Even they can’t stay on the right side of age-bias law: Bonita Brady, who works for the American Association of Retired Persons in its Lansing, Mich. office, is suing the advocacy group saying she was passed over for jobs because of her age despite good reviews. (”63-Year-Old Woman Sues the AARP for Age Discrimination”, AP/FoxNews.com, Aug. 20).
Last year in Shingle Springs, Calif., a schizophrenic 34-year-old named Eddie Mies gunned down his father and then engaged in a shootout with sheriff’s deputies which resulted in his own death and the wounding of three deputies. Now two of the deputies have sued Karen Mies, mother of the slain gunman and widow of his slain father, as well as her late husband’s estate and surviving son for a combined $8 million for “for emotional distress, medical expenses, loss of earning capacity, and punitive damages.” They claim the family should have controlled Eddie better, and say the deputies “suffered anxiety and humiliation” in addition to their physical injuries.
Attorney Phillip Mastagni of Sacramento, “whose family law firm works for police unions across Northern California”, is representing the two deputies, Jon Yaws and Greg Murphy, in the suit filed in El Dorado County. Mastagni says he is confident that the suit will overcome the “firefighters’ rule”, a doctrine that historically has barred lawsuits by public safety officers against those whose negligence has allegedly led to emergencies. The rule has decayed considerably in recent years in some jurisdictions, and suits by firefighters, police, paramedics and other rescuers have multiplied.
The defendant, Mrs. Mies, a hospice nurse, had this to say:
“June 5 was a tragic day for me and my family, and it was a tragic day for the deputies who were injured,” Karen Mies said. “We were all victims that day. But this lawsuit is victimizing our family again. What do they want? My husband’s dead, my son’s dead. Do they want my house and my 10-year-old car?”
(Dorothy Korber, “Son battled officers; now mom fights suit”, Sacramento Bee, Aug. 10). Smallest Minority (Aug. 20) is particularly intrigued by allegations of “bunkers and tunnels” supposedly maintained by the younger Mies.
Public criticism that followed initial reports of the lawsuit doesn’t seem to have softened Yaws and Murphy any: per one later account (AR15.com Forums, scroll to update at end of first entry, source not identified) they’ve upped their demand to $38.4 million. What are said to be excerpts of other recent local coverage can be found on page 6 of the same extensive comments section. And the name of the third injured deputy, the one who did not sue, deserves to be recorded in this place as well: it is Melissa Meekma.
They’ll have to assist unmarried women in giving birth even if doing so violates their religious scruples, according to a new California Supreme Court decision involving a lesbian applicant. As Bookworm Room points out (Aug. 19), and as we noted in the earlier Bay Area conscience controversy over gender-switch breast surgery, it makes a practical difference (if not one of libertarian principle) that there are plenty of other fertility clinics around San Diego that would be happy to step into the gap. The doctors in the case at hand might still escape liability because a ban on marital-status discrimination as such was not yet part of state law at the time they rejected Guadalupe Benitez; Benitez will win if she shows that the true motivating factor was her lesbianism. (Egelko, SF Chronicle, Recorder). The ruling also allows doctors to excuse themselves on the basis of religious scruples if there is a second doctor within the same practice — but not, apparently, a doctor across town at a different practice — willing to perform the work in question. And of course the legislature in Sacramento could readily help bring peace to the culture war by inserting into the law a generously drafted conscience clause — if it wanted to.
The state of Rhode Island and town of West Warwick, the last major defendants left in the lawsuits over the Station/Great White fire, agreed to throw $10 million apiece into the settlement pot, which now reaches $175 million, to compensate the 200 injured and survivors of the 100 killed in the 2003 blaze. The town of West Warwick, population just under 30,000, is expected to have to borrow heavily to enable its payment; it has a $4 million insurance policy, but defense litigation costs will be deducted before any of that money is made available for the settlement (RedOrbit/ProJo, more, AP/Firefighting News via Childs).
Dozens of private companies named in the suits had settled earlier, including many with peripheral or remote connections to the calamity, such as beer sponsor Anheuser-Busch, which together with a beer distributor agreed to pay $21 million, and radio operator Clear Channel, which paid $22 million. West Warwick will wind up paying much less than that, although its negligent contribution to the disaster (in failing to enforce key provisions of its own fire code) would appear immeasurably greater. Earlier posts here.
Setting spies and informers against us in our houses dept.: I’m quoted about a bad idea under consideration by the New York legislature (Benjamin Sarlin, “Child, Animal Abuse Linked Under Albany Bill”, New York Sun, Aug. 20).
In Longview, east Texas, the Patterson Nissan dealership held a contest awarding prizes to the participants who could hold their hands on a car the longest. One contestant dropped out, ran to a nearby store where he broke a gun out of its case, and shot himself. The dealership has now settled the lawsuit by Richard Thomas Vega II’s widow claiming that the stress and sleep deprivation of the event amounted to “brainwashing” and that the sponsors failed to make allowances for temporary loss of sanity. (AP/FoxNews.com, Aug. 17).
One Westport split cost the divorcing couple an estimated $13 million. It differed in degree, but not really in kind, from many lesser domestic catastrophes: “Divorcing couples in Connecticut regularly rack up bank-busting legal bills that can put the lesser earning party — and there often is an economic imbalance between warring couples — into bankruptcy. … the most expensive and sought-after divorce attorneys are commonly referred to as ‘junkyard dogs.’” Then there are the hefty sums you may be forced to hand over to lawyers who get themselves appointed guardians ad litem, to represent your kids against, well, you and your ex (Daniel D’Ambrosio, Hartford Advocate, Jul. 24).
A good idea. And from college presidents! (Baltimore Sun, Seattle P-I blog). MADD, of course, is having a fit. (Philadelphia Inquirer). More (via comments): Adler @ Volokh.
Philip Howard’s new online discussion series, New Talk, is back today with a discussion of loser-pays, moderated by Rebecca Love Kourlis. I’m one of the discussants, as is Marie Gryphon of the Manhattan Institute’s Center for Legal Policy, and a galaxy of others, including several law professors who can be expected to oppose the idea strongly. You can tune in here (cross-posted from Point of Law).
More: publicity from Kevin Williamson at NRO Media Blog.
Blood should never clot, microorganisms should never happen, and one doc-blogger is on a tear (Aug. 14, more, Aug. 17) over the sometimes absurd hype being given to the concept:
“Never events” are and always have been “all about the Benjamins.” Look at this news release. The “background” section states that the “never events” were “required” pursuant to Section 5001(c) of the Deficit Reduction Act. Medicare wants to stop paying for things not because they “should never happen” but because it’s trying to save money. The whole “never event” moniker is just a spin they put on the cuts to make it look like someone else’s fault. Do “never events” never occur at government run hospitals? We’ll never know because CMS doesn’t even include government run hospitals on the “hospital compare” list.
In hospitals; medical; Medicare; never events
And it’s the fault of Yankees management and a stadium security firm, as well as the two men who actually knocked him around, says Charles Hillios of Chicopee, Mass., of the Aug. 29, 2007 incident at Yankee Stadium. (”Red Sox fan from Chicopee takes legal swing at New York Yankees”, Springfield, Mass. Republican, Aug. 6 via TortsProf weekly roundup).
P.S. In comments, Curt Cutting calls our attention to a lawsuit arising from another fracas between fans of the two teams, this one in Carlsbad, Calif. In that one a jury awarded $25,000 to the Yankees fan “for injuring his hand when he punched” the Red Sox fan.
Thanks to Jason Barney for holding the fort in my absence last week. We’re expecting another guestblogger along soon as well.
Thursday’s New York Times investigates Fred Baron’s role (Serge F. Kovaleski and Mike McIntyre, “Lawyers’ Ties Hint at Extent of Hiding Edwards’s Affair”, Aug. 14; AP/L.A. Times; commentary at Deceiver, Jeralyn Merritt/TalkLeft, Greg Pollowitz/NRO Media Blog, DBKP; earlier). And more from DBKP here and here. P.S. And I didn’t realize until reading USA Today’s profile that scandal figure Andrew Young has served not only as a loyal Edwards foot soldier, but also as a lobbyist for the North Carolina trial lawyers’ association.
Thus Helen Bailey, an attorney with the government-funded Disability Rights Center in Augusta, Maine. But things didn’t work out so well in the case of violent schizophrenic William Bruce, who was released from Riverview Psychiatric Center in Augusta against the recommendations of his doctors but after urgings from patient advocates. Two months later he murdered his mother. The young Bruce, now penitent, is not really on board any more with the corps of public interest lawyers that had swung into action on his behalf:
“They helped me immensely with getting out of the hospital, so I was very happy,” he said. He later added, “The advocates didn’t protect me from myself, unfortunately.” …
While William believes patients deserve some protection, he said he understands his father’s fight to strengthen commitment and treatment laws. That fight took another turn last month, when Ms. Bailey and another attorney filed a lawsuit that could undermine portions of a law Joe [the father] supported. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Maine, is directed at the law which makes it easier for hospitals to compel patients to take medication.
“There are times when people should be committed,” William said. “Institutions can really help. Medicine can help.”
“None of this would have happened if I had been medicated.”
(Elizabeth Bernstein and Nathan Koppel, “A Death in the Family”, Wall Street Journal, Aug. 16). The Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, whose heated response to the article is presumably expected any day now, can be found here.
More: A group called Treatment Advocacy Center is gathering horror stories about “experiences with federally funded Protection & Advocacy attorneys”.
Benjamin Legeri, a/k/a BennyBaby, wants $1 million in damages, saying he wouldn’t have posted sketch and parody videos had he known he wouldn’t get a chance to be cut in on the ad revenue. (David Chartier, “YouTube user sues Google for his slice of the traffic”, Ars Technica, Aug. 15).
New Jersey’s most famous homeless litigant has reached an “amicable settlement” with the Seattle Cafe and Grill at Hoboken Terminal, the Hoboken Now blog reported in April (via). “Kreimer said an employee falsely accused him of stealing an apple and had cops frisk him to keep him from coming to the shop. ‘I was dirty and disheveled. … It was homeless profiling,’ he said”. Kreimer’s many lawsuits have apparently been a mixed blessing for him: per the Hoboken blog, he’s made so much in settlements that he’s lost his Medicaid eligibility. Some of Kreimer’s earlier exploits are here.
Point of Law Volokh