June 2003 archives, part 3


June 24 – Next: Mercedes sues Merced, Calif. The Volo Antique Auto Museum and Mall in Volo, Ill. (population 200) exhibits and vintage and historic automobiles and runs a website Volocars.com. Now the Volvo division of Ford Motor has failed in a bid before the World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva to take away the museum’s right to the volocars.com domain. (Dan Rozek, “Volo car museum nets a win in Volvo Web fight”, Chicago Sun-Times, Jun. 20; Declan McCullagh’s Politech, Jun. 11 and Jun. 10; TechDirt, Jun. 20). (DURABLE LINK)

June 24 – Engle: a $710-million loose end. Assuming the $145 billion punitive damages verdict in the Florida tobacco class action is not revived by the state’s supreme court, one major loose end remains, but it’s a really big one. Three tobacco companies agreed to fork over $710 million in exchange for class counsel’s agreeing “not to challenge a new state law, passed at the behest of the cigarette makers, capping appeals bonds at $100 million.” The enormous sum was placed in escrow for the class, but now the class does not exist since it’s been decertified. Does the class somehow get reconstituted for purposes of dividing the booty? Does it go back to the defendants? To some worthy cause? And how much of it, if any, are plaintiff’s lawyers Stanley and Susan Rosenblatt going to be allowed to grab for themselves? The agreement between the Rosenblatts and the three companies says nothing about decertification. (Matthew Haggman, “The $710 Million Question”, Miami Daily Business Review, Jun. 19). (DURABLE LINK)

June 23 – Lightning bolt in amusement park’s parking lot. Cincinnati attorney Drake Ebner admits cynics will think he’s suing the Kings Island amusement park — in whose parking lot his client was struck by lightning — just because it’s a deep pocket. “But they should hold the park accountable, for not telling his client and thousands of others about an impending lightning storm, Edner said Monday. ‘They could have told the people not to go to their cars, which are large metal objects that can attract lightning.’” (Kimball Perry, “Family sues Kings Island”, Cincinnati Post, Jun. 17). (DURABLE LINK)

June 23 – Misguided search for a sanitized jury. The “legal defense team for Lee Boyd Malvo, the young suspect in last fall’s Washington-area sniper attacks, is seeking a change of venue from Fairfax County. It contends that all potential jurors in the county were victims of the terror spread by the sniper attacks and that jurors contaminated by news coverage make a fair trial impossible. … But impartiality only means without bias. It does not mean without knowledge. The courts have long recognized that jurors can set aside what they might know about a case, and that it’s preferable to have jurors who are tuned into the world around them than ones who are hermits.” (Charles H. Whitebread, “Jurors Must Be Impartial. They Shouldn’t Be Clueless”, Washington Post, Jun. 22). (DURABLE LINK)

June 23 – Mold — to the highest bidder! “Did you hear the one about the guy with the Park Avenue apartment full of toxic mold? He couldn’t find anyone to buy the place for $15.5 million, so he jacked up the asking price last week to $18 million. … At 515 Park Avenue, real-estate developer Richard Kramer would have you believe that recently, his apartment went up in value by $2.5 million even as he and the condominium’s board of managers continue to fight multimillion-dollar lawsuits against the building’s developers and sponsors, in which they allege that the 43-story tower is plagued with a mold infestation and major construction deficiencies.” (Blair Golson, “Toxic-Mold Gold: Shoddy High Rises Sold With Flaws”, New York Observer, Jun. 23 (temporary URL — after it expires, try search function)) (DURABLE LINK)

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