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ARCHIVE -- MAY 2001 (II)


May 18-20 -- "Couple sues for doggie damages".  Claiming that their 4-year-old golden retriever Boomer was hurt by an "invisible fence" electronic collar device, Andrew and Alyce Pacher, of Vandalia, Ohio, want to name the dog itself as a plaintiff in the suit.  "It's my opinion that it's clear dogs cannot sue under Ohio law," says the fence company's lawyer.   But the Pachers' attorney, Paul Leonard, a former lieutenant governor and ex-mayor of Dayton, says that's exactly what he hopes to change: he's "hoping to upgrade the legal status of dogs in Ohio."  ("Damages for Injuries Caused by Invisible Fence Sought for Dog", AP/FoxNews.com, May 11). 

May 18-20 -- "Fortune Magazine Ranks ATLA 5th Most Powerful Lobby".  The business magazine finds that plaintiff's lawyers have more clout in Washington than the U.S. Chamber of Commerce or the AFL-CIO; more than Hollywood or the doctors or the realtors or the teachers or the bankers.  (Fortune, May 28; ATLA jubilates over its rise from 6th to 5th, May 15). 

May 18-20 -- Batch of reader letters.  Our biggest sack of correspondence yet includes a note from a reader wondering if some open-minded attorney would like to help draft a loser-pays initiative for the ballot in Washington state; more about carbonless paper allergies, the effects of swallowing 9mm bullets, the Granicy trial in California, and "consumer columns" that promote lawyers' services; a link between ergonomics and gun control controversies; and a reader's dissent on the case of the boy ticketed for jaywalking after being hit by a truck. 

May 17 -- "Crash lawyers like Boeing move".   Attorneys who sue after midair mishaps are pleased that Boeing is planning to relocate its headquarters to Chicago.  They say the courts of Cook County, Ill., hand out much higher verdicts than those of Seattle, the aircraft maker's former hometown.  Some lawyers in fact predict that domestic crashes, at least when the plane is Boeing-made, are apt to be sued in Cook County from now on regardless of where the flight originated or went down; under the liberal rules of forum-shopping that prevail in American courts, most big airlines may be susceptible to venue in the Windy City since they do at least some business there.  (Blake Morrison, "Crash lawyers like Boeing move", USA Today, May 16). 

May 17 -- Like a hole in the head.   As if the nine private law schools in the state of Massachusetts weren't enough, proponents now want to establish a public one by having the state take over the struggling Southern New England School of Law at North Dartmouth, near New Bedford.  (Denise Magnell, "Crash Course", Boston Law Tribune, May 1). 

May 17 -- Lessons of shrub-case jailing.   The months-long contempt-of-court jailing of John Thoburn of Fairfax County, Va. for refusing to erect enough trees and shrubs around his golf driving range is a good example of the excesses of bureaucratic legalism, says Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher ("In Fairfax shrub fight, Both Sides Dig In Stubbornly", April 26).   Some of the county's elected supervisors voice few misgivings about the widely publicized showdown, saying their constituents want them to be tougher in cracking down on zoning violations.  (Peter Whoriskey and Michael D. Shear, "Fairfax Zoning Case Draws World Attention", Washington Post, April 21) (freejohnthoburn.com). 

May 16 -- No baloney.   "A suspected drug dealer who was served a bullet-and-bologna sandwich wants a side of lettuce -- about $5 million worth. "  Louis Olivo says he was given an officially prepared lunch during a break in a Brooklyn Supreme Court hearing last week, and felt something "crunchy" which turned out to be a bullet.  Surgery (not syrup of ipecac?) is expected to remove the 9mm bullet from Olivo's stomach; his lawyer wants $5 million (Christopher Francescani, "$5M Lawsuit Over Bulletin in Bologna", New York Post, May 15) (& letter to the editor, May 18

May 16 -- "Who's afraid of principled judges?"   More questions should be raised about a retreat held at Farmington, Pa. earlier this month in which 42 Democratic Senators were lectured on the need to apply ideological litmus tests to judicial nominees, writes Denver Post columnist Al Knight.  (May 13).  "Liberals rightly decried efforts a decade ago to turn membership in the American Civil Liberties Union into a disqualification for high office; current efforts to do the same thing to the Federalist Society are equally wrong. ... In fact, they are the only group, liberal or conservative, that regularly sponsors debates throughout the nation's law schools on important public-policy issues."  (Howard Shelansky, "Who's Afraid of the Federalist Society?", Wall Street Journal, May 15). 

May 16 -- Drawing pictures of weapons.   In Oldsmar, Fla., an eleven-year-old "was taken from his elementary school in handcuffs after his classmates turned him in for drawing pictures of weapons."  (Ed Quioco and Julie Church, "Student removed from class because of drawings", St. Petersburg Times, May 11; "Pinellas fifth grader cuffed, sent home after classmates turn him in for drawing weapons", AP/Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, May 11).  In Sunderland, England, police raided Roland Hopper's 11th birthday party and arrested him as he cut the cake after he was seen playing with the new pellet gun his mother had bought him ("Armed Police Raid 11th Birthday", Newcastle Journal, April 10).  And the website ztnightmares.com, which developed out of a controversy at Lewis-Palmer High School in Monument, Colo., "publicizes the downside or evils of zero tolerance school discipline policies" and has a noteworthy list of outside links as well as horror stories. 

May 15 -- "Judges or priests?".   Why have judicial nomination fights taken on the intensity and bitterness once associated with religious disputes?  "The only places left in this country that could be described as temples -- for that is how we treat them -- are the courts. ... They are temples because the judges who sit in them now constitute a priesthood, an oracular class ... we have abdicated to them our personal responsibility and, in many cases, even what used to be the smallest judgment call a citizen had to make for himself."  (Tunku Varadarajan, WSJ OpinionJournal.com, May 11). 

May 15 -- Techies fear Calif. anti-confidentiality bill.   Trial lawyers have been pushing hard for the enactment of legislation granting them wide leeway to disseminate to anyone they please much of the confidential business information they dig up by compulsory process in lawsuits.  (At present, judges are free to issue "protective orders" which restrain such dissemination.)  Proponents say lawyers will use this new power to publicize serious safety hazards that now remain unaired; critics predict they will use it to stir up more lawsuits and for general leverage against defendants who have been found guilty of no wrong but who don't want the inner details of their business to fall into the hands of competitors or others.  A lawyer-backed bill had been hurtling toward enactment in California following the Firestone debacle, but now a counterforce has emerged in the person of high-tech execs who say the proposal "could expose confidential company information, stifle innovation and encourage frivolous litigation. ... TechNet CEO Rick White called the bills 'the most significant threat to California's technology companies since Prop. 211.'  White was referring to the 1996 initiative that would have made company directors and high-ranking executives personally vulnerable to shareholder lawsuits."  (Scott Harris, "Old Foes Squabble Over Secrecy Bills", Industry Standard/Law.com, May 10). 

May 15 -- Canadian court: divorce settlements never final.   The Ontario Court of Appeal has ruled that courts may revisit and overturn former divorce settlements if a "material change of circumstances" has taken place since the original deal.  "Tens of thousands of people who believed they had agreed to a 'final' divorce settlement could face more financial demands ... Family law lawyers predict a surge of legal attacks on separation agreements and marriage contracts as a result of the ruling." (Cristin Schmitz, "Divorce deals never final: court", Southam News/National Post, April 28). 

May 14 -- Write a very clear will.  Or else your estate could wind up being fought over endlessly in court like that of musician Jerry Garcia (Kevin Livingston, "Garcia Estate Fight Keeps On Truckin'", The Recorder, April 25; Steve Silverman, "Online Fans Sing Blues About Garcia Estate Wrangling", Wired News, Dec. 16, 1996; Don Knapp, "Garcia vs. Garcia in battle for Grateful wealth", CNN, Dec. 14, 1996).  Or actor James Mason (A Star is Born, North by Northwest) ("He would have been horrified by all this. ... he hated litigation") (Caroline Davies, "James Mason's ashes finally laid to rest", Daily Telegraph (London), Nov. 25, 2000).  Or timber heir H.J. Lutcher Stark of Orange, Texas, who died in 1965 and whose estate, with that of his wives, has spawned several rounds of litigation which look as far back for their subject matter as 1939 and are still in progress (William P. Barrett, "How Lawyers Get Rich", Forbes, April 2 (reg)). 

May 14 -- City gun suits: "extortion parading as law".   To curb the use of officially sponsored litigation as a regulatory bludgeon, as in the gun suits, the Cato Institute's Robert Levy recommends "a 'government pays' rule for legal fees when a governmental unit is the losing plaintiff in a civil case".  (Robert A. Levy, "Pistol Whipped: Baseless Lawsuits, Foolish Laws", Cato Policy Analysis #400 (executive summary links to full paper -- PDF)) 

May 14 -- Update: "Messiah" prisoner's lawsuit dismissed.   In a 22-page opinion, federal district judge David M. Lawson has dismissed the lawsuit filed by a Michigan prisoner claiming recognition as the Messiah (see April 30).  The opinion contains much to reward the curious reader, such as the list on page 5 of the inmate's demands (including "5 million breeding pairs of bison" and "25,000 mature breeding pairs of every creature that exists in the State of Michigan," and the passage on page 18 citing as precedent for dismissal similar previous cases such as Grier v. Reagan (E.D. Pa. Apr. 1, 1986), "finding that plaintiff’s claim she was God of the Universe fantastic and delusional and dismissing as frivolous complaint which sought items ranging from a size sixteen mink coat and diamond jewelry to a three bedroom home in the suburbs and a catered party at the Spectrum in Philadelphia"). (opinion dated April 26 (PDF), Michigan Bar Association site)  (DURABLE LINK)

May 11-13 -- Welcome Aardvark Daily readers (NZ).  "New Zealand's leading source of Net-Industry news and commentary since 1995" just referred us a whole bunch of antipodal visitors by featuring this website in its "Lighten Up" section.  It says we offer "an aggregation of quirky and oddball legal actions which go to prove that the USA has far too many lawyers for its own good".  (Aardvark.co.nz).  For NZ-related items on this site, check out July 26, Sept. 8 and Oct. 31, 2000, as well as "Look for the Kiwi Label", Reason, July 2000, by our editor. 

May 11-13 -- New York tobacco fees.  "An arbitration panel has awarded $625 million in attorneys' fees to the six firms that were hired by New York state to sue the tobacco industry, say sources close to the arbitration report."  The well-connected city law firm of Schneider, Kleinick, Weitz, Damashek & Shoot (which last year was reported to be renting office space to New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver; see May 1, 2000) will receive $98.4 million.  Three firms that took a major national role in the tobacco heist will share $343.8 million from the New York booty, to add to their rich haul from other states; they are Ness Motley, Richard Scruggs' Mississippi firm, and Seattle's Hagens & Berman. (Daniel Wise, "Six Firms Split $625 Million in Fees for New York's Share of Big Tobacco Case," New York Law Journal, April 24).  Update Jun. 21-23, 2002: judge to review ethical questions raised by fee award. 

May 11-13 -- "Judges behaving badly".  The National Law Journal's fourth annual roundup of judicial injudiciousness includes vignettes of jurists pursuing personal vendettas, earning outside income in highly irregular ways, jailing people without findings of guilt, and getting in all sorts of trouble on matters of sex.  Then there's twice-elected Judge Ellis Willard of Sharkey County, Mississippi, who allegedly "fabricated evidence such as docket pages, arrest warrants, faxes [and] officers' releases." That was why he got in trouble, not just because he was fond of holding court in his Beaudron Pawn Shop and Tire Center, "a tire warehouse flanked by service bays on one side and a store that holds the judge's collection of Coca-Cola memorabilia."  (Gail Diane Cox, National Law Journal, April 30). 

May 11-13 -- Update: Compaq beats glitch suit.  In 1999, after Toshiba ponied up more than a billion dollars to settle a class action charging that its laptops had a glitch in their floppy drives, lawyers filed follow-on claims against other laptop makers whose machines they said displayed the same problem.  But Compaq refused to settle, and now Beaumont, Tex. federal judge Thad Heartfield has felt constrained to dismiss the suit against it on the grounds that plaintiff's lawyer Wayne Reaud had failed to show that any user suffered the requisite $5,000 in damages.  (Daniel Fisher, "Billion-Dollar Bluff", Forbes, April 16 (now requires registration)). 


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