• Joe Nocera’s recent column on the Vioxx settlement infuriated loyalists of the plaintiff’s bar, and they won’t like his new one on lead paint litigation much better [NY Times]
• Trial of Overlawyered favorite Jack Thompson over ethical charges leveled by Florida bar wraps up, but judge won’t rule right away [GamePolitics earlier, more recent posts]
• Two joggers hit by driver alongside Pacific Coast Highway will share $49 million from city of Dana Point — allegedly the bike lane was too wide — so now here come the concrete barriers [LA Times]
• Do makers of anti-PC documentary “Indoctrinate U.” owe cash to Indiana U. for infringing on its logo? [Maloney, OpinionJournal, Coleman] Update Dec. 11: settled.
• Casselberry, Fla. cop who sued parents after boy’s near-drowning in pool has now lost her job following public outcry over the incident [Orlando Sentinel; earlier]
• Lawyer who says he was defamed by commenters on DontDateHimGirl.com is back in court [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Ambrogi, On Point; earlier here, here, etc.]
• Outspoken blog of BU prof Dr. Michael Siegel ticks off “tobacco control” activists [Beam, Globe]
• Warning label alert: old Sesame Street episodes unsafe for children? [Stier, Wash. Times]
• Furor mounts in and out of Canada over “human rights” complaint against Maclean’s over Mark Steyn book excerpt [Wente, Globe and Mail; Eteraz, UK Guardian; Steyn, NRO; Kimball]
• Judge rejects lawsuit by animal rights group challenging UCSF animal testing [SF Chronicle]
• New at Point of Law: How do all those big cases wind up in Judge Jack Weinstein’s court, anyway?; latest Richard Epstein podcast is on antitrust, Microsoft, AT&T, etc.; abuse of the Family and Medical Leave Act; welcome new contributor Marie Gryphon; Yale Law clinic sues Yale-New Haven Hospital; bar official dismisses concerns about cy pres slush funds; breastfeeding accommodation on the job, via lawsuit?; just what New York needs, a new state law school at Binghamton; and much more.

Last year, New York City Mayor Bloomberg filed federal lawsuits against bunches of gun stores across the country; we’ve covered these suits extensively. (See, e.g. May 2006, Jun. 2006), Sep. 2006). NYC sent people to stores in places such as Georgia, Ohio, Virginia and South Carolina; these city agents then conducted “stings” in which they made supposedly illegal firearms purchases. Bloomberg then sued these stores, claiming that the guns were ending up in New York City and that the stores should for some reason be liable for this.

Somehow, despite the fact that whatever illegal sales took place did so in Georgia, Ohio, Virginia and South Carolina, the suit ended up in the Brooklyn courtroom of federal Judge Jack Weinstein, the man who has never seen a products liability case he couldn’t endorse. The gun stores moved to dismiss the suits on the grounds that New York courts have no jurisdiction.

Last week, Weinstein rejected the gun stores’ motion in a 99 page opinion (PDF) replete with anti-gun rhetoric (about criminals who “terrorize” the city and descriptions of guns as “Saturday Night Specials”) and citations to his own decisions in previous gun-litigation cases (Jul. 2003) So the suits will continue; a trial date has been set for January.

Republican presidential-non-candidate Fred Thompson doesn’t think much more of these suits than we do.

Eastern District of New York Judge Jack Weinstein heard the first challenge to the Lawful Commerce in Arms Act Monday. Tom Perrotta of the New York Law Journal reports that Weinstein was dismissive of the constitutional arguments, but possibly open to the plaintiffs’ attempt to expand an exception in the Act into a loophole that would encompass virtually all litigation against gun manufacturers. (NYC Claims Exception in New Federal Law Allows Gun Suit, Nov. 23). See also Nov. 9; Apr. 13, 2004.

In a 233-page ruling, federal judge Jack Weinstein has dismissed a lawsuit on behalf of Vietnamese plaintiffs demanding compensation over the use of the defoliant Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. (William Glaberson, “Agent Orange Case for Millions of Vietnamese Is Dismissed”, New York Times, Mar. 10). As Julian Ku puts it, “If the plaintiffs can’t convince Judge Weinstein, who can they convince?” The case is separate from one that has been allowed to proceed seeking compensation on behalf of U.S. veterans, despite a settlement brokered and approved by Judge Weinstein years ago which had been widely thought to have resolved that category of claim (see Jul. 4, 2003).

Several years ago, in a controversial ruling, activist federal judge Jack Weinstein ruled that health insurance plans in New York could sue tobacco companies for cost recoupment under state consumer protection law. The result, in 2000, was a jury verdict of $17 million to which Weinstein added an award of $32 million in attorney’s fees (see Mar. 6-7, 2002). However, the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, has now declared that the basis of the case is invalid: the Blues can’t invoke the consumer protection act. That will probably mean the suit’s dismissal. Health insurers do have a separate right to sue under older principles of “subrogation”, but the tobacco companies have robust defenses against that variety of action. (John Caher, “Insurer Loses Bid for Direct Recovery in Test Case Against Cigarette Makers”, New York Law Journal, Oct. 20). Two other Blue Cross actions in other states have also been dismissed. On dismissal of union health plans’ suits against tobacco companies, see Jan. 11, 2000.

And what about similar actions on behalf of government health insurers, as in the state-Medicaid legislation? Well, the handwriting would seem to be on the wall that those cases are not exactly founded on a good legal theory of recovery either — the trouble being that in the mean time the muscle of the state AGs and their lawyers nonetheless managed to extract hundreds of billions in tobacco lucre.

As if to confirm this website’s worst fears (Mar. 31, 2003 and Mar. 24, 2003), federal Judge Jack Weinstein of the Eastern District of New York is permitting the City of New York to proceed with a “public nuisance” suit against the gun industry. If that theory sounds eerily familiar, it is because a Manhattan appellate state court threw out an essentially identical public nuisance lawsuit by the state of New York against the gun industry in the Sturm, Ruger case, noting that New York state law did not countenance such attenuated theories of liability (Jun. 30 and Jul. 4). The district court opinion is a marvelous example of how an unprecedented theory of liability lifts itself up by the bootstraps: the decision relies heavily on Judge Weinstein’s previous opinions and the Ninth Circuit’s unreasoned Ileto v. Glock decision (Dec. 3 and Nov. 20); while claiming that Sturm, Ruger supports it, the decision ignores language (and related precedent) in that opinion that would preclude the City’s theory of liability. (Tom Perotta, “Federal Judge Keeps New York City’s Gun Suit Alive”, New York Law Journal, Apr. 13; City of New York v. Beretta opinion).

Update: Clayton Cramer comments.

Continue Reading »

Upholding an advisory jury’s verdict in favor of the firearms industry, federal judge Jack Weinstein has dismissed the NAACP’s public nuisance lawsuit against 68 gun manufacturers and distributors, discussed earlier in this space. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People had asked the court to declare the manufacturers and distributors liable for creating a public nuisance under New York law. Rather than monetary damages, the NAACP sought “sweeping restrictions on buyers and sellers of handguns.” (Tom Hays, “Judge Dismisses NAACP Gun Lawsuit,” Assoc. Press, July 21, 2003). Judge Weinstein said that “while the NAACP’s evidence showed some gun retailers were careless in allowing a large number of handguns to enter the illegal market, the group did not prove its members suffered unique harm.” (”Court dismisses NAACP gun suit,” Reuters, July 21, 2003). His 175-page opinion is available here.

Judge Weinstein’s ruling follows by a month a Manhattan appellate court’s decision affirming the dismissal of state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s lawsuit against gun manufacturers, also brought on public nuisance grounds.

As earlier discussed by Walter, a Manhattan appellate court has affirmed the dismissal of Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s state lawsuit against gun manufacturers. Spitzer had sued under a theory of “public nuisance.” The opinion is now on-line and the court’s language is interesting:

[P]laintiff would have us summarily ignore: [...]

2) the importance and fairness of considering such concepts as remoteness, duty, proximate cause and the significance of the indisputable intervention of unlawful and frequently violent acts of criminals — over whom defendants have absolutely no control — who actually, directly, and most often intentionally, cause the cited harm;

3) the significance and unfairness of holding defendants accountable even though their commercial activity is wholly lawful and currently heavily regulated, and that their products are non-defective; and

4) the plain fact that courts are the least suited, least equipped, and thus the least appropriate branch of government to regulate and micro-manage the manufacturing, marketing, distribution and sale of handguns.

An identical federal suit filed by the NAACP is pending before Judge Jack Weinstein in Brooklyn. (Samuel Maull, “Appeals court affirms dismissal of state’s lawsuit against gun makers,” AP, June 24).

Weinstein is perhaps best known for his work on the Agent Orange class action settlement, which the U.S. Supreme Court recently allowed to be reopened when it split 4-4 in its review of a Second Circuit opinion holding that the settlement did not preclude veterans from seeking additional damages. There are obvious implications, since now class action defendants risk losing the benefits of finality in the Second Circuit. (Tony Mauro, “Vets Win Chance At Agent Orange Damages,” Legal Times, June 10).
(Full disclosure: My firm filed an amicus brief on behalf of the Product Liability Advisory Council in Dow Chemical v. Stephenson.)

June 10-11 – New Orleans cleanup continues. “It was bad enough that New Orleans personal injury attorney Curtis Coney Jr. was illegally paying ‘runners’ to solicit accident victims, paying them $500 for each ambulance-chasing referral. When his secretary was subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury, Coney compounded his problems by urging her to lie about the payments, even though she was the one who usually doled them out. … In a plea agreement unveiled in federal court Wednesday, Coney, 58, pleaded guilty to 10 counts of ’structuring’ referral payments to hide them from the state and federal governments, one count of conspiracy and one count of obstruction of justice for pressuring [the secretary] to lie. As part of the deal, lead prosecutor Irene Gonzalez recommended a 33-month jail sentence for Coney.” The lawyer’s guilty plea is among the fruits of “a 4-year federal investigation of personal injury attorneys, a quietly unfolding case that has resulted in more than 20 convictions”. Targeted along with attorneys and “runners” are “medical providers who exaggerated or falsified injury claims in order to secure lucrative insurance settlements.” (Michael Perlstein, “Lawyer guilty in referral scheme”, New Orleans Times-Picayune, May 16). (DURABLE LINK)

June 10-11 – Bounty-hunting in New Jersey. The administration of Gov. Jim McGreevey has retained a flamboyant private plaintiff’s lawyer to pursue claims seeking to hold businesses legally liable for wastes left over from the state’s industrial past. Although Allen Kanner is initially donating his services for free, it is expected that he will take a contingency stake in some or many of the state’s financial recoveries. Also being hired is a politically well-connected law firm named Lynch Martin Kroll, associated with one of the state’s Democratic power brokers. Together, Kanner and the Lynch firm “are scouring state files for possible ‘natural resource damage’ claims. Such claims — little used in the state’s past — require polluters to go far beyond simple cleanups by making them pay the public for things such as lost fishing time, lost tap water, injured wildlife and soiled scenery.” (Alexander Lane, “State retains enviro-lawyer who gets polluters’ attention”, Newark Star-Ledger, May 11). More: PointOfLaw.com, Sept. 5, 2004. (DURABLE LINK)

June 10-11 – The Rule of Lawyers reviewed. In the June Commentary, Washington attorney and Findlaw columnist Barton Aronson contributes a very generous appraisal of our editor’s latest book. (DURABLE LINK)

June 9 – “Silver’s wreck”. Our editor has an op-ed piece in today’s New York Post on the impending demise of auto leasing in New York state, wrecked by the state’s archaic “vicarious liability” law whose chief defenders include the state trial lawyers’ association and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (Walter Olson, New York Post, Jun. 9). Our earlier coverage of the issue is here. More: Sept. 5, 2004. (DURABLE LINK)

June 9 – “Families of teens killed in crash after rave sue U.S. government”. “Family members of five teens who died when their car careened off a cliff after an all-night rave party have filed a suit against the U.S. government for issuing the event’s permit. ‘If you knowingly allow use of your land for a drug party and people get killed, we allege you are partially responsible,’ said Andrew Spielberger, a West Hollywood-based attorney representing the families.” (AP/Sacramento Bee, Jun. 1). (DURABLE LINK)

June 9 – The intimidation tactics of Madison County. Four business groups held a press event in Madison County, Ill., last week to unveil the latest report depicting the county’s courts as a paradise for plaintiff’s lawyers (U.S. Chamber of Commerce, “The Rogue Courts of Madison County” (PDF)). What happened next? Local plaintiff’s attorney Bradley M. Lakin promptly slapped them with a subpoena demanding that their executives testify in a would-be class action case against Ford Motor on alleged paint defects. “Subpoenas are for witnesses who know something about the case,” said Victor E. Schwartz, general counsel of the American Tort Reform Association. “In this situation, ATRA knows nothing. It is clear the subpoena power is being used to squelch ATRA from speaking out about Madison County and its inequities as one of the leading ‘judicial hellholes’ in the United States.” Last year ATRA published a report entitled “Justice for Sale: The Judges of Madison County“. (”ATRA Says Subpoena Power Should Not Be Used To Squelch First Amendment Rights”, ATRA press release, Jun. 6; Illinois Civil Justice League, which was one of the subpoenaed groups along with ATRA and the national and Illinois Chambers of Commerce, has links). Updates Jul. 12: subpoenas dropped and Jul. 26: sanctions motions dropped.

And St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Bill McClellan turns the spotlight on a recent Madison County class action settlement involving Sears tires: “If you have a receipt showing you purchased an AccuBalance from a Sears auto center between 1989 and 1994 and are willing to take the time to request a claims form and fill it out and send it in, you could get $2.50 for each tire, up to a total of $10. Of course, who keeps receipts from 1989? You still might be eligible for $1.25 a tire, up to a total of $5. If Sears does not have a record of your purchase, you will be eligible only for a $3 Sears coupon. Of course, there will be forms to fill out under threat of perjury. Things are a little better for the lawyers who ‘represented’ you. The settlement says that their legal fees cannot exceed $2.45 million.” McClellan is bold to tackle this subject, since when he criticized lawyers from the same class-action firm in 1999 they came after him with a lawsuit, later dropped (see Nov. 4, 1999)(Bill McClellan, “Just like your tires, wheels of justice may be out of balance”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Jun. 4). (DURABLE LINK)

June 6-8 – New legal ethics weblog. David Giacalone, formerly of PrairieLaw, has started a new weblog, ethicalEsq?, specializing in “client-centered legal ethics”. He’s already posted on several issues of interest, including Common Good’s early-offers proposal (May 30 and Jun. 3), the case for requiring lawyers to disclose more fully to clients the circumstances of their representation (Jun. 3), and (citing this website) the still-unfolding battle in a New York courtroom over whether Judge Charles Ramos has authority to review and correct outrageous tobacco fees (May 31; on tobacco fees, see Daniel Wise, “Judge’s Power to Review $625M Tobacco Fee Award Challenged”, New York Law Journal, May 28). (DURABLE LINK)

June 6-8 – Claims consciousness in Utah. To promote a contemplated April Fool’s Day festival, Mayor Gerald R. Sherratt of Cedar City, Utah, published in local papers a tall tale about how wandering Vikings had left precious ancient artifacts in a local cave. Most residents seem to have gotten the joke, but various readers in the nearby town of St. George stepped forward to lay claim to the supposed treasure found in the cave, several of them saying “their ancestors had been part of the settlement and had owned some of the artifacts. …When Sherratt explained the whole story was made up to promote the festival, the St. George residents accused him and other officials of a cover-up.” (Paul Rolly and JoAnn Jacobsen-Wells, “Ad Flap Is Stranger Than Fiction”, Salt Lake Tribune, May 26). (DURABLE LINK)

June 6-8 – Hiker cuts off use of his name. Equipped to Survive, a wilderness gear site, recommended a pocket-sized emergency beacon by referring to a recent survival story that received worldwide publicity: “Your survival should not require you to amputate your own arm, as Aron Ralston was recently forced to do in order to escape being trapped by an 800-lb. boulder.” Before long the site’s proprietor received this cease and desist letter (PDF format) dated June 5 from Ralston’s lawyer demanding that the reference be removed as in violation of the hiker’s “right of publicity” under state statutes. There followed this rude reply from the website proprietor, inviting the lawyer to “stick your ridiculous cease and desist demand where the sun don’t shine”. Now cut that out, boys, there’s no reason we can’t be polite. (DURABLE LINK)

June 4-5 – Blaming murder on flat tire. A 19-year-old woman, having stopped to change a flat tire at the side of the road, is taken away and murdered by a local man. According to a lawyer for her family, the Ford Motor Co. and tiremaker Bridgestone/Firestone should be made to pay for the murder. A court dismissed the case against the two companies on grounds that they could not have found harm of this sort foreseeable enough to trigger a legal duty of care, but the family’s lawyer, Richard Rensch, is appealing to the Nebraska Supreme Court. (AP/KETV, Jun. 3; “Murder victim’s parents say flat set off tragic events”, Fremont (Neb.) Tribune, Jun. 3). (DURABLE LINK)

June 4-5 – Fox News “The Big Story”. Our editor was interviewed on screen for a piece that Fox News’s “The Big Story” is preparing on the search for deep pockets in litigation. It’s tentatively scheduled to run Wednesday, but these things are always subject to change. Update: it did run Wednesday, Jun. 4. (DURABLE LINK)

June 4-5 – Malpractice: juggling the stats. In the course of an otherwise standard feature package on the medical malpractice crisis (Daniel Eisenberg and Maggie Sieger, “The Doctor is Out”, Time, Jun. 9, and sidebars) Time gives credence to a newly issued report asserting that doctors’ malpractice premiums are actually rising fastest in states without damage caps (Jyoti Thottam, “A Chastened Insurer”, Jun. 1). Very curiously, the new report (from Weiss Ratings, “an independent insurance-rating agency in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.”) is described as compiling figures for median premiums and payouts (the numbers compared with which half of the data points are higher and half lower) rather than averages, even though this is a field where the outliers (giant awards, unusually litigious specialties) drive the debate and the dollar figures. CalPundit (Jun. 2) spots this anomaly and opines: “this is so obviously the wrong statistic to use in this case that there must be some kind of axe to grind here” (via Jonathan Adler, NR Corner).

A table laying out the (very large) differences between malpractice premiums between Los Angeles (where doctors practice under California’s MICRA damages cap) and three litigious jurisdictions elsewhere in the country (Miami, Long Island, Detroit) indicates that MICRA confers its greatest benefit by far on the most litigation-prone specialties: for example, the average savings from MICRA for a neurosurgeon is $ 145,813 and for an ob/gyn $ 88,593, but it’s only $24,599 for an internist and $15,639 for a dermatologist (”2003 Malpractice Premium Comparison“, California Physician (California Medical Association)) (PDF format)(CMA’s MICRA Resource Center). For a more reliable reading of the crisis and its relation to damage caps and the insurance market, check out the report issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services this spring (”Addressing the New Health Care Crisis: Reforming the Medical Litigation System to Improve the Quality of Health Care”, Mar. 3; Senate testimony by Deputy Secretary Claude A. Allen, Mar. 13).

How big an impact do the “outlier” cases have, the small number of gigantic verdicts that almost vanish from the calculation when per-case outlays are calculated as a median? Among recent examples are the $78.5-million verdict against an Orlando hospital for failing to figure out that a woman visiting its emergency room was suffering from a bizarre undiagnosed tumor; thought to be the largest medical malpractice award in Florida history, it has “become the symbol of juries run amok” in the view of critics of the system. (William R. Levesque, “Tremors still felt from whopping jury award”, St. Petersburg Times, Jun. 2). And in a result vocally criticized by appeals judges even as they felt obliged to uphold it, a Manhattan jury’s $40 million malpractice award against one of the city’s premier hospitals, New York-Presbyterian, has been blown up to $140 million by a law mandating that annual interest of 4 percent be added to awards “even if the jury has already adjusted the annual amount for inflation. Critics say that means a double adjustment for inflation in some cases, like this one.” (Richard Perez-Pena, “New York Hospitals Fearing Malpractice Crisis”, New York Times, Jun. 3). (DURABLE LINK)

June 4-5 – “Rape defendant asks $20,000; found fly in mashed potatoes”. “If convicted later this year of raping a 16-year-old girl, [Kenneth] Williams could be sentenced to 112 years to life in prison. It would be his third, and last, trip to state prison, authorities say.” What has upset Williams recently, however, is the insect impurity he says he found in his prison dinner. He “is seeking $20,000 to ease the ‘mental stress and anguish’ he said finding the fly inflicted upon him. ‘It’s been almost a month since this occurred,’ Williams wrote last week in the claim, ‘and I still only pick at my food …. I’m losing weight and am unable to eat properly.’” The sum demanded was fair, according to his complaint, since public venting of the allegations “would cost the county ‘a great deal more both financially and in bad publicity.’” (J. Harry Jones, San Diego Union-Tribune, Jun. 3). (DURABLE LINK)

June 3 – An important litigation skill. From Gail Diane Cox’s “Voir Dire” column in the National Law Journal, Nov. 4, 2002 (scroll down to “Jargon Watch”): “Blamestorming: Variant of brainstorming. Sitting around in a group discussing a mistake and how to make someone responsible for it, preferably a deep-pocket defendant. Synonym: Litigation initiation.” Maybe a session of this sort was responsible for the naming of Shell Oil as a defendant in the Rhode Island nightclub fire (see May 30-Jun. 1). (DURABLE LINK)

June 3 – “Resumé spam saddles employers”. It’s common these days for employers to receive hundreds, thousands or even milllions of resumés via email from hopeful job-seekers. Federal regulations on the books since the 1970s, however, require most larger companies to preserve records of all job applications, the most important reason being to furnish evidence in case they are someday investigated for possible discrimination. Under the strictest interpretation of the rules, companies with more than fifteen employees must keep on file any resumé sent to them — even if “the applicant misspells the company’s name, applies for a job not listed or is simply not qualified.” The result: a large and ever-growing paperwork/compliance burden on American business. (Bill Atkinson, “Resume spam saddles employers”, Baltimore Sun, May 22; Michelle Martinez, “Who Really Is An Applicant When Recruiting Online?”, PeopleClick.com, undated). See Shirleen Holt, “Résumé spam is tiring those hiring”, Seattle Times, Jan. 19; Katherine Harding, “The new scourge: Résumé spam”, GlobeTechnology.com (Globe & Mail, Canada), Jan. 8 (”Companies that advertise jobs on-line are finding their e-mail boxes crammed with irrelevant responses”, some from applicants who blast out responses to every job listed on a posting board). (DURABLE LINK)

June 2 – Updates. Further developments in cases we’ve covered:

* Citing its recent jurisprudence bringing constitutional due process limits to bear on punitive damages, the U.S. Supreme Court has instructed lower courts to reduce a $290 million award against Ford Motor in the Romo case; the case arose from a Bronco rollover in central California, and we’ve had quite a bit to say about it over the four years since it went to trial (see Oct. 24, 2002 and links from there) (David Kravets, “High Court Reduces Damages in Car Crash”, AP/Yahoo, May 19; Bob Egelko, “Key ruling on punitive damages”, San Francisco Chronicle, May 19);

* The Los Angeles Zoo has transferred Ruby, its female African elephant, to a Tennessee zoo notwithstanding a pending lawsuit (see May 16-18) complaining that the move would disrupt Ruby’s bond with her elephant “best friend”; an attorney who had gone to court seeking a temporary restraining order against splitting the two elephants complained that zoo authorities had acted “like thieves in the middle of the night”. (Carla Hall, “Despite Protests, L.A. Zoo Sends Elephant to Tennessee”, Los Angeles Times, May 27) (via SoCalLaw, May 27);

* The Supreme Court of Hawaii has reversed a jury’s award of $2 million to an auto service manager fired over what his employer considered credible charges of sexual harassment (see Mar. 10-12, 2000) (Gonsalves v. Nissan Motor Corp. in Hawaii, Ltd., Supreme Court of Hawaii, Nov. 27, 2002; see Jeffrey Harris, “Law Watch: Preventing Harassment Trumps Keeping Promises”, Hawaii Business, Feb. 20);

* In a humiliating defeat for backers of anti-gun litigation, a federal “advisory” jury in Brooklyn has refused to hold manufacturers liable for inner-city gun crime in the much-publicized case brought by the NAACP before judge Jack Weinstein. “The panel of 12 jurors issued a finding of no liability for 45 of the defendants and was unable to reach a verdict for the remaining 23 manufacturers or gun dealers”. (Mark Hamblett, “Federal Advisory Jury Declines to Find Gun Industry Liable”, New York Law Journal, May 15; Katherine Mangu-Ward, “No Smoking Gun”, WeeklyStandard.com, May 8). Update Jul. 20: judge dismisses lawsuit entirely. (DURABLE LINK)

March 31 – Gun-suit thoughts. Our editor has contributed an op-ed to the New York Sun outlining his view that the NAACP’s lawsuit against gunmakers (which went to trial last week amid a flurry of favorable press notices; see Mar. 24) is plenty lame and derives its only real vitality from having been filed before a favorable judge (Walter Olson, “Gun Lawsuit Meets Activist Judge”, New York Sun, Mar. 26). On an unrelated note, the House Judiciary Committee has asked our editor to discuss federal pre-emption of anti-gunmaker litigation at a hearing this Wednesday before the Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law (Rayburn HOB 2141, 10 a.m.) (DURABLE LINK)

March 31 – Teachers afraid. “Educators in Baltimore County and beyond say the threat of lawsuits prevents administrators from backing their punishment of disorderly or dishonest students.” One of the more thorough explorations of this topic we’ve seen recently (Jonathan D. Rockoff, “Teachers say the law adds to disorder in classroom”, Baltimore Sun, Mar. 23) (via Joanne Jacobs). (DURABLE LINK)

March 31 – Some reader letters. We’ve fallen lamentably behind in publishing readers’ letters. Here’s a batch of four, on terrorism suits against foreign entities, Sen. Edwards and cerebral palsy, one New Jersey judge’s dismissal of a playground lawsuit, and an unwelcome (to us) advertising intrusion into our newsletter. Quite a few other letters remain in our pipeline — we’ll try to get to them soon. (DURABLE LINK)

March 25-30 – Fast food opinion roundup. “The word “addiction” is perilously close to losing any meaning. If lawyers can turn fast food into an addiction and pin liability on restaurants, it won’t be long before adulterers sue Sports Illustrated, claiming its swimsuit issue led them astray.” (Sally Satel, “Fast food ‘addiction’ feeds only lawyers”, USA Today, Mar. 12, reprinted at AEI site). One 270-lb., 5-foot-6 plaintiff “said her regular diet included an Egg McMuffin for breakfast and a Big Mac meal for dinner”, but Chris Rangel at RangelMD concludes that the calorie count doesn’t add up — the only way you could get up to 270 pounds would be by consuming a whole lot more food than that. (RangelMD, Feb. 23). “Big Food stands charged with making the plaintiffs fat, notes Howard Fienberg in a review of a fairly dreadful-sounding book on the much-ballyhooed obesity epidemic. Yet “Grocery stores are easily accessible for most Americans. …. Healthy choices are everywhere.” (”Supersize Nation?”, AmericasFuture.org, Winter). As expected, attorney Samuel Hirsch has re-filed his suit against McDonald’s (John Lehmann, “McFatties Bite Back”, New York Post, Feb. 20). “And now, Hirsch tells Newsweek, he’s targeting companies selling weight-loss products such as herbal supplements. Within weeks, he says, his law firm will begin placing ads in magazines to invite clients who bought the products but failed to lose weight to join a class-action lawsuit.” (Daniel McGinn, Newsweek, Feb. 10). See also “Tobacco-war lawyers taking aim at fast food”, Sacramento Bee, Feb. 24; Duane Freese, “Frankensuits”, Tech Central Station, Feb. 27.
(DURABLE LINK)

March 25-30 – “How a lawyer blew the whistle on a judge”. “It was the most distasteful thing I ever had to do in my life” said Joel Persky of his decision to turn in Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Joseph A. Jaffe, who offered favorable rulings in Persky’s asbestos cases in exchange for a cash quid pro quo (see Sept. 3, 2002). Had Persky merely ignored the judge’s overtures, according to one “seasoned” lawyer, he might have been laying himself open to legal malpractice charges. “Jaffe, 52, pleaded guilty last month to extorting money from Persky and will be sentenced May 16. Jaffe has qualified for a temporary, $60,000 a year disability from the State Employees’ Retirement System because he is depressed. The system’s board of trustees will vote on whether to award the money in March.” (Marylynne Pitz, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Mar. 2). (DURABLE LINK)

March 25-30 – Gone for a few days. The site will lie fallow while our editor gives several speeches to promote his new book. See you Monday. (DURABLE LINK)

March 24 – Mad County pays out again. “A judge in Madison County, Ill., ordered Philip Morris USA Inc. to pay $10.1 billion in a class-action lawsuit that claimed the tobacco giant misled smokers about the dangers of light cigarettes.” Circuit Judge Nicholas G. Byron “gave the plaintiffs’ lawyers a quarter of the compensatory damages, or nearly $1.8 billion.” (”Philip Morris Hit With $10.1B Verdict in Illinois Case, Dow Jones/Quicken, Mar. 21; Trisha Howard and Paul Hampel, “Tobacco firm lawyer derides court’s reputation”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Mar. 22; related stories; Sherri Day, “Philip Morris Faces Big Penalty”, New York Times, Mar. 22). Madison County, Ill. is located east of St. Louis (map); its main cities include Alton, Edwardsville and Granite City. For more on its fame as a “plaintiff’s paradise” and “judicial hellhole” for defendants, see notes below, including work sponsored by the Manhattan Institute, with which our editor is associated. (Update Apr. 2-3: Philip Morris says it is unable to post appeals bond; more updates.)

MORE ON MADISON COUNTY: “Study finds Madison County has most class action suits per capita”, AP, Sept. 11, 2001; Jim Getz, “Class-Action Suits Soar In Madison County, Study Says; Think Tank Argues For Moving Cases To Federal Court”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sept. 11, 2001; John H. Beisner and Jessica Davidson Miller, “They’re Making a Federal Case Out of It … In State Court”, Manhattan Institute Civil Justice Report #3, Sept. 2001; Noam Neusner with Brian Brueggemann, “The judges of Madison County”, U.S. News, Dec. 17, 2001 (fee); Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), Statement on Class Action Fairness Act, Congressional Record, Nov. 15, 2001; Lester Brickman, “Anatomy of a Madison County (Illinois) Class Action: A Study of Pathology”, Manhattan Institute Civil Justice Report #6, press release, Aug. 12, 2002. (DURABLE LINK)

March 24 – Stalking horse for anti-gun litigators. If the NAACP really does have legal standing to sue firearms manufacturers and demand that a court impose gun-control measures on them, one might reasonably conclude that in the future anyone will henceforth have standing to sue anyone over anything. Still, this notional standing has been the excuse for longtime anti-gun litigators to make yet another pilgrimage to the Brooklyn courtroom of federal judge Jack Weinstein, who’s considered far more sympathetic to their cause than most of his colleagues (Tom Hayes, “Ex-Lobbyist to Testify for Gun Foes in Federal Trial”, AP/Law.com, Mar. 21). Jacob Sullum comments on the resulting trial set to begin today (”Jack B. Trick”, syndicated/Reason Online, Mar. 21), as does Eugene Volokh, who points out that the arguments for holding gun manufacturers liable would, if taken seriously, also lead to findings of liability against liquor manufacturers for “foreseeable misuse” of their wares — not that some ambitious lawyers wouldn’t like to do that too (Volokh Conspiracy blog, archive link not working, scroll to Mar. 23). The NAACP case seeks injunctive relief; per the AP, above, Judge Weinstein “has decided the jury will play only an ‘advisory role,’ leaving himself to make the final determination on liability and remedy.” For our earlier coverage of the suit, click here. See also “Off Target: Anti-gunners again take aim at manufacturers”, (editorial), McAllen (Tex.) Monitor, Mar. 21; and Hunting and Shooting Sports Heritage Fund site (& welcome Kausfiles readers). Updated to include correct HSSHF link (DURABLE LINK)

March 21-23 – “Lawyers find gold mine in Phila. pension cases”. Philadelphia Inquirer exposes how the city’s municipal pension funds enlisted as the complaisant clients of two prominent class action law firms, Berger & Montague and Barrack, Rodos & Bacine, which between 1996 and 2002 scooped up $19 million in fees representing the city in securities litigation. Then-Mayor Ed Rendell green-lighted the suits, and also happens to have received $460,000 in contributions from the lawyers since 1990. “‘The truth is, there was just a bounty hunter prowling the security industry, picking things and putting our names on it,’ said Joseph Herkness, the pension fund’s former director. ‘We were told, basically, to sign these things.’” “It was an opportunity to make money for the city without any risk,” claims Rendell, who is now Pennsylvania’s governor. But perhaps not quite so much money as if the city had driven a harder bargain: “Funds in Florida, Connecticut, Wisconsin, and New York City have trimmed millions off legal fees by seeking bids and setting fees in advance,” but not Philadelphia, the paper reported. As reported earlier (see Jan. 31) the FBI is investigating the actions of city officials in hiring the firms and resisting a judge’s efforts to encourage competitive bidding. (Joseph Tanfani and Craig R. McCoy, Philadelphia Inquirer, Mar. 16; “Lawyer’s responses scrutinized”, Feb. 14). Name partner Leonard Barrack of Barrack, Rodos, a big-league political donor, served as finance chairman for the Democratic National Committee under President Clinton (Washington Post, Jan. 12, 1999); he has said his firm is cooperating with the FBI probe. (DURABLE LINK)

March 21-23 – More notices for The Rule of Lawyers. Free-Market.net, one of the major libertarian sites, names our author’s new book “Freedom Book of the Month”, with reviewer Sunni Maravillosa calling it “clear, compelling” and “very important” and saying its “revelations will likely astonish most people who aren’t intimately acquainted with the American legal system” (March). In a review for the Indianapolis Star, reviewer Peter J. Pitts applauds the book as “insightful and frightening” (”Lawyers get rich; we get a warped idea of blame”, Mar. 15). And in American Hunter and its sister publications (American Rifleman, etc.), National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre uses his monthly column to call NRA members’ attention to the continuing outrage of the municipal gun suits and to The Rule of Lawyers in particular (April, not online). If you haven’t ordered your copy yet, what are you waiting for? (DURABLE LINK)

March 8-10 – Will EU silence the pipes? Some Scottish members of the European parliament are warning that new noise regulations could make it unlawful to play their nation’s musical instrument: lowering maximum noise levels to 87 decibels, as is being proposed, could “silence the bagpipes for the first time since Culloden”. “If this goes through then the Queen will have to be without her piper every morning who wakes her up at Buckingham Palace,” said Jim Banks, the head of the Piping Centre in Glasgow. “It is just daft.” An EU spokeswoman denied that the authorities in Brussels wished to suppress bagpipes, but a Tory MEP said the application of the rules to employment contexts could result in the end of professional pipe bands. Two years ago the British defense ministry announced that the din of military brass bands was in violation of job-safety noise limits (see Dec. 22, 2000) (Hamish Macdonell, “EU threat to noisy bagpipes”, The Scotsman, Mar. 6)(more on bagpipers in trouble: June 21, 2001).

March 8-10 – Inability to get along with co-workers. An assembly worker with bipolar disorder “fired in 1996 following a series of conflicts with her fellow employees and what court papers termed ‘her confrontational and irrational behavior’ with her supervisor” is entitled to sue her employer under the Americans with Disabilities Act since the ability to interact or get along with others is “a major life activity”, a federal judge ruled in New York. The employer had responded to the woman’s lawsuit with a counterclaim against her, charging that her erratic and hostile behavior had cost it $500,000 in losses to its operations, but Judge Frederic Block suggested that its counterclaim was “in terrorem tactics” and “a naked form of retaliation” against “a vulnerable plaintiff who suffers from a significant mental impairment, for filing her lawsuit,” and suggested that he might impose sanctions on the company for so foolishly imagining that the accusation game might work in both directions. (Mark Hamblett, “Plaintiff With Bipolar Disorder Protected Under ADA”, New York Law Journal, March 4).

March 8-10 – Near and dear to their hearts. Florida trial lawyers are up in arms over the merest suggestion, from a committee on jury innovations, that it might be time to start rethinking their cherished right to kick prospective jurors off panels without offering reasons or explanations. Thomas Scarritt, chair of the Florida bar’s trial lawyers section, “called any discussion of eliminating peremptory challenges ‘a dangerous move.’ Scarritt told the [state supreme] court ‘that is a subject that is near and dear to the hearts of trial lawyers and we do not think there should be any change whatsoever.’” (Susan R. Miller, “Juror Power?”, Miami Daily Business Review, Feb. 6).

March 8-10 – Crestfallen at the news. “Obviously, we’re disappointed.” — Len Selfon, director of benefits programs for the Vietnam Veterans of America, on word that the Institute of Medicine had found no evidence that the herbicide Agent Orange, to which many veterans were exposed, has contributed to the risk of a form of leukemia in children (”Washington in Brief: Science Panel Retreats On Agent Orange Risks”, Washington Post, Feb. 28) (via Health Facts and Fears (American Council on Science and Health), March 5).

March 6-7 – Updates. Stories that kept on developing:

* “A judge dismissed a lawsuit Monday that claimed several video game and movie makers shared blame for the 1999 Columbine High School massacre. … [Federal judge Lewis] Babcock said there was no way the makers of violent games and movies could have reasonably foreseen that their products would cause the Columbine shooting or any other violent acts. ‘Setting aside any personal distaste, as I must, it is manifest that there is social utility in expressive and imaginative forms of entertainment, even if they contain violence,’ Babcock wrote.” (”Columbine Family’s Lawsuit Against Video Game Makers Dismissed”, AP/Tampa Bay Online, Mar. 5)(see April 24, 2001).

* A Southwest Texas University student who bared her breasts at a wet T-shirt contest in Mexico over spring break 2000 has won a $5 million default judgment against the makers of a Wild Party Girls video who used the resulting topless picture of her in their promotions. She continues to pursue a lawsuit against the E! cable network for airing the “Too Hot for TV” ads with her image. (”Woman in ‘too hot for TV’ suit gets $5 million”, Cox/AZCentral, Feb. 27) (Update Apr. 15: default judgment thrown out). And the quest for a very private Mardi Gras continues as a Florida State University business major “has sued producers of the ‘Girls Gone Wild’ videos, claiming they invaded her privacy and used her image without permission. … [She] admits in her lawsuit that she was among the women on the streets and balconies of the French Quarter last year who removed their tops in exchange for Mardi Gras beads and trinkets.” (Janet McConnaughey, “Coed files suit over nude video”, AP/Polk County Online, Jan. 23)(see Sept. 28, 2001). At Metafilter, user “Mikewas” has some advice (Oct. 1) for how a defense lawyer might try such cases after first determining whether the local jury is of liberal or conservative leaning.

* ” In what is being described as a major victory for the so-called ‘visitability’ movement, two cities in disparate parts of the country [last month] started requiring all new homes to be accessible to the handicapped.” Besides the expected passage of such an ordinance in Naperville, Ill. (see Feb. 6), a new ordinance in Pima County, Arizona “includes the significant additional requirement of a zero-step entrance.” “I thought homes were for the owners,” says University of Chicago law professor Richard Epstein. A suburban Chicago homebuilder says the added expense could run as high as $3,000 a house: “it’s real easy to spend somebody else’s money,” adds J. Mark Harrison, executive director of the Home Builders Association of Illinois. (”Activists Win New Rules Requiring Handicapped-Accessible Private Homes”, FoxNews.com, Feb. 10).

March 6-7 – Quest for deep pockets in Ga. crematory scandal. “But while relatives focus their anger on the Marshes, their lawyers have deeper pockets in mind — the funeral homes that sent bodies to Tri-State. The reason is simple: Funeral homes have more insurance. Lawyers know the Marshes’ assets are likely to be eaten up in criminal court defending Ray Brent Marsh, the man charged with theft by deception in the Tri-State case. That leaves the funeral homes, who carry multimillion-dollar liability policies.” (Duane D. Stanford, “Big bucks at stake as lawsuits hit funeral homes that sent bodies to Tri-State Crematory”, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Mar. 3).

March 6-7 – Washington eyes your 401(k). At Reason Online, Mike Lynch explains why the Enron collapse doesn’t prove what members of Congress keep saying it does about the supposed laxity of pension regulation (”Political Returns”, April) (see Feb. 15).

March 6-7 – Dewey deserve that much? Dig deeper into your pockets, smokers: federal judge Jack Weinstein of the Eastern District of New York “has awarded nearly $38 million in legal fees to New York-based Dewey Ballantine for representing Blue Cross and Blue Shield in a suit against the tobacco industry — more than twice the amount of a jury verdict in the case last year.” (Tom Perrotta, “Dewey Ballantine Given $38 Million Fee Award”, New York Law Journal, Mar. 1). (Update Oct. 23, 2004: New York high court derails award and underlying case.) And Loyola University law professor Dane Ciolino has dropped his challenge of the $575 million in legal fees private lawyers got for representing the state of Louisiana in the national tobacco settlement. Terms were confidential; Ciolino said he is not receiving personal benefit from the deal. “When they signed on to represent the state, the lawyers from 13 different firms became Louisiana assistant attorneys general. The lawyers claimed they acted as independent contractors, not government employees.” (Marsha Shuler, “Tobacco fee challenge dropped”, Baton Rouge Advocate, Feb. 15).

March 5 – Scenes from a malpractice crisis. “In Las Vegas, more than 10% of the doctors are expected by summer to quit or relocate, plunging the city toward crisis. … In California — where juries hearing malpractice lawsuits are limited to maximum awards of $250,000 for pain and suffering — [ob/gyn Dr. Cheryl] Edwards’ insurance premium this year is $17,000 [it had been $150,000 when she practiced in Nevada]. Because of 1975 tort reform, doctors in California are largely unaffected by increasing insurance rates. But the situation is dire in states such as Nevada where there is no monetary cap.”

“Doctors in Oregon have been told to brace for ‘breathtaking’ increases in malpractice insurance premiums in coming weeks. … When the Oregon Supreme Court in 1999 rejected as unconstitutional a $500,000 lid on pain- and- suffering awards in malpractice cases, jury awards of $8 million, $10 million and $17 million swiftly followed. … The Arizona border town of Bisbee has lost its hospital maternity ward because four of the town’s six obstetricians can no longer afford to practice. … Both trauma centers in Wheeling, W.Va., have closed because their neurosurgeons couldn’t pay their new malpractice premiums. The trauma center at Abington Memorial Hospital outside Philadelphia faces closure next month as its doctors scramble to find affordable insurance.” (Tom Gorman, “Physicians Fold Under Malpractice Fee Burden”, Los Angeles Times, Mar. 4; also (same story) Boston Globe; Joelle Babula, “Malpractice Crisis: Trauma unit faces cuts”, Las Vegas Review-Journal, Feb. 7). In Mississippi, where trial lawyers hold great sway in many courts and recently blocked tort reform in the state legislature, an 18-doctor group of emergency physicians in Hattiesburg two years ago “paid $140,000 for malpractice insurance. Last year, the premium went to $250,000. The next annual premium would be $437,500 or $475,000…” (”Cost to cover errors in ER to rise for doctors”, Hattiesburg American, Jan. 26). See also Geekemglory blog, Dec. 13. (DURABLE LINK)

March 5 – Case for declaring wars, cont’d. “The framers had good reason to separate the dangerous power to declare (and finance) war from the power to command the armed forces.” Unfortunately, Congress nowadays tends to abdicate its responsibility by delegating to the White House discretion on whether to institute hostilities. (Sheldon Richman, “Anything to declare?”, Foundation for Economic Education, Feb. 16) (see Sept. 13, 2001) (via Free-Market.Net).

March 5 – “Man awarded $60,000 for falling over barrier”. Australia: “A surfer who fell and injured his back when he stepped over a guard rail to urinate has been awarded more than [A]$60,000 in compensation. Paul Andrew Jackson was aged 35 when he crossed a bicycle bridge on the Pacific Highway at Kanahooka, in Wollongong South, and stepped over a barrier to relieve himself in what he thought was ground level bush.” (The Age (Melbourne), Mar. 4). Update Mar. 8-9, 2003: award overturned.

March 4 – 9/11: grab for the gems. Lawyers have sued large Manhattan jewel dealer STS Jewels Inc., the Tanzanian Mineral Dealers Association and other defendants, seeking to attach proceeds from the sale of the popular gemstone tanzanite on behalf of victims of Sept. 11 terror. Muslim radicals with links to Al-Qaeda are widely believed to have engaged in trading in the gem, which is extensively smuggled out of Tanzania, the East African country where it is mined. “Yesterday, representatives of STS and the Tanzanian Mineral Dealers Association vehemently denied any connection between their industry and al Qaeda. ‘My sympathies to the victims, but this is ridiculous,’ said STS owner Sunil Agrawal.” Among lawyers involved in filing the action are Texas asbestos lawyer Mark Lanier, corporate defense lawyer Paul Hanly and celebrity lawyer Ed Hayes. (Jerry Markon, “Tanzanite Dealers Named in Suit Brought by the Families of Victims”, Wall Street Journal, Feb. 15 (online subscribers only)). See also Ralph R. Reiland, “Lawyers Lust for 9-11 Gold” (The American Enterprise, Feb. 18). And a great Stuart Taylor, Jr. column from January that we somehow missed back then: “How 9/11 Shines a Spotlight on Litigation Lottery”, (National Journal/The Atlantic, Jan. 8).

March 4 – No reply. Lawyers from Jacoby & Meyers have filed a class action suit against online payments firm PayPal alleging all manner of atrocities in its customer service. “PayPal’s spokesman said he could not comment on the suit because his company is in the midst of a [legally mandated] post-IPO [initial public offering] quiet period.” You get to accuse them, and they can’t answer back — isn’t it fun being a lawyer? (Cheryl Meyer, “Class Action Filed Against PayPal”, The Deal, Feb. 25).

March 4 – A menace in principle. Under a law that took effect in New Hampshire last year, police are required to arrest and hold until arraignment anyone accused of violating a domestic protective order. So when a woman in the town of Farmington charged her estranged husband with placing harassing phone calls, they had to haul him in, even after a visit to his house revealed that he is blind, uses a wheelchair, and is on dialysis, leaving him not much of a credible threat to anybody. “Police had to wait three hours for an ambulance to bring [him] to the jail, but the jail wouldn’t hold him because of potential liability.” (”State domestic violence law puts police in bind”, AP/Manchester Union-Leader, Feb. 25) (via Free-Market.Net).

March 1-3 – Should have arrested him faster. “A convicted sex offender wanted in Florida who fled into the Maine woods from police is complaining that he got frostbite and lost a few toes because he wasn’t arrested fast enough. Harvey Taylor, 48, who spent at least three nights in the woods in Mattawamkeag after running from a Penobscot County Sheriff’s detective a few weeks ago, is threatening to sue the detective for not arresting him promptly.” (Mary Anne Lagasse, Flight from law leads to frostbite, threat of lawsuit”, Bangor Daily News, Feb. 27).

March 1-3 – Too much Nintendo. “A Louisiana woman is suing Nintendo, alleging her 30-year-old son suffered seizures after playing video games for eight hours a day, six days a week.” (AP/Minneapolis Star Tribune, Feb. 24; Brett Barrouquere, “Woman sues Nintendo in death of her son, 30″, Baton Rouge Advocate, Feb. 23).

March 1-3 – Batch of reader letters. We’ve fallen far behind both on posting reader letters and in answering our mail (and unfortunately we can’t answer all of it). Still, we’ve managed to put up a batch of letters from the closing weeks of last year. Topics include safe deposit boxes at the WTC, a federal judge’s decision striking down high school sports schedules that put boys’ and girls’ sports in different seasons, and discrimination against motorcyclists.

March 1-3 – Entitled to jobs that kill? On Wednesday the Supreme Court heard argument on the case of Echabazal vs. Chevron, which poses the question: “Does the Americans with Disabilities Act force employers to hire disabled workers for a job, even when the position could cause injury or death to the worker?” The Bush administration and business groups are trying to advance what turns out to be the controversial proposition that “employers have an interest in keeping their employees from being hurt or killed.” (Michael Kirkland, “Are disabled entitled to jobs that kill?”, UPI, Feb. 27; Warren Richey, “Can a disabled worker put himself at risk?”, Christian Science Monitor, Feb. 27; Marcia Coyle, “Rejecting a Worker”, National Law Journal, Feb. 26)(see Nov. 5, 2001). Update: Court unanimously rules for defense (see Jun. 19-20, 2002).

March 1-3 – Launder mania. Rushed through Congress in the weeks after Sept. 11, the USA Patriot Act “requires every financial institution — not just traditional banks — to monitor and to report suspicious customers to federal officials.” The paperwork and compliance burdens will be enormous, but there is little assurance that the program will make much difference in preventing terrorism, which tends to be accomplished on relatively small budgets. (Krysten Crawford, “On the Home Front”, Corporate Counsel, Jan. 22) (see Nov. 29, 2001).

March 1-3 – Welcome Boortz.com listeners. Popular Atlanta-based broadcaster Neal Boortz calls this site “one of my frequent stops” in researching his show (Feb. 27). He sure does have a lot of listeners — our traffic on Wednesday, when he did a segment paying us this tribute and endorsing loser-pays, was among the best ever.

Another noteworthy bit from his commentary: “Day after day people file lawsuits just to ’see if we can get the other side to pay something.’ I’ve been there, folks. I’ve seen it. I was a member of the Georgia Trial Lawyers Association and the American Association of Trial Lawyers. I went to the conventions. I sat in the meetings. I participated in those discussions where lawyers would say ‘I know we don’t have a case — but maybe they would rather fork over a hundred thousand or so rather than taking the chance of going to trial. Hell, their expenses alone would be more than we’re asking!’”.

December 20 – New York guardianship scandals. “Cronyism, politics, and nepotism” run rife in New York’s notorious system of court-appointed guardianships, a report released by the state’s chief judge, Judith Kaye, has found after a two-year investigation (see Jan. 12, 2000). “In one case, a lawyer appointed to be a guardian for a woman who could not handle her own affairs billed her estate $850 after he and an assistant took a cake and flowers to her nursing home on her birthday. On another day, the lawyer and an employee took her out for a walk and bought her an ice cream cone. Their bill was $1,275.” And much, much more (Jane Fritsch, “Guardianship Abuses Noted, Including a $1,275 Ice Cream”, New York Times, Dec. 4; Daniel Wise, “Investigation Finds ‘Cronyism’ Abounds in New York Court Appointments”, New York Law Journal, Dec. 5; “Report of the Commission on Fiduciary Appointments”, December; “Fiduciary Appointments in New York“).

December 20 – “Firms Hit Hard as Asbestos Claims Rise”. L.A. Times looks at asbestos litigation and finds abuses and overreaching have gone so far that even some prominent plaintiff’s lawyers agree on the need for action. “An Oakland-based attorney who has represented asbestos victims for 27 years is leading a renegade faction of the plaintiffs’ bar that has joined with many of the corporations they sue in calling for limits on claims from people without serious illnesses. ‘It’s too far gone to do anything else,’ Steve Kazan said. ‘The asbestos companies are really cash cows that we should care for and cultivate so we can milk them for years as we need to. But I have colleagues who’d rather kill them, cut them up and put them on the grill now. We’d all have a great time, but there are people who will be hungry in five years.’” Over 15 years, now-bankrupt boilermaker Babcock & Wilcox “spent $1.6 billion on 317,000 claims that took paralegals five to 10 minutes each to prepare.” (Lisa Girion, “Firms Hit Hard as Asbestos Claims Rise”, L.A. Times, Dec. 17). According to a letter sent by the Manville Trust to federal judge Jack Weinstein on Dec. 2, asbestos claimants with cancer or other grave illness are receiving reduced payments because “disproportionate amount of Trust settlement dollars have gone to the least injured claimants — many with no discernible asbestos-related physical impairment whatsoever.” As usual, a key problem is the submission of questionable x-rays. (Queena Sook Kim, “Asbestos Trust Says Assets Are Reduced As the Medically Unimpaired File Claims”, Wall Street Journal, Dec. 14)(online subscribers only).

December 20 – Accused WTC bombing participant won’t get $110K. “In a decision that comments extensively on the war on terrorism, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned an award of more than $110,000 in attorney fees to a Palestinian man who successfully avoided deportation after the government accused him of involvement in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center … the court found that the government’s efforts to deport Hany Mahmoud Kiareldeen were ’substantially justified’ even though it was ultimately unable to prove its case against him to the satisfaction of the trial judge” by clear, convincing and unequivocal evidence. (Shannon P. Duffy, “3rd Circuit Takes Away Attorney Fee Award in ‘93 WTC Bombing Case”, The Legal Intelligencer, Dec. 7).

December 19 – Texas jury clears drugmaker in first Rezulin case. Back to the drawing board for plaintiff’s lawyers trying to take down the Warner-Lambert division of Pfizer over side effects from its diabetes drug Rezulin. “‘It was a good drug. It helped a lot of people,’ said one juror, who asked not to be identified. ‘There just wasn’t enough evidence to show the drug was defective.’” Attorney George Fleming had demanded $25 million in damages and “emphasized Warner-Lambert’s interest in profits, flashing excerpts from internal memos before the jury.” Lawyers have many more Rezulin cases in the pipeline, so they’ll be able to try again and again before other juries. (Leigh Hopper, “Firm wins 1st Rezulin suit in court”, Houston Chronicle, Dec. 17). UpdateJan. 9-10, 2002: second trial goes against drugmaker with $43 million actual damages.

December 19 – “$3 million awarded in harassment”. “A federal jury Wednesday awarded a woman patrol officer for the Cook County Forest Preserve District $3 million in damages — $1 million more than her lawyer sought from the district–for years of sexual harassment and retaliation on the job … One member of the five-woman, three-man jury said he didn’t find the harassment egregious but felt a need to send the Forest Preserve District a message for its inaction regarding Spina’s complaints. ‘The county didn’t respond,’ juror Christopher Calgaro, an insurance claims supervisor from Homewood, said after the verdict. ‘They need to change, I mean catch up to the times.’” (Matt O’Connor and Robert Becker, Chicago Tribune, Dec. 13).

December 19 – Sued if you do dept.: language in the workplace. “Any worker offended by the words of a single employee can sue his employer for damages. Accordingly, many employers have adopted ‘English-only’ rules for their employees, in order to better supervise employee comments. Yet the EEOC also insists that employers can be sued by any employee who takes offense to an ‘English-only’ policy.” (Jim Boulet Jr., , “Catch-22 on Language”, National Review Online, Nov. 14) (see Nov. 17, 1999).

December 18 – False trail of missing lynx. “Federal and state wildlife biologists planted false evidence of a rare cat species in two national forests, officials told The Washington Times. Had the deception not been discovered, the government likely would have banned many forms of recreation and use of natural resources in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest and Wenatchee National Forest in Washington state.” After a Forest Service employee blew the whistle on colleagues, officials discovered that seven government employees, five from federal agencies and two from Washington state, “planted three separate samples of Canadian lynx hair on rubbing posts used to identify existence of the creatures in the two national forests.” The employees were given no serious discipline, merely counseling and being taken off the lynx survey project, and federal officials would not even release their names, “citing privacy concerns.” (Audrey Hudson, “Rare lynx hairs found in forests exposed as hoax”, Washington Times, Dec. 17; InstaPundit, Dec. 17).

December 18 – For client-chasers, daytime TV gets results. “Princeton, N.J. lawyer John Sakson … spends up to $80,000 a month soliciting potential plaintiffs. Some of his advertising is aimed at slip-and-fall and medical-malpractice victims. But these days he’s also trawling for much bigger fish — plaintiffs for deep-pocket attacks on big corporations, especially pharmaceutical companies. … the nation’s largest legal- advertising agency … says one-third of its $20 million in legal billings comes from pharmaceutical litigation ads, compared with maybe 1% a decade ago.” Poor, unemployed and disabled people disproportionately watch daytime TV: “Real-life judge shows like Judge Mills Lane and Judge Judy are jackpots.” (Michael Freedman, “New Techniques in Ambulance Chasing”, Forbes, Nov. 11).

December 18 – Compulsory chapel for Minn. lawyers. “Since 1996, the Minnesota Supreme Court has required attorneys to participate in its version of diversity training — called ‘elimination of bias’ education — as a condition of holding a license to practice law.” The point is less to regulate attorneys’ conduct than to instill in them opinions that the authorities consider correct about complex political and moral questions, and many of the resulting seminars have had a tendentious, preachy anti- white- male tone. (Katherine Kersten, “Court-ordered ‘elimination of bias’ seminars threaten freedom of thought”, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Dec. 12). See update Nov. 21, 2003 (lawyer challenges requirement).

December 17 – “Suing the City for Sept. 11? Oh, Why Not?”. Giuliani or Bloomberg, New York City’s tort crisis just keeps getting worse: “Settlements cost the city $459 million that year [fiscal 2000], the latest for which statistics are available. … You might expect the litigation to slow down as a hurt and financially damaged city looks to rebuild and weather a recession. You would be wrong. … Interviews with lawyers for the city and prospective plaintiffs indicate that the attack will generate substantially more than 1,000 notices of claim.” (Joyce Purnick, New York Times, Dec. 13).

December 17 – Slouching toward Marin? Every conservative commentator in the country, it seems, has by now told us where to pin the blame for Tali-boy John Walker’s descent into Islamic extremism: it’s all because of his permissive, religiously liberal suburban upbringing. Steve Chapman offers a corrective to all the Culture War axe-grinding (”Is John Walker a failure of liberalism?”, Chicago Tribune, Dec. 16).

December 17 – Daynard watch. It sure did take a long time, but the British Medical Journal has finally admitted to its readers that tobacco-baiting Northeastern University law prof Richard Daynard failed to disclose competing interests in litigation to BMJ readers as per the journal’s policy (see our earlier reports). The correction states that Daynard “has been involved as counsel in suing tobacco companies and has received grants for research into the use of litigation to control tobacco use”. Because this formulation is so terse and artfully worded, however, readers in the United Kingdom (where lawyers are generally not allowed to claim percentage stakes in litigation) may not realize that the competing interest Daynard concealed consisted not in routine hourly fees but a contingency stake that, per his claims, may top $100 million (”Correction: Tobacco litigation worldwide”, Oct. 6). Connecticut activist Martha Perske deserves the credit for getting the BMJ to semi-’fess up. Meanwhile, Daynard’s division- of- the- spoils suit against former anti-tobacco colleagues Ron Motley and Richard Scruggs “is providing an inside look at the way lawyers finagled fees in the tobacco litigation — and the lengths they’ll go to protect their hoard.” (Elizabeth Preis, “A Piece of the Action”, The American Lawyer, Sept. 7).

December 15-16 – Criminal defense attorneys, doing what they do best. “While it may seem like the ultimate smoking gun, defense lawyers said there would be ways to try to undercut the videotape of Osama bin Laden if he were to go on trial for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. … ‘I would argue as a defense lawyer that the tape is puffery, celebration and bragging,’ said Robert E. Precht, director of public interest law at the University of Michigan Law School who was a defense lawyer in the trial of the World Trade Center bombers in 1994′ … several defense lawyers suggested that a creative defense team might claim that the damning translation from Arabic was misleading or that the tape was doctored. ‘The reality is you can make a tampering argument with any tape,’ Barry I. Slotnick, a New York defense lawyer, said.” And: “with tapes that are transcribed from a different language, there are interpreters you can find who can come up with a different transcript,” offered New York’s Benjamin Brafman. Then there’d be attacks on the tape’s admissibility, since “it was not clear how the government obtained it”, which might in turn force the CIA to reveal sensitive information — great tactical leverage. (William Glaberson, “Defense Lawyers See Ways to Attack Tape, if Not Win”, New York Times, Dec. 15). On the role of the O.J. Simpson case in convincing much of the American public that our court system cannot be trusted to deliver even rough justice in a high-profile criminal trial, see, among many others, Glenn Reynolds, InstaPundit.com, Dec. 13.

December 15-16 – Updates. Further developments in cases that were bound to develop further:

* The Canadian Transportation Agency has ruled that obesity in itself is not a disability and that airlines are not therefore obliged by law to offer extra seats to severely overweight passengers, although it suggested they consider doing so voluntarily (see June 7, Dec. 20, 2000)(”Canadian tribunal rules obesity is not a disability”, Reuters/FindLaw, Dec. 13).

* In New South Wales, Australia, an appeals court has ordered a new trial after finding that an award of almost $3 million (Aust.) was “excessively high” in the case of a man who sued over having been subjected to strapping as punishment twice at a Catholic school seventeen years ago (see Feb. 20). (Ellen Connolly, “Compensation takes a caning as $3m payment revoked”, Sydney Morning Herald, Nov. 1).

* Sitting en banc, the Ninth Circuit has held that grabbing the interest on clients’ trust accounts at law firms to finance poverty law does not entail any “taking” for which the clients need be compensated; the 7-4 decision comes over a dissent by Judge Alex Kozinski, whose earlier opinion for a three-judge panel (see Jan. 31) the court reversed. The Ninth now officially disagrees with the Fifth Circuit (so what else is new?) on this issue, and the circuit split may attract the attention of the U.S. Supreme Court. The court did not resolve the question of whether such programs violate the First Amendment. (Jason Hoppin, “IOLTA: 9th Circuit Says IOLTA Programs OK”, The Recorder, Nov. 15) (opinion in PDF format courtesy FindLaw).

* “Five shopkeepers prosecuted for weighing food in British Imperial measurements instead of the metric system demanded by European law appealed to London’s High Court Tuesday to quash their convictions.” After greengrocer Steven Thoburn of Sunderland, the original “metric martyr”, was brought up on charges for weighing bananas in pounds (see Jan. 22, April 11), authorities collared four more shopkeepers who were using the forbidden measures to weigh such items as mackerel and pumpkins. Some 200 protesters demonstrated outside the court in support of the merchants. (”Shopkeepers Battle for Right to Use British Weight” , Reuters/Yahoo, Nov. 23). Update Feb. 20, 2002: they lose High Court appeal.

December 13-14 – “Father seeks $1.5 million after son misses varsity spot”. By reader acclaim: “The father of a high school sophomore seeks $1.5 million in damages and the dismissal of the school’s basketball coach after his son did not make the varsity. Lynn Rubin sued the New Haven Unified School District on Nov. 27 because his son, Jawaan Rubin, was told to return to the junior varsity after being asked to try out for varsity.” The youngster attends James Logan High School in Union City, Calif. (AP/SFGate.com, Dec. 11; Contra Costa Times, Dec. 12).

December 13-14 – SCTLA’s homegrown Chomsky. We’re familiar with the tendency of politically active injury lawyers to espouse opinions farther to the left than those of the communities they live in. Still, we’re a bit amazed at a commentary that appeared last month on CommonDreams.org, a left-leaning website that has vehemently opposed U.S. military action before and after September 11. The commentary, in headlong Noam Chomsky/Robert Fisk rant mode, claims that “the United States is making war on children” in its efforts against the Taliban and al Qaeda, declares that the American military is delivering a “message of greed and violence” to Afghanis, and even puts scare quotes around the word “evil-doers” in referring to those responsible for Sept. 11. The screed’s author? Columbia, S.C. plaintiff’s lawyer Tom Turnipseed, a well-known figure in his state’s Democratic politics (most recently as its 1998 attorney general candidate; he’s now mulling a run for U.S. Senate) who’s often described as a leader of the state party’s progressive wing. Can this sort of thing really play with the voting public and in the jury box in a conservative, pro-military state like S.C.?

The “message of greed” that Turnipseed claims the U.S. is conveying to Afghanis, incidentally, consists of our offer of $25 million for the apprehension of Osama bin Laden. Presumably this is quite different from the message conveyed by Turnipseed’s own web site, which assures prospective clients that he has resolved numerous cases for sums in excess of $1 million. (”Broadcasting and Bombing”, CommonDreams.org, Nov. 22; Turnipseed’s law firm website and “mission“; via Matt Welch). (DURABLE LINK)

December 13-14 – Competitor can file RICO suit over hiring of illegal aliens. A really odd one from the Second Circuit: the court says a commercial cleaning service in Hartford has standing to sue a competitor for racketeering under federal law over the second firm’s alleged hiring of undocumented workers. If the decision stands, expect all sorts of new business-on-business litigation, underscoring the need to roll back RICO’s many overexpansive provisions, or repeal the law entirely. (Elizabeth Amon, “New RICO Target: Hiring Illegal Aliens”, National Law Journal, Nov. 27). Update: see Point Of Law, Jul. 12, 2004.

December 13-14 – Segway, the super-wheelchair and the FDA. The much-publicized new mobility device, known variously as “It”, “Ginger” and the “Segway”, originated as a spinoff of a quest for a truly powerful and versatile wheelchair that would allow disabled users to climb and descend stairs and curbs, traverse rough terrain and surmount other kinds of barriers. The IBot wheelchair project is still considered extremely promising, but progress on it has been less rapid than hoped: genuine safety concerns are part of the problem, but they’re magnified by various legal worries including the arduous process of getting the Food and Drug Administration to approve a new “medical device”. Meanwhile some disabled persons, frustrated at seeing years of their lives slip by without the yearned-for mobility advance, are now considering hacking the “Segway” to meet their needs. (Michelle Delio, “What About Kamen’s Other Machine?”, Wired News, Dec. 7).

As for the Segway itself: “No matter how inherently safe Segways may be, someone, somewhere is going to kill himself on one. ‘It’s inevitable,’ says Gary Bridge, Segway’s marketing chief. ‘I dread that day.’ Never mind that people die every day on bicycles, in crosswalks, on skateboards, in cars. The Segway is the newest new thing, and nothing does more to set hearts afire on the contingency-fee bar. ‘There are some very deep pockets around this thing,’ remarks Andy Grove. ‘I fear this could be a litigation lightning rod.’” (John Heilemann, “Reinventing the wheel”, Time, Dec. 2 (see p. 4)). Update: see Aug. 1, 2002.

December 13-14 – Menace of office-park geese. We knew they were sinister: an Illinois panel has approved a $17,000 settlement for Aramark Corp. deliveryman Nolan Lett, who was attacked by Canada geese on his employer’s property in suburban Oak Brook, and filed a workers’ comp claim “under the theory that Aramark had a duty to warn employees of the dangers of the geese because the building was in an area that attracted them.” Lett broke his wrist trying to fend off the pesky creatures. (”Workers’ compensation: Victim of wild goose attack settles for $17,000″, National Law Journal, Oct. 22). (DURABLE LINK)

December 12 – By reader acclaim: R