- Speaking of prostitutes and politicians, Deborah Jeane Palfrey has come to recognize that Montgomery Blair Sibley (Oct. 29; May 4; etc.) may not be the best lawyer for her. [WTOP via BLT]
- Update: Nearly two years later, trial court gets around to upholding $2 million verdict in lawn-mower death we covered Jun. 16 and Aug. 18, 2006. [Roanoke Times (quoting me); opinion at On Point]
- In other lawn mower news, check out Jim Beck’s perceptive comment on a Third Circuit lawn-mower liability decision.
- Update: Willie Gary wins his child-support dispute. [Gary v. Gowins (Ga.); Atl. Journal-Const.; via ABA Journal; earlier: Nov. 2]
- Tobacco-lawyer Mike Ciresi drops out of Minnesota senate race. [WCCO]
- Belfast court quashes libel ruling against restaurant critic. [AFP/Breitbart]
- Trial-lawyer-blogger happy: jury returned $1.25 million med-mal verdict for death of totally disabled person suffering from end-stage renal disease, pulmonary hypertension, oxygen dependent lung disease, and obesity, after rejecting businessperson from jury “for cause” because he was head of local Chamber of Commerce. [Day]
- Car-keying anti-military attorney Jay Grodner faced the law in January; here’s the transcript. [Blackfive]
- Anonymous blog post not reliable evidence of factual allegations. [In re Pfizer, Inc. Sec. Litig., 2008 WL 540120 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 28, 2008) via Roberts, who also reports on fee reduction in same post]
- Clinton’s nutty mortgage plan. [B&MI (quoting me)]
- A supposed DC cabbie’s take on DC v. Heller. [DC Cabbie blog]
Tagged as:
Atlanta,
child support,
DC v. Heller,
Hillary Clinton,
jackpot justice,
lawn mowers,
libel slander and defamation,
Michael Ciresi,
Minnesota,
Montgomery Blair Sibley,
PSLRA,
restaurant critics,
roundups,
tobacco,
Willie Gary
A jury, however, sent away U.S. District Judge George P. Schiavelli away with nothing at all, ruling that the firm responsible for maintaining the escalators at the Encino Shopping Center was not to blame for the injuries the judge suffered in a 2005 mishap. After the verdict the plaintiff’s lawyer in the case, Browne Greene, charged the jury with partiality: “The bias against judges in today’s world is just palpable,” he said. (Robert J. Lopez, “Encino judge gets no award in escalator fall”, Los Angeles Times, Feb. 26; “Jury Unanimously Rejects Judge’s $21 Million Personal Injury Suit”, PRNewswire/Fox Business, from defense firm Murchison & Cumming, Feb. 25; Greene’s press release)(via Perlmutter/Schuelke). More on escalator suits at this link.
Tagged as:
elevators and escalators,
jackpot justice
I’ve joked about plaintiffs asking for a “squillion gazillion” dollars instead of other effectively fictional numbers, but one plaintiff has actually done it. One Baker, Louisiana, Katrina plaintiff (earlier on Overlawyered and Point of Law) suing the Army Corps of Engineers is asking for 3 quadrillion dollars—though he would presumably settle for one third that amount, which, at $3,000,000,000,000,000.00 would be over 200 times the annual $13 trillion gross domestic product of the United States. 246 other plaintiffs (including the City of New Orleans, which asked for “only” $77 billion, notwithstanding a taxpayer-funded bailout of tens of billions for a city built beneath sea level) are asking for over a billion each. [AP; TortsProf]
Tagged as:
jackpot justice,
Katrina,
Louisiana
A 37-year-old Jane Doe (who claims to be the host of a national cable tv program) agreed to be videoed rolling around in a bed “looking excited” for $200 in November, and was disturbed to see the results on a YouTube advertising campaign with obviously dubbed orgasmic moans. The punchline in the ad (probably NSFW if your volume is on): “Jewelry works every time.” Or, as my feminist girlfriend grouses every time she sees a tv jewelry ad with far subtler implications, “Your wife is a whore who will only put out for shiny objects.” Cf. also this YouTube copyright violation from Family Guy (NSFW), soon to be taken down by Fox.
Through her attorney, Kevin Mulhearn, she’s sued Szul Jewelers for $5 million. Mulhearn claims there’s no release, which while implausible, may be true. If so, she has a point, though the ad damnum claim is ludicrous: and far more people are going to watch the supposedly image-damaging video now that Mulhearn has gone to the press. And, of course, she didn’t have to roll around on the bed in the first place. (One hopes that I’m not aiding and abetting a publicity stunt for the jeweler.) [Daily News; AP/New York Times]
Tagged as:
copyright,
jackpot justice,
lawyers making clients worse off,
personal responsibility
- Remember that ludicrous case where the Florida driver fell asleep, crashed his Ford Explorer, his passenger was killed, and a jury blamed Ford to the tune of $61 million? (See also Sep. 10.) A Florida court got around to reversing it, though only to grant a new trial under a variety of erroneous evidentiary rulings that prejudiced Ford, rather than because the suit was too silly to ever conceivably win in a just society. The remand goes back to the same judge that let the suit go forward and committed multiple reversible errors in favor of the plaintiff. [Ford Motor v. Hall-Edwards (Fla. App. Nov. 7, 2007); Krauss @ Point of Law; Daily Business Review; Bloomberg/Boston Globe]
- Not really a man-bites-dog story, but Geoffrey Fieger (Aug. 25 and rather often otherwise) speaks. [ABA Journal]
- Uh-oh: Former litigator hired to invest $100m in court cases for UK hedge fund. [Times Online]
- The real NatWest Three deal. [Kirkendall; July 2006 in Overlawyered]
- Homeowners fined $347,000 for trimming trees without a permit—after the Glendale Fire Department sent them a notice telling them to trim their trees for being a fire hazard. (h/t Slim) [Consumerist]
- Disclaimers at children’s birthday parties (h/t BC) [Publishers Weekly]
- British Christmas parades handcuffed by litigation fears. (h/t F.R.) [Telegraph]
- Underlawyered in Saudi Arabia: A “19-year-old Saudi gang-rape victim was recently sentenced to 200 lashes and six months in jail for being in a car with an unrelated male when the attack occurred. Last week, her lawyer was disbarred for objecting too vociferously.” [Weekly Standard]
- Don’t forget to vote for us at the ABA Journal Blawg 100.
Tagged as:
autos,
deep pocket,
Enron,
Ford Explorer,
Ford Motor,
Geoffrey Fieger,
jackpot justice,
nonmonetary costs of litigation,
personal responsibility,
Saudi Arabia,
sued if you do,
trees,
United Kingdom
All-automotive edition:
- Court won’t unseal settlement arising from $105 million Aramark/Giants Stadium dramshop case for fear girl’s father will try to get his hands on money [NJLJ, NorthJersey.com, Childs; earlier]
- Great moments in insurance defense law: you mean it wasn’t a good idea to infiltrate that church meeting to investigate the crash claim? [Turkewitz first, second posts]
- Columnist Paul Mulshine rejoices: Ninth Circuit decision “if it stands, will lead to the end of the SUV as we know it” [Newark Star-Ledger]
- Is it unfair — and should it be unlawful? — for insurers to settle crash victims’ claims too early? [Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog]
- If Ron Krist prevails in shoot-out of Texas plaintiff titans, he vows to have sheriff seize John O’Quinn’s Batmobile [American Lawyer; see also Ted's take earlier]
- In much-watched case, Australian high court by 3-2 split upholds highway authority against claim defective bridge design was blameworthy after youth’s dive into shallow water [RTA NSW v. Dederer, Aug. 30]
- Redesigning Toyota’s occupant restraint system? Clearly another job for the Marshall, Texas courts [SE Texas Record; Point of Law; more]
- Bench trial results in $55 million verdict against U.S. government after Army employee on business runs red light and paralyzes small child [OC Register]
- Vision in a purple Gremlin: her Yale Law days shaped Hillary in many ways [Stearns/McClatchy]
- Zero tolerance for motorists’ blood-alcohol — are we sure we want to go there? [Harsanyi, Reason]
- Driver falls asleep, so of course Ford must pay [two years ago on Overlawyered; much more on our automotive page]
Tagged as:
absent parents who sue,
Aramark,
Australia,
autos,
dramshop statutes,
Eastern District of Texas,
Hillary Clinton,
insurers,
jackpot justice,
John O'Quinn,
Judge Ward,
Maryland,
Ninth Circuit,
Ron Krist,
roundups,
SUVs,
taxpayers,
Toyota,
zero tolerance
We’ve been on top of this outrage of a medical malpractice case since it was in trial—Aug. 2004, Oct. 2004, Nov. 2004, May 2006, Apr. 12—but Roger Parloff has such a comprehensive post about the Ohio Supreme Court’s 5-1 (corrected:) 6-1 decision to strike down an intermediate court’s reinstatement of a bogus $30 million verdict that we defer to him. Even the dissenter would have found Fieger’s shenanigans problematic, but would have merely reduced the award to $10 million. Still, on remand for a new trial, Justice Paul Pfeifer recommended that “it would be wise for the trial judge to deny any motion for admission pro hac vice filed on behalf of Mr. Fieger.”
NB that among the tactics condemned by the Ohio Supreme Court are the tactics that trial lawyer John Edwards used when he successfully tried a medical malpractice case—pretending to channel the baby in the womb to the jury.
Among the victorious attorneys: one of our favorite bloggers, Mark Herrmann.
Tagged as:
Geoffrey Fieger,
jackpot justice,
John Edwards,
medical,
medical malpractice,
Ohio,
overzealous advocacy
In 1981, Curtis Campbell (Campbell) was driving with his wife, Inez Preece Campbell, in Cache County, Utah. He decided to pass six vans traveling ahead of them on a two-lane highway. Todd Ospital was driving a small car approaching from the opposite direction. To avoid a head-on collision with Campbell, who by then was driving on the wrong side of the highway and toward oncoming traffic, Ospital swerved onto the shoulder, lost control of his automobile, and collided with a vehicle driven by Robert G. Slusher. Ospital was killed, and Slusher was rendered permanently disabled. The Campbells escaped unscathed.
Guess quickly: which plaintiff in the resulting twenty years of litigation won the biggest jury verdict?
How many of you say Ospital?
How many of you say Slusher?
You’re both wrong. The plaintiff with the biggest jury verdict was Curtis Campbell, whom a jury awarded an incredible $147.6 million.
[click to continue…]
Tagged as:
bad faith,
insurance,
jackpot justice,
personal responsibility,
punitive damages,
State Farm,
Supreme Court,
Utah
- New Jersey Supreme Court won’t touch appellate court reversal of $105M dram-shop verdict against Aramark Corp. Not noted in our earlier coverage: Aramark was held liable as a deep pocket through illegitimate piercing of the corporate veil, adding yet another problem to an appalling series of problems with the trial. [New Jersey Law Journal; earlier on Overlawyered; Point of Law]
- Half-trillion-dollar class certified against Wal-Mart in lawless Ninth Circuit decision. [Point of Law]
- Court papers show direct link to Lerach in Milberg probe. Most entertaining: a letter by Lerach saying “Dr. Cooperman’s reputation and character are impeccable.” Cooperman has since pled guilty to taking kickbacks, and Milberg Weiss now says he has no credibility. [National Law Journal; WSJ Law Blog]
- Slip and fall worth $5.7M [Atlantic City Press]
- Cardiologists doing Brazilians: “Graduating med students aren’t blind; they see established physicians with busy practices dropping out. Looking ahead they see more headaches–more controls and regulations, more scrutiny, more liability, less money.” [TIME via Kevin MD]
- Florida law may allow men to get out of paying fraudulent paternity when DNA shows they’re not the father. [Miami Herald; see also Parker v. Parker; earlier on Overlawyered]
- Editorial: Alabama Supreme Court ruling on illegal multi-billion-dollar punitive damages award in Exxon contract dispute can prove state is no longer tort hell. [Press-Register]
- Update to earlier Overlawyered post: Danny Cuesta pleads guilty, sentenced to fifteen months; Melissa Cuesta, whose claim we covered, arrested for perjury, pleads not guilty. [EmpireStateNews.net via Teacher trash blog]
- Incomes and inequality: what the numbers don’t tell us. [Marginal Revolution]
- India and the drug patent wars. [AEI]
- I (along with John Beisner, Michael Hausfeld, and John Stoia) am speaking on a panel on the Class Action Fairness Act at the National Press Club February 14. [Federalist Society]
Tagged as:
Alabama,
Aramark,
Bill Lerach,
child support,
Class Action Fairness Act,
class actions,
deep pocket,
Exxon,
jackpot justice,
Michael Hausfeld,
Milberg Weiss,
New Jersey,
Ninth Circuit,
Ted Frank
My latest Liability Outlook for AEI is about the Ford Explorer rollover litigation and what it says about products liability litigation in the US in general:
It went generally unnoticed last November when the California Supreme Court refused to review an intermediate court’s decision in Buell-Wilson v. Ford Motor Co. But then again, it went generally unnoticed when a jury awarded an arbitrary $368 million in damages in that case, when the trial judge reduced that verdict to an arbitrary $150 million judgment, and when an intermediate appellate court reduced that figure to an arbitrary $82.6 million (which, with interest, works out to over $100 million). Products liability verdicts have become so run-of-the-mill that even nine-digit verdicts and their aftermath receive only local or specialty press coverage, with cursory national coverage. But Buell-Wilson demonstrates much that is wrong with the current liability regime, including the fact that the media is so jaded by litigation abuse that a $368 million verdict is barely newsworthy.
I have a related letter to the editor in the Jan. 1 Legal Times. See also POL Dec. 13, OL Dec. 12, OL Jun. 3, 2004.
Tagged as:
autos,
Buell-Wilson v. Ford,
Ford Motor,
Ford Pinto,
jackpot justice,
Liability Outlook,
noneconomic damages,
preemption,
punitive damages,
rollover litigation,
SUVs,
Ted Frank
The ludicrous $366 million award on a conspiracy theory (Aug. 30, 2004; Sep. 2, 2004) was, as we predicted reduced by remittitur to a still ludicrous $22.5 million. (Plaintiff’s attorney’s press release, Sep. 21). Kevin M.D.’s commenters note that the trial bar simultaneously complains that doctors don’t do enough to police themselves and then hold doctors liable for policing other doctors.
Note that the doctors whom the verdict was issued against weren’t even the ones on the peer review committee that suspended Dr. Poliner’s privileges for a few months; they were just the ones who started the peer-review process.
Tagged as:
antitrust,
Dallas,
hospitals,
jackpot justice,
libel slander and defamation,
medical,
remittitur,
sued if you do
Ted Fields was injured in an auto accident with Jimmy Woodley; Woodley’s insurer went bankrupt, so Fields, on January 30, 1997, asked Allstate to pay $25,000 in medical bills and lost wages. Allstate sent Fields forms to fill out, and he did so three weeks later; when Allstate didn’t pay instantaneously, he sued them in March 1997 for bad faith. Fields turned the discovery process into a far-reaching investigation of all of Allstate’s claim procedures; the judge refused to constrain irrelevant deposition questioning, at which point in 1999 Allstate offered Fields the full amount of his $50,000 policy limit rather than waste hundreds of thousands in trial. Fields refused; his attorneys filed several separate motions of default rather than litigate the underlying issues after the trial court denied a summary judgment motion. An appellate court found that Allstate was entitled to summary judgment because of the lack of any evidence of bad-faith in responding to Fields’s claims; the Indiana Supreme Court overturned that ruling on a procedural technicality that the appeal was premature.
The trial court ruled that Allstate was not allowed to present evidence that it was not liable for actual or punitive damages or that it acted “with anything other than dishonest purpose, moral obliquity, furtive design, and/or ill will.” A jury, hearing this one-sided sham of a trial, awarded $20 million in damages, though one would hope the Court of Appeals, hearing a timely appeal, makes the same decision it made before. Press coverage fails to mention that Allstate wasn’t allowed to defend itself at trial; the plaintiff told the jury that the dispute caused high blood pressure, heart problems, and a stroke, though then the question becomes why he isn’t suing his attorney. (Ken Kosky, “Valpo man wins $20 million verdict v. Allstate”, Northwest Indiana Times, Oct. 6).
Tagged as:
Allstate,
bad faith,
fishing expeditions,
Indiana,
insurance,
jackpot justice,
procedure
Left over from last month: “An economics professor from California who was arrested because a flight attendant thought she looked like a terrorist has been awarded $27.5m. In a victory for critics of racial profiling, a jury in El Paso, Texas, ordered Southwest Airlines to pay damages to Samantha Carrington for false imprisonment and malicious prosecution after she was bundled off a flight and arrested because flight attendants found her appearance suspicious.” (Salamagundi, Apr. 14; Best of the Fray; Protein Wisdom; “Finding the wrong answer” (editorial), USA Today, Apr. 14). For more links on air profiling, see our aviation page archive.
Tagged as:
airlines,
jackpot justice,
safety,
Southwest Airlines
In 1997, Melahn Parker fell asleep while driving a 1996 Ford Explorer at highway speeds; the SUV crashed, killing 17-year-old passenger Lance Crossman Hall, who was ejected because he was reclining in the front seat, thus preventing his seat-belt from restraining him. Parker was charged with careless driving, but a Miami jury viewed the accident as Ford’s fault, and awarded $61 million in damages yesterday, $60 million in pain and suffering. The plaintiff, Joan Hall-Edwards’s, Hall’s mother, has thus won a marvelous windfall in that her son was killed by a careless driver instead of by a means where she would have no deep pocket to seek lottery-style damages.
Ford will appeal. “This tragic accident occurred when the driver of the vehicle fell asleep at the wheel while traveling at highway speeds. Real-world experience and testing show that the Explorer is a safe vehicle, consistently performing as well as or better than other vehicles in its class,” Ford spokeswoman Karen Shaughnessy said.
Hall-Edwards’s attorney was Bruce Kaster, who complained that Ford blamed defective Firestone tires for what he called Explorer handling problems. This is a curious complaint, because Kaster calls himself “the nation’s foremost authority on tires and their defects,” has brought several lawsuits against Firestone, and has reserved the domain name “tirefailures.com” for his law firm. On his site, Kasten complains that Ford models don’t have the same features as the more expensive Volvo models made by Ford’s subsidiary. Is it really to be considered a “defect” if an inexpensive car has fewer safety features than a more expensive car? Are consumers not permitted to make the decision for themselves how safe a car to purchase?
No doubt there will be further details than what the AP has provided so far, and we’ll update as more becomes known. (Jennifer Kay, “Ford Ordered to Pay $61M in SUV Accident “, AP, Nov. 16).
Tagged as:
autos,
deep pocket,
Ford Explorer,
Ford Motor,
jackpot justice,
personal responsibility
His affluent parents bear the other 70 percent of the fault, a Cincinnati jury decided, as they awarded $10 million to victim Casey Hilmer and her family. Ben White was just 11 days short of his 18th birthday when he savagely stabbed the girl in an unprovoked assault; he was later sentenced to 10 years for attempted murder. You’d think for White’s parents to be more than twice as much at fault in the outrage as he was — 70 percent compared with 30 percent — they must be quite the monstrous couple. Curiously, though, the jury foreman said of Lance and Diane White afterward that they had “no intent” to harm and that he didn’t think they showed “ill will” or “conscious disregard for somebody”: “I’m not saying they’re bad parents”. The plaintiff’s lawyer was Stanley Chesley, who will be familiar to many of our readers. (Sharon Coolidge, “Parents must pay $7M”, Cincinnati Enquirer, Aug. 20; Tony Cook and Jeanne Houck, “Stabbed girl wins $10M judgment”, Cincinnati Post, Aug. 20).
Tagged as:
Cincinnati,
deep pocket,
jackpot justice,
Stan Chesley,
third party liability for crime
The Daily Business Review has more on the Eller Media trial and verdict in Florida (Jul. 10). While the story unfortunately does not take any steps to resolve the question of whether the defense theory of a lightning strike had any legitimacy, the story does reveal that the beneficiary of the $65.1 million verdict will be a father who abandoned his son when he was two, and then had little to do with him over the next ten years before there was a potential deep-pocket defendant. The plaintiffs were allowed to argue to the jury that the profits of Clear Channel Communications—which bought the defendant years after the incident—should be considered. (Jessica Walker, “Strategies on the Way to a $65 Million Verdict”, Jul. 12).
Tagged as:
absent parents who sue,
Clear Channel,
jackpot justice
Twelve-year-old Jorge Luis Cabrera Jr. was found dead next to a Miami bus shelter in October 1998 after he took shelter there during a rainstorm. Weather data shows a lightning strike near the bus shelter at the time the boy would have been there; the defense claims there were several signs of an indirect lightning hit on the Cabrera’s body and clothing. Accusations were made that faulty wiring in the bus shelter electrocuted the boy, but employees of Eller Media, which owned the bus shelter, were acquitted of manslaughter charges.
Civil lawyers resuscitated the argument on behalf of Cabrera’s father, noting that Victor Garcia, who wired the shelter, was unlicensed. A jury agreed, and awarded $4.1 million in compensatory and $61 million in punitive damages; Cabrera’s mother settled separately. “Jose Irizarry, the jury foreman, told The Herald on Friday that he and his fellow jurors did not believe lightning could have killed the boy.” (David Ovalle, “Firm to pay millions in boy’s death”, Miami Herald, Jun. 25; “Jury: Eller Media should pay $65.1M”, South Florida Business Journal, Jun. 27; Chrystian Tejedor, “Jury awards $65.1 million”, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Jun. 25; “Company Found Negligent In Boy’s Electrocution Death”, WTVJ-TV; “Unlicensed Electrician Admits ‘Regret’ In Boy’s Electrocution Trial”, Local 10 News, May 3; Colson Hicks Eidson press release; verdict form for Serrano v. Eller Media Co., Case No. 13-1998-CA-023808-0000-01 (Dade Cty. Fla. Cir. Ct.)).
Risibly unclear on the concept: the Miami Herald reports that “Today, more than 850 Miami-Dade Transit Authority bus shelters are lit by roof-mounted solar panels instead of electricity.” (I think they mean to say that the new bus shelters are lower voltage.)
[click to continue…]
Tagged as:
absent parents who sue,
electrocution,
jackpot justice,
junk science
