Overlawyered » elevators and escalators

Life without elevators

Walter Olson — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 06:00:03 +0000

Could they have been introduced successfully under today’s product liability law? [Ted at PoL]

“Failed to warn escalator was not moving”

Walter Olson — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 05:16:47 +0000

Kevin at Lowering the Bar spots a San Francisco lawsuit premised on the idea that a stationary escalator needed to have a sign posted with a warning to that effect.

Tags: elevators and escalators

Rand Paul, the ADA, and the gotcha narrative

Walter Olson — Mon, 24 May 2010 05:08:54 +0000

I’ve got some thoughts up at Cato at Liberty about the latest controversy to embroil the GOP Kentucky Senate candidate, including comments on an AP story in which I’m quoted.

Tags: disabled rights, elevators and escalators

“Plaintiff Who Alleged Airport Concealment Has Litigation History”

Walter Olson — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 05:24:38 +0000

Lowering the Bar (channeling Dave Eyvazzadeh at Wired/Autopia) has some word on other unusual lawsuits filed by that Hillsborough, Calif. man who’s suing multiple defendants over San Francisco Airport noise and congestion [earlier]

Tags: elevators and escalators, George W. Bush, San Francisco, September 11

August 7 roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 04:12:14 +0000

Hold on to your hat: Litigation Lobby ally and Grade A business-basher David Michaels — who founded a project purportedly advancing the cause of scientific integrity with money furnished by, of all groups, the silicone breast implant bar — named to head OSHA [Wood/PoL; more on SKAPP]
City of Clearwater, Florida bans playing catch on beach or in park [Popehat]
In wake of Kindle “1984″ episode, watch for lawyers to start demanding remote line-item deletion of allegedly defamatory or infringing matter from books after publication [Moshirnia, Citizen Media Law]
Amicus brief exposes more free-speech problems with that federal law banning depictions of animal cruelty [Volokh, earlier]
“Crocs settles safety suits over escalator injuries” [Matthew Heller, OnPoint News, earlier]
Was he planning to drive somewhere? MADD official objects to Obama’s appearing on TV drinking a beer [Sullum, Reason "Hit and Run"]
Air crash lawsuit charges Oklahoma City didn’t do enough to keep Wiley Post Airport free of birds [NewsOK.com/The Oklahoman]
Many dubious things in health care bill, but “mandatory end-of-life care discussions” not among them [C.B. Brown, Politico]

Tags: aviation, beer and brewers, elevators and escalators, Florida, free speech, MADD, Oklahoma, OSHA

July 16 roundup

Walter Olson — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 14:07:41 +0000

Bad move for GOP to call disappointed litigant as witness at Sotomayor hearing [Taranto via Barnett] Nominee’s disavowal of Legal Realism and identitarian/viewpoint-based judging should be seen as a victory for legal conservatism [Copland at PoL, related Examiner and NRO "Bench Memos"; Adler/WaPo; coverage in NYT] Why do Senators speechify instead of asking questions? “Why does the rain fall from up above?” [Althouse]
“Illinois Law Dean Announces New Admission Policy in Wake of Scandal” [NLJ; earlier] “U of I Law School Got Scholarship Cash for Clout Admissions” [ABA Journal]
Weird warning sign in Swedish elevator [BoingBoing; commenters there disagree as to whether the elevator in question is of an old continuous-motion type called a Paternoster which has fallen out of use in part because of its high accident risk, or an elevator of more conventional design but lacking an inner door]
“Gambler Appeals; Wants More of His Money Back From Casino” [South Korea; Lowering the Bar]
The price of one Ohio Congresswoman’s vote on Waxman-Markey [Washington Times via Coyote, who has a followup]
“Want to live like tort king Melvin Belli?” [real estate listing in Pacific Heights; WSJ Law Blog]
Fierce moral urgency yada yada: “Put nothing in writing, ever” advised Carol Browner on CAFE regs [Mark Tapscott, D.C. Examiner] Alex Beam zings Obama on signing statements [Boston Globe]
Constitution lists only three federal crimes: treason, piracy, and counterfeiting. How’d we get to 4,500 today? [Ryan Young, CEI "Open Market"]

Tags: CAFE, crime and punishment, elevators and escalators, gambling, law schools, Sonia Sotomayor, South Korea

Lawyers making clients worse off department: Nicholas White’s elevator ride

Ted Frank — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 10:55:22 +0000

Nicholas White, trying to leave the McGraw-Hill Building in New York, was trapped in an elevator for 42 hours over a weekend. We’ll agree that under the principle of res ipsa loquitur, there’s liability, and even non-economic damages, to be had: there’s a duty not to let people get trapped in your elevators, to respond to an elevator alarm, and to notice the security cameras broadcasting video of the trapped individual. But, judging by the April 21 New Yorker coverage, it’s hard not to think White’s attorney’s litigation strategy hurt White far worse than his elevator experience:

He got a lawyer, and came to believe that returning to work might signal a degree of mental fitness detrimental to litigation. Instead, he spent eight weeks in Anguilla. Eventually, Business Week had to let him go. The lawsuit he filed, for twenty-five million dollars, against the building’s management and the elevator-maintenance company, took four years. They settled for an amount that White is not allowed to disclose, but he will not contest that it was a low number, hardly six figures. He never learned why the elevator stopped; there was talk of a power dip, but nothing definite. Meanwhile, White no longer had his job, which he’d held for fifteen years, and lost all contact with his former colleagues. He lost his apartment, spent all his money, and searched, mostly in vain, for paying work. He is currently unemployed.

Looking back on the experience now, with a peculiarly melancholic kind of bewilderment, he recognizes that he walked onto an elevator one night, with his life in one kind of shape, and emerged from it with his life in another. Still, he now sees that it wasn’t so much the elevator that changed him as his reaction to it. He has come to terms with the trauma of the experience but not with his decision to pursue a lawsuit instead of returning to work. If anything, it prolonged the entrapment. He won’t blame the elevator.

NB also that White never would’ve gotten in the elevator if not for anti-smoking laws requiring him to leave the building to have a cigarette, not that I’m suggesting anyone sue the city or the tobacco companies over that remote causation.

Tags: elevators and escalators, lawyers making clients worse off, tobacco

Escalator mishap: federal judge wanted $21 million

Walter Olson — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 14:44:11 +0000

A jury, however, sent away U.S. District Judge George P. Schiavelli away with nothing at all, ruling that the firm responsible for maintaining the escalators at the Encino Shopping Center was not to blame for the injuries the judge suffered in a 2005 mishap. After the verdict the plaintiff’s lawyer in the case, Browne Greene, charged the jury with partiality: “The bias against judges in today’s world is just palpable,” he said. (Robert J. Lopez, “Encino judge gets no award in escalator fall”, Los Angeles Times, Feb. 26; “Jury Unanimously Rejects Judge’s $21 Million Personal Injury Suit”, PRNewswire/Fox Business, from defense firm Murchison & Cumming, Feb. 25; Greene’s press release)(via Perlmutter/Schuelke). More on escalator suits at this link.

Tags: elevators and escalators, jackpot justice

Here come the Crocs suits

Walter Olson — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 00:11:34 +0000

The comfortable footwear can apparently lead to “shoe entrapment” accidents at the tops and bottoms of escalators, attracting lawyers’ interest. (Southern California Injury Law Blog, Oct. 1)(via Turkewitz). More: Earlier escalator suits on Overlawyered (h/t Ted) include February 2005, first and second posts.

Tags: elevators and escalators, product liability

Litigious clients file lawsuits

David Nieporent — Wed, 02 May 2007 11:01:56 +0000

Courtesy of Judicial Reports, a cautionary tale for lawyers: be careful when you accept litigious clients. The law firm of Wallace & Minchenberg wasn’t, and it came back to bite them:

Bennett A. Cohen kept getting hurt in elevators — or so he claimed. The lawyers he hired to exact compensation from the culprits responsible for the injuries he allegedly sustained in four elevator mishaps between 1989 and 1992 must have suspected that their litigious client might eventually turn on them, as he did. When the last of the elevator tort claims collapsed, Cohen sued the law firm for malpractice for allegedly mishandling his slam-dunk tort suits.

A lower court in Brooklyn refused to dismiss Cohen’s suits, but the Appellate Division said that law firms can’t be guilty of malpractice for failing to properly prosecute cases without any merit to begin with.

I’m sure that’s of great comfort to the elevator maintenance companies who were originally sued by the law firm on behalf of Cohen.

(Too bad Cohen was representing himself pro se in his lawsuit against Wallace & Minchenberg. Otherwise he could have sued the lawyers who represented him in this lawsuit for failing to win against his former lawyers.)

Tags: elevators and escalators, pro se

Overlawyered » elevators and escalators

Life without elevators

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