Overlawyered » Buffalo

Buffalo lawmakers irate at law firm ad set in council chambers

Walter Olson — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 05:32:38 +0000

“What’s next? A dog food commercial?” fumed Council President David A. Franczyk, who says, as do colleagues, that they were never informed that a prominent local injury-law practice was filming a TV ad in its historic chambers [Buffalo News via WSJ]. The firm of Cellino & Barnes, which we’ve met previously on this site, says it has no plans to discontinue showing the ad despite the lawmakers’ displeasure.

Tags: Buffalo, chasing clients, movies film and videos

Who’s linking to us this week?

Ted Frank — Sat, 24 May 2008 15:32:08 +0000

If you’re reading our blog, you might be interested in some of the blogs that link to us, which include the ones in our sidebar to the right, Judgepedia, Right Thinking, Adam Smith Institute, Patterico, The Objective Eye, Locomotive Breath 1901, Lumpen, Rougblog, New Age, A Brief History, Tai-Chi Policy, Moorewatch, DBKP, Jane Genova, BuffaloG, Not Frequently Updated, Not PC, Nobrainer, and Walker.

Tags: Buffalo, on other blogs

Congress: let’s sue OPEC

Walter Olson — Thu, 22 May 2008 03:57:29 +0000

This wretched proposal to pursue sensitive foreign policy goals by way of treble-damage antitrust suits against sovereign nations is met by a hail of dead cats from Below the Beltway, Gateway Pundit, Liberty Reborn, Buffalog, Coalition of the Swilling, Sense of Events, Q and O, Coyote, Politics in the Zeros, Socrates’ Academy, It’s a Funny Thing, Bronze Blog, Discerning Texan, Blog About Nothing, It Looks Obvious, NoBrainer’s, Wheeling Intelligencer, and Collideoscope, among others. Earlier here.

And yet more: Perry de Havilland, Samizdata (”a derangement of legislators”)(via ASI).

Tags: antitrust, Buffalo, hail of dead cats, OPEC

“Innovative” city suits against foreclosing lenders

Walter Olson — Thu, 15 May 2008 02:59:21 +0000

City governments, sometimes in league with private counsel working on contingency fee, “have started suing banks and mortgage companies to recoup their costs” on such services as “fire departments, police, code enforcement or even demolition” in blighted neighborhoods. “The lawsuits were filed in recent months under different theories, in state and federal court. Cleveland and Buffalo filed suits under public nuisance laws. Minneapolis’ suit was brought on consumer fraud grounds, while Baltimore took the unusual approach of filing suit in federal court under alleged Fair Housing Act violations.” Bank of New York says it was included in Buffalo’s suit against 39 lenders even though it neither originated nor purchased loans, but merely acted as trustee. (Julie Kay, “Empty Homes Spur Cities’ Suits”, National Law Journal, May 9).

Tags: Baltimore, Buffalo, Cleveland, contingent fee, fair housing, Maryland, Minnesota, mortgages, New York state, nuisance, Ohio

Inside one TV-ad law firm

Walter Olson — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 00:07:26 +0000

William K. Mattar, 43, of Buffalo “has built a substantial auto-injury practice through the estimated $2 million he spends each year on ads produced by CJ Advertising in Nashville, Tenn.” Now three lawyers who worked for Mattar have quit in acrimonious circumstances, providing a look inside the firm’s workings. Joseph Bergen said Mattar had admitted never having tried a case and had never taken a client deposition in the nine years Bergen had worked with the firm. As business poured in from TV viewers, the lawyers say, Mattar stopped using his staff lawyers to screen the cases for likely merit, instead devolving that task on a call center in Tennessee. Meanwhile, the staff lawyers’ caseloads swelled to more than 200 cases apiece, along with which came “increased pressure from Mattar to settle a minimum of two to three cases a week each,” whether or not the lawyers felt the cases were in an appropriate posture to settle. The three are setting up their own personal-injury firm, and Mattar depicts them as disgruntled employees who are misleading clients in hopes of taking away business from him. (Michael Beebe, “Mattar’s 3 trial lawyers quit”, Buffalo News, Oct. 25; “Mattar says lawyers conspired to steal clients”, Nov. 1; Martha Neil, “Former PI Colleagues Now Battling in Buffalo”, ABA Journal, Nov. 1). For some reason the Buffalo-Rochester area has generated a steady stream of colorful stories about law firms with saturation TV-ad budgets, sometimes coupled with factory-line methods; see our earlier coverage of Cellino & Barnes/The Barnes Firm and the now-retired Jim (”The Hammer”) Shapiro, of “hand you their severed heads” fame, who conceded in a deposition that he had never tried a case.

Tags: Buffalo, chasing clients, Tennessee

October 10 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 00:09:37 +0000

She wore a wire: defense attorney says administrative assistant to one of the three lawyers in Kentucky fen-phen scandal worked as FBI mole, circumventing attorney-client privilege [AP, Courier-Journal, Lexington Herald-Leader, ABA Journal]
Suing a lawyer because his deposition questions inflicted emotional distress? No way we’re going to open those floodgates, says court [NJLJ]
Counsel Financial Services LLC, which stakes injury lawyers pending their paydays, says it’s “the largest provider of attorney loans in the United States and the only Law Firm Financing company endorsed by the AAJ (formerly ATLA)”; its friendly public face is a retired N.Y. judge while its founder is attorney Joseph DiNardo, suspended from practice in 2000 “after pleading guilty to filing a false federal tax return” and whose own lend-to-litigants operation, Plaintiff Support Services, shares an office suite with Counsel [Buffalo News] The firm’s current listing of executives includes no mention of DiNardo, though a Jul. 19 GoogleCached version has him listed as President;
Patent litigation over cardiac stents criticized as “a horrendous waste of money” [N.Y. Times]
More on the “pro bono road to riches”, this time from a California tenant case [Greg May, Cal Blog of Appeal]
Not a new problem, but still one worth worrying about: what lawyers can do with charitable trusts when no one’s looking over their shoulder [N.Y. Times via ABA Journal]
Has it suddenly turned legal to stage massive disruptions of rush-hour traffic, or are serial-lawbreaking cyclists “Critical Mass” just considered above the law? [Kersten @ Star-Tribune]
“Look whose head is on a plate now”: no tears shed for fallen Lerach by attorney who fought him in the celebrated Fischel case [ChicTrib, San Diego U-T]
“Jena Six” mythos obscures graver injustice to black defendants, namely criminal system’s imposition of long sentences for nonviolent offenses [Stuart Taylor, Jr. @ National Journal -- will rotate off site]
Economist David Henderson on restaurant smoking bans [Econ Journal Watch, PDF, via Sullum, Reason "Hit and Run"]
Technical note: we learned from reader Christian Southwick that our roundups were displaying poorly on Internet Explorer (Ted and I use other browsers) and we found a way to fix. So, IE users, please drop us a line when you encounter problems — we may not hear about them otherwise.

Tags: AAJ, Bill Lerach, Buffalo, charitable trusts, Daniel Fischel, emotional distress, fen-phen, Kentucky, Kentucky fen-phen settlement fraud, patent litigation, pro bono, restaurants, roundups, San Diego, smoking bans

From Matthew L. Kolken, Esq.

Walter Olson — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 00:05:30 +0000

Buffalo attorney Matthew Kolken takes issue with our Aug. 7 post “…a classic American success story”, which quotes him:

I am writing this in response to your article found at http://www.overlawyered.com/2007/08/a_classic_american_success_sto.html

It is no surprise that my characterization of the Levin family was taken out of context.

What the press and your article have failed to explain is that my characterization of the Levin family as a classic American success story was in reference to the hardships that the family endured prior to coming to the United States as refugees in the late 1970s.

The family left the Soviet Union with only $500.00 in their pockets, and their wedding bands, because all of their possessions and money were confiscated as property of the State.

Without even knowing the language, Mr. and Mrs. Levin worked from nothing to afford their children a better life. They did all of this within the confines of the law, and I am honored to be considered part of their family.

Unfortunately, their son made a tremendous error in judgment. He has paid for this error, and is forced to live with his regret.

Thankfully in this country the sins of the son are not the sins of the father, or of the family, and shame on you for casting derision without first knowing all of the facts.

Good day.

Matthew L. Kolken, Esq.

Tags: about the site, Buffalo

“…a classic American success story”

Walter Olson — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 00:18:38 +0000

In Buffalo, a federal judge has sentenced Belarus native Maxim Levin to time served and ordered him to pay $334,000 restitution following a guilty plea over an extensive scheme of staging car crashes and submitting bogus insurance claims. The prosecution resulted in guilty pleas from roughly two dozen defendants, some of whom who were actually in Brooklyn at the time of claimed accidents hundreds of miles away in Buffalo. As part of a five-year program of supervised release, Levin is also supposed to finish his last semester at the University at Buffalo — in what field of study we are not informed, but one 2004 account described him as a prelaw student. In operating his First Buffalo Medical Clinic, Levin employed a bogus doctor, Mark Nepokroeff, who treated patients for nine years on a forged Mexican medical school diploma and was sentenced to four months. (Michael Beebe, “Man gets time served for staging crashes”, Jul. 7, and Dan Herbeck, “Ex-clinic head pleads guilty in phony claims from auto insurance”, Mar. 5, Buffalo News pay-archive coverage; BH Times, Jul. 8; Buffalo FBI office 2005 and 2007 releases; Johnsville News, Nov. 24, 2004; NY State Insurance Dept., Feb.). Like Greedy Trial Lawyer (Jul. 8), I find the most piquant element of the case to be the character testimonial given by Levin’s brother-in-law, trial lawyer Matthew L. Kolken, who wrote to Judge William M. Skretny asking leniency and describing the Levin family as “a classic American success story”. P.S. Kolken responds here.

Tags: Buffalo, ethics

Judge to lawyers: “I want this plaintiff to get money.”

Ted Frank — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 15:26:39 +0000

“I’m not going to look at the evidence submitted to me. I want this plaintiff to get money. Tell each of your clients to pay up and make a contribution if they want to get out of this lawsuit.”—unnamed Buffalo Supreme Court judge, according to Brendan P. Cunningham op-ed in the June 22 Buffalo News.

Tags: Buffalo, loser pays

July 3 roundup

Walter Olson — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 00:05:39 +0000

Represented by repeat Overlawyered mentionees Cellino & Barnes/The Barnes Firm, this injured upstate New Yorker got a settlement of $35,000 which worked out after expenses to — are you ready? — $6.60 [Buffalo News]

Not yet a laughingstock: AMA backs off idea of labeling video-game addiction [Wired News, L.A.Times/CinciPost, HealthDay/WilmNJ]

Restaurant critics fear losing their physical anonymity, which means a Bala Cynwyd eatery has a sword to hold over the Philadelphia Inquirer reviewer it’s suing [PhilaWeekly] (More: AP/CNN)

Dad of the year? Father who didn’t have much contact with 30-year-old son during his life shows up to claim half his $2.9 million 9/11 compensation award [NYDN, NYLJ, PDF brief courtesy Taranto/WSJ]

Fie on goodness: Geoffrey Fieger engages Harvard’s Dershowitz to try to quash federal grand jury probe, and he’s still battling Michigan judges too [DetNews]

In suburban D.C. middle school, high-fiving could mean detention under no-touching rule [Washington Post, AP/CNN]

Law firm whistleblowers? Ex-employees allege billing fraud in tobacco suit by high-flying Kansas City, Mo. trial lawyer [Legal NewsLine]

U.K. government panel bans egg ad as not encouraging healthy eating [Times Online, Guardian, Telegraph]

Lawprof is keen on expanding tort law to open door for more suits against schools over kids’ bullying [Childs]

1,001 ways to self-publicize: one is to become a “trial groupie” [Elefant]

Guess what? This site just turned eight years old [isn't it cool]

Tags: absent parents who sue, advertising, Buffalo, child protection, Geoffrey Fieger, Michigan, Missouri, Philadelphia, restaurant critics, tobacco, videogames

Overlawyered » Buffalo

Buffalo lawmakers irate at law firm ad set in council chambers

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