Noting that a litigant’s choice of counsel is to be given weight in such matters, a court in Stamford, Ct. has ruled against a husband’s request to disqualify the opposing attorney on the grounds that that attorney “simultaneously represents the defendant’s first and second wives”. ["Motion To Disqualify Lawyer Representing Both Wives Denied," Connecticut Law Tribune, May 11 (pay section of site)(Voruganti v. Voruganti, Malone, J.)]
Posts tagged as:
ethics
By tortuous steps, the dispute continues to advance in a New Jersey courtroom over whether, as part of a settlement of discrimination claims by some of its employees, Prudential made a side payment to the law firm representing the workers, and if so whether that was proper. Both the giant insurer and the law firm, Leeds Morelli & Brown, have disputed the clients’ accounts and denied wrongdoing. [Newark Star-Ledger via ABA Journal, earlier]
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You supply the quips: “Dozens of Milwaukee-area lawyers earned education credits a little while back for attending a local seminar featuring a convicted felon posing as an expert on criminal sentencing.”
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You may recall the earlier trial of the Kentucky fen-phen attorneys who had stolen tens of millions of dollars from their clients ended in a mistrial for two and an acquittal for their third compatriot. This time around, a federal court jury, after ten hours of deliberation, found William Gallion and Shirley Cunningham Jr. guilty of eight counts of fraud and one count of conspiracy. A streamlined prosecution case no doubt helped make a difference; defense attorneys sought to blame the matter on Stan Chesley, who negotiated the underlying settlement and received millions more than he was contracted to receive, and it remains mysterious why he was not charged. [Courier-Journal]
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- Probate court in Connecticut: bad enough when they hold you improperly in conservatorship, but worse when they bill you for the favor [Hartford Courant]
- Does “Patent Troll” in World of Warcraft count as a character type or a monster type? [Broken Toys]
- 102-year-old Italian woman wins decade-long legal dispute, but is told appeal could take 10 years more [Telegraph]
- “This Cartoon Could Be Illegal, If Two Iowa Legislators Have Their Way” [Eugene Volokh]
- David Giacalone, nonpareil commentator on attorneys’ fee ethics (and haiku), has decided to end his blog f/k/a. He signs off with a four-part series on lawyer billing and fairness to consumers/clients: parts one, two, three, four, plus a final “Understanding and Reducing Attorney Fees“. He’s keeping the site as archives, though, and let’s hope that as such it goes on shedding its light for as long as there are lawyers and vulnerable clients. More: Scott Greenfield.
- Even they can’t manage to comply? Politically active union SEIU faces unfair labor practice charges from its own employees [WaPo]
- Judge in Austin awards $3 million from couple’s estate to their divorce lawyers [Austin American-Statesman]
- “Keywords With Highest Cost Per Click”, lawyers and financial services dominate [SpyFu]
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81- year-old Manhattan attorney Bertram Brown was banished from the legal profession but authorities allege he’s continued to practice under three different aliases since his disbarment. (NY Post).
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Assume a false identity and file a bogus misconduct complaint that gets your boss fired. Claim whistleblower protection and transfer to a nice job in another department. When the imposture is discovered, the state won’t be able to do more than slap your wrist. That’s been the happy experience of a lawyer with Connecticut’s state ethics bureau (!) in a case provoking considerable, though apparently futile, outrage in the Nutmeg State. (Point of Law, Nov. 25; Dan Schwartz, Nov. 17).
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- Anyone suing over anything dept.: Kansas City attorney Mary Kay Green sues McCain, Palin, for supposed hate speech against Obama [KC Star, Feral Child, Above the Law; related, my article the other day for City Journal]
- Got $331K from victim fund claiming severe injuries from Pentagon 9/11 attack, yet “kept playing basketball and lacrosse and ran [NYC] marathon in under four hours two months after the attacks” [Maryland Daily Record]
- Krugman claims Fannie/Freddie not big culprits in mortgage meltdown, but Calomiris and Wallison show him wrong [Stuart Taylor, Jr., National Journal; also note this Goldstein/Hall unlabeled opinion piece from McClatchy pushing the Krugman line]
- Government bailout of newspapers? Who’s trying to float this idea, anyway? [Bercovici/Portfolio via Romenesko] Update: maybe this?
- Colluded with chiropractor to generate bills for imaginary treatment, then pocketed clients’ insurance settlements without telling them [Quincy, Mass., Patriot-Ledger; Bruce Namenson sentenced to 5 years and "cannot practice law for at least 10 years after he gets out of jail"]
- Ontario: “Killer awarded $6K over wrong shoes in prison” [National Post]
- “Is there any doubt that Lucy grew up to be a lawyer?” [Above the Law on Doyle Reports, Judge Robertson ruling in patent case]
- Jury hits Jersey City, N.J. rheumatologist with $400K verdict (including $200K punitives) for not hiring sign language interpreter at his own expense for deaf patient [NJLJ, Krauss @ PoL]
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Reacting to a case from Connecticut, Scott Greenfield deplores the apparent decline of standards among double-dealing criminal defense attorneys: “For God’s sake, man, if you are going to engage in flagrantly unethical behavior, at least avoid being a moron while doing so.” (Oct. 13; Hilda Munoz, “Attorney Found Guilty Of Bribing, Tampering With Witness”, Hartford Courant, Oct. 10).
Lawyer Robert Bundy, representing a key witness at the Ted Stevens trial, is said to be all “torn up” about the judge’s accusation that he was transmitting secret nods and movements to convey to his client what testimony was desirable. Eric Turkewitz says that in his experience coaching during testimony takes three forms: “speaking objections”, nods and head movements (which may be unconscious), and deliberate signaling. (Oct. 7; AP/Google).
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MDL Judge Eldon Fallon orders plaintiffs’ attorneys’ fees in the $4.85 billion settlement to be capped at 32%. Hooray, right? Certainly, the trial bar is capable of arguing for itself that the ruling is wrong and it is entitled to a couple of hundred million more, but I might just have to take their side here.
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The Louisiana Attorney Disciplinary Board’s charges against attorney John M. Sharp, formerly managing partner in the firm Sharp Henry Cerniglia Colvin Weaver & Davis, may possibly recall the old joke: lawyer finds satchel of someone’s misplaced cash, followed by wrenching dilemma of legal ethics: should he tell the partners? (Karina Donica, “Attorney involved in city-Cleco case faces possible disbarment”, Town Talk (Alexandria, La.), Aug. 22)(via ABA Journal).
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Lester Brickman has a new must-read paper on an under-reported problem:
Lawyers obtain the “mass” for some mass tort litigations by conducting screenings to sign-up potential litigants en masse. These “litigation screenings” have no intended medical benefit. Screenings are mostly held in motels, shopping center parking lots, local union offices and lawyers’ offices. There, an occupational history is taken by persons with no medical training, a doctor may do a cursory physical exam, and medical technicians administer tests, including X-rays, pulmonary function tests, echocardiograms and blood tests. The sole purpose of screenings is to generate “medical” evidence of the existence of an injury to be attributed to exposure to or ingestion of defendants’ products. Usually a handful of doctors (”litigation doctors”) provide the vast majority of the thousands and tens of thousands of medical reports prepared for that litigation.
By my count, approximately 1,500,000 potential litigants have been screened in the asbestos, silica, fen-phen (diet drugs), silicone breast implant, and welding fume litigations. Litigation doctors found that approximately 1,000,000 of those screened had the requisite condition that could qualify for compensation, such as asbestosis, silicosis, moderate mitral or mild aortic value regurgitation or a neurological disorder. I further estimate that lawyers have spent at least $500 million and as much as $1 billion to conduct these litigation screenings, paying litigation doctors and screening companies well in excess of $250 million, and obtaining contingency fees well in excess of $13 billion.
On the basis of the evidence I review in this article, I conclude that approximately 900,000 of the 1,000,000 claims generated were based on “diagnoses” of the type that U.S. District Court Judge Janis Jack, in the silica MDL, found were “manufactured for money.”
Despite the considerable evidence I review that most of the “medical” evidence produced by litigation screenings is at least specious, I find that there is no effective mechanism in the civil justice system for reliably detecting or deterring this claim generation process. Indeed, I demonstrate how the civil justice system erects significant impediments to even exposing the specious claim generation methods used in litigation screenings. Furthermore, I present evidence that bankruptcy courts adjudicating asbestos related bankruptcies have effectively legitimized the use of these litigation screenings. I also present evidence that the criminal justice system has conferred immunity on the litigation doctors and the lawyers that hire them, granting them a special dispensation to advance specious claims.
Finally, I discuss various strategies that need to be adopted to counter this assault on the integrity of the civil justice system.
Here’s a good article on the American practice of allowing litigants to hire their own experts. Each expert advocates a position favorable to “their” side often rendering the dueling experts’ opinions of limited usefulness to the jury. Other countries implement different mechanisms for engaging expert testimony including having the judge select the expert. That sounds less partisan and cheaper, too. (“In U.S., Expert Witnesses Are Partisan”, The New York Times, Aug. 11).
And, I’m reminded of Ron Coleman’s post where he quotes an article describing hired experts as “witnesses having other rational explanations”. (Try the acronym and you’ll get it).
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Instead, consult higher-ups at the law firm orally about the mistake. Such at least is the advice attorneys are getting, per the ABA Journal (channeling New York Lawyer). Perhaps it’s time for a “Sorry Works” movement to encourage errant lawyers to do the right thing?
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Class actions of the lawyers, by the lawyers, for the lawyers? To quote the Law.com summary: “A federal judge has rejected a proposed co-lead plaintiff for the Monster Worldwide securities fraud class action because the representative knew nothing about the case. Southern District of New York Judge Jed Rakoff had some pointed words for lead plaintiffs counsel Labaton Sucharow, saying the Steamship Trade Association International Longshoremen’s Pension Fund was ’simply the willing pawn of counsel’ because it ‘has no interest in, genuine knowledge of, and/or meaningful involvement in this case.’” Judge Rakoff noted that pension fund co-chairman Horace Alston had represented himself under oath as the fund’s most knowledgeable person about the suit. “However, Mr. Alston then testified that he did not know the name of the stock at issue in this case, did not know the name of either individual defendant, did not know whether STA-ILA ever owned Monster stock, did not know if an amended complaint had been filed, did not know whether he had ever seen any complaint in the action,” leading Judge Rakoff to declare that he would “not be party to a sham.” (Mark Hamblett, “Lead Plaintiff Pick Rejected as Merely ‘Pawn of Counsel’”, New York Law Journal, Jul. 17).
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Melbourne Mills’s defense that he was too drunk to know what was going on when he and two other attorneys stole tens of millions of dollars appears to have created reasonable doubt in the mind of a Kentucky jury. Mills may have been helped by the revelation that his two co-counsel tried to hide $50 million from him, too, permitting his attorney to more plausibly blame the scheme on others. Or the jury may have believed the argument of Mills’s attorney that the three attorneys were too stupid to understand the settlement agreement and didn’t intend to steal any money (though they transferred a lot of money from their personal account to their clients when they learned the bar was investigating, and lied to the bar about how much money their clients received). (Jim Hannah, “One cleared in diet drug case”, Cincinnati Enquirer, Jul. 2; Beth Musgrave, “Fen-phen lawyer Mills is found not guilty”, Lexington Herald-Leader, Jul. 2; Beth Musgrave, “Jury hears closing arguments in fen-phen trial”, Lexington Herald-Leader, Jun. 24; AP/Kentucky Post, Jun. 23). The jury, today in its seventh day of deliberations, claims a deadlock on the other two attorneys, no doubt confused by why Judge Jay Bamberger and co-counsel and Democratic bigwig Stanley Chesley have not also been indicted. Defendants Cunningham and Gallion have sought to blame the tens of millions they stole on the fact that Bamberger (who was indirectly paid millions) judicially approved the settlement and Chesley (who was directly paid tens of millions) was allegedly the architect of the settlement that ensured lawyers would get far more than their contracts with their clients provided. Since there is no dispute that those two were indeed intimately involved in the scheme, the jury isn’t the only one confused why the Kentucky fen-phen three are being treated differently than the judge, the judge’s former law partner, and Stan Chesley, who all profited mightily.
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Wired magazine (May) carries this bit of advice from attorney David Brown, author of Beat Your Ticket:
3. Stall. Two weeks before your trial, request a continuance from the court clerk. The longer you delay, the more likely the officer won’t be able to attend, which should result in a dismissal if you ask for one.
Question: is it ethical to advise clients to ask for continuances with the purely tactical aim of increasing the burden on an opponent, as opposed to the more aboveboard reasons one might have for such a request?
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