires." The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
has already ruled in his favor on his Americans
with Disabilities Act claim, agreeing with his lawyer that "the county
could have kept him on the job by assigning him to other duties not affected
by his colorblindness." There are "19 differently colored wires in
a traffic light". (AP/FoxNews.com, June 27).
June 28 -- Chapman,
Broder, Kinsley on patients' rights. The American Medical
Association recognizes that medical malpractice litigation operates with
amazing randomness and is actually "a barrier to quality improvement" --
so why exactly do they wish to expand it? (Steve Chapman, "Seeing
your HMO in court", Chicago Tribune, June 21). Backers of
the Kennedy- McCain- Edwards bill
rely to an extraordinary degree on anecdotes -- keep that in mind the next
time the trial lawyers start dismissing critics like us as anecdotal (David
Broder, "Battle of Anecdotes", Washington Post,
June
26). And Slate editor Michael Kinsley calls the bill the
perfect piece of legislation for our era, not meaning that in a complimentary
way. "Republicans charge that Democrats are in the pocket of the
Trial Lawyers Association, and it's pretty
true. But there are also strategic and even philosophical reasons
why proposals like the patients' bill of rights rely on lawsuits to do
their dirty work." They are a "way to impose rules on the private
economy while avoiding the big-government stigma." Unfortunately,
the "downside of this approach includes the enormous, though hidden, cost
of litigation (the lawyers, the punitive damages, etc.), the inconsistent
standards of judge-made law as opposed to uniform rules," and so on.
Kinsley concludes that liberalism of this sort is "flawed ... [but] better
than nothing." ("Liberalism a la Mode", Slate, June
21). See also "Patients' Right to Sue" (WSJ editorial),
OpinionJournal.com, June
24).
June 28 -- More
things you can't have: glowsticks. Some federal drug enforcement
officials consider glowsticks, the neonlike tubes of light waved by concertgoers,
to be "drug paraphernalia", and a group of New Orleans "rave" promoters,
attempting to comply with a court order, have barred the novelty items
from their clubs. (Janelle Brown, "Sell a glowstick, go to prison",
Salon,
June
20). Update Feb. 20, 2002:
court strikes down.
June 28 -- "Lawyers
put profits above lives". Why did Texas lawyers
suing Firestone (see June 25) refrain for years from
reporting the tire failures
to the federal government's safety agency, NHTSA, thus ensuring the danger
would continue? They've claimed it was because they were afraid NHTSA
would undercut their cases by investigating and wrongly clearing the tires,
but Prof. Lester Brickman, a legal ethics
specialist at Yeshiva University's Cardozo Law School, holds out an alternative
theory: "they didn't want to alert other lawyers to the chance for profit".
(New York Post (op-ed), June 27).
June 27 -- By reader
acclaim: student sues law prof over class demonstration.
Talk about learning by doing: a student is suing her law professor "for
pulling a chair out from under her as a demonstration in a class
on personal injury lawsuits. Denise DiFede, 30, charges Pace University
Law prof Gary Munneke caused her 'severe pain and mental anguish' when
he pulled the stunt." She's demanding $5 million and is also suing
Pace University School of Law, in White Plains, N.Y., where the incident
took place. "Munneke was teaching a 'torts' class, discussing Garrett
vs. Daley -- a case about a child who injured another kid when he pulled
out a chair from under him." DiFede's lawyer said she "was badly
injured because she has an 'eggshell' body and had undergone a back operation
shortly before her fall." (Dareh Gregorian, "Class Action", New York Post,
June 26; "Student Sues Professor Over Class Demonstration", Reuters, June
26; Jim Knipfel, "Billboard: The Three Stooges Go To Law School", New York
Press,
June
27).
June 27 -- Educational
privacy gone to extremes. The Family Education Rights
and Privacy Act is another of those feel-good enactments whose cumulative
effect on our national life has been so harshly punitive: it prohibits
public
schools from releasing any "education records of students ... without
the written consent of their parents." Since that includes grades,
it may now violate federal law for a teacher to disclose how a student
scored in any class or project -- even posting a child's artwork on a wall
with a gold star may be legally dubious, according to one school attorney.
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to help clarify the law in a case where
a teacher allowed students to "grade" each other's work aloud, which meant
the grades were necessarily "disclosed" as they were given. ("High
court to hear school grade, honor roll case", AP/CNN, June
26; "Why Is This In Court?" (editorial), Washington Post, June
27).
June 27 -- Warren
Buffett was wrong. Not long ago the famed investor, through
his Berkshire Hathaway, bought a substantial stake in USG
(Yahoo
page), the big maker of drywall, joint compound, ceiling tiles and
other familiar construction-site products. In doing so Buffett was
widely reported to have placed a bet that the company's legacy of asbestos
litigation would soon be resolved through some agreed-on scheme of
compensation for injured workers, despite the opposition of organized trial
lawyers to any legislation that would remove claims from the tort system.
No such reforms have been forthcoming, however, and on Monday USG joined
Owens Corning, Armstrong World Industries, GAF, W.R. Grace and other major
industrial companies that have lately sought protection from asbestos suits
in the bankruptcy courts ("USG files for Chapter 11", CNNfn, June
25; "USG Files for Bankruptcy, Blames Lawsuits", Yahoo/Reuters, June
25; company site). As each
company folds its hand, lawyers demand higher payouts from those remaining,
in a joint-and- several-liability "last-man club". While USG reported
$3.78 billion in revenue last year, its asbestos-related payouts this year
are expected to surpass $275 million, a large portion of which will likely
go toward claims on behalf of persons never injured by its products, with
more claims flooding in by the tens of thousands, the "vast majority",
it says, for workers who are not in fact ill (background).
"We have said repeatedly that U.S. Gypsum can afford to pay for its own
liability, but it cannot pay for the liability of other companies or pay
everyone who was exposed to asbestos-containing products -- yet that is
exactly what is happening because of the high volume of new cases and other
asbestos-related bankruptcies," said chairman William C. Foote. The
company's management cites the party switch of Vermont Sen. James Jeffords
as a reason for throwing in the towel, since a Senate organized by Democrats
is unlikely to give the nod to any legislative fix for the litigation morass.
("USG Says It May Seek Bankruptcy Protection After Jeffords Decision",
Wall
Street Journal, June
5).
Still not bankrupt is Crown Cork
& Seal (Yahoo page),
the big Philadelphia-based packaging company, which in 1963 "bought Mundet,
a North Bergen, N.J. firm that made cork bottle caps and insulation that
contained asbestos. Only interested in the bottle-cap business, Crown sold
off the insulation part of Mundet just 93 days later. It neither operated
the insulation business nor ever intended to. Crown has paid dearly
for those 93 days, paying out millions of dollars to settle some 70,000
asbestos-related claims, and bringing the company to the edge of bankruptcy"
with its aggregate payouts mounting into many hundreds of millions (Monte
Burke, "An Affair to Remember", Forbes, June
11 (reg)). Update Jun. 26-27,
2002: judge upholds bill passed by Pa. legislature limiting Crown's
asbestos liability (DURABLE LINK)
June 26 -- Managed
care debate. "The 'patients bill of rights' is the issue
du
jour, but the problems it was designed to address have largely passed,"
writes Virginia Postrel. "Managed
care operates in a market, imperfect though it may be. When patients
are unhappy enough to complain to Congress, they're also unhappy enough
to complain to their insurance-buying employers -- who are a lot more nimble
than the political process." As employers shop for plans that will not
tick off their workforces too badly, many of the things people hated about
managed care a couple of years ago are already being changed (VPostrel.com,
"The Scene", scroll to "Obsolete
Reform"; and see Michael Lynch, "Timing Error", Reason, July
1998). Those without health insurance currently constitute 17
percent of the U.S. population, and the Employment
Policy Foundation estimates that the figure would increase to 23 percent
by 2010 if Congress enacts the cost-inflating new bill, with 9 million
more persons off the insured rolls ("Patients' Rights Legislation: The
Triangle of Health Insurance: Quality, Cost and Access", June
20 (PDF). Not all the increase is attributable to the PBR, however,
since the EPF's paper says that the number would increase to 19 percent
even without the change. Although Sen. McCain has described organized
medicine's support for the PBR as unanimous, the American
Association of Physicians and Surgeons begs to differ (letter from
Jane Orient, M.D., June
21). And employers are not inclined to credit assurances from
trial lawyer-Sen. John Edwards (D.-N.C.) and other Kennedy-McCain sponsors
that tagging them with liability for managed-care practices is the furthest
thing from their minds ("Senate Patients' Rights Debate Focuses on Employers",
Fox News, June 25).
June 26 -- Spoof
memo draws EEOC probe. Dateline Columbia, S.C.: the federal
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission "has opened a preliminary inquiry
into a tongue-in-cheek memo that
urged female pages at the state House to dress more provocatively.
The memo was written as a spoof reply to a dress code banning the pages,
mostly University of South Carolina students, from wearing low-cut blouses
or short skirts." The memo's anonymous authors also exhibited disrespect
toward the Women's Caucus, urging female pages to ignore future memos from
the caucus. (Jim Davenport, AP/Nando, June 13).
June 26 -- "Burn
Victim Files Suit Over Yellowstone Scalding". "A man is
suing the federal government for negligence after he was badly scalded
in a Yellowstone National Park thermal pool last year. Lance Buchi,
19, of Holladay, Utah, and two friends jumped into the 178-degree water
at night on Aug. 21, apparently mistaking the pool for a narrow stream.
... The three worked for Amfac Parks and Resorts, the park's management
company." ("Burn Victim Files Suit Over Yellowstone Scalding", AP/FoxNews.com,
June 21).
Update Sept. 6-8, 2002:
judge lets case go forward.
June 26 -- Welcome
Bourque.org
readers. Pierre Bourque's
page has been called the "Drudge Report of Canada"
and we were stampeded by Canadian readers yesterday after he linked our
piece on trial lawyers and tire defects. Also
sending us visitors: John Armor's American
Civil Rights Union, conceived as a counterweight to the ACLU; WCSI
Radio, Columbus, Ind. (among "sites of the week", June
9); Green Party volunteer Paul
Franklin in Santa Cruz, Calif.; "Libertarianistaj
Organizoj kaj Aliaj Subtenantoj de Libereco", a page for libertarian-minded
speakers of Esperanto; Max Utens Press,
publisher of "Informed Consent in Otolaryngology" and other medico-legal
treatises; DomeLights.com "Cop's
Lounge" ("Links and other features of interest to cops and their friends");
CapitolGate, among the favorite sites of Ohio political consultant Mark
R. Weaver (June
25); and Burton Randall Hanson's "Law
and Everything Else" page (featured site this week), among hundreds
of others. Ask your favorite webmaster to give us a link as
well!
June 25 -- Trial
lawyers knew of tire failures, didn't inform safety regulators.
"A group of personal-injury lawyers and one of the nation's top traffic-safety
consultants identified a pattern of failures of Firestone
ATX tires on Ford Explorer sport utility vehicles in 1996," reported
Keith Bradsher in yesterday's New York Times lead story. "But
they did not disclose the pattern to government safety regulators for four
years, out of concern that private lawsuits would be compromised."
By 1996 trial lawyers suing Bridgestone/Firestone, through the work of
a consultant named Sean Kane, had identified 30 cases of tire failure,
"a few" involving deaths. For the next four years, however, they
chose not to file the safety complaints that would have called the pattern
to the attention of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
They were afraid doing so might prejudice their chances of winning their
cases because the agency might investigate and find no proof of a defect.
Of the 203 reported U.S. deaths linked to failure of the tires, 190 occurred
after 1996 and thus might in principle have been averted had the lawyers
chosen to speak up.
"Dr. Ricardo Martinez, the administrator of the traffic safety agency
from 1994 to 1999, said he was appalled to learn that information had been
kept from his staff for years. He said he would have ordered an immediate
investigation if anyone had told him of the tire problems. ...Mr. Kane
said that the lawyers' first duty was to win as much money as possible
for the crash victims whom they represented. The lawyers typically
work on contingency and collect up to a third of any settlement or court
verdict."
Prominent legal ethicist Geoffrey Hazard Jr. of the University of Pennsylvania
Law School agrees that current ethical
codes leave lawyers with only a "civic responsibility", not a legal
duty, to report safety problems of which they become aware. "Ford
engineers were falsely reassured in 1999 when they checked the federal
complaint database and found it virtually empty -- because lawyers had
not filed complaints." Even after a February 2000 Houston TV report
on the tires triggered a NHTSA investigation, the lawyers withheld from
the agency some information on problems with the tires: "You don't want
to be tipping your hand to the defendants," said Mr. Kane, who since 1997
has been the partner for tire issues at a litigation consultancy called
Strategic Safety. (Keith Bradsher, "S.U.V. Tire Defects Were Known
in '96 but Not Reported", New York Times, June
24 (reg); see Sept. 15, 2000)
(& letter to the editor, July
6). (DURABLE LINK)
June 25 -- "Lawyers'
client bashed for due fees". Dateline Australia: "Two
Melbourne lawyers, one of them a QC, stood outside a conference room while
a client who owed them money was bashed inside, a court was told yesterday."
Solicitor Alan Shnider is now facing criminal charges over the incident,
as are two men who summoned property developer George Kallis to the rendezvous
and then allegedly beat him while Shnider waited outside. (Melbourne
Age,
June
23). In other news, while public concern is on the rise in Australia
about mounting litigiousness, some members of the Down Under bar are dismissing
it all as a "myth" and "smokescreen" cooked up by their opponents -- taking
a leaf from their American counterparts, who've been sticking to that line
for years (Larissa Dubecki, "Come up and sue me some time", Melbourne Age,
June 23).
June 25 -- Barney's
bluster. After online joke
site Cybercheeze ran an item proposing a variety of demises for the
cartoon character Barney ("150
Ways to Kill the Purple Dinosaur"), it got this
letter (June 6) from Barney's owners, Lyons Partnership, L.P., advising:
"We have reviewed your website and have concluded that it incorporates
the use and threat of violence towards the children's character Barney
without permission from Lyons
Partnership" and demanding that the item be pulled, to which the site owners
fired off this
massively rude reply (June 14).
June 22-24 -- Columnist-fest.
To read at the beach, or even inland:
* Christopher Caldwell on the Jenna Bush case and our absurdly
puritanical youth-drinking laws (thanks so much, Liddy Dole) ("Pour, Little
Rich Girl", New York Press, June
6).
* Wendy McElroy on the EEOC's finding that librarians suffered
"second-hand harassment" when patrons
were permitted to visit dirty websites ("The Next Wave of Office Politics:
'Second-Hand Harassment'", Fox News, June
6; see June 4).
* Amity Shlaes on the traveling circus of product-liability
forum-shopping that has currently pitched its tent in Jefferson County,
Mississippi ("Will Grisham soon be unemployed?", Financial Times/Jewish
World Review, May
30; see May 4-6).
* "Kennedy-McCain is the medical
profession's effort to counterattack its enemy, the insurance industry,
using expensive lawsuits as a weapon. ... the ultimate victims will be
lower-income employees who will lose insurance coverage," writes Morton
Kondracke ("Patients Rights' Bill Is Doctors' Overkill In War With HMOs",
Roll
Call, June
21).
* Jacob Sullum on the welcome dismissal of several municipal suits
against the gunmaking industry ("Shot
down", Creator's Syndicate/Reason.com, May
15) and on the reasons the Bush Justice Department should simply drop,
rather than try to settle through negotiation, the lawsuit it inherited
against tobacco companies
("A Real Racket", National Review Online, June
21).
* Wrap-ups on the Court's lamentable Casey
Martin decision: Stuart Taylor, Jr., "Nice Guy Wins, Dumb Lawsuits
to Follow", National Journal/The Atlantic Online, June
5 (quotes our editor); John Leo, "Duffers in the Court", Jewish
World Review, June
6; David E. Bernstein (George Mason U.), "Casey Martin Ruling Is Par
for the Course", Wall Street Journal, May
30.
June 22-24 -- Updates.
Further developments in stories we've written about:
* In as belated and ungracious an apology as he could muster without
sustaining further political damage, California AG Bill Lockyer now says
he regrets his remark about locking Enron exec Ken Lay in a cell with tattooed
"Spike" (June 1-3, 8-10)
and doesn't after all think "that prison rape is proper punishment for
criminals" ("Lockyer Regrets 'Crude Remark'", L.A. Times, June
20).
* New York's Rev. Al Sharpton, widely seen as wanting to clean up his
affairs in preparation for running for office, has at last paid Steven
Pagones the money he owes for defaming him in the Tawana Brawley case,
thus ending a prolonged charade in which Sharpton claimed that the many
tailored suits and other accouterments of his expensive lifestyle didn't
really belong to him and therefore couldn't be seized to satisfy the debt
(Dave Goldiner, "Rev. Al Pays Off Pagones in Brawley Slander Case", New
York Daily News, June 14; see Dec.
29, 2000).
* A California judge last month vacated an $88.5 million arbitration
award of legal fees that would have been paid to Milberg
Weiss and other politically connected law firms that successfully litigated
a challenge to the state's "smog impact fee" (see Dec.
5, 2000). The fee was supposed to remain "confidential" but leaked
out anyway, resulting in a huge public outcry. (Statement,
Dean Andal, member, Calif. Board of Equalization; Michael A. Glueck, "Sweetheart
Deal Enriches Law Firm", Orange County Register, Jan. 21, reprinted
at Orange County CALA; Greg Turner, "State Gambles, Taxpayers Lose", Cal-Tax
Digest, February;
"Taxpayers fleeced again: Lawyers' bill for smog-fee suit should be challenged",
editorial, Sacramento Bee, Jan. 12; Kevin Livingston, "California
Ups the Ante in Smog Fee Award Fracas", Law.com, Dec.
15).
June 21 -- "Catherine
Crier Live" today. Our editor is scheduled to be a guest
today on the Emmy award-winning journalist's "Court
TV" program, to discuss this website. (5 p.m. Eastern/Pacific).
June 21 -- Annals
of zero tolerance: bagpiper prom garb. In Holt, Mich.,
17-year-old Jeremy Hix went to his school's May senior prom "in his authentic
bagpiper's uniform, including a skandubh [skean dubh], a knife with a 3-inch
blade. In keeping with Scottish tradition, Hix carried the knife
in a sheath tucked into his sock." Although he did not remove the
knife from its sheath, a chaperone noticed it and reported him for weapons
possession. Now Hix, "one year shy of graduation, is facing an
expulsion that would effectively ban him from all Michigan public schools
for the rest of his high school career." Veteran teacher Bill Savage
said the authorities are scared of not being punitive enough: "The school's
legal counsel is saying, 'If we make an exception in this case, it will
explode the litigation box wide open.'" (John Schneider, "Schneider:
Legal Ploy", Lansing State Journal, June 14) (& letter to the
editor, July 6).
June 21 -- Pregnant
actress complains at being denied virgin role. In Great
Britain, actress Bethany Halliday is filing a complaint with an employment
tribunal against the famed D'Oyly
Carte opera company, which taking note of her state of pregnancy declined
to cast her in the role of a virginal teenager. In Gilbert &
Sullivan's "Pirates
of Penzance", the daughters of Major-General Stanley 
are supposed to have been raised in such delicacy and seclusion that they
scream every time they see a man. The D'Oyly Carte producers
noted that Ms. Halliday "would be at least six months pregnant at the time
the show was due to open", beyond which the show's costumes call for tight
Victorian corseting. Actors' Equity is backing Ms. Halliday's complaint,
which may test the bounds of the widely noted "authenticity"
exception to discrimination law, which allows an employer to take into
account otherwise protected characteristics when they affect the believability
of character portrayals. ("Pregnant singer 'refused' virgin role",
BBC, May
18; Art: Bab collection).
June 21 -- Tobacco-fee
tensions. A newly organized group in Maryland is calling
for a boycott of baseball's Baltimore Orioles until owner Peter
Angelos retreats from his demand to be paid $1.1 billion for representing
the state in the tobacco litigation.
"'We believe Mr. Angelos should be fairly compensated for his effort.
However, as a matter of law, the $1.1 billion fee is totally outrageous,'
said Jeffrey C. Hooke, a Chevy Chase investment banker and co-founder of
the organization called Project $1.1 Billion Recovery". Earlier this
month, "Maryland’s highest court found the lawyer’s argument that he [Angelos]
is entitled to the full 25 percent [of the state's $4.4-billion recovery]
to be 'completely without merit.'" (Lori Montgomery, "Taxpayers Call
for Boycott Against Angelos, Orioles", Washington Post, June
10). (Update Apr. 10,
2002: Angelos settles for $150 million). Wrangling continues
over Texas tobacco fees as new AG John Cornyn seeks to escape the Texarkana
court of federal judge David Folsom, who appears less than well disposed
to Cornyn's efforts to investigate the circumstances under which the politically
connected Big Five trial lawyers hauled home a $3.3 billion fee (Brenda
Sapino Jeffreys, "5th Circuit Weighs Dispute Between Texas AG and Plaintiffs'
Lawyers Over Big Tobacco Litigation", Texas Lawyer, June
12; see Sept. 1, 2000).
And the state of Florida, which has helped lead the way in escalating the
level of rhetoric against tobacco companies, has quietly decided to resume
investing state pension fund money in those very same companies ("Florida
approves pension fund investments in tobacco stocks", AP/FindLaw, June
20) (& letter to the editor, July
6).
