“A Manhattan jury has awarded a former Pace University student $9 million for medical bills, loss of earnings, and pain and suffering as a result of injuries she sustained in a 2004 accident in Pleasantville, injuries that her left her debilitated by obsessive-compulsive disorder and unable to work.” Although a brain scan taken after the incident “came up normal,” “not long after, symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder began cropping up, and, over time, became increasingly severe. Grossman could no longer ride in black cars, while also developing an aversion to the number six,” among other symptoms. While the accident took place in suburban Westchester, the plaintiff lived in New York City and sued there; jurors deemed “25 percent responsible, as lawyers for [defendant] Mari argued that [plaintiff] Grossman was speeding and talking on her cellphone at the time of the accident.” No more than $1.1 million will be paid because of a prior agreement between the two sides, presumably what lawyers call a “high-low” agreement. [White Plains Journal-News/LoHud.com]
Tagged as:
damages,
NYC
Update: That’s what we get for posting hastily on a holiday weekend. We — and a great many other sites from CBS News to Business Insider to The Onion — took the below report seriously, but per Mike Masnick at TechDirt, it’s both outdated — Judge Kimba Wood rebuked RIAA’s damage demand as excessive, and the LimeWire case settled for a far lower amount — and more broadly questionable (while the original demands might have reached trillions, and were justly subject to ridicule on that account, the jump to $72 trillion seems to be at best someone’s subjective extrapolation).
Masnick’s story is here. What follows is the original post.
“It’s no secret that LimeWire was once a hotbed of peer-to-peer music piracy, but the RIAA has now attempted to sue it for $72 trillion – more money than exists in the world today. LimeWire was shut down in October 2010, but litigation continues from music bodies around the world…” [Ultimate Guitar]
Tagged as:
damages,
music and musicians,
RIAA and file sharing
The case does raise an issue of importance — at what point does a parent’s mental illness expose children to unreasonable risk? But if Ms. Ogunbayo is hoping to convince a court that she has everything in perspective now, asking for $900 trillion may not help. [Staten Island Advance]
Tagged as:
damages
- UK: “Premiums to soar as accident claims lawyers push up cost of motor insurance, MPs hear” [Telegraph]
- John Stossel on death by FDA [Reason] Disapproving stance on e-cigarettes might cost lives [Balko] Company abandons pioneering stem-cell research after running up $45 million in costs to win FDA approval of initial safety tests [Technology Review] NYT can be obtuse about regulatory costs [Cowen]
- No, we’re not allowed to let you out of the van to relieve the call of nature [Ted at PoL]
- “Economic Damages Are Affirmed Though Plaintiff’s Earnings Rose After Accident” [NJLJ]
- A shame about the business climate in Hawaii [Inverse Condemnation]
- “Massachusetts Lawyer Loses License for a Year for Charging $93.8K Contingent Fee, Absent a Contingency” [Martha Neil, ABA Journal]
- Movement “rapidly gaining steam” in U.S. to prohibit anonymous sperm donation [Glenn Cohen, Prawfs]
Tagged as:
assisted reproduction,
contingent fee,
damages,
FDA,
Hawaii,
United Kingdom
Said Judge Posner, of an alleged serial spammer’s courtroom presentation. “It’s not only incompetent, it’s grotesque. You’ve got damages jumping around from $11 million to $130 million to $122 million to $33 million. In fact, the damages are probably zero.” [Timothy Lee, Ars Technica]
Tagged as:
damages,
Richard Posner
A Brooklyn woman intends to pursue further levels of judicial review after an appeals court denied her damages in a breast-feeding mix-up “because the error was discovered and fixed inside the hospital and her infant didn’t get sick or injured.” [Brooklyn Paper; another breastfeeding mixup case]
Tagged as:
damages,
hospitals,
New York,
obstetrics
Federal judge Kimba Wood in Manhattan applies some skepticism to the quantum of damages demanded by record companies in copyright actions against file-sharing service LimeWire. [American Lawyer]
Tagged as:
damages,
RIAA and file sharing
Which is why she’s threatening to sue her New York City landlord; she says the 25-minute delay cost her $10,000 a minute. [NY Post via Lowering the Bar]
Tagged as:
damages,
NYC
- Growth of regulatory state makes lobbying more attractive path than innovation [Morris Panner, WaPo]
- Long-awaited Norma Zager book flays Erin Brockovich role in Beverly Hills High School controversy [CJAC]
- Colorado high court: no need to limit medical fee awards to sums plaintiffs actually paid [CCJL, Law Week Colorado]
- Please, law firm marketers, don’t assume we’re in need of your services [Popehat]
- Updates on prosecutorial silencing of pain treatment activist Siobhan Reynolds [Sullum, more, yet more, Balko]
- Comments of NTSB official notwithstanding, riding motorcycle without helmet is no “public health issue” [Boaz, Cato] Watch out for more paternalism premised on government health care expenditures [Coyote]
- No contracting out? Can California really be this screwed up? [Coyote]
- Claim: railroad should have warned against walking on the right-of-way [six years ago on Overlawyered]
Tagged as:
California,
Colorado,
damages,
Erin Brockovich,
public health
- “If someone wants to sue you, they can. Easily, too.” Amy Wallace on being sued over her vaccine story [Reporting on Health, earlier]
- Jury tells Ford to pay $131 million after minor league ballplayer crashes Explorer at 80 mph+ [WaPo]
- Winnipeg judge scandal has sex, race, coercion and most riveting of all a legal ethics angle [Alice Woolley, LEF]
- “$667M Nursing Home Verdict Surprised Even the Plaintiffs’ Lawyers” [ABA Journal, earlier]
- “Maryland Woman Sues After Being Banned by Facebook” [Kashmir Hill/Forbes, MSNBC "Technolog"]
- The trouble with (some) defense-side trial lawyers [Ted Frank, CCAF] And: defense bar briefing prosecutorial agencies on ins and outs of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Ethics/loyalty problem in that, or no? [Koehler]
- Bow-tied troll? Patent-marking suits hit the big time [WSJ Law Blog and more, ABA Journal, Glenn Lammi/Forbes]
- “A girl named Sue who sues and sues and sues” [SE Tex Record]
Tagged as:
autos,
damages,
defense lawyers,
Facebook,
libel slander and defamation,
nursing homes,
patent marking,
serial litigants
Kevin at Lowering the Bar points out that the suit we reported on yesterday doesn’t actually carry the highest damages demand ever; it is topped by one man’s suit last year against Bank of America for 1.7 septillion dollars. In third place — maybe — is “a claim for three quadrillion and change filed by someone against the federal government after Hurricane Katrina.”
Meanwhile, the story of the $38 quadrillion lawsuit moves Adam Freedman at Ricochet to consider some perhaps drastic legal reform remedies.
Tagged as:
damages,
juries
- Judge bans $1.35 billion sugar beet crop for lack of environmental impact statement [NY Times]
- Brennan Center, Justice at Stake attracting attention with new report on money in state court judicial races [report in PDF, Kang/ConcurOp]
- Obama signs “libel tourism” bill into law [Levy, CL&P]
- “Zach Scruggs claims new evidence clears him” [Patsy Brumfield, NE Mississippi Daily Journal via YallPolitics]
- Second Circuit panel blasts 1980s abuse-accusation panic in ruling on Friedman case [opinion via NYT and Bernstein/Volokh]
- Famed Cincinnati lawyer Stanley Chesley may face disciplinary action before Kentucky bar over role in fen-phen scandal [Courier-Journal via Dan Fisher and PoL]
- Sexual harassment verdict against California casino “amounts to 2/3 of the company’s net worth” [Fox, Jottings]
- Every White House needs to hire some partisan brawlers. But with “ethics czar” duties? [Matt Welch, Reason]
Tagged as:
Barack Obama,
child abuse,
damages,
Dickie Scruggs,
environment,
ethics,
harassment law,
judicial elections,
Kentucky fen-phen settlement fraud,
libel slander and defamation,
Stan Chesley
- Report: European sunscreens use superior ingredients US regulators haven’t gotten around to approving [NYT]
- Some in Pakistan want Zuckerberg executed for hosting “draw Mohammed” [Freethinker, UK]
- GM fought Clean Air Act? “Sen. Franken’s bad environmental history” [Adler/Volokh]
- Scary McChesneyite plans for federal intervention in media: FTC seems to be listening [Thierer, City Journal] FCC relations with Free Press on the skids? [Mike Riggs, Daily Caller]
- In 1978 Canada Supreme Court judicially imposed cap on noneconomic damages, world doesn’t seem to have ended for Canadian litigants [Wood, PoL]
- “Landlord victorious in Peeps trial” [Lowering the Bar, earlier]
- Who’ll wind up paying in Chinese drywall litigation? [Risk and Insurance]
- How not to get out of jury duty [Abnormal Use]
Tagged as:
Al Franken,
Canada,
damages,
Facebook,
FDA,
Federal Trade Commission,
jury selection
- Compensation awards to soldiers in the UK: £161,000 for losing leg and arm, but £186,896 for sex harassment? [Telegraph]
- Judge in banana pesticide fraud case says threats have been made against her and against witnesses [AP, L.A. Times]
- Teacher plans to sue religious school that fired her for having premarital sex [Orlando Sentinel]
- Now sprung from hoosegow, class-actioneer Lerach on progressive lecture circuit and “living in luxury” [Stoll, Carter Wood at PoL and ShopFloor (Campaign for America's Future conference), San Diego Reader via Pero]
- Connecticut law banning “racial ridicule” has palpable constitutional problems, you’d think, but has resulted in many prosecutions and some convictions [Volokh, Gideon]
- Gone with the readers: newsmagazines, metro newspapers facing fewer libel suits [NY Observer] More: Lyrissa Lidsky, Prawfs.
- Having Connecticut press comfortably in his pocket helped Blumenthal turn the tables against NY Times [Stein/HuffPo] Must not extend to the New Britain Herald News, though;
- Interview with editor Brian Anderson of City Journal [Friedersdorf, Atlantic] I well remember being there as part of the first issue twenty years ago.
Tagged as:
banana pesticide litigation fraud,
Bill Lerach,
Connecticut,
damages,
discrimination law,
hate speech,
libel slander and defamation,
Richard Blumenthal,
United Kingdom
