Last year in Shingle Springs, Calif., a schizophrenic 34-year-old named Eddie Mies gunned down his father and then engaged in a shootout with sheriff’s deputies which resulted in his own death and the wounding of three deputies. Now two of the deputies have sued Karen Mies, mother of the slain gunman and widow of his slain father, as well as her late husband’s estate and surviving son for a combined $8 million for “for emotional distress, medical expenses, loss of earning capacity, and punitive damages.” They claim the family should have controlled Eddie better, and say the deputies “suffered anxiety and humiliation” in addition to their physical injuries.

Attorney Phillip Mastagni of Sacramento, “whose family law firm works for police unions across Northern California”, is representing the two deputies, Jon Yaws and Greg Murphy, in the suit filed in El Dorado County. Mastagni says he is confident that the suit will overcome the “firefighters’ rule”, a doctrine that historically has barred lawsuits by public safety officers against those whose negligence has allegedly led to emergencies. The rule has decayed considerably in recent years in some jurisdictions, and suits by firefighters, police, paramedics and other rescuers have multiplied.

The defendant, Mrs. Mies, a hospice nurse, had this to say:

“June 5 was a tragic day for me and my family, and it was a tragic day for the deputies who were injured,” Karen Mies said. “We were all victims that day. But this lawsuit is victimizing our family again. What do they want? My husband’s dead, my son’s dead. Do they want my house and my 10-year-old car?”

(Dorothy Korber, “Son battled officers; now mom fights suit”, Sacramento Bee, Aug. 10). Smallest Minority (Aug. 20) is particularly intrigued by allegations of “bunkers and tunnels” supposedly maintained by the younger Mies.

Public criticism that followed initial reports of the lawsuit doesn’t seem to have softened Yaws and Murphy any: per one later account (AR15.com Forums, scroll to update at end of first entry, source not identified) they’ve upped their demand to $38.4 million. What are said to be excerpts of other recent local coverage can be found on page 6 of the same extensive comments section. And the name of the third injured deputy, the one who did not sue, deserves to be recorded in this place as well: it is Melissa Meekma. More: Pro Libertate.

• If you’re claiming benefits for “total and permanent” disability it’s probably best not to enter bodybuilding competitions [Boston Globe and more, firefighter Albert Arroyo] More: GruntDoc;
• From 1884 Montreal: actionable to snub a parishioner while taking collection in church? [Volokh]
• Follow the bouncing venue in lawsuits against Rick Frenkel and Cisco over Patent Troll Tracker blog [Texas Lawyer "Tex Parte" blog]
• Individual liberty was one reason Bill Gates was free to earn his billions, too bad he’s not doing more to advance it with his philanthropy [NYTimes, Bloomberg and "tobacco control"]
• Andrew Giuliani, son of the mayor, is suing Duke University for kicking him off its golf team [Newsday, Henican] More: complaint at Popehat;
• New at Point of Law: AAJ, formerly ATLA, has its convention in Philadelphia (more); bogeyman of supposedly ultraconservative Roberts Court; why must “trophy” federal courthouses have such soulless and uncomfortable design?; Congress gunning for arbitration; too bad NYT’s enthusiasm for transparent public contracting on corporate monitors doesn’t carry over to other lawyer-hiring; the Delaware advantage in court organization; as we keep asking, what happened to Ron Motley’s yacht? and much more;
• Dr. Anna Pou, New Orleans cancer surgeon whose prosecution after Katrina roused intense controversy, recounts her experience [AP via Folo]
• “Unreal world of greed”: California appeals court throws out $88 million fee-arbitration award to Milberg Weiss and other firms following challenge to “smog impact fees” [six years ago on Overlawyered]

• Federal judge: asking employee to get coffee not an intrinsically sexist act [Legal Intelligencer]
• Kilt-clad Montgomery Blair Sibley, at press conference, adds certain je ne sais quoi to tawdry Larry Sinclair sideshow [Sydney Morning Herald]
• Remind us why Florida Gov. Crist is supposed to be an acceptable veep pick? [PoL]. Also at Point of Law: Hill’s FISA compromise may end pending telecom-privacy suits; interesting Second Circuit reverse-preference case on New Haven firefighters.
• Virginia bar authorities shaken by charges that Woodbridge attorney Stephen T. Conrad pocketed $3.4 million in injury settlements at clients’ expense [Va. Lawyers Weekly; case of Christiansburg, Va. lawyer Gerard Marks ties in with first links here]
• U.K.: Local government instructs staff that term “brainstorming” might be insensitive to persons with epilepsy, use “thought showers” instead [Telegraph; Tunbridge Wells, Kent]
• Big personal injury law firm in Australia, Keddies Lawyers, denies accusations of client overcharging and document falsification [SMH]
• Will this be on the bar exam? Massachusetts law school dean eyes war crime trials culminating in hanging for high officials of Bush Administration [Ambrogi and more, Michael Krauss and I at PoL]
• “Just another cash grab”? New Kabateck Brown Kellner “click-fraud” class actions against Google AdWords, CitySearch [Kincaid, TechCrunch/WaPo]
• Former Rep. Bob Barr, this year’s Libertarian presidential candidate, is no stranger to the role of plaintiff in politically fraught litigation [six years ago on Overlawyered, and represented by Larry Klayman to boot]

• High school graduation got rained out in Gilbert, Ariz., and a dad wants $400 from the school district for that [Arizona Republic]
• Happens all the time in one-way fee shift awards, but still worth noting: lawyer in police-misconduct case “billed 22 hours at $480 an hour — a total of $10,560 — just to figure out how much his fees are going to be” [Seattle Times]
• We get to decide and that’s that: New York judge orders that salaries of New York judges including his own be raised [PoL, Bader] Also at Point of Law: white-shoe Clifford Chance throws a party for New York lefties, should anyone be surprised? outsourcing of interrogation to profit-minded private contractors is bad when it’s Blackwater, good when it’s Motley Rice; tax break for trial lawyers said to be blocked for now.
• One firefighter killed in Boston restaurant blaze had sky-high .27 blood alcohol level, the other traces of cocaine, which probably won’t impede the inevitable lawsuit against the restaurant and other defendants [Globe, background]
• Writing again on U.S. exceptionalism, Adam Liptak contrasts our First Amendment with Canadian speech trials; James Taranto thinks he’s siding with the Canadians, but the piece looks pretty balanced to me [NYTimes, WSJ Best of the Web]
• Milberg said to be on verge of deferred prosecution agreement deal with feds involving $75 million payment and admissions of wrongdoing [NLJ]
• Courts in Australian state of Victoria, emulating a model tried in Canada, will resort more to mediation of intractable disputes [Victoria AG Rob Hulls/Melbourne Age]
• Great moments in international human rights: KGB spy on the lam sues British government for confiscating royalties he was hoping to make from his autobiography [five years ago on Overlawyered]

• Raelyn Campbell briefly captured national spotlight (”Today” show, MSNBC) with $54 million suit against Best Buy for losing laptop, but it’s now been dismissed [Shop Floor; earlier]
• Charmed life of Florida litigators Stanley and Susan Rosenblatt continues as Miami judge awards them $218 million for class action lawsuit they lost [Daily Business Report, Krauss @ PoL; earlier here, here, and here]
• Lerach said kickbacks were “industry practice” and “everybody was paying plaintiffs”. True? Top House GOPer Boehner wants hearings to find out [NAM "Shop Floor", WSJ law blog]
• It’s Dannimal House! An “office rife with booze, profanity, inappropriate sexual activity, misuse of state vehicles and on-the-job threats involving the Mafia” — must be Ohio AG Marc Dann, of NYT “next Eliot Spitzer” fame [AP/NOLA, Adler @ Volokh, Above the Law, Wood @ PoL; earlier]
• Sorry, Caplin & Drysdale, but you can’t charge full hourly rates for time spent traveling but not working on that asbestos bankruptcy [NLJ] More: Elefant.
• Fire employee after rudely asking if she’s had a face-lift? Not unless you’ve got $1.7 million to spare [Chicago Tribune]
• Daniel Schwartz has more analysis of that Stamford, Ct. disabled-firefighter case (May 1); if you want a fire captain to be able to read quickly at emergency scene, better spell that out explicitly in the job description [Ct Emp Law Blog]
• As expected, star Milberg expert John Torkelsen pleads guilty to perjury arising from lies he told to conceal his contingent compensation arrangements [NLJ; earlier]
• Case of deconstructionist prof who plans to sue her Dartmouth students makes the WSJ [Joseph Rago, op-ed page, Mindles H. Dreck @ TigerHawk; earlier]
• How’d I do, mom? No violation of fair trial for judge’s mother to be one of the jurors [ABA Journal]
• First sell the company’s stock short, then sue it and watch its share price drop. You mean there’s some ethical problem with that? [three years ago on Overlawyered]

The state of Texas recently enacted legislation requiring that all non-working fire hydrants, defined as those pumping less than 250 gallons of water per minute, be painted black so that firefighters do not waste time during emergencies hooking up to futile sources (and presumably so that nearby homeowners can also assess their risk before a fire). Alas, the new law has had an unintended consequence, according to this Sept. 18 press release (PDF) from the State Firemen’s and Fire Marshals’ Association of Texas:

Unfortunately, some water utilities in Smith County have over-reacted to the legislation by painting all fire hydrants black, most of which are functioning hydrants that pump well over 250gpm. “The utilities are painting all hydrants black to protect against liability,” said, Cody Crawford, Fire Chief of Chapel Hill Fire Department. “While this makes sense to the lawyers, it doesn’t make good common sense and it puts homeowners at risk.”

Crawford goes on to give his opinion that the practice “creates more liability than it removes”; presumably the water utilities’ lawyers disagree with that assessment (h/t reader Eric Bainter).

I previously posted on Washington’s Insurance Fair Conduct Act, known as Referendum 67. If passed by the voters, it would allow first party claimants to recover triple damages and attorney fees for those claims “unreasonably” delayed or denied.

Existing law already allows a wronged insured to bring three separate causes of action against his/her insurer for such claims: breach of contract, bad faith and violations under Washington’s Consumer Protection Act (CPA). Such existing remedies often yield bizarre results as we saw in the Woo v. Fireman’s Fund case.

The Supreme Court’s knuckleheaded 5-4 ruling upheld a judgment to pay Woo $250K he paid to settle an underlying suit, plus $750K in emotional distress and attorney fees. Obviously, there are already plenty of incentives for an insurer to avoid these judgments by acting fairly, and under this legislation Woo could have received three times more as punitive damages in addition to the “emotional distress” damages which have a punitive measure built into them. And in case you are wondering, Fireman’s Fund coverage position was perfectly reasonable.

The television ads for the Approve 67 camp are demagogic and misleading, if not outright lies. The worst has to be the ad featuring Tiffany Forslund whose father, firefighter David Potter, died allegedly because an insurer delayed payment for necessary health treatment. Forslund says:

My father would have given his life in the line of duty, turns out the insurance company took it instead.

What tripe. Not only would R-67 not apply to her father’s claim (it is intended to benefit auto, home and property policies–not health insurance) it’s not true according to the mayor of the city for which Potter worked, who said it would be covered as a workers’ compensation claim or through the city’s health plan. But the attorneys promoting this legislation could not resist such a sympathetic story of a firefighter allegedly killed by an insurance company, even if it’s entirely off-point and probably untrue. Demagoguery at its finest. And, if the claim is true Potter’s family already has remedies under existing law for emotional distress, which, for a lost loved one are rightfully substantial and the threat of such judgments deter wrongful insurer conduct. Why shall we now triple those damages?

Attorney fees are typically one-third of the gross recovery. So if the gross recovery is tripled it equals a bigger fee. But let’s say the insured prevails but the gross recovery is small? No problem. Just submit your fee request to the court on an hourly basis if it provides a greater recovery for the attorney. And, here’s another little tidbit: the attorney fee provision is mandatory but the triple damages are at the court’s discretion. Who’s looking out for who here, really? And, that the triple/punitive damages are for the deliberately vague “unreasonable” and not for criminal, willful or wanton conduct as you would expect (and would be deserved) to award punitive damages makes for a juicy tidbit indeed.

And, there’s no crisis in the first place. Check out this link from the Insurance Commissioner of Washington State showing the number of complaints against individual insurers. In 2006, Private Passenger Auto Insurance Complaints averaged one complaint for every $1.5M in premium and Homeowners Insurance Complaints averaged one complaint for every $2.5M in premium. Hardly a crisis, and nothing worthy of threatening triple damages in every instance.

This legislation will enrich those attorneys bringing these suits, bring a windfall to a small number of insureds at the greater expense of all who pay insurance, directly or indirectly.

It would appear U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn has reached the end of his patience with attorney Mark E. Brennan, and then some. Throwing out a $1.2 million verdict obtained by Brennan against the city of Denver on a claim of age discrimination against a firefighter, Judge Blackburn condemned Brennan’s courtroom antics as “disgraceful” as well as “boorish and unprofessional”:

“In over 19 years on the bench, I have seen nothing comparable,” the judge wrote. “Such disrespectful cockalorum, grandstanding, bombast, bullying and hyperbole as Mr. Brennan exhibited throughout the trial are quite beyond my experience as a jurist, and, I fervently hope, will remain an aberration during the remainder of my time on the bench.”

(Daniel J. Chacon, “Judge points to lawyer’s antics in junking $1.2 million ruling”, Rocky Mountain News, Oct. 6). No response from Mr. Brennan is recorded yet in the news coverage assembled by Google. The dictionary, incidentally, defines “cockalorum” as “boastful talk; crowing”. P.S. Brennan’s response, as reported in the Rocky Mountain News (via ABA Journal); also more details at On Point News.

Quick multiple choice question: you call the police to report an emergency. Several officers respond. Who do you want supervising these officers?

1. Smart police officers

2. Police officers who speak English
3. Police officers who can choose the right strategy from multiple possibilities
4. All of the above

Tricked you! The question can’t be answered, because police supervisors shouldn’t have to answer multiple choice questions at all:

Five police officers from Lawrence and Methuen filed a federal civil rights lawsuit yesterday against the two cities and the state, contending that the state promotional exam discriminates against members of minority groups and has prevented their advancement within the ranks.

[...]

They say the multiple-choice format of the test, not the content of the questions, has blocked the rise of minorities, many of whom grew up speaking a different language. They want the state to devise a promotion system that would better reflect the skills used by a police supervisor, instead of how well they answer multiple-choice questions.

Welcome to the world of “disparate impact” litigation, where you don’t have to demonstrate any racism to charge racial discrimination. All you have to do is claim that some groups get promoted less frequently than others, and point out that the employer can’t really prove that his standards are necessary for the job. You know, like speaking English…

“I think this exam is really outdated,” said Cano, who scored a 78 in 2006. “For me, a person whose native language is Spanish, it’s a challenge. The questions are extremely complicated.”

…or dealing with “complicated” situations. The complaints don’t even have to make sense:

Kevin Sledge, 45, a patrolman in Lawrence for 14 years, said the test favors those who have more practice taking written exams. He took the exam last year for the first time, scoring a 76, but was passed over for others who scored higher.

“Some people are more practical and verbal, and those are important skills to be a police supervisor,” he said.

Whereas multiple choice questions don’t test either practical or verbal skills? Well, I guess if you see an emergency, you can just call a lawyer instead. (H/T John Rosenberg)

(Past Overlawyered fun with civil service exams: Mar. 2005, Apr. 2006, Jan 2007, Aug. 1, others.)

Not such a swift idea if the people in the crashed vehicle are just going to tell on you:

Police arrested a 20-year-old woman Sunday for allegedly jumping into a car that collided with a police cruiser and possibly faking an injury….

Powell [Shava Shirlee-Sophia Powell, of Boynton Beach, Fla.] yelled in pain and claimed her back was hurt when firefighters and paramedics arrived, the report said. She deflected attention from rescuers trying to treat others injured in the collision, the report said. Powell was taken to Boca Raton Community Hospital where doctors found no evidence of injury. She tried to flee the hospital when she found out police were called in.

Catasha Adams, the driver of [the] Toyota that Powell jumped into, told police Powell wanted to use the accident for a lawsuit against the police department.

(Leon Fooksman, “Police accuse Boynton woman of faking crash injury”, Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, Aug. 20)(via QuizLaw).

• Kind thanks to Oklahoma’s largest newspaper, The Oklahoman, for an editorial recommending that readers “visit… on a regular basis” a certain website that “offers frequent updates on a legal climate gone wild. …an amusing if sad reality check”. (”Batting zero: Litigation reform strikes out” (editorial), Jul. 12; see also 100 Ideas Oklahoma, Jul. 23).


• All that fine print on contracts — what sort of legal effect does it have, and should you feel obliged to read it? I’m quoted, as are legal bloggers David Rossmiller and Ron Coleman (Katherine Reynolds Lewis, New Orleans Times-Picayune, Jul. 29, and other Newhouse papers)


• Again with the guru business, and I can’t even fold my legs properly (Joe Palazzolo, “Giuliani Burnishes Conservative Credentials With Choice of Legal Policy Advisers”, Legal Times, Jul. 25)


• I’m quoted criticizing a federal lawsuit filed against the City of New York for its use of written tests to screen aspiring firefighters’ reading and writing skills (Ari Paul, ” Accuse UFA Head Of Racial Politics; Rip Support of Fire Test”, The Chief/Civil Service Leader, Jul. 27 — not yet available to nonsubscribers). Relevant links here, here, here, and here.

• Not sure you’ve got probable cause for your motorist stop? Why not just fabricate it? [Grits for Breakfast]


• California Attorney General Jerry Brown cracks down on a prolific filer of Prop 65 (toxic warning) cases, New Canaan, Ct.-based Clifford Chanler [The Recorder]


• Man mounts San Francisco rooftop with apparent “self-destructive” intent, rescue effort by firefighters fails, now family’s suing the city [SF Chronicle]


• Why Mort Zuckerman says the law is the opposite of sex [Lattman, from offline New Yorker mag]


• Who’s stirring the pot on client litigation against big law firm Hogan & Hartson? [Lat] Update: it’s a former client [Turkewitz]


• Some top judges in Australia embarrassed after confessing activist leanings to an American academic who was writing it all down [The Australian]


• Cost of defending against a white-collar crime prosecution: seven figures if you’re lucky [Lattman via Lat]


• New at Point of Law: chiding Supreme Court Chicken Littles, more on Canadian sovereignty and the Conrad Black trial, reasonable degrees of expert witness certainty, making litigation instead of steel, Michael Krauss criticizes Virginia Tech compensation fund;


• If you can’t do something about the falling petals, maybe your flower shop shouldn’t be in the train station [U.K. Telegraph]


• Illinois tells lawyers to hire a doctor to certify merit of med-mal claim, but permits that doctor to remain anonymous [three years ago on Overlawyered]

A jury has convicted prominent attorney Stephen Yagman, who’s prospered greatly filing police-misconduct and civil-rights lawsuits in Los Angeles, of 19 counts of attempted tax evasion, bankruptcy fraud and money laundering. Prosecutors said Yagman led a lavish lifestyle while declaring bankruptcy, hiding assets from creditors, and failing to pay payroll tax. (”Famed SoCal civil rights attorney found guilty of tax fraud”, AP/Riverside Press-Enterprise, Jun. 22; Patterico, Jun. 22 and Jun. 23 (not sharing Duke lawprof Erwin Chemerinsky’s somber view of the verdict)). Last year (Jul. 5, 2006) Yagman sued a retired police detective who in a letter expressed “glee and profound satisfaction” over the lawyer’s indictment. For Yagman’s other appearances on this site, see Feb. 23, 2000, Mar. 18, 2005, Apr. 3, 2006, and Nov. 4, 2006.

Meanwhile, the city attorney of Los Angeles, Rocky Delgadillo, who’s figured in these columns a couple of times (grandstanding on Grand Theft Auto, Jan. 28 of last year; defending the city’s $2.7 million settlement of the firefighter dog food case, Nov. 22) seems to have landed in an ethical spot of bother himself (more).

Like pretty much every big-city fire department, the one in Los Angeles has come under intense legal pressure to hire more female applicants, and in doing so to water down or eliminate whatever former prerequisites for hiring (such as physical tests calling for a show of upper-body strength) show “disparate impact” against women. And having been whipped up one side of the street on those grounds, it now gets whipped down the other side for having apparently responded in the most direct and practical way to the first set of legal pressures:

In the latest bizarre court case involving the Los Angeles Fire Department, a jury has awarded $3.75 million to a male fire captain who said he was retaliated against for not making training exercises easier for women.

Fire Capt. Frank Lima alleged in his lawsuit against the city that he was told by superiors that he shouldn’t hold women to the same standards as men. The reason: The Fire Department was under pressure from City Hall to increase the number of women within its ranks.

Thursday’s judgment in the 2 1/2 -week case in Los Angeles County Superior Court was notable because it involved $2.96 million in noneconomic damages — in other words, money for pain and suffering.

In his lawsuit, Lima alleged that he suffered heart problems and stress after the department tried to punish him and subsequently denied him certain assignments.

(Steve Hymon, “L.A. fire captain awarded $3.75 million”, Los Angeles Times, Jul. 9). For more on the legal pressures on fire departments to relax performance standards that women have trouble meeting, see Jan. 18. For a related set of sued-if-you-do, sued-if-you-don’t dilemmas for fire departments, see Mar. 24, 2005 (reverse discrimination suits by whites after Chicago altered rules to encourage black applicants). Finally, we covered (Dec. 5, 2006 and earlier posts) the saga of the $2.7 million settlement that the LAFD paid to a firefighter subjected to a prank in which he was tricked into eating dog food.

The newspaper reprinted my warning labels column yesterday (Walter Olson, “Product labels have come unglued from reality”, Mar. 25). Reader Gary Neyens of Round Rock, Tex. wrote in to say he enjoyed the piece and added one of his own favorite stories:

I recently replaced the serpentine (fan) belt on my Ford pickup. The Ford Motorcraft packaging warned “Shut off engine before checking or replacing belt”. I know the reason for this warning - - Somebody, somewhere…

While on the subject of publicity, Legal NewsLine did a whole article (with file photo!) based on my recent column about not counting the trial lawyers out (Rob Luke, Anti-business suits still surging, warns tort-reform expert”, Mar. 21). Last month New York Post reporter Janon Fisher quoted me in an article on the “firefighter’s rule” which historically has barred injured public rescue personnel from suing the people they were rescuing, or others whose negligence allegedly led to disaster (”Firemen file arson lawsuits”, Feb. 2). And a couple of publicity clips from last year that I didn’t round up at the time: at the North County Times’ The Californian, Bridgit Jordan quotes me on Mayor Bloomberg’s anti-tobacco philanthropy (”Donation may go up in smoke”, Aug. 22); and Joseph Goldstein of the New York Sun quotes me in an illuminating article about the “creeping oversight” of New York City government operations obtained by the feds through consent decrees and the like (”Bush Administration, in Series of Federal Lawsuits Against New York Agencies, Gains Creeping Oversight of Local Government”, Aug. 15).

Lt. David Lenotti says the fire department of Stamford, Connecticut improperly denied him extra time on its test for promotion to captain even though he had a diagnosis of learning disability. A state human rights investigator has backed Lenotti’s complaint, which is scheduled for a Jan. 23 hearing, but the Stamford authorities beg to differ:

The city has never granted anyone extra time on the lieutenant’s or captain’s exams, said Felicia Wirzbicki, human resources generalist. … The reasoning is that lieutenants and captains are in charge at emergency scenes and have to make split-second decisions, Wirzbicki and other city officials said. Those decisions often are based on floor plans, hazardous material reports and similar documents, they said. Speed is an “essential function of the job,” the city argued. … “You don’t get extra time at a fire scene,” Wirzbicki said.

None of which seems to cut much ice with disabled-rights advocates:

“You’re supposed to give accommodations, period,” said Suzanne Kitchen, a clinical instructor and consultant for the Job Accommodation Network, a federally funded non-profit that provides employers with advice on disability rights. “No is never the right answer.”

That last sound bite is actually quite false as a legal matter; in fact Ms. Kitchen herself is described elsewhere in the article as correctly noting that accommodations may sometimes be refused under the law. But it does have quite a ring to it, though, doesn’t it? (Zach Lowe, “State official: Disability rights apply on fire captain test”, Norwalk Advocate, Jan. 15). Jeff Hall at Created Things comments (Jan. 16).

All of which is very much business as usual in today’s employment discrimination law. Long before the disabled-rights suits came along, fire departments had came under intense attack by feminist litigators seeking to invalidate testing of applicants’ physical strength, agility and so forth, particularly when timed tests were involved. I wrote about this history at some length in The Excuse Factory, a few of the highlights figuring in this 1997 magazine piece. An excerpt:

[In Brunet v. Columbus] Judge Kinneary also disallowed the city’s practice of awarding credit for speed in accomplishing the dummy rescue or other simulated tasks such as hoisting equipment to upper floors (men tended to finish the tasks more quickly than women). Why? Well, Kinneary wrote, again accepting the arguments of plaintiffs’ lawyers, testimony had been given that “sometimes firefighters work all-out, and sometimes they pace themselves; it depends on the task at hand.” In other words, they hurry only sometimes, and other times save their energy because they expect to need it later. From this the judge concluded that all applicants who made it through the tasks at all deserved equal ranking. The case for preferring recruits who could work quickly was merely, he said, “anecdotal.” Yes, you read that right. It seems people have picked up this anecdotal idea that firefighters should do their job fast, maybe because they’ve heard anecdotally that fires left undoused tend to spread. Many press accounts adopted the same high-minded agnosticism about exactly what it takes to fight fires. City officials defending tests say “speed is critical” in combating blazes, reported the New York Times, in the best tradition of we-print-all-viewpoints journalism. “Opponents argue that it is not.”

I was a guest just now on the radio O’Reilly Factor, guest-hosted by KABC’s Doug McIntyre, to discuss the L.A. firefighter dog food hazing suit. A couple more background links on the story, to go with those collected by Ted above: Christine Pelisek, “Dog food caper”, L.A. Weekly, Nov. 21 (”for nearly a week after the original story hit the papers — a tale of racist America making a black man eat dog food — the print media all but squelched the ensuing developments. The only hint of a brewing debacle was an almost invisible, 2-inch-long “brief” in the Los Angeles Times on November 15.”) and Eric Berlin, Nov. 21 (discussing several stories on this site, and disputing the notion that dog food somehow historically evokes slavery) and Nov. 22.

We’d like to take credit, but: After talk-radio-flamed outrage over the City Council’s approval of a $2.7 million settlement for “racial harassment” for a 6′5″ African firefighter nicknamed “Big Dog” who was pranked with a meal of dog-food-spaghetti-sauce, the mayor vetoed the settlement. The “John and Ken Show” website posted photos of the plaintiff, Tennie Pierce, engaging in other pranks. Five council members backtracked after voters started sending cans of dog food to the politicians as a protest, which makes it unlikely the veto will be overridden, even though the settlement was approved 11-1. Hurt politically: the office of city attorney Rocky Delgadillo, whose office continues to defend the settlement. (Sandy Banks and Steve Hymon, “Fury on the airwaves undid bias settlement”, LA Times, Nov. 22)