• High-profile trial lawyer and Hillary fundraiser John Coale now backing McCain, believes plaintiff-friendly Sen. Lindsey Graham, a confidant of the GOP candidate, will sway him on liability issues [Gerstein, NY Sun, Tapper/ABC, Haddad/Newsweek] More on McCain-Graham friendship [New Republic]
• Reasonably neutral evaluation of contrasting McCain and Obama positions [Chris Nichols, NC Trial Law Blog]
• No Naderite he? Sen. Biden has generally taken a “protect the golden goose” approach toward his state’s niche as provider of corporate law [Pileggi, Bainbridge]
• Palin’s views on legal reform mostly unknown; Alaska (like Delaware) has one of the most highly regarded state legal systems, and wouldn’t it be fun if the state’s distinctive and longstanding (if somewhat attenuated) loser-pays rule got mentioned in the campaign?
• Lending spice to campaign: prospect that victorious Dems might criminally prosecute Bush officials [Guardian (U.K.), Memeorandum, OpenLeft ("we'll put people in prison" vows whistleblower trial lawyer/Democratic Florida Congressional candidate Alan Grayson)] Some differences of opinion among Obama backers on war crimes trials [Turley (Cass Sunstein flayed for go-slow approach); Kerr @ Volokh (Dahlia Lithwick doesn't think it has to be Nuremberg or nothing); earlier]
• If anyone’s keeping track of these things, co-blogger Ted is much involved with the McCain campaign this fall, I am not involved with anyone’s, so discount (or don’t discount) accordingly.

The notion that present-day Democrats regularly steal elections by engaging in concerted efforts to vote multiple times in funny mustaches is a myth, unsupported by data or fact.

– Dahlia Lithwick, Slate, May 24

As outlined at trial, the vote fraud scheme infected not only the actual voting process in November, but also the voter registration process preceding the election. Several persons, including the defendant Cusack, falsely registered to vote by claiming to reside at addresses within the precinct when they actually resided elsewhere. The actual residents at these addresses were asked to place name-tags on their doors that bore the names of the non-resident registrants. The defendants, and several others acting under their direction, also participated in a canvass of the precinct …. Although the canvass disclosed that a number of persons who were registered to vote in the precinct had died, moved away, or for some other reason had become ineligible to vote, these persons were not struck from the list of eligible voters. Finally, on election day the defendants, either personally or by acting through others, caused numerous false ballots to be cast for the straight Democratic ticket.

– United States v. Howard, 774 F.2d 838 (7th Cir. 1985)

[T]he U.S. Attorney in Chicago at the time, Daniel Webb, estimated that at least 100,000 fraudulent votes (10 percent of all votes in the city) had been cast. Sixty-five individuals were indicted for federal election crimes, and all but two (one found incompetent to stand trial and another who died) were convicted.

– Hans A. von Spakovsky, Heritage Legal Memorandum #23

Update: Some commenters complain that the 1982 example is irrelevant to Lithwick’s claim, because it is modified by “present-day.”

Present-day examples include 2007 cases in Hoboken, NJ, Noxubee, MS, and King County, WA—not to mention the unprosecuted voter fraud in Washington state in 2004, which affected the gubernatorial election. There may be many more examples, except Democrats are using lawsuits to block attempts to compare voter rolls with addresses.

Lithwick’s argument against present-day voter fraud is that there are very few prosecutions, and that therefore prevention measures are not needed. This is akin to arguing that, because very few people are ticketed for running red lights, there is no need for traffic signals. If there’s less voter fraud today, it’s in large part because of the prosecutions in the 1980s. Given Senator Obama’s appalling block on the van Spakovsky nomination to the FEC, and the liberal activism against preventing vote fraud, one worries that an Obama Justice Department will cease prosecuting voter fraud, and that there will be a return to the bad old days, in which case 1980s examples from when the DOJ first started prosecuting vote fraud are quite relevant.

Add Dealbreaker’s John Carney to the lawyers decidedly unimpressed with Dahlia Lithwick. Earlier: July 9, 2005; July 24, 2005. Also: Kerr.

What I find so amusing about Dahlia Lithwick’s suggestion of a lengthy warning for Christmas parties isn’t so much the warning itself (others have done that funnier, not to mention the real-life examples), but that Lithwick doesn’t recognize that she’s part of the culture that encourages such ludicrous warnings: in 2003, Lithwick pooh-poohed as “extreme” the need for legislative intervention to prevent courts from going after food providers in obesity lawsuits because, after all, Big Food could survive by “posting warnings.”

Legal hazards of Christmas party-giving (Alan Kopit, Lawyers.com, undated recent; Dahlia Lithwick, “Fa-la-la-la-lawsuit”, Slate, Dec. 1).

P.S. And here’s a report from the U.K. claiming that many employers there are curtailing the posting of holiday decorations at workplaces from stated motives that include avoiding offense to those of other faiths and a variety of safety concerns. (Amy Iggulden, “No decorations, please, it might cause offence”, Telegraph, Dec. 6).

• In the Supreme Court November 29: Watters v. Wachovia. Also an AEI panel November 28, broadcast on C-SPAN1, 2pm to 4pm Eastern. [Point of Law; AEI; Zywicki @ Volokh]
• Also in the Supreme Court November 29: Massachusetts v. EPA global warming regulation case. Previously an AEI panel November 21. [Adler @ Volokh; AEI; C-SPAN (Real Media)]
• Legal cliche: If the facts are against you, pound the law; if the law is against you, pound the facts; if both are against you, pound the table. Table-pounding class of Gerry Spence protegee offers lessons in emotionally creating jury sympathy worth millions. [LATimes]
• What judicial activism?, Part 7356: Indiana state court judge holds “Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act” unconstitutional, complains gun industry supported the law. [Indianapolis Star via Bashman; Indiana Law Blog]
• Entertaining doctor victory in medmal case. [Musings of a Dinosaur via Kevin MD]
• Dahlia Lithwick gets something right; if only it was on an issue more important than a suit advertisement. [Slate]
• Leftover from Thanksgiving: lawyers acting like turkeys. [Ambrogi]
• Ninth Circuit grants potential standing to monkeys over Kozinski dissent. Earlier: Oct. 21, 2004. [Bashman roundup of links]
• Gloria Allred joins the Borat pile-on. [LATimes]
• Speaking of, here’s the future case of Allred v. Kramer. More Allred: Oct. 16. [Evanier]
• Speaking of Allred nostalgia, and of primates, whatever happened to chimpanzee victim St. James Davis? (Mar. 17, 2005; Mar. 8, 2005) [Inside Edition; "The Original Musings"; CNN Pipeline ($)]
• More Allred nostalgia: is Veronica Mars‘ Francis Capra the next Hunter Tylo? Discuss. [Prettier than Napoleon]

• Bill Moyers calls his lawyers. [Adler @ Volokh]
• Jim Copland: 9/11 suits against New York City over emergency recovery work “simply wrong.” [New York Post]
• Did the PSLRA help shareholders? [Point of Law]
• 32-year-old Oregon grocery store employee sues, claiming that Green Day stole his never-recorded high-school writings. [Above the Law]
• Does one assume the risk of a broken nose if one agrees to a sparring match at a karate school? [TortsProf]
• “At KFC (né Kentucky Fried Chicken), the chicken is still fried. At Altria (né Philip Morris), the cigarettes still cause cancer. And at the American Association for Justice, some will say that the trial lawyers are still chasing ambulances.” [New York Times via Point of Law]
• More on global warming lawsuits. [Point of Law]
• Dahlia Lithwick, wrong again when bashing conservatives? Quelle surprise! [Ponnuru @ Bench Memos; see also Kaus] Earlier: POL Oct. 6 and links therein. Best commentary on New Jersey gay marriage decision is at Volokh.
• Michael Dimino asks for examples of frivolous lawsuits. What’s the over-under until it turns into a debate over the McDonald’s coffee case? [Prawfsblawg]
• Unintended consequences of campaign finance reform. [Zywicki @ Volokh; Washington Times]
• Who’s your least favorite Supreme Court justice? [Above the Law]
• More on Borat and the law. [Slate] Earlier on OL: Dec. 9 and links therein.
• “Thrilled Juror Feels Like Murder Trial Being Put On Just For Her.” [Onion]
• A revealing post by the Milberg Weiss Fellow at DMI: companies make “too much” profit. I respond: “Again, if you really think the problem is that insurance companies charge ‘too much’ and make ‘too much’ money, then the profitable solution is to take advantage of this opportunity and open a competing insurance company that charges less instead of whining about it. (Or, you could use a fraction of the profits to hire a dozen bloggers and thus solve the problem at the same time keeping the whining constant.)” [Dugger]

• David Lat has much more detail on the $46 meal-skipping criminal case; and the St. Petersburg Times reports Ralph Paul was acquitted because his defense attorney misrepresented to the jury the legal standard, and the prosecutor didn’t correct it. [Above the Law; St. Petersburg Times]
• Amber Taylor isn’t impressed with Dahlia Lithwick’s proposal of new rules for Supreme Court clerkships. [Law. com; Prettier Than Napoleon]
• Legalized extortion of banks over Enron scandal. [Point of Law]
• Round-up of links of Sherwin-Williams’s suit against Ohio municipalities that are using contingent-fee plaintiffs’ lawyers against it. [Point of Law]
• Possible settlement in the Million Little Pieces class action. [TortsProf]
• California kennel works can’t sue dog owners for bites. [Bashman]
• Defense prevails in first federal welding trial. See also POL Nov. 21 and Dec. 9. [Products Liability Prof]
• David Bernstein on phony associations in epidemiological research. [Volokh]
• Aleksey Vayner doesn’t just have an impressive video resume, he can send a bogus cease-and-desist letter with the best of them. [IvyGateBlog]

Let’s face it, Dahlia Lithwick points out: “the law offers a whole host of opportunities for wrecking the lives of others”. In fact, lawyers have been known to boast about the way they’ve spoiled the other side’s holidays:

Consider the perfectly timed restraining order, or the spontaneous motion for an order to show cause — or in fact anything that could bury the other side in research and paperwork the day before Christmas. Think about the possibilities for 11th-hour changes in the visitation schedule for the children — requiring canceled plane tickets and Christmas Eve court appearances. Or the last-minute effort to have a local crèche or tree deemed unconstitutional.

So Slate, for which Ms. Lithwick writes, is holding a contest in which lawyer-readers can submit “the meanest thing you’ve ever done to an opponent on the holidays”:

The best stories will be reprinted here shortly, and the Most Evil Attorney in the World will be showered with Slate paraphernalia. This contest is also open to anyone, anywhere with stories of hideous pre-holiday lawyer shenanigans, whether they were perpetrated upon you by counsel on the other side, by bosses in your law firm, or you merely heard about them from some sad-sack lawyer in a bar on Christmas morning.

All forced jollity aside, doesn’t this present bar authorities — forever fretting about the profession’s image — with a goal worth working toward, namely, find ways to revamp the practice of litigation to make such “hideous…shenanigans” rarer? (”Billable Horrors”, Slate, Dec. 13).

Welcome to Blawg Review #33, the latest installment of the weekly carnival assembling some of the best recent weblog posts about law.

If this is your first visit to Overlawyered, we’re among the oldest legal sites (launched in July 1999, practically the Eocene era), and over the years we’ve built a vast collection of information (with links/sources) on strange, excessive and costly legal cases, examples of the over-legalization of everyday life, pointers on litigation reform, policy stuff of generally libertarian leanings, and much more. We’re a fairly high-volume site; 6-8,000 unique visitors on a weekday is pretty typical. And although our work is regularly critical of trends in the legal profession — or maybe because of that fact — practicing lawyers around the world are among our most valued and loyal readers.

More specifically, there are two of us posting here. One of us (Walter Olson) has been writing about these topics for twenty years as the author of several books (The Litigation Explosion, The Excuse Factory, The Rule of Lawyers) and a great many shorter articles. He’s a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute who lives and works in Chappaqua, N.Y., north of New York City. More recently Ted Frank, who’s in Washington with the American Enterprise Institute, joined as a regular blogger. Unlike Walter, Ted is a lawyer, having practiced until lately with O’Melveny & Myers. Both of us also blog at the (somewhat more serious-toned) website Point Of Law, which unlike this one is sponsored by our respective institutes and boasts numerous other contributing writers.

Enough about us. Here’s Blawg Review #33, written by Walter with

indented sections by Ted.

* * *

The week in headlines

The talk of the blawg world last week? The New Yorker’s unmasking of the girlish “Article III Groupie” who’s blogged anonymously about federal judges at “Underneath Their Robes”, as, in fact, a (male) Assistant U.S. Attorney in Newark. Much more on that from Ted, below.

The pace of commentary on Samuel Alito Jr.’s Supreme Court nomination has slowed a good bit, despite the release of a 1985 memo detailing Alito’s views on abortion (which occasioned this post by Will Baude taking exception to a Dahlia Lithwick Slate column) and, more tantalizingly, on the Warren Court’s reapportionment cases (see posts by Nathan Newman and Steve Bainbridge). Alito is now heavily favored among bettors to win confirmation, notes San Diego lawprof Tom Smith.

Possibly the week’s strangest headline, discussed by J-Walk: “1,100 Lawyers Leave Saddam Defense Team”. 1,100?

And the Fifth Circuit is coming back to New Orleans (Tom Kirkendall).

* * *

Splendors and miseries of legal practice

Find out:

* What makes a talented 39 year old attorney burn out of a criminal defense practice? (Norm Pattis, Crime and Federalism)

* What sorts of squirm-inducing compliments do criminal defense lawyers hear from their clients after scoring legal points on their behalf? (Ken Lammers, CrimLaw)

* Is it smarter for big law firms to compensate their partners on an “eat what you kill” model, a “lockstep” model, or something between the two? (Bruce MacEwen, Adam Smith, Esq.)

* How do licensing professionals decide what’s a reasonable royalty rate? (Patent Baristas)

* What sorts of bad things can happen to a law firm when one of its individual lawyers behaves rudely to a stranger? (Jim Calloway)

* * *

Controversies galore

Read, ponder, and make up your own mind:

Did Texas execute an innocent man, Ruben Cantu? (Doug Berman)

Conservatives are still griping about the Ninth Circuit, but the new twist is that they think its judges aren’t activist enough. (Eugene Volokh)

Every so often, through luck or pluck, the “fair use” side manages to win one in copyright litigation (Ron Coleman, Likelihood of Confusion).

A group is “pushing for a ballot referendum that would strip South Dakota judges of their immunity from suit for actions taken in their capacity as judges.” Atlanta attorney Jonathan B. Wilson calls it “one of the worst reform ideas ever”.

Michael Newdow, of Pledge of Allegiance suit fame, has filed a new legal action demanding that the motto “In God We Trust” be removed from U.S. currency. Jon Rowe winces.

Our own Ted Frank takes a look at the much-talked of “Dodgeball” document and concludes that it by no means proves Merck’s guilt in the Vioxx matter. (Point of Law). Also at Point of Law, James Copland of the Manhattan Institute and Dr. Bill Sage of Columbia have been engaged in a spirited debate on med-mal litigation.

In a Providence courtroom, the state of Rhode Island is demanding that companies that once manufactured lead paint be held liable for the cost of lead abatement programs. Speechwriter/ghostwriter Jane Genova is liveblogging the case’s retrial, and suggests that the defense side has been making its points more effectively.

A court has ordered the Armour Star meatpacking concern to pay $3 million for using a strength test to screen applicants for a job requiring much lifting. George Lenard’s Employment Blawg originally covered the case last month, Overlawyered picked it up, and now George has returned to the subject, observing that those dissatisfied with the suit’s outcome should realize that sex discrimination law’s distrust of strength tests isn’t something the EEOC just came up with the other day and in fact dates back at least a couple of decades. (I quite concur, having written at length on the subject back in the 1990s.)

The British government recently published a white paper entitled “The Future of Legal Services: Putting the Consumer First”. Dennis Kennedy at Between Lawyers provides a link.

In other consumer news, State Farm conceded earlier this year that when it disposed of many wrecked-and-repaired vehicles it failed to ensure that they were given appropriate “salvage titles”. E.L. Eversman at AutoMuse has been following the issue.

The head of the NY state bar association is advising prospective clients not to be swayed by lawyers’ advertising. David Giacalone, who frequently discusses legal advertising on his blog f/k/a, isn’t impressed.

San Diego lawprof Gail Heriot discovers a convicted rapist is living a few doors down from her, which gets her to thinking about the interaction of “Megan’s Law” statutes and statutory rape.

New York AG Eliot Spitzer has gone after former NYSE head Richard Grasso but not the board that approved Grasso’s plans. Larry Ribstein suspects the worst, charging that Spitzer “gets securities industry political support if he handles this so only Grasso gets hurt.”

* * *

Student division

Scheherezade at Stay of Execution, who wrote a classic post last year giving advice on whether or not to go to law school, now fields a reader’s question: Should I transfer to a higher-ranked law school?

Called for jury duty, Jeremy Blachman gets shown a somewhat hokey video entitled “Your Turn: Jury Service in New York State.” “I wanted to really mock the video, but in all honesty it was a better explanation of the jury system than anything we got in law school”.

Michael Froomkin offers a surprising and counterintuitive quiz on the U.S. Constitution in the form of a “scavenger hunt”. He also suspects that a national ID card might abet price discrimination.

And this from Ted:

Congratulations to Amber, G, Marissa, Grigori, Eve, Jeremy, and others who passed the bar. Third Attempt failed for the second time, and is opening a blog on the subject of his third try, with links to other passers and failers. Only 13% of those who repeated the California bar passed.

On the lighter side, law student Kurt Hunt quotes his prof’s maxim that “Cahoots is not a crime” but wonders what would happen if “tomfoolery, cahoots, no-gooding, antics and shenanigans were redefined as ‘Crime-Lite’”. And Colin Samuels of Infamy or Praise is among the many human beings who don’t manage to eat as well as (UCLA lawprof) Steve Bainbridge’s dog.

* * *

Buzz about blogs

Now I’ll turn the floor over to Ted again to discuss the UTR affair:

The blawgosphere likes nothing more than navel-gazing, and the New Yorker’s outing of anony-blawger “Article III Groupie” as Newark AUSA David Lat and resulting implosion of “her”/his popular “Underneath Their Robes” blawg has generated lots of curiosity and posts with Austin Powers references; the story even made Drudge and the New York Times. Blawg Review has a retrospective look at the blawg. Howard Bashman has done the most original reporting, interviewing Jeffrey Toobin, who revealed Lat’s identity, and publishing the reminiscences of a former co-worker of Lat’s. Denise Howell provides an obituary for the blawg. The Kitchen Cabinet’s “Lily” comments from the perspective of another anonymous blawger, as does Jeremy Blachman, who got a book deal from his anony-blogging. Ann Althouse muses on the nature of humor; Professor Solove and Howard Bashman comment on blogger anonymity, as does Half Sigma, who pulled a similar hoax using the photo of a Russian mail-order bride earlier this year as the image of “Libertarian Girl.” Another blawgger claiming to be a libertarian female, this one with the implausible name of “Amber,” meta-comments on the various shattered blog-crushes exhibited in the garment-rending Volokh Conspiracy reader comments on the subject; JD expresses his own disappointment. (Judge Kozinski claims to have known all along, but Judge Posner has proof of his foresight.) And Ian has sound commentary on A3G’s “status anxiety.” (And speaking of status anxiety, a Harvard Law School admissions dean snarks on Yale and gets snarked back. One can understand the sniping: HLS and YLS are good schools, and there’s a lot of competition for who’s #2 behind Chicago Law.)

Some fallout: anony-blogger “Opinionistas” got an e-mail accusing her of really being a man, and Will Baude and Heidi Bond make a bet over the gender of anony-law-prof Juan Non-Volokh, who promises to come out of the closet soon.

Taking second place in interblog buzz is the IP sticky wicket that awaited the former Pajamas Media (discussed by Blawg Review here) when shortly before launching it decided to switch to the more dignified monicker of Open Source Media. Turned out there was already a well-known public radio show by the name of Open Source which hadn’t been consulted even though it occupied such URLs as opensourcemedia.net. Ann Althouse has been merciless (here, here and here) in needling the OSM organizers, while Prof. Bainbridge piles on with a law and economics analysis of OSM’s market.

Monica Bay passes along the views of legal-tech consultant and frequent CLE presenter Ross Kodner, who charges that law blogs are “narrow-minded” and display “elitist exclusionism”. “I am sick and tired of being repeatedly asked why I don’t have a blog,” he declares. Okay, Mr. Kodner, we promise never to ask you that.

* * *

In conclusion

Finally, intellectual property lawyer Doug Sorocco, of the ReThink(IP) and phosita blogs, arrives “fashionably late to the BlawgThink ball” (in Chicago last week). Sorocco’s Oklahoma City firm also figures prominently (as the acquiring party) in what Dennis Kennedy says may amount to a milestone: “the first move of one legal blogger to the law firm of another legal blogger.” Stephen Nipper has more details about this “move” at ReThink(IP).

By coincidence, and giving us a nice way to wrap things up, phosita is going to be the home of next week’s Blawg Review #34. Blawg Review has information about that and other upcoming matters, as well as instructions how to get your blawg posts considered for upcoming issues.

P.S. As Bob Ambrogi notes, you can now check out — and tag your own location in — Blawg Review’s reader map feature.

Dahlia Lithwick got her start in Slate with the innovation of covering the Supreme Court almost entirely in terms of what jokes were told at the oral argument. Now, gossipy legal humor has entertainment value, and Lithwick’s essays had a legitimate role in the context of providing added value for an Internet magazine whose main advantage over competing media sources was the ability to put writing out there in a breezier and quicker fashion than a newspaper. But the legal analysis was often slipshod, and Lithwick would freely admit her ignorance and instead focus on which Supreme Court Justice she’d most like to hug or the build of the lawyers. Yet Lithwick has parlayed being the Slate “Supreme Court correspondent” into a regular gig doing serious analysis and op-eds in purportedly more serious media outlets. The results often aren’t pretty. Heather Mac Donald puts her thumb precisely on the problem and points out how vapid Lithwick’s analysis of Justice O’Connor’s career is (via Point of Law). Lithwick makes the mistake of criticizing O’Connor’s decisions as lacking sufficient empathy for the sympathetic losing party (though, as Mac Donald points out, Lithwick’s sympathy is inconsistent within the same paragraph in the op-ed). Legal reporting all too often has the flaw of describing cases as a question of picking the most deserving winner, divorcing this question from the real issue of the neutral application of legal rules; this is a problem that all too often trickles down to some judges and jury decisions. And it’s a sad commentary on the state of legal education when a Stanford Law graduate doesn’t give any signs of knowing better.

In “acquaintance rape” cases, especially, these laws unjustly deny defendants access to potentially exculpatory evidence. Yet they haven’t succeeded in protecting rape accusers’ reputations or right to privacy either, especially in runaway media events like the Kobe Bryant trial in Colorado: “high-profile rape trials allow the media to do far more damage than rape shield laws ever tried to mitigate”. (Dahlia Lithwick (acting this month as guest columnist), New York Times, Aug. 8).

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether Hughes Missile Systems violated the Americans with Disabilities Act when it enforced an otherwise neutral policy against rehiring workers terminated for violations of its misconduct rules, even though one consequence was to deny a second chance for an employee terminated for past drug abuse, a protected disability. (Warren Richey, “Limits of disability act tested”, Christian Science Monitor, Oct. 8). See Sept. 16-17, 2002 for our earlier take on the case. More: Dahlia Lithwick, “Junkie Justice”, Slate, Oct. 8; Tony Mauro, “Supreme Court Weighs Workplace Rights for Ex-Substance Abusers”, Legal Times, Oct. 9. Update Dec. 13: Supreme Court rules.

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)

July 19-21 – Disabled lap dancing just the start. Our recent item (Jul. 16-17) on demands for accessibility in lap-dancing facilities reminded an alert Australian reader of a recent case from his country in which a disabled complainant filed charges against the proprietors of a “swinging house party”, which was found in unrelated proceedings to be operating as an unlicensed brothel, for excluding her because of her status as a wheelchair user. (Ball v Morgan & Anor [2001] FMCA 127)(adult content warning, though it’s a court opinion). (DURABLE LINK)

July 19-21 – Stolen silence? Via WSJ OpinionJournal Best of the Web Today: “The London Sun reports that Nicholas Riddle, who heads a firm that owns the copyright to the late John Cage’s composition ‘4′ 33″ ‘–which consists of four minutes, 33 seconds of silence–is suing ‘pop guru’ Mike Batt, whose new band, the Plantes, has just released an album with a track called ‘A One Minute Silence.’ Riddle alleges that Batt violated Cage’s copyright. ‘John always said the duration of his piece may be changed, so the Planets’ piece doesn’t escape by virtue of its shorter length,’ Riddle tells the paper. ‘We want our royalties.’” Oh please, let this be a Monty Python skit and not an actual lawsuit (Thomas Whitaker, “Silence is old ‘un”, The Sun (London), Jul. 18). (DURABLE LINK)

July 19-21 – Enron’s other helpers. If Arthur Andersen & Co. is going to get run out of business for approving Enron’s dubious financial deals, why is its outside law firm, Vinson & Elkins, unlikely to face similarly devastating consequences for approving and helping structure the same deals? Well, one reason is that accountants are conceived of as having broad obligations to the general public, while lawyers mostly aren’t. Rather convenient for the lawyers, don’t you think? Julie Hilden makes a valiant effort to defend the double standard as a principled one (”Scummery Judgment”, Slate, Jun. 21). (& see letter to the editor, Oct. 23) (DURABLE LINK)

July 18 – “Family of boy injured by leopard may sue”. “In April, Eric River, 11, sneaked into the Rosamond Gifford Zoo at Burnet Park with friends, tried to feed and pet a snow leopard, got 10 deep lashes to his face, arm and back, and received 500 stitches. Now, three months later, his mother, Terry Wells, is threatening to sue the zoo’s owner, Onondaga County, for failing to properly secure and police the zoo after hours.” River and three friends managed to get into the zoo by scaling one 8-foot fence, squeezing through a gap in another, and scaling a 4-foot fence before finally approaching the leopard in its cage. (Teri Weaver, Syracuse Post-Standard, Jul. 17) (see Sept. 21, 1999). (DURABLE LINK)

July 18 – “Trauma center reopens doors”. The only trauma center in southern Nevada has reopened, “ten days after a state malpractice insurance crisis forced its closure”. (Las Vegas Review-Journal, Jul. 14; Joelle Babula, “University Medical Center: Trauma center closing”, Las Vegas Review-Journal, Jul. 2; Steve Kanigher, “Trauma cases to shift to nearest hospital”, Las Vegas Sun, Jul. 2; William Booth, “Las Vegas Trauma Center Closes as Doctors Quit”, Washington Post, Jul. 4; Las Vegas Review-Journal, coverage at a glance). Crisis continues in Mississippi: Reed Branson, “Doctors shutting practices amid epidemic of lawsuits”, GoMemphis.com, Jul. 11; John Porretto, “Exodus of doctors causing crisis for moms-to-be in Mississippi”, AP, Jul. 11. Texas: Mary Ann Roser, “Doctors at a crossroads”, Austin American-Statesman, Jun. 17. (DURABLE LINK)

July 18 – “Edwards’ fund raising a strong suit”. Why are we not surprised that he’s vaulted ahead of some better-known Democrats on the money-raising front? “Reports released Monday show that two fund-raising committees controlled by Edwards raised a combined $2.6 million in the second quarter of this year and that the North Carolina Democrat now has more than $4.4 million in the bank. … A News & Observer analysis of Edwards’ PAC money showed that more than 77 percent of it came from lawyers or law firms.” (John Wagner, Raleigh News & Observer, Jul. 16). All five of the top contributors to the Edwards campaign are plaintiff’s law firms, the list topped by Girardi & Keese of Los Angeles and Baron & Budd of Dallas, both familiar to longtime readers of this site. (David Brown, “The Candidate”, The Recorder, Jun. 14). (DURABLE LINK)

July 16-17 – By reader acclaim: quadriplegic sues strip club over wheelchair access. Edward Law of Orlando, Fla., who is quadriplegic, “has sued a strip club, charging that it violates the Americans with Disabilities Act because the lap dance room does not have wheelchair access.” In addition to suing the Wildside Adult Sports Cabaret of West Palm Beach, Law has also recently sued a second strip clup, “an Orlando restaurant and a Daytona Beach Harley-Davidson motorcycle shop”; we don’t know yet whether to assign his filing activities to this category. (”Orlando quadriplegic sues strip club over wheelchair access”, AP/Palm Beach Post, Jul. 15)(for more on lap-dance handicap accommodation, see Sept. 27-28, 2000). (DURABLE LINK)

July 16-17 – Mercury in dental fillings. For well over a century dentists have used a mixture of metals including mercury in standard tooth fillings, and both the U.S. Public Health Service and Consumers Union have declared that patients have no grounds for alarm that the fillings pose a risk to health. That hasn’t convinced a small if longstanding body of dissenters who hold that exposure to even trace amounts of the heavy metal must be having toxic effects on users’ bodies. The dispute has lately turned litigious, with Van Nuys, Calif. personal injury and environmental attorney Shawn Khorrami spearheading several suits which accuse the American Dental Association and dentists of wrongly promoting the material, and the ADA striking back with a defamation suit. (Doug Bandow, “Killer teeth?”, Cato Institute Dailies, Jun. 28; Raymond J. Keating, “Lawsuits and Legislation Causing Pain for Dentists”, Small Business Survival Committee, Jun. 7; AltCorp (anti-mercury testing firm); Stephen Barrett, “The Mercury Amalgam Scam”, QuackWatch.com, last revised Apr. 23; search QuackWatch on “amalgam”; American Dental Association on ADA v. Khorrami). (DURABLE LINK)

July 16-17 – Hizzoner’s divorce, settled at last. “Anyone who’s been appalled at the depths to which the parties stooped in this Hanover/Giuliani split just hasn’t been divorced from a millionaire often enough. As big splashy divorces go, this was no uglier than most.” (Dahlia Lithwick, “Hats Off to Rudy”, Slate, Jul. 12). (DURABLE LINK)

July 16-17 – “Spanking Client Not Legitimate Trial Prep Tactic”. Just plain bizarre: U.S. District Judge Robert N. Chatigny has ruled that an attorney’s malpractice insurer is not obliged to pay out in a case in which Derby, Ct. attorney Milo J. Altschuler allegedly took a client across his lap and spanked her before a court appearance. “The woman claimed Altschuler, before removing her panties and stockings, told her he needed to spank her so the judge didn’t think she was lying.” Judge Chatigny ruled that the spanking did not constitute the rendering of professional services, although Altschuler “acknowledged that he used [threats of spanking] in representing more than a dozen other clients to make them ‘more afraid of him than they would be of the prosecutor.’” (Scott Brede, Connecticut Law Tribune, Jul. 15). (DURABLE LINK)

July 15 – “Morales’ $1 Million Tobacco Fee Under Fire”. “Former Attorney General Dan Morales told lawyers that a $1 million contribution to his political campaign fund was a condition for joining his anti-tobacco legal team, a Houston lawyer testified in a newly released document.” In a 1999 interview that has only now been made public in court proceedings, an assistant to Texas Attorney General John Cornyn questioned Houston attorney Wayne Fisher, a former president of the State Bar and a former president of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association, under oath. Fisher “said Morales outlined two separate requirements during a meeting he had with the then-attorney general in 1995. Fisher said one condition of employment was to ‘front’ the legal expenses and a second was to ‘commit to contribute $1 million to (Morales’) political campaign — to (Morales’) political campaign fund, as I recall it.’” Fisher “chose not to join Morales’ legal team”; he also “recalled wondering later if the meeting was a ’sting operation.’” Fisher’s account seems to buttress earlier recollections by noted plaintiff’s attorney Joe Jamail, who also did not join the state’s team (see Sept. 1-3, 2000, May 22, 2000, June 21, 2001, Aug. 29-30, 2001, Nov. 12, 2001).

The five law firms eventually hired by Morales are all “major contributors to Democratic candidates and causes”. Michael Tigar, attorney for the five, denies that any of their tobacco fees or expenses went to Morales but concedes that “some was paid to Austin political consultant George Shipley. Tigar said all the payments to Shipley were first reviewed by University of Texas law professor Charles Silver, who was retained by the lawyers as an ethics adviser.” (Clay Robison, Houston Chronicle, Jul. 12). (DURABLE LINK)

July 15 – Paper currency should accommodate blind, suit argues. “The American Council of the Blind, which seeks to improve conditions for the visually impaired, has sued the Treasury Department to force its way into the currency revamping process. …The group is not promoting a specific change that would help blind and sight-impaired Americans sift through their money, but hopes the government will study an array of options that would be helpful. A major step could be offering denominations in different colors or sizes with large-print features, like many other countries, [Ralph] Brunson said. Braille and textures also are possibilities, although the markings are prone to wearing off. ‘We did not specify a particular option because, primarily, at this point we’re trying to get the dialogue going,’ Brunson said.” (Mark Babineck, “Blind Group Sues U.S. over Currency”, AP/FindLaw, Jul. 1). (DURABLE LINK)

July 15 – New civil rights target: “linguistic profiling”. With assistance from a Ford Foundation grant, the National Fair Housing Alliance and Stanford education and linguistics professor Dr. John Baugh have launched a project “to study the impact of linguistic profiling on housing discrimination. This summer, Baugh will track the instances of bias that the housing markets show toward speakers of non-standard English over the telephone. Baugh says speakers who do not ’sound white’ often are discriminated against over the telephone. ‘Even though the courts are reasonably well equipped to prosecute cases of face-to-face discrimination,’ says Dr. Baugh, ‘they have a hard time understanding and applying the law to linguistic profiling, and that’s where this research will help.’” “National Study on Linguistic Profiling in Housing Announced”, Jun. 26)(via Scott Norvell, FoxNews.com, Jul. 1). (DURABLE LINK)

July 12-14 – Welcome Salon.com readers, Bill O’Reilly listeners. We’re cited in Janelle Brown’s excellent article on parental lawsuits against teachers (”L is for Lawsuit”, Jul. 12) which mentions our subpage on overlawyered schools. And our editor is appearing today (Fri.) on Bill O’Reilly’s popular radio show to discuss the case of a New York City jury’s award to a woman who lay down on the subway tracks (see Jun. 26-27), along with other cases featured on our personal- responsibility subpage. Update: and welcome BBC-5 listeners, for whom our editor taped an interview arising from the Salon piece (DURABLE LINK)

July 12-14 – Credibility up in smoke? Environmentalist groups have strenuously denied that their use of litigation to stall road building, logging and the construction of firebreaks worsened this year’s raging wildfires out West (see Jul. 1-2). But it turns out that a recent General Accounting Office report, much cited by the enviro groups to show that they don’t sue often, actually may show nothing of the sort. “Environmental appeals delayed 48 percent of the [Forest Service]’s fire-suppression projects in fiscal 2001 and 2002, thereby stalling efforts to clear the brush and small trees that fuel the catastrophic wildfires plaguing the West, according to an internal Forest Service report obtained by The Washington Times. The report, slated for release [Thursday], found that 155 of the agency’s 326 plans to log overgrown, high-risk national forests were stymied by appeals. In Arizona and New Mexico, sites of some of this summer’s worst wildfires, that figure rose to 73 percent, and climbed to 100 percent in the Pacific Northwest”. (Valeria Richardson, “Forest Service Says Activists Played Role in Fires,” Washington Times, Jul. 11; Kimberley A. Strassel, “Truth Under Fire “, Wall Street Journal/ OpinionJournal.com, Jul. 11). (& see letter to the editor, Oct. 23) (DURABLE LINK)

July 12-14 – Read the label, then ignore it if you like. “Two carpet installers who admit they read the label of an adhesive they used, admit they understood the adhesive was flammable and should not be used inside, used it inside anyway, caused an explosion, were burned badly, sued, and won $8 million dollars.” (Phil Trexler, “2 installers get millions in blast suit”, Akron Beacon Journal, Jul. 10) (link and description via MedPundit, Jul. 10). (DURABLE LINK)

July 12-14 – Financial scandals: legislate in haste. The “chief sponsor of the House [financial-reform] legislation, Republican Michael G. Oxley of Ohio … complained that some aspects of the Sarbanes bill appeared to be turning into ‘a gravy train’ for trial lawyers.” (Richard A. Oppel Jr., “Senate Backs Tough Measures to Punish Corporate Misdeeds”, New York Times, Jul. 11). House Republicans are particularly critical of provisions which, in line with a long-term goal of the plaintiff’s bar, increase the time permitted to bring securities fraud lawsuits. The Mobile Register editorially warns that a number of ideas emanating from the Senate “would be a huge boon to voracious plaintiffs’ attorneys. And the last thing the nervous stock market needs, now or ever, is to worry about companies being ruined by ever-more creative lawsuits whose practical effect would do far more to enrich the lawyers than to protect the interests of individual investors.” (”Bush right, Shelby not, on business reform” (editorial), Mobile Register, Jul. 10). “Robert Musil” has some thoughts on the newly popular idea of requiring CEOs to certify their company’s financial filings on penalty of perjury (Jul. 7). And before assuming that it was management malfeasance alone that destroyed the market value of such companies as WorldCom and Adelphia, it would be wise to note that Europe, without benefit of major scandal, has managed to see most of the value of its telecom stocks evaporate since the sectoral bubble burst, with historic enterprises like Deutsche Telekom, France Télécom and Royal KPN of the Netherlands losing 80 or 90 percent of their value, and Britain’s BT doing not much better (Edmund L. Andrews, “Europe Shares Pain of the Fall in Phone Stocks”, New York Times, Jul. 11). And see Steve Chapman, “Real and phony fixes for corporate corruption”, Chicago Tribune, Jul. 11). (DURABLE LINK)

July 12-14 – “Court Tosses ‘Sopranos’ Suit”. Following an appellate court’s ruling against them, the Italian-American Defense Association has dropped its suit against HBO charging that “The Sopranos” offends the dignity of Italian Americans in supposed violation of the Illinois Constitution’s “individual dignity” clause. Score one for free speech (N.Y. Daily News,