(Updated from July 30 post with new dates.)  I’m going outside the Beltway, and may be in your neighborhood, to speak at a variety of Federalist Society chapters:

• September 3, Loyola Law School, New Orleans (obesity litigation)
• September 4, LSU Law School (obesity litigation)
• October 13, Ave Maria Law School (Is Overlawyering Overtaking Democracy?)
• October 14 (new date!), University of Michigan Law School (debate with Professor Steven Croley)
• October 15, DePaul University Law School (class action settlements)
• October 16, University of Chicago Law School (class action settlements and Grand Theft Auto)
• October 16, Chicago-Kent College of Law (obesity litigation)
• October 21, Florida State University College of Law (TBD)
• October 22, University of Florida Levin College of Law (TBD)
• October 23, Stetson University College of Law (TBD)

Please do suggest my name to your local Federalist Society chapter (or ACS chapter or what-have-you) if you wish me to speak at your law school. (And if your law school is in the Chicago or New Orleans metropolitan areas, now’s a good time to free-ride off of what your neighbors have already scheduled and help save the Federalist Society money. Otherwise I’ll just use the free time to visit local casinos.)

• Raft-flip mishap at Riviera Beach, Fla. water park: family’s collective weight far exceeded posted limit on warning signs, they’re mulling suit [Palm Beach Post]
• New Rigsby/Katrina depositions include sensational new allegations of Scruggs misconduct as well as touches of pathos [Point of Law]
• “Al Gore Places Infant Son In Rocket To Escape Dying Planet” [The Onion]
• So much coverage of Hasbro vs. Scrabulous but so little solid reportage by which readers might judge strength of copyright infringement claims [Obbie]
• City of Seattle spokesman says police actions in shootout with gunman might have “saved countless other lives”, which hasn’t saved city from being sued by injured bystander [Seattle Times]
• First the vaccine-autism scare, now this? “Mercury militia” crows after FDA agrees to move forward with statement on possible risks of dental amalgam, but maybe there’s not a whole lot for them to chew on [Harriet Hall, Science-Based Medicine]
• Of lurid allegations in paralegal Angela Robinson’s suit against Texas plaintiff potentate Richard Laminack, the most printable are the ones about chiseling fen-phen clients and not paying overtime [American Lawyer; Laminack response]
• U.K. attorney suing former bosses for £19 million: that wasn’t me at the interview, that was my alternative personality [Times Online]
• Allegation: Foxwoods croupier thought he could mutter lewd comments in Spanish about Anglo female patrons, but guess what, one was entirely fluent [NY Post]
• “Richard Branson claims to own all uses of ‘Virgin’” [three years ago on Overlawyered]

Fort Lauderdale, Fla., criminal defense attorney Sean Conway claims he was within his First Amendment rights and should not face disciplinary action over his blog comments calling one of the judges he practices before an “evil, unfair witch” who is “seemingly mentally ill”. (Jordana Mishory, “Attorney Argues His ‘Witch’ Comments About Judge Are Protected Speech”, Daily Business Review, Jul. 16; earlier). To me, this seems rather to miss the point: sure, almost everyone but a member of the local bar enjoys or should enjoy a First Amendment right to call a judge an evil, unfair witch. Lawyers admitted to practice, however, enlist as “officers of the court” with special obligations, among which may be (to name only one) to avoid the sorts of displays of enmity that might complicate future cases before that judge, as by provoking recusal. For an extreme instance, see the Geoffrey Fieger episode recounted here, here, here, and here. More on what lawyers can say about judges from Bruce Campbell (Campbell & Chadwick) at Texas Lawyer.

Updating our previous story, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports that the Florida Bar has taken action against the law firm that may have ripped off millions of dollars from consumers.

State documents filed in Broward County Circuit Court claim that in 2006 and 2007 the law firm run by Laura Hess and an affiliated company managed by Edward Cherry paid $12 million to friends and relatives, and to businesses run by former employees or associates of Hess and Cherry.

In the meantime, the firm did not negotiate with clients’ creditors or review credit records as promised, resulting in some consumers being sued for their debts or having to file bankruptcy, records showed.

Hess Kennedy Chartered LLC and The Consumer Law Center collected “exorbitant” upfront fees, usually up to 15 percent of the client’s unsecured debt, according to the Florida Bar’s Tuesday filing with the Florida Supreme Court.

• “The accusatory legal document begins with several remarks defaming the skills, education, ability, integrity, and honesty of the physician being charged.” [Donald May, State Policy Blog] But hey, don’t take it personally, lawyers say [Mark Crane, Medical Economics] Good luck with that [Chiaramonte/Examiner, KevinMD, more]
• Law throwing open Florida doctors’ peer review to lawyers was bad enough, but now state high court has applied it retroactively to records created before law was enacted [KevinMD guest post; background at PoL here, here, and here]
• Even the New York Times hails as “sensible” laws encouraging medical apologies by making them inadmissible as evidence of wrongdoing [editorial]; but see counterexample to the usual reportage [Berlin/Am. Journal of Roentgenology via Buckeye Surgeon]
• A med-mal defense attorney says plaintiffs would win more often in proposed “health courts” than they do in the cases he handles [Medical Economics, more, and similarly]
• More evidence, this time from study of orthopedists, that docs rated as cold or callous attract far more than their proportionate share of suits [Orthopedics Today]
• EMTALA, the law forcing emergency rooms to take all comers, “has created the very conditions it sought to avoid” [Edwin Leap, M.D.O.D.] Watch for “free-standing” ERs that dodge mandate by refusing federal dollars [Scalpel or Sword?, Health Care BS] Semi-defense of law [Over My Med Body]
• Besieged state of dispersed emergency rooms and specialists is one reason for use of those risky helicopters that fly patients to the big city [Williams/Health Business Blog, M.D.O.D.]
• Docs should stand up to family members demanding futile or inappropriate end-of-life care [Musings of a Dinosaur] Relatedly, daughter on dying father: “if you give him any more morphine, I will sue you.” [Fat Doctor]

“I have no problem being accused of being a professional whatever,” says Allen Fox, who’s filed 139 disabled-accessibility lawsuits over six years in concert with attorney Samuel Aurelio, as many as eight of the similarly worded complaints in a day. Most of the complaints result in the payment of legal fees and Fox, of West Palm Beach, Fla., pays nothing on the rare occasions he loses.

Aurilio, who has filed 274 ADA cases in Florida, including Fox’s, laments that a few lawyers have given all of those who fight for the disabled a bad name. The poster child is a North Miami lawyer who in 2003 was sanctioned by U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks for filing 13 lawsuits on behalf of a man he claimed was a quadriplegic who later walked in to give his deposition in one of the cases.

Not only was the man not disabled, he “did not know what a quadriplegic was, and when the term was explained to him, he was repulsed by the thought of being so incapacitated,” Middlebrooks wrote in a blistering 18-page order sanctioning lawyer Lawrence Fuller.

Fuller was also admonished by the Florida Bar; by one estimate, he’d taken in $3 million in his ADA practice by that point. (Jane Musgrave, “‘Pro Plaintiff’ Crusades for Disabled Access”, Palm Beach Post/Lakeland Ledger, May 12).

• Significant if true: Ninth Circuit may have finally decided that judges should stop micromanaging Forest Service timber sales [Lands Council v. McNair, Adler @ Volokh]
• GMU lawprof/former Specter aide whose law review output grabbed big chunks of others’ work without attribution doesn’t belong on the federal bench, though he may have a future at Harvard Law [Liptak, NYT; WSJ law blog]
• Update on gift card class actions (earlier) filed by Madison County, Ill.’s mother-daughter team of Armettia Peach and Ashley Peach [MC Record; more background here and here]
• If you regard demand letters from attorneys as menacing and aggressive, maybe you’re one of those “lawyer-haters” with cockamamie notions of loser-pays [Greenfield, and again]
• Just wait till Public Citizen goes after those “charities” that spend more on telemarketing than they raise by it — oh, wait a minute [LA Times via Postrel]
• U.K.: nursery schools urged to report as “racist” incidents in which pre-schoolers say “yuk” about spicy foreign foods [BBC, Telegraph, Taranto; the author speaks, via Michael Winter, USA Today]
• Blawg Review #167 creatively assigns each of 50+ blog posts to its own “state”, though it took some doing to associate us with “Maryland” [Jonathan Frieden, E-Commerce Law]
• I will NOT go around saying Miami-Dade judges are being paid off… I will NOT go around saying Miami-Dade judges are being paid off… [Daily Business Review, earlier]
• “‘I’m thinking of getting disability.’ … This individual figured that [it] was tantamount to a career choice”. [physician blogger Edwin Leap]

Three years ago we noted (following reporting by Ed Lowe and J.E. Espino of the Appleton, Wis. Post-Crescent) (more) that

Representatives of the Hollywood, Fla.-based law firm of Schwartz Zweben & Associates have played a substantial role behind the scenes in helping organize, promote and support the Ms. Wheelchair America pageant and some of its state affiliates. And lawyers with the firm have filed more than 200 lawsuits in at least seven states and the District of Columbia on behalf of at least 13 pageant participants, “including state and national titleholders, state coordinators and pageant judges”.

Now the Birmingham, Ala. News follows up on the case of Colleen Macort, Ms. Wheelchair Florida 2002, who has filed more than 73 disabled-accessibility actions in Alabama “but has never spent a day in court because of settlements”. Local law provides that Macort cannot be compensated for filing the lawsuits, but the Wisconsin paper reported that the firm of Schwartz Zweben had engaged her as a consultant on other cases. The reporter is kind enough to quote me and mention this site (Liz Ellaby, “Bessemer woman crusades to address disability act violations, provoking critics”, Birmingham News, Jul. 3).

In the state of Washington, Ms. Wheelchair Washington 2005, Michelle Beardshear, has teamed up with the Florida firm to file 15 lawsuits, of which twelve have been settled, against enterprises in Clark County (Kathie Durbin, “Advocate for disabled not hesitant to sue for access”, The Columbian, May 27 courtesy Chamber ILR). And in March, Schwartz Zweben & Slingbaum (as it is now called) swooped down to sue twelve defendants in the Tucson area, including a number of well-known restaurants, alleging ADA violations. (Josh Brodesky, “12 Tucson businesses facing suits alleging Disabilities Act problems”, Arizona Daily Star, Mar. 28).

• Business groups have signed off on dreadful ADA Restoration Act aimed at expanding disabled-rights lawsuits, reversing high court decisions that had moderated the law [WSJ; more here and here]
• U.K. man to win damages from rail firms on claim that trauma of Paddington crash turned him into deranged killer [Times Online]
• Patent cases taken on contingency lead to gigantic paydays for D.C.’s Dickstein Shapiro and Wiley Rein [Kim Eisler, Washingtonian; related last year at Eric Goldman's]
• Fort Lauderdale injury lawyer disbarred after stealing $300K in client funds; per an ABA state-by-state listing, Florida has not enacted payee notification to help prevent/detect such goings-on [Sun-Sentinel; more]
• I’ll pay top dollar for that spot under the bridge: tech firms hope to outbid patent trolls for marginal inventor rights [ABA Journal]
• Enviro-sympathetic analysis of Navy sonar case [Jamison Colburn, Dorf on Law, first and second posts via Adler @ Volokh]
• Obama proposal for youth national service “voluntary”? Well, schools will lose funds if they fail to meet goals [Goldberg, LAT; bad link fixed now]
• Not-so-independent sector: under pressure from Sacramento legislators (Feb. 6, PoL May 30), California foundations pledge to redirect millions toward minority causes [CRC]
• James Lileks on lawyer-friendly Microsoft Minnesota settlement [four years ago on Overlawyered]

The federal judges in the Northern District of Georgia decided to place curbs on the famously litigious inmate who’s filed more than 1,000 lawsuits nationwide naming celebrities and politicians as members of hallucinatory cabals against him. In March the judges enjoined him from filing more suits without permission in the district, which he can do only if he agrees to be prosecuted for false statements. (Miami Daily Business Review, Jun. 12, also with some discussion of Jack Thompson and of a few other Florida litigants who’ve had their acts shut down after filing (e.g.) 18, 20 and 60+ meritless or inappropriate actions.)

The order in the Northern District of Georgia has not prevented Riches from continuing to file lawsuits against celebrities and public figures elsewhere, as in the federal District of South Carolina. (Rachel Barron, “Vinod Khosla Slapped With $43M Lawsuit”, Greentech Media, Jun. 20).

• 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]

So why not become a judge instead?

Fort Lauderdale attorney Bruce Rogow, who teaches legal ethics at Nova Southeastern University’s Shepard Broad Law Center, said [Ricardo] Corona’s campaign should not be penalized for something that happened 20 years ago.

“Being barred from the banking business doesn’t mean you can’t be a lawyer,” he said.

Corona, unlike his father and brother, never faced criminal charges following the collapse of a bank acquired with drug money, but the FDIC barred him permanently from involvement with regulated banks. Palm Beach County judicial-election consultant Andre Fladell looks at the bright side:

“The argument of performance is not a fair one. Everybody’s got an incredible past, and it doesn’t stop them from being a fair judge,” he said. “A person who’s been involved with the sleaze can recognize it better than someone who hasn’t.”

(Billy Shields, Miami Daily Business Review, Jun. 19).

• Florida trial lawyers have funneled millions to Gov. Charlie Crist and GOP state legislators; now guess why Orlando isn’t going to get commuter rail [Bousquet/St. Petersburg Times; Sentinel]
• What his ex-law firm told the world was “extremely inappropriate personal conduct” was in reality no more than a “brief, consensual kiss” with co-worker, charges attorney in $90 million defamation suit; Kasowitz Benson says it was following zero tolerance policy [American Lawyer]
• SCOTUS, 9-0, Thomas writing, narrows scope for money-laundering charges over hiding unexplained cash — but will that curb forfeiture abuse? [Grits for Breakfast, Greenfield]
• After West Virginia high court refuses to review $405 million royalty dispute jury verdict against Chesapeake Energy and another defendant, company scraps plans to build $30 million headquarters in the state [PoL]
• Even after discounting anti-corporate rhetoric, there does seem to be a story here about aggressive seed patent litigation tactics used by agri-giant Monsanto, a firm known to our readers [Barlett & Steele, Vanity Fair; earlier]
• Medical liability consequences of much-promoted concept of hospital “never events” [Buckeye Surgeon]
• Cellphone rage update: Judge Robert Restaino ousted for jailing 46 people after one of the annoying devices rang out in his Niagara Falls, N.Y. courtroom [Buffalo News, earlier]

It “won’t accept any more filings” from the embattled anti-videogame attorney “without the signature of another Florida Bar member.” (DBR). Relatedly, Above the Law is retiring Thompson to a Hall of Fame in which he will be ineligible for further naming as ATL’s Lawyer of the Day, because it just isn’t fair to other lawyers who do outlandish things to let Thompson win so often.

You guessed it: it’s the Jack Thompson Florida folly discussed here a couple of weeks ago (Bonnie Goldstein, Slate, Mar. 7). Bonus: the court includes a reference to the precedents set by Montgomery Blair Sibley in his struggles with the Florida bar (earlier). P.S. More from Dennis McCauley at GamePolitics who exchanges emails with Thompson regarding his use of a photo of burned-out Hiroshima to presage what may “figuratively” happen to the Florida bar if he gets sanctioned.

“A police officer has sued the family of a 1-year-old boy who nearly drowned because she slipped and injured a knee responding to their 9-1-1 rescue call.” Andrea Eichhorn, a police sergeant in Casselberry, Florida, responded to the pool accident, and now “claims the boy’s family left a puddle of water on the floor, causing her fall during the rescue efforts. She broke her knee and missed two months of work.” So she’s suing the Cosmillo family. “It’s a situation where the Cosmillos have caused these problems, brought them on themselves, then tried to play the victim,” says her attorney, David Heil. Joey Cosmillo, the infant in question, suffered severe brain damage and lives in a nursing home now. (Rene Stutzman, “Cop who fell on the job sues family of baby who almost drowned”, Orlando Sentinel, Oct. 10; AP/Florida Today, Oct. 10)(slightly reworded to clarify sequence of events).

Plus: commentary on the above (Mike Thomas, “Hello, 911? Send a cop — who won’t sue”, Orlando Sentinel, Oct. 11). And update: cop decides to withdraw suit after public outcry.

Reader J.B. points us to Tampa physician David Lubin writing in the Tampa Tribune June 11 on the Lucia med-mal verdict we discussed in May. The column is must-read:

Continue Reading »

Peter Lattman reported on Gary Farmer, a Florida judge who decided to try his hand at humorous legal writing in the course of deciding a lawsuit. Discussion of the opinion around the internet (see, e.g., Orin Kerr) focused on the propriety of a judge turning his job into a forum for self-promotion. Regardless of whether judges are allowed to have fun with their work, in my opinion, it wasn’t very funny at all. But perhaps I had lost my sense of humor after reading the ridiculous nature of the lawsuit.

The case was brought by the owners of the championship racehorse Funny Cide against the publishers of the Miami Herald, for a newspaper report that the horse’s jockey had used an illegal device to help him win the Kentucky Derby. The report was false, and the paper ran a correction. But that wasn’t good enough for the owners of Funny Cide; they sued in May 2005.

Their complaint? Although Funny Cide won the Preakness, the false report caused the horse to lose the Belmont Stakes, and hence miss out on the Triple Crown, which would have been worth large sums of money.

Their theory? Funny Cide’s jockey was so motivated to disprove the false report that he worked the horse too hard in the Preakness, which tired the horse out so it couldn’t win the Belmont three weeks later.

As you can imagine, this theory is (to use the technical legal term) loony. Even if they had a snowball’s chance of proving causation — as if there were no other possible reason a horse might lose a race? — they would also have to show that it was foreseeable by the Herald that their report would cause this to happen. This they obviously could not do, and so the court granted summary judgment to the newspaper. What makes this case especially egregious, though, is that the humorous opinion being discussed above wasn’t written by the trial court; Gary Farmer is an appellate judge. That’s correct: the horse’s owners appealed the dismissal of their frivolous lawsuit.

In case you were wondering, Bruce Rogow was listed as one of the attorneys for the horse’s owners.

Mr. Rogow has taught Civil Procedure, Federal Jurisdiction, Constitutional Law, Appellate Practice, Criminal Law and Legal Ethics.