Aggressive solicitation by lawyers has been raising hackles in Los Angeles since the commuter train crash. (Carol J. Williams, “Lawyers swoop in after the Metrolink crash, looking for clients”, L.A. Times, Oct. 5)(earlier)(via Stier, Mass Tort Prof).
Two Milwaukee-based law firms, Hupy & Abraham and the McNally Law Offices, have been gathering up vehicle-crash police reports in the famously litigation-friendly Illinois counties east of St. Louis, and then soliciting persons named in the reports to file injury claims. “Some local police departments, including Belleville, Edwardsville, O’Fallon and the Madison County Sheriff’s Department,” have resisted the demands, based on worries about citizen privacy and identity theft, or have sought to charge for per-report access, which would discourage mass scooping up of names. The McNally firm, however, “sends a copy of a letter from Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s office, which states the police have to allow viewing of the reports, at no charge.” (Brian Bruegemann, “Ambulance chasing? Lawyers zero in on metro-east clients”, Belleville News-Democrat, Sept. 28). Ron Miller at Maryland Injury Lawyer says the practice contributes toward giving the plaintiff’s bar a bad name, and corresponds with attorney Michael Hupy whose firm figures in the story. We covered the phenomenon earlier here and here.
It doesn’t actually hang together as a phrase, but it does contain plenty of promising keywords for lawyers trolling for business from the fatal commuter wreck north of Los Angeles, so it rates highly on Google. (Kevin O’Keefe, Sept. 19).
Perennial Overlawyered favorite Hagens Berman seems to be doing that to promote a Verizon late fee suit (Kevin O’Keefe, Sept. 16, via @kevinokeefe — yes, our first Twitter-derived post). Update: Tweet retracted.
Another entry into the genre of for-profit websites offering to match aggrieved visitors with lawyers, this one is said to be based on a slightly tweaked format (including “talk to a live lawyer” options) sidestepping certain potential pitfalls ethical and otherwise. (Siobhan Morrissey, Time, Aug. 6). Per its press release:
…The unique process used by WhoCanISue.com also ensures that cases are not jeopardized inadvertently, a common pitfall of some other approaches to online matchmaking. Because WhoCanISue.com does not require submission of open-ended descriptions of the facts of the user’s claim, users are not forced to divulge information that could be deemed a waiver of the attorney-client priviledge [sic] resulting in the information being introduced in court and used against them.
WhoCanISue.com does not generate “leads” to potential clients, a method commonly used in online legal marketing that violates ethical rules governing most attorneys’ advertising. Instead, WhoCanISue.com’s patent pending model allows attorneys to bid on real-time ad placements – usually limited to five attorneys – delivered to users who have completed question paths to determine their qualification for a particular claim.
An earlier entry in the legal-matchmaking field, SueEasy.com, has come in for a fair bit of criticism in and out of the profession (”hairball generator“, “incredibly stupid” idea, “like a carpool for ambulance chasers“, etc.).
Reactions: Bill Childs does some legwork on the site’s sponsorship, throwing cold water on hasty, sloppy, or gullible speculation in some circles that the site might be a false-flag operation. Eric Turkewitz and Carolyn Elefant aren’t any more impressed this time around than they were with SueEasy.com.
Justinian Lane crows: Pfizer fined by an Australian trade group! Indeed it was; drug reps went off the reservation of what they were supposed to talk about without telling managers, and exaggerated the health effects of a competing drugs for personal profit. (Note that there was no need for a regulator or plaintiffs’ attorneys to get involved; this was entirely an Australian free-market self-policing arrangement through contractual agreements that fined Pfizer. Lane forgets to mention that part.)
Lane thinks this is a just result worth noting. So let us consider that trial lawyers do the same thing every day: lie about or exaggerate health effects of drugs for profit (just Google the name of any prescription drug to get a lawyer’s ad)–and without the intermediating effects of doctors to assess the claims and correctly inform patients, so it is clearly worse. But the lawyers do so with impunity, with no consequences for the adverse health effects on patients. (E.g., POL June 2007; POL Feb. 12.) There’s no private cause of action; and the trial bar and its professional organizations lionize such tactics, rather than punish them. All we can do is criticize plaintiffs’ lawyers for putting profits before people.
Apparently a few of the ones with exotic striations have enough radioactive mineral content that you might have to worry if you spent many of your waking hours strapped to them as to a hospital gurney. (Staying even a few inches away should be enough to lower the risk to pretty much zero, which is fortunate given that the posture most of us use while chopping celery does not involved prolonged whole-body contact.) Nonetheless, per a New York Times account yesterday that does little to discourage reader alarmism, “Personal injury lawyers are already advertising on the Web for clients who think they may have been injured by countertops.” (Kate Murphy, “What’s Lurking In Your Countertop?”, Jul. 24).
Let me be the first to predict that if such litigation has any future, it will not be in recovering large sums for the unprovable (because almost certainly nonexistent) toxic effects, but in $20,000 claims against insurers and contractors for rip-out and replacement*, which, in the usual circular fashion, will be stimulated by alarmist accounts like the one in the Times. And the predominant injury risk from a chunk of hewn granite will continue to be, as it has always been, being in the way when it drops.
*I’m not sure why people choose a countertop material that will dull their knives and chip their china, to say nothing of being cold and ungrateful to the touch. But that’s another topic.
P.S. The EPA has a statement (scroll).
Three years ago we noted (following reporting by Ed Lowe and J.E. Espino of the Appleton, Wis. Post-Crescent) (more) that
Representatives of the Hollywood, Fla.-based law firm of Schwartz Zweben & Associates have played a substantial role behind the scenes in helping organize, promote and support the Ms. Wheelchair America pageant and some of its state affiliates. And lawyers with the firm have filed more than 200 lawsuits in at least seven states and the District of Columbia on behalf of at least 13 pageant participants, “including state and national titleholders, state coordinators and pageant judges”.
Now the Birmingham, Ala. News follows up on the case of Colleen Macort, Ms. Wheelchair Florida 2002, who has filed more than 73 disabled-accessibility actions in Alabama “but has never spent a day in court because of settlements”. Local law provides that Macort cannot be compensated for filing the lawsuits, but the Wisconsin paper reported that the firm of Schwartz Zweben had engaged her as a consultant on other cases. The reporter is kind enough to quote me and mention this site (Liz Ellaby, “Bessemer woman crusades to address disability act violations, provoking critics”, Birmingham News, Jul. 3).
In the state of Washington, Ms. Wheelchair Washington 2005, Michelle Beardshear, has teamed up with the Florida firm to file 15 lawsuits, of which twelve have been settled, against enterprises in Clark County (Kathie Durbin, “Advocate for disabled not hesitant to sue for access”, The Columbian, May 27 courtesy Chamber ILR). And in March, Schwartz Zweben & Slingbaum (as it is now called) swooped down to sue twelve defendants in the Tucson area, including a number of well-known restaurants, alleging ADA violations. (Josh Brodesky, “12 Tucson businesses facing suits alleging Disabilities Act problems”, Arizona Daily Star, Mar. 28).
Plaintiffs firm Berman DeValerio sued attorneys Eran and Susan Boltz Rubenstein, former Coughlin Stoia attorneys, for breach of contract; in their counterclaim, the Rubensteins claim they were hired on a contingent fee basis to wrangle international clients to serve as plaintiffs in securities class actions. Lyle Roberts has the details, and the complaint and counterclaim. Alas, the case settled before details of this interesting arrangement came to light in discovery or other court filings, and it is perhaps too much to ask for questions to be asked in the nonexistent Congressional investigation of the practices of the securities class action bar.
Overly eager salmonella-chasing attorneys might risk coming across as, well, bad actors (ATRA press release, Jun. 11). More: Jane Genova takes a different view.
From the folks at The Street.com, and it’s probably a parody. At least I hope so. (John Carney, DealBreaker, Jun. 6).
Via R.L., the Shugar Law Offices’ web ad for traffic law clients features a blonde wearing a police cap and a too-small halter top. Maybe she’s one of the associates. Related: Corri Fetman, who posed for her law firm’s tasteless billboard in a low-cut bra.
His future in private practice? (NBC Saturday Night Live, dubiously safe for work; via Turkewitz).
The Damage Control comedy team has done parody ads under the titles Neglect, Nursing Home, Personal Injury, Sexual Harassment, and Sue Somebody. (h/t: Nicole Black).
The new website aspires to match would-be litigants with the right class action and lawyer for them, but Michael Arrington likely is a great deal too flattering in terming it a “Shangri-La for ambulance chasers” (TechCrunch, Apr. 12), since it remains to be seen whether such a mechanism will be able to attract either litigants or lawyers of the highest caliber. To Luke Gilman (Apr. 13) it calls to mind “a hairball generator…. Looks like a race to the bottom on both sides to me.” Writes TechCrunch commenter “Joey”: “I hope they make a Facebook app: ‘6 of your friends joined this class action lawsuit! Click here to join!’” P.S. Much more from Eric Turkewitz, & welcome visitors from Legal NewsLine and United Press International.
Point of Law Volokh