Jeralyn Merritt @ TalkLeft and Jonathan Adler @ Volokh identify one data point.

P.S.: via comments, Robert Ambrogi at Legal Blog Watch has more.

MDL Judge Eldon Fallon orders plaintiffs’ attorneys’ fees in the $4.85 billion settlement to be capped at 32%. Hooray, right? Certainly, the trial bar is capable of arguing for itself that the ruling is wrong and it is entitled to a couple of hundred million more, but I might just have to take their side here.

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Aficionados of the John Edwards-Rielle Hunter scandal may have noticed a new attorney’s name cropping up in news reports: Lee Rohn of the U.S. Virgin Islands. From the New York Daily News:

One day before Edwards went public with the affair, Hunter and 6-month-old daughter Frances were flown to the Virgin Islands on a chartered jet, the Enquirer reported.

The $50,000 trip was paid for by friends of Edwards. The newspaper also said she stayed at the oceanfront home of another Edwards’ pal, lawyer Lee Rohn.

(Larry McShane, “John Edwards promised Rielle Hunter they’d be together - report”, Aug. 20)(via ABA Journal)(Update: Rohn vehemently denies the Enquirer story as false, saying she neither hosted Hunter nor is close to Edwards; see below). Readers may be wondering: is Rohn yet another attorney whose doings are going to make irresistible copy for a site like this, much as with Edwards chum/Democratic moneyman/perennial Overlawyered mentionee Fred Baron? To which the answer would appear to be, “you bet”:

St. Croix attorney Lee Rohn has stirred up a chorus of criticism and complaints about her professional practices both inside and outside the courtroom.

Her most vocal critics have been opposing parties or counsel in lawsuits she has filed. They have alleged a wide spectrum of professional conduct violations.

Among Rohn’s frequent targets is Innovative Communication Corp., which runs the Virgin Islands’ local telephone provider and the islands’ newspaper, and whose lawyers say they’ve lost count of how many times she’s sued them. The company’s chairman, Jeffrey Prosser, has called in vain for Rohn’s disbarment, complaining of “intolerable” and “abusive” instances of “ethical misconduct” as well as “vitriolic” public attacks: “In some cases with us, she coerced her clients to sign documents that were knowingly false [and] ignored judge’s orders on limits of discovery inquiry during depositions,” he wrote.

In 2002, Rohn publicly blasted one of the islands’ two federal district judges, Thomas Moore, accusing him of inappropriate behavior, and Moore recused himself from some of her cases citing the antipathy. Subsequently, after she moved to demand Moore’s recusal from yet another of her cases, he refused, stating in his written ruling, “I believe attorney Rohn’s personal attack on one of the two sitting judges in this jurisdiction was nothing more than a calculated litigation tactic that would be labeled ‘judge shopping’ in most places.” Moore, who has sanctioned Rohn for insulting and profane language toward witnesses and court personnel, wrote in another case, in which the Caribbean Geoffrey Fieger “sought to compel testimony from all the federal judges in the territory”:

“Nothing Lee Rohn does surprises me anymore, although subpoenaing all the federal judges in the jurisdiction is a high point of ingenuity and creativity in attempting to manipulate the system,” Moore wrote.

“I do not believe, however, that an attorney should be allowed to use her calculated personal attack on a sitting judge as a technique to prevent that judge from presiding over any of her cases, especially in a small district with only two judges.”

A few weeks ago, it may be recalled, we looked at the question of lawyers’ public denunciations of judges and whether they do or should result in recusal by those judges. (Jason Robbins and Lee Williams, “From judges to opponents, Rohn has no shortage of harsh critics”, Virgin Islands Daily News, Mar. 29, 2004 — the newspaper, it bears repeating, and its parent company have been frequent targets of Rohn’s litigation, as in this libel case arising from her airport pot bust). Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts has more, including a picture of the Rohn villa.

The National Enquirer, which keeps breaking new developments in the story, is now reporting that “a team of six more lawyers have been involved in the coverup”. They can’t all be as interesting as Baron and Rohn, can they?

Update Fri. 8:20 p.m.: the Daily News reports Rohn categorically denies the story’s truth:

The Enquirer quoted Virgin Island pol Anne Golden as saying Hunter stayed for 10 days in an oceanfront home owned by prominent St. Croix lawyer Lee Rohn.

Rohn hotly denied that to the Daily News and vowed to sue.

“It is absolutely false,” she told The News. “The Enquirer knows the story is not true as they sat on a hill above my house for a week with telephoto lenses and video cameras and had no sighting of her. The guest cottage she was supposedly staying in is under construction and has no floor.”

Rohn said that while she donated money to Edwards, she is not friends with him. Records show she gave $2,300 to Edwards a year ago and another $2,300 to Barack Obama early this year.

(Helen Kennedy, “John’s island girl Rielle fled to St. Croix on eve of cheating flap”, Aug. 21). And — hat tip to commenter Ken Floyd — the opinions of heated Rohn critic Jeffrey Prosser, the newspaper/telephone magnate, should be evaluated in the perspective of his own controversial and colorful business record, which recently culminated in high-profile bankruptcy proceedings involving his Innovative Communication empire. Some sources on that here, here, here, and here. For more background on the recusal disputes involving Rohn and Judge Thomas K. Moore, see this Moore opinion (U.S. v. Roebuck, PDF) and this Third Circuit opinion (Selkridge v. Mutual of Omaha, 360 F. 3d 155). DBKP wishes it had been a fly on the wall during an AAJ award ceremony honoring Rohn. And see commenter #7 below who seems to have been doing considerable digging.

His libel suit against the Boston Herald may have been a lucrative success, but the “fascinatingly repellent” letters he sent to the paper’s publisher drew the adverse attention of the state’s Commission on Judicial Conduct. [WSJ law blog, Aug. 21]. Full saga here.

More: Globe (Murphy, “who has said he suffers from post-traumatic stress because of his legal battle with the Boston Herald and the newspaper’s stories about him, has been on a paid leave of absence since July.”). The Herald’s coverage includes side stories on Murphy’s wish for a taxpayer-provided lawyer and the question of whether his cases will need to be reopened, as well as an unsparing Howie Carr column on the ins and outs of “involuntary disability” pensions for judges (”ask yourself this: If you or I wrote ‘allegedly threatening’ letters to somebody, would we get a disability pension, or a visit from the cops?”).

“Sixty-five percent of those attending the ABA Annual Meeting session said they were better than average at predicting the settlement value of a case, and 76 percent said they were better than average at predicting when a trial court judgment would be reversed on appeal.”  But when asked a multiple-choice question on basic Bayesian statistics, only 34% of the attendees got it right–just nine points better than chance.  (The most popular answer was also the most incorrect.)  The ABA Journal blog also reports that attendees also suffered from severe cognitive bias on such issues as non-economic damages:

A hypothetical described a case involving a school teacher who lost his arm in an accident. Half were told that the plaintiff offered to settle for $100,000, and the other half learned of a $10 million settlement offer.

A majority of the $100,000 group said a judge would assess the value of pain and suffering between $500,000 and $2 million. But a majority of the $10 million group went higher, saying the value would be between $1 million and $5 million.

When even the lawyers and judges can’t accurately peg noneconomic damages, what other evidence do we need to show that uncapped and unscheduled noneconomic damages are unconstitutionally arbitrary and irrational?

If blogging from me is light the next three days, it is because I somehow snuck in to the all-star cast of judges and scholars and attorneys participating in a on-line roundtable on this question sponsored by Common Good’s new website, NewTalk.  Participants include Walter Dellinger, Ken Feinberg, Mark Geistfeld, Gillian Hadfield, Lord Leonard Hoffman, Philip Howard, Robert Joffe, Judge Edith Jones, Alan Morrison, David Schoenbrod, Peter Schuck, Stuart Taylor, Michael Traynor, and Russell Wheeler.

I’ve done a podcast for the Federalist Society on the Supreme Court punitive damages decision in Exxon Shipping v. Baker.

So why not become a judge instead?

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

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

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

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

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

Cyrus Sanai tells Patterico that his triggering an investigation of Judge Alex Kozinski’s web site is all “part of a litigation strategy” but does not reveal what the other two steps of his three-step strategy is, or more insight into his strategic genius.

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• Educator acquitted on charges of roughness toward special ed student sues Teacher Smackdown website over anonymous comments criticizing her [NW Arkansas Morning News, Citizen Media Law Project, House of Eratosthenes]
• Lorain County, Ohio judge who struck down state’s death penalty has Che Guevara poster in his office, though Guevara wasn’t exactly an opponent of killing [USA Today]
• Privatization of U.S. Senate food service is a parable for wider issues [Tabarrok]
• Low-end strategies for acquiring criminal-law clients include trolling the attorney visiting area at the federal lockup, paying the hot dog guy in front of the courthouse [Greenfield]
• A Canadian Senator on why his country’s medical malpractice law works better than you-know-whose [Val Jones MD leads to audio]
• U.K.: convicted rapist sexually assaults and murders teenage girl after housing authority is told evicting him would breach his human rights [Telegraph]
• No word of legal action (yet, at least) in Salina, Kansas car crash that driver blames on “brain freeze” from Sonic restaurant frozen drink [AP/K.C. Star]
• In Michigan, some mysterious entity is trying to drop an electoral anvil on two of our favorite jurists [PoL]

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

The Patterico blog has details of some of the coarse humor that was available on Judge Alex Kozinski’s website. Kozinski can be criticized for indiscretion in failing to realize that his website was publicly accessible, and opening himself up to this politically-motivated silliness, but I fail to see why a judge’s e-mail habits should be a scandal. Yes, Kozinski apparently has an immature sense of humor, but we already knew that.

Of more interest is that the attorney peddling this, Cyrus Sanai, has been targeting Kozinski for years. Perhaps because of this Recorder article of September 23, 2005, responding to a Sanai op-ed criticizing the Ninth Circuit, and written by Kozinski:

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In Alex Kozinski; Cyrus Sanai; free speech; judges; scandals

I’ve previously criticized the unrealistic notions judges have of the expense of litigation. (For example: Budget Rent A Car (7th Cir. 2005).) As I said, “[T]he mistake of thinking that legal practice is so frictionless is what encourages so many judges to deny motions to dismiss and deny motions for summary judgment and fail to restrain discovery.” The Spalding Labs v. ARBICO case, No. CV 06-1157 ODW (SHx), 2008 WL 2227501 (C.D. Cal., May 29, 2008) (via Tushnet) provides another example.

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The press is starting to catch on to the scandal of Judge Bamberger not being charged in the Kentucky fen-phen settlement scandal, and we have criminal trial updates after the jump.

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Massachusetts Superior Court Judge Ernest B. Murphy is well known to readers of this site for winning a $2 million libel suit (upheld by the state’s high court) against the Boston Herald, which had published pieces portraying him as soft on crime and insensitive to victims. When the paper wired Murphy $3.4 million in June (the sum included interest), Legal Times’s Tony Mauro cited the episode as one of a string that had led the press to be newly wary of having to face off in court against judges (”Press Frets as More Judges Sue for Libel”, Jun. 22). And in July a state disciplinary panel filed misconduct charges against Judge Murphy for having sent the Herald’s publisher a “bring me a check and keep quiet” letter that media critic Dan Kennedy termed “fascinatingly repellent“.

Judge Murphy has maintained that because of the stories the Herald ran about him, he has suffered debilitating post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD]. As of Aug. 1, he was on sick leave for this disorder, although Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick rejected his request “to retire early with a special judicial disability pension that would have netted him 75 percent of his salary”. Which makes it all the more surprising that a Herald reporter-photographer team would catch the judge looking relaxed and at ease over two days at the races in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., where he bet at the $50-minimum window, picnicked with his wife and chatted with other spectators. Call it one of those miracle recoveries (Jessica Van Sack, “Bay State judge plays ponies for two days at N.Y. track”, Boston Herald, Sept. 27).

“Massachusetts’ highest court on Monday upheld a $2 million verdict against the Boston Herald won by a state Superior Court judge who said the newspaper libelously depicted him as soft on crime and insensitive to the suffering of a 14-year-old rape victim.” Better be careful what you say about Judge Ernest Murphy in future. (AP coverage; Romenesko first, second posts; Dan Kennedy, Media Nation; Childs). Earlier coverage: Dec. 8 and Dec. 23, 2005.

Reacting to the recent case in which a jury awarded Illinois chief justice Robert Thomas $7 million against a suburban newspaper, the Kane County Chronicle (Jun. 22, Jul. 19, Nov. 3, Nov. 7, Nov. 14, Nov. 19). the New York Times recalls a 1983 case in which “a Supreme Court justice in Pennsylvania sued The Philadelphia Inquirer for defamation. The case was finally dismissed this summer — a full 23 years after it began. … [Reporter Daniel R.] Biddle, who is now an editor at The Inquirer, said he had learned through lawyers that some of the biggest law firms in Philadelphia declined to represent the paper, in part ‘because they were afraid’ that fighting a Supreme Court justice might jeopardize their other clients.” (Katharine Q. Seelye, “Clash of a Judge and a Small Paper Underlines the Tangled History of Defamation”, New York Times, Nov. 20). More: Mar. 16, 2004. The Times piece also discusses a lawsuit’s silencing of the Alton Telegraph, which once was an outspoken voice in Madison County, Illinois; Ted covered that episode on Point of Law Dec. 28, 2004.

So how exactly do you build a case for high damages when the alleged defamation (see Jun. 22) hasn’t dislodged you from the bench and it will be a good long while before your term expires? Well, your lawyer can talk about how you were thinking of stepping down to become a highly paid rainmaker at a Chicago law firm, and so maybe the defendant newspaper should have to compensate you for what your hired economist says is the value of that. Besides, you were thinking of securing an appointment as a federal judge. And what if the Illinois voters decide to throw you out down the road — isn’t the lost salary from that something the defendant should have to pay you for, too? (Eric Herman, “Justice’s libel suit figures his losses”, Chicago Sun-Times, Jun. 10)(via Lattman).