As good an argument for the Class Action Fairness Act as any: Trial lawyers sued Compaq in Texas over an allegedly defective disk controller, though none of the plaintiffs had ever suffered a malfunction or a loss of data, alleging a violation of Texas consumer fraud law on behalf of a nationwide class.  No dice: the Texas Supreme Court threw out the case, noting that Texas law did not permit the sort of nationwide class action contemplated by the plaintiffs.  End of story?  Nope: the same trial lawyers filed the same complaint again, this time in Oklahoma state court, and asked the Oklahoma state court to apply Texas law to a nationwide class.  “Sure thing!” the court rubber-stamped–applying an ersatz version of Texas law rejected by Texas courts.  The forum-shopping was able to extract $40 million in attorneys’ fees from a questionable coupon settlement, as an Overlawyered post noted August 6.  The Summer 2008 issue of State Court Docket Watch includes my essay discussing why this is a constitutionally problematic set of decisions by Oklahoma courts–written before, though published after, the Anthony Caso analysis for WLF.

*Blogroll, cont’d*

Other sites by our authors: Point of Law (Ted Frank, Walter Olson and others) / Ted Frank’s AEI Legal Center / David Nieporent’s Jumping to Conclusions and Likelihood of Success / Walter Olson home page / Our Facebook group

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This site’s reprinted articles library, with articles by authors Michael Fumento, Peter Huber, Walter Olson, and Jonathan Rauch.

Now we may have a better idea why prominent Booneville, Miss. lawyer Joseph Langston recently withdrew as counsel for Dickie Scruggs in the widening corruption scandal: per a report by Jerry Mitchell in Sunday’s Jackson Clarion-Ledger, Langston was himself nabbed on corruption charges, has pleaded guilty and is cooperating with federal authorities. According to the article, Langston’s guilty plea arose from his involvement in one of Scruggs’s many fee disputes with fellow lawyers, this one being the Luckey-Wilson asbestos fee matter (in which Scruggs’ adversaries were Alwyn Luckey and William Roberts Wilson Jr.) Langston will apparently testify that he worked with both Dickie Scruggs and son Zach in an attempt to improperly influence Circuit Judge Bobby DeLaughter, who issued rulings favorable to Scruggs in the case. In one memorable detail, the C-L reports that federal authorities have obtained a May 29, 2006, e-mail in which “Zach Scruggs told his father’s attorney in the case, John Jones of Jackson, that ‘you could file briefs on a napkin right now and get it granted.’” Judge DeLaughter has denied any impropriety. (Jerry Mitchell, “Another lawyer pleads guilty”, Jan. 13). Separately, Patsy Brumfield of the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, who was first with an unconfirmed report of Langston’s guilty plea, also reports from unnamed sources that federal prosecutors have flipped another of the five indictees in the original scandal, Steven Patterson (partner of informant Tim Balducci), and that documents to be unsealed Monday will clarify other aspects of the status of the case. (”First public clue Patterson has pleaded in Scruggs case”, Jan. 11; “Scruggs updates”, Jan. 12). Discussion: Lotus/folo, Jan. 12, Jan. 13.

The implications are enormous. Among them:

* It looks as if informant Balducci, who formerly practiced law in the Langston law firm, wasn’t kidding when he said he knew where there were “bodies buried“. Information from Balducci likely helped lead the feds to raid the Langston office and seize records documenting the alleged Wilson-Luckey conspiracy.

* Langston is no incidental Scruggs sidekick or henchman; he’s quite a big deal in his own right, with a national reputation in mass tort litigation. He’s been deeply involved in pharmaceutical liability litigation, in tobacco litigation, in litigation against HMOs, and in litigation against non-profit hospitals over alleged violations of their charitable charters, among other areas. Mississippi attorney general Jim Hood, the law enforcement officer who has comically been playing potted plant as one after another of his closest political allies have been getting indicted in recent weeks, has employed Langston as lead counsel for the state in both the controversial Eli Lilly Zyprexa litigation and the even more controversial MCI back-tax-bill litigation. Langston also served Scruggs as go-between in the much-discussed funneling of $50 million in tobacco funds to ex-football player P.L. Blake (to whom now-reportedly-flipped Patterson was also close). If the reports that Langston is now cooperating with the feds are accurate, he will presumably be expected to tell what he knows about other episodes. (Langston has also endeavored to provide intellectual leadership for the plaintiff’s bar, as in this Federalist Society panel discussion presentation (PDF) in which he strongly criticizes the work on federalism and state attorneys general of Ted’s AEI colleague Michael Greve).

* Part of Scruggs’s modus operandi, as we know from tobacco and Katrina (among other) episodes, is to arrange to bring down prosecutions and other public enforcement actions on the heads of his litigation opponents. A particularly brutal instance of this crops up in today’s Clarion-Ledger piece, which reports that Scruggs in 2001 took documents obtained in discovery from Wilson, his fee-dispute opponent, and brought them to Hinds County (Jackson) district attorney Ed Peters hoping to instigate a state tax prosecution of Wilson:

Later, one of Wilson’s lawyers met with Peters, and [Wilson attorney Vicki] Slater said Peters told that lawyer that a “high-ranking public official” asked him to prosecute Wilson.

Peters could not be reached for comment.

Wilson did nothing to warrant criminal prosecution, Slater said. “All of this was to help Scruggs in his lawsuit.”

This is the same Dickie Scruggs of whom the New York Times was less than a year ago running moistly admiring profiles quoting common-man admirers of the Oxford, Miss.: lawyer: “good people. … If he tells you something, it’s gospel.”

P.S. It would certainly be interesting to know who that “high-ranking public official” who helped Scruggs in the tax-prosecution matter was, if there was one.

P.P.S. Corrected Monday a.m.: “Langston’s guilty plea was to an information; he waived indictment” (Folo). This post originally described Langston as pleading to an indictment.

Liability reform provided an early flashpoint last night, with Giuliani assailing Fred Thompson’s Senate voting record and Sen. Thompson offering a federalism defense. (Althouse, Oct. 21)(more; ritual disclaimer). More: the Giuliani site is hitting Thompson hard on the issue.

The annual Supreme Court Briefing of the AEI Legal Center for the Public Interest will take place 9 am Friday at AEI; registration is free. Speakers include frequent Supreme Court advocates Maureen Mahoney and Andrew Pincus, as well as AEI’s Michael Greve and myself. Michael Greve’s most recent Federalism Outlook looks at the most recent term, as does a recent Liability Outlook I wrote.

Longtime Overlawyered favorite Geoffrey Fieger, a fixture in Michigan politics and personal injury law for many years, and his law partner Vernon (Ven) Johnson were indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of unlawfully “conspiring to make more than $125,000 in illegal contributions to presidential candidate John Edwards’ 2004 campaign”. Fieger, who’s being represented by Gerry Spence, says it’s all a plot by Republicans in the U.S. Department of Justice. (Oakland Press; Detroit News, more; Detroit Free Press, more)(& Pattis).

Evan Sparks on the governor’s latest attack on federalism.

Arizona’s East Valley Tribune looks at the question (considered here Jul. 28 first and second post) of whether the fugitive being chased by Phoenix police could be held legally responsible for the crash of two news copters observing the scene. An unrelated local case puts a twist on an otherwise familiar “felony murder” fact pattern:

In an ongoing case, a Phoenix woman faces murder charges in a 2004 robbery attempt at a Mesa check-cashing store following the death of her accomplice. The accomplice was shot and killed by the store’s clerk, who also shot Rhonda Wright multiple times.

Prosecutors reasoned that the clerk would not have pulled his weapon if the assailants had not entered his store.

(Dennis Welch, “Homicide charges in helicopter crash a tough call”, East Valley Tribune, Jul. 29). More on felony murder and the Phoenix crash: Michelle Tsai, “News chopper down”, Slate, Jul. 30.

More: Mike Cernovich identifies another culprit in the chopper crash (Jul. 30).

• Grand jury declines to indict Dr. Anna Pou in Katrina hospital deaths, despite heavy breathing from Louisiana AG Charles Foti and TV’s Nancy Grace [Times-Picayune, more; 2005 CNN transcript; Health Care Blog, GruntDoc, Vatul.net]


• Protection from lawsuits for “John Doe” security informants is back in anti-terror legislation moving through Congress, despite back-door effort to eliminate it earlier [Fox News, Malkin; earlier] Addendum: but it’s in altered, much-weakened form, says commenter Bob Smith;


• U.K.: Top law firm Freshfields earns millions advising clients on employment compliance, yet “omitted to check that changes to its own pension scheme were legal” [Times Online]


• Thinking of doing some guestblogging, for us or another site? Some good advice here [Darren Rowse via Kevin O'Keefe]


• Even Conrad Black can have trouble affording lawyers, at least with feds freezing his accounts [PoL on Steyn]


• Shouldn’t have let us become parents again: Florida jury awards $21 million in “wrongful birth” case [Fox News]


• Possibility of gigantic reparations claims adds intensity to big lobbying fight in Washington over whether Turkey’s slaughter of Armenians in 1915 amounted to genocide [Crowley, New Republic]


• Updating colorful coverage case (Jun. 22, 2005): dentist wins $750K verdict on insurer’s duty to defend him for taking gag photos of sedated employee with boar tusks in mouth [Seattle Times, more; dissent in PDF; Althouse]


• Giuliani might use federalism to defuse culture wars [Brownstein, L.A. Times; disclaimer]


• Virginia’s enactment of harsh traffic fines (Jul. 6) follows tryouts of the idea in Michigan and New Jersey, where effects included rise in unlicensed driving [Washington Post]

• Encouraging kids’ adoption is a great thing to do, but there are right and wrong ways of going about it [U.K. Daily Mail]


• Defensive medical testing: “Every day I work as a doctor, I must choose between committing malpractice and committing insurance fraud.” [Dr. Paula Hartzell in Medical Economics]


• After serving 2+ years for consensual sex with fellow teen, Genarlow Wilson (Feb. 8, Mar. 6) may walk free, or maybe not [CNN; views of some Andrew Sullivan readers]


• “We need to eliminate nuisance lawsuits through ‘loser-pays’ provisions.” [candidate Giuliani @ NRO]


• Boston Herald (May 11, etc.) pays $3.4 million to local judge to settle libel verdict [Globe]


• Blind squirrel finds acorn dept.: American Prospect weblog promotes a good idea, abolishing peremptory challenges [Tapped; more]


• Disciplinary hearing begins against Duke DA Nifong [ABCNews.com]; you’d think lacrosse player’s out-of-town alibi might have raised a red flag [K. C. Johnson via Cernovich]


• Another flap, this time from Oklahoma, about a doc who vows to turn away malpractice-suit advocates as patients [Enid News & Eagle via KevinMD]


• No shock, Sherlock: mud-slinging, money-flinging found to be big problems in state high court races [AP]


• In that curious saga of Madison County, Ill.’s oft-suing Peach family (earlier posts here and here) Armettia Peach has settled her leaky-roof case against Granite City [M. C. Record]


• New York “plastic surgery addict” loses case claiming doctor should have counseled her against going under the knife so often [six years ago on Overlawyered]

• Everyone’s got an opinion on Dr. Flea’s trial-blogging fiasco [Beldar, Childs, Adler @ Volokh (lively comments including Ted), Turkewitz (who also provides huge link roundups here and here), KevinMD]
• Sidebar: some other doctor-bloggers have shut down or curtailed posting lately amid pressures from disapproving employers and patient-privacy legal worries [KevinMD first, second posts; Distractible Mind, Blogaholic]
• Amusement park unwisely allows “extremely large” woman to occupy two seats on the roller coaster, and everyone lands with a thump in court [Morris County, N.J. Daily Record via Childs]
• Prosecutors all over are trying to live down the “Duke effect” [NLJ]; how to prevent the next such debacle [Cernovich]
• Bad for their image: trial lawyers’ AAJ (formerly ATLA) files ethics complaint against Judge Roy Pearson Jr., of $65 million lost-pants-suit infamy [Legal Times]
• More suits assert rights to “virtual property” in Second Life, World of Warcraft online simulations [Parloff]
• Plea deals and immunity in the Conrad Black affair [Steyn, OC Register]
• Another round in case of local blog sent nastygram for allegedly defaming the city of Pomona, Calif. [Foothill Cities; earlier]
• “There once was a guy named Lerach…” — Milberg prosecution has reached the limerick stage [WSJ Law Blog comments]
• Government of India plans to fight Americans’ claims of intellectual property over yoga postures [Times Online; earlier here and here]
• After car-deer collision, lawyer goes after local residents who allegedly made accident more likely by feeding the creatures [seven years ago on Overlawyered]

A great opportunity for recent college graduates with good grades interested in legal issues and public policy: my current research assistant is Princeton-bound to get the Ph.D. that will give him a better resume than mine, so the AEI Liability Project is hiring, and hiring very soon:

Research Assistant: Liability Project

Seeking a full-time research assistant for the AEI Liability Project. The Liability Project examines the institutions, procedures, and political economy of contemporary liability law through research, publications, and other activities.

This position provides research support on issues related to American federalism and tort reform through case and brief retrieval, citation checking, case summarization, and legal analysis. It will also involve cultivating relationships with academics and practitioners in the field and overseeing the production of several monographs per year, as well as such administrative tasks as conference planning, editing, mass mailings, and data entry.

The ideal candidate will have excellent organizational, writing, and editing skills, as well as an interest in public policy and/or tort reform. Legal research experience and a background in economics preferred.

Qualified applicants should submit a resume, cover letter, and a 500-word writing sample on any topic with their online application.

This position will be available Summer 2007.

More information about applying, including a link to a Washingtonian article naming AEI as one of 55 great places to work in Washington. (Don’t contact me directly; all hiring is done through AEI Human Resources, but successfully indicating that you’ve been a regular reader of what I’ve been writing will surely help.)

We regularly complain about the fact that the legal system is unable — or at least unwilling — to police attorneys who violate the rules. But this failure is not limited to the plaintiff’s bar in civil cases. Lawrence Floyd was a prosecutor in Cuyahoga County who, according to the judge, “deliberately committed prosecutorial misconduct” by making unconstitutional remarks at a murder trial, forcing the judge to declare a mistrial.

His punishment? A $26,000 fine — the amount that a new trial will cost taxpayers. Sounds reasonable, right? Not quite: the judge declined to fine Floyd; instead, she fined taxpayers that amount of money. That’ll show him.

(via Crime & Federalism)

John Edwards may not be the only plaintiff’s attorney in the White House race:

Mr. Thompson [Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., much buzzed about as a late-entering Republican possibility] has also been criticized for failing to back some comprehensive tort-reform bills because of his background as a trial lawyer. Here he insists his stance was based on grounds of federalism. “I’m consistent. I address Federalist Society meetings,” he says, noting that more issues should be left to the states. For example, he cast the lonely “nay” in 99-1 votes against a national 0.8% blood alcohol level for drivers, a federal law banning guns in schools, and a measure limiting the tort liability of Good Samaritans. “Washington overreaches, and by doing so ends up not doing well the basics people really care about.” Think Katrina and Walter Reed.

(John Fund, “Lights, Camera . . . Candidacy?”, OpinionJournal.com/WSJ, Mar. 17).

On Sen. Thompson’s behalf, it can be said that he did co-sponsor the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which was enacted into law after he left the Senate. Thus he presumably recognizes that in some situations, federal action can be necessary and proper to prevent a few state courts from imposing their views on the unwilling citizens of distant states. One hopes Thompson also goes so far as to realize that federal curbs on state-court litigation in those circumstances do not necessarily infringe on proper precepts of federalism and decentralization, but in fact can work in defense of them, by protecting the right to self-government of sister states and their citizens. The question is whether he has gone on to consider that quite a few other federal interventions into state-court litigation, in such areas as class actions, product liability and punitive damages, can be defended on very similar grounds (namely, that they are needed to restrain state courts from exporting their legal doctrines to other states) and thus are entirely consistent with “good federalist” precepts.

• French court acquits satirical weekly that printed Mohammed cartoons (see Feb. 7) [DW]


• Subprime panic: “Does no one remember what it was like to get a mortgage before they were so easily securitized?” [Coyote channeling Tabarrok, Kirkendall and our own Ted]


• Food safety regulators have their eye on Amish bakers at farmers’ markets [AP/Ledger-Enquirer]


• Attorney Harpreet Singh Brar, notorious for mass filings against small business (Jun. 4, 2006, etc.), ordered “inactive” by California bar [Calif. Wage and Hour Law]


• “The litigation was much thicker than the music”, hence the downfall of 60s girl-group The Shangri-Las (Remember, Leader of the Pack) [NY mag, Althouse]


• Our comments section hits the big time [Chicago-Sun Times quotes Richard Nieporent on South Park]


• Special-needs teen brutally murders fellow student in affluent Boston suburb; did school officials keen on “mainstreaming” him downplay signs of trouble? [Globe, more, AP]


• New Mexico is 49th state to ban cockfighting, sport beloved of early American presidents [Walker @ Reason, Zincavage]


• Rudy Giuliani still vividly remembers defending NYC hospital lawsuits [Point of Law]


• “[Plaintiff husband] denied that he had been abducted by aliens, but stated that his [plaintiff] wife had been” [Cernovich]


• Forced marriage: don’t assume it only happens a world away [Dalrymple, Spectator]


• Lawyers stage sham trial aimed at inculpating third party [five years ago on Overlawyered]

• We’re among the “favorite recent discoveries” of blogging technology pioneer Dave Winer (Scripting News); his own recent brush with legal unpleasantness may have primed him for the subject (Update: and more);


• ER doc: “Her vocabulary was laced with too much plaintiffese” [Time mag via KevinMD]


• Is Spain really “overlawyered”, and if so, compared with what? [The Recorder]


• Debate kicks off between lawprofs David Wagner and Michael Krauss over Supreme Court’s recent Williams decision on punitive damages [Point of Law]


• A five year old? Doing motocross? And his parents are blaming the park? [Charlotte Observer]


• Lawyers leaking court documents to reporters from improper motives? Imagine that [Wasserman/Miami Herald]


• EU consumer law might ban sock-puppet blogs [Slashdot]


• Local paper prints full trial transcript in case of Connecticut teacher Julie Amero (Jan. 20, Feb. 15), convicted after her computer caught smutware bug [Norwich (Ct.) Bulletin via Pattis]


• Swedish woman sued by lawyer-neighbor for smoking in her own garden [UPI]


• American conservatism dead set against modernity, individual liberty, secularism? Let’s hope not [Sullivan blasts D'Souza @ New Republic]


• Car dealers didn’t warn of exhaust and oil fumes, so enterprising California lawyer wants $7500 from each of them, mostly payable to, well, guess. [Five years ago on Overlawyered]

Norm Pattis suspects the influence of cameras in the courtroom may help explain the histrionics of presiding judge Larry Seidlin (Crime and Federalism, Feb. 22; Above the Law, Feb. 22, first and second posts; Althouse, Feb. 22).

K.C. Johnson has assembled the details (Feb. 19) on the CNN/Court TV commentator’s scurrilous handling of the lacrosse rape allegations. For more on Grace, see Mar. 1, 2006, as well as Legal Blog Watch, May 4, 2005, and Suz at Large, Mar. 2, 2006 (quoting Prof. Bainbridge’s pungent assessment).

The legal professoriate does not escape unscathed from Johnson’s attention, either. He is a particular critic (e.g., Jan. 21) of the televised pronouncements on the case of New England School of Law professor Wendy Murphy. And recent assertions by South Texas College of Law professor Kathleen A. Bergin on the Feminist Law Professors blog (Jan. 29, declaring the players “far from ‘innocent’” whether or not a rape is proven in court) fail to stand up to critical scrutiny, Johnson says (Feb. 18). (More: Cernovich).

P.S. And here’s the Saturday Night Live parody. Plus: Ambrogi, Bainbridge.