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Maryland

Frank Eisler kept an assortment of guns in his home, and in particular had “kept at least one gun in an unlocked drawer of his water bed — separate, but not far, from its clip.” Eisler’s stepson, 16-year-old Brian Montes, used one of the guns to commit suicide on April 11, 2005 and Brian’s father, Joseph Montes, sued Eisler for negligence in the death. [Maryland Daily Record]

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Robert Kahn, Courthouse News on a Maryland case: “A family demands $10 million from Honda, claiming a side window shattered and injured them when a tornado picked up their Honda Odyssey. …They say Honda should use laminated glass, as it does for windshields,” instead of tempered glass. For why the choice between laminated and conventional glass in side windows exposes automakers to a choice between one type of lawsuit and another, see our May 13, 2005 post. The plaintiff husband is also suing his wife, who was driving the vehicle. More: Fark.

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Don’t

by Walter Olson on August 14, 2009

If you’re a judge annoyed at a court worker’s parking her car in a restricted parking space at the courthouse, don’t take it upon yourself to let the air out of her tires [Maryland circuit court judge Robert Nalley, who's stepping down from an administrative post but not from the bench after conceding the bit of self-help in question; Washington Post]

April 3 roundup

by Walter Olson on April 3, 2009

  • Those enviro-hazard warnings plastered all over because of Prop 65? They may be not merely pointless but untrue [California Civil Justice; a still-timely 2000 piece]
  • Is it somehow wrong for a public medical examiner to testify against cops — even when it’s in another county? [Radley Balko, Reason]
  • UCLA research scientists fight back against animal rights fanatics’ violence and intimidation [Orac/Respectful Insolence, "Pro-Test"]
  • Ezra Levant, himself a target of Canada’s official speech tribunals, has written a new book denouncing them, buy before they ban it [Amazon; Andrew Coyne, Maclean's] Has odious censorship-complaint-filer Richard Warman finally gotten his comeuppance? [Ken @ Popehat] More: another Warman case [Cit Media Law]
  • Roundup of recent sports/assumption of risk cases [John Hochfelder]
  • Already in trouble on charges of faking a will, Allentown, Pa. police-brutality attorney John Karoly now faces tax charges including alleged failure to report $5 million in income for 2002, 2004 and 2005 [TaxGirl]
  • Lawprof’s “Reparations, Reconciliation and Restorative Justice” seminar led to introduction of Maryland bill requiring insurers to disclose antebellum slaveholder policies [DelmarvaNow]
  • Judge tosses suit by Clarksville, Tennessee officials against activists who called them cozy with developers [Sullum, Reason "Hit and Run"]

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Baltimore: “Accepting a plea bargain that her attorney described as unprecedented in American jurisprudence, a 22-year-old Maryland woman yesterday agreed to cooperate in the prosecution of other defendants in the death of her son under the condition that charges against her be dropped if the child rises from the dead.”

Eugene Volokh notes a disturbing case arising from land-use conflicts in Walkersville, Maryland.

Last year we covered the unsuccessful suit against Contemporary Watercrafters, a Rockville, Md.-based pool maintenance business. It’s getting some more attention now as one of the entries in the U.S. Chamber’s Faces of Lawsuit Abuse campaign (careful, it auto-plays video with sound). Angle we didn’t mention in our earlier post: the owner was annoyed at the mess made by the geese and approached the Humane Society about removal but was told “it was a no-go — the Migratory Species Act forbade him from moving or disturbing the geese. All he could do was wait for their goslings to hatch and hope they then moved on of their own free will. The store put up tape around the area and signs warning passersby of the terrible geese threat.” (On the Record (Md. Daily Record blog), Dec. 9).

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Zebulon Brodie, the owner of a Dunkin’ Donuts on the Eastern Shore, “argued to Maryland’s highest court yesterday that the host of an online forum should be forced to reveal the identities of people who posted allegedly defamatory comments” about his eatery. The comments were posted at NewsZap.com. (Henri E. Cauvin, “Md. Court Weighs Internet Anonymity”, Washington Post, Dec. 9; Citizen Media Law, Dec. 11).

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“A federal judge in Manhattan took the unusual step on Thursday of overturning settlements in four lawsuits filed on behalf of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, saying the firm that negotiated the deals was seeking excessive legal fees and that the settlement amounts themselves were unreasonable.” Judge Alvin Hellerstein declared that to give the Maryland-based firm, Azrael, Gann & Franz $7 million for representing four Pentagon workers’ families “would reflect a very large windfall,” given that the firm’s “entire strategy seems to have been to coast on the work of others.” Hellerstein also noted that the settlement figures, averaging $7 million per victim, seemed out of line with earlier 9/11 awards for the families of modest wage earners. (Benjamin Weiser, “Judge Overturns Accords in 4 Suits by 9/11 Victims”, New York Times, Jul. 26). More: David Giacalone.

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City governments, sometimes in league with private counsel working on contingency fee, “have started suing banks and mortgage companies to recoup their costs” on such services as “fire departments, police, code enforcement or even demolition” in blighted neighborhoods. “The lawsuits were filed in recent months under different theories, in state and federal court. Cleveland and Buffalo filed suits under public nuisance laws. Minneapolis’ suit was brought on consumer fraud grounds, while Baltimore took the unusual approach of filing suit in federal court under alleged Fair Housing Act violations.” Bank of New York says it was included in Buffalo’s suit against 39 lenders even though it neither originated nor purchased loans, but merely acted as trustee. (Julie Kay, “Empty Homes Spur Cities’ Suits”, National Law Journal, May 9).

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That’s Carter Wood’s hard-to-improve-on headline over an item on how two youths involved on the perpetrator side of a sensationally vicious attack onboard a Maryland bus are now suing over being barred from the bus system. (”Teen ‘Ringleader’ In Bus Beating Sentenced To Juvy Jail; Boys To Sue MTA, Schools”, WBAL, Apr. 24; Point of Law, Apr. 24; Jeff Quinton, Inside Charm City, Apr. 23; Malkin, Apr. 23).

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The purported class action on behalf of unharmed (and even un-inconvenienced) customers is looked on askance at Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog (”It is just far beyond silly.”) and by many readers at Consumerist (via P&S)(earlier).

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April 2 roundup

by Walter Olson on April 2, 2008

  • Judge expresses surprise at how many law firms want in on fees in Visa/MasterCard issuer settlement [NYSun]
  • Mississippi bill would require a lawyer’s presence at real estate escrow closings; so rude to cite the profession’s self-interest as a factor [Clarion-Ledger]
  • Following Coughlin Stoia’s lead, Mark Lanier announces he’s expanding into intellectual property litigation [The Recorder]
  • Maryland legislation would require state-aided colleges and universities to report on what they’re doing to advance “cultural diversity” [Examiner via Bader/Open Market]
  • New era at UK pubs? Under new directive, “employers will risk being sued if a bar worker or waitress complains of being called ‘love’ or ‘darling’, or if staff overhear customers telling sexist jokes.” [Daily Mail]
  • ACLU just sued city of San Diego and snagged $900K in legal fees, but that’s no impediment to the city’s council’s enacting a special day of tribute to the group [House of Eratosthenes]
  • George Wallace, who’s guestblogged here, hosts twin editions of Blawg Review #153 at his blogs Declarations & Exclusions and A Fool in the Forest, on piratical and Punchinello themes;
  • Obama won’t support lowering drinking age [Newsweek]
  • Such a shame for entrepreneurial plaintiffs, post-Proposition 64 if you want to sue a California business you might actually need to have been injured [CalBizLit]
  • Time mag appeals $100 million Suharto libel ruling [IHT]
  • Hey, no fair enforcing that fine print disclaiming liability for sweepstakes misprints [three years ago on Overlawyered]

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Welcome WBAL listeners

by Walter Olson on March 25, 2008

I was a guest on Ron Smith’s Baltimore-based show, with Bruce Elliott hosting, this afternoon to discuss the possible settlement between the state of Virginia and families of slain Virginia Tech students (coverage: CNN, Washington Post, AP).

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A guestblogger will be joining us momentarily, and I’ll be posting less over the holidays. Meanwhile, my pipeline is still backed up with items from the past year that deserve a more serious treatment than a hurried roundup mention permits. Here are four of them:

  • More docs moving to Texas? Watch out, they must be quacks! After the New York Times reported that doctors seemed to be showing fresh interest in practicing in Texas since its enactment of litigation reforms, our frequent sparring partner Eric Turkewitz of New York Personal Injury Law Blog quickly countered by noting that disciplinary actions in the state are way up, and — quite a jump here — concluded with a suggestion that the newly arriving docs must be causing quality problems. Among bloggers who took this idea and ran with it: Phillip Martin of Burnt Orange Report. Then Prof. Childs had to spoil the fun by asking whether the doctors being disciplined were in fact newcomers to the state and found that, to judge by an initial sampling, no, they’re not. And the medical blogs then knocked the remaining props out from under the reform-made-care-worse theory by linking to coverage documenting how the increase in disciplinary actions reflected the Texas medical board’s concerted recent effort to get tough on doctors — too tough, said many critics. In other words, the Texas medical profession was doing exactly what many skeptics demanded it do — submit to stricter oversight in exchange for liability reform — and now that very submission was being cited as if it proved that standards of care were slipping.
  • Uninjured car owners can sue GM over seatbacks. No class members claim to have been injured, but Maryland appeals court allows class action over cost of replacing allegedly weak seatbacks in GM cars. [DLA Piper; opinion, PDF; Maryland Courts Watcher]
  • The litigious stylings of Jonathan Lee Riches. We mostly ignore litigants who file handwritten pleadings from prison cells complaining of obviously hallucinated events, but there’s no getting around it: the South Carolina convict has become a pop culture phenomenon with his scores of lawsuits against sports figures, President Bush, Perez Hilton, William Lerach and Elvis Presley over a host of imagined legal injuries. Some of the coverage: The Smoking Gun, Dreadnaught, Deadspin, Justia, Above the Law. He even has several Facebook fan groups.
  • Taxpayers and vaccine-compensation lawyers. Under the federally enacted vaccine-compensation program, notes Kathleen Seidel, “a petitioner who brings a claim in good faith is entitled to reimbursement for reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs, regardless of whether the claim is successful.” (Forget about loser-pays; this ensures that taxpayer-defendants can win but pay the other side’s fees anyway.) What sorts of bills do you think attorneys file for reimbursement under those circumstances? Yep, very optimistic bills, in which they expect taxpayers to shell out for their attendance at “advocacy group meetings, and attendance at a conference of trial lawyers representing autism plaintiffs”. In this case, HHS successfully appealed (PDF) an order that it pay the fees. Seidel’s Neurodiversity blog offers a remarkable trove of insight into litigation relating to autism causation theories, vaccines and thimerosal, and this post is no exception. (Updated to include links.)
More stories that shouldn’t get away in another post to come.

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Rockville, Maryland: “A Montgomery County jury has rejected a negligence lawsuit brought by a woman who claimed she was attacked by a Canada goose while at a shopping center in 2004, causing her to fall and break her hip.” Suzanne Webster’s attorney said “the store made the situation worse by letting employees feed the geese.” (AP/WJZ.com, Dec. 10).

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November 26 roundup

by Walter Olson on November 26, 2007

All-automotive edition:

  • Court won’t unseal settlement arising from $105 million Aramark/Giants Stadium dramshop case for fear girl’s father will try to get his hands on money [NJLJ, NorthJersey.com, Childs; earlier]
  • Great moments in insurance defense law: you mean it wasn’t a good idea to infiltrate that church meeting to investigate the crash claim? [Turkewitz first, second posts]
  • Columnist Paul Mulshine rejoices: Ninth Circuit decision “if it stands, will lead to the end of the SUV as we know it” [Newark Star-Ledger]
  • Is it unfair — and should it be unlawful? — for insurers to settle crash victims’ claims too early? [Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog]
  • If Ron Krist prevails in shoot-out of Texas plaintiff titans, he vows to have sheriff seize John O’Quinn’s Batmobile [American Lawyer; see also Ted's take earlier]
  • In much-watched case, Australian high court by 3-2 split upholds highway authority against claim defective bridge design was blameworthy after youth’s dive into shallow water [RTA NSW v. Dederer, Aug. 30]
  • Redesigning Toyota’s occupant restraint system? Clearly another job for the Marshall, Texas courts [SE Texas Record; Point of Law; more]
  • Bench trial results in $55 million verdict against U.S. government after Army employee on business runs red light and paralyzes small child [OC Register]
  • Vision in a purple Gremlin: her Yale Law days shaped Hillary in many ways [Stearns/McClatchy]
  • Zero tolerance for motorists’ blood-alcohol — are we sure we want to go there? [Harsanyi, Reason]
  • Driver falls asleep, so of course Ford must pay [two years ago on Overlawyered; much more on our automotive page]

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September 4 roundup

by Walter Olson on September 4, 2007

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