• “I did not know what kind of monster we were dealing with”: dramatic testimony from Judge Lackey on Scruggs corruption [Folo; and repercussions too]
• New at Point of Law: Pork-barreling Albany lawmakers shell out for just what NY needs, three more law schools; Sarbanes-Oxley unconstitutional? Ted goes after JAMA on Vioxx; sadly, appeals court overturns Santa Clara opinion that nailed ethical problems with govt.-paid contingency fee; legal aid lawyers, to subprime borrowers’ rescue? and much more;
• Cadbury claim: we own the color purple as it relates to chocolate [Coleman]
• A world gone mad: Innocence Project directors include… Janet Reno? [Bernstein @ Volokh]
• Not unrelatedly: Can a California prosecutor be held liable for wrongful murder conviction of man freed after 24 years? [Van de Kamp versus Goldstein, L.A. Times via Greenfield]
• With all his lawyer chums from Milberg-witness days, you’d think Ben Stein could have saved the makers of his creationist movie from stumbling into textbook IP infringements [Myers, again, WSJ law blog]
• Groggy from dental anesthesia, plus a half a glass to drink: then came the three felony DUI counts [Phoenix New Times, Balko via Reynolds]
• Shell says boaters had years of notice that mandated ethanol in fuel was incompatible with fiberglass marine gas tanks, which hasn’t stopped the filing of a class action [L.A. Times via ABA Journal]
• Terrorism asymmetry: “They say ‘Allahu Akbar!’ we say ‘Imagine the liability!’” [McCarthy/Lopez, NRO]
• Deborah Jeane Palfrey convicted [WaPo; earlier]
• David Neiwert truly born yesterday if he thinks Kevin Phillips is noteworthy for his record of being right [Firedoglake; some correctives]

Notes Cato’s Tim Lynch: “The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) recently bestowed its ‘Champion of Justice’ award to former Attorney General Janet Reno.” (Oct. 10). Radley Balko, like Lynch, wonders what NACDL could have been thinking (Oct. 13).

This is a bit off topic from civil litigation, but Tom Kirkendall, a Houston attorney following the Enron trial, makes the case that the Enron prosecution team or “task force” has been pushing the envelope of prosecution tactics, with disturbing results.

In an unprecedented move, the Task Force has named over 100 co-conspirators in the case. So, the potential definitely exists for substantial testimony about out-of-court statements going to the jury without the defense ever having an opportunity to cross-examine the persons who made the alleged statements. Moreover, fingering unindicted co-conspirators is an equally effective technique for the Task Force to prevent testimony that is favorable to the defense because persons named as unindicted co-conspirators are likely to the assert their Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and thus, not be defense witnesses during the trial. Thus, the Task Force’s liberal use of the co-conspirator tag has a double-whammy effect — not only does it allow the Task Force to use out-of-court statements against defendants without having the declarant of the statements subjected to cross-examination, it has also effectively prevented previous Enron-related defendants from obtaining crucial exculpatory testimony from alleged co-conspirators who have elected to take the Fifth and declined to testify.

Kirkendall argues that despite these tactics, the task force botched the broadband prosecution, and already seem to be making mistakes in the Lay/Skilling trial. He has a lot of fun, in particular, with the task force’s indictment against Lay and Skilling, which was apparently so poorly written that the prosecution itself has petitioned the court not to let the indictment be referred to in cross examination. (Tom Kirkendall, Houston’s Clear Thinkers, Jan 27)

Almost makes you nostalgic for Marcia Clark. But probably not Janet Reno. Over at CoyoteBlog, I wonder whether NJ prosecutors are more interested in upholding the law or getting front page pub in the NHL betting case.

May 10-12 – Lawyers say taxpayers owe $41 million to smuggled illegals’ survivors. Two Yuma, Ariz. lawyers have filed wrongful death claims with the federal government’s Fish and Wildlife Service demanding $3.75 million each for the families of eleven illegal immigrants who died in May 2001 while being smuggled through a desolate section of the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge in southern Arizona near the Mexican border. The suit charges the government with failing to authorize the placement of water stations intended for use by unlawful visitors, though it knew smugglers of immigrants were active in the desert area. “It’s absolutely untrue that anyone ever proposed to put stations where the aliens perished,” said Tom Bauer, spokesman for the Fish and Wildlife Service regional office in Albuquerque. (Hernán Rozemberg, “Families sue U.S. over Mexican migrants who died in desert”, Arizona Republic, May 9; David J. Cieslak, “Families of migrants who died last year file claim against U.S. government”, Tucson Citizen, May 8). Update May 21, 2004: judge allows further time for plaintiffs to prove case. (DURABLE LINK)

May 10-12 – “Judge allows powwow lawsuit”. It’s sensitivity vs. sensitivity: in Minnesota state court a group of female drummers are pursuing a sex discrimination law over their exclusion from the ritual drumming at a Native American powwow held annually at the University of St. Thomas. “Larry Smallwood, part of the Little Otter Singers drum group from the Mille Lacs Indian Reservation in central Minnesota, said women singing around a drum is a ‘cultural no-no.’” However, a judge denied the university’s motion to throw out the case, ruling (among other things) that “the school failed to show that drumming is protected speech under the First Amendment”. (Hannah Allam, St. Paul Pioneer Press, May 7). (DURABLE LINK)

May 10-12 – Updates. More developments in stories familiar to longtime readers:

* In a case arising under San Francisco’s pioneering ordinance banning discrimination on the basis of height and weight, “Jennifer Portnick, a 240-pound San Francisco aerobics instructor rejected by Jazzercise because of her size, has reached an agreement under which the firm will drop its requirement that instructors look fit.” (see Feb. 27) (Elizabeth Fernandez, “Exercising her right to work”, San Francisco Chronicle, May 7).

* Blackford High School in Hartford City, Ind., has relented and is going to allow Rob Mahon to attend its prom after all despite the positive results on his blood test for nicotine (he is 18 and it is legal for him to smoke) (”School Reverses Prom Ban For 18-Year-Old Smoker”, IndyChannel, Apr. 26)(see Apr. 26)(via WhatTheHeck.com)

* In the acrimonious litigation between the members of classical music’s Audubon Quartet (see Nov. 13, 2001 and links from there), “Estranged violinist David Ehrlich, who won a $611,000 judgment against his former quartet colleagues over his sudden dismissal two years ago, has filed motions in court that could force Clyde ‘Tom’ Shaw and his wife, Doris Lederer, to sell their Blacksburg home in order to pay their court-imposed debt.” (Kevin Miller, “Spurned violinist seeks house”, Roanoke Times, May 9; documents, defendant Shaw’s site)(& see letter to editor, Jun. 14, recommending website critical of defendants)(Update Dec. 4, 2005). (DURABLE LINK)

May 9 – The rewards of growing mold together. “Toxic mold” claims are among the fastest-growing source of lawsuits and claims against property insurance companies. Now various government agencies in Texas are investigating suspected unsavory practices in the thriving business that has sprung up of assisting homeowners to file such claims. After first moving the homeowner into a rental, some dishonest adjusters proceed to “put wet towels in the house, spray down the draperies, hose down furniture — anything to increase moisture. They close the windows and crank up the heat. It’s called ‘cooking’ the house, and it’s a recipe for sprouting mold and bilking insurance companies out of thousands of dollars.” The scams sometimes are unbeknownst to homeowners and at other times go on with their collusion. Alan Bligh, president of the Better Business Bureau in the Coastal Bend area of Texas, calls the practice “fairly widespread”, saying there are both legitimate and dishonest firms operating locally within the “mold remediation” business, which has mushroomed in short order from two or three companies to about 100. Insurance companies that delay paying mold claims or subject them to too much scrutiny can face punitive damages from angry jurors. (Laura Elder, “‘Cooked’ houses burn insurers”, Corpus Christi Caller-Times, May 5)(via CALA Houston). See also Mike Vallante, “Calm the mold hysteria”, Houston Chronicle, Apr. 26. (DURABLE LINK)

May 9 – House bill would cut off municipal gun suits. A proposed “Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act” would defend interstate commerce in guns from lawsuits brought on behalf of hostile local jurisdictions. As of mid-April the bill had 215 co-sponsors in the House. “When 219 members co-sponsor it the bill would likely be voted on by the full House. Four more co-sponsors would help bring the battle between the gun banners and the firearms industry to a swift and honorable conclusion.” (Tanya Metaksa, “Stop the War Against the Gun Industry”, FrontPage, Apr. 16; H. Sterling Burnett, National Center for Policy Analysis, “Congress should stop lawsuits against legal firearms, Apr. 18; “House GOP seeks to end handgun suits”, AP/Washington Times, Apr. 19). (DURABLE LINK)

May 9 – “‘Little’ done for firm, Rendell says”. It’s commonplace for politicians on leaving office to step into remunerative partnerships at big law firms, even when (especially when?) those law firms do a lot of business with the public entities associated with the politicians. What has raised eyebrows in the case of former Philadelphia mayor and Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Ed Rendell is his superior candor: he freely admits that he has done “very little work” to justify the $250,000 he draws annually from the prominent Philadelphia law firm of Ballard, Spahr, Andrews & Ingersoll. (Tom Infield and Thomas Fitzgerald, Philadelphia Inquirer, Apr. 23). (DURABLE LINK)

May 8 – Zoo asserts animals’ “medical privacy”. The Washington Post had asked to see the medical records of a beloved giraffe after its death, but no go: “The Smithsonian Institution’s National Zoo has taken the position that viewing animal medical records would violate the animal’s right to privacy and be an intrusion into the zookeeper-animal relationship.” On the other hand, the zoo does allow curious visitors to view the matings and other intimate habits of reclusive creatures through its PandaCam, ElephantCam and Naked Mole-Rat Cam. (James V. Grimaldi, “National Zoo Cites Privacy Concerns in Its Refusal to Release Animal’s Medical Records”, Washington Post, May 6). (DURABLE LINK)

May 8 – Mayor Bloomberg goes to bat for liability reform. “Having made little headway so far in his efforts to get the State Legislature to pass the bills he is seeking to limit damages against the city, the mayor has now turned his sights on the City Council. Mr. Bloomberg said that he would submit two bills to the Council tomorrow to make the city less vulnerable to slip-and-fall lawsuits. ‘All too often, people file tort claims for the same reason they file lottery tickets,’ he complained at a news conference in City Hall.” (Michael Cooper, “Mayor Fights to Reduce Damage Awards”, New York Times, May 7 (reg)). See Steven Malanga, “Tort City”, City Journal, Spring 2001; “Tort Trauma”, Summer 2001. (DURABLE LINK)

May 8 – Blumenthal sues own client. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, whose never-ceasing quest for turf and publicity frequently earns him mentions in this space, has filed suit against a body called the Connecticut Siting Council in an attempt to stall construction of an underwater cable line that would supply electric power to New York’s Long Island. There’s just one problem: the Council is a unit of the state government and thus is among his own clients, being in fact “represented in court by members of Blumenthal’s office.” (Thomas Scheffey, “Can Connecticut AG Sue His ‘Client’?”, Connecticut Law Tribune, April 30). (DURABLE LINK)

May 7 – “Crime and Punitives”. The Supreme Court’s jurisprudence in civil punitive damage cases like BMW v. Gore — where it limited a state court’s multi-million-dollar punitive award over a new car’s undisclosed paint touch-up — turns out to have various organic connections with the course of its jurisprudence on arguably excessive criminal sentences, like those handed out under California’s “three-strikes” law. Why? “Because, when it comes to punishment, the Court should try to be consistent — even across the line dividing criminal law from civil law and the line dividing the Eighth Amendment from the due process clause. This isn’t just my opinion; it’s the Court’s.” (Evan Schultz, Legal Times, Apr. 19). (DURABLE LINK)

May 7 – “Big government ruined my long weekend”. A couple goes off for a brief getaway to the mountains, then realizes that the wife has left behind her prescription medication. Think they can convince a standby doctor to authorize four pills so that she can make it through the weekend? Forget it: “Between the War on Drugs and the liability climate, doctors are scared to death to make this kind of accommodation.” (Jim Henley, Unqualified Offerings blog, Apr. 6). (DURABLE LINK)

May 7 – “Reno owes the public answers”. If former attorney general Janet Reno is going to present herself to the voters of Florida as a candidate for governor, the least she can do is answer questions — raised anew by a PBS “Frontline” documentary last month — about whether her prosecution as Dade County district attorney of the sensational Country Walk ritual-child-abuse case resulted in the imprisonment of innocent defendants (editorial, St. Petersburg Times, Apr. 28; PBS/WGBH, “The Child Terror“; Dorothy Rabinowitz, “The Pursuit of Justice in Dade County”, Wall Street Journal, Oct. 28, 1996, reprinted at McGill University site; Rael Jean Isaac, “Janet Reno and her Record as a So-Called Champion of Children”, Independent Women’s Forum, Apr. 27, 2000). (DURABLE LINK)

May 6 – Fearing ethnic profiling charges, bureau ignored flight school warning. “An F.B.I. agent in Phoenix told counterterrorism officials at the bureau’s headquarters last July that he had detected an alarming pattern of Arab men with possible ties to terrorism taking aviation-related training, and urged a nationwide review of the trend, according to F.B.I. officials. The agent’s recommendation was not acted upon before Sept. 11, however … F.B.I. officials said there was reluctance at the time to mount such a major review because of a concern that the bureau would be criticized for ethnic profiling of foreigners.” (James Risen, “F.B.I. Told of Worry Over Flight Lessons Before Sept. 11″, New York Times, May 4; Kausfiles, “Hit Parade”, scroll to May 5). (DURABLE LINK)

May 6 – ReplayTV copyright fight. Television networks are suing the maker of the ReplayTV device, arguing, among other things, that their copyright is infringed by the device’s power to let users skip commercials during playback. To Steven den Beste, this is a bit like demanding that scissors be banned “because they might be used to clip articles out of magazines.” (U.S.S. Clueless, May 4; Christopher Stern, “Privacy Fight Centers on Ad-Zapper”, Washington Post, May 4). (DURABLE LINK)

May 6 – “Unharmed woman awarded $104,000″. “A woman who believes she was poisoned by a chemical spill in 1993 has been awarded [C]$104,000 by a Manitoba court, even though the judge acknowledged the woman is likely mistaken in her belief.” Lynette Mary Sant, 55, reported being exposed to fumes from a broken bottle of the chemical phenol. “Medical tests found no evidence of liver, kidney or nervous system damage.” When Sant was examined at a clinic, “it was found that while she exhibited symptoms when exposed to phenol, she also exhibited symptoms when exposed to distilled water.” (Francine Dubé, National Post, Apr. 26). (DURABLE LINK)

May 3-5 – Australian roundup: taxpayers pay for schoolyard fight. “A young man involved in a schoolyard punch-up with another student seven years ago was awarded more than [A]$1 million in damages yesterday because the teachers failed to provide adequate playground supervision.” At Narrandera High School, according to the record of the case, 13-year-old David Michael Griffin “and another student, Joshua Ferguson, met for an ‘arranged fight’ next to the basketball court, in the schoolgrounds, at lunchtime on March 1, 1995. Mr Griffin threw the first punches and Mr Ferguson hit back, knocking him to the ground.” (Ellen Connolly, “Former student wins $1m over injuries”, Sydney Morning Herald, May 1). “An entrepreneur schoolboy trying to save up for a skateboard by selling flowers has fallen foul of local laws by failing to take out a A$5 million ($2.70 million) public liability insurance policy.” (”Law Puts Schoolboy Flower Seller Out of Business”, Reuters, Apr. 23). And a dispute over team standings in the Australian soccer league may proceed to litigation (Michael Cockerill, “Con-undrum: who is in the finals?”, Sydney Morning Herald, Apr. 7). Plus: coverage of medical liability insurance crisis (”Health Under Threat”, news.com.au, May 3 and other dates) (DURABLE LINK)

May 3-5 – Update: Defend yourself in print and we’ll sue (cont’d). In a decision deplored alike by business groups and the ACLU, the California Supreme Court ruled Thursday by a 4-3 vote (PDF format) that that companies can be sued for false advertising over policy statements made in “issue ads”. The Nike Corporation had bought ads defending its record on the use of so-called sweatshop labor and was promptly sued by activists whose “private attorney general” action claimed that the ads violated the state’s fair advertising law (see Feb. 13). “What [Thursday's] decision means,” says Deborah La Fetra of the Pacific Legal Foundation, “is that one side of the debate gets full free speech protection, but a corporation trying to defend itself is subject to strict liability.” (Mike McKee, The Recorder, May 3). UCLA free speech specialist Eugene Volokh, whose already-indispensable new blog it seems we are beginning to quote daily, has the perfect instant analysis complete with a hypothetical on speech by abortion clinics that may help drive home why this new decision is anything but “progressive” (May 2). (DURABLE LINK)

May 3-5 – “It’s No Laughing Matter”. The Chicago Tribune finds harassment law trainers continuing to warn management against tolerating an atmosphere of joking in the workplace: “once a disgruntled employee files a lawsuit, ‘they’ll remember every inappropriate joke (ever) told,’ said Malcolm Kushner, who teaches harassment classes to attorneys in Santa Cruz, Calif. ‘Even if they laughed at it (at the time), it looks horrible to a jury.’” (T. Shawn Taylor, Chicago Tribune, Apr. 28). (DURABLE LINK)

May 1-2 – What big teeth you have, Sen. Edwards. In this week’s New Yorker, Nicholas Lemann profiles ambitious trial lawyer/Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, who is itching to run for President “as a trial lawyer”. (”The Newcomer”, May 6, not online.) Noteworthy line: “Throughout much of the South, trial lawyers are, in effect, the left: an influential group that, instead of converting populist sentiment into redistributionist legislation, converts it into big rewards for a small number of people who have stories of having been screwed by powerful, uncaring figures.” Mickey Kaus nails Edwards’ demagogic “us against them” populism as exactly the sort of thing you’d expect from one who chose his route to the top: “Trial lawyers like Edwards, Lemann notes, specialize in a theatrical form of scapegoating, taking complicated disasters and finding a ‘villain’ with deep pockets.” (Kausfiles, “Hit Parade: The pretty ShrumPuppet”, scroll to Apr. 30; InstaPundit, Apr. 30).

An analysis by Roll Call finds that Edwards (D-N.C.) “has relied almost entirely on his trial lawyer friends” to underwrite his $1.39 million war chest. “Of that total, $1.19 million — 86 percent — came from lawyers, their employees or their family members, …. No other Congressional leader or potential presidential contender has such a heavy reliance on a single industry for their leadership PAC. Edwards … makes a point of stressing that he won’t take money from PACs or registered lobbyists”, but conveniently trial lawyers don’t need to couch their donations in either of those forms. (Paul Kane, “Trial Lawyers Fuel Edwards’ Efforts”, Roll Call, Apr. 25; see Ribstone Pippin blog, Apr. 28) (& welcome Andrew Sullivan readers). (DURABLE LINK)

May 1-2 – Ad model sues tobacco company. “An Arkansas man who said he worked as a model in cigarette ads in the late 1970s sued R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. yesterday, saying he experienced years of emotional distress from enticing people to smoke. Raymond Leopard of Little Rock seeks at least $65 million in damages in the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court … The suit said Mr. Leopard worked as the ‘Winston Man’ from 1978 to 1980, pictured in Winston cigarette ads in popular magazines. The suit said he never smoked Winstons. … ‘His reputation has been forever tarnished and his personal credibility diminished,’ the suit said.” (”Former tobacco model sues Reynolds over ‘reputation’”, Washington Times, Apr. 30). (DURABLE LINK)

May 1-2 – “Injudicious conduct”. National Law Journal’s annual roundup of bad behavior on the bench includes cases mentioned previously in this space (Amundson, Couwenberg) plus a bunch of others (Gail Diane Cox, National Law Journal, Apr. 23). (DURABLE LINK)

May 1-2 – “Don’t sue for Israel”. Following legal threats, a small Texas automotive exporter has apologized for apparently having refused to do business with Israeli firms and citizens. When the story circulated last week, our friend James Taranto at the WSJ/OpinionJournal’s “Best of the Web” audibly hoped that the exporter would get in trouble under the odd “antiboycott” law that makes it a federal offense, inter alia, for an American company to engage in “actual refusal to do business with or in Israel”. (”Best of the Web”, Apr. 25; W. Gardner Selby, “Texan’s fax causes international fuss”, San Antonio Express-News, Apr. 30). But Sasha Volokh points out the inconsistency of the antiboycott law with the principle of free association, connects that theme nicely with the Boy Scouts v. Dale case and hate speech litigation, and adds a bunch of useful links (”Don’t sue for Israel”, Volokh brothers blog, Apr. 28). (DURABLE LINK)

April 20-22 – Quite an ankle sprain. Michele Nations, 26, who sprained her ankle five years ago when she tripped into a hole at a municipal park in Tucson, has now been awarded $450,000 by a local jury. Nations’ attorney “says the case hinged on the city’s responsibility to post adequate warning about burrowing animals [such as squirrels and gophers] and to provide a safe alternative to dodging holes and caved-in tunnels.” An attorney for the city differs, and calls the outcome astonishing: “You would think in a park — in a natural space — people should have to watch where they’re going.” (April 19: Maureen O’Connell, “Gopher hole may cost city $450K”, Arizona Daily Star; “Jury awards Tucson woman who stepped into hole at a park”, AP/Arizona Republic). (DURABLE LINK)

April 20-22 – Thank you, Your Honor. The May Brill’s Content has a cover story (teaser only online) entitled “Human Portals: How people with an obsession — and a website — are upstaging big media”. It tells how weblogs, link-rich sites regularly updated and often zeroing in on a specialized theme, are the new Big Thing in online media; typically “curated by one person”, according to editor in chief David Kuhn, they “could teach big media portals a lot about engaging their audience”. Happy to read all this, we were particularly pleased to turn to the sidebar feature in which the magazine surveys a group of public luminaries about their favorite websites, which range from eBay (Nora Ephron) to 10KWizard.com (Gretchen Morgenson). And here’s Alex Kozinski, distinguished federal judge on the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, on his favorite: “Overlawyered (overlawyered.com) provides pointers to legal-system horror stories: the accused rapist who pockets disability checks for his ’sexual compulsion’; the drunk who climbs a voltage tower and sues the utility company when he gets injured; the guy who murders his mom and sues his shrinks for not stopping him. The site is run by Walter Olson, who likes nothing better than reporting on legal overkill, and he’s compiled serious research tools for anyone interested in trends and abuses within the civil litigation system.” Thank you, Your Honor! (DURABLE LINK)

April 20-22 – Comparable worth in Maine. Despite widespread criticism of the idea from economists and others, Maine has enacted new rules opening private employers to a serious threat of legal action if they pay less to a worker of one gender than to a worker of the opposite gender “for comparable work on jobs with comparable requirements related to skill, effort and responsibility”. Some other states have had “comparable worth” or “pay equity” laws on the books, but Maine is the first to enact regulations giving such laws serious teeth. “We won”, said an official with the state AFL-CIO. “The business community has not awakened to the fact that this is going to cost them.” Disagreements are all but inevitable as to whether (say) secretaries’ work should be regarded as just as valuable as that of (say) truck drivers, and the Maine law will allow lawyers to march into such controversies with class action suits for unlimited damages — won’t that be fun? The state chamber of commerce did not oppose the enactment. (”Equal pay advocates tout new state rules”, AP/Bangor Daily News, April 4; “Maine Becomes First State Requiring Pay Equity”, Women’s ENews, April 3 (via Freedom News Daily); Maine Equal Justice Partners, 2000 Docket Report (scroll down to “Pay Equity”)).

SEE ALSO May 17, 2000; Diana Furchtgott-Roth, “Suicide Mission: The Union Push for Comporable Worth”, Capital Research Center Labor Watch, Dec. 1999; Lawrence W. Reed, “Comparable Worth or Incomparably Worthless?”, Mackinac Center, Sept. 6, 1994. The late Clarence Pendleton Jr., chairman of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, called comparable worth “the looniest idea since Looney Tunes came on the screen” (Simpson’s Contemporary Quotations #519). (DURABLE LINK)

April 20-22 – “Lie-tery winners”. All sorts of basically decent people, from cops to grandmothers, would never think of shoplifting or forging checks but do seem to think it’s okay to lie in lawsuits. “Just ask anyone who has taken more than a handful of depositions or cross-examined witnesses at trial — especially witnesses in tort cases. … the oath has become virtually meaningless,” writes Kirkland & Ellis partner Michael Jones (”Lie-tery Winners”, National Law Journal, March 22).

April 18-19 – Mistletoe dangerous even when absent. LeRoy Crawford says his female boss at the New York Stock Exchange behaved seductively and made remarks such as “if there were mistletoe, I would give you a kiss,” when giving him a Christmas bottle of cologne. Things went from bad to worse, and he now wants $1 million in compensatory damages and $1 million for “special damages as a result of physical and mental injury”. (Peter Noel, “Sex on the floor”, Village Voice, April 11-17).

April 18-19 – Randomness of case assignments questioned. San Francisco assigns cases for pre-trial motions to one of two judges, and it seemed that the plaintiff’s firm of Wartnick, Chaber, Harowitz & Tigerman kept getting lucky by drawing the more favorable judge to hear its asbestos cases. Lucky, indeed: over the past two years, 94 percent of the firm’s cases were assigned even numbers, instead of the odd numbers that would have sent the cases to the other judge. (Dennis J. Opatrny, “Playing the Numbers”, The Recorder, April 9).

April 18-19 – “Guests sue inn for overbooking”. When five Massachusetts couples arrived at Vermont’s romantic Woodstock Inn for an investment club weekend last April, they found the inn had inadvertently overbooked its rooms, and three of the couples had to stay at a local B&B. The inn proprietors were terribly apologetic and treated all five couples to the weekend’s lodging for free, as well as giving them a free dinner. Nonetheless, four of the couples are suing for a sum “substantially in excess of $25,000″ in a Boston court. (AP/Boston Globe, April 17).

April 18-19 – Tempest in an arsenic-laced teacup? President Bush deserves credit for standing up to demagogues by pulling back this bad regulation: Steve Chapman, “Who’s really poisoning our drinking water?”, Chicago Tribune, April 12; George Will, “The costs of moral exhibitionism”, Washington Post, April 15; Jason K. Burnett and Robert W. Hahn, Brookings/AEI Joint Center study, “EPA’s Arsenic Rule: The Benefits of the Standard Do Not Justify the Costs”, abstract, Jan. 2001; Mercatus Center (George Mason U.) Public Interest Comment series, Sept. 19, 2000; Michael Kinsley, “Bush is right on arsenic. Darn!”, Washington Post, April 13; Michael Y. Park, “Study: Arsenic Rule Would Have Increased Deaths”, FoxNews.com, April 17; Nick Schulz, “Poisoner-in-Chief Is Saving Lives”, American Spectator Online, April 17; Diane Rehm show transcript (National Public Radio), March 28.

April 17 – Reparations: take a number. National Journal columnist Stuart Taylor Jr. traces the link between demands for compensation for century-old evils such as slavery and colonization and legal battles over liability for decades-ago sales of products like lead paint and asbestos (”Paying Reparations for Ancient Wrongs Is Not Right”, The Atlantic/National Journal, April 11; our take, Reason, Nov. 2000). The group of lawyers mapping out slavery-reparations suits are scheduled to huddle on strategy today in Washington, and say they plan to name businesses as well as the U.S. government as defendants (Jamal E. Watson, “Lawyers plan suit for slavery reparations”, Boston Globe, April 13). The conservative magazine Insight has given uncritically positive coverage to demands for compensation over Japan’s World War II mistreatment of American servicemen, despite the clear laying to rest of such claims by postwar treaty. You’d think victims of the crimes of communism over its long reign would be even better placed to score positive ink in the conservative press, but we seem to hear little about them — not that we would want to load up the reparations bandwagon even further, you understand (Stephen Goode, “New book documents Japanese exploitation”, Insight, undated).

April 17 – A Pulitzer for Dorothy Rabinowitz. The Wall Street Journal editorialist, whose searing commentaries on dubious child-abuse prosecutions have helped expose some of the most glaring injustices to flow from sentimentalism and credulity in our legal system, snags one of this year’s Pulitzer Prizes for her commentaries on American society and culture (Yahoo Full Coverage — Pulitzers). OpinionJournal.com keeps an archive of her media criticism; her articles on abusive prosecution, when online at all, are found at far-flung corners of the web (”A Darkness in Massachusetts” -I-, -II-, -III- (RickRoss.com); more columns on Amirault case; “Through the Darkness” (the Grant Snowden case, forever linked with the name of Janet Reno) (DennisPrager.net); Wenatchee case -I-, -II-).

April 16 – “Woman settles hot pickle lawsuit with McDonald’s”. Or at least its local franchisee: “A woman who claimed she was permanently scarred by a hot McDonald’s hamburger pickle has settled her lawsuit against the restaurant chain. MAR Inc., which does business as McDonald’s in Knoxville, admitted no wrongdoing in the agreement signed by a judge Thursday. Other details of the settlement are to remain confidential. ” (see Oct. 10, 2000) (AP/CNN, April 13).

April 16 – New batch of reader letters. Our correspondents tell why the law makes it perilous to hire a home renovation contractor in New York, ask about buying T-shirts from us, wonder whether Indian-derived place names such as Wichita and Massachusetts are next up for abolition, lament American law’s resistance to the obvious fairness of the loser-pays principle, and hail a Supreme Court decision upholding employment arbitration.

April 16 – Big numbers. It is a truth universally acknowledged that if the injuries resulting from a transportation accident are sufficiently severe, a wealthy business must have been at fault. Teledyne Continental Motors of Mobile, Ala. has agreed to pay $27 million to settle a suit on behalf of survivors of five skydivers killed in the crash of a Cessna, though its attorney said the company’s oil tube design does not cause engine failure as the plaintiffs alleged (Joe Lambe, “$27 Million Settlement in Skydiving Plane Crash”, DropZone.com, March 16; “Poor Preflight Probably Killed Skydivers: NTSB”, Aero-News.Net, June 29, 2000). An Indiana appellate court has upheld a $55 million jury verdict against the Kroger Co. over a truck accident at a company terminal, rejecting the company’s contention that the award was excessive and in conflict with workers’ compensation laws (the injured man, a truck driver, worked for a wholly owned subsidiary of the large grocery chain). (Margaret Cronin Fisk, “Finding No Direct Employment Relationship, Indiana Appellate Court Upholds PI Award”, National Law Journal, March 28). A Los Angeles jury has just voted $55 million against General Tire, a unit of Germany’s Continental Gummi-Werke, over a “tread separation” accident (if you thought those were unique to Firestone, think again). (Myron Levin, Los Angeles Times, April 14; “Jury orders tire maker to pay $55 million”, AP/CNN, April 14). Among the plaintiff’s lawyers in the case was Brian Panish, famed for his 1999 feat in getting another L. A. jury to award $4.9 billion against GM, later reduced to $1.2 billion. And another well-known maker of replacement tires, Cooper Tire, got hammered the same week for $10 million in El Paso (”Jury OKs $10M Award Vs. Cooper Tire”, AP/FindLaw, April 13). Also see Margaret Cronin Fisk, “Two Tire Companies Punctured by Juries”, National Law Journal, April 24, with more details about both tire cases.

April 13-15 – It was the bar’s fault. “A 20-year-old Jamison man, who was shot last summer, says a Warminster bar is partially to blame for the incident. Had he not become drunk from alcohol consumption that night, Martin Joyce’s judgment would not have been impaired, he would not have approached an unknown man for change and he would not have been shot, alleges a suit filed in Montgomery County Court.” (John Corcoran, “Intoxication caused judgment error, suit claims”, Doylestown, Pa. Intelligencer-Record, April 11).

April 13-15 – Anti-Ritalin lawyers still acting out. Despite some early setbacks, tobacco-veteran lawyers including Richard Scruggs, John Coale and Marc Saperstein continue to seek megabucks damages against drugmaker Novartis (formerly Ciba-Geigy) over the widespread prescribing in schools of Ritalin, the drug meant to combat attention deficit disorder, hyperactivity, and related conditions. There’s a strong case to be made against the thoughtless overuse of this drug, but how characteristic of our litigation system that it proposes to take decisions about its use out of the hands of both medical professionals and parents, instead inviting the lawyers to shop around until they find a few sympathetic courts and a jury or two willing (effectively) to ban the drug through punitive damages. PBS “Frontline” covered the issue recently (”Medicating Kids“) and its website includes a section on the litigation (”ADHD Lawsuits“) which points out a noteworthy recent development: on March 8 of this year federal judge Rudi Brewster threw out a suit seeking class-action status on behalf of everyone in California who had used or bought Ritalin, and also “ruled that activities by defendants intended to advance the medical understanding, diagnosis and treatment of ADHD were free speech protected under California’s anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) statute.” This latter is significant because efforts by businesses to engage in medical promotion or policy defense of products, trade association activity etc. are now routinely sued over by trial lawyers in themselves (conspiracy! public brainwashing! tobacco all over again!) and anti-SLAPP statutes might prove useful in rebuffing such causes of action.

MORE: Sept. 18 & Sept. 22, 2000; Nancy Shute, “Pushing Pills on Kids?”, U.S. News, Oct. 2, 2000; Shankar Vedantam, “A symptom of the times? ADD, Ritalin focus of suits”, Philadelphia Inquirer, Dec. 11, 2000; Bob Seay, “Ten Questions for the Lawyers”, About.com ADD site, Sept. 16, 2000.

April 13-15 – “2000’s Ten Wackiest Employment Lawsuits”. Gerald Skoning of Chicago’s Seyfarth Shaw compiles an annual roundup of the most bizarre cases in employment law. Among this year’s highlights: a Minneapolis woman took a job in a sex-toy store and then filed a hostile-environment harassment lawsuit because of all the dirty talk she had to listen to; an Ohio court allowed a worker at a mental health facility to proceed with his reverse disability-discrimination claim that he had been singled out for mistreatment as the only employee at the facility without a mental disability; and a Boeing employee claimed that the company’s objection to his working in the nude was a failure to accommodate his religion, shamanism (”2000’s 10 Wackiest Employment Lawsuits”, National Law Journal, March 29).

April 12 – Zero-tolerance spiral. The WSJ’s OpinionJournal.com “Best of the Web” feature has lately made it a special project to collect reports of zero tolerance excesses, which are fast mounting beyond our ability to record them. F’rinstance, there are the school officials in West Annapolis, Md., who have banned kids from playing tag during recess, citing the school’s “no-touching” policy (Kimberly Marselas, “City school bans students from playing tag”, Annapolis Capital, March 26); and the honor student given an in-school suspension in West Monroe, La., for drawing a GI Joe-style commando with canteen, knife and grenades (Emeri O’Brien, “3rd-grader suspended for drawing”, Monroe, La. News-Star, March 24; “Soldier drawing gets wide attention”, March 27). A 16-year-old student at Legacy High School in Broomfield, Colo. “may be charged with a felony after school officials found an unloaded BB gun in his car.” (Christine Reid, “Student may face felony charge over unloaded BB gun”, Scripps-Howard, April 8). And in the continuing search for ways to build character in the leaders of tomorrow, some favor snitchlines: “Cedar Rapids police are believed to be the first in Iowa to create a student hot line to take tips on illegal activity. Teens who call about classmates they believe to have alcohol, drugs or weapons on school property get $50 if the police recover anything.” (Kate Kompas, “Teen crime hot line offers cash”, Des Moines Register, April 5).

April 12 – “The Last Tycoon”. This Baltimore City Paper profile from last August, which we missed at the time, says contingency fees to Peter Angelos’s law firm topped $100 million for asbestos work on behalf of Bethlehem Steel workers alone, with more riches expected to flow in from fen-phen, lead paint and those supposedly deadly cellular phones. “When it comes to Baltimore’s politics and finances, it seems, almost nothing happens without Peter Angelos. … in 1999, 10 lawyers and lobbyists were registered with the State Ethics Commission on his behalf.” The minority leader of the state house describes the Orioles owner’s power in Annapolis as “absolutely magical” and “amazing … It’s all based on huge amounts of money flowing [from] Peter Angelos’ pocket and into the coffers of the Democratic Party.’” (Molly Rath, Baltimore City Paper, Aug. 16, 2000)(more).

April 11 – Lost his live client, had to substitute dead one instead. In St. Louis, where lots of dead people are registered to vote, “a dead man was listed as the chief plaintiff in a lawsuit filed on Election Day in November,” according to the L.A. Times. “He was having trouble voting, the suit said, due to long lines at his polling station. So he petitioned a judge — successfully — to keep city ballot boxes open late. … The lawyer who filed the suit explained the mix-up by saying he had intended the plaintiff to be Robert ‘Mark’ Odom, an aide to a Democratic candidate for Congress.” However, “Odom had voted, without a wait, by the time the suit was filed,” and the papers had been prepared with his name on them. But as California judge William W. Bedsworth suggests, this supposed explanation if anything makes the case more egregious: the lawyer “‘explained’ how he filed a suit on behalf of a dead person by saying that the plaintiff turned out not to have had his rights violated, and the only available person with the same name happened to be dead. And this caused not the batting of an eyelash in St. Louis. No immediate suspension, no call for disbarment, no investigation into how he got a judge to sign this thing”. (”Meet Me in St. Louis”, The Recorder, April 9).

April 11 – Update: “metric martyr” convicted. In the first such prosecution in Britain, greengrocer Steven Thoburn of Sunderland has been convicted of violating a 1985 compulsory metric system laws by selling bananas in pounds and ounces (see Jan. 22) (”‘Metric martyr’ convicted”, The Guardian, April 9; “Bananas” (editorial), Daily Telegraph (editorial), April 10; footrule.org, of which the late Jennifer Paterson (TV’s “Two Fat Ladies”) was an honorary member).

September 29-October 1 – Disabled rights roundup. The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether the PGA golf tour must bend its rules to allow disabled golfer Casey Martin to ride in a golf cart (”U.S. High Court To Decide Case of Disabled Golfer”, Reuters/FindLaw, Sept. 26; see April 10, our May 1998 take). The government of Great Britain is considering legislation that would compel its armed forces to accept disabled recruits, and pressures are rising to accept handicapped military personnel in front-line as well as auxiliary positions, given the principle of nondiscrimination (Michael Smith, “Disabled want frontline jobs in ‘pc’ Services”, Daily Telegraph (London), Sept. 26; “Forces may have to admit disabled”, Aug. 21; UK Disability Discrimination Act). And a trend that has been well established under U.S. disabled rights law for some time — doctors’ having to hire sign-language translators at their own expense when a deaf patient wishes to call on them for a consultation — is exemplified by a consent decree negotiated by the office of New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, requiring an upstate doctors’ group to provide interpreters-on-demand for “all significant medical encounters” (”Spitzer Announces Agreement With Upstate Physician’s Practice To Provide Sign Language Interpreters for Deaf Patients”, press release, June 21; see also May 31).

September 29-October 1 – Annals of zero tolerance: Tweety bird chain. In suburban Atlanta, the Garrett Middle School has suspended 11-year-old Ashley Smith from sixth grade for two weeks on charges of breaking its zero-tolerance weapons policy by bringing a chain to school. It’s a 10-inch novelty chain that dangles from her Tweety bird wallet. “It’s only a little chain, and I don’t think it can really hurt anyone,” said Ashley, a “Tweety fan who publishes her own Web site devoted to the cartoon character.” Earlier, the ACLU successfully represented an Atlanta public school student who was charged with criminal weapons possession after she brought African tribal knives to school for a project (”Girl suspended for Tweety chain”, AP/Salon, Sept. 28; UPI/Virtual New York) (Ashley Smith’s guestbook) (update Oct. 4: school’s explanation).

September 29-October 1 – French crash, German victims, American payout levels? Air France has sued Continental Air Lines to recoup its costs from the July Concorde disaster in Paris that killed 113 people, charging that a strip of metal that fell off a Continental DC-10 caused the incident. The French airline has already offered to compensate survivor families, who are mostly German, but “German lawyers are pushing for a settlement in the United States, where courts order higher payouts.” (”Airline files Concorde suit”, Reuters/CNNfn, Sept. 27).

September 29-October 1 – “Denny’s fights back against false suits”. The restaurant chain, dogged by past charges of racial discrimination, releases more details on how it uses videotapes and other techniques to disprove dubious copycat claims (see Aug. 29-30). In Oakland, Calif., the lawyer son of John S. Harrison Sr. sued Denny’s claiming that a white couple had been served before his father though they had arrived later. “Mr. Harrison conceded he had been a customer for 20 years and ate at that Denny’s counter twice a day for 10 to 12 years with no problems in a store whose clientele was 50 percent black.” He had been happy with the meal and had left a tip. A federal magistrate threw out the suit and gave Denny’s legal fees. (Frank Murray, Washington Times, Sept. 25).

September 29-October 1 – “Supersize small claims”. Prairielaw columnist David A. Giacalone argues for reviving the nearly moribund institution of small claims court by boosting the threshold value of claims handled by such courts to $20,000, a change also endorsed by the HALT legal reform group. Thresholds around $3,000 are now common. Such a shift might relieve some of the docket pressure on regular courts while allowing ordinary citizens to vindicate more claims without lawyers’ assistance, a feature that may help explain why the bar shows little enthusiasm for the idea (undated, but appeared Aug.) (see also Oct. 3).

September 27-28 – Welcome UserFriendly.org readers. We’re picked as the link of the day by the website for the cartoon strip User Friendly, by Illiad.

September 27-28 – “Blind customers want to touch club lapdancers”. In East Sussex, England, the Brighton and Hove municipal council says it will consider a request by the Pussycats Club that its blind patrons be permitted to touch the exotic dancers as a form of handicap accommodation. The club says its vision-impaired customers appreciate the proximity of the lapdancers and their perfume but would get a better idea of what they looked like if they were allowed a hands-on experience, which is currently forbidden by the club’s license. (David Sapsted, Daily Telegraph (London), Sept. 26).

September 27-28 – Welcome Toronto Star readers. “One of my favourite Web sites is overlawyered.com, a collection of the most asinine stories from the admittedly ordinarily twisted universe of American law,” writes columnist Jason Brooks. He interviews our editor about a current proposal for Ontario to enact its own law emulating the Americans with Disabilities Act. No one seems to have any very clear idea what such a law would cost, but the Ontarians with Disabilities Act Committee says “the idea of a total cost figure misses the point.” Uh-oh…. (Jason Brooks, “Will new act go too far for the disabled?”, Toronto Star, Sept. 25).

September 27-28 – “Controversial drug makes a comeback”. A small Canadian firm, Duchesnay Inc., wants to reintroduce to the U.S. market Bendectin, the pregnancy-nausea drug driven off the market by mass litigation claiming that it caused birth defects. “Bendectin was the archetypical case of junk science scuttling a perfectly safe product,” Dr. Michael Greene, director of maternal-fetal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, tells New York Times science correspondent Gina Kolata. “It was a sad episode in American jurisprudence.” Although ultimately the manufacturer never paid damages, it spent $100 million in defense costs, says Prof. David Bernstein of George Mason University (Sept. 26)(reg).

September 27-28 – Stuart Taylor, Jr. on Gore and Vetogate. Another scathing, must-read column on trial lawyers and politics by the National Journal columnist, written before Janet Reno’s announcement last week that the Justice Department would not pursue an investigation of the Umphrey call sheet affair. Did you know that lawyers as a group have donated nearly ten times as much to the Democrats during this election cycle as the tobacco industry has given Republicans? (”Gore’s Shameless About Posing As A Populist”, National Journal/Atlantic Unbound, Sept. 26) .

September 27-28 – Microsoft wins one. The U.S. Supreme Court has turned down a Justice Department request that it hear the Microsoft case immediately, instead allowing the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to review the case, which is what the company preferred; past D.C. Circuit rulings suggest that it may be more sympathetic to Microsoft’s position than was the trial judge. (”High Court Defers to Microsoft”, AP/Wired News, Sept. 26; Declan McCullagh, “Microsoft gets what it wants”, Wired News, Sept. 26). And a number of courts have thrown out statewide consumer class actions against Microsoft based on the sale of Windows, although this doesn’t really come as much of a surprise in the case of states that bar indirect (end-user) antitrust claims, since cases filed in those courts were always long shots (Jonathan Groner, “The Cases Microsoft Is Winning”, Legal Times (Washington), Sept. 18).

September 27-28 – Bank error in your favor. Latest coins- found- under- the- sofa- cushions class action settlement: Wilmington, Del.-based credit card giant MBNA Corp. agrees to pay $3.57 each to current and former customers to settle claims that its ads were misleading in the early 1990s when they promoted a low interest rate for balances transferred from another card, but did not warn that the low rate did not apply to newly incurred charges. Lawyers for the plaintiff class, meanwhile, are set to pocket $1.3 million. Major credit card companies are frequent targets of class action litigation; Chase Manhattan and Providian Financial have recently settled such actions, and Citibank and Bank One/First USA face pending claims (Joseph N. DiStefano, “MBNA settles suit over card ads”, Philadelphia Inquirer, Sept. 26).

September 27-28 – Final innings for Kennewick Man. Score stands at archaeologists 0, multiculturalists 1, as Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt announces that the 9,000-year-old skeleton found along the Columbia River four years ago will be given to local Indian tribes, who intend to bury the remains without allowing a complete examination. “If Babbitt’s ruling stands, the loss to science is beyond comprehension,” writes National Review Online’s John Miller (”Kennewick Man’s last stand”, Sept. 26; see also Oct. 11, 1999).

September 25-26 – New data on state campaign contributions. Triallawyermoney.org, the project of the American Tort Reform Foundation that tracks plaintiff lawyers’ political contributions, has just expanded its coverage to include local elections in seven key states as well as federal elections. The states include Alabama, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and Texas; there is also a link to similar data collected by the Civil Justice Association of California (launched Sept. 19 — “State Races“).

September 25-26 – “Skier to be tried for manslaughter in Colorado in fatal collision”. Although two county courts ruled that a reasonable person would not have expected skiing too fast to result in another person’s death, prosecutors in Denver have insisted on pressing a manslaughter rap against Chico, Calif. college student Nathan Hall, who in 1997, at the age of 18, headed down Vail Mountain and collided with 33-year-old Denverite Alan Cobb on the slope, killing him almost instantly. (AP/CNN, Sept. 11). Update Nov. 21: Hall convicted of criminally negligent homicide.

September 25-26 – Wal-Mart’s tobacco exposure. Through a little-known subsidiary named McLane Co., the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer is the largest distributor of cigarettes to convenience stores, which makes it the biggest handler of that commodity aside from the tobacco companies themselves. Despite Wal-Mart’s deep pockets, plaintiff’s attorneys seem not to have noticed it yet. (Kelly Barron, “Smoking gun”, Forbes, Aug. 21) (see also July 7).

September 25-26 – A job offer for the judge. Following protests from defendants, Judge Edward Angeletti of Baltimore, Maryland Circuit Court removed himself from a series of asbestos-injury cases over which he was presiding and declared a mistrial after it was revealed that he had received a job offer from plaintiff’s attorney and political kingmaker Peter Angelos (see Oct. 19 and Dec. 9, 1999, March 15, 2000). According to AP/CNN, “Angelos has said that he made a ‘very substantial’ offer for Angeletti to head his office’s pursuit of lawsuits against lead paint manufacturers.” Angelos, who has become immensely wealthy through his handling of asbestos litigation, controls about three of every four asbestos cases in the Baltimore court. (”Job offer from lawyer leads judge to step down from asbestos trial”, AP/CNN, Aug. 1; “Judge removes himself from absbestos [sic] trials”, AP/Prince George’s County [Md.] Journal, Aug. 2)

September 25-26 – Kopel on zero-tolerance policies. Dave Kopel, Paul Gallant, & Joanne D. Eisen of the Independence Institute comment on the school zero-tolerance policies under which possession of an obvious toy gun — or sometimes just making a thumb-and-first-finger “gun” gesture — is considered grounds for punishment. (”Gunning for the Kiddies”, National Review Online, Sept. 22).

September 25-26 – Treaties rule. A federal judge in San Francisco has thrown out a lawsuit against Japanese defendants over World War II atrocities. In 1951 we signed a peace agreement with Japan which prohibited exactly these sorts of claims. Now we have to live up to our end of the treaty — period. (Louis Sahagun, “Suit on WWII Slave Labor in Japan Voided”, L.A. Times, Sept. 22; Reuters/FindLaw; see Sept. 20, 1999).

September 22-24 – “N.Y. Lawyer Charged in Immigrant Smuggling”. In a 44-count indictment, federal prosecutors on Wednesday charged the Manhattan lawyer who runs the country’s largest political asylum practice, Harvard Law-educated Robert Porges, with a wide range of offenses including concocting thousands of fictitious stories of persecution by which detained aliens could avoid deportation, advising smugglers how best to avoid detection by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and “helping smugglers detain illegal immigrants until debts were paid.” According to prosecutors, paralegals wrote out longhand accounts of persecution, claiming of women clients, for example, that they had suffered forced abortions under China’s “one-child” policy, and then coached the immigrants on how to carry off the story convincingly. Porges is said to have “collected as much as $13 million in fees for helping to transport as many as 7,000 illegal immigrants from mainland China to the United States”. (Hanna Rosin and Christine Haughney, Washington Post, Sept. 21). Update Sept. 21, 2003: Porges and wife sentenced in 2002 to about eight years.

September 22-24 – RN’s illusions. Ralph Nader campaigns on the theme that anti-business advocates like himself are somehow kept from circulating their message or swaying policy. Is he really so disconnected from reality as to think that? (Sebastian Mallaby, “Victim of His Success”, Washington Post, Sept. 17). Before you get too enthusiastic about the Greens, suggests James Lileks, take a look at their platform: “They want your money, your job, your freedom and your car.” (”A look at Nader and his merry Greens”, San Francisco Examiner, July 14). And since some Nader groups have proposed the setting aside of a new .sucks domain to express discontent with powerful institutions (ibm.sucks, mcdonalds.sucks, etc.) some Seattle libertarians have turned the tables by founding the rudely named but inevitable Nadersucks.org, which bills itself as the largest collection of critical links about him online, outpacing the “Nader Skeleton Closet” feature at Realchange.org.

Other links of note from a Nader-watcher’s scrapbook: Doug Henwood, “1.75 cheers for Ralph”, Left Business Observer, Oct. 1996; discussion on LBO mailing list re RN finances, Sept. 9, 1998; RN denounces tort reform in campaign press release, VoteNader.org, Aug. 11; Robert Bryce, “Naturally Nader”, Austin Chronicle, April 7; Mike Allen, “Nader: The Little Guy’s Multimillionaire” (worth $3.8 million, heavily invested in tech stocks, still refuses to reveal income tax records), Washington Post, June 18; Paul West, “Corporate gadfly turns out to be rich”, Baltimore Sun, June 17; Michael Lewis, “Campaign Journal: The Normal Person of Tomorrow”, The New Republic, May 20, 1996.

September 22-24 – From our mail sack: hyperactive lawyers. Reader Scott Replogle, M.D., writes from Colorado: “I see (Sept. 18) that trial lawyer Richard Scruggs is suing psychiatrists and the makers of the drug Ritalin, alleging they conspired to ‘create’ a disease, Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, and then overdiagnose it for monetary gain. Which raises the question: when can we sue the people who not too long ago ‘created’ the previously unknown disorders of ’silicone disease’ and ‘human adjuvant disease’ during the breast-implant controversy, and conspired to overdiagnose those diseases for monetary gain? And does it matter that many of those people were trial lawyers?” (see also April 13, 2001)

September 21 — Missouri tobacco fees. Lawyers stand to make $100 million or more for representing the state of Missouri in the Medicaid-tobacco litigation and the state’s largest newspaper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, says that sum “is out of proportion to the work performed and the risk involved … troubling … grossly overpays the lawyers involved … creates an unholy alliance between the state and tobacco interests” It’s also “a political gravy train” since “the five law firms involved in the case donated a total of more than $500,000 in campaign contributions over the past eight years, mostly to Democrats”; a prominent Republican former judge and Democratic former mayor of St. Louis were also cut in. “An important issue of public policy — the lawyers’ fees — will be determined outside the public forum” given that a secret arbitration proceeding will be employed to set the fees. “…It is private money in the public trough. But that doesn’t make the sight of the lawyers lining up to feed any prettier.” (”All aboard the gravy train” (editorial), St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sept. 17).

Brent Evans, a state senate candidate in Missouri, has posted extensive documentation on the circumstances surrounding state attorney general Jay Nixon’s hiring of outside lawyers to prosecute the suit. According to Evans, the lawyers’ campaign contributions of $561,000 included $139,000 for Nixon himself and $113,000 for Democratic Gov. Mel Carnahan (”The Tobacco Papers“; the lawyers; their generosity; the work they might have done to justify the fees; “Attorneys mum about how much they’re seeking” (fee request “confidential”), Jefferson City News-Tribune, April 26, 1999; Jack Cashill, “Warning: Tobacco Settlements May Endanger The Integrity of Your Elected Officials” (also discusses Kansas fees), Cashill.com, undated 1999; “Appeals court sides with Nixon on legal fees in tobacco settlement”, Jefferson City News-Tribune, May 31, 2000; James Baughn, The Cape Rock webzine (Cape Girardeau, Mo.), June).

Last year Missouri Digital News reported that Paul Wilson, lead attorney on the matter with AG Nixon’s office, “urged lawmakers to pass legislation that will protect the major tobacco companies from a market-share loss once the impact of the tobacco settlement sets in. Off-brand cigarette companies, those not participating in the settlement, could otherwise undercut the prices of the major tobacco companies. Missouri will keep getting its billions so long as the market share of the signatories does not dip below 95 percent. If it were to do so and Missouri had no off-brand tobacco law, explained Wilson, the terms of the settlement let the major tobacco companies stop paying.” (Anna Brutzman, “Legislators Bewildered By Settlement”, April 4, 1999). Update Oct. 5, 2003: Missouri Supreme Court refuses to entertain challenge to tobacco fees.

September 21 – Dangerous divorce opponents. It’s tough enough going through a divorce in any case, but you’d really better watch out if your spouse is a successful lawyer, according to the New York Post. Advice: try for a change of venue. (Laura Williams, “Attorneys’ Wives Court Disaster”, Sept. 20).

September 21 – Eastwood trial begins. Jurors will hear an Americans with Disabilities Act complaint against the actor’s Mission Ranch hotel in Carmel. For our coverage of the Eastwood case and related Congressional hearings, see May 18, March 7, Feb. 15 and Jan. 26. (”Eastwood to Jurors: ‘Make My Day’”, AP/Fox News, Sept. 20; Shannon Lafferty, “Eastwood in the Line of Fire,” The Recorder/CalLaw, Sept. 21).

September 20 – Victory in Chicago. A judge last week threw out the city of Chicago’s lawsuit against the gun industry. “In granting the industry’s motion to dismiss, Judge Stephen A. Schiller of Cook County Circuit Court suggested that the city had not shown wrongdoing by the individual defendants. He said that the city’s arguments would be better handled in a legislature than in a courtroom.” However, a West Coast judge denied a defense motion to dismiss a group of cases filed by San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles city and county, and other plaintiffs. Pending appeal, judges have now dismissed the suits filed by Chicago, Cincinnati, Bridgeport, and Miami, while declining to dismiss suits filed by Detroit, Atlanta, Boston, New Orleans, Cleveland, and the California cities. (Pam Belluck, “Chicago Gun Suit Fails, but California’s Proceeds”, New York Times, Sept. 16 (reg); “Judge dismisses Chicago suit against gun industry”, Reuters/CNN, Sept. 15; reaction from Illinois State Rifle Association). Plus: John Derbyshire gets radicalized on the tort reform issue when he goes out trying to buy ammunition on Long Island, and discovers that the courtroom assault on the industry is choking the local firearms dealers into oblivion with no legislation needed, simply by causing their liability insurance to dry up. (”First thing we do…”, National Review Online, Sept. 12).

September 20 – Disbarred, with an asterisk. Most clients probably assume that a lawyer thrown out of the profession is gone for good, but the Boston Globe finds that for years bar authorities have been quietly readmitting practitioners, including some whose original offenses were grave. Some of this leniency has been misplaced, since a number of the readmitted lawyers have gone on to commit new offenses against clients. (David Armstrong, “Special Report: Disbarred Mass. lawyers skirt discipline system”, Sept. 17, and sidebars: “Reinstatement process favors lawyers“, “Victims often missing from equation“.

September 20 – “Regulating Privacy: At What Cost?” Free-marketeers finally start organizing to resist the steamroller movement toward online-privacy laws, reports Declan McCullagh. Among new initiatives are a symposium held yesterday on Capitol Hill by George Mason U.’s Mercatus Center, a book entitled The Future of Financial Privacy forthcoming from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and a privacy-issues website called Privacilla.org. (Wired.com, Sept. 19). And Reason Express a while back alerted us to a website by Jacob Palme in Sweden which recounts some of the less pleasant consequences of that nation’s pioneering (1973) law preventing the electronic gathering or dissemination of information about individuals without their consent. Palme says the law mostly went unenforced as regards web publishing, which is a good thing since if enforced literally it could have rendered unlawful much of the web in Sweden. The few instances that led to enforcement action, as related by Palme, suggest that unpopular and dissident opinions were among the most likely to draw complaints under the law. One man put up a webpage critical of a large Swedish bank, naming individual directors whom he believed had behaved in ethically irresponsible ways; he was prosecuted and fined for violating their privacy. In another case, an animal rights group was subject to legal action for posting a list of fur producers. In a third, a church volunteer was prosecuted for stating on a web page that one named church member had broken a leg and another was a member of the Social Democratic Party; health status and political affiliations are considered especially sensitive under the law. In a fourth case, dissident dog lovers got in privacy-law trouble for criticizing leading members of a dog society by name. The privacy laws were revised in 1998 and again in 1999, following much criticism, and as of June 2000, when Palme’s page was last revised, the highest Swedish court had not yet given its interpretation of the law (”Freedom of Speech, The EU Data Protection Directive and the Swedish Personal Data Act“; “The Swedish Personal Register Law“; “Swedish Attempts to Regulate the Internet“; official Data Inspection Board). (DURABLE LINK)

September 19 – Hollywood under fire: nose of the Camel? In what may take the prize for worst idea of the month, South Carolina Attorney General Charles Condon has proposed filing coordinated state lawsuits to make Hollywood the next tobacco. “Clearly we have here a virtual replay of what the tobacco industry did to our children. Instead of Joe Camel, Hollywood uses Eminem, South Park, Doom and Steven Segal [sic] to seduce children,” Condon wrote in a letter to the National Association of Attorneys General (Condon press release, Sept. 13; David Shuster, “South Carolina AG Threatens Suit Against Entertainment Industry”, Fox News, Sept. 15). It’s time the entertainment business cleaned up its act, writes Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune, but that doesn’t mean Sens. McCain and Lieberman are right to “justify [an] end run around the 1st Amendment with a public-health argument like that which justifies the regulation of tobacco or liquor.” (”A World Apart: Eminem and Me”, Sept. 17). Owens Corning and Met Life use cartoon characters (the Pink Panther and Snoopy respectively) as advertising mascots, and you might jump to the conclusion that they were committing that dire sin, “marketing to children”, if you didn’t know that fiberglass insulation and insurance are products bought by adults, observes Illinois law prof Ronald Rotunda (”The FTC Report on Hollywood Entertainment“, Federalist Society, Free Speech and Election Law Working Group; FTC report; “Lieberman: Entertainment must police itself”, AP/Miami Herald, Sept. 13). Filmmaker John Waters doesn’t think much of the crusade: “The future CEOs of America are all sneaking into R-rated movies” (Rick Lyman, “Writers, Directors Fear Censorship, Tell Anger Over Violence Hearings”, New York Times Service/Chicago Tribune, Sept. 18). And plaintiff’s lawyers suing entertainment companies over school shootings, who’ve already gotten plenty of favorable ink in the conservative press (see July 22, 1999), are hoping the new report will invigorate their legal cause (Frank Murray, “FTC adds ammo to lawsuits for deaths”, Washington Times, Sept. 13).

September 19 –WSJ’s Bartley on decline of American law. The establishment of the rule of law, replacing the whim of powerful rulers, was perhaps the supreme achievement of the West in the millennium just past, but the United States has grown careless about its legal inheritance, with systematic injustices mounting in both criminal and civil courtrooms. Last week’s call-sheet scandal illustrates the way “audacious and powerful interests” who have found ways to use the legal system to make their fortunes “have allied themselves with government and politicians.” (Robert Bartley, “The Law and Civilization’s Future”, Opinion Journal (Wall Street Journal), Sept. 18). “Justice Department investigators and prosecutors want to know if there were, in fact, any quid pro quos for the trial lawyers’ extraordinary generosity,” editorializes the San Diego Union-Tribune about the scandal. “With trial lawyers contributing almost 10 percent of all funds raised by the Gore-Lieberman campaign, that remains an urgent question. Voters have a right to some answers before Nov. 7.” (”Veto for sale?”, Sept. 16).

September 19 – Punitive damages for hatemongering? Washington Post’s editorial page “is gutsy enough to have qualms about Morris Dees’ strategy of bankrupting hate groups with punitive tort damages,” observes Mickey Kaus at Kausfiles (”The Aryan Nations Verdict” (editorial), Washington Post, Sept. 16). “Many advocacy groups that engage in direct actions potentially expose themselves to tort liability…. That danger is compounded by the abusive system of punitive damages, which gives juries wide discretion to ruin people or companies financially in a fashion untethered to the scope of the harm they have done in the specific case at issue,” the Post comments. “That could not have happened to a more deserving bunch than Mr. [Richard] Butler and the Aryan Nations. But it’s worth pausing for a moment to wonder who’s next.”

September 18 – Scruggs v. Ritalin. Latest target for zillionaire tobacco lawyer and recent Time profilee Richard Scruggs: Novartis Pharmaceutical Corp., makers of the drug Ritalin, and the American Psychiatric Association. Scruggs’s firm accuses the two of conspiring to promote an overly broad diagnosis of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), with the result that the drug is given to too many youngsters. “Novartis and the APA deny the allegations. In a statement, Novartis says the charges are ‘unfounded and preposterous.’” Some lawyers from the Castano consortium, which pursued tobacco litigation separate from Scruggs’s, are also joining him in the action. (”Lawsuits Accuse Ritalin Makers, APA”, AP/Yahoo, Sept. 15; Excite/Dow Jones; Toni Locy, “Fight over Ritalin is heading to court”, USA Today, Sept. 15) (see also Sept. 22-24 and April 13, 2001).

September 18 – White House pastry chef harassment suit. White House assistant pastry chef Franette McCulloch, 53, is suing her boss Roland Mesnier, claiming he “became hostile and rude when she spurned his advances, ’screaming’ at her for refusing to have sex, excluding her from designing desserts and once assigning her to peel eight crates of kiwi.” Her suit also alleges that Bill Clinton, as the head of the White House, failed to establish a proper method for employees to bring harassment complaints, and demands $1 million each from Mesnier and Clinton. (AP/CNN, Sept. 13; Ellen Nakashima, “White House Chef Accuses Boss of Sexual Harassment”, Washington Post, Sept. 14). In 1997, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled against a discriminatory-firing claim by an employee of the White House chef’s office, but said he had been improperly retaliated against for filing his complaint. A former executive chef testified in a sworn deposition that year that the Clintons had paid him $37,000 to quit his post “because of my accent and the fact that I’m overweight.” (more).

September 18 – The teetery inkbottle. “Whenever the law and the facts were against him, Mr. Homans was not one to pound on the table. Instead, he would resort to what he called his ‘trial pen’, a big, old-fashioned device that he would pull out at a critical moment in a trial. On the stand would be the state’s star witness testifying that he had seen with his own eyes as Mr. Homans’s client pulled out a gun and pointed it directly at the bank teller’s head. But the jurors’ eyes would be on Mr. Homans, who, with trembling hand, would be filling the pen from a bottle of India ink perched so precariously, half over the edge of the defense table, that the jury would be caught up in the suspense of when it would fall.” — from an obituary, “William Homans, 75, Dies; Boston Civil Rights Lawyer”, by the late Robert McG. Thomas, Jr., New York Times, February 13, 1997 (fee-based archives, search on “William Homans”).

September 18 – That’ll be $2 trillion, please. A former resident has filed three lawsuits against the town of Rocky River, Ohio, “claiming everything from false arrest to injury of reputation,” and demanding $2 trillion. The town isn’t amused and is countersuing her, saying it’s had to expend money to defend itself. (Sarah Treffinger, “Rocky River sues woman who sued for trillions”, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Sept. 13).

September 15-17 – Day Two of Vetogate. George W. Bush in a California speech says the new call-sheet revelations are evidence that Gore “may have crossed a serious line … The appearance is really disturbing”, Janet Reno refuses to talk about the status of the investigation,