“The male cheerleaders who carried the 80-pound Tennessee Titans flag at every game and tossed the female cheerleaders in the air won’t be doing it this fall. The Titans and the Baltimore Ravens were the last two teams in the National Football League that still featured male cheerleaders, and now the Titans have decided to drop them because of liability concerns over the stunts.” (Jim Wyatt, “Titans male cheerleaders out of a job; who’ll hoist the flag?”, The Tennessean, Apr. 17).
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Baltimore
In last week’s issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association ($ access), Baltimore physician David Merenstein writes about a malpractice case which resulted in a $1 million verdict against the residency program in which he was working (though he himself was let off the hook for liability) over his failure to insist on a PSA test in a middle-aged male later diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer. Central to the plaintiff’s attorney’s strategy was to put on trial the mode of medical practice known as “evidence-based medicine”. Medical blogger Ross Silverman at “The Bloviator” (Jan. 8), who is often critical of attempts to limit malpractice litigation, nonetheless finds the result in this case “horrible” and “ridiculous”. MedRants (Jan. 8 and Jan. 9) comments, as does Medpundit Sydney Smith (Jan. 9). More: The LitiGator, from Michigan, also comments (Jan. 18)
In the same Jan. 9 post, Medpundit links to an illuminating Cleveland Plain Dealer piece (Harlan Spector, “Fleeing the malpractice crisis”, Jan. 4) about a neurologist who lost his malpractice insurance and moved out of Ohio after he was hit with six claims. Six claims sounds like a lot, and we keep hearing that “problem doctors” account for a large share of the malpractice problem; but how weak were the six claims? Well, four of the six were dismissed before he had to meet with a lawyer; in a fifth, which is pending, the plaintiff has no lawyer of record. And the sixth? That resulted in a defense verdict, and was called “frivolous” by the presiding judge, who however also said: “They paid these experts who sign affidavits, and I can’t throw the case out.” “I feel like I’m being shot at all the time,” said the defendant, Dr. Bruce Morgenstern, who moved to less litigious Colorado.
You may have heard of the $100 million lawsuit filed by postal workers against US Postal Service officials for failing to evacuate the anthrax-contaminated Brentwood facility and to treat workers quickly enough. (Allan Lengel, “Postal Workers File Suit Over Handling of Anthrax Crisis”, Washington Post, Oct. 15). The press coverage universally fails to note that while two workers, Joseph P. Curseen, and Thomas J. Morris, Jr., died from anthrax, the lawsuit was filed on behalf of all 2200 workers in the facility, and none of the five named plaintiffs represent the families of the deceased or, though all the Brentwood postal workers were tested for the disease, allege that they contracted anthrax. Instead, they allege, vaguely, “anthrax-like symptoms” for which they wish to receive damages. (At the press conference, the lead lawyer apparently claimed that there are several other anthrax-linked deaths, a fact we’re sure the CDC would be curious to know even as it was being reported uncritically by the Washington Post.) At least some postal workers who actually contracted anthrax have already brought individual suits that won’t be affected by the class action. (Linell Smith, “More anthrax suits likely against Postal Service”, Baltimore Sun, Jan. 10; “Lawsuit Over Anthrax Death Settled”, Washington Post, Aug. 9, 2002). Again, this went unnoted by the press coverage, which focused on the postal workers who were harmed, rather than the claims of the named plaintiffs. Also less publicized is the fact that New Jersey postal workers are suing Bayer, claiming that they were injured because they took Cipro as a precaution against anthrax exposure, and requesting class action status. (”Postal Workers Sue Maker of Cipro”, AP, Oct. 19).
UPDATE, Oct. 24: Reader William Jones writes to point us to a recent study of Brentwood postal employees in a CDC publication that shows no additional mortality from the anthrax exposure beyond the deaths of Curseen and Morris. (K. Berry et al., “Follow-Up of Deaths Among U.S. Postal Service Workers Potentially Exposed to Bacillus anthracis — District of Columbia, 2001–2002″, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Oct. 3 ).
Archived entries before July 2003 can also be found here.
2003: “Stuart Taylor, Jr. on lead paint litigation“, Mar. 5-7.
2002: “R.I. lead paint case goes to jury“, Oct. 28-29 (& Oct. 30-31: mistrial).
2001: “From the paint wars: a business’s demise, a school district’s hypocrisy“, Nov. 13; “Forbes on lead paint suits, cont’d“, Jun. 8-10; “Ness monster sighted in Narragansett Bay” (Rhode Island, Ness Motley), Jun. 7 (& see Dec. 27-28, 1999 re R.I.); “Reparations: take a number“, Apr. 17 (& see Olson, Reason, Nov. 2000); “‘Painting the town — with lawsuits’“, Mar. 7-8; “‘Bogus’ assault on Norton“, Jan. 18.
2000: “The right to be poisoned“, Nov. 30; “A job offer for the judge“, Sept. 25-26 (see also April 12, 2001); “Maryland: knowledge, notice not needed to sue landlords over lead“, Apr. 24; “Game over four decades ago: let’s change the rules” (retroactive Md. legislation), Mar. 15; see also Baltimore Sun special coverage); “New York court nixes market-share liability for paint“, Jan. 17.
1999: “‘The Dutch Boy isn’t Joe Camel’“, Nov. 10; “Covers the earth with litigation“, Oct. 14.
June 10-11 – New Orleans cleanup continues. “It was bad enough that New Orleans personal injury attorney Curtis Coney Jr. was illegally paying ‘runners’ to solicit accident victims, paying them $500 for each ambulance-chasing referral. When his secretary was subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury, Coney compounded his problems by urging her to lie about the payments, even though she was the one who usually doled them out. … In a plea agreement unveiled in federal court Wednesday, Coney, 58, pleaded guilty to 10 counts of ’structuring’ referral payments to hide them from the state and federal governments, one count of conspiracy and one count of obstruction of justice for pressuring [the secretary] to lie. As part of the deal, lead prosecutor Irene Gonzalez recommended a 33-month jail sentence for Coney.” The lawyer’s guilty plea is among the fruits of “a 4-year federal investigation of personal injury attorneys, a quietly unfolding case that has resulted in more than 20 convictions”. Targeted along with attorneys and “runners” are “medical providers who exaggerated or falsified injury claims in order to secure lucrative insurance settlements.” (Michael Perlstein, “Lawyer guilty in referral scheme”, New Orleans Times-Picayune, May 16). (DURABLE LINK)
June 10-11 – Bounty-hunting in New Jersey. The administration of Gov. Jim McGreevey has retained a flamboyant private plaintiff’s lawyer to pursue claims seeking to hold businesses legally liable for wastes left over from the state’s industrial past. Although Allen Kanner is initially donating his services for free, it is expected that he will take a contingency stake in some or many of the state’s financial recoveries. Also being hired is a politically well-connected law firm named Lynch Martin Kroll, associated with one of the state’s Democratic power brokers. Together, Kanner and the Lynch firm “are scouring state files for possible ‘natural resource damage’ claims. Such claims — little used in the state’s past — require polluters to go far beyond simple cleanups by making them pay the public for things such as lost fishing time, lost tap water, injured wildlife and soiled scenery.” (Alexander Lane, “State retains enviro-lawyer who gets polluters’ attention”, Newark Star-Ledger, May 11). More: PointOfLaw.com, Sept. 5, 2004. (DURABLE LINK)
June 10-11 – The Rule of Lawyers reviewed. In the June Commentary, Washington attorney and Findlaw columnist Barton Aronson contributes a very generous appraisal of our editor’s latest book. (DURABLE LINK)
June 9 – “Silver’s wreck”. Our editor has an op-ed piece in today’s New York Post on the impending demise of auto leasing in New York state, wrecked by the state’s archaic “vicarious liability” law whose chief defenders include the state trial lawyers’ association and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (Walter Olson, New York Post, Jun. 9). Our earlier coverage of the issue is here. More: Sept. 5, 2004. (DURABLE LINK)
June 9 – “Families of teens killed in crash after rave sue U.S. government”. “Family members of five teens who died when their car careened off a cliff after an all-night rave party have filed a suit against the U.S. government for issuing the event’s permit. ‘If you knowingly allow use of your land for a drug party and people get killed, we allege you are partially responsible,’ said Andrew Spielberger, a West Hollywood-based attorney representing the families.” (AP/Sacramento Bee, Jun. 1). (DURABLE LINK)
June 9 – The intimidation tactics of Madison County. Four business groups held a press event in Madison County, Ill., last week to unveil the latest report depicting the county’s courts as a paradise for plaintiff’s lawyers (U.S. Chamber of Commerce, “The Rogue Courts of Madison County” (PDF)). What happened next? Local plaintiff’s attorney Bradley M. Lakin promptly slapped them with a subpoena demanding that their executives testify in a would-be class action case against Ford Motor on alleged paint defects. “Subpoenas are for witnesses who know something about the case,” said Victor E. Schwartz, general counsel of the American Tort Reform Association. “In this situation, ATRA knows nothing. It is clear the subpoena power is being used to squelch ATRA from speaking out about Madison County and its inequities as one of the leading ‘judicial hellholes’ in the United States.” Last year ATRA published a report entitled “Justice for Sale: The Judges of Madison County“. (”ATRA Says Subpoena Power Should Not Be Used To Squelch First Amendment Rights”, ATRA press release, Jun. 6; Illinois Civil Justice League, which was one of the subpoenaed groups along with ATRA and the national and Illinois Chambers of Commerce, has links). Updates Jul. 12: subpoenas dropped and Jul. 26: sanctions motions dropped.
And St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Bill McClellan turns the spotlight on a recent Madison County class action settlement involving Sears tires: “If you have a receipt showing you purchased an AccuBalance from a Sears auto center between 1989 and 1994 and are willing to take the time to request a claims form and fill it out and send it in, you could get $2.50 for each tire, up to a total of $10. Of course, who keeps receipts from 1989? You still might be eligible for $1.25 a tire, up to a total of $5. If Sears does not have a record of your purchase, you will be eligible only for a $3 Sears coupon. Of course, there will be forms to fill out under threat of perjury. Things are a little better for the lawyers who ‘represented’ you. The settlement says that their legal fees cannot exceed $2.45 million.” McClellan is bold to tackle this subject, since when he criticized lawyers from the same class-action firm in 1999 they came after him with a lawsuit, later dropped (see Nov. 4, 1999)(Bill McClellan, “Just like your tires, wheels of justice may be out of balance”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Jun. 4). (DURABLE LINK)
June 6-8 – New legal ethics weblog. David Giacalone, formerly of PrairieLaw, has started a new weblog, ethicalEsq?, specializing in “client-centered legal ethics”. He’s already posted on several issues of interest, including Common Good’s early-offers proposal (May 30 and Jun. 3), the case for requiring lawyers to disclose more fully to clients the circumstances of their representation (Jun. 3), and (citing this website) the still-unfolding battle in a New York courtroom over whether Judge Charles Ramos has authority to review and correct outrageous tobacco fees (May 31; on tobacco fees, see Daniel Wise, “Judge’s Power to Review $625M Tobacco Fee Award Challenged”, New York Law Journal, May 28). (DURABLE LINK)
June 6-8 – Claims consciousness in Utah. To promote a contemplated April Fool’s Day festival, Mayor Gerald R. Sherratt of Cedar City, Utah, published in local papers a tall tale about how wandering Vikings had left precious ancient artifacts in a local cave. Most residents seem to have gotten the joke, but various readers in the nearby town of St. George stepped forward to lay claim to the supposed treasure found in the cave, several of them saying “their ancestors had been part of the settlement and had owned some of the artifacts. …When Sherratt explained the whole story was made up to promote the festival, the St. George residents accused him and other officials of a cover-up.” (Paul Rolly and JoAnn Jacobsen-Wells, “Ad Flap Is Stranger Than Fiction”, Salt Lake Tribune, May 26). (DURABLE LINK)
June 6-8 – Hiker cuts off use of his name. Equipped to Survive, a wilderness gear site, recommended a pocket-sized emergency beacon by referring to a recent survival story that received worldwide publicity: “Your survival should not require you to amputate your own arm, as Aron Ralston was recently forced to do in order to escape being trapped by an 800-lb. boulder.” Before long the site’s proprietor received this cease and desist letter (PDF format) dated June 5 from Ralston’s lawyer demanding that the reference be removed as in violation of the hiker’s “right of publicity” under state statutes. There followed this rude reply from the website proprietor, inviting the lawyer to “stick your ridiculous cease and desist demand where the sun don’t shine”. Now cut that out, boys, there’s no reason we can’t be polite. (DURABLE LINK)
June 4-5 – Blaming murder on flat tire. A 19-year-old woman, having stopped to change a flat tire at the side of the road, is taken away and murdered by a local man. According to a lawyer for her family, the Ford Motor Co. and tiremaker Bridgestone/Firestone should be made to pay for the murder. A court dismissed the case against the two companies on grounds that they could not have found harm of this sort foreseeable enough to trigger a legal duty of care, but the family’s lawyer, Richard Rensch, is appealing to the Nebraska Supreme Court. (AP/KETV, Jun. 3; “Murder victim’s parents say flat set off tragic events”, Fremont (Neb.) Tribune, Jun. 3). (DURABLE LINK)
June 4-5 – Fox News “The Big Story”. Our editor was interviewed on screen for a piece that Fox News’s “The Big Story” is preparing on the search for deep pockets in litigation. It’s tentatively scheduled to run Wednesday, but these things are always subject to change. Update: it did run Wednesday, Jun. 4. (DURABLE LINK)
June 4-5 – Malpractice: juggling the stats. In the course of an otherwise standard feature package on the medical malpractice crisis (Daniel Eisenberg and Maggie Sieger, “The Doctor is Out”, Time, Jun. 9, and sidebars) Time gives credence to a newly issued report asserting that doctors’ malpractice premiums are actually rising fastest in states without damage caps (Jyoti Thottam, “A Chastened Insurer”, Jun. 1). Very curiously, the new report (from Weiss Ratings, “an independent insurance-rating agency in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.”) is described as compiling figures for median premiums and payouts (the numbers compared with which half of the data points are higher and half lower) rather than averages, even though this is a field where the outliers (giant awards, unusually litigious specialties) drive the debate and the dollar figures. CalPundit (Jun. 2) spots this anomaly and opines: “this is so obviously the wrong statistic to use in this case that there must be some kind of axe to grind here” (via Jonathan Adler, NR Corner).
A table laying out the (very large) differences between malpractice premiums between Los Angeles (where doctors practice under California’s MICRA damages cap) and three litigious jurisdictions elsewhere in the country (Miami, Long Island, Detroit) indicates that MICRA confers its greatest benefit by far on the most litigation-prone specialties: for example, the average savings from MICRA for a neurosurgeon is $ 145,813 and for an ob/gyn $ 88,593, but it’s only $24,599 for an internist and $15,639 for a dermatologist (”2003 Malpractice Premium Comparison“, California Physician (California Medical Association)) (PDF format)(CMA’s MICRA Resource Center). For a more reliable reading of the crisis and its relation to damage caps and the insurance market, check out the report issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services this spring (”Addressing the New Health Care Crisis: Reforming the Medical Litigation System to Improve the Quality of Health Care”, Mar. 3; Senate testimony by Deputy Secretary Claude A. Allen, Mar. 13).
How big an impact do the “outlier” cases have, the small number of gigantic verdicts that almost vanish from the calculation when per-case outlays are calculated as a median? Among recent examples are the $78.5-million verdict against an Orlando hospital for failing to figure out that a woman visiting its emergency room was suffering from a bizarre undiagnosed tumor; thought to be the largest medical malpractice award in Florida history, it has “become the symbol of juries run amok” in the view of critics of the system. (William R. Levesque, “Tremors still felt from whopping jury award”, St. Petersburg Times, Jun. 2). And in a result vocally criticized by appeals judges even as they felt obliged to uphold it, a Manhattan jury’s $40 million malpractice award against one of the city’s premier hospitals, New York-Presbyterian, has been blown up to $140 million by a law mandating that annual interest of 4 percent be added to awards “even if the jury has already adjusted the annual amount for inflation. Critics say that means a double adjustment for inflation in some cases, like this one.” (Richard Perez-Pena, “New York Hospitals Fearing Malpractice Crisis”, New York Times, Jun. 3). (DURABLE LINK)
June 4-5 – “Rape defendant asks $20,000; found fly in mashed potatoes”. “If convicted later this year of raping a 16-year-old girl, [Kenneth] Williams could be sentenced to 112 years to life in prison. It would be his third, and last, trip to state prison, authorities say.” What has upset Williams recently, however, is the insect impurity he says he found in his prison dinner. He “is seeking $20,000 to ease the ‘mental stress and anguish’ he said finding the fly inflicted upon him. ‘It’s been almost a month since this occurred,’ Williams wrote last week in the claim, ‘and I still only pick at my food …. I’m losing weight and am unable to eat properly.’” The sum demanded was fair, according to his complaint, since public venting of the allegations “would cost the county ‘a great deal more both financially and in bad publicity.’” (J. Harry Jones, San Diego Union-Tribune, Jun. 3). (DURABLE LINK)
June 3 – An important litigation skill. From Gail Diane Cox’s “Voir Dire” column in the National Law Journal, Nov. 4, 2002 (scroll down to “Jargon Watch”): “Blamestorming: Variant of brainstorming. Sitting around in a group discussing a mistake and how to make someone responsible for it, preferably a deep-pocket defendant. Synonym: Litigation initiation.” Maybe a session of this sort was responsible for the naming of Shell Oil as a defendant in the Rhode Island nightclub fire (see May 30-Jun. 1). (DURABLE LINK)
June 3 – “Resumé spam saddles employers”. It’s common these days for employers to receive hundreds, thousands or even milllions of resumés via email from hopeful job-seekers. Federal regulations on the books since the 1970s, however, require most larger companies to preserve records of all job applications, the most important reason being to furnish evidence in case they are someday investigated for possible discrimination. Under the strictest interpretation of the rules, companies with more than fifteen employees must keep on file any resumé sent to them — even if “the applicant misspells the company’s name, applies for a job not listed or is simply not qualified.” The result: a large and ever-growing paperwork/compliance burden on American business. (Bill Atkinson, “Resume spam saddles employers”, Baltimore Sun, May 22; Michelle Martinez, “Who Really Is An Applicant When Recruiting Online?”, PeopleClick.com, undated). See Shirleen Holt, “Résumé spam is tiring those hiring”, Seattle Times, Jan. 19; Katherine Harding, “The new scourge: Résumé spam”, GlobeTechnology.com (Globe & Mail, Canada), Jan. 8 (”Companies that advertise jobs on-line are finding their e-mail boxes crammed with irrelevant responses”, some from applicants who blast out responses to every job listed on a posting board). (DURABLE LINK)
June 2 – Updates. Further developments in cases we’ve covered:
* Citing its recent jurisprudence bringing constitutional due process limits to bear on punitive damages, the U.S. Supreme Court has instructed lower courts to reduce a $290 million award against Ford Motor in the Romo case; the case arose from a Bronco rollover in central California, and we’ve had quite a bit to say about it over the four years since it went to trial (see Oct. 24, 2002 and links from there) (David Kravets, “High Court Reduces Damages in Car Crash”, AP/Yahoo, May 19; Bob Egelko, “Key ruling on punitive damages”, San Francisco Chronicle, May 19);
* The Los Angeles Zoo has transferred Ruby, its female African elephant, to a Tennessee zoo notwithstanding a pending lawsuit (see May 16-18) complaining that the move would disrupt Ruby’s bond with her elephant “best friend”; an attorney who had gone to court seeking a temporary restraining order against splitting the two elephants complained that zoo authorities had acted “like thieves in the middle of the night”. (Carla Hall, “Despite Protests, L.A. Zoo Sends Elephant to Tennessee”, Los Angeles Times, May 27) (via SoCalLaw, May 27);
* The Supreme Court of Hawaii has reversed a jury’s award of $2 million to an auto service manager fired over what his employer considered credible charges of sexual harassment (see Mar. 10-12, 2000) (Gonsalves v. Nissan Motor Corp. in Hawaii, Ltd., Supreme Court of Hawaii, Nov. 27, 2002; see Jeffrey Harris, “Law Watch: Preventing Harassment Trumps Keeping Promises”, Hawaii Business, Feb. 20);
* In a humiliating defeat for backers of anti-gun litigation, a federal “advisory” jury in Brooklyn has refused to hold manufacturers liable for inner-city gun crime in the much-publicized case brought by the NAACP before judge Jack Weinstein. “The panel of 12 jurors issued a finding of no liability for 45 of the defendants and was unable to reach a verdict for the remaining 23 manufacturers or gun dealers”. (Mark Hamblett, “Federal Advisory Jury Declines to Find Gun Industry Liable”, New York Law Journal, May 15; Katherine Mangu-Ward, “No Smoking Gun”, WeeklyStandard.com, May 8). Update Jul. 20: judge dismisses lawsuit entirely. (DURABLE LINK)
March 31 – Gun-suit thoughts. Our editor has contributed an op-ed to the New York Sun outlining his view that the NAACP’s lawsuit against gunmakers (which went to trial last week amid a flurry of favorable press notices; see Mar. 24) is plenty lame and derives its only real vitality from having been filed before a favorable judge (Walter Olson, “Gun Lawsuit Meets Activist Judge”, New York Sun, Mar. 26). On an unrelated note, the House Judiciary Committee has asked our editor to discuss federal pre-emption of anti-gunmaker litigation at a hearing this Wednesday before the Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law (Rayburn HOB 2141, 10 a.m.) (DURABLE LINK)
March 31 – Teachers afraid. “Educators in Baltimore County and beyond say the threat of lawsuits prevents administrators from backing their punishment of disorderly or dishonest students.” One of the more thorough explorations of this topic we’ve seen recently (Jonathan D. Rockoff, “Teachers say the law adds to disorder in classroom”, Baltimore Sun, Mar. 23) (via Joanne Jacobs). (DURABLE LINK)
March 31 – Some reader letters. We’ve fallen lamentably behind in publishing readers’ letters. Here’s a batch of four, on terrorism suits against foreign entities, Sen. Edwards and cerebral palsy, one New Jersey judge’s dismissal of a playground lawsuit, and an unwelcome (to us) advertising intrusion into our newsletter. Quite a few other letters remain in our pipeline — we’ll try to get to them soon. (DURABLE LINK)
March 25-30 – Fast food opinion roundup. “The word “addiction” is perilously close to losing any meaning. If lawyers can turn fast food into an addiction and pin liability on restaurants, it won’t be long before adulterers sue Sports Illustrated, claiming its swimsuit issue led them astray.” (Sally Satel, “Fast food ‘addiction’ feeds only lawyers”, USA Today, Mar. 12, reprinted at AEI site). One 270-lb., 5-foot-6 plaintiff “said her regular diet included an Egg McMuffin for breakfast and a Big Mac meal for dinner”, but Chris Rangel at RangelMD concludes that the calorie count doesn’t add up — the only way you could get up to 270 pounds would be by consuming a whole lot more food than that. (RangelMD, Feb. 23). “Big Food stands charged with making the plaintiffs fat, notes Howard Fienberg in a review of a fairly dreadful-sounding book on the much-ballyhooed obesity epidemic. Yet “Grocery stores are easily accessible for most Americans. …. Healthy choices are everywhere.” (”Supersize Nation?”, AmericasFuture.org, Winter). As expected, attorney Samuel Hirsch has re-filed his suit against McDonald’s (John Lehmann, “McFatties Bite Back”, New York Post, Feb. 20). “And now, Hirsch tells Newsweek, he’s targeting companies selling weight-loss products such as herbal supplements. Within weeks, he says, his law firm will begin placing ads in magazines to invite clients who bought the products but failed to lose weight to join a class-action lawsuit.” (Daniel McGinn, Newsweek, Feb. 10). See also “Tobacco-war lawyers taking aim at fast food”, Sacramento Bee, Feb. 24; Duane Freese, “Frankensuits”, Tech Central Station, Feb. 27.
(DURABLE LINK)
March 25-30 – “How a lawyer blew the whistle on a judge”. “It was the most distasteful thing I ever had to do in my life” said Joel Persky of his decision to turn in Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Joseph A. Jaffe, who offered favorable rulings in Persky’s asbestos cases in exchange for a cash quid pro quo (see Sept. 3, 2002). Had Persky merely ignored the judge’s overtures, according to one “seasoned” lawyer, he might have been laying himself open to legal malpractice charges. “Jaffe, 52, pleaded guilty last month to extorting money from Persky and will be sentenced May 16. Jaffe has qualified for a temporary, $60,000 a year disability from the State Employees’ Retirement System because he is depressed. The system’s board of trustees will vote on whether to award the money in March.” (Marylynne Pitz, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Mar. 2). (DURABLE LINK)
March 25-30 – Gone for a few days. The site will lie fallow while our editor gives several speeches to promote his new book. See you Monday. (DURABLE LINK)
March 24 – Mad County pays out again. “A judge in Madison County, Ill., ordered Philip Morris USA Inc. to pay $10.1 billion in a class-action lawsuit that claimed the tobacco giant misled smokers about the dangers of light cigarettes.” Circuit Judge Nicholas G. Byron “gave the plaintiffs’ lawyers a quarter of the compensatory damages, or nearly $1.8 billion.” (”Philip Morris Hit With $10.1B Verdict in Illinois Case, Dow Jones/Quicken, Mar. 21; Trisha Howard and Paul Hampel, “Tobacco firm lawyer derides court’s reputation”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Mar. 22; related stories; Sherri Day, “Philip Morris Faces Big Penalty”, New York Times, Mar. 22). Madison County, Ill. is located east of St. Louis (map); its main cities include Alton, Edwardsville and Granite City. For more on its fame as a “plaintiff’s paradise” and “judicial hellhole” for defendants, see notes below, including work sponsored by the Manhattan Institute, with which our editor is associated. (Update Apr. 2-3: Philip Morris says it is unable to post appeals bond; more updates.)
MORE ON MADISON COUNTY: “Study finds Madison County has most class action suits per capita”, AP, Sept. 11, 2001; Jim Getz, “Class-Action Suits Soar In Madison County, Study Says; Think Tank Argues For Moving Cases To Federal Court”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sept. 11, 2001; John H. Beisner and Jessica Davidson Miller, “They’re Making a Federal Case Out of It … In State Court”, Manhattan Institute Civil Justice Report #3, Sept. 2001; Noam Neusner with Brian Brueggemann, “The judges of Madison County”, U.S. News, Dec. 17, 2001 (fee); Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), Statement on Class Action Fairness Act, Congressional Record, Nov. 15, 2001; Lester Brickman, “Anatomy of a Madison County (Illinois) Class Action: A Study of Pathology”, Manhattan Institute Civil Justice Report #6, press release, Aug. 12, 2002. (DURABLE LINK)
March 24 – Stalking horse for anti-gun litigators. If the NAACP really does have legal standing to sue firearms manufacturers and demand that a court impose gun-control measures on them, one might reasonably conclude that in the future anyone will henceforth have standing to sue anyone over anything. Still, this notional standing has been the excuse for longtime anti-gun litigators to make yet another pilgrimage to the Brooklyn courtroom of federal judge Jack Weinstein, who’s considered far more sympathetic to their cause than most of his colleagues (Tom Hayes, “Ex-Lobbyist to Testify for Gun Foes in Federal Trial”, AP/Law.com, Mar. 21). Jacob Sullum comments on the resulting trial set to begin today (”Jack B. Trick”, syndicated/Reason Online, Mar. 21), as does Eugene Volokh, who points out that the arguments for holding gun manufacturers liable would, if taken seriously, also lead to findings of liability against liquor manufacturers for “foreseeable misuse” of their wares — not that some ambitious lawyers wouldn’t like to do that too (Volokh Conspiracy blog, archive link not working, scroll to Mar. 23). The NAACP case seeks injunctive relief; per the AP, above, Judge Weinstein “has decided the jury will play only an ‘advisory role,’ leaving himself to make the final determination on liability and remedy.” For our earlier coverage of the suit, click here. See also “Off Target: Anti-gunners again take aim at manufacturers”, (editorial), McAllen (Tex.) Monitor, Mar. 21; and Hunting and Shooting Sports Heritage Fund site (& welcome Kausfiles readers). Updated to include correct HSSHF link (DURABLE LINK)
March 21-23 – “Lawyers find gold mine in Phila. pension cases”. Philadelphia Inquirer exposes how the city’s municipal pension funds enlisted as the complaisant clients of two prominent class action law firms, Berger & Montague and Barrack, Rodos & Bacine, which between 1996 and 2002 scooped up $19 million in fees representing the city in securities litigation. Then-Mayor Ed Rendell green-lighted the suits, and also happens to have received $460,000 in contributions from the lawyers since 1990. “‘The truth is, there was just a bounty hunter prowling the security industry, picking things and putting our names on it,’ said Joseph Herkness, the pension fund’s former director. ‘We were told, basically, to sign these things.’” “It was an opportunity to make money for the city without any risk,” claims Rendell, who is now Pennsylvania’s governor. But perhaps not quite so much money as if the city had driven a harder bargain: “Funds in Florida, Connecticut, Wisconsin, and New York City have trimmed millions off legal fees by seeking bids and setting fees in advance,” but not Philadelphia, the paper reported. As reported earlier (see Jan. 31) the FBI is investigating the actions of city officials in hiring the firms and resisting a judge’s efforts to encourage competitive bidding. (Joseph Tanfani and Craig R. McCoy, Philadelphia Inquirer, Mar. 16; “Lawyer’s responses scrutinized”, Feb. 14). Name partner Leonard Barrack of Barrack, Rodos, a big-league political donor, served as finance chairman for the Democratic National Committee under President Clinton (Washington Post, Jan. 12, 1999); he has said his firm is cooperating with the FBI probe. (DURABLE LINK)
March 21-23 – More notices for The Rule of Lawyers. Free-Market.net, one of the major libertarian sites, names our author’s new book “Freedom Book of the Month”, with reviewer Sunni Maravillosa calling it “clear, compelling” and “very important” and saying its “revelations will likely astonish most people who aren’t intimately acquainted with the American legal system” (March). In a review for the Indianapolis Star, reviewer Peter J. Pitts applauds the book as “insightful and frightening” (”Lawyers get rich; we get a warped idea of blame”, Mar. 15). And in American Hunter and its sister publications (American Rifleman, etc.), National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre uses his monthly column to call NRA members’ attention to the continuing outrage of the municipal gun suits and to The Rule of Lawyers in particular (April, not online). If you haven’t ordered your copy yet, what are you waiting for? (DURABLE LINK)
January 20 – U.K.: coercive campaign to constrain Cadbury… In Britain, a “leading public health expert” is proposing a legal ban on extra-large chocolate bars and a code of conduct for snack food companies which “would include promises to cut the size of their portions by 20 per cent and to stop selling ‘over-sized’ sweets”. Particularly offensive to coercive nutritionists is some food companies’ practice of offering an extra-large package at a price only slightly higher than that of the smaller size. (Severin Carrell, “Why that big, fat KitKat could be the death of you”, The Independent, Jan. 19) (& welcome TongueTied readers). (DURABLE LINK)
January 20 – … and climbing cost of “compensation culture”. “The compensation culture, in which ‘every mishap leads to a complaint’ and often to legal action, is changing the face of Britain and costing about £10 billion a year, a report says today. … Compensation paid by insurance companies and public authorities amounts to one per cent of GDP, actuaries estimate. The figure is growing by 15 per cent a year. … However, the 35 per cent spent on administration in Britain compares well with the 58 per cent in America.” Schools, police forces and the ministry of defense are all being sued more frequently. (Joshua Rozenberg, “Price of ’suing for every mishap’ is £10bn”, Daily Telegraph, Dec. 17; “Compensation claims ‘costing UK £10bn a year’”, Ananova/Guardian, Dec. 17; Robert Verkaik, “Lawyers earn £3bn yearly from injuries culture”, Independent, Dec. 17; London Institute of Actuaries/Edinburgh Faculty of Actuaries, press release; “The Cost of Compensation Culture”, Dec. 2002 (PDF)). (DURABLE LINK)
January 17-19 – Vt. high court: ALL-CAPS DISCLAIMER on front page of employee handbook not unambiguous enough. “Sidestepping an all-capitals disclaimer on page one of an employee handbook, Vermont’s Supreme Court has revived a woman’s right to sue her ex-employer for breaching an implied contract when it fired her.” Although the disclaimer said: “THE POLICIES AND PROCEDURES CONTAINED IN THIS MANUAL CONSTITUTE GUIDELINES ONLY. THEY DO NOT CONSTITUTE PART OF AN EMPLOYMENT CONTRACT, NOR ARE THEY INTENDED TO MAKE ANY COMMITMENT TO ANY EMPLOYEE,” the court ruled that the woman could nonetheless ask a jury to construe the manual’s contents as generating a legally enforceable promise. (Andrew Harris, “Big Disclaimer No Bar to Employee Suit”, National Law Journal, Jan. 15). (DURABLE LINK)
January 17-19 – “Ich Bin Ein Tort Lawyer”. Train disasters in the Austrian Alps and in Germany in recent years, which killed 155 and 101 people respectively, have resulted in the filing of massive personal-injury lawsuits in New York City, although very few Americans numbered among the victims and most of the defendants being sued are European companies. American lawyers (including Edward Fagan, who also drew critical attention in the Holocaust-assets litigation — see Jun. 24, 2002) argue that so long as they designate at least one American as lead plaintiff, they should be able to bring any number of other nonresident plaintiffs in on the same action. Such forum-shopping enables the lawyers to sidestep rules in German and Austrian courts that ban contingency fees, cap damages, require the losing side to compensate the winners, and restrict discovery and the use of class actions. (Michael Freedman, Forbes, Jan. 6). (DURABLE LINK)
January 17-19 – Blog-appreciated. Yesterday (Jan. 16) we got Slashdotted, with a reader’s suggestion that we cover a lawyer’s cease-and-desist letter sent to the maintainer of a “free PCI device table” (we readily admit we don’t know what those devices are). AngryRobot describes an indecorous canine-generated outdoor hazard which seems only too likely to eventuate in the sort of personal injury case “destined to be on Overlawyered” (Jan. 16). Our return from hiatus last month was generously hailed by Susanna Cornett in Cut on the Bias (Dec. 13), and by the web’s premier chronicler of appellate law, Howard Bashman’s How Appealing (Dec. 15 and Dec. 30). Dean Esmay (Dean’s World, Jan. 10) calls us “one of the best sites on the web”. We’ve also been mentioned lately on Employers’ Lawyer (Jan. 12), MedRants (Jan. 11), Larry Sullivan’s Delaware Law Office (Nov. 12)(on loser-pays, which Sullivan dubs “winner wins”), Nikita Demosthenes (Oct. 19), and on many link lists including those of Rick Henderson, Nikki, Esq., Carey Gage, Professor Bunyip, John Ray, and Skunk by the Ocean. All this incoming link activity leaves us at #155 in the BlogStreet Top 200 blogs (ranked by number of those who link to us). A special tip of the hat to Scott Norvell’s recently launched TongueTied site, cataloguing excesses of political correctness, which generates an impressive amount of traffic for us. And we turn up in a sidebar in Germany’s Der Spiegel Online (Frank Patalong, “Wahre Lügen”, on the “Stella Awards” list of spurious cases, Nov. 29). (DURABLE LINK)
January 15-16 – Furor over California complaint mills. Beverly Hills, Calif. law firm Trevor Law Group has used the state’s bounty-hunting consumer-protection laws to file complaints en masse against auto repair shops, nail salons, and hotels, from which it then demands settlements. Even Calif. attorney general Bill Lockyer, no foe of the plaintiff’s bar, says he is “disgusted and appalled” by Trevor’s most recent mass litigation campaign, against more than 1,000 restaurants and food stores, many small and immigrant-owned. Business owners are organizing in response and many news outlets have run indignant editorials (Cindy Chang, “Backlash against lawsuit gains steam”, Pasadena Star-News, Jan. 2; Traci Jai Isaacs, “Business owners claiming old law used in ’shakedowns’”, South Bay Daily Breeze, Jan. 14; California Restaurant Association “Call to Action”, Jan.; KABC-TV 7, “Auto Lawsuits”, Dec. 3; Civil Justice Association of California, “Legal Shakedowns Hitting Thousands of California Businesses”, Dec. 6; “Mass Produced Claims Against Nail Salons”, Dec. 6 (PDF)). Radio’s “John and Ken Show” has also been covering the controversy and its online audio segments (three December dates) are described by one reader as quite lively in tone, although we haven’t had the chance to listen to them. (& see Mar. 3) (DURABLE LINK)
January 15-16 – Sis-Boom-Sue. Jenny Lawson is suing the Des Moines school district, alleging she broke her leg when she collided with another cheerleader while cheering for the wrestling team at Roosevelt High School. “The suit claims the district was negligent for — among other things — failing to have cheerleaders perform on an absorbent mat and encouraging more than one cheerleader to jump at once. Drew Bracken, an attorney for the Des Moines district, said he knew of no schools with such rules. ‘I’m not aware of a requirement that cheerleaders perform on an absorbent mat. I’ve never heard of it before,’ Bracken said.” (Mark Siebert, Des Moines Register, Jan. 2). (DURABLE LINK)
January 13-14 – “Wacky Warning Label” winners. This year’s winner in Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch’s Wacky Warning Label contest is a label on a robotic massage chair that warns, “Do not use massage chair without clothing” along with “Never force any body part into the backrest area while the rollers are moving”. “Second place goes to a snowblower label that says ‘Do not use snowthrower on roof.’ Third is a kitchen label that says, ‘Do not allow children to play in the dishwasher.’” (multiple outlets; Business Wire, Jan. 8) (earlier winners: Jan. 25-27, 2002; Jan. 19-21, 2001; Jan. 18, 2000) (DURABLE LINK)
January 13-14 – Cochran: City Hall to blame for arson/murder by drug dealer. “In a legal memo expected to land at City Hall in a matter of days, attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. will claim the city bears responsibility for the October arson murder of an East Baltimore family — in part because the anti-drug ‘Baltimore Believe’ campaign encouraged residents to speak out against dealers, a lawyer working with Cochran said yesterday. Cochran is representing relatives of the Dawson family, who prosecutors say were killed in retaliation for reporting neighborhood dealers to police.” (Laura Vozzella and Del Quentin Wilber, “Anti-drug campaign blamed in Dawson arson deaths”, Baltimore Sun, Jan. 8)(via WSJ Best of the Web) (DURABLE LINK)
January 13-14 – Anti-diet activist hopes to sue Weight Watchers. “U.K.-based psychotherapist Susie Orbach, author of Fat Is A Feminist Issue, is planning a lawsuit against Weight Watchers on behalf of what she says are thousands of women and men who have paid out many hundreds of British pounds to the company, only to end up fatter than before they started the program. … Orbach’s suit would be the first to hold a weight-loss company responsible for clients’ gaining the weight back.” (”Diet Dispute”, ABC News, Jan. 9). “‘Now that the general public is taking absolutely no responsibility, we retailers are starting to get anxious,’ says Simon Doonan, creative director of the Manhattan clothier Barney’s. ‘If people are suing McDonald’s for making them fat, one does wonder how far we are from an era where individuals will attempt to sue us when they buy clothes that make them look fat.’” (Joanne Kaufman, “Seasonal Pain and Suffering”, Wall Street Journal, Nov. 29) (DURABLE LINK)
November 8-10 – By reader acclaim: “Father files suit after son fails to win MVP award”. “A Canadian father is suing the New Brunswick Amateur Hockey Association after his 16-year-old son failed to win the league’s most valuable player award. Michael Croteau is seeking about $200,000 in psychological and punitive damages from the association. He also demands that the MVP trophy be taken from the winner and given to his son, Steven.” (”Father sues team for not naming son MVP”, AP/ESPN, Nov. 7; Shawna Richer, “Father files suit after son fails to win MVP award”, Globe and Mail, Nov. 7). (DURABLE LINK)
November 8-10 – Welcome Weekly Standard readers. The magazine’s “Scrapbook” feature generously refers to us as “One of [its] favorite sites” (”The Scrapbook: DeWayne Wickham, Wellstone, and more”, Nov. 11)(requires print sub + reg) in the course of hailing a Miami federal judge’s recent ruling that the Americans with Disabilities Act does not require website operators to redesign their offerings for the convenience of blind customers (see Oct. 22). (DURABLE LINK)
November 8-10 – Asbestos opinions. The Supreme Court has just heard oral argument on Norfolk & Western Railway Co. v. Ayers, a case raising the question whether railroad workers who have not in fact developed cancer from exposure to asbestos can nonetheless sue under federal law for fear of same (Dahlia Lithwick, “Supreme Torts: How to get paid a million dollars for your phobias.”, Slate, Nov. 6; Marcia Coyle, “Litigating Over the Fear of Cancer”, National Law Journal, Oct. 30). The recent massive combined asbestos suit in West Virginia has served to expose the rift between plaintiffs’ counsel whose clients are seriously sick, and those whose strategy leads them to recruit other kinds of clients (Lisa Stansky, “Unusual Clash in Asbestos Case”, National Law Journal, Oct. 31). In the latest of several scorching columns he has written on the controversy, Stuart Taylor, Jr., charges that “lawyer-plutocrats continue to obscenely enrich themselves by using massive asbestos lawsuits and a disgracefully dysfunctional litigation system to extort billions of dollars from American consumers every year. The lawyers blackmail mostly blameless companies, while cheating the real victims of asbestos. This scandal in turn dramatizes how our lawsuit industry often operates as an engine of injustice — and as a drain on the economy, an inadequate vehicle for compensating people actually harmed by corporate wrongdoing, and a transparent fraud in its pretensions to punish those responsible for such wrongdoing.” (”Greedy Lawyers Cheat Real Asbestos Victims”, National Journal/The Atlantic, Oct. 1). See also James A. Lacey, “Asbestos Suits: Worse Than Enron”, New York Post, Oct. 9. (DURABLE LINK)
November 8-10 – Munched zoo animals, gets six months severance. “A German zookeeper, fired last month for eating animals in a town zoo, has been awarded six-months severance pay after reaching a settlement in a labour court. The town of Recklinghausen, north of Cologne, fired the zookeeper after he was caught barbecuing five Tibetan mountain chickens and two Cameroonian sheep at the zoo, popular with children who were allowed to stroke the animals. … Germany’s laws make it extremely difficult for employers to fire workers.” (”Animal feast zookeeper win pay claim”, Yahoo/UK Reuters, Nov. 7) (DURABLE LINK)
November 8-10 – “Lawyers Fight Over Louima Case Fees”. Continuing the tawdry saga last aired in this space July 24, 2001: “The Abner Louima police brutality case resurfaced in federal court Wednesday, as attorneys disputed the distribution of nearly $3 million in attorney fees amid accusations of slipshod lawyering, client poaching and greed. Johnnie L. Cochran, Peter Neufeld and Barry S. Scheck have filed a motion to prevent Louima’s first two lawyers — Carl W. Thomas and Brian Figeroux — from receiving any portion of the fees associated with the record $8.75 million settlement Louima received from New York City.” (Tom Perrotta, New York Law Journal, Oct. 18; “Louima’s first team of lesser-known attorneys seek share of $3 million”, AP/CNN, Oct. 18). “According to Scheck’s testimony, the relationship between the two groups of lawyers was tense from the very beginning, with members of both teams launching racial slurs.” (”Lawyers Fight Over Fees From Louima Settlement”, (WNBC-TV, Oct. 17). (DURABLE LINK)
November 7 – Some election results. The Senate results, as will be surmised, were a spectacular rout for organized trial lawyer interests, which had spent heavily to defend Democratic control of the upper chamber. (Another key litigation lobby ally, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) (Jul. 7, 2000) did not face serious challenge and won easy re-election.) Of the three extremely wealthy trial attorneys who ran for U.S. House seats in West Virginia and Florida (Oct. 11-13), all lost by margins of 60-40 or worse (Humphreys, Jacobs, Hogan). And all of the nationally publicized state supreme court races seem to have been resolved in a manner favorable to litigation reformers. Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Chuck McRae, widely viewed as symbolizing his court’s runaway-litigation faction (Sept. 9-10), lost badly, actually coming in third in a three-way race with 23 percent of the vote. (Antoinette Konz, “Dickinson takes high court position”, Hattiesburg American, Nov. 6). Despite a nasty ad campaign against them (Nov. 1-3), Maureen O’Connor and Evelyn Stratton won convincing victories for seats on the Ohio high court, whose balance of power may shift as a result. Judges Robert Young (Michigan) and Harold See (Alabama), who have drawn trial lawyer fire in the past, were both re-elected, albeit narrowly in See’s case.
In governor’s races, on the other hand, there was little to cheer about, with trial-lawyer-backed candidates pulling out mostly narrow victories in Michigan, Oregon and Tennessee. We never expect much good news to come out of attorney general races, and were unsurprised to see New York’s Eliot Spitzer and Connecticut’s Richard Blumenthal glide to re-election; we’re also expecting the worst from Illinois’s incoming Lisa Madigan (Jan. 7). But we note GOP takeovers of the AG’s office in Michigan and Florida, as well as retention of the crucial Texas post. (full list at NAAG site)
A footnote: one of the engineers of the great 1998 tobacco heist, Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth, was term-limited and deigned to run instead for a state senate seat in Broward/Palm Beach, but lost to the Republican candidate (WSVN-TV, Nov. 6). This continues the series of political pratfalls by which key players in the tobacco affair — the list includes former attorneys general Hubert Humphrey III of Minnesota, Dan Morales of Texas and Scott Harshbarger of Massachusetts, and Minnesota private attorney Michael Ciresi — have come up short when they tried to run for other offices. (DURABLE LINK)
November 7 – Scourge of the Super-Size order. The hullabaloo over suing fast-food chains has been great publicity for Washington-based law prof John Banzhaf, who finds himself the subject of a profile in the Washington Post (Libby Copeland, “Snack Attack”, Nov. 3), not to mention all the publicity furthered by his own website and its obesity links. Less respectful views are offered by syndicated columnist Doug Bandow (”Lawyers run amok”, TownHall, Nov. 5) and Southern restauranteur Robert St. John (”In state’s legal climate, ‘I could sue, … retire to Hawaii’”, Hattiesburg American, Oct. 15). (DURABLE LINK)
November 6 – Notation on Scruggs’ court file: to be “kept away from the press”. “Even as famed Pascagoula trial lawyer Dickie Scruggs testified in Hattiesburg Tuesday in a lawsuit over legal fees from asbestos litigation, records of the lawsuit were being withheld from the media by Jackson County officials. The file for the case … contains the original complaint in the lawsuit between Scruggs’ firm and Merkel & Cocke, a Clarksdale law firm that also handled asbestos cases in the 1990s. Scruggs believes that Merkel & Cocke owes him money for a case that the firm and Scruggs worked on together. … A handwritten note attached to the court file in Jackson County, found by a Sun Herald reporter, said, ‘This file is being kept away from the press/media, etc., but is not under seal per Court Order…’ The word ‘not’ was underlined twice for emphasis.” (Beth Musgrave and Karen Nelson, “Scruggs’ case file being kept away from media”, Biloxi Sun-Herald, Oct. 30). The next day county officials relented and agreed to let the newspaper see the file (”Court opens Scruggs file to newspaper”, Oct. 31). The paper’s editorialists call the withholding of the file “brazen” and “no innocent mistake”. (”Public records are not private property of government officials” (editorial), Oct. 31). (DURABLE LINK)
November 6 – Choirgirl vs. cathedral. In Britain, a judge has dismissed the complaint that 13-year-old choirgirl Pollyanna Molloy filed against the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln Cathedral (consecrated 1092) after she was passed over for a “cope”, a senior chorister position. Molloy says she was “utterly destroyed” to learn that a less experienced girl had been chosen for the honor, and her lawsuit claims damages for mental anguish. Molloy’s parents say they plan to appeal the judge’s order. (”Judge throws out choirgirl’s writ”, Lincolnshire Echo, Oct. 30; Jonathan Petre, “Girl sues cathedral for choir honour ’snub’”, Daily Telegraph, Sept. 10). (DURABLE LINK)
November 6 – “Google sued over search ratings”. “Top billing in Google search results has become so coveted that one Web hosting company is suing for it. Search King, an Oklahoma City-based Web site network and advertising seller,” claims in its federal complaint that the popular search service “purposefully reduced Search King’s value, as well as that of Web sites hosted by Search King,” by downgrading its rankings. “According to the complaint, the Web hosting company in August started the PR Ad Network — an advertising network in which it sold text links on the popular Web sites to get them a better listing in Google’s results.” Google has recently been reported to have cracked down on “link farm” techniques by which sites are artificially induced to link to each other for purposes of boosting the beneficiaries’ search results. (Stefanie Olsen, ZDNet, Oct. 22). (DURABLE LINK)
November 4-5 – Campaign roundup. As we prepare to vote:
* Election Day is just the start: “both major parties have recruited unprecedented armies of lawyers — at least 10,000 on the Democratic side — for possible recount battles but also to keep an eye on voting procedures. …The campaign’s tone also shows the indelible mark of the 2000 election. The [Florida] recount battle signaled that lawyers can be as important as voters in shaping the outcomes of tight races.” Elections expert Larry Sabato says we “may not know for sure who controls the House and Senate until December or January.” (Gail Russell Chaddock, “As vote arrives, lawyers are ready”, Christian Science Monitor, Nov. 4). More: John Fund, “Have You Registered to Sue?”, OpinionJournal, Nov. 6.
* Medical malpractice reform has flared as an issue in races across the country. A very small sampling: the Tennessee governor’s race (Bill Poovey, “Hilleary says malpractice suit awards need a limit”, Knoxville News-Sentinel, Nov. 1); the Texas attorney general’s race (Jim Belew, “Abbott touts solution for healthcare”, Conroe Courier, Oct. 31); the Oregon governor’s race (”Governor hopefuls respond to readers”, Salem Statesman-Journal, Oct. 28 — scroll to near end); the Ohio high court races (”Taft says a GOP high court will fix malpractice problems”, Toledo Blade, Oct. 31; the Maryland governor’s race (”Maryland medical society turns against Townsend”, Baltimore Sun, Oct. 31); Pennsylvania’s 13th District U.S. House race (John Anastasi, “Doctors group backs tort reform supporters”, PhillyBurbs.com, Nov. 3); the Florida governor’s race (Mary Ellen Klas, “Candidates clash on medical liability”, Palm Beach Post, Oct. 16); and Mississippi state legislative races (Matthew Coleman, “Lawyers’ group targets Lincoln County senator”, Brookhaven (Miss.) Daily Leader, Oct. 9).
* In Connecticut, attorney Martha Dean has taken up the thankless task of running against the Northeast’s most successful political demagogue, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, and has been making a spirited job of it (Edmund H. Mahony, “Attorney Takes On A General”, Hartford Courant, Oct. 19; Ray Hackett, “GOP challenger: Blumenthal’s high-profile cases waste tax dollars”, Norwich Bulletin, Oct. 28; “Dean says Blumenthal should stop Microsoft suit”, AP/WSFB-TV, Nov. 3). In news coverage no longer online, Dean has assailed Blumenthal for his continued denials that there was anything wrong with the way he picked his former law partners for the fabulously lucrative job of representing the state in the tobacco litigation (see Feb. 3 and Feb. 16, 2000).
* Of donations to federal candidates this election cycle by California’s 40 biggest law firms, which mostly represent corporations and other large institutions, 62 percent of the money has gone to Democrats, 35 percent to Republicans. (Jason Dearen, “Big-Firm Backing”, The Recorder, Oct. 29; “By the Numbers”). What, you thought it would be any different?
* In West Virginia’s hotly contested House race, asbestos plaintiff’s lawyer James Humphreys, “who made $10 million from his successful law practice last year, has spent $5.2 million of his own money in his quest to unseat Republican Shelley Moore Capito. Two years ago, the Charleston Democrat spent $6.1 million of his own cash in a narrow loss to Capito.” Make him spend it all, Shelley! (Karin Fischer, “Humphreys’ top contributor is himself”, Charleston Daily Mail, Oct. 24; “Bush pre-election drive stops in W.Va.”, Huntington Herald-Dispatch, Nov. 1; “Elections 2002: West Virginia House rematch”, UPI, Oct. 22).
More: A Washington Times editorial reminds us that trial lawyers have staked many, many chips on Michigan AG and gubernatorial candidate Jennifer Granholm; her GOP opponent, Lt. Gov. Dick Posthumus, “as the majority leader of the state senate tenaciously pushed the 1995 tort reforms through the legislature, and has been the personal-injury lawyers’ Public Enemy No. 1 ever since.” (”Lawsuit abuse”, Nov. 4; see Oct. 9). Those following Missouri politics will want to check out retired judge Ralph Voss’s website calling for voters to reject several incumbent judges. And here’s a list of local webloggers who will be following key races across the country (courtesy DailyPundit). (DURABLE LINK)
November 4-5 – “Lawyers who sue to settle”. L.A. Times profiles local attorney Morse Mehrban, a major user of California’s bounty-hunting charter Proposition 65, whose exploits include filing 400 separate claims against candle makers and more than a dozen against fireplace log makers, claiming their products emit toxic fumes when burned. “A group of Los Angeles-area hardware stores paid Mehrban $27,500 last year to settle a lawsuit claiming that discarded metal filings from key-duplicating machines posed a threat of lead contamination.” A Los Angeles judge who dismissed one of Mehrban’s cases — against a hotel for failing to post signs warning that cigarette smoke in public areas of the hotel was toxic — “likened the lawsuit to ‘racketeering.’ … Though [Mehrban] bills his time at as much as $400 an hour and drives a Mercedes roadster, he says he’s not in it for the money.”
“The plaintiff in many of Mehrban’s suits is Consumer Cause Inc., which describes itself as a statewide advocacy group. Its mailing address is the Brentwood home of Mehrban’s mother, Rafat Efraim, who for a time was listed on state incorporation records as the group’s only officer. According to Mehrban, Consumer Cause now has five officers, including his mother and fiancee. He declined to identify the other officers.” In one case Mehrban filed, “the manufacturer’s lawyer called Mehrban’s mother to the witness stand during a pretrial hearing in an effort to show that Consumer Cause was a mere front for Mehrban’s legal practice. Efraim speaks only Farsi and testified through an interpreter. Asked the name of the consumer group, she replied: ‘Help the customers.’ Efraim said she did not know whether it had any other officers.”
However, the Times reports that Mehrban has also represented clients whose independent existence will be familiar to some of our readers, including the National Coalition of Free Men (on whose behalf he filed suit recently against Los Angeles County, saying it was being discriminatory by maintaining a commission on women’s issues but not one for men’s) and the National Council Against Health Fraud (on whose behalf Mehrban went to court over the effectiveness of homeopathic remedies; numerous favorable mentions of Mehrban turn up on QuackWatch and he is listed on QuackWatch’s Legal Advisory Board). According to the Times, Mehrban is currently in court suing dentists on the claim “that the mercury in silver fillings could cause birth defects and diseases”. We wonder how that sits with his friends over at the NCAHF, which recently voiced agreement with the view of the American Dental Association that a different lawyer’s West Coast suit against mercury fillings constitutes “an egregious abuse of the legal system.” (see Jul. 16). (Monte Morin, Los Angeles Times, Oct. 26). For more on Prop 65 litigation, see Daniel Blackburn, “The be-all, catch-all”, San Luis Obispo New Times, Mar. 7. (DURABLE LINK)
November 4-5 – Self-defense, of course. Former policeman Eddie Myers fired 36 shots at Emma Horton from three different guns, hitting her 14 times. Last month a jury acquitted Myers on grounds of — what else? — self-defense. “This is a runaway jury and crazy verdict,” said Holmes County District Attorney James Powell III. Defense attorney Chokwe Lumumba disagreed, saying Myers was reasonably in fear of his life: Horton, who was an assistant police chief and Myers’s sister-in-law, was armed and Myers said she had reached for her gun. When found, “Horton was armed, but her gun was found strapped in its holster on her body.” (Jimmie E. Gates, “Ex-cop offers apology to family”, Jackson Clarion-Ledger, Oct. 23). (DURABLE LINK)
November 4-5 – You breached my privacy, says serial killer. Australia: “Serial killer Ivan Milat could receive up to $40,000 in compensation over alleged breaches of [New South Wales] privacy laws, State Parliament heard yesterday. Milat has lodged a complaint with the NSW Privacy Commission over the public release of x-rays taken last year when he swallowed three razor blades, 24 blade staples and a nail-clipper chain. Milat claimed he did this in protest at his solitary confinement but prison authorities believe the killer was hoping for a transfer to a medical facility from which to escape…. Milat, who is serving seven life sentences for the murder of seven backpackers between September 1992 and November 1993, stood to gain up to $40,000 in compensation if his complaint was upheld, he said. … ‘Milat believes as a result of those x-rays becoming public, that his personal rights have been impinged,’ [Corrective Services Minister Richard Amery] told Parliament.” (Linda Silmalis, “Milat’s compo bid could pay $40,000″, Sydney Morning Herald, Oct. 30). (DURABLE LINK)
November 4-5 – “Resounding victory” for Microsoft. Last Friday’s ruling was a rebuke to activist state attorneys general and others who’d wanted to pursue the technology company to the bitter end. “U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly embraced, with minor changes, the settlement struck last winter aimed at addressing Microsoft’s violations of antitrust laws. …And she all but ridiculed the states for the legal theories they put forth to justify tougher restrictions on the Redmond, Wash., company.” (Jonathan Krim, “Judge Accepts Settlement in Microsoft Case”, Washington Post, Nov. 2; Dennis J. Opatrny, “Reaction Mixed on Microsoft Decision”, The Recorder, Nov. 4). (DURABLE LINK)
November 1-3 – WHO demands pretzel de-salting by law. “Far from just encouraging people to leave aside the salt pot to prevent high blood pressure, governments should resort to legislation to cut the amount of salt in processed foods, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said Wednesday.” The transnational agency for years has been pushing governments to restrict tobacco, which seems to have whetted its activist spirit. (”East Less Salt — By Law, Says WHO”, AFP/Discovery Health Channel, Oct. 30). In Australia, “Take-away [take-out] chains may face pressure to end cheap deals on super-sized meals under a radical plan to be proposed to the Federal Government to combat obesity. Commercial television networks could also face new restrictions on screening fast-food and confectionery advertisements, especially to children.” (Fia Cumming, “New laws target fast food”, Sydney Morning Herald, Oct. 13). See also Andrew Ferguson, “Tobacco Lesson for McDonald’s in Fat War”, Bloomberg.com, Sept. 10 (interview with John Banzhaf); Iain Murray, “Slaughtering the Fatted Calf”, TechCentralStation, Aug. 19. (DURABLE LINK)
November 1-3 – Mudslinging in Ohio high court races. Trial lawyers and labor unions have been funding attack ads against two Republican candidates for the Ohio Supreme Court, incumbent Justice Evelyn Stratton and Lt. Gov. Maureen O’Connor, in a campaign so ugly that it has drawn a formal condemnation from the Ohio State Bar Association. “The ad, produced by the Citizens for an Independent Court political action committee, depicts laughing businessmen in suits inside a limousine, as a narrator states Justice Stratton and Ms. O’Connor are on ‘their side.’” (Jim Provance, “State bar assails ad in Ohio court race”, Toledo Blade, Oct. 22; Emily Heller, “Attack ads, big money set tone again this year”, National Law Journal, Oct. 28). Ohio GOP chairman Bob Bennett identifies an element of hypocrisy: “The same trial lawyers who funded this ad were outraged only two years ago when similar tactics were used against Justice [Alice Robie] Resnick,” one of their own favorites. (Liz Sidoti, “Group’s ad links GOP Supreme Court candidates to big business”, AP/Akron Beacon Journal, Oct. 16)(see Oct. 30, 2000). On judicial races in other states, see “Courting the Vote”, National Law Journal, Nov. 1 (fewer big fights between trial lawyers and their opponents than two years ago, Mississippi and Ohio aside). (DURABLE LINK)
November 1-3 – “Mom who drugged kids’ ice cream sues”. “A Phoenix mother who admitted lacing her daughters’ ice cream with prescription tranquilizers is suing a health care provider and others, saying they are responsible for her drug-induced delirium at the time. Jodi Lynn Henry, 38, who was acquitted in July of attempted murder charges, filed a medical malpractice claim in Maricopa County Superior Court against Jewish Family Services, a nurse practitioner and ValueOptions, a mental-health care provider.” (Carol Sowers, Arizona Republic, Oct. 30). (DURABLE LINK)
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August 5-15 – On hiatus. We’ll be taking a break for the next week and a half or so. While we’re away, check out the world’s funniest police log (Arcata, Calif.); the Manhattan Institute (with which our editor is associated), whose email announcement list you really ought to be on, and whose Center for Legal Policy has been publishing a series of important papers on such topics as asbestos litigation, class actions, and forum-shopping; and of course this site’s very own archives, which date back to July 1999, and which you can search. See you (more likely than not) on Friday, Aug. 16. (DURABLE LINK)
August 2-4 – Lawyer’s suit against airline: my seatmate was too fat. “A pretrial hearing is scheduled in an Ashland attorney’s civil lawsuit against an airline that sold him a seat next to an obese man. Philip Shafer will meet representatives from Delta Air Lines Inc. in Ashland Municipal Court at 3:30 p.m. Sept. 19. Shafer seeks $9,500 from Delta. The suit stems from a two-hour November flight from New Orleans to Cincinnati. Shafer claims Delta breached its contract to provide him with a full seat and reasonable comfort because the obese man crowded onto his seat.” (Mark Caudill, “Ashland attorney sues over ‘jet jam’”, Mansfield, Ohio News Journal, Aug. 1) (see Dec. 20, 2000). (DURABLE LINK)
August 2-4 – Dense yet sieve-like. “The INS has no real idea who’s within America’s borders. One reason they have no idea is because it takes them a decade to process a routine green-card application by a highly-employable, high-earning, law-abiding citizen of America’s closest ally.” (Mark Steyn, National Post (Canada), Aug. 1). (DURABLE LINK)
August 2-4 – Welcome Fox News viewers/ readers. We suggested on Tuesday that the media should take a closer look at the tobacco-fee saga unfolding in the Manhattan courtroom of Justice Charles Ramos, and Fox News Channel wasted no time stepping into the breach; its news coverage gave this site’s editor generous time on screen to describe the case’s significance. However, none of the lawyers requesting the $13,000/hour fees were willing to go on camera to defend those fees — funny about that. (”Tobacco Settlement a Windfall for Lawyers”, Fox News, Aug. 1). And as if that weren’t enough publicity for one week, our editor is also interviewed on camera in a Fox News segment on school lawsuits (Liza Porteus, “Flunking Out of School? Get a Lawyer”, Fox News, Aug. 2) (DURABLE LINK)
August 2-4 – LexisOne “Site of the Month”. We’re one of the picks for the month of August at the major legal research service’s Legal Web Site Directory. (DURABLE LINK)
August 1 – You mean I’m suing that nice doctor? When Hazel Norton of Rolling Fork, Mississippi, read that the drug Propulsid might cause harm, she stopped taking it and signed up for a lawsuit. “‘Actually, I didn’t get hurt by Propulsid,’ Norton, who had the drug prescribed for her heartburn, said. But because she had taken the drug, she said she thought she could join a class-action lawsuit ‘and I might get a couple of thousand dollars.’
“The last thing she intended, Norton said, was for Kooyer to be sued. [Dr. Kirk Kooyer, who "arrived in the Mississippi Delta in 1994 to serve the poor."] ‘He’s really a good doctor, very intelligent,’ said Norton, who’s been Kooyer’s patient since 1994. ‘He makes you feel so comfortable.’
“She said she intended for the drug company to be sued, but that lawyers told her it would be better for her case to sue Kooyer in order to keep the case in Mississippi. After finding out Kooyer had been sued, she said she wrote a letter to her attorneys, objecting. ‘I’m kind of upset. I do not want him leaving because of all the suits,’ she said. ‘If we run off all the doctors, what are the people gonna do?’ Kooyer was eventually dropped from the litigation but not before he made up his mind to leave Mississippi.” (Jerry Mitchell, “Tort reform: just what the doctor ordered?”, Jackson Clarion-Ledger, Jul. 29 — many other good details)(more on Propulsid suits: Oct. 1, 2001; FindLaw). (DURABLE LINK)
August 1 – Sic ‘em on Segway. As the Los Angeles Times reported July 23 (registration process too frustrating to give them a link), one law firm is already announcing plans to organize lawsuits against Segway (also known as “It” or “Ginger”), the smart scooter whose backers think it could revolutionize urban transportation (see Dec. 13, 2001). “We believe that the Segway HT is potentially a legal nightmare and will be the basis for many lawsuits, both from the corporate and consumer side,” explains the website, which sports the tastefully restrained name of Sue-It.com and was put up by a “successful corporate law firm” calling itself the “USA Immigration Law Center”.
Wait a minute. Immigration? Well, that might shed light on why the “successful corporate law firm” argues its case in language that sometimes reads as if it has been inexactly translated into English from a foreign tongue. “We are successful corporate law firm with offices in Washington, DC and Baltimore named the USAILC. We are planning to further specialize in new areas associated with suing It [Segway]. … [W]e view the potential onslaught of cases against It as more than just a basis for strong financial profits. … Get ready to Sue-It!” A bunch of wild and crazy guys, no? As for the website USAILC puts up to promote its major line of practice, among its first sentences is the following: “The United States of America Immigration Law Center is the official online home for US Immigration Legal Matters and Issues” — which brought us up short since we had always imagined that “the official” site was this one. (DURABLE LINK)
May 31-June 2 – Welcome Fox News viewers/readers. Our editor is interviewed on air and quoted in print in this piece on the quest to make casinos and lottery operators the next Big Tobacco (Alisyn Camerota, “Trial Lawyers Target Gambling”, Fox News, May 31) (see May 20-21). (DURABLE LINK)
May 31-June 2 – “After stabbing son, mom sues doctors”. Pennsylvania: “Janice Taylor, who stabbed her 4-year-old son two dozen times outside their Lake Ariel home in 2000, is suing her doctors for not adequately responding to her psychosis as she neared the end of a pregnancy.” (Scranton Times Tribune, May 29). (via WSJ OpinionJournal “Best of the Web“, May 30). (DURABLE LINK)
May 31-June 2 – Activist judges north of the border. In the United States judicial activism has been falling into gradual disrepute for a quarter century, but in Canada many highly placed jurists seem eager to boogie like it’s 1975: the Ontario Court of Appeal has just struck down as unconstitutional one of the central planks in welfare reform, the principle that recipients with live-in boyfriends should not draw benefits accorded to single mothers. It’s only the latest in a long string of decisions in which judges seem to be writing their own preferences into law, according to columnist Christina Blizzard. Earlier this year the Supreme Court of Canada struck down as unconstitutional a Conservative government’s repeal of a law authorizing unionization of workers on family farms, although the effect of the repeal would only have been to revert to the state of the law as of a couple of years previously. Next up: a challenge to another plank of welfare reform, a lifetime ban on payment of benefits to persons caught cheating the system. Paging Mickey Kaus — they need you up there! (Christina Blizzard, “Disorder in the court”, Toronto Sun/Canoe, May 18). On U.S. judicial activism, see John Leo, “Running away with the law”, U.S. News/Jewish World Report, May 13. (& see letter to the editor, Jun. 14). (DURABLE LINK)
May 31-June 2 – Folk medicine meets child abuse reporting. The Vietnamese and Hmong folk remedy cao gio, or coining, “involves the rubbing of warm oils or gels across a person’s skin with a coin, spoon or other flat object. It leaves bright red marks or bruises, but many Asian families believe the marks represent bad blood rising out of the body and allow improved circulation and healing.” The lesions are typically not of medical significance, according to many Western medical observers, but they sometimes lead school and social service workers to report suspected child abuse, in part owing to the influence of laws mandating that possible instances of abuse be reported even if borderline. In Omaha, following such reports, police swooped down and removed ten children from their parents; following an outcry, charges against the parents were dropped and the children were returned to their homes. (Omaha World-Herald coverage including Joe Dejka, “Asian couples work to get children back”, May 3; Jeremy Olson, “Asian remedy raises few alarms elsewhere”, May 3; Joseph Morton, “2nd coining case dropped; Asian family expresses relief”, May 14; Karyn Spencer and Angie Brunkow, “Officials not sanctioning all ‘coining’”, May 17). (DURABLE LINK)
May 30 – “Oxy Morons”. “Last fall,” reports Forbes, North Carolina law firm Lutzel & Associates “sent a letter soliciting users of [time-release pain medication] Oxycontin and several other drugs. Claiming that the Food & Drug Administration had ‘banned’ the medications, the letter advised them to ’stop using’ the drugs immediately.” But in fact Oxycontin was neither banned nor threatened with removal, and for a patient suffering pain suddenly to discontinue its use without a doctor’s recommendation can result in medically serious consequences as well as needless agony. (Ian Zack, “Oxy Morons”, Forbes.com, Apr. 29). Despite vigorous efforts by some plaintiff’s lawyers to stoke mass tort litigation over the drug (see Apr. 10 and links from there), the National Law Journal reports that drugmaker Purdue Pharma has “had a string of confidence-building victories in early litigation.” (Bob Van Voris, “OxyContin Maker Not Yet Feeling Much Pain”, National Law Journal, April 30). (DURABLE LINK)
May 30 – “Privileged chambers”. Earlier this year the Albany Times Union ran a five-day editorial series (”Unequal Justice” — scroll down to find it) on judicial misconduct in New York state. It concluded that discipline is generally lax when Empire State judges behave badly and that it can take years to remove a jurist from the bench even after charges of serious misconduct (”Privileged chambers”, Feb. 3; “Justice denied”, Feb. 4; “Conduct unbecoming”, Feb. 5; “Starving the watchdog”, Feb. 6; “The need for reform”, Feb. 7). (DURABLE LINK)
May 29 – Our editor interviewed. John Hawkins at Right Wing News interviewed our editor by email about this site and our ideas on legal reform, and publishes the results this morning (”An Interview with Walter Olson“). Earlier interviewees in the series include Glenn Reynolds of InstaPundit, Wendy McElroy of iFeminists and FoxNews.com, and Australian journalist Tim Blair. Update: nice things said about this by Protein Wisdom, VodkaPundit, and Eve Tushnet.
May 28-29 – The scandal of the Phoenix memo. It warned FBI higher-ups that Islamic radicals including followers of Osama bin Laden were training at American flight schools. So why wasn’t it followed up? FBI director Robert Mueller told Senators May 8 that it would have been a “monumental undertaking” to investigate the 20,000 or so students at domestic flight schools. “What a load of nonsense,” writes Christopher Caldwell. “Any small-town newspaper reporter could have narrowed down that 20,000 to under a hundred in an afternoon, just by focusing on names like … oh, I don’t know … try Mohamed, Walid, Marwan, and Hamza. Couldn’t the entire FBI have done the same?
“As it turns out, no. And the reason is, whoever got Williams’s memo would understand that there is one commonsensical way to implement it: Look for Arabs. And given congressional pressure on racial profiling and the president’s own outrageous pandering on the subject during the 2000 election campaign, Williams’s lead was something no agent with an instinct for self-preservation would want to touch with a barge pole.” (Christopher Caldwell, “Low Profile”, Weekly Standard, May 24) (via WSJ Best of the Web, May 24). See also John Fund, “Willful Ignorance”, WSJ OpinionJournal.com, May 22; “Key Lawmaker: Probe of FBI Warrant Will Look at ‘Racial Profiling’ Concerns”, AP/Fox News, May 26). Update: perfect Mark Steyn column (”Stop frisking crippled nuns”, The Spectator, May 25). (DURABLE LINK)
May 28-29 – “Rocketing liability rates squeeze medical schools”. “The University of Nevada School of Medicine in Reno could be forced to close if it can’t find affordable liability insurance by June 30. In West Virginia, Marshall University’s Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine in Huntington has cut its pathology program and is trimming resident class size. Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine in Hershey is cutting faculty salaries, which will make it hard to land top researchers. ‘The sudden, very large increase in expenses that were not anticipated or budgeted is creating a great deal of anxiety,’ says Jordan J. Cohen, MD, president of the Assn. of American Medical Colleges.” (Myrle Croasdale, American Medical News, May 20). (DURABLE LINK)
May 28-29 – “Barbed wire might hurt burglars, pensioner warned”. In Northampton, England, 94-year-old Ruby Barber has finally gotten permission from the borough council to put barbed wire on her garden walls after suffering four break-ins to her bungalow over the past year and a half. The council granted permission “as long as she uses warning signs and agrees to take full responsibility if a would-be intruder is injured“. Her son Burt, who lives nearby, said: “It is bordering on the ridiculous to say that if they hurt themselves getting in here I am responsible. The Queen has got it all around Buckingham Palace and if it is good enough for her it is good enough for my mother. She is the Queen to me.” (Ananova, May 24). (DURABLE LINK)
May 28-29 – Must-know-Spanish rules defended. Recently it was reported that a Miami social services agency was requiring an Anglo worker to learn Spanish on pain of losing her job. Some commentators were upset, but Eugene Volokh, of the Volokhii, argues that “speaking a foreign language is a valuable skill, and … employers may legally discriminate against employees who lack this skill”. (Volokh blog, May 8, May 11; Jim Boulet Jr., “Mandatory Spanish”, National Review Online, May 10, and running commentary by Boulet at English First site). And the factual background of the case turns out to be considerably less simple than first reports indicated; not only does the county deny that failure to learn Spanish was the reason for the worker’s firing, but it seems she held herself out as having “proficiency” in that language when she accepted the job (Jay Weaver, “Poor work, not language barrier, got employee fired, court says”, Miami Herald, May 11). (DURABLE LINK)
May 28-29 – Goodbye, Wendell Barry. Eve Tushnet administers a well-deserved thrashing to the overrated localist (”Hayseeds and Straw Men”, Eve Tushnet blog, May 27) (DURABLE LINK)
May 27 – McArdle on food as next-tobacco. “If you can’t be held responsible for what you put in your mouth, what are you responsible for?” (Megan McArdle, “Can We Sue Our Own Fat Asses Off?”, Salon, May 24). See also Duncan Campbell, “Junk food firms fear being eaten alive by fat litigants”, The Guardian, May 24; Jacob Sullum, “Food Fight”, Reason Online, May 10 (& see Jun. 3-4). (DURABLE LINK)
May 27 – “Lawsuit stifles Internet critics”. The Richmond Times-Dispatch and Long Island Business News have new stories out on the PetsWarehouse case (in which a pet store owner has sued aquatic plants hobbyists on charges of online defamation based on their postings on mailing lists and websites — see Aug. 6, 2001 & May 22, 2002). Both interview several parties, including defendant Dan Resler (a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University), plaintiff Robert Novak, and (in the Richmond paper) free-speech law commentator Rodney Smolla. A key factor working to defendants’ disadvantage: liberal jurisdictional rules which allow a plaintiff to file an Internet libel case in his local court (in this case the Eastern District of New York) and force defendants who live in distant states to shoulder the cost of litigating there from a distance. (Gordon Hickey, “Online speech not free”, Richmond Times-Dispatch, May 26). In Long Island Business News, owner Novak is quoted as being aware of this cost asymmetry: “‘It’s only five miles for me,’ he said. ‘All these people have to come here at their own expense.’” (Ken Schachter, Long Island Business News, “PetsWarehouse.com founder dries out aquarists in courts”, May 24-30). More on Internet jurisdiction: Carl S. Kaplan, “A Libel Suit May Establish E-Jurisdiction”, New York Times, May 27 (reg). Update Oct. 4-6: Novak sues Google and other defendants. Further update: Oct. 5, 2003. (DURABLE LINK)
May 24-26 – Nader credibility watch. In France, the litigation advocate called fast-food restaurants “weapons of mass destruction”. (”Ralph Nader met en garde les Français contre les ‘fast food’”, Yahoo/AFP, May 17; via Matt Welch, May 18; see comments at Tim Blair blog, May 26). More on Nader’s credibility or lack thereof: Matt Welch, “Speaking Lies To Power”, Reason, May; Thomas Oliphant, Boston Globe, Apr. 21. (DURABLE LINK)
May 24-26 – “Counseling center may face closure”. Chickasha, Okla.: “The largest civil verdict in Grady County history may mean the county’s largest mental health center will have to close for financial reasons, officials said Wednesday. A $1.5 million jury verdict awarded last week against Chisholm Trail Counseling Service was a bittersweet victory for the family of James Phillips, who committed suicide a few hours after being interviewed and released by one of the agency’s counselors.” (Penny Owen, The Oklahoman, May 23). (DURABLE LINK)
May 24-26 – Australia’s litigation debate. “Some of Australia’s most famous beaches face closure after a huge damages award to a man paralysed while swimming at Bondi Beach, local authorities have warned.” (BBC, “Closure ‘threat’ to Australia’s beaches”, May 14). Former chief justice of the High Court of Australia Harry Gibbs “said the culture of litigation had been fostered by some lawyers, while some judges seemed to strive to find a reason for finding in favour of an injured plaintiff and award damages in cases where a reasonable and informed person would not have thought the defendant was at fault. He said the deficiencies of the law of negligence had now become apparent. ‘It favours generosity to the plaintiff at the expense (in many cases) of justice to the defendant’.” Gibbs suggested that Australia might want to consider emulating the New Zealand model under which most negligence actions are replaced with a system of no-fault compensation. (”Lawyers blamed for crisis” (editorial), Queensland Courier-Mail, May 16). See Susanna Lobez, “Snails, Consumer Power and the Law”, ABC national radio transcripts, The Law Report, June 1, 1999)
“The latest figures available from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show that as of June 30, 1999, there were 10,819 barrister and solicitor practices in Australia, an increase of 11 per cent over three years, and these practices generated an income of $7.04 billion, a robust 27 per cent increase over three years. Income from personal injury cases grew still faster, by 31 per cent.” What strikes us as remarkable about these figures is not just the rapid growth in sums redistributed, but that the figures are obtainable at all. Virtually no data is available, reliable or otherwise, on how much money American lawyers receive in the aggregate from personal injury cases. Why not? If the answer that occurs to you is “because our legal profession doesn’t want it to be collected”, you may be on to something. (Paul Sheehan, “Laws made by lawyers — well they would like that, wouldn’t they?”, Sydney Morning Herald, May 6). (DURABLE LINK)
May 22-23 – Convicted hospital rapist sues hospital. “A Sandusky man serving a 10-year sentence for raping a patient at the former Providence Hospital is suing both the hospital and his former attorney for negligence, according to Erie County Common Pleas Court records. Edward Brewer filed suit Monday against Providence Hospital, now part of Firelands Regional Medical Center, for ‘inadequate security in protecting visitors as well as their patients’ which caused him pain and suffering, according to court documents. Brewer, 47, was found guilty in October of raping a 44-year-old acquaintance in her hospital bed in June 1998. … Brewer claims negligence by the hospital, including a poorly trained nursing staff, negatively affected his criminal case, according to the suit.” The suit, which Brewer filed on his own behalf, asks for $2 million in damages; separately, Brewer is suing his former criminal attorney. (Emily S. Achenbaum, “Convicted rapist sues hospital”, Sandusky [Ohio] Register, May 21). Update: court dismisses case, see Mar. 5-7, 2003. (DURABLE LINK)
May 22-23 – Reparations suits “pure hooey”. The “slave-reparation plaintiffs have articulated neither standing nor a cognizable claim. In the final analysis, these cases are not really about pushing the envelope and making new law. Rather, they are part of a strategy to inflict public relations damage in order to coerce political and economic concessions. The federal courts should stand firm against this gathering storm, dismiss the lawsuits and leave the complex issues of social policy they raise to the political process.” (Steven P. Benenson, “Reparations Suits Are Too Little, Too Late”, National Law Journal, May 20). “Any judge not assessing sanctions for the filing of frivolous litigation should be ashamed. … So much for laches, the statute of limitations and all the other legal devices that assure that disputes are resolved in a timely manner. No wonder the world laughs at our love of litigation.” (Norm Pattis, “The Color of Money: It’s Red for Reparations”, Connecticut Law Tribune, Apr. 15).
“The villain Calvera said, ‘Generosity, that was my first mistake,’ as he peered ominously from beneath his mega-sombrero at the gringo gunman in the classic scene from the 1960 film The Magnificent Seven. … Honchos at Aetna Inc., the insurance company named in a recent lawsuit seeking reparations for slavery, must be remembering that quote right about now.” (Gregory Kane, “Generosity goes unnoticed in slavery reparations lawsuit”, Baltimore Sun, Apr. 20). Kane says Aetna has responded to the suit with “infuriating wussiness” and says “what Aetna bigwigs should tell [plaintiff-activist Deadria] Farmer-Paellmann and her lawyers [is]: ‘Get a life!’” (DURABLE LINK)
May 22-23 – PetsWarehouse.com defamation suit, cont’d. Last year we reported on the ongoing litigation filed by Robert Novak, founder and owner of PetsWarehouse.com, against members of an internet discussion list that he said had defamed him and his company (see Aug. 6, 2001; letter to editor from Novak, Aug. 10). Many aquarium enthusiasts, alarmed by the legal action, have at various times posted information on their sites about the suit, sometimes posting banners that solicit donations on the defendants’ behalf. (”$15,000,000 lawsuits suck the life out of online discussions. Please support the APD Defense Fund,” reads one.) According to Katharine Mieszkowski, writing last month in Salon, a number of these site operators have been given reason to regret that they ever took such rash steps. In particular, according to Mieszkowski, Novak has proceeded to add more defendants to the suit, including supporters of the APD Defense Fund who put up its banner solicitations, and the webmaster of a site that had posted information on the case, charging them with violating his PetsWarehouse copyright and engaging in a conspiracy against him. Among evidence of copyright infringement offered in his suit was webmasters’ use of Pets Warehouse as a “metatag”, that is to say, a keyword directed at search engines but not normally seen by ordinary users (more on metatag litigation: Sept. 25, 1999).
A number of defendants have settled out of the case, including a Colorado webmaster who says she spent thousands on her defense and who turned over the rights to her domain to Novak as part of the settlement, having shut it down after being sued. “Other defendants had to run banners on their sites promoting Pets Warehouse.” “According to [defendant Dan] Resler, at one point, the money in the defense fund ran out, and when the defendants had to start paying out of their own funds, they got scared. (Novak is representing himself ‘pro se’ in the case.)” Resler himself agreed to pay $4,150. “Beyond the lawsuit itself, other supporters of the case say they have received cease-and-desist letters for using the words ‘Pets Warehouse’ on their sites.” Among them: the webmaster of a site that “features a banner advertisement that mentions the case with this headline: ‘Pets Warehouse Sues Hobbyists’ and links to the aquarists’ site about the case. ‘I’m just literally reporting that the case exists and linking to another site,’ he says.” (Katharine Mieszkowski, “Free speech and the Internet; a fish story”, Salon, Apr. 4). (DURABLE LINK)
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April 10 – Soap star: ABC wrote my character out of the show. “A former star of ABC’s daytime drama ‘All My Children’ has filed a lawsuit for nearly $32 million, claiming that the network lied to him and damaged him professionally and financially.
“Michael Nader, who played the dark, dashing and rich Hungarian Count Dimitri Marick on ‘All My Children’ for nearly 10 years, says in court papers that he ‘became ill’ in February 2001 and went on medical leave.
“Nader, 57, was in fact in drug treatment after a narcotics arrest in Manhattan’s East Village. The district attorney’s office said he pleaded guilty and was sentenced May 22, 2001, to three years of probation.
“Nader’s Dimitri character …was written out of the show in 1999. The character was resurrected in 2000 but was written out again in 2001 after Nader’s arrest and rehab. … Nader says [in court papers] he told ABC in March 2001 that he was ready to work but officials there told him to continue on medical leave. … [Later they] refused to release him from his [$1.7 million five-year] contract [signed in April 2000] so he could work elsewhere.” (”Former ‘All My Children’ Star Files Suit”, AP/Newsday, Apr. 3). (DURABLE LINK)
April 10 – “Peter’s Pence”. Baltimore plaintiff’s lawyer and political czar Peter Angelos, who had been demanding $1 billion in fees for representing the state of Maryland in its tobacco suit, has ended the dispute by agreeing to take a mere $150 million instead. The people over at the National Association of Manufacturers’ Human Resources Policy Department feel awfully sorry for the Orioles owner for having to settle for such a measly amount and have launched a “Peter’s Pence” campaign by which readers can collect the spare change off their dresser tops and send it to him to help make up some of the extra $850 million (”Workplace Watch”, NAM, April; Daniel LeDuc, “Md., Angelos Reach Tobacco Fee Deal”, Washington Post, Mar. 22). (DURABLE LINK)
April 10 – “Can Pain Treatment Survive Our Addiction to Law?”. After suffering the effects of a partially collapsed lung, writer Jonathan Rauch learns firsthand how much pain sufferers have to lose if our runaway litigation system takes away their access to the revolutionary pain relief medication OxyContin (National Journal/Reason Online, Apr. 6). See also Damien Cave, “No relief”, Salon, Apr. 4; Duane Freese, “In Rx, Who’s To Blame For Abuse?”, TechCentralStation.com, Feb. 14; and earlier reports on this site: Jan. 23-24, 2002, Aug. 7-8 and July 25, 2001. Updates: see May 30, Aug. 27. (DURABLE LINK)
April 8-9 – An eggshell psyche at U.Va. Law. Worst harassment suit of the year? At the University of Virginia, first-year law student Marta Sanchez on Feb. 26 filed “a claim of assault and battery in Albemarle Circuit Court, seeking $25,000 in compensatory damages and $10,000 in punitive damages” against Prof. Kenneth Abraham, a nationally prominent scholar in tort law. To quote Wendy McElroy’s summary of the case: “During an introductory program last August, Abraham demonstrated a legal principle known as the ‘egg-shell skull rule’ from Vosburg v. Putney, a case commonly taught in torts classes [in which one child's minor battery on another unexpectedly causes major harm to the victim]. Abraham announced his intention to show the class of about twenty students how a slight contact could be actionable. Then Abraham briefly touched Sanchez on her fully clothed shoulder. …Former students confirm that the shoulder tapping is a standard part of Abraham’s lesson on Vosburg. Sanchez says the tap flooded her with memories of being terrorized, raped and molested when she was 11 years old and living in her native land of Panama.” “What some would characterize as mere touching to this victim was an extreme event,” said Sanchez’s lawyer, Steven Rosenfield. “What makes it different is that she was the victim at the hands of men in the past.” (DURABLE LINK)
SOURCES: Nick Denton, “University student sues law professor”, Cavalier Daily, Mar. 27; AP/Richmond Times-Dispatch, Mar. 26; Wendy McElroy, FoxNews.com, Apr. 2; Justin Park, “Student sues professor”, Virginia Law Weekly, Mar. 22 (PDF); blogs InstaPundit, Mar. 25 and Mar. 26 and DaveTepper.net, Mar. 25.
April 8-9 – Zero tolerance leaves ‘em gasping. School districts across the country are decreeing that “students with asthma must keep their emergency inhalers in the school office, rather than on hand.” Better time your attacks for after school, guys (Catherine Seipp, Reason, Apr.). (DURABLE LINK)
April 8-9 – “Former clients sue attorney O’Quinn”. “Twenty former clients of lawyer John O’Quinn are suing him for alleged mishandling of the Kennedy Heights and Chevron contamination settlement, in which they received $12 million instead of the $500 million that he asserted their claims were worth.” Billed at the time as a major “environmental racism” case, the Kennedy Heights litigation asserted that toxic residues had caused cancers and other ailments among the largely African-American residents of the Houston neighborhood, a charge disputed by defendant Chevron. But were the clients really unaware that it’s standard practice for lawyers in this country to talk up a far higher valuation for injury claims than those claims are actually likely to settle for? The former clients also say O’Quinn used his involvement in the Kennedy Heights case for image-buffing purposes to help beat a 1998 disciplinary rap. “A similar [pending] lawsuit was filed in 1999 by about 80 former plaintiffs who were Kennedy Heights residents claiming O’Quinn allegedly shortchanged them on a settlement.” (Jo Ann Zuniga, Houston Chronicle, Apr. 3). In 1999, when former breast implant clients filed a complaint against O’Quinn, the combative litigator struck back with a libel suit against the women’s lawyer which resulted in a quick gag order shutting down the story (see Aug. 4, 1999). (DURABLE LINK)
April 8-9 – Traffic-cams: Volokh v. Labash. UCLA law prof Eugene Volokh, in a contrarian vein, ventures to defend the red-light cameras that some cities use to generate speeding tickets, arguing that if they are operated in a non-abusive way they hold out promise of being more objective than traffic cops (”The Cameras Are Watching — And It’s a Good Thing”, Wall Street Journal, Mar. 26, reprinted at author’s site). However, Matt Labash’s new investigation for the Weekly Standard shows that the use of cameras in practice has been anything but free from error and abuse (example: cities’ propensity to shorten the duration of yellow lights to bolster revenues). There will be little reason to trust the system’s integrity so long as cities go on letting a contractor run the program in exchange for a share of ticket revenues: as we’re always emphasizing on this site, contingency fees and trustworthy law enforcement just don’t mix (see Sept. 6, 2001) (Matt Labash, “Inside’s the District’s Red Lights”, Weekly Standard, Apr. 1; “The Yellow Menace”, Apr. 2; “The Safety Myth”, Apr. 3; “Getting Rear-Ended by the Law”, Apr. 4; “Fighting the Good Fight”, Apr. 5). (Update/correction: the original post named Lockheed Martin as the contractor in charge of the program, but a reader advises us (see letter, Apr. 19) that Lockheed sold its photo traffic-enforcement division to Affiliated Computer Services Inc. of Dallas, Texas on August 24, 2001; we have corrected the text accordingly). (DURABLE LINK)
April 5-7 – Right to yell “fire”. In Denver, Claudia Huntey is suing her landlord, which she says violated disability-rights law when it evicted her. “She was cruelly thrown out of her apartment solely because she makes involuntary vocalizations due to her Tourette’s syndrome,” said her attorney, John Holland, who said the apartment managers should have made greater efforts to accommodate Huntey’s condition after repeated complaints from other residents of the complex. “What happened to Claudia Huntey is a societal wake-up call reminding us that this continuing struggle is far from over,” said Holland. For neighbors, the wake-up calls were of a different nature: Huntey suffers from more than usually intense symptoms of Tourette’s, as a result of which “[t]he intensity of the constant, involuntary sounds cause her ribs and chest muscles to ache, and she is chronically hoarse from yelling. … For reasons she does not understand, Huntey most often says or yells, ‘Fire!’”. (Sue Lindsay, “Tourette’s sufferer sues, charging unfair eviction”, Rocky Mountain News, Apr. 4). (DURABLE LINK)
April 5-7 – From the grave, instructions to sue. Brooksville, Fla.: “A woman who hanged herself in jail while waiting to face charges in her husband’s death asked in a suicide note that her lawyer sue the jail for allowing her to die. … [Laren] Sims, 36, was awaiting extradition to California to face charges of killing her attorney husband, Larry McNabney, and burying him in a vineyard. ‘My impression is she’s got a scam going even in death,’ said San Joaquin County prosecutor Lester Fleming, who was trying to extradite Sims to California. ‘It’s just an amazingly cold-blooded note.’” (”California woman accused in husband’s murder urged suit based on suicide”, AP/Boston Globe, Apr. 4). (DURABLE LINK)
April 5-7 – Avoid having a medical emergency in Mississippi. The malpractice-suit crisis in the Magnolia State just keeps getting worse: “The Mississippi Trauma Advisory Committee has suspended re-inspection of its hospitals for a year to give health officials time to address the growing problem of surgeons leaving the system.” The state legislature, in which trial lawyer-legislators occupy strategic positions (see June 15, 2001), adjourned without heeding the doctors’ plea for legal relief. (”Mississippi in trauma crisis as surgeons leave”, AP/Memphis Commercial Appeal, Mar. 19)(& see Jun. 3-4, 2002). (DURABLE LINK)
April 5-7 – Advice the whole country could use. P. J. O’Rourke, reviewing two etiquette books: “[M]uch of their advice [the "Etiquette Grrls"] is needed by the entire nation: ”It is much, much more polite simply to tell someone ‘See you in hell’ than ‘See you in court.”’ (New York Times Book Review, Mar. 24). Also: Michael Kinsley on suing as “our national sport” (scroll to near end) (”Social Hypochondria”, Washington Post, Mar. 1). And: author Philip Howard (The Death of Common Sense) is launching a new organization called the Coalition for the Common Good that will gather participants from across the political spectrum in an effort to curb legal excess (Michael Barone, “The Common Good”, U.S. News, Mar. 25; Stuart Taylor, Jr., “How More Rights Have Made Us Less Free”, National Journal/The Atlantic, Feb. 12). (DURABLE LINK)
April 3-4 – High court nixes back pay for illegal aliens. Last week, in Hoffman Plastic Compounds v. NLRB, the Supreme Court by a 5-4 vote ruled that illegal aliens can’t collect damages for being fired from jobs it was never lawful for them to hold (Gina Holland, “Supreme Court Restricts Illegal Workers’ Rights in Employment Cases”, AP/Law.com, Mar. 28; see Oct. 28, 1999). Our editor has a new piece out in National Review Online today (Wed.) expressing relief that for the moment at least the country will be free of this absurdity. (Walter Olson, “A Wink Too Far”, Apr. 3). For a contrasting view, here are the editorialists at the San Francisco Chronicle (”Green light for abuse”, Apr. 2).
April 3-4 – “Addictive” computer game blamed for suicide. 21-year-old Shawn Woolley of Hudson, Wisc. played the popular online game EverQuest a whole lot. Then he committed suicide. Now his mother Elizabeth says she plans to sue Sony Online Entertainment, saying the game should have come with a warning label concerning its “addictive” nature, and she’s lined up attorney Jack Thompson, veteran of earlier litigation attacks on videogame companies (see, for example, July 22, 1999). A psychiatrist had diagnosed Shawn with depression and schizoid personality disorder which “fed right into the EverQuest playing,” claims Mrs. Woolley. “It was the perfect escape.” A specialist in “computer addiction” appears on cue in the article, as if summoned by the lawyer, to say that “The manufacturer of EverQuest purposely made it in such a way that it is more intriguing to the addict” and that it “could be created in a less addictive way, but (that) would be the difference between powdered cocaine and crack cocaine.” Moreover, “[h]aving low self-esteem or poor body image are also important factors, he said.” (Stanley A. Miller II, “Death of a game addict”, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Mar. 30) (and see letter to the editor from attorney Jack Thompson, Apr. 11). (DURABLE LINK)
April 3-4 – Microsoft case and AG contributions. Columnist Robert Novak rather rudely totes up the very considerable contributions that Microsoft’s rivals have been making to the campaigns of state attorneys general like Bill Lockyer in California and Carla Stovall in Kansas, both of whom are running for governor (Robert Novak, “Money driving Microsoft case?”, Chicago Sun-Times, Apr. 1) (& see Apr. 15). Blogger Ed Driscoll reminds us that AGs also have another constituency that wants them to keep the pressure on Redmond, namely trial lawyers who stand to gain a fortune from the private suits against the company (Mar. 31; see Jeff Taylor, “Symposium: Microsoft Endgame?”, National Review Online, Nov. 5, 2001).
April 3-4 – Ninth Circuit orders Agent Orange payments. The federal appeals court that does so much to provide this site with material has ordered that Vietnam veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange and later contracted prostate cancer and diabetes be given disability payments, “setting a precedent that could cover many illnesses linked to the defoliant.” (”Some Agent Orange Veterans Win Payments”, Reuters/New York Times, Apr. 2). The problem remains that health authorities are by no means agreed that the compound had anything to do with those ailments or most of the others complained of. (Howard Feinberg, “Vetting Agent Orange”, TechCentralStation.com, Mar. 11; Reason links, Feb. 28) (see Jan. 7-8).
April 1-2 – Intel Corp. versus yoga foundation. For more than a year lawyers for giant chipmaker Intel Corp. have been menacing the Yoga Inside Foundation of Venice, Calif., claiming that the nonprofit group’s name infringes on its own “Intel Inside” trademark. “Yoga Inside has nothing to do with computers. It provides free yoga classes in schools, treatment facilities, shelters, prisons and underprivileged communities.” Founder Mark Stephens says the similarity of the slogans “never even crossed my mind” until the company complained. Because of the large sums it has spent to promote its trademark, “Intel argues, the linguistic construction ‘(Blank) Inside,’ whether concerning state-of-the-art technology or a centuries-old spiritual practice, should uniquely belong to the chipmaker.” As for the bad karma to be had in picking on a little group like this, “We’re certainly sensitive about that,” said Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy. “But our hands are tied because of the way the law is structured”. (David Lazarus, “Intel forces yoga group to fight for its name”, San Francisco Chronicle, Mar. 29; Slashdot thread) (DURABLE LINK)
April 1-2 – No more ANZAC Day marches? Australia has rapidly Americanized its liability system and is now paying the price in the form of a drying up of insurance for local events such as ANZAC Day, which honors veterans. “Federal Assistant Treasurer Helen Coonan called [a Mar. 27] forum to share ideas after a series of community events had to be cancelled because of the insurance crisis. … Earlier, Senator Coonan said it was common sense to restrict the ability of those injured while drunk, drug-affected or committing a crime to sue for compensation.” (”States thrash out insurance crisis”, AAP/News.com, Mar. 27; “Quick insurance savings ruled out”, AAP, Mar. 27). With medical claims spiraling, New South Wales health minister Craig Knowles has warned that the nation’s “main medical malpractice insurer could collapse within weeks”, which could leave 60 percent of Australia’s doctors “uninsured for private practice work, and throw the health system into chaos”. (Mark Robinson, “Doctors’ insurer on brink of collapse”, Sydney Morning Herald, Mar. 22). (DURABLE LINK)
April 1-2 – Roger Parloff on 9/11 fund. “If the victims may have no viable claim in the tort system after all, because no one was really at fault for their deaths other than the terrorists, then why must a compassion-driven, taxpayer-financed fund pay what the tort system might theoretically have extracted from a totally hypothetical, deep-pocketed, unambiguously guilty defendant? … [Critiques of the Feinberg proposals as insufficiently generous] demonstrate the otherworldly sense of entitlement that the tort system now fosters.
“In setting up an alternative to the tort system, Congress made an admission that cannot be retracted. … What they said, in essence, was this: In all probability, skilled plaintiffs’ lawyers representing sympathetic victims would convince juries that the airlines were responsible for what happened. That’s because plaintiffs’ lawyers have become expert at redirecting blame from judgment-proof targets toward minimally blameworthy, solvent targets. We all know that such ‘fault’ is, to some degree, a fiction. It’s just a compassionate way to ensure that grievously injured, inadequately insured people get taken care of. The trouble is, when catastrophes get big enough, not even corporate entities are sufficiently deep-pocketed to pay without other innocent human beings suffering as a result. In blaming and bankrupting the airlines — or the private security firms, or the airports, or the municipalities that operate them, or Boeing Corporation, or any of the other usual suspects — we will obviously be scapegoating minimally blameworthy corporations for the nation’s universal unpreparedness. In so doing, we will be creating new waves of innocent victims: airline employee-shareholders who, like Enron’s, see their retirement funds vaporize; public and private employees who are thrown out of work; local residents whose public services deteriorate and whose taxes rise when their local municipal authorities in New York, New Jersey, or Boston go broke.” So now how about applying those lessons in other areas of mass tort litigation? (Roger Parloff, “Tortageddon”, The American Lawyer, Mar. 18). (DURABLE LINK)
April 1-2 – Gary & Co. shenanigans at Maris trial. Last August, after a three-month trial, a Gainesville, Fla. state court jury awarded the family of late baseball star Roger Maris $50 million against Anheuser-Busch Inc. in a dispute over the termination of a beer distributorship. The family had earlier lost an antitrust case against the beer company in federal court. They were represented at the August trial by noted Stuart, Fla. attorney Willie Gary (slavery reparations 1, 2, 3, Loewen, Disney, Coke, Gannett, Microsoft, etc.) who joined the family’s legal team two months before trial on a contingency fee basis.
Court records depict the trial, presided over by senior judge R.A. Green Jr., as a veritable carnival of lawyer misconduct. “At the beginning of this trial,” wrote Judge Green, “it became apparent to the court that counsel, primarily plaintiff’s counsel, would ‘press the limits’ of proper conduct and compliance with directives of the court.” Judge Green found two attorneys on Gary’s team, including his co-counsel and partner Madison McClellan, to be in contempt, whicle Gary himself “was ejected from the courtroom at one point and silenced by the judge on another occasion for uttering a profanity”. Moreover, “the Maris legal team sent a private investigator to conduct surveillance on the defense lawyers’ offices”, to which the defense lawyers responded with counter-surveillance. Judge Green then took the highly unusual step of appointing special master Stephen N. Bernstein to conduct a confidential investigation of lawyer misconduct at the trial. In a 35-page report, the special master concluded that the behavior of Gary and the other lawyers was “an insult to the integrity of the legal system,” and “resulted in an atmosphere that elevated tactics in pursuit of opposing counsel over the duty to pursue truth.” (Larry Keller, “Maris Trial Had Its Share of Misbehaving Lawyers”, Miami Daily Business Review, Jan. 28). Updates Jan. 5 and Jan. 7, 2004: (ethics charges against Gary thrown out by judge); Sept. 5, 2005 (case and related litigation settle for sum in excess of $120 million). (DURABLE LINK)
April 1-2 – New traffic records on Overlawyered.com. Our best month ever for number of pages served (March), best week ever (last week) and best day ever (last Wednesday). Thanks for your support!
September 10 – “Group Sues Starbucks Over Tea Ingredient”. A newly formed group in Berkeley, Calif. by the name of Council for Education and Research on Toxics charges that the Tazo Chai tea sold by the Seattle-based coffee chain contains some quantity of ephedrine, a stimulant found in the Chinese herb ephedra or ma huang whose use poses hazards to health. (”Starbucks sued in LA court over alleged tea additive”, AP/KING-5 Seattle, Sept. 8; “Group Sues Starbucks Over Tea Ingredient”, Channel 2000, Sept. 6). Starbucks says that while it does not comment on litigation, “Starbucks and Tazo believe it is important to confirm for our customers that ephedrine has never been used as an ingredient in Tazo’s Chai Tea or any other Tazo product”. Lawyers have recently been making a big business suing over alleged health effects of ephedra consumed as a dietary supplement: searching on terms like ephedra and ma huang results in a bountiful harvest of lawyer advertising and client-recruitment pages. Ephedra has long been used in herbal teas and nutritional supplements, sometimes in trace quantities, other times in high dosages sought by dieters and athletes deliberately for its medicinal effects, which are related to those of phenylpropanolamine (PPA), a stimulant long ubiquitous in over-the-counter remedies until pulled off the market last fall (see April 6).
“The only purpose of the suit is to get Starbucks to get the ephedrine out of the product, not to get any money,” claims attorney Raphael Metzger, who filed the suit. While CERT is previously unknown, the same is not true of attorney Metzger, based in Long Beach, who runs a large “toxic-tort” practice whose website is publicizing the Starbucks action (leads to complaint in long PDF document). “The constitutional right of Californians to pursue and obtain safety could be an untapped source of riches that plaintiffs’ attorneys should consider on behalf of their clients and the public,” Metzger wrote a while back in the San Francisco Daily Journal regarding the prospect of tort claims based on the California Constitution’s “inalienable rights” provision. (Civil Justice Association of California “Balance”, Q4 1997 — scroll to “Deep Pocket Dreaming” near bottom).
September 10 – Japan sued for $1 trillion in reparations. We only thought there was a postwar treaty settling all claims against the Japanese — law prof Anthony D’Amato of Northwestern U. claims to have found a loophole that would let him reopen the whole thing. “I think we’re being conservative,” he says of his $1 trillion monetary demand. “This isn’t the first unusual legal action by D’Amato, who specializes in international law,” reports the Chicago Tribune. “In 1999 he filed suit seeking unsuccessfully to halt U.S. bombing of the former Yugoslavia to prevent damage to churches, shrines, monasteries and sacred relics.” (Matt O’Connor, “Suit seeks $1 trillion from Japan for war”, Chicago Tribune, Sept. 6 (reg); complaint in PDF format; “Japan sued for $1 trillion in reparations”, UPI/InfoSpace, Sept. 6).
September 10 – Employment class actions: EEOC to the rescue. For trial lawyers pressing job bias cases, the key to getting a big employer to offer a jumbo-sized settlement is to get the case certified as a class action on behalf of minority or female workers as a group: “Once it’s certified, it’s difficult for an employer to suck it up and go to trial. The [financial] risk is too high,” says management-side attorney C. Geoffrey Weirich of the Atlanta office of Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker. But if plaintiff’s lawyers are falling short on the certification issue they can get a second bite at the apple by persuading the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to intervene in the case; the EEOC is held to looser standards in class representation. “[S]howing up to bail out a plaintiffs’ lawyer who ran off the road doesn’t seem like a proper use of the process”, according to Fred Alvarez, a former EEOC commissioner who now represents employers at Palo Alto, Calif.’s Wilson Sonsini. Plaintiff’s lawyers counter that intervention on behalf of groups of workers is an intended part of the agency’s function and occurs only occasionally, despite a 1996 Forbes article in which an official of the EEOC’s Chicago office endorsed class actions as offering the agency “a much bigger bang for the buck”. (Mike McKee, “Employment Bar at War Over EEOC Intervention in Workplace Complaints”, The Recorder, Aug. 30). Sample case: Matt Gove, “Harris Teeter sued by black employees”, Atlanta Business Chronicle, Sept. 7.
September 7-9 – Judges overturning fewer huge verdicts. The litigation lobby is always insisting that alarm about excessive damage awards is misplaced because judges can be relied on to reduce or overturn anything really out of line. But is that so? A new survey by the National Law Journal of 100 jury awards exceeding $1 million dating back to 1997 that came under review by trial and appellate courts found that “the rate of outright reversal has fallen, and the bar has been raised considerably on what judges find offensive. “Federal and state judges are accepting numbers that would have been rejected as excessive only a few years ago,” notes the NLJ. “Jury awards that ‘used to make you gag and choke are being upheld,’ says defense counsel Frank Daily of Milwaukee’s Quarles & Brady.” Personal injury awards were least likely to be reversed, while large awards won by businesses against other businesses fared somewhat less well after trial. Somehow we doubt the folks at ATLA are going to be ringing their friends in the press about this one (Margaret Cronin Fisk, “Hard to Shock”, “After the Jurors Go Home”, National Law Journal, Aug. 29).
September 7-9 – Managed care bill: Do as we say…. Notable fact: “the Patients’ Bill of Rights just passed by the House exempts the 9 million federal workers, retirees and dependents covered by the federal health plan, including Congressional employees. … Tellingly, the House bill also exempts the 41 million people insured through Medicaid and the more than 50 million covered through Medicare and other federal programs from the potentially expensive new mandates and protections.” Proponents claim the new scope for litigation won’t drive up costs — but they sure don’t act as if they believe that (Ira Carnahan, “Do As We Say …”, Forbes, Sept. 3) (see also Dec. 6, 1999). And: “Liberals are right: a patients’ bill of rights is just a baby step. But it’s a step in the wrong direction,” expanding access to pricey experimental treatments for the middle class while pushing more poorer persons down into the ranks of the uninsured. (Noam Scheiber, “Daily Express: Stand Still”, The New Republic Online, July 13).
September 7-9 – Mosh pit mayhem. The mosh pit down front at the rock concert is a great place to get yourself injured (but you probably knew that). And it’s an equally great place for briefcase-toting lawyers to descend afterward filing “personal injury lawsuits with promoters, producers, arenas and sometimes even the musicians themselves as defendants”. Concert promoters say part of the crowd is always eager to enter the mosh area despite the known risks, but one plaintiff’s lawyer dismisses such talk: “The guy who controls the microphone controls the crowd,” he says. Among rock groups that have reached confidential settlements after being sued in such cases is the frenetically anti-capitalist group Rage Against the Machine, which distributes Noam Chomsky tracts to its fans. (Robert Wiener, “Rock And Roll Lawsuits”, LexisOne, July 31; Anthony DeBarros, “Injuries surge to high levels”, USA Today, Aug. 8, 2000).
September 6 – Red-light cameras. A San Diego judge has dismissed 300 traffic tickets issued under a system that “snaps a photo of a red-light runner and mails a $271 citation to the registered owner of the vehicle,” $70 of which is kept by a former Lockheed Martin subsidiary that operates the enforcement system. Such systems have already spread to fifty cities; critics charge that errors are common and very difficult for the motorist to fight, and that the company running the computerized cameras has no financial incentive to reduce the rate of erroneously issued tickets — quite the contrary, since it collects a share of the ill-gotten gains. According to Rep. Dick Armey (R-Tex.), since red-light cameras became a major source of municipal revenue, many cities have significantly shortened the duration of yellow lights, a practice that profitably increases the number of violations for the cameras to catch but worsens the risk of traffic accidents themselves. It’s another wrinkle on the bad old practice of contingency-fee law enforcement — a sure recipe for injustice whether inflicted by public authorities, private contractors, or the two in combination. (”Judge Dismisses 300 Tickets Spawned by Red-Light Cameras, FoxNews.com, Sept. 5; Alex Roth, “Ex-worker says firm puts profits over safety; Man testifies that revenue is main purpose of red-light cameras at intersections”, San Diego Union-Tribune, July 6; Ray Huard and Alex Roth, “Doubt focuses on red-light cameras”, San Diego Union-Tribune, Aug. 17; RedLightLawyers.com; Eric Peters, “Rigging traffic lights hurts safety”, Detroit News, Aug. 12; OpinionJournal.com, “Big Brother’s Camera” (editorial), July 3) (see also Apr. 8-9, 2002).
September 6 – Judge Kent: another helping. A Philadelphia environmental litigator who asks to remain anonymous writes: “I love your stuff on Judge Kent [the Hon. Samuel Kent, federal judge, S.D. Texas; see Aug. 2, Aug. 3]. I have in my grubby lawyer hands a Judge Kent order dated June 7, 2001 (entered June 8, 2001) in Labor Force, Inc. v. Jacintoport Corp. & James McPherson, Civ. Action No. G-01-058 (opinion in PDF form courtesy Green Bag). In that opinion, the judge, among other things, calls the lawyer’s motion ‘obnoxiously ancient, boilerplate, [and] inane.’ He also refers to it as asinine. … No URL as yet, and I don’t think it’s on Westlaw.
“There are 38 uses of ‘asinine’ in the allfeds database in Westlaw. Judge Kent has the vast majority of them. Thank God I’m in PA and not Texas.” (Corrected Aug. 15, 2004: fixed earlier erroneous spelling of case name).
September 6 – Reparations talk. “Reparations, so popular a topic in black-radio discussions and in black newspapers, masquerade as a bonus check for being black. They are a Trojan horse full of devastating consequences for the future of black America. Reparations are a dangerous, evil idea that has to be derailed now before emotions and momentum take American race relations on a crash course”. (Juan Williams, “Get a Check? No, Thanks”, GQ/FrontPage, Sept.) East Indians, recently arrived, made themselves a power in small business and science “with organization and planning. They certainly didn’t do it with reparations checks. Blacks could have done it, if for years we hadn’t been following leaders whose motto should be ‘Ain’t Too Proud to Beg.’” (Gregory Kane, “Slavery reparations no fix for ‘community in disarray’”, Baltimore Sun, Aug. 18). “Europe has indeed played a unique role in the history of slavery. Slavery has been a universal feature of all societies throughout most of history. … What makes Europe unique is that it ended slavery.” (Andrew Kenny, “White is Right”, The Spectator (UK), Aug. 25). And the King of Senegal has weighed in, pointing out that the guilt for slavery as an institution in his part of Africa long antedated Europeans’ arrival (Ellen Knickmeyer, “Senegal’s leader blasts idea of slave reparations”, AP/Nando, Aug. 29) (see Aug. 22 and links from there).
September 5 – “New law would stem abuses in Disabilities Act”. H.R. 914, the ADA Notification Act, is a bill introduced by Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.); Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Haw.) is sponsoring a Senate counterpart. It would give businesses 90 days to make renovations to their facilities demanded under the Americans with Disabilities Act, thus putting a crimp (it’s hoped) in the complaint mills by which lawyers file accessibility complaints by the dozen and then collect legal fees from target businesses (see Jan. 26, 2000). (Hector Florin, Miami Herald, Aug. 31).
Among South Florida lawyers who have filed many near-identical complaints, collecting thousands of dollars per defendant in legal fees on settlement, are William Tucker and Lawrence McGuinness. The Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel notes, however, that “Tucker works out of a Fort Lauderdale building that has no disabled parking, a ramp steeper than the law allows, no landing and a door with a round doorknob. McGuinness’ office in Coral Gables has a curb with no ramp to the front door.” (Aug. 26). The same paper editorializes: “The Americans with Disabilities Act has been hijacked by trial lawyers who are using it to drum up legal fees.” (editorial, Aug. 28) (via OpinionJournal.com “Best of the Web“).
September 5 – New York’s crazy homeless program. It’s the result of litigation by advocacy groups that have been tying the city in courtroom knots for years (Heather Mac Donald, “Forbidden Facts”, New York Post, Aug. 21).
September 5 – Target: trade associations. Two appeals courts in Washington state have upheld a verdict holding the National Spa and Pool Institute liable for $6.6 million in damages to a man who broke his neck diving into a below-ground pool and sued, saying the institute’s voluntary safety standards for pool design should have been stricter. “To protect its assets, the pool group was forced to file for bankruptcy (it’s now out of it) and sell off its $3 million (net income) trade show. Until this decision virtually all courts declined to extend product liability to associations that develop voluntary safety standards in good faith.” (Matthew Swibel, “On the Docket: In Hot Water”, Forbes, July 9 (reg)).
September 3-4 – “Lawsuit demands AOL stop anti-Islamic chat”. “A Muslim subscriber sued America Online yesterday, claiming that anti-Islamic insults in AOL’s chat rooms violate his civil rights. If successful, the suit could force the world’s largest Internet company to strictly limit what 30 million members can say in 14,000 chat rooms. … The suit alleges that by not kicking out the disrupters, AOL violated its contract with users. But it also claims that under the 1964 Civil Rights Act, an AOL chat room is a ‘public accommodation,’ as is a restaurant or a hotel.” (Hiawatha Bray, Boston Globe, Aug. 31; AP/Yahoo, Aug. 30; Leef Smith, “Suit Says AOL Permits Insults”, Washington Post, Aug. 31; BBC; Robyn Weisman, “AOL Stung by Hate Speech Lawsuit”, NewsFactor.com, Aug. 31) (& see Dec. 5-6).
September 3-4 – Not discriminatory to kick sleeping worker’s chair. A Pittsburgh federal jury has decided that it did not constitute race or sex discrimination for a supervisor to kick the chair of a sleeping 911 emergency dispatcher to wake her up. The supervisor had said that he had jostled the chairs of other workers who snoozed on the job. (”911 Boss Cleared In Woman’s Kicking Lawsuit”, WTAE/Yahoo, Aug. 28). And Great Britain’s Institute of Management has said that privacy provisions of that country’s newly enacted Human Rights Act may restrict an employer’s right to call its employees at home. “‘An employer does not have the right to demand an employee’s telephone number unless it is specified in the contract that the employee has a duty to be available outside normal working hours,’ the institute said. … The body also said employees are under no obligation to divulge their addresses except for the purpose of receiving ‘routine correspondence’ in connection with their job, such as salary slips.” (”Plagued by calls from the boss at home? Sue them”, Yahoo/Reuters, Aug. 24).
September 3-4 – Batch of reader letters. On topics such as Miniver Cheevy’s prospective wrongful-birth lawsuit, the next Cessna, slavery reparations, should doctors turn away lawyers as patients?; a 2-cent class action refund, and zero tolerance meets domestic violence. Also: we recommend a new book.
August 10-12 – Smile-flag lawsuit. Dr. Patricia Sabers, a dentist in Sarasota, Fla., sometimes flies a colorful pennant adorned with smiles outside her office, but now a rival dentist, Mitchell Strumpf, is suing her, saying the smile on her flag is a distinctive design that he registered as a service mark some years ago and which he thus has the exclusive right to display in the area. “Sabers said her generic-looking flag comes from a dental supply company catalog”. Sabers “should get her own service mark,” said Strumpf’s attorney, Michael Taaffe. “It’s not a laughing matter.” (Kelly Cramer, “Smile logo brings frowns”, Venice Herald-Tribune, July 31).
August 10-12 – Perils of extraterritorial law. Elite opinion in the U.S. has been relatively uncritical toward the idea of putting unpopular foreign leaders on trial outside their home country for outrages committed in their official capacities, but the policy could easily backfire against us given that there are an awful lot of people and factions around the world aggrieved at the United States and its leaders, observes the former chief of staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (Pat M. Holt, “The push for human rights could hurt Americans”, Christian Science Monitor, Aug. 2). And agitation continues for a lawsuit against the U.S. in international courts to blame us for global warming and our failure to back stronger steps against it (Andrew Simms, “Global Warming’s Victims Could Take U.S. to Court”, International Herald Tribune, Aug. 7).
August 10-12 – School email pranksters to Leavenworth? Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.) recently introduced a bill called the School Website Protection Act of 2001 which would provide that anyone who “knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally affects or impairs without authorization a computer of an elementary school or secondary school or institution of higher education” will to go federal prison for up to 10 years.” Critics say the bill “is worded so vaguely it would turn commonplace activities into federal crimes to be investigated by the U.S. Secret Service.” “Sending one unsolicited e-mail affects a computer,” says Jim Dempsey, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology. “If I send an e-mail to my student’s teacher and I didn’t have her permission, I violate the act.” (”Senator Targets School Hackers”, Declan McCullagh, Wired News, Aug. 1).
August 10-12 – New in Letters. The operator of an online pet store writes in to amplify our coverage of his recent suit against participants in a hobbyist listserv (more).
August 10-12 – U.K.: Labour government proposes curbs on malpractice awards. In Britain, the newly reelected Labour government of Tony Blair is proposing to limit skyrocketing awards in medical malpractice cases against the National Health Service. It wants to adopt “fixed tariffs of compensation”, i.e. prescheduled amounts for types of injury that can be looked up in tables in lieu of individualized argumentation. Also in the works is a shift to in-kind awards, such as the provision of future nursing services, instead of large lump sums. “The Government is keen to cut the amount paid in lawyers’ fees — which often exceed the damages awarded by the courts.”
“The tariff scheme is similar to one brought in by the previous Tory government — amid stiff Labour opposition — to cut the cost of criminal-injuries compensation. Mr Milburn [Health Secretary in the Blair Cabinet] is determined to take an axe to the spiralling cost to the health service of legal claims which he believes are being driven by profiteering lawyers. ‘We need to get the lawyers out of the operating theatres and off the backs of doctors — and get doctors out of the courts,’ said a Health Department aide. ‘The amount of litigation is rising and causing distress not only to NHS staff but also to patients who find themselves drawn into protracted and upsetting legal battles.’” The Bar Council, representing barristers, has already attacked the proposals. (Joe Murphy and Jenny Booth, “Labour blocks big payouts to victims of NHS blunders”, Sunday Telegraph (U.K.), July 8).
August 9 – Why we lose workplace privacy. Employers are monitoring their employees’ email, web surfing logs and hard drives more than ever these days, and the number one reason is to protect themselves from lawsuits. “Almost every workplace lawsuit today, especially a sexual harassment case, has an E-mail component,” says one expert. Plaintiffs’ lawyers subpoena hard drives in search of sexually oriented jokes or other material they can use to build a case, and rather than leave themselves vulnerable many companies conduct pre-emptive searches before disputes arise. (Dana Hawkins, “Lawsuits spur rise in employee monitoring”, U.S. News & World Report, Aug. 13).
August 9 – “Nudist burned while fire-walking files lawsuit”. “A nudist whose feet were burned while fire-walking has filed a lawsuit that accuses event organizers of leading participants to believe the stunt was safe.” The suit by Eli Tyler of El Cajon claims that the organizer “told participants the walk would be ‘a safe and spiritual experience’” but that seven participants were hospitalized with severe burns to their feet. The owner of the resort where the event took place, who is also named as a defendant in the action, “said participants were warned of the dangers and each agreed not to sue if they were injured.” (AP/Sacramento Bee, Aug. 8).
August 9 – Forbes on lead paint suits, cont’d. The “suits claim the companies misrepresented the paint as safe for use around children. Evidence? In 1920 National Lead told retailers to be nice to children because they might someday be customers. More: In 1930 the company distributed coloring books with poems and a cartoon drawing of its Dutch Boy character. Hard to imagine children having much influence on paint purchases.” (Michael Freedman, “Turning Lead Into Gold”, Forbes, May 14 (reg)).
August 7-8 – Victory in California. By a 5-1 margin, the California Supreme Court has ruled that crime victims cannot sue gun manufacturers over criminals’ misuse of their wares. In doing so it reinforces a trend so clear that some day it might even sink in to the folks over at the hyperlitigious Brady Campaign: “Every state high court and federal appellate court in the nation to consider such lawsuits has ruled that makers of legal, non-defective guns cannot be sued for their criminal misuse.” (”California Supreme Court Says Gunmaker Not Liable in Killing Spree”, AP/Fox News, Aug. 6).
August 7-8 – Wrong guy? Doesn’t seem to matter. Antonio Vargas, a bus driver in Northern California, has the same name as an Antonio Vargas who owes child support in San Bernardino County, in Southern California. He’s been trying to disentangle himself from attachments, process servers and other legalities aimed at the other Mr. Vargas, but with at best temporary success — and it’s been going on for twenty years, he says. An official with the desert county acknowledges that Mr. Vargas’s protestations of being the wrong guy were probably ignored for a while; so many men falsely use that excuse that why should they listen?, seems to be the official’s reasoning (Dan Evans, “It’s the wrong Vargas”, San Francisco Examiner, Aug. 2).
August 7-8 – Trial lawyers vs. OxyContin. The breakthrough pain medication, a timed-release opioid, has brought unprecedented relief to sufferers from advanced cancer and chronic disease but can result in addiction if improperly prescribed and is unusually easy to abuse on purpose: users crush the time-release capsules into a powder that yields a heroin-like high when snorted or injected. Now, amid public alarm about its emergence as “hillbilly heroin”, lawyers have filed billions of dollars in claims against the drug’s manufacturer, Purdue Pharma, distributor Abbott Labs, and other companies; they’re also advertising heavily for clients, and the state of West Virginia has stepped in with its own suit. Well-known Cincinnati tort lawyer Stanley Chesley, of breast-implant and hotel-fire fame, is “working with a group of lawyers from Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia on similar cases.” If such litigation drives the drug off the market, a million or more legitimate users may be forced back to lives of agonizing pain, but that won’t be the lawyers’ problem, now, will it?
SOURCES: “Maker of OxyContin is hit with lawsuits”, AP/Baltimore Sun, July 27; Paul Tough, “The Alchemy of OxyContin: From Pain Relief to Drug Addiction”, New York Times Magazine, July 29 (reg); National Clearinghouse for Drug and Alcohol Information; Amanda York, “1st Ohioan named in Oxy suit”, Cincinnati Enquirer, July 10; Norah Vincent, “A New ‘Worst’ Drug Stirs Up the Snoops”, Los Angeles Times, July 19; Eric Chevlen, “A Bad Prescription from the DEA”, Weekly Standard, June 4; “W.Va. files first state suit against OxyContin firms”, AP/Charleston Daily Mail, June 12; Common Sense for Drug Policy; “Oxycontin Lawsuit Aims For Class-Action Status”, Roanoke Times, June 19; many more links (Google search on “Oxycontin + lawsuits”). If you click on “OxycontinInfoCenter.com“, a sponsored link on Google, you get “Oxycontin law info and lawyers who specialize in Oxycontin litigation” (see also July 25).
August 7-8 – Dotcom wreckage: sue ‘em all. Class action firms are suing not only investment banks and directors of failed dotcoms, but also executives and lenders. (Joanna Glasner, “Bankrupt? So What? Lawyers Ask”, Wired News, Aug. 6).
August 7-8 – “Judge orders parents to support 50-year-old son”. “In what could turn out to be a landmark decision, a Ventura County Superior Court judge ordered a Ventura couple to support their 50-year-old son indefinitely. Judge Melinda Johnson ruled two weeks ago that James and Bertha Culp of Ventura pay their son David Culp $3,500 a month for living expenses because he is incapable of supporting himself. Culp suffers from depression and bipolar disorder.” The son had practiced as an attorney for 19 yearss, but his practice fell apart and he went on disability. “Johnson based her ruling on state law, Family Code section 3910(a). It states that ‘the father and mother have an equal responsibility to maintain, to the extent of their ability, a child of whatever age who is incapacitated from earning a living and without sufficient means,’” language which the judge called “unambiguous on its face”. Representatives of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill called the decision a “bad judgment” that could “set a terrible precedent”. (Leslie Parrilla, Ventura County Star, Aug. 2).
August 6 – “Airline restricts children flying alone”. America West Airlines, changing its previous policy, has announced that it will no longer allow children of 11 years or less to fly alone on connecting (as opposed to nonstop) routes. Last month a young girl traveling from L.A. to Detroit was mistakenly allowed to board a connecting flight to Orlando, and it took nearly a day before she was reunited unharmed with her father. The father, Bill McDaniel, said he was thinking of hiring a lawyer and suing because the airline’s proffered free ticket and other compensation was not enough. So now all families, including those who believe their kids can handle the responsibility, stand to lose a freedom that saves them a lot of money as well as hassle (Channel 2000, Aug. 3; “Airline Puts Young Girl On Wrong Plane”, July 18).
August 6 – Big fish devour the little? After hobbyists on a listserv dealing with aquatic plants criticized one online pet store for allegedly “horrible” service and worse, its operator proceeded to sue various individual posters who he says defamed his company with such comments. His complaint asks for $15 million in compensatory and punitive damages. (Aquatic Plants Mailing List listserv; discussion; TheKrib.com; AquariaCentral forums; Usenet rec.aquaria.freshwater.plants) (see letter to the editor from Robert Novak, owner of PetsWarehouse.com, Aug. 10)(see extensive update on case May 22-23, 2002).
August 6 – When trial lawyers help redesign cars. Class action lawyers suing GM over its old C/K full-size pickup trucks are venturing onto what you might think is perilous ground by proposing a retrofit change to the vehicles’ design, with effects on performance that can’t be foreseen with complete certainty. Aren’t they worried that if the design turns out to malfunction in some way they’ll be held responsible for the consequences? (Well, no, they probably aren’t, since they’ll just find some way to blame the carmaker if that happens.) (Dick Thornburgh (former U.S. attorney general), “Designing Ambulances and Retrofitting Class Actions”, National Law Journal, July 18).
August 6 – Mailing list switch. If you’ve been on the list to receive our periodic announcements of what’s new on Overlawyered.com, you should by now have received an email from Topica.com, our new list-hosting service, inviting you to continue your subscription. To do so, just respond to their email. If you take no action you’ll automatically be dropped from the list as ListBot closes down. If you discarded or didn’t receive the Topica email, or would like to join the list for the first time (it’s free), just visit our mailing list page.
Another logistical note: we’ve now established a separate archives page that makes it easier to navigate Overlawyered.com’s archives without repeatedly having to download large pages. Just as we encourage you to bookmark our search page if you expect to perform frequent searches at our site, so we encourage you to bookmark the new archives page if you expect to browse our archives often.
August 3-5 – “Lawyers pay price for cruel hoaxes”. “Two Florida lawyers, whose paternity hoaxes last year cost families of four Alaska Airlines crash victims hundreds of thousands of dollars to rebut, finally will have to pay for a smidgen of the damage they inflicted.” Attorneys Robert Parks and Edgar Miller of Coral Gables, Fla. filed suits on behalf of four distinct sets of supposed secret Guatemalan heirs claimed to have been fathered by men who perished on the doomed flight without direct heirs (see Nov. 29, 2000, April 10, 2001). The suspiciously multiple nature of the filings was noticed only by chance, and the outraged families of the deceased had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to fend off the phony heirs’ claims. Now, Parks and Miller have agreed in a court-ordered mediation to pay $225,000 toward the families’ costs; Seattle lawyer Harold Fardal, who assisted their claims, will help split the cost, though it doesn’t begin to cover the expense the families faced in rebutting the claims. “Miller, by his own admission, has [represented survivor claims] as many as 100 times before, mostly in Central and South America.”
To investigate the phony claims, the surviving Clemetson and Ryan families sent investigators to Guatemala, where the supposed secret heirs lived. “But an investigator and a court-appointed guardian found that the birth records were forged. They found that the alleged grandmothers couldn’t keep the girls’ names straight, couldn’t say where their own daughters were born or how they died, couldn’t remember their own addresses and had no knowledge of the details alleged in the inheritance claims. In February, DNA tests proved the girls weren’t related to the men.” The families now say they may file a complaint with the Florida bar against Parks and Miller. (Candy Hatcher, “Lawyers pay price for cruel hoaxes”, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Aug. 2; “Claims against two Flight 261 victims thrown out” (AP), Feb. 7; “Heirs claimed in Flight 261 twist” (AP), Nov. 22, 2000).
According to Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Candy Hatcher, Seattle attorney Mark Vohr, who later withdrew from the case, sent the same photograph of two little Guatemalan girls to two different families against whom he was pursuing secret-heir claims. And: “The woman who was providing temporary housing for the girls and their ‘grandmothers’ said she was working with a ‘lawyer’ in Florida who had helped her when both her husbands died in aviation disasters in Central America. The ‘lawyer’ turned out to be an investigator for the Florida lawyers.” (”False claims add to the agony of a tragedy”, Feb. 26). See also Richard Marosi, “Unexpected ‘Heirs’ of Flight 261″, L.A. Times, Jan. 31, no longer online at Times site but Googlecached. (DURABLE LINK)
August 3-5 – More from Judge Kent. Yesterday we linked to a scorching opinion by Judge Samuel Kent of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, excoriating what he saw as incompetent pleadings by the lawyers on both sides of a maritime injury case. Reader Keith Rahl points out that this is just the most recent in a series of colorful opinions from Judge Kent’s pen, and directs our attention to two of them that have been reprinted at The Smoking Gun: one in which he orders a change of venue (to the District of Columbia) for a suit that lawyers for the government of Bolivia had filed in his Galveston courtroom against the tobacco industry; and this one turning down a defendant’s request to transfer a case to Houston due to claimed travel inconveniences.
August 3-5 – Dra-clonian. By a margin of 265 to 162, the U.S. House of Representives has voted “to approve the Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2001. It would impose steep criminal and civil penalties on any individual violating the ban — even scientists who create cloned human cells solely for research purposes. The penalties make participation in human cloning in any way — from creating cloned human cells to patients receiving medicine based on such research done abroad — subject to a felony conviction that could bring a 10-year prison term and, if done for profit, civil penalties of more than $1 million.” (Megan Garvey, “House Approves Strict Ban on Human Cloning”, L.A. Times, Aug. 1; Kristen Philipkoski, “What Side Effects to a Clone Ban?” Wired News, Aug. 1) The best critique we’ve seen of the stampede to legislate has come from Virginia Postrel at her VPostrel.com (several entries in recent weeks; also check out her new commentary on firearms and journalists).
August 2 – Fee fights. They’re worse than catfights, aren’t they? Lawyers are snapping and swatting at each other over the fee spoils of several dubious but lucrative mass-tort cases. “Wallace Bennett, former associate dean at the University of Utah’s law school, is suing well-known lawyer Robert DeBry, claiming his old friend is cheating him out of money he earned while they worked together on national breast implant litigation. … Bennett was part of a legal team that included former U.S. Sen. Frank E. Moss and former Utah Supreme Court Justice D. Frank Wilkins. … [He] alleges breach of contract, intentional breach of fiduciary duty, conversion and fraudulent transfer of assets, and usurpation of business opportunities.” (Elizabeth Neff, “Former U. of U. Dean Sues Ex-Law Partner Over Fees”, June 28, Salt Lake Tribune, no longer online on Tribune site but Googlecached). The breast implant campaign was based on charges of systemic illness soon refuted in scientific studies, which didn’t stop trial lawyers from cashing in a $7 billion settlement.
Meanwhile: “Several of the plaintiffs’ lawyers in the massive Orthopedic Bone Screw case are putting the screws to each other as an ugly battle has erupted” over how a court divided $12 million in fees deriving from a $100 million settlement by Acromed Corp. Among the charges flying: fraud, contempt of court and abuse of process. (More on the bone screw litigation: Oct. 24, 2000.) (Shannon P. Duffy, “Disgruntled Lawyers Sue in Louisiana to Get Bigger Share of Bone Screw Fees”, The Legal Intelligencer, July 18). Last but certainly not least, anti-tobacco prof. Richard Daynard has followed through on his pledge to sue legal sultans Richard Scruggs and Ron Motley, claiming they’d promised to cut him in on a 5% contingency share of the maybe $3 billion they stand to haul in from the tobacco caper. “In his role as intellectual godfather of tobacco litigation, Daynard has been quoted in news articles hundreds of times — though always as a public health advocate, never as a private litigator.” (see April 21, 2000). Scruggs and Motley “said that if Daynard had indeed been a member of their legal team, his attacks on a settlement proposal favored by their clients, the states, would have been a serious ethical lapse.” (Myron Levin, “Tobacco Wars’ Huge Legal Fees Ignite New Fight”, Los Angeles Times, May 20, reprinted at NYCClash.com)
August 2 – “Baskin-Robbins lawsuit puts family in dis-flavor”. The Janze family of Alamo, Calif. is surprised to have gotten such a disrespectful reception in the press and on the Web for its lawsuit against the ice cream chain over a frozen confection strewn with fizzy “Pop Rocks”, a scoop of which they say sent their 5-year-old daughter Fifi to the hospital. “Shrek Swirl” is “one of several ogre-related treats tied to the animated movie ‘Shrek’.” Baskin-Robbins spokeswoman Debra Newton “said the Janzes’ complaint has been the only one reported to the company. ‘What we can tell you is that we have absolutely no indication that there are any safety concerns whatsoever with Shrek Swirl,’” Newton said. (Claire Booth, Knight-Ridder/Bergen County (N.J.) Record, July 19).
August 2 – “Ouch”, they explained. It’s every lawyer’s nightmare: to be the target of a judicial opinion as scathing as this one from federal judge Samuel Kent (S.D. Tex.). Neither side’s attorney gets out unscorched (Bradshaw v. Unity Marine, June 26, reprinted at National Review Online).
August 1 – Batch of reader letters. Latest assortment covers everything from exploding Pop-Tarts and special-ed “mainstreaming” to small claims reform, IOLTA and zero tolerance, and includes an explanation of an unusual photograph sent in by a reader.
August 1 – “Businesses bracing for flood of lawsuits after state court ruling”. “If you wear glasses, use a hearing aid or take medication for high blood pressure, you now may be legally disabled in California.” Sacramento’s homegrown version of disabled-rights law is even more sweeping than the federal Americans with Disabilities Act, and the divergence has been widened by a new state law that “significantly broadens the definition of disabled and throws open the courthouse doors to workers with a wide range of diagnosable ailments — from depression to chronic back pain.” Things got even dicier “when a state appeals court in Los Angeles ruled that the new law applies retroactively to potentially thousands of cases that arose before Jan. 1, when the law went into effect. Employers are bracing for an onslaught of claims, warning that the statute signals open season on business.” (Harriet Chiang, “Businesses bracing for flood of lawsuits after state court ruling”, San Francisco Chronicle, July 29; Mike McKee, “California Disability Rules Declared Retroactive: State Supreme Court May Have to Referee”, The Recorder, July 27).
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).
June 8-10 – Parted from his money. Philadelphia-area businessman David Piscitelli has settled his lawsuit against Sole Mio Balaam Nicola, 90, a resident of Egg Harbor City, N.J. who worked for many years as an astrologer at the Woolworth’s on the Atlantic City Boardwalk. Piscitelli said “he was the victim of a ‘gypsy scam’ from 1978 to 1991 that prompted him to turn over about $200,000, leave his wife, sell his real-estate business, and move to Brigantine to avoid snake attacks and other evil curses.” It all began, he told the court, when he found Nicola’s ad in the Yellow Pages and arrived at her establishment where she “instructed him to hand her $400 under her desk for the purchase of candles that, when burned, would remove his curse.” However, Nicola averred that he had been a willing financial supporter of her “pyramid-shaped Temple of Hope and Knowledge, a house of worship she founded on the White Horse Pike in Galloway Township.” Moreover, she “denied ever demanding cash to remove curses from Piscitelli’s family members, forcing him to turn over his wedding ring, depositing a beheaded bat at his home, or throwing his Christmas presents into the bay, as he claims.” (Amy S. Rosenberg, “Fortune teller or taker: Boardwalk astrologer got $200,000 and lawsuit”, Philadelphia Inquirer, May 17).
June 8-10 – Tobacco plunder in Los Angeles. Its anger whipped up by a sharp trial lawyer, an L.A. jury has voted $3 billion in punitive damages against Philip Morris in a case brought by an individual smoker. (CNNfn, June 6; Robert Jablon, “Los Angeles Jury Orders Philip Morris to Pay $3 Billion to Lifelong Smoker”, AP/Law.com, June 7). Our take on the earlier Engle case appeared in the Wall Street Journal: July 18, 2000 and July 12, 1999. Update Oct. 2, 2004: appeals court orders punitive award cut to a sum not to exceed $50 million.
June 8-10 – Lockyer should go. We weren’t the only ones who concluded (June 1-3) that California attorney general Bill Lockyer was unfit for public office after hearing him express a hope that an energy-company adversary would be jailed and suffer prison rape: Tom G. Palmer (Cato Institute), “‘Hi, My Name Isn’t Justice, Honey’, and Shame on Bill Lockyer”, Los Angeles Times, June 6; see also Steve Chapman, “Since when does rape equal justice?”, Chicago Tribune, June 7; Larry Elder, “Blame-shifting in California”, FrontPage, June 1. (See update, June 22-24).
June 8-10 – Forbes on lead paint suits, cont’d. There seems to be no dispute that some, if not many, cases of classic lead poisoning continue to occur among children who literally eat chips of old paint in dilapidated housing in inner-city areas like South Providence (see yesterday’s post). A key factual premise of the mass suits, however, is that the paint is causing learning deficits and behavioral problems among a wider class of children whose blood-lead levels might not have been considered particularly high by medical science through most of the twentieth century (when ambient lead levels in the human environment were far higher) but which are now viewed as triggers for concern or even as “poisoning” following a drastic downward revision of definitional thresholds some years back.
As Forbes’s cover story points out, this leaves a question of how to account for why the symptoms now causing concern were not observed more widely during the long period when lead-based interior paints were commonly found in American homes. “If traces of lead near such levels have something to do with learning disabilities, the sweeping decline in blood-lead levels in the U.S. in the past half-century should have given us a generation of geniuses in our elementary schools. But test scores have scarcely been going up …. Even as blood-levels in children dropped drastically, IQ scores have increased a consistent 3% a decade for 100 years — possibly because of media exposure and better nutrition.” Nor, one might add, does one observe a big “absence of lead effect” if one compares the learning and behavioral problems of kids growing up in modern housing projects, most of which were built after the discontinuance of lead pigments in paint, with those of similarly disadvantaged kids growing up in older housing stock. (Michael Freedman, “Turning Lead Into Gold”, Forbes, May 14 (reg)).
MORE: For a contrary view, accepting the premise that lead paint in older housing is causing widespread as opposed to exceptional harm to children, see the recent series in the Providence Journal: Peter Lord, “Poisoned”, May 13-18. For more on the course of the litigation, see Bob Van Voris, “Paint suit’s a lead balloon (so far)”, National Law Journal, May 8; “San Jose: Judge gives counties OK to sue paint firms”, San Francisco Chronicle, June 4; Tom Kertscher, “Suing Just 2 Paint Firms Helps Case, Lawyers Say”, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, April 9. (DURABLE LINK)
June 7 – “‘Pseudologia Fantastica’ Won’t Fly”. Contrary to what he claimed during the screening process that led up to his appointment to the bench, “Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Patrick Couwenberg never earned a Purple Heart. He didn’t fight in Vietnam or work for the CIA. Nor did he attend Loyola Law School or earn a master’s degree in psychology or any other subject.” Now a disciplinary panel has rejected the judge’s plea in mitigation of his fibs that he suffers from “a recently diagnosed condition called ‘pseudologia fantastica,’ which doctors say causes people to tell tall tales and mix fantasy with facts.” (Sonia Giordani, The Recorder, May 18). Update: state panel orders him removed from bench (see Aug. 20-21).
June 7 – Ness monster sighted in Narragansett Bay. Bad enough that Rhode Island, with its insider-dominated political system, has failed to shake its reputation as the “Louisiana of the North”. (See, e.g., Mark Sappenfield, “Legacy of scandal mars Rhode Island”, Christian Science Monitor, April 11). But will Little Rhody become the first state to auction itself off to out-of-state trial lawyers? You start wondering after reading Forbes’s recent cover story on the nation’s richest tort law firm, Charleston, S.C.-based powerhouse Ness Motley (tobacco, asbestos, etc.), and its branch office in Providence, opened some years ago by partner John J. McConnell Jr. Ness Motley has quickly made itself “Rhode Island’s largest political contributor, at $540,950 for the 2000 national elections”, and its local partner McConnell has become treasurer of the Democratic party in the tiny state. By one of these coincidences that are so rare in novels but so common in real life, Rhode Island Democratic attorney general Sheldon Whitehouse, considered ambitious for a gubernatorial run, in 1999 awarded the Ness firm a contingency fee contract to sue on behalf of the state seeking money from former makers of lead paint — the only one of the fifty state AGs thus far to take such a step. If the firm and its superlawyer Ron Motley succeed in convincing cities, school districts and other governmental units to follow suit, they might extract billions from such companies as Arco, ICI Glidden, and American Cyanamid. “In April, in a major victory for Motley, a Rhode Island Superior Court judge rejected the defendants’ motion to dismiss, and Sherwin-Williams’ stock dropped 21%.” (Michael Freedman, “Turning Lead Into Gold”, Forbes, May 14 (reg)). Dueling websites: leadlawsuits.com (defendants) and aboutlead.com (Ness Motley)[more on lead paint litigation tomorrow] (DURABLE LINK)
June 7 – “Sorry, Slimbo, you’re in my seats”. Columnist Peter Simpson isn’t impressed with the opinion of the Canadian government that, as a matter of handicapped rights, severely overweight airline passengers should be given an extra seat free of charge (Ottawa Citizen/National Post, May 11; Glen McGregor, Treat the obese as disabled, airlines told”, Ottawa Citizen, Dec. 10; see Dec. 20, 2000). (Update Dec. 15-16: Canadian transportation agency backs off policy)
June 7 – Welcome WSJ OpinionJournal.com readers. We’ve figured in their “Best of the Web” feature quite a few times recently, including yesterday. Also: KRLD Dallas, “Eye on the Internet” with Katie Pruett (interviewed our editor last night); Good Clean Fun June 2; LynnLynn’s Links June 4; links lists Ennazus, Brian Tebeau’s, Breaching the Web, Stop Lawsuit Abuse — Mississippi, Amy Welborn’s, ChinaLawInfo.com, YouDontSay.org (”too many lawyers?”), Washington State University at Spokane, Eruditum.org, Joseph DeMartino’s (see “something we have no shortage of”), Weaverlane LogB2K, Univ. of Georgia Sagan Society, Baltimore Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse, Snakebite’s, and Mr. Linck’s social studies class in Morrisville, N.Y. (gun debate).
June 6 – Intellectual-property dispute Hall of Fame. San Francisco Bay area artists Emily Duffy and Ron Nicolino have each retained lawyers and have exchanged threatening letters in a dispute over who owns the concept underlying their art, which consists of giant bundles of brassieres: hers weighs 650 pounds, his twice as much. Both bra assemblages “keep growing — huge spheres of lace, silk, padding and underwire bras of all colors, shapes and sizes.” Nicolino “has used 14,000 bras from an abandoned project to hook them across the Grand Canyon. Now he’s pulling his ball to Los Angeles behind his 1963 flamingo pink Cadillac, looking for someone to sponsor a worldwide tour and eventually, a showcase where people can continue hooking on their own bras.” “I think it’s a major important part of American art,” he said. Duffy says he swiped the idea from her. (Margie Mason, “Bay Area artists battle over giant bra balls”, Modesto Bee, May 29). They both have websites: braball.com and nicolinosbraball.com.
June 6 – “Risks of the crime”. A Florida appeals court has dealt a setback to two men who sued a hotel for damages after they were shot in its parking lot during a suspected drug deal. The appeals court said the hotel chain should not be held responsible for injuries incurred by visitors engaged in criminal acts. A jury had ruled for the men to the tune of $1.7 million (see Dec. 15, 1999) after Judge Celeste Muir “excluded all evidence of the suspected drug deal — including the previous drug conviction of one of the men suing, an electronic scale and $38,000 in cash found at the scene. All the jury heard was that two hotel guests who were shot in a dimly lit Ramada Inn parking lot in Hialeah wanted damages from the hotel.” The case is still pending. (”Risks of the crime” (editorial), Miami Herald, June 5).
June 6 – To destroy a doctor. Laparoscopic (small-incision) surgery counts as one of the major medical advances of recent years, and among its internationally famed practitioners have been the three Iranian-born Nezhat brothers, all of whom are on the faculty at Stanford Medical School. For more than seven years Cleveland lawyer James Neal has been pursuing medical malpractice complaints against the Nezhats, accusing them “of, among other things: lying about their credentials; systematically overbilling their patients; threatening witnesses; conducting unauthorized experimental surgeries; sexually assaulting patients; kidnapping at gunpoint; and faking their research in order to promote devices [used in surgery] in exchange for consulting fees and royalties from manufacturers. ” Although he hasn’t made much progress in getting courts to accept his charges, Neal’s pursuit of the numerous lawsuits has taken over his life and, say the Nezhats, has ruined theirs. (Alison Frankel, “Obsession” (cover story), The American Lawyer, June 4).
June 5 – Prisoners stay acoustic. The First Amendment does not confer on federal prisoners a right to practice on electric guitars, ruled U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan May 22. “[C]onvicted bomber and frequent litigant Brett Kimberlin … who’s in federal prison in Petersburg, Va., on parole violations”, had sued the federal Bureau of Prisons over a rule restricting inmates to acoustic instruments, saying it inhibited his rights of expression. (Jonathan Groner, “Inadmissible: Unplugged”, Legal Times, May 28) (second item).
June 5 – NFL satellite ticket class action. The National Football League has agreed to settle a class action lawsuit filed four years ago over its practice of selling only season packages to its satellite-TV televised games. Under the settlement, subscribers will get cash payments of between $8.33 and $20.83, and will be able to buy individual weeks at $29.99 each instead of the whole season at $169.99 for the last two years of existing contracts; two named plaintiffs will get $1,000 each, and the lawyers will enjoy an appetizing $3.7 million in fees. Counting administrative costs as well as the legal payouts, the settlement is expected to cost the league more than $13 million, and if you think fans may wind up footing much of the bill for such legally inflicted outlays over the long run as ticket prices go up to cover them, why, shame on you for being such a cynic (”Lawsuit settlement with DSS allows fans to buy single weekend games”, AP/Detroit News, June 1; ValkyrieRiders.net discussion, May 31) Update Aug. 20-21: judge disallows settlement.
June 5 – Missouri’s tagalong tobacco fees. When it came to the role it played in the multistate tobacco litigation, Missouri “didn’t need red-hot lawyers. Our lawsuit was what’s called a tagalong suit. We were the 27th state to sue the tobacco companies. A national settlement was already in the works. … Five months after Team Missouri was assembled, [it] was reached.” But that didn’t stop the lawyers who represented the state — some of whom “were distinguished more for their political connections than their legal track records”– from asking for a cool $480 million in fees, though they later declared themselves willing to settle for $100 million (see Sept. 21, 2000). Readers will recall that not long ago popular St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Bill McClellan had the temerity to criticize the high fees trial lawyers were getting in another case, and they promptly slapped him with an intimidating $1 million lawsuit (Nov. 4, 1999; Nov. 30, 1999; Feb. 29, 2000). But he still goes right on writing these sorts of columns, even though he must know it’s bound to get more lawyers mad at him. Hasn’t he learned his lesson yet? (Bill McClellan, “Just what did our tobacco legal team do for $100 million?”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 16). Update Oct. 5, 2003: Missouri Supreme Court refuses to entertain challenge to tobacco fees.
June 4 – “Dad Sues After Girl Fails to Make Cheerleading Squad”. In Vestavia Hills, Ala., the father of Laura Brooke Smith “has sued [the] school district, saying his daughter’s rejection from the high school cheerleading squad despite professional coaching has caused her humiliation and mental anguish.” (Fox News, May 31). And in North Haven, Ct., the “families of two high school sophomores have filed a federal lawsuit over the school’s decision to drop them from the drum majorette squad.” Stephanie Tata and Rebecca Mickolyczk and their mothers filed the suit in U.S. District Court April 30. Town attorney Robert K. Ciulla says the schools get “many” disputes over after-school activities, but this is the first involving baton twirling. (Ann DiMatteo, “Families Sue Over Unfair Twirl Tryouts”, New Haven Register, May 18).
June 4 – Maori tribes v. Lego. “Three New Zealand Maori tribes are considering a legal challenge to Danish toy company Lego over the use of Maori words and Polynesian culture in a new computer game. New Zealand-based barrister Solomon Maui has written to Lego asking for sales of the game to be suspended, saying it infringed the Polynesian people’s intellectual property rights to their language and culture.” (”Maori challenge Lego over use of culture”, CNN, June 1; Slashdot thread).
June 4 – EEOC: unfiltered computers “harass” librarians. In a “blockbuster” ruling, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission declared on May 23 that the Minneapolis Public Library may have subjected its librarians to unlawful “hostile work environment” sexual harassment by exposing them to sexually explicit images called up by patrons on unfiltered computers. The pro-censorship religious-right Family Research Council hailed the ruling, which is likely to intensify legal pressure on institutions of all sorts (including libraries at private universities and research institutions, and indeed all enterprises with employees) to install “filtering” software which excludes a wide variety of websites deemed obscene, hateful or otherwise improper.
Public libraries like the one in Minneapolis are likely to be sued if they do, sued if they don’t, given the precedent of a 1998 federal district court decision finding that the filtering policy of a public library in Loudoun County, Va., was unconstitutional. However, UCLA’s Eugene Volokh predicts that the balance of legal pressure will tilt toward website blocking, because losing a First Amendment lawsuit filed by patrons will subject a library to only “nominal damages”, while losing a Title VII discrimination suit can result in a damage figure “with lots of zeros in it”. In the Minneapolis case, “[Librarian Wendy] Adamson said the E.E.O.C. had privately suggested to the library that it pay each of the 12 employees $75,000 in damages,” which would add up to $900,000. (Carl S. Kaplan, “Cyber Law Journal: Controversial Ruling on Library Filters”, New York Times, June 1)(reg).
June 1-3 – Sweetness and light from Bill Lockyer. As the state’s power crisis continues, California attorney general Bill Lockyer provokes a few gasps with his recent comments about Enron Corp. chairman Kenneth Lay: “I would love to personally escort Lay to an 8-by-10 cell that he could share with a tattooed dude who says, ‘Hi my name is Spike, honey,’” Lockyer told the Wall Street Journal. While the state’s top law enforcement officer thus quips about subjecting a prominent adversary to prison rape, the Los Angeles Times notes that “neither Lockyer’s office nor any investigative panel has filed charges against Enron or other companies”. (Jenifer Warren, “Lockyer Fires Earthy Attack at Energy Exec”, L.A. Times, May 23, fee-based archive; “Lockyer lockdown”, L.A. Daily News, May 29). Lockyer, who’s promised a bounty of millions of dollars to any informant who can nail the generating firms, was elected AG in a well-funded campaign after serving for many years as head of the Judiciary Committee and chief guardian of litigation-lobby interests in the state Senate; The Recorder (S.F.), Dec. 11, 1992, described him as “the darling of trial lawyers…a part time plaintiff’s attorney”.
Other California politicos have also stepped up the business-bashing to an intensity not heard since the 1970s, to judge from an account by Chris Weinkopf in the Los Angeles Daily News. At a press conference, state senate president pro tem John Burton “announced the solution is for Sacramento to ‘terrorize the bastards’ [electricity generators] by seizing their power plants. If he were governor, he said, he ‘would have taken them yesterday.’ The actual governor, Gray Davis, is more subtle in his attacks. He’s only called the generators ‘marauders,’ ‘pirates’ and ‘the biggest snakes on the planet Earth.’ … Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante has called for empowering the state to put energy executives in jail. …Treasurer Phil Angelides has suggested that if generators ‘don’t take their foot off our throat,’ the state should ’seize a plant or two to sober them up.’” (Chris Weinkopf, “California’s Assault on Energy Producers”, Los Angeles Daily News, April 24, reprinted at FrontPage magazine).
MORE: In San Francisco Weekly, Jeremy Mullman makes the case that the key error in California’s electricity restructuring was to proceed with government-supervised “Reliability Must-Run” (RMR) contracts (he explains what these are) which perversely rewarded generators for unreliability and supply shortfalls (”Contract Killings”, May 30). See also William Tucker, “California Unplugged”, The American Spectator, April; Rob Wherry, “Crossed Wires,” Forbes, March 5 (reg); “Power Scramble”, Forbes, April 23. (DURABLE LINK)(& welcome visitors from AndrewSullivan.com; Sullivan nominates Lockyer for his “Paul Begala Award” for intemperate rhetoric, linking to our item)
June 1-3 – Old-hairstyle photo prompts lawsuit. Speaking of the unlamented 1970s: Skip Johnson, a production manager who once toured with Jefferson Airplane and the Eagles and was married to singer Grace Slick, has sued a dotcom, its advertising firm, and photo firm Corbis over an ad prominently displaying an old photo of him and implicitly poking fun at the unruly 1970s-vintage hairstyle he then wore. He now sports a more conservative ‘do; suits over commercial use of people’s pictures without their permission go back at least as far as 1902, according to his lawyers. (Peter Hartlaub, “S.F. dot-com is sued over big hair ad”, San Francisco Chronicle, May 29). And the latest tattoo-misspelling lawsuit comes from Tucson where a parlor left out one of the “n”s in the motto 22-year-old West Hill had asked to have inscribed on his arm, thus rendering it as “New Beginings”. (Maureen O’Connell, “A major tattoo miscue”, Arizona Daily Star, May 29).
June 1-3 – “A disabling verdict for organized sports”. Steve Chapman’s take on the high court’s ruling in the Casey Martin case; quotes our editor (Chicago Tribune, May 31). Also: Lance Morrow, “PGA, not SCOTUS, Should Have Decided the Casey Martin Case”, Time.com, May 31; Paul Campos, “Martin ruling only further handicaps us”, Rocky Mountain News, June 2; “The court’s errant shot” (editorial), Chicago Tribune, May 31.
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April 30 – Michigan prisoner sues for recognition as Messiah. “A prisoner who claims he is God has sued the U.S. government, the state of Michigan, a book publishing company, a radio program and several others.” The case of inmate Chad De Koven, 43, reflects a more serious problem: in spite of reforms at both the federal and state level that have aimed at curbing unmeritorious suits by those behind bars, “Michigan Assistant Attorney General Leo Friedman heads a division of 19 lawyers who do nothing but handle prison litigation.” (Crystal Harmon, Bay City Times, March 28). Update May 14: judge dismisses case in 22-page opinion.
April 30 – “States Mull Suit Against Drug Companies”. Latest nominee for Next Tobacco designation are the folks who’ve allegedly charged too much for saving our lives: “In an action modeled on their 1998 class action lawsuit against the tobacco industry, at least six states are poised to go to court to try to force pharmaceutical companies to lower prescription prices … Attorneys general in Florida, Georgia, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada and Texas are among those considering legal action, officials from some of the offices said. … A catalyst for state legal action is Florida businessman Zachary Bentley, who is going from state to state urging state attorneys general to sue drug manufacturers.” Bentley, himself a disgruntled competitor of the drug companies, says they overstate the average wholesale price of many drugs so as to boost what Medicare and Medicaid programs will pay for them. “Under whistleblower and federal False Claims laws, Bentley gets a portion of any settlement that results from what he’s revealed.” (Mary Guiden, Stateline.org, April 2)(more on False Claims Act: July 30).
April 30 – “Radio ad pulled after lawyers object”. Following protests from the state bar association, the Kentucky transportation department last month agreed to stop airing a traffic-safety radio ad based on a well-worn lawyer joke. The joke? “A car full of lawyers turned over right in front of old man Jenkins’ place. He comes out and buries them all. The sheriff asked old man Jenkins, ‘You sure they were all dead?’ ‘Well,’ says Jenkins. ‘Some said they weren’t. But you know how them lawyers lie.”’ The ad urged motorists to slow down so as not to meet a similar fate. (Jack Brammer, Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader, March 27).
April 27-29 – Victory in Albany. Unanimous, long-awaited, and devastating: by a 7-0 vote New York’s highest court yesterday rejected the most important elements of the much-hyped lawsuit Hamilton v. Accu-Tek, which seeks retroactively to tag gun manufacturers with liability for criminal misuse of their products. Answering two questions 
certified to them by the federal Second Circuit, the jurists of the New York Court of Appeals declined to impose a new legal duty of gun manufacturers toward anyone who might fall victim to post-sale misuse of guns, and also ruled out the application of “market-share liability”, the adventurous theory by which plaintiff’s lawyers were attempting to impose liability on gunmakers without having to show that their guns figured in particular shootings. Both rulings stand as a reproof to activist federal judge Jack Weinstein, who had kept the Hamilton suit alive despite many indications that it had no grounding in existing law. (Joel Stashenko, “Court says gun manufacturers not liable”, AP/Albany Times-Union, April 26; “N.Y. Gun Ruling Could Have National Impact”, AP/FoxNews.com, April 27; John Caher, “New York Rules Gun Manufacturers Not Liable for Injuries”, New York Law Journal, April 27; read full opinion (PDF) — Firearms Litigation Clearinghouse site).
Other judges have lately thrown out of court municipal antigun suits filed on behalf of New Orleans and Miami (Susan Finch, “N.O. gun suit shot down”, New Orleans Times-Picayune, April 4; Susan R. Miller, “Appeals Court Halts Miami-Dade Suit Against Gun Industry”, Miami Daily Business Review, Feb. 15). And the Florida legislature has voted on largely partisan lines, with Democrats opposed, to join 26 other states in spelling out explicitly that cities, counties and other subdivisions of state government have no authority to file recoupment actions against gun makers and dealers over criminals’ misdeeds (”Florida Legislature Votes to Insulate Gunmakers”. Reuters/Yahoo, April 25; see also Charlotte Observer, April 26) (N.C. bill). Unfortunately, judges have recently allowed novel anti-gunmaker suits to proceed in Chicago and Atlanta; and as the gun-control-through-lawyering crowd knows too well, even a few eventual breakthroughs for their side may be enough to ruin this lawful industry (Todd Lighty and Robert Becker, “Gun victims’ lawsuit against firearms industry can move forward”, Chicago Tribune, Feb. 15).
MORE: Jeff Donn, “Maker of the .44 Magnum turns to golf putters and teddy bears”, AP/Minneapolis Star Tribune, April 14 (after the failure of its attempt to cut a deal with its legal tormentors, S&W struggles to stay afloat; one lawsuit had cost the company $5 million just to be dropped from the case); Tanya Metaksa, “Smith & Wesson’s Deal With the Devil”, FrontPage, April 12; Kris Axtman, “Gunmakers not about to run up white flag”, Christian Science Monitor, Dec. 15. Politicians have begun to move away from reflexive antigun sloganeering as election results have made clear that the supposed antigun consensus in American public opinion is no consensus at all (Michael S. Brown, “Gun Control: What Went Wrong?”, FrontPage, April 26).
April 27-29 – “Iowa Supreme Court says counselors liable for bad advice”. “A high school guidance counselor can be held responsible for giving wrong advice to a student that damages the student’s educational goals, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.” Katie, bar the door! (AP/CNN, April 26).
April 26 – “Legal action prolongs whiplash effects: experts”. Yet another study, this time from researchers at the University of Adelaide, Australia, finds that after auto accidents people experience more pain and quality-of-life deterioration if they are pursuing litigation (Australian Broadcasting Corporation, April 12) (see April 24, 2000). Also see Kevin Barraclough, “Does litigation make you ill?” British Medical Journal, March 31.
April 26 – Judge offers “court phobia” defense. Court-appointed special masters found that Los Angeles County Judge Patrick Murphy took more than 400 days of unjustified sick leave at taxpayer expense since 1996. They were not “impressed with what they called his ‘evolving defense,’ which began with claims that his political opponents were behind the accusations and ‘matured’ into a defense that he was disabled because of a ‘phobic reaction to judicial activities.’” (Sonia Giordani, “Los Angeles Judge’s ‘Court Phobia’ Defense Falls Flat”, The Recorder, April 12).
April 26 – The law must be enforced. In St. Cloud, Florida, 12-year-old Derrick Thompson tried to cross a street against the traffic and got hit by a truck, to onlookers’ horror. Dazed and bleeding, Derrick got another surprise minutes later when town police handed him a ticket for jaywalking. (Susan Jacobson, “Ticket seen as insult to injury”, Orlando Sentinel, April 13).
April 25 – While you were out: the carbonless-paper crusade. Some people are convinced their health has been damaged by ordinary workplace exposure to the chemicals present in carbonless paper, the material used in pressure-sensitive memo slips and similar office supplies. (”Carbonless Copy Paper — The Injury and Information Network”, carbonless.org). Although the product’s makers, such as Appleton Papers and the Mead Corporation, deny that there’s anything to be feared from working with receptionist’s pads or other multiple forms, a number of news reports have uncritically accepted the idea of a causal link between the paper and the ills complained of — to MSNBC’s Francesca Lyman, for example, “probably thousands” have fallen victim to the scourge, showing how “a seemingly benign product could leave a trail of damage”. (”The carbonless paper caper”, MSNBC, Jan. 17 (page now removed, but GoogleCached); see also Keith Mulvihill, “Sick of Paperwork? Some Office Workers Say It’s the Paper”, New York Times, Sept. 26, 1999 (reg); Tracy Davidson, WCAU-TV Philadelphia “Consumer Alert“). Inevitably, those who feel victimized are filing suits against companies that manufacture the product.
None of the activists have figured more prominently in news stories than Brenda Smith of Virginia Beach, Va., who filed suit in 1993 over a variety of symptoms including “headaches, sinus and allergy problems, skin and eye irritation, sore throats, respiratory infections, bronchitis,” and others, which she believes resulted from exposure to the chemicals in carbonless paper at her job. “The potential for litigation from worker’s compensation to product liability is huge,” she told The American Enterprise. However, the magazine also unearthed one extra little fact which the earlier press reports had neglected to mention: that “the health-afflicted Brenda Smith was addicted to cigarette smoking, which she admitted to TAE when we bothered to ask. Apparently some reporters didn’t think that fact advanced their story.” (”Scan”, The American Enterprise, April/May (scroll down to “Smoking Gun”)) See also Bob Van Voris, “Scents or Nonsense?”, National Law Journal, Nov. 6, 2000. NIOSH review (PDF — very long)(& see letter to the editor, May 18).
April 25 – Value of being able to endure parody without calling in lawyers: priceless. When MasterCard sent its lawyers to do a cease and desist routine on rec.humor.funny over a tasteless parody of its “Priceless” ad campaign, list founder Brad Templeton posted this tart riposte on NetFunny.com (April).
April 24 – Put the blame on games. The lawyer for survivors of a murdered Columbine teacher has sued 25 media companies, mostly makers and distributors of video games whose violence he says incited the perpetrators of the crime. Attorney John DeCamp claims to be “100 percent on the side of the First Amendment” when he isn’t filing actions like this, and equally predictably says it’s not really about the money, which isn’t keeping him from demanding that the defendants fork over $5 billion-with-a-”b”. (Kevin Simpson, “Slain teacher’s family launches suit aimed at media violence”, Denver Post, April 21). Update Mar. 6, 2002: judge dismisses case.
April 24 – Pennsylvania MDs drop work today. “Hundreds of physicians from Southeastern Pennsylvania plan to shut down their offices and leave their hospital posts [Tuesday] to go to Harrisburg to insist that lawmakers enact insurance-tort reforms and give them relief from soaring malpractice-insurance premiums. … According to the Pennsylvania Medical Society, obstetricians in the Philadelphia region pay an average of $84,000 yearly in malpractice insurance, while the same doctors in New Jersey pay about $58,000, and in Delaware, $52,000. Neurosurgeons pay $111,000 for coverage in Philadelphia. If their practices were in New Jersey, the rate would be about $75,000.” (see Jan. 24-25). Timothy Schollenberger, president of the state trial lawyers’ association and evidently a man given to bold denials, says the protest is misplaced: “tort law is not a significant factor in making [malpractice] premiums rise or fall”. Kind of like an oil sheik denying that OPEC crude price hikes have anything to do with the cost of gas at the pump, isn’t it? (Ovetta Wiggins, “Doctors to protest premium increases”, Philadelphia Inquirer, April 23).
April 24 – Bush’s environmental centrism. The press has decided to make President Bush’s supposed anti-environmentalism the story du jour, but in fact “on almost every environmental issue, Bush has upheld the Clinton-Gore position.” (Gregg Easterbrook, “Health Nut”, The New Republic, April 30).
Among Bush proposals to meet with support from many centrists and Democrats is the one for a year-long moratorium on pressure groups’ use of endangered-species lawsuits to drive the agenda of the Fish and Wildlife Service; see Bruce Babbitt, “Bush Isn’t All Wrong About the Endangered Species Act,” New York Times, April 15 (reg); Michael Grunwald, “Bush Seeks To Curb Endangered Species Suits”, Washington Post, April 12 (”The litigation explosion has been so bad, we couldn’t even list species that were going over the edge,” said Jamie Rappaport Clark, who directed the service under Clinton. “We asked the courts to let us set our own priorities, but they wouldn’t budge.”)(see Dec. 4, 2000).
April 24 – Washington Post editorial on cellphone suit. We’ve appended highlights from yesterday’s refreshingly blunt Post editorial (”More Dumb Lawsuits”) to the item below on the Angelos onslaught against mobile telephony. Is it too much to hope that the New York Times or L.A. Times will someday start being even half as editorially sensible about litigation issues as the Post is?
April 23 – Sorry, wrong number. As expected, Baltimore tort tycoon Peter Angelos filed suit against 25 defendants including Nokia, Motorola, Ericsson, Verizon, Sprint and Nextel accusing them all of concealing the brain-frying horrors of cellular telephone use. “The suits do not claim that anyone has actually suffered an illness.” (Peter S. Goodman, “Angelos Suits Allege Cellular-Phone Danger”, WashTech.com/ Washington Post, April 19). In an editorial bluntly titled “More Dumb Lawsuits”, the Washington Post declares, “There is now a new way to satisfy the bemused foreigner who asks why a nation so proudly founded upon the rule of law is marked by such contempt for lawyers. Just tell the foreigner about the litigation against cell-phone makers that Peter Angelos began on Thursday.” Moreover, Angelos is demanding a remedy (free headsets) that “makes no sense … Mr. Angelos is seeking to replace a situation in which consumers are free to buy headsets if they choose with one in which they indirectly are forced to pay for them — and to pay Mr. Angelos’s fees into the bargain.” (April 23). Update Oct. 1-2, 2002: court dismisses case.
April 23 – Seventh Circuit rebukes EPA. A U.S. Court of Appeals has rebuked the Environmental Protection Agency, dismissing the Superfund suit in which the agency sought permission to enter and dig up the 16-acre property of John Tarkowski, a disabled and indigent building contractor in Wauconda, Ill. Tarkowski’s habit of accumulating surplus materials, from which he has constructed his house, has annoyed many of his upscale neighbors, but repeated investigations have failed to find any serious contamination on his property. Rejecting the government’s arguments, the appeals court held that EPA “sought a blank check from the court. It sought authorization to go onto Tarkowski’s property and destroy the value of the property regardless how trivial the contamination that its tests disclosed.” And: “In effect, the agency is claiming the authority to conduct warrantless searches and seizures, of a particularly destructive sort, on residential property, despite the absence of any exigent circumstances. It is unlikely, even apart from constitutional considerations, that Congress intended to confer such authority on the EPA.” (”U.S. Court of Appeals Dismisses EPA Suit Threatening to Destroy Elderly Wauconda Man’s Property”, press release from Mayer, Brown & Platt (whose Mark Ter Molen represented Tarkowski pro bono), Yahoo Finance/Business Wire, April 20).
April 23 – If I can’t dance, you can keep your social conservatism. The town of Pound in Virginia’s coal-mining western corner has an ordinance on the books that bans public dancing without a permit. Bill Elam is defying the law by operating his Golden Pine nightclub, while local clergy hope the town sticks to its guns: “I can never see a time when dancing can be approved of, especially with people who are not married,” said one. (”Virginia town outlaws dancing”, Nando Times, April 16).
April 20-22 – Quite an ankle sprain. Michele Nations, 26, who sprained her ankle five years ago when she tripped into a hole at a municipal park in Tucson, has now been awarded $450,000 by a local jury. Nations’ attorney “says the case hinged on the city’s responsibility to post adequate warning about burrowing animals [such as squirrels and gophers] and to provide a safe alternative to dodging holes and caved-in tunnels.” An attorney for the city differs, and calls the outcome astonishing: “You would think in a park — in a natural space — people should have to watch where they’re going.” (April 19: Maureen O’Connell, “Gopher hole may cost city $450K”, Arizona Daily Star; “Jury awards Tucson woman who stepped into hole at a park”, AP/Arizona Republic). (DURABLE LINK)
April 20-22 – Thank you, Your Honor. The May Brill’s Content has a cover story (teaser only online) entitled “Human Portals: How people with an obsession — and a website — are upstaging big media”. It tells how weblogs, link-rich sites regularly updated and often zeroing in on a specialized theme, are the new Big Thing in online media; typically “curated by one person”, according to editor in chief David Kuhn, they “could teach big media portals a lot about engaging their audience”. Happy to read all this, we were particularly pleased to turn to the sidebar feature in which the magazine surveys a group of public luminaries about their favorite websites, which range from eBay (Nora Ephron) to 10KWizard.com (Gretchen Morgenson). And here’s Alex Kozinski, distinguished federal judge on the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, on his favorite: “Overlawyered (overlawyered.com) provides pointers to legal-system horror stories: the accused rapist who pockets disability checks for his ’sexual compulsion’; the drunk who climbs a voltage tower and sues the utility company when he gets injured; the guy who murders his mom and sues his shrinks for not stopping him. The site is run by Walter Olson, who likes nothing better than reporting on legal overkill, and he’s compiled serious research tools for anyone interested in trends and abuses within the civil litigation system.” Thank you, Your Honor! (DURABLE LINK)
April 20-22 – Comparable worth in Maine. Despite widespread criticism of the idea from economists and others, Maine has enacted new rules opening private employers to a serious threat of legal action if they pay less to a worker of one gender than to a worker of the opposite gender “for comparable work on jobs with comparable requirements related to skill, effort and responsibility”. Some other states have had “comparable worth” or “pay equity” laws on the books, but Maine is the first to enact regulations giving such laws serious teeth. “We won”, said an official with the state AFL-CIO. “The business community has not awakened to the fact that this is going to cost them.” Disagreements are all but inevitable as to whether (say) secretaries’ work should be regarded as just as valuable as that of (say) truck drivers, and the Maine law will allow lawyers to march into such controversies with class action suits for unlimited damages — won’t that be fun? The state chamber of commerce did not oppose the enactment. (”Equal pay advocates tout new state rules”, AP/Bangor Daily News, April 4; “Maine Becomes First State Requiring Pay Equity”, Women’s ENews, April 3 (via Freedom News Daily); Maine Equal Justice Partners, 2000 Docket Report (scroll down to “Pay Equity”)).
SEE ALSO May 17, 2000; Diana Furchtgott-Roth, “Suicide Mission: The Union Push for Comporable Worth”, Capital Research Center Labor Watch, Dec. 1999; Lawrence W. Reed, “Comparable Worth or Incomparably Worthless?”, Mackinac Center, Sept. 6, 1994. The late Clarence Pendleton Jr., chairman of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, called comparable worth “the looniest idea since Looney Tunes came on the screen” (Simpson’s Contemporary Quotations #519). (DURABLE LINK)
April 20-22 – “Lie-tery winners”. All sorts of basically decent people, from cops to grandmothers, would never think of shoplifting or forging checks but do seem to think it’s okay to lie in lawsuits. “Just ask anyone who has taken more than a handful of depositions or cross-examined witnesses at trial — especially witnesses in tort cases. … the oath has become virtually meaningless,” writes Kirkland & Ellis partner Michael Jones (”Lie-tery Winners”, National Law Journal, March 22).
April 18-19 – Mistletoe dangerous even when absent. LeRoy Crawford says his female boss at the New York Stock Exchange behaved seductively and made remarks such as “if there were mistletoe, I would give you a kiss,” when giving him a Christmas bottle of cologne. Things went from bad to worse, and he now wants $1 million in compensatory damages and $1 million for “special damages as a result of physical and mental injury”. (Peter Noel, “Sex on the floor”, Village Voice, April 11-17).
April 18-19 – Randomness of case assignments questioned. San Francisco assigns cases for pre-trial motions to one of two judges, and it seemed that the plaintiff’s firm of Wartnick, Chaber, Harowitz & Tigerman kept getting lucky by drawing the more favorable judge to hear its asbestos cases. Lucky, indeed: over the past two years, 94 percent of the firm’s cases were assigned even numbers, instead of the odd numbers that would have sent the cases to the other judge. (Dennis J. Opatrny, “Playing the Numbers”, The Recorder, April 9).
April 18-19 – “Guests sue inn for overbooking”. When five Massachusetts couples arrived at Vermont’s romantic Woodstock Inn for an investment club weekend last April, they found the inn had inadvertently overbooked its rooms, and three of the couples had to stay at a local B&B. The inn proprietors were terribly apologetic and treated all five couples to the weekend’s lodging for free, as well as giving them a free dinner. Nonetheless, four of the couples are suing for a sum “substantially in excess of $25,000″ in a Boston court. (AP/Boston Globe, April 17).
April 18-19 – Tempest in an arsenic-laced teacup? President Bush deserves credit for standing up to demagogues by pulling back this bad regulation: Steve Chapman, “Who’s really poisoning our drinking water?”, Chicago Tribune, April 12; George Will, “The costs of moral exhibitionism”, Washington Post, April 15; Jason K. Burnett and Robert W. Hahn, Brookings/AEI Joint Center study, “EPA’s Arsenic Rule: The Benefits of the Standard Do Not Justify the Costs”, abstract, Jan. 2001; Mercatus Center (George Mason U.) Public Interest Comment series, Sept. 19, 2000; Michael Kinsley, “Bush is right on arsenic. Darn!”, Washington Post, April 13; Michael Y. Park, “Study: Arsenic Rule Would Have Increased Deaths”, FoxNews.com, April 17; Nick Schulz, “Poisoner-in-Chief Is Saving Lives”, American Spectator Online, April 17; Diane Rehm show transcript (National Public Radio), March 28.
April 17 – Reparations: take a number. National Journal columnist Stuart Taylor Jr. traces the link between demands for compensation for century-old evils such as slavery and colonization and legal battles over liability for decades-ago sales of products like lead paint and asbestos (”Paying Reparations for Ancient Wrongs Is Not Right”, The Atlantic/National Journal, April 11; our take, Reason, Nov. 2000). The group of lawyers mapping out slavery-reparations suits are scheduled to huddle on strategy today in Washington, and say they plan to name businesses as well as the U.S. government as defendants (Jamal E. Watson, “Lawyers plan suit for slavery reparations”, Boston Globe, April 13). The conservative magazine Insight has given uncritically positive coverage to demands for compensation over Japan’s World War II mistreatment of American servicemen, despite the clear laying to rest of such claims by postwar treaty. You’d think victims of the crimes of communism over its long reign would be even better placed to score positive ink in the conservative press, but we seem to hear little about them — not that we would want to load up the reparations bandwagon even further, you understand (Stephen Goode, “New book documents Japanese exploitation”, Insight, undated).
April 17 – A Pulitzer for Dorothy Rabinowitz. The Wall Street Journal editorialist, whose searing commentaries on dubious child-abuse prosecutions have helped expose some of the most glaring injustices to flow from sentimentalism and credulity in our legal system, snags one of this year’s Pulitzer Prizes for her commentaries on American society and culture (Yahoo Full Coverage — Pulitzers). OpinionJournal.com keeps an archive of her media criticism; her articles on abusive prosecution, when online at all, are found at far-flung corners of the web (”A Darkness in Massachusetts” -I-, -II-, -III- (RickRoss.com); more columns on Amirault case; “Through the Darkness” (the Grant Snowden case, forever linked with the name of Janet Reno) (DennisPrager.net); Wenatchee case -I-, -II-).
April 16 – “Woman settles hot pickle lawsuit with McDonald’s”. Or at least its local franchisee: “A woman who claimed she was permanently scarred by a hot McDonald’s hamburger pickle has settled her lawsuit against the restaurant chain. MAR Inc., which does business as McDonald’s in Knoxville, admitted no wrongdoing in the agreement signed by a judge Thursday. Other details of the settlement are to remain confidential. ” (see Oct. 10, 2000) (AP/CNN, April 13).
April 16 – New batch of reader letters. Our correspondents tell why the law makes it perilous to hire a home renovation contractor in New York, ask about buying T-shirts from us, wonder whether Indian-derived place names such as Wichita and Massachusetts are next up for abolition, lament American law’s resistance to the obvious fairness of the loser-pays principle, and hail a Supreme Court decision upholding employment arbitration.
April 16 – Big numbers. It is a truth universally acknowledged that if the injuries resulting from a transportation accident are sufficiently severe, a wealthy business must have been at fault. Teledyne Continental Motors of Mobile, Ala. has agreed to pay $27 million to settle a suit on behalf of survivors of five skydivers killed in the crash of a Cessna, though its attorney said the company’s oil tube design does not cause engine failure as the plaintiffs alleged (Joe Lambe, “$27 Million Settlement in Skydiving Plane Crash”, DropZone.com, March 16; “Poor Preflight Probably Killed Skydivers: NTSB”, Aero-News.Net, June 29, 2000). An Indiana appellate court has upheld a $55 million jury verdict against the Kroger Co. over a truck accident at a company terminal, rejecting the company’s contention that the award was excessive and in conflict with workers’ compensation laws (the injured man, a truck driver, worked for a wholly owned subsidiary of the large grocery chain). (Margaret Cronin Fisk, “Finding No Direct Employment Relationship, Indiana Appellate Court Upholds PI Award”, National Law Journal, March 28). A Los Angeles jury has just voted $55 million against General Tire, a unit of Germany’s Continental Gummi-Werke, over a “tread separation” accident (if you thought those were unique to Firestone, think again). (Myron Levin, Los Angeles Times, April 14; “Jury orders tire maker to pay $55 million”, AP/CNN, April 14). Among the plaintiff’s lawyers in the case was Brian Panish, famed for his 1999 feat in getting another L. A. jury to award $4.9 billion against GM, later reduced to $1.2 billion. And another well-known maker of replacement tires, Cooper Tire, got hammered the same week for $10 million in El Paso (”Jury OKs $10M Award Vs. Cooper Tire”, AP/FindLaw, April 13). Also see Margaret Cronin Fisk, “Two Tire Companies Punctured by Juries”, National Law Journal, April 24, with more details about both tire cases.
April 13-15 – It was the bar’s fault. “A 20-year-old Jamison man, who was shot last summer, says a Warminster bar is partially to blame for the incident. Had he not become drunk from alcohol consumption that night, Martin Joyce’s judgment would not have been impaired, he would not have approached an unknown man for change and he would not have been shot, alleges a suit filed in Montgomery County Court.” (John Corcoran, “Intoxication caused judgment error, suit claims”, Doylestown, Pa. Intelligencer-Record, April 11).
April 13-15 – Anti-Ritalin lawyers still acting out. Despite some early setbacks, tobacco-veteran lawyers including Richard Scruggs, John Coale and Marc Saperstein continue to seek megabucks damages against drugmaker Novartis (formerly Ciba-Geigy) over the widespread prescribing in schools of Ritalin, the drug meant to combat attention deficit disorder, hyperactivity, and related conditions. There’s a strong case to be made against the thoughtless overuse of this drug, but how characteristic of our litigation system that it proposes to take decisions about its use out of the hands of both medical professionals and parents, instead inviting the lawyers to shop around until they find a few sympathetic courts and a jury or two willing (effectively) to ban the drug through punitive damages. PBS “Frontline” covered the issue recently (”Medicating Kids“) and its website includes a section on the litigation (”ADHD Lawsuits“) which points out a noteworthy recent development: on March 8 of this year federal judge Rudi Brewster threw out a suit seeking class-action status on behalf of everyone in California who had used or bought Ritalin, and also “ruled that activities by defendants intended to advance the medical understanding, diagnosis and treatment of ADHD were free speech protected under California’s anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) statute.” This latter is significant because efforts by businesses to engage in medical promotion or policy defense of products, trade association activity etc. are now routinely sued over by trial lawyers in themselves (conspiracy! public brainwashing! tobacco all over again!) and anti-SLAPP statutes might prove useful in rebuffing such causes of action.
MORE: Sept. 18 & Sept. 22, 2000; Nancy Shute, “Pushing Pills on Kids?”, U.S. News, Oct. 2, 2000; Shankar Vedantam, “A symptom of the times? ADD, Ritalin focus of suits”, Philadelphia Inquirer, Dec. 11, 2000; Bob Seay, “Ten Questions for the Lawyers”, About.com ADD site, Sept. 16, 2000.
April 13-15 – “2000’s Ten Wackiest Employment Lawsuits”. Gerald Skoning of Chicago’s Seyfarth Shaw compiles an annual roundup of the most bizarre cases in employment law. Among this year’s highlights: a Minneapolis woman took a job in a sex-toy store and then filed a hostile-environment harassment lawsuit because of all the dirty talk she had to listen to; an Ohio court allowed a worker at a mental health facility to proceed with his reverse disability-discrimination claim that he had been singled out for mistreatment as the only employee at the facility without a mental disability; and a Boeing employee claimed that the company’s objection to his working in the nude was a failure to accommodate his religion, shamanism (”2000’s 10 Wackiest Employment Lawsuits”, National Law Journal, March 29).
April 12 – Zero-tolerance spiral. The WSJ’s OpinionJournal.com “Best of the Web” feature has lately made it a special project to collect reports of zero tolerance excesses, which are fast mounting beyond our ability to record them. F’rinstance, there are the school officials in West Annapolis, Md., who have banned kids from playing tag during recess, citing the school’s “no-touching” policy (Kimberly Marselas, “City school bans students from playing tag”, Annapolis Capital, March 26); and the honor student given an in-school suspension in West Monroe, La., for drawing a GI Joe-style commando with canteen, knife and grenades (Emeri O’Brien, “3rd-grader suspended for drawing”, Monroe, La. News-Star, March 24; “Soldier drawing gets wide attention”, March 27). A 16-year-old student at Legacy High School in Broomfield, Colo. “may be charged with a felony after school officials found an unloaded BB gun in his car.” (Christine Reid, “Student may face felony charge over unloaded BB gun”, Scripps-Howard, April 8). And in the continuing search for ways to build character in the leaders of tomorrow, some favor snitchlines: “Cedar Rapids police are believed to be the first in Iowa to create a student hot line to take tips on illegal activity. Teens who call about classmates they believe to have alcohol, drugs or weapons on school property get $50 if the police recover anything.” (Kate Kompas, “Teen crime hot line offers cash”, Des Moines Register, April 5).
April 12 – “The Last Tycoon”. This Baltimore City Paper profile from last August, which we missed at the time, says contingency fees to Peter Angelos’s law firm topped $100 million for asbestos work on behalf of Bethlehem Steel workers alone, with more riches expected to flow in from fen-phen, lead paint and those supposedly deadly cellular phones. “When it comes to Baltimore’s politics and finances, it seems, almost nothing happens without Peter Angelos. … in 1999, 10 lawyers and lobbyists were registered with the State Ethics Commission on his behalf.” The minority leader of the state house describes the Orioles owner’s power in Annapolis as “absolutely magical” and “amazing … It’s all based on huge amounts of money flowing [from] Peter Angelos’ pocket and into the coffers of the Democratic Party.’” (Molly Rath, Baltimore City Paper, Aug. 16, 2000)(more).
April 11 – Lost his live client, had to substitute dead one instead. In St. Louis, where lots of dead people are registered to vote, “a dead man was listed as the chief plaintiff in a lawsuit filed on Election Day in November,” according to the L.A. Times. “He was having trouble voting, the suit said, due to long lines at his polling station. So he petitioned a judge — successfully — to keep city ballot boxes open late. … The lawyer who filed the suit explained the mix-up by saying he had intended the plaintiff to be Robert ‘Mark’ Odom, an aide to a Democratic candidate for Congress.” However, “Odom had voted, without a wait, by the time the suit was filed,” and the papers had been prepared with his name on them. But as California judge William W. Bedsworth suggests, this supposed explanation if anything makes the case more egregious: the lawyer “‘explained’ how he filed a suit on behalf of a dead person by saying that the plaintiff turned out not to have had his rights violated, and the only available person with the same name happened to be dead. And this caused not the batting of an eyelash in St. Louis. No immediate suspension, no call for disbarment, no investigation into how he got a judge to sign this thing”. (”Meet Me in St. Louis”, The Recorder, April 9).
April 11 – Update: “metric martyr” convicted. In the first such prosecution in Britain, greengrocer Steven Thoburn of Sunderland has been convicted of violating a 1985 compulsory metric system laws by selling bananas in pounds and ounces (see Jan. 22) (”‘Metric martyr’ convicted”, The Guardian, April 9; “Bananas” (editorial), Daily Telegraph (editorial), April 10; footrule.org, of which the late Jennifer Paterson (TV’s “Two Fat Ladies”) was an honorary member).
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