- Florida man and attorney file multiple ADA complaints against businesses in Seminole-Largo area [Tampa Bay Newspapers]
- “The growing ambitions of the food police”:
dietary paternalism in Bloomberg’s NYC and Washington, D.C. doesn’t go over well with writers at Slate [William Saletan, Jacob Weisberg, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Glenn Reynolds]
- Assumption of risk is alive and well in New York cases over sports and spectator injuries [Hochfelder first, second, third posts, NYLJ]
- Favorable review of William Patry, “Moral Panics and the Copyright Laws” [BoingBoing]
- Kentucky high school case: “Coach Acquitted in Player’s Heatstroke Death” [ABA Journal]
- Olivia Judson on the Singh case and the many problems with British libel law [NYT; earlier here, here, etc.]
- Kids behave stupidly with girlfriends/boyfriends or dates, then the law ruins their lives [Alkon, Balko, Sullivan]
- “Report a bad doctor to the authorities, go to jail?” [Orac/Respectful Insolence, Texas; disclosure of patient and official information alleged against nurses]
Tagged as:
ADA filing mills,
assumption of risk,
baseball,
crime and punishment,
nanny state,
New York,
obesity,
privacy,
sports,
United Kingdom
Cleveland federal judge Donald Nugent has dismissed a disabled-access lawsuit by Bonnie Kramer against a real estate management company and allowed a counterclaim to go forward against Kramer and her lawyers “alleging abuse of process, fraud, civil conspiracy to commit fraud, spoliation and Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations violations”. Kramer, a self-styled “tester”, has been plaintiff in more than 100 actions under the ADA. [Andrew Longstreth, American Lawyer] More on “Disabled Patriots of America” group: Charlie Deitch, Pittsburgh City Paper.
Tagged as:
ADA filing mills,
Cleveland,
Pittsburgh
Alzada Knickerbocker’s bookshop in Davis Sacramento, California, the Avid Reader, was hit with a complaint from a serial ADA filer. She went on camera to explain what happened for the Sick of Lawsuits video series. More on ADA serial filers here. And the Desert Sun in southern California profiles the activities of San Diego resident Roy Gash, who “is or was the plaintiff in more than 200 ADA lawsuits,” and his lawyer Theodore Pinnock, whose San Diego firm Pinnock and Wakefield “has filed about 2,000 such suits.”
P.S. Thanks to commenter B.P. for correction: the suit was against the store’s Sacramento, not Davis, branch.
Tagged as:
ADA filing mills,
San Diego
“The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled in favor of the retailer, finding that plaintiff Byron Chapman does not have standing to pursue claims for alleged barriers that he had not personally encountered and where he was not deterred from entering the store.” [Cynthia Lambert, California Civil Justice; Byron Chapman v. Pier 1 Imports (U.S.), Inc. opinion (PDF)]
Tagged as:
ADA filing mills,
Ninth Circuit
- Legal hazards of beachcombing: “Keeping bald eagle feather could result in a $100,000 fine and year in prison” [BoingBoing; our Sept. 1999 post]
- “E.U. Condemns America’s Online Gambling Crackdown” [Sullum, Reason "Hit and Run"]
- Much-loved Stockton, Calif. eatery Chuck’s Hamburgers is menaced by ADA serial litigator, and friends rally to save it [Stockton Record, 4000-member Facebook group]
- Doomed AF Flight 447 had multiple connections with France (airline, aircraft maker) and Brazil (takeoff, many passengers’ nationality), so of course some American lawyers are hoping to get resulting suits heard in U.S. courts [Bloomberg]
- Sure takes a lot of lawyering to bring a movie like “Bruno” to the screen [Althouse, WSJ Law Blog, Legal Ethics Forum]
- Form vs. substance: U.K. historic-preservation edict saves increasingly impractical Victorian bell frames, at expense of 650-year-old bell ringing tradition [Telegraph via Never Yet Melted]
- All in a day’s (double) work: take city retirement or even disability, then come back in second job [Al Tompkins, Lowell (Mass.) Sun]
- Can it be? In just about another two weeks your favorite source of legal consternation will turn ten years old [nine years and eleven months or so ago on Overlawyered]
Tagged as:
ADA filing mills,
aviation,
endangered species,
forum shopping,
gambling,
historic preservation,
public employment,
United Kingdom
- Hospital can be sued for releasing mental patient who killed his wife ten days later [ABA Journal, Michigan]
- Pet-sitter draws probation on animal cruelty charges after letting pig overeat and get too fat [AP/Austin, Minn. Post-Bulletin]
- The government pressured states to raise drinking age to 21. So why didn’t the move save lives? [Miron/Tetelbaum, Forbes]
- “Goldman Sachs Tries To Bully Blogger” [Marc Randazza, Cit Media Law and Legal Satyricon; Ron Coleman, Likelihood of Confusion; Brian Baxter, American Lawyer; Martin Schwimmer, Trademark Blog ("I Don't Think It's The Dumbest Trademark Demand Letter I've Ever Seen")]
- Dangers in using Title IX to go after sex imbalances in science and engineering, as Obama is said to want to do [Christina Hoff Sommers, Washington Post]
- Thomas Mundy and his attorney, frequent Overlawyered mentionee Morse Mehrban, have filed more than 200 ADA lawsuits against California merchants and other businesses, settling them for an income that opponents estimate as in excess of $300,000 a year each [L.A. Times back in January, California Civil Justice] But an Orange County jury took 18 minutes to dismiss Mundy’s suit against Del Taco [OC Register, MoreLaw, Ken @ Popehat and his followup] Noni Gotti’s 45-day spree of 41 lawsuits against 111 businesses and landlords in Santa Ana area [Jan Norman, OC Register; more on ADA filing mills]
- Police payouts up but hospital payouts down: “[New York] City Paid Out $568 Million for Lawsuits Last Year” [NY Politics; Ted yesterday]
- Another lawyer disclaimer with a sense of humor [Nicole Black/Legal Antics citing Kelly Phillips Erb/TaxGirl; earlier]
Tagged as:
ADA filing mills,
alcohol,
animals,
colleges and universities,
Morse Mehrban,
nastygrams,
NYC,
psychiatry,
Title IX,
trademarks
Today I testified before the Senate Republican Conference about the effect on the economy of excessive litigation. A podcast is available on-line and, for the insomniacs among you, the hearing will be broadcast on C-SPAN tonight at 10:56 PM Eastern and again at 2:09 AM Eastern. Also testifying was Life Without Lawyers author Philip Howard; Crystal Chodes, who lost her job because of the expense of a meritless ADA filing mill suit; Texas doctor David Teuscher; and arbitration expert and University of Kansas law professor Christopher Drahozal.
If you just prefer reading what I have to say, my written testimony is on-line also:
The total loss to the economy from excessive tort litigation above and beyond a baseline of an employment at will regime and an average industrialized tort system can be estimated at between over $600 billion and over $900 billion a year, 4.3% to 6.5% of GNP, or a tort tax of between $8,000 and $12,000/year for an average family of four. And this is very much a conservative estimate, as other economists find much stronger effects than I have estimated here, as I have not tried to estimate a number of identifiable secondary and tertiary effects of excessive tort litigation on allocation of economic resources, and as I have not tried to estimate the likely effect of recent Congressional expansions of tort liability in the last twelve months.
I was pleased to hear from multiple Congressional staffers who are regular Overlawyered readers: one even surreptitiously added the website into my official biography. Carter Wood talks about the hearing and Senator Cornyn’s remarks over at Point of Law.
Update: video on-line at C-SPAN; my segment begins at 43:15 or so. And C-SPAN2 is rebroadcasting at 4:16 pm Eastern on Tuesday, March 17, which suggests that my appearance will be at about 5 pm Eastern.
Tagged as:
ADA filing mills,
arbitration,
medical malpractice,
nonmonetary costs of litigation,
on TV and radio,
Ted Frank,
Texas,
tort reform
- A “retired Reserve captain is threatening to sue her local California school board if the board’s members do not address her by her military title” [Navy Times, Popehat]
- Members revolt at Florida bar’s selling their email addresses to marketers; general counsel of bar suggests they maintain multiple email addresses [Daily Business Review]
- “Panel Upholds $17M Attorney Fee Award, Cites Bad-Faith Patent Litigation by Drug Companies” [NLJ; fees awarded to Takeda Chemical Industries against Mylan Laboratories and Alphapharm Pty. Ltd.]
- Much of what you think you know about the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act is wrong [Stuart Taylor, Jr./National Journal; Point of Law, more]
- Not only prejudicial, but a whiskery urban legend to boot: fictional “Winnebago tale” (man thinks cruise control function will drive RV for him, sues after crash) makes its way into an Australian lawyer’s courtroom argument [Rees v. Bailey Aluminium Products]
- Posner was scathing about the class action lawyers’ conflicts of interest in the Mirfasihi v. Fleet Mortgage Co. case, but Max Kennerly thinks the judge got the case wrong [Litigation and Trial, earlier]
- Fight erupts over fee split in Blue Cross eating-disorder class action settlement [NJLJ, earlier]
- “Many attorneys from both parties also marvel at the sheer number of lawyers Obama has picked so far” in staffing White House [Washington Post]
Tagged as:
ADA filing mills,
Australia,
bar associations,
Barack Obama,
class action settlements,
Florida,
Lilly Ledbetter,
sanctions,
urban legends about lawsuits
-
Must stores let in “social support” goats? Hot ADA issue we’ve often covered makes it into NYTimes mag [Rebecca Skloot] And Time mag tackles scandal of ADA-suit mass filing for $$, long familiar to our readers [Alison Stateman]
-
Can you guess mechanism by which snow globes turned out to cause fire hazard? (Then check link.) [K.C. Business Journal]
-
“Do Not Track” legislation could torpedo online-advertising models [ReadWriteWeb h/t @lilyhill]
-
What if plea-bargaining defendants could give D.A.s eBay-style feedback? [Greenfield]
-
UK cabinet minister wants govt to regulate Net with aim of child safety, Brit blogger says – hell, no! [Perry de Havilland, Samizdata]
-
As lawyer-driven mummeries go, which is worse, coffee machine overwarning or medical “informed consent”? [Happy Hospitalist]
-
Bogus memoirs nowadays spawn real lawsuits, as we remember from James Frey case [Elefant]
-
Is health care prohibition in our future? [KevinMD]
-
Massachusetts child support guidelines said to be highly onerous for dads already and getting worse [Bader, CEI]
-
Kid gloves from some local media for Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd & his magic mortgages [Christopher Fountain and again]
-
Had Robertson v. Princeton donor-intent suit gone to trial, lawyers might have billed $120 million hourly fees. How’d the number get that high? [Kennerly, Litigation & Trial and again]
-
A reminder: these microblog posts are based on a selection of my contributions to Twitter, which you can “follow” here.
Tagged as:
ADA filing mills,
charitable trusts,
child support,
colleges and universities,
Connecticut,
feeing frenzy,
James Frey,
Massachusetts,
privacy,
service animals
- You are cordially invited to a fishing expedition for lawsuits over energy drink/alcohol mixes. RSVP: Center for Science in the Public Interest [Balko, Reason "Hit and Run"]
- Recent Overlawyered guestblogger Victoria Pynchon mediates an ADA claim against a Long Beach motel owner. Extortion? Fair compromise? Both? Neither? [Settle It Now, scroll]
- 19-year-old Ciara Sauro of Pittsburgh is disabled, in medical debt, and waiting for transplant, crowning touch is the $8,000 default judgment RIAA got against her for downloading 10 songs [Ambrogi]
- “It does not take a graduate degree to understand that it is unacceptable to hide evidence and lie in a deposition” — Seventh Circuit sanctions Amtrak worker for dodgery in workplace-injury suit [Ohio Employers' Law; Negrete v. Nat’l Railroad Pass, PDF]
- New Richard Nixon tapes: “I can’t have a high-minded lawyer … I want a son-of-a-b—-.” [Althouse]
- Aramark suit documents unsealed: girl paralyzed by drunk driver got $25 million in suit against New York Giants stadium beer vendor [AP/Vineland, N.J. Daily Journal, earlier]
- New York high court bounces Alice Lawrence/Graubard Miller fee suit back to lower courts, says more info needed [NYLJ, earlier]
- Couple claims retention of $1,075 rental security deposit was racially motivated, seeks $20 million [WV Record; Martinsburg, W.Va.]
Tagged as:
ADA filing mills,
ADR,
alcohol,
Aramark,
damages,
railroads,
RIAA and file sharing,
Victoria Pynchon,
West Virginia
Many small businesses in the historic and much-visited neighborhood have been hit with ADA complaints, often from the law offices of famed serial ADA filer Thomas Frankovich. (Carol Lloyd, “Surreal estate: ADA accessibility lawsuits causing headaches for small business owners”, San Francisco Chronicle, Jun. 13). “I’ve seen the ADA racket threaten businesses in other towns, and they ended up closing. The owner [of a small chocolate shop that has now laid off three workers] has never gotten a formal complaint from a wheelchair-bound person, except for this suit.” (”SF_Anna”, “North Beach Block Threatened by ADA Suits”, MetBlogs, Aug. 20).
Tagged as:
ADA filing mills,
San Francisco,
Thomas Frankovich
“I have no problem being accused of being a professional whatever,” says Allen Fox, who’s filed 139 disabled-accessibility lawsuits over six years in concert with attorney Samuel Aurelio, as many as eight of the similarly worded complaints in a day. Most of the complaints result in the payment of legal fees and Fox, of West Palm Beach, Fla., pays nothing on the rare occasions he loses.
Aurilio, who has filed 274 ADA cases in Florida, including Fox’s, laments that a few lawyers have given all of those who fight for the disabled a bad name. The poster child is a North Miami lawyer who in 2003 was sanctioned by U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks for filing 13 lawsuits on behalf of a man he claimed was a quadriplegic who later walked in to give his deposition in one of the cases.
Not only was the man not disabled, he “did not know what a quadriplegic was, and when the term was explained to him, he was repulsed by the thought of being so incapacitated,” Middlebrooks wrote in a blistering 18-page order sanctioning lawyer Lawrence Fuller.
Fuller was also admonished by the Florida Bar; by one estimate, he’d taken in $3 million in his ADA practice by that point. (Jane Musgrave, “‘Pro Plaintiff’ Crusades for Disabled Access”, Palm Beach Post/Lakeland Ledger, May 12).
Tagged as:
ADA filing mills,
Florida
Three years ago we noted (following reporting by Ed Lowe and J.E. Espino of the Appleton, Wis. Post-Crescent) (more) that
Representatives of the Hollywood, Fla.-based law firm of Schwartz Zweben & Associates have played a substantial role behind the scenes in helping organize, promote and support the Ms. Wheelchair America pageant and some of its state affiliates. And lawyers with the firm have filed more than 200 lawsuits in at least seven states and the District of Columbia on behalf of at least 13 pageant participants, “including state and national titleholders, state coordinators and pageant judges”.
Now the Birmingham, Ala. News follows up on the case of Colleen Macort, Ms. Wheelchair Florida 2002, who has filed more than 73 disabled-accessibility actions in Alabama “but has never spent a day in court because of settlements”. Local law provides that Macort cannot be compensated for filing the lawsuits, but the Wisconsin paper reported that the firm of Schwartz Zweben had engaged her as a consultant on other cases. The reporter is kind enough to quote me and mention this site (Liz Ellaby, “Bessemer woman crusades to address disability act violations, provoking critics”, Birmingham News, Jul. 3).
In the state of Washington, Ms. Wheelchair Washington 2005, Michelle Beardshear, has teamed up with the Florida firm to file 15 lawsuits, of which twelve have been settled, against enterprises in Clark County (Kathie Durbin, “Advocate for disabled not hesitant to sue for access”, The Columbian, May 27 courtesy Chamber ILR). And in March, Schwartz Zweben & Slingbaum (as it is now called) swooped down to sue twelve defendants in the Tucson area, including a number of well-known restaurants, alleging ADA violations. (Josh Brodesky, “12 Tucson businesses facing suits alleging Disabilities Act problems”, Arizona Daily Star, Mar. 28).
Tagged as:
ADA filing mills,
Alabama,
Arizona,
chasing clients,
Florida,
restaurants,
Schwartz Zweben,
Washington state
Even rural Northern California affords no refuge from the filing mills:
Eureka’s Arctic Circle franchise has closed its doors after the restaurant was sued for noncompliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Jack Williams, who has owned the franchise with his wife, Peggy, since 1989, said the couple decided to close the business last Tuesday because they cannot afford the renovations required by the lawsuit.
The suit was filed by local attorney Jason K. Singleton, who in recent years has filed ADA-related suits against a number of local establishments, including Village Pantry, Broadway Cinema, Fortuna Theatre, Cafe Waterfront and College of the Redwoods, among others. …
“Here we had a business that was serving all kinds of customers and now is serving no one,” Hockaday [J Warren Hockaday, executive director of the Greater Eureka Chamber of Commerce] said.
(Ryan Burns, “Arctic Circle closes due to ADA lawsuit”, The Times-Standard, May 6; earlier).
Tagged as:
ADA filing mills,
disabled rights
