Aggressive solicitation by lawyers has been raising hackles in Los Angeles since the commuter train crash. (Carol J. Williams, “Lawyers swoop in after the Metrolink crash, looking for clients”, L.A. Times, Oct. 5)(earlier)(via Stier, Mass Tort Prof).
Thanks to a new city ordinance, they get to provide some of the world’s most expensive free hotel service to patients who are well enough to leave but refuse. (WSJ health blog, Aug. 4).
More: Numerous interesting comments from readers including this from Throckmorton:
This is not just in L.A. but happens all around the country as well. Our area saw this increase with the rise in nursing home suits. Nursing homes are now very reluctant to accept patients who are at risk for decubitus ulcers, etc. This combined with the declining revenue has led to the situation where there are no places that will accept transfers from the hospital. As more and more patients fill the wards awaiting placement, the hospital has no choice but to divert those that need urgent care.
You may not be able to get a nursing home patient out of the hospital, but at least you will not have a problem finding them an attorney.
It doesn’t actually hang together as a phrase, but it does contain plenty of promising keywords for lawyers trolling for business from the fatal commuter wreck north of Los Angeles, so it rates highly on Google. (Kevin O’Keefe, Sept. 19).
Los Angeles: “David Birke and his attorney Johnny Birke filed a complaint Aug. 27 against seven talk show hosts of KRLA-AM (870), Salem Communications Corporation and its owner Edward Atsinger III, alleging that they use the public airwaves to push Republican beliefs. David and Johnny Birke would not say whether they were related, citing attorney-client privilege. … Radio hosts Laura Ingraham, Dennis Prager, Michael Medved, Hugh Hewitt, Dennis Miller, Mike Gallagher and Kevin James are named as defendants in the suit.” The various defendants have defrauded the public and violated FCC obligations “by using their radio license to discuss only Republican issues, Johnny Birke said Monday.” (Veronica Rocha, “KRLA sued over content”, Glendale News-Press, Sept. 8). Radio Equalizer (Sept. 9) notes one presumed irony: “KRLA has in the past featured a show on the subject of lawsuit abuse.”
At American.com, Sara Wexler casts a critical eye at the redlining of new fast-food restaurants out of certain Los Angeles neighborhoods. I hadn’t previously noticed that LA was justifying the ban in part on the claim that South LA’s obese residents are “plac[ing] enormous costs on the California state Medicare system”–as a good an example of the future dangers to freedom of government-run health-care as any.
Per Marisa Guthrie at the magazine Broadcasting & Cable, ABC News was able to force John Edwards’ hand in part because it had been tracing the Fred Baron money trail (which, it will be recalled, Edwards supposedly had nothing to do with). “According to multiple sources, Edwards was apoplectic that ABC News broke the story on its website and began promoting it early on Friday” because the former North Carolina senator — who, y’know, was beating up on himself so bad and wanted nothing more than to come clean with the American people — “had hoped to control the news cycle by making his admission late on a Friday night when the country was watching the Olympics and the long weekend yawned ahead.” Earlier here and here.
Many commentators have questioned whether Edwards was telling the truth about when the affair ended. (Despite her family’s publicly expressed wishes for a paternity test, Rielle Hunter says she won’t allow one; whether this refusal is or is not related to her presumably ongoing financial dependence on Fred Baron’s largesse is not for us to know.) A second question is whether Edwards was telling the truth on ABC when he said he hired Hunter first for her filmmaking skills and began the relationship later, thus dodging charges of having put his mistress on the payroll. Sam Stein at Huffington Post examines chronologies here. Relatedly, Advice Goddess Amy Alkon has this to say about the L.A. Times’s straightfaced description of Hunter as a filmmaker: “Katie, honey, in this town [L.A.], we know to look at imdb.com to see if somebody actually is a filmmaker. This is a good dating tip for you, too, dear, because half the guys you’ll meet at the bar in this town are ‘producers.’”
More: Welcome Michelle Malkin readers.
William Saletan is appropriately appalled by the action of the Los Angeles City Council, which has moved to prohibit the opening of new fast food restaurants in South Central. Law and public health activists are trying to obtain similar legislation in New York and elsewhere, often pretending that they are not seeking to override the actual food choices of local residents. It’s a good idea not always to accept their factual assertions at face value:
“You try to get a salad within 20 minutes of our location; it’s virtually impossible,” says the Community Coalition’s executive director. Really? The coalition’s headquarters is at 8101 S. Vermont Ave. A quick Google search shows, among other outlets, a Jack-in-the-Box six blocks away. They have salads. Not the world’s greatest salads, but not as bad as a government that tells you whose salad you can eat.
(”Food Apartheid”, Slate, Jul. 31).
More: Several thoughts from Hans Bader, including this: “When Domino’s, a private company, decided not to deliver pizza and other fast food to certain dangerous parts of Washington, D.C., based on geographic region, not race, it was accused of racism by civil-rights groups, sued for discrimination, and demonized by D.C.’s City Council. … Why the double standard in favor of government bullies?” From commenter “Shine” at Matthew Yglesias: “What’s ironic is that many of the mom and pop restaurants were burned out during the 1992 riots. And the fast-food franchises promised two things that the post-riot LA political establishment (i.e., Rebuild L.A.) demanded above all else: minority ownership and jobs.” Another commenter there, “Too many Steves”, sniffs “a political favor to the existing franchise owners”, who stand to benefit from the throttle on competition, and whose interests of course diverge from those of the national franchisors, who are probably quite sincere in their opposition.
Seems there’s no surfeit of collegiality among L.A. lawyers whose names figure in the Terry Christiansen connivance-at-wiretapping trial. (Amanda Bronstad, “A Tale of the Tape in Christensen Wiretapping Trial”, National Law Journal, Jul. 16; “In Opening of Wiretap Trial, Christensen Claims He Was the Victim”, Jul. 21).
Governor Schwarzenegger has signed into law the first statewide ban on the use of the maligned ingredient by restaurants and food service facilities. (Samantha Sondag, “Gov. signs nation’s first statewide ban on trans fats in restaurants”, San Francisco Chronicle, Jul. 25).
P.S. Speaking of the nanny state in California, Los Angeles is moving to ban new fast food restaurants from poorer sections of South Central L.A. on the explicitly paternalistic grounds that it knows better than local residents what they should be eating. Prof. Bainbridge has more.
The “Borat” star, per AFP, “has sold Fox film studios a comedy, ‘Accidentes,’ about an ambulance-chaser-turned-hero, which he will produce and possibly star in, Variety magazine said Tuesday. The film is about a personal injury lawyer who becomes a hero among Los Angeles Hispanics for successfully defending a worker against a wealthy employer, but who in the process becomes the enemy of the city’s elite.” And see Defamer Australia with related graphic: “El Mejor Abogado”.
The Ninth Circuit has upheld a jury’s $15 million award to three Los Angeles Police Department officers who said they were wrongly arrested and made scapegoats in the notorious Rampart evidence-faking scandal. Two of the three officers who will share in the award were in fact convicted by a jury of obstruction of justice in an earlier case arising from the scandal, but the judge later concluded that she had committed an error at trial and set aside the verdict; the case was not reprosecuted. Which jury erred: the first, the second, or are there theories on which both might be accounted right? (Maura Dolan, “Federal appeals court upholds $15-million civil award for Rampart police officers”, Los Angeles Times, Jul. 15; Metropolitan News-Enterprise).
Los Angeles police arrested 20 suspects, with warrants for another 20 still outstanding, in what the department said was another massive auto accident claim fraud ring, headed they say by Curtis H. Connor with involvement from many members of his family. After faking accidents, investigators say, the Connors would “use lawyers in on the scam to submit claims and demand payments for both injuries and damage to the car.” A chiropractic office and auto body repair shop were also part of the family enterprise. (Joel Rubin and Ken Bensinger, “Family members held in major insurance scam”, L.A. Times, Mar. 7). Earlier coverage here, here, here, etc.
After the glamourpuss tort-chaser’s campaign over environmental contamination at the high school met with one reverse after another in court, ending in a judicial ruling of no merit, plaintiff’s lawyers have now agreed to reimburse the city and school district of Beverly Hills for a not insignificant chunk of their legal expenses in defending the claims, in the sum of $450,000. As readers of this site know, prevailing defendants very seldom recover fees from losing plaintiffs or their lawyers in American litigation. The Civil Justice Association of California has details (Oct. 9).
This summer Viking published a book by journalist Joy Horowitz entitled Parts Per Million: The Poisoning of Beverly Hills High School which, as its subtitle implies, would appear to place much credence in the lawsuits’ claims of disease causation from oil wells on the high school campus (undated L.A. Times review by Robin Abcarian). For the side of the story that proved more convincing to the courts, see the work of Norma Zager and Eric Umansky here and here as well as this article in Time. Brockovich herself, incidentally, now has a blog of her own.
No doubt the search for policy lessons from the catastrophic Southern California wildfires (N.Z. Bear, CBS8) is in its early stages, and no doubt multiple contributing factors will wind up being implicated. Many, though, recall the controversy that hit the front pages after disastrous 2002 wildfires in Arizona, when it was revealed that Forest Service attempts to reduce fire risk by clearing underbrush, installing firebreaks and permitting logging of excessive growth had been heavily litigated and delayed in court by environmental groups (Jul. 1-2 and Jul. 12-14, 2002). Just last month scientists testified that efforts to “step up tree removal efforts and prescribed fire programs” were needed to counter growing fire risk (Ben Goad, “Speed forest thinning to ease fire threat, experts say”, Riverside, Calif., Press-Enterprise, Sept. 24). Michelle Malkin and readers have a big discussion (Oct. 23; & welcome readers from there). More from CEI’s Hans Bader and Robert Nelson and again from Michelle Malkin (per L.A. Times report, brush clearance and forest thinning credited with saving homes around Lake Arrowhead).
Reversing a lower court, a California appeals court “reinstated allegations that the city had failed to adequately shield marketgoers from motorist George Russell Weller, who was 86 when he crashed his car through barricades and into crowds of pedestrians at the popular open-air market”. (John Spano, “Farmers market crash victims can sue Santa Monica, court rules”, Los Angeles Times, Oct. 17; Terence Lyons, “City Back In Farmers’ Market Lawsuits”, Santa Monica Mirror, Oct. 18-24). Earlier: Jul. 14, 2004.
A jury has convicted prominent attorney Stephen Yagman, who’s prospered greatly filing police-misconduct and civil-rights lawsuits in Los Angeles, of 19 counts of attempted tax evasion, bankruptcy fraud and money laundering. Prosecutors said Yagman led a lavish lifestyle while declaring bankruptcy, hiding assets from creditors, and failing to pay payroll tax. (”Famed SoCal civil rights attorney found guilty of tax fraud”, AP/Riverside Press-Enterprise, Jun. 22; Patterico, Jun. 22 and Jun. 23 (not sharing Duke lawprof Erwin Chemerinsky’s somber view of the verdict)). Last year (Jul. 5, 2006) Yagman sued a retired police detective who in a letter expressed “glee and profound satisfaction” over the lawyer’s indictment. For Yagman’s other appearances on this site, see Feb. 23, 2000, Mar. 18, 2005, Apr. 3, 2006, and Nov. 4, 2006.
Meanwhile, the city attorney of Los Angeles, Rocky Delgadillo, who’s figured in these columns a couple of times (grandstanding on Grand Theft Auto, Jan. 28 of last year; defending the city’s $2.7 million settlement of the firefighter dog food case, Nov. 22) seems to have landed in an ethical spot of bother himself (more).
Like pretty much every big-city fire department, the one in Los Angeles has come under intense legal pressure to hire more female applicants, and in doing so to water down or eliminate whatever former prerequisites for hiring (such as physical tests calling for a show of upper-body strength) show “disparate impact” against women. And having been whipped up one side of the street on those grounds, it now gets whipped down the other side for having apparently responded in the most direct and practical way to the first set of legal pressures:
In the latest bizarre court case involving the Los Angeles Fire Department, a jury has awarded $3.75 million to a male fire captain who said he was retaliated against for not making training exercises easier for women.
Fire Capt. Frank Lima alleged in his lawsuit against the city that he was told by superiors that he shouldn’t hold women to the same standards as men. The reason: The Fire Department was under pressure from City Hall to increase the number of women within its ranks.
Thursday’s judgment in the 2 1/2 -week case in Los Angeles County Superior Court was notable because it involved $2.96 million in noneconomic damages — in other words, money for pain and suffering.
In his lawsuit, Lima alleged that he suffered heart problems and stress after the department tried to punish him and subsequently denied him certain assignments.
(Steve Hymon, “L.A. fire captain awarded $3.75 million”, Los Angeles Times, Jul. 9). For more on the legal pressures on fire departments to relax performance standards that women have trouble meeting, see Jan. 18. For a related set of sued-if-you-do, sued-if-you-don’t dilemmas for fire departments, see Mar. 24, 2005 (reverse discrimination suits by whites after Chicago altered rules to encourage black applicants). Finally, we covered (Dec. 5, 2006 and earlier posts) the saga of the $2.7 million settlement that the LAFD paid to a firefighter subjected to a prank in which he was tricked into eating dog food.
Point of Law Volokh