| Overlawyered.com commentaries: “Texas’s giant legal reform“, Jun. 18-19, 2003. “To tame Madison County, pass the Class Action Fairness Act“, Jun. 12-15, 2003; “‘Reforming class action suits’” (Class Action Fairness Act), Apr. 25-27, 2003. “Judge kicks class-action lawyers off case” (H&R Block), May 15, 2003. “Class action lawyer takes $20 million from defendant’s side“, Mar. 15-16, 2003. “FBI probes Philadelphia’s hiring of class action firm“, Jan. 31-Feb. 2, 2003. “Ninth Circuit panel sniffs collusion in bias settlement fees“, Dec. 16-17, 2002. Auctions: “Third Circuit cuts class action fees“, Sept. 25-26, 2001; “Letter to the editor” (competitive bidding for class representation), Jun. 13, 2001 (& Oct. 1-2, 2002). “7,000 missing colors, many of them crisply green“, Aug. 29, 2002. “‘Junk-fax’ suit demands $2 trillion“, Aug. 26, 2002; “Junk-fax litigation: blood in the water“, July 24, 2001; “Junk-fax bonanza“, March 27, 2001; “Junk fax litigation, continued“, March 3-5, 2000; “In Houston, expensive menus” (unsolicited faxes), Oct. 22, 1999. “Penthouse sued on behalf of disappointed Kournikova-oglers“, Jun. 3-4, 2002. “The mystery of the transgenic corn“, May 14-15, 2002. “Editorial-fest“, Mar. 11, 2002; “Washington Post on class action reform” (good editorial), Aug. 29-30, 2001; “Actions without class” (Washington Post editorial), Dec. 2, 1999. “The thrill of it all: plaintiffs win 28 cent coupon“, Feb. 27-28, 2002. “‘Toyota buyers’ suit yields cash — for lawyers’“, Feb. 18-19, 2002; “Golf ball class action” (Acushnet Co.), Nov. 18-19, 1999; “Class action coupon clippers” (Washington Post on settlement abuses), Nov. 15, 1999. “‘Congress looks to change class action system’“, Feb. 11-12, 2002; “‘They’re making a federal case out of it … in state court’“, Nov. 7-8, 2001. “Selling out the class?” (allegations of collusive settlement in H&R Block case), April 5, 2001 (& see Dec. 3). “Swiss banks vindicated“, Nov. 1, 2001. Letter to the editor (lawyers’ own incremental billing disclosed?), Oct. 22, 2001 (& see Dec. 3). “Counterterrorism bill footnote” (forum shopping), Oct. 16, 2001; “Best little forum-shopping in Texas” (class actions make their way to Texarkana), August 27, 1999. “Employment class actions: EEOC to the rescue“, Sept. 10, 2001. “220 percent rate of farmer participation” (USDA black farmer settlement), July 25, 2001. “The rest of Justice O’Connor’s speech“, July 6-8, 2001. “Blockbuster Video class action“, June 11, 2001 (& see July 3-4 (Vince Carroll column)). “Letter to the editor” (First USA credit cards), June 13, 2001; “Bank error in your favor” (credit card holders), Sept. 27-28, 2000; & letter to the editor, Sept. 3, 2001. “Ghost blurber case“, June 12, 2001. “NFL satellite ticket class action“, June 5, 2001 (& update Aug. 20-21: court disallows settlement). “Insurance class settlement scuttled“, Feb. 26, 2001. “Florida lawyers’ day jobs, cont’d” (hotbed of class action filing), Dec. 11-12, 2000; “Florida’s legal talent, before the Chad War” (Florida Marlins ticketholders), Dec. 8-10, 2000. “Obese soldiers class action“, Nov. 10-12, 2000. “Sweepstakes, for sure” (American Family Publishers), Oct. 20-22, 2000; “Update: Publishers’ Clearing House case“, Feb. 29, 2000. “Courtroom crusade on drug prices?“, Oct. 19, 2000. “Class actions: are we all litigants yet?“, Aug. 23-24, 2000. Coke: “Class-action lawyers to Coke clients: you’re fired“, July 21-23, 2000; “‘Coke plaintiff eavesdrops on lawyers; case unravels’” (what do lawyers tell each other after they think their clients have hung up on the conference call?), July 19-20; “‘Ad deal links Coke, lawyer in suit’” (Willie Gary, suing Coke, cuts lucrative ad deal with it), May 11, 2000. “Target Detroit” (lawyers countersue DaimlerChrysler and exec personally), July 19-20, 2000; “Turning the tables” (DaimlerChrysler sues class action lawyers), Nov. 12, 1999. “Class-action assault on eBay“, July 13, 2000. “AOL ‘pop-up’ class action” (ads said to be unfair), June 27, 2000. “Rise, fall, and rise of class actions” (enormous increase in filing rates in past decade), Mar. 10-12, 2000. “Criticizing lawyers proves hazardous” (columnist Bill McClellan makes fun of class-action attorneys, they sue him for libel), Nov. 4, 1999 (update Nov. 30: he criticizes them again, though suit is still pending); “Update: Publishers’ Clearing House case” (judge approves settlement including legal fee request; agreement reached to end libel suit), Feb. 29, 2000. “Secrets of class action defense“, Feb. 25, 2000; “Mobile Register probes class action biz” (BancBoston and other mortgage escrow cases), Feb. 7, 2000. “AOL upgrade’s sharp elbows“, Feb. 12-13, 2000. “Weekend reading: columnist-fest” (Laura Pulfer on suit against Ralph Lauren outlet stores; Alex Cockburn on Swiss banks), Feb. 5-6, 2000. “From our mail sack: unclear on the concept“, Jan. 28, 2000. “Santa came late” (suit against Toys-R-Us for missing Christmas delivery), Jan. 19, 2000. “Pokemon litigation roundup“, Jan. 10, 2000; “Pokemon cards update“, Oct. 13, 1999; “Pokemon-card class actions“, Oct. 1-3, 1999 “Expert witnesses and their ghostwriters” (life insurance class actions), Jan. 4, 2000. “Lawyers for famine and wilderness-busting?” (anti-biotech), Jan. 3, 1999. “Class action toy story” (antitrust), Dec. 29-30, 1999. “‘In race to sue Microsoft, some trip’” (lawyers inadvertently copy details of pleadings in earlier cases), Dec. 23-26, 1999. “Rolling the dice, cont’d” (suits over online gambling), Dec. 7, 1999 (earlier report, Aug. 26). “Beware of market crashes” (class action sought against E*Trade for alleged computer-related trading losses), Nov. 26-28, 1999. “Are they kidding, or not-kidding?” (proposals for suits against makers of fattening foods, losing sports teams), Nov. 15, 1999. “Public by 2-1 margin disapproves of tobacco suits” (if class actions are filed on behalf of the public, why don’t they reflect public opinion?), Nov. 5-7, 1999. “Demolition derby for consumer budgets” (class action against State Farm over generic crash parts), Oct. 8, 1999. “Power attracts power” (Boies joins anti-HMO effort), Sept. 30, 1999; “Impending assault on HMOs“, Sept. 30. “$49 million lawyers’ fee okayed in case where clients got nothing” (secondhand smoke action), Sept. 28, 1999; “Personal responsibility takes a vacation in Miami” (tobacco class-action verdict), Jul. 8, 1999. “Judge throws out four WWII reparations lawsuits“, Sept. 20, 1999. “Tainted cycle” (Milwaukee taxpayers sue themselves), Sept. 2, 1999. “Three insurers sued for $100 million” (how the press covers class action announcements), Aug. 20, 1999.
Resources on class actions are found at many different places on Overlawyered.com. For example, most of the massive lawsuits filed against individual industries over personal injury to classes of consumers are covered on pages specific to the subject matter of the cases, such as the pages on firearms litigation, tobacco litigation, managed-care litigation, breast implant litigation, product liability, and so forth. This page assembles resources on class actions as a procedural device and as an institution. Among topics covered are the unique role in this area of an “entrepreneurial” plaintiff’s bar that decides on its own behalf who and how to sue and lines up clients as needed; the history of the device and the reasons why it is either sharply limited or virtually unknown in the courts of other industrial democracies; the distinctive ethical problems that arise because of the extreme difficulty of policing lawyers’ faithfulness to the interests of the absent class; and the operations of the class action “industry” in the areas in which it has been a familiar part of the American legal landscape for decades, namely shareholder litigation and class actions over consumer and antitrust grievances aggregating large numbers of (usually smallish) claims. Background — procedural history, ethical issues: Overlawyered.com‘s editor wrote about class actions (as well as “champerty and maintenance”, the “invisible-fist theory”, and other topics) in Chapter 3 of his book The Litigation Explosion; an excerpt is online. Chapter 5 (“The New Town Meeting”) of Peter Huber’s book Liability: The Legal Revolution and Its Consequences contains a valuable discussion of the class action format, particularly as it applies to the so-called toxic tort; it is unfortunately not online. Lawrence Schonbrun, a Northern California attorney who has developed a specialty in filing challenges to excessive class action attorneys’ fee requests, wrote a prescient article in 1996 on “coupon deals”, “separately negotiated” fees from defendants, and other innovative ways the class action bar was finding to escape scrutiny of its remuneration. (“Class Actions: The New Ethical Frontier“) Shareholder litigation: A starting point for research on this topic is Stanford Law School’s comprehensive Securities Class Action Clearinghouse. See also the commentaries on this site. In Felzen v. Andreas (1998), Judge Frank Easterbrook of the Seventh Circuit wrote that “Many thoughtful students of the subject conclude, with empirical support, that derivative actions do little to promote sound management and often hurt the firm by diverting the managers’ time from running the business while diverting the firm’s resources to the plaintiffs’ lawyers without providing a corresponding benefit.” He cited a long list of scholarly articles including Janet Cooper Alexander, Do the Merits Matter? A Study of Settlements in Securities Class Actions, 43 Stanford L. Rev. 497 (1991), which found that the “structural characteristics common to securities class actions . . . combine to produce outcomes that are not a function of the substantive merits of the case.” and Roberta Romano, The Shareholder Suit: Litigation without Foundation?, 7 J. L. Econ. & Organization 55 (1991), which examined 39 shareholder suits filed between the late 1960s and 1987 and concluded that “shareholder litigation is a weak, if not ineffective, instrument of corporate governance.” In 1995 Congress passed the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, which aimed to rectify some of the worst abuses in the field. This client memo from Fried, Frank describes the wider powers institutional investors obtained under the act to influence litigation going on purportedly in the name of investors such as themselves. In Polar International Brokerage v. Reeve, a New York federal judge rejected a proposed class action settlement and request for $200,000 in attorneys’ fees, saying it offered shareholders “nothing of real value”. (Deborah Pines, National Law Journal, May 24, 1999). Although the securities bar frequently alleges that well-known companies in Silicon Valley and elsewhere are run by crooked managements that fleece their shareholders, they ironically turn out to keep a lot of their (very substantial) stock holdings invested in the very same companies. (Paul Elias, San Francisco Recorder, June 8, 1999). Among the reasons is that in many cases they have accepted stock as payment for dropping earlier legal actions. Other class action resources: The Federalist Society publishes a Class Action Watch newsletter. The first issue is in conventional web-page format. The second issue is a PDF document (Adobe Acrobat needed to view; get it here). Among the better-known law firms representing class action plaintiffs are Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach LLP, Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann & Bernstein LLP, Cohen Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll, Krause & Kalfayan, and Barrack, Rodos & Bacine. Actuary Jack Patterson has written an account for a plaintiff’s lawyer readership of class actions against life insurance companies, one of the big practice areas of the 1990s. The class action bar also files many antitrust suits on behalf of large groups of consumers or business purchasers. The Antitrust Policy web site collects many worthwhile resources on antitrust law.
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January 30-31 – Don’t mess with the taste cops. Arizona: Angelica Flores was handcuffed by police officers in front of her daughter and packed off to jail because “she and her husband, Tony, last year violated a code requiring Christmas decorations to be removed 19 days after the holiday.” Thinking that the charges had been dropped, the couple had skipped a court date with officials of the town of Peoria. (Monica Alonzo-Dunsmoor, “Couple jailed for Christmas lights see charge as humbug”, Arizona Republic, Jan. 28).
January 30-31 – “Legal Lesson for Afghanistan: War’s Not a Slip-and-Fall Case”. “For centuries, it has been accepted that damage caused in wartime cannot be claimed as injuries deserving compensation. … combatants are not required to treat every invasion like a massive slip-and-fall case,” notes law prof/pundit Jonathan Turley of George Washington University (L.A. Times, Jan. 29) (via InstaPundit).
January 30-31 – Washington Post blasts HMO class actions. The paper’s editorialists warn of “a new rash of abusive class action lawsuits” that “are being filed by an array of plaintiff’s lawyers, led by Richard Scruggs — of tobacco litigation fame and fortune — and David Boies”. The suits’ premise that managed health care cost control amounts to “racketeering” is a “novel but silly” theory that has already been rejected by one federal appeals court, the Third Circuit. “The notion of a national class of HMO enrollees is absurd. … The suits are a transparent effort to hijack the policy debate about managed care.” (“More actions without class”, Jan. 28).
January 30-31 – All things sentimental and recoverable. Down, attorney, down! cont’d: trial lawyers are salivating at the prospect of getting the law changed so they can file malpractice suits against veterinarians not just for a pet’s economic or replacement value as an animal, as is mostly the rule now, but for its personal and sentimental value, which would clear the way for six- and even seven-figure recoveries. In a closely watched case called Bluestone v. Bergstrom, an Orange County, Calif. judge has ruled in favor of a plaintiff’s right to pursue the larger scope of damages. At present only one veterinarian in sixteen faces a malpractice claim every year, but insurance specialist Mike Ahlert of Mack & Parker predicts skyrocketing rates if courts adopt the new doctrines: “it will drive up the cost of claims and attract plaintiff’s attorneys looking for new sources of income”. (Jennifer Fiala, “Court rulings could up ante on DVM malpractice”, DVM (veterinary newsmagazine), Sept., reprinted at ABD Services site); see also Thomas Scheffey, “Putting a Price on Pets”, Connecticut Law Tribune, Nov. 21).
January 28-29 – “Probe of Milberg Weiss Has Bar Buzzing”. Rumors fly that a grand jury is investigating class-action behemoth Milberg Weiss. Accounts differ, but the focus of the investigation is said to be the firm’s financial relationships with clients serving as plaintiffs in securities cases. (Jason Hoppin, The Recorder, Jan. 28). (DURABLE LINK)
January 28-29 – State of prosecution in Iowa. In a bizarre application of federal sentencing guidelines, the U.S. attorney’s office in Cedar Rapids, Iowa has gotten Dane Allen Yirkovsky, 38, sentenced to prison for 15 years for possessing a single .22 caliber bullet. “Yirkovsky’s saga began when he happened to come across a loaded .22-caliber round while pulling up carpets in the home of a friend who was putting him up in exchange for some remodeling work. He stuck the bullet in a box in his room. The bullet was discovered by police who were searching Yirkovsky’s room after his ex-girlfriend asserted he had some of her belongings.” (“Editorial: One bullet, 15 years”, Des Moines Register, Jan. 21). “The Iowa Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Polk County authorities were within their rights to confiscate a $9,000 car for a $35.81 crime.” (Frank Santiago, “County seizure of $9,000 car for $35.81 crime is upheld”, Des Moines Register, Jan. 25) And thank the Iowa attorney general’s office for this one: “Critics say a state law aimed at confining sexual predators past their prison terms is being used to punish offenders for crimes that aren’t sex-related.” (Jeff Eckhart, “Predator law used in non-sex crimes, critics say”, Des Moines Register, Dec. 23 — via Free-Market.Net). (DURABLE LINK)
January 28-29 – Strain, sprain injuries get $350K. “A California shopper who sustained a lower-back injury after a slip and fall in a department store settled her case for $349,999. On Dec. 26, 1998, plaintiff Bianca Hernandez, an unemployed female in her early 50s, was shopping in the sportswear section of a J.C. Penney store when she slipped and fell on coat hangers, clothes and other debris that were left on the floor.” Hernandez was taken to an emergency room. “She suffered sprain and strain injuries to her lumbar spine, left knee and left ankle.” Her suit alleged “that the store was inadequately supervised because the department manager and the assistant manager were both on break at the time, and sales associates were fully occupied serving customers.” Hernandez v. J.C. Penney Co. Inc., No. VC 030 725 (L.A. County) (“Fall during post-holiday sale costs J.C. Penney”, National Law Journal, Jan. 21, not online). (DURABLE LINK)
January 28-29 – Third Circuit nixes Philly gun suit. Goodbye to the city’s nuisance of a suit against the gun industry: “gun manufacturers are under no legal duty to protect citizens from the deliberate and unlawful use of their products,” said the federal appeals court, which also ruled the city couldn’t show the gunmakers were the “proximate cause” of harm suffered. (Shannon P. Duffy, “Philadelphia’s Gun Suit Off Target, 3rd Circuit Says”, Legal Intelligencer, Jan. 14). (DURABLE LINK)
January 25-27 – Warning on fireplace log: “Risk of Fire”. Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch has released the results of its fifth annual contest for the wackiest warning label, with the warning on the fireplace log coming in second. The winning entry, found on a CD player: “Do not use the Ultradisc2000 as a projectile in a catapult.” Third prize went to the label on a box of birthday candles: “DO NOT use soft wax as ear plugs or for any other function that involves insertion into a body cavity.” (Larry Hatfield, “Dumbest warning labels get their due”, San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 24; M-Law press release, Jan. 22). (DURABLE LINK)
January 25-27 – Goodbye to zero tolerance? Democratic state senator Richard Marable is leading a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the Georgia legislature who want to give school authorities more discretion for lenience in cases of students found with weapons or weapon-like objects in their possession. The public has been soured on zero-tolerance policies by cases like that of Ashley Smith, the Cobb County sixth-grader suspended for 10 days for bringing to school a Tweety Bird keychain (see Sept. 29, Oct. 4, 2000), and an Eagle Scout punished after “return[ing] to school from a weekend expedition with a broken ax in his car … An Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll this past Friday found that 96 percent of respondents supported examining each case individually. Only 1 percent liked zero tolerance the way it was, and 3 percent wanted school safety laws to be stricter.” (“Georgia Pols Want ‘Common Sense’ to Trump ‘Zero Tolerance’”, FoxNews.com, Jan. 21). (DURABLE LINK)
January 25-27 – McMouse story looking dubious. Brett B., 32, “said he found a mouse inside his Big Mac sandwich in June of 2001.” His story has been looking a little peaked, however, since he and four others were busted “as part of a methamphetamine ring in Berkeley County. Police say [he] was also part of a scam that went around the state stealing people’s identities and credit cards. But one of his alleged accomplices spoke up about last June’s mouse incident, telling police, ‘Brett had got together with myself … and had planned to come up with a scam to pull on McDonald’s where Brett was going to say he had bit into a mouse that the employees of McDonald’s had put in there.’” (Dan Krosse, “McMouse Case Looks Like a Hoax”, WCIV-TV (Charleston, S.C.), Jan. 15). (DURABLE LINK)
January 25-27 – “Companies may be liable for drugs used in rapes”. “Drug manufacturers whose products are used by offenders to help them commit rape could be held legally responsible for the crimes, according to a Melbourne lawyer. Eugene Arocca was commenting on reports of increasing drug-assisted date-rape in and around Melbourne clubs and entertainment venues. … However, the managing director of Roche Australia, the drug company that produces several drugs that have allegedly been used in date-rapes, described the whole idea as ‘bloody ridiculous’.” (Heather Kennedy, The Age (Melbourne), Jan. 6). (DURABLE LINK)
January 23-24 – Life imitates parody: “Whose Fault Is Fat?” By reader acclaim: “Some say the food industry — particularly fast food, vending machine and processed food companies — should be held accountable for playing a role in the declining health of the nation, just as the tobacco industry ultimately was forced to bear responsibility for public health costs associated with smoking in its landmark $206 billion settlement with the states. Although no one is taking such legal action against the food industry, nutrition and legal experts say it is reasonable to think that someday, it may come to that. ‘There is a movement afoot to do something about the obesity problem, not just as a visual blight but to see it in terms of costs,’ says John Banzhaf, a George Washington University Law School professor.” (Geraldine Sealey, “Whose Fault Is Fat? Experts Weigh Holding Food Companies Responsible for Obesity”, ABCNews.com, Jan. 22). OpinionJournal.com “Best of the Web” (Jan. 22) reports that “This past Sunday, ‘The Simpsons’ aired a new episode in which Marge, shocked to learn that Springfield is the fattest town in America, hires a lawyer to sue ‘big sugar.’” See Michael Y. Park, “Lawyers See Fat Payoffs in Junk Food Lawsuits”, FoxNews.com, Jan. 23 (quotes our editor).
January 23-24 – “Law hurts men, women”. Title IX, the feminist sports law run amok, is taking an ever-increasing toll: “Baseball at Boston University — gone. Kent State hockey — goodbye. Swimming at New Mexico — finished. The list goes on and on, more than 350 programs in virtually every sport on campus, and with it go the scholarships earned by student athletes and their dreams of competition to which most have devoted a lifetime. Incredibly, that has happened to more than 22,000 college athletes in recent years.” (Mike Moyer (executive director of the National Wrestling Coaches Association), Yahoo/USA Today, Jan. 21)(see Nov. 3, 2000, and our 1998 take).
January 23-24 – “Dangerous compensation”. “It seems that envy has replaced acceptance as the final stage of grief. … Washington’s payments to the victims of terrorism exposes the government to a potentially limitless array of future claims. Families of those killed in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, received nothing from Washington; relatives of federal employees killed in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing collected approximately US $100,000 each. But if US $1.6-million per decedent is the going rate, then a proper accounting for past and future terrorist attacks might bleed the coffers dry.” (National Post (editorial), Jan. 21).
January 23-24 – Drug demagogy and needless pain. Doctors still underprescribe opioids for the control of chronic pain, and it doesn’t help when CBS “60 Minutes” lends its assistance to the campaign against one of the most important recent pain advances, the drug OxyContin (Jane E. Brody, “Misunderstood Prescription Drugs and Needless Pain”, New York Times, Jan. 22 (reg); Jacob Sullum, “Killing a Painkiller”, Dec. 18; Geov Parrish, “A junkie’s confession”, Seattle Weekly, Dec. 20-26) (see Aug. 7, 2001). A Google search on the drug’s name immediately calls up ads from the websites AboutOxyContin.com and OxycontinInfoCenter.com, which might sound neutrally informative but turn out to be client intake sites for trial lawyers.
January 21-22 – Med-mal: should doctors strike? Insurance rates for doctors are soaring in New Jersey, and the legislature in Trenton is too deeply entwined with trial lawyers to pass anything likely to curtail the bar’s prosperity. “Calling the supply of surgeons tenuous, Dr. Michael Goldfarb, chief of surgery at Monmouth Medical Center in Long Branch, said that unless action is taken soon, New Jersey and the rest of the nation will have a surgeon shortage.” Neptune, N.J. ob/gyn Dr. George Lauback “gave up the obstetrical side of his practice, realizing that paying the $170,000 annual premium would mean he was working for the insurance company, not his family.” Brick, N.J. obstetrician Dr. Charles Brick suggests the state’s physicians stage a work stoppage of non-emergency care to draw attention to their plight (Naomi Mueller, “Malpractice costs driving doctors out”, Asbury Park Press, Jan. 19). In neighboring Pennsylvania, where payouts per doctor are said to be the highest in the country, the “Pennsylvania Medical Society reports that, according to data compiled by CASCO Consulting, a typical obstetrician in the regions of Pennsylvania with the highest average premiums, pays $83,541 a year in insurance premiums …[a] typical orthopedic surgeon in Pennsylvania’s highest region pays $96,199 a year … the average neurosurgeon in the same Pennsylvania region pays $111,296 a year.” (“Focus on medical malpractice”, Law.com, Oct. 31).
One Delaware County, Pa., orthopedic surgeon calculates that his liability insurance costs him $300 per surgery, which is more than some of the procedures are reimbursed for, so that “he’s losing money before other expenses are even factored into the equation.” (Tanya Albert, “Liability rates squeezing out specialties”, American Medical News (A.M.A.), Dec. 3; Tanya Albert and Damon Adams, “Professional liability insurance rates go up, up; doctors go away”, Jan. 7). On the withdrawal from delivering babies of half or more of the obstetricians practicing in various Mississippi Delta counties since just a year or two ago, see Hugh A. Gamble (president, Mississippi State Medical Association), letter to the editor, Mississippi Medical News, Dec., (PDF format, large download), at p. 4. (DURABLE LINK)
January 21-22 – “In a class of his own”. Profile of famed class-actioneer Melvyn Weiss of Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach. Quotes our editor (The Economist, Jan. 17).
January 21-22 – Student: clown college harder to get into than law school. Soon after graduating with his law degree from the University of California, Berkeley, David Carlyon left it all behind to enroll in the Ringling Bros.-Barnum & Bailey clown training program. “Hey, listen, it’s harder to get into that Clown College than it is into a law school,” he told the Saginaw (Mich.) News. “Some 3,000 apply to it each year, only 60 get in and only 30 get contracts after they graduate.” (“Berkley [sic] grad says getting into clown school harder than getting into law school”, AP/AZcentral.com, Jan. 18). (DURABLE LINK)
January 21-22 – “Judo champion refuses to bend in lawsuit”. Challenging the ritual which begins sanctioned judo matches, a suit by three students “against three U.S. judo groups, as well as the International Judo Federation. …claim[s] that the forced bowing to inanimate objects, such as judo mats and pictures of the Japanese martial art’s founder, is religious in nature and violates federal and Washington state discrimination laws.” (Sam Skolnik, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Dec. 7) (via OpinionJournal.com “Best of the Web“).
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May 10 – “Barbecue group sued over contest”. Jim Woodsmall of Jumpin’ Jim’s BBQ in Johnston, Ia., has sued the Kansas City Barbeque Society, charging that his business has suffered because the society has failed to award his barbecue recipe the stellar ratings he feels it deserved. The enthusiast group fails to follow impartial and uniform rules in its cook-offs, Woodsmall claims, which he thinks amounts to fraud and negligence. (Lindsey A. Henry, Des Moines Register, May 8).
May 10 – Fortune on Lemelson patents. We’ve run a couple of items on the amazing Jerome Lemelson patent operation (see Jan. 19, 2001 and August 28, 1999) and now Fortune weighs in with the best overview we’ve seen. Lemelson, who died in 1997, filed patents for hundreds of ideas and industrial processes which he said he had invented, and which underlay such familiar modern technologies as VCRs, fax machines, bar-code scanners, camcorders and automated warehouses. A mechanical genius? Well, at least a genius in figuring out the angles that could be worked with American patent law: by filing vague patents and then arranging to delay their issuance while amending their claims to adjust to later technological developments, Lemelson steered them into the path of unfolding technology, eventually securing bonanzas for his tireless litigation machine. Foreign-owned companies folded first because they were afraid of American juries, which helped give Lemelson the war chest needed to break the resistance of most of the big U.S.-based industries as well. $1.5 billion in royalties later, his estate continues to sue some 400 companies, with many more likely to be added in years to come. (Nicholas Varchaver, “The Patent King”, May 14).
May 10 – Prospect of $3 gas. One reason refinery disruptions lead to big spikes in the price of gasoline at the pump: environmental rules end up mandating a different blend of gas for each state, hampering efforts to ship supplies to where they’re most needed. (Ron Scherer, “50 reasons gasoline isn’t cheaper”, Christian Science Monitor, May 4; Ben Lieberman (Competitive Enterprise Institute), “Skyrocketing Ga$: What the Feds Can Do”, New York Post, April 23, reprinted at CEI site).
May 10 – Welcome Norwegian readers. We get discussed, and several of our recent news items summarized, on the “humor” section of Norway’s Spray Internet service (Bjørn Tore Øren, “For mange advokater”, May 8). Among other non-U.S. links which have brought us visitors: Australia’s legal-beat webzine, Justinian (“A journal with glamour — yet no friends”; more); Baker & Ballantyne, in the U.K.; the Virtual Law Library pages on media law compiled by Rosemary Pattenden at the University of East Anglia; and Sweden’s libertarian- leaning Contra.nu (“Har advokatkåren i USA för stort inflytande?” they ask of us)(more).
May 9 – Oklahoma forensics scandal. After serving fifteen years in prison on a 1986 rape conviction, Jeffrey Pierce was released Monday after new DNA evidence refuted testimony against him by a forensic specialist whose work is the subject of a growing furor. “From 1980 to 1993, Joyce Gilchrist was involved in roughly 3,000 cases as an Oklahoma City police laboratory scientist, often helping prosecutors win convictions by identifying suspects with hair, blood or carpet fibers taken from crime scenes.” Although peers, courts and professional organizations repeatedly questioned the competence and ethical integrity of her work, prosecutors asked few questions, perhaps because she was getting them a steady stream of positive IDs and jury verdicts in their favor. Now Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating has ordered an investigation of felony cases on which Gilchrist worked after an FBI report “found she had misidentified evidence or given improper courtroom testimony in at least five of eight cases the agency reviewed.” (Jim Yardley, “Flaws in Chemist’s Findings Free Man at Center of Inquiry”, New York Times, May 8; “Inquiry Focuses on Scientist Used by Prosecutors”, May 2)(reg)
May 9 – Not about the money. Foreign policy making on a contingency fee: “When attorneys agreed to champion the causes of American victims of terrorism in the Middle East, it wasn’t supposed to be about the money.” We’ve heard that one before, haven’t we? “But the prospect of multimillion-dollar fees in what once seemed to be long-shot litigation against Iran has left lawyers fighting over fees in federal court in Washington, D.C. High principles of international law and justice aren’t at stake. It’s simply a matter of who gets paid.” (Jonathan Groner, “Anti-Terrorism Verdicts Spur Big Fee Fights”, Legal Times, April 18).
May 9 – Update: cookie lawsuit crumbles. Half-baked all along, and now dunked: a federal court in March dismissed a would-be class action lawsuit against web ad agency DoubleClick over its placing of “cookies” on web users’ hard drives. Other such suits remain pending (see also Feb. 2, 2000); this one was brought by Milberg Weiss’s Melvyn Weiss and by Bernstein, Litowitz (Michael A. Riccardi, “DoubleClick Can Keep Hand in Cookie Jar, Federal Judge Rules”, New York Law Journal, March 30).
May 8 – “Lawyers to Get $4.7 Million in Suit Against Iomega”. “Lawyers in a class action suit alleging defects in portable computer Zip disk drives will get the only cash payout, up to $4.7 million, in a proposed settlement with manufacturer Iomega Corp., according to the company’s Web site.” Rebates of between $5 and $40 will be offered to past customers who buy new Iomega products, while Milberg Weiss and three other law firms expect to split their fees in crisp greenbacks, not coupons, if a Delaware judge approves the settlement in June. (Yahoo/Reuters, April 12) (Rinaldi class action settlement notice, Iomega website).
May 8 – A definition (via Sony’s Morita and IBM’s Opel). “Litigious (li-TIJ-uhs) adjective: 1. Pertaining to litigation; 2. Eager to engage in lawsuits; 3. Inclined to disputes and arguments. [From Middle English, from Latin litigiosus from litigium, dispute.]
“‘My friend John Opel of IBM wrote an article a few years ago titled ‘Our Litigious Society,’ so I knew I was not alone in my view that lawyers and litigation have become severe handicaps to business, and sometimes worse.” — Sony co-founder Akio Morita (Wordsmith.org “A Word a Day” service, scroll to Jan. 26).
May 8 – “Halt cohabiting or no bail, judge tells defendants”. “A federal judge in Charlotte is using a 19th-century N.C. law banning fornication and adultery, telling defendants they won’t be freed on bond until they agree to get married, move out of the house or have their partner leave. U.S. Magistrate Judge Carl Horn won’t release a criminal defendant on bond knowing that he or she will break the law. And that includes North Carolina’s law against unmarried couples cohabiting, placed on the books in 1805.” (Eric Frazier and Gary L. Wright, Charlotte Observer, April 4) (see also May 18, 2000).
May 7 – Says cat attacked his dog; wants $1.5 million. “A San Marcos man has filed a $1.5 million claim against the city because a cat who lives in the Escondido Public Library allegedly attacked his dog.” Richard Espinosa says he was visiting the library on November 16 with his assistance dog Kimba, a 50-pound Labrador mix, when the feline, named L.C. or Library Cat because it’s allowed to live in the building, attacked the dog inflicting scratches and punctures. As for Espinosa, wouldn’t you know, he “was emotionally traumatized and suffers from flashbacks, terror, nightmares and other problems.” Four lawyers declined to take his case and he finally filed it himself. “The cat was apparently uninjured.” (Jonathan Heller, “Escondido gets $1.5 million claim; library cat allegedly assaulted dog”, San Diego Union-Tribune, May 4) (see letter to the editor from Espinosa, June 13).
May 7 – Judge throws out hog farm suit. As was reported a few months ago, a number of environmental groups aim to take a lesson from the tobacco affair by using mass lawsuit campaigns to pursue various goals which they haven’t been able to secure through the legislative and electoral process. To do this they’ve teamed up with tobacco-fee-engorged trial lawyers; the nascent alliance got lots of publicity in December with one of its first projects, suing Smithfield Farms for billions over the nuisance posed by large-scale hog farming, a project apparently masterminded by Florida trial lawyer Mike Papantonio (tobacco, asbestos, fen-phen) and with suits against chicken and livestock operations promised in later phases of the effort (see Dec. 7, 2000). Far less publicity has been accorded to Judge Donald W. Stephens’s ruling in March which threw out the first two lawsuits as having failed to state a legal claim against the large hog packer and raiser. (Appeal is expected.) Power scion Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is still on board with his headline-ready name to front for the lawyers in the press, but he doesn’t seem to have gone out of his way to call attention to the adverse ruling (“North Carolina judge dismisses lawsuits against hog producer”, AP/MSNBC, March 30; Scott Kilman, “Environmental groups target factory-style hog farm facilities”, Wall Street Journal/MSNBC, undated; Smithfield press release, March 29).
MORE: National Public Radio, “Living on Earth” with Steve Curwood and reporter Leda Hartman, week of Feb. 16; Water Keeper Alliance (Kennedy’s group), hog campaign homepage with list of lawyers (J. Michael Papantonio, Steven Echsner and Neil Overholtz, Levin, Papantonio, Pensacola, Fla.; Thomas Sobol, Jan Schlichtmann, Steven Fineman and Erik Shawn of Lieff, Cabraser, New York and Boston; F. Kenneth Bailey, Jr. and Herbert Schwartz of Williams Bailey, Houston; Howard F. Twiggs and Douglas B. Abrams of Twiggs, Abrams, (Raleigh, N.C.), Ken Suggs and Richard H. Middleton, Jr. of Suggs, Kelly & Middleton (Columbia, S.C.), Joe Whatley, Jr., Birmingham, Ala.; Kevin Madonna, Chatham, N.Y.; Stephen Weiss and Chris Seeger, New York; Charles Speer, Overland Park, Kan.; Hiram Eastland, Greenwood, Miss.) Compare “Conoco Could Face $500 Million Lawsuit Over Bayou Water Pollution Problems”, Solid Waste Digest: Southern Edition, March 2001 (page now removed, but GoogleCached) (Papantonio campaign in Pensacola).
May 7 – Website accessibility law hits the U.K. “Scottish companies were warned yesterday that they could face prosecution if their websites are not accessible to the disabled. Poorly-designed websites are often incompatible with Braille software.” (more) (yet more) (Pauline McInnes, “Firms warned on websites access”, The Scotsman, April 19).
May 4-6 – By reader acclaim: “Vegetarian sues McDonald’s over meaty fries”. Seattle attorney Harish Bharti wants hundreds of millions of dollars from the burger chain for its acknowledged policy of adding small amounts of beef flavoring to its french fries, which he says is deceptive toward vegetarian customers (ABCNews.com/ Reuters, May 3). Notable detail that hasn’t made it into American accounts of the case we’ve seen, but does appear in the Times of India: “When he is not practising law in Seattle, Bharti says he teaches at Gerry Spence’s exclusive College for Trial Lawyers in Wyoming”. Does this mean you can be a predator without being a carnivore? (“US Hindus take on McDonald’s over French fries”, Times of India, May 3) (see also Aug. 30, 1999).
May 4-6 – Mississippi’s forum-shopping capital. The little town of Fayette, Miss., reports the National Law Journal, is “ground zero for the largest legal attack on the pharmaceutical industry” in memory. Tens of thousands of plaintiffs are suing in the Fayette courthouse over claimed side effects from such drugs as fen-phen, Rezulin, and Propulsid, not because they’re local residents (most aren’t) but because the state’s unusually lax courtroom rules allow lawyers to bring them in from elsewhere to profit from the town’s unique brand of justice. The townspeople, nearly half of whom are below the poverty level and only half of whom graduated from high school, “have shown that they are willing to render huge compensatory and punitive damages awards”. Among other big-dollar outcomes, Houston plaintiff’s lawyer Mike Gallagher of Gallagher, Lewis, Serfin, Downey & Kim “helped win a $150 million compensatory damages verdict for five fen-phen plaintiffs in Jefferson County on Dec. 21, 1999. The jury deliberated for about two hours…” There’s just one judge in Fayette County to hear civil cases, Judge Lamar Pickard, whose handling of trials is bitterly complained of by out-of-town defendants. As for appeal, that route became less promising for defendants last November when plaintiff’s lawyers solidified their hold on the Mississippi Supreme Court by knocking off moderate incumbent Chief Justice Lenore Prather.
Lots of good details here, including how the Bankston Drug Store, on Main Street in Fayette since 1902, has the bad fortune to get named in nearly every suit because that tactic allows the lawyers to keep the case from being removed to federal court. Plaintiff’s lawyer Gallagher, who also played a prominent role in the breast implant affair, says criticism of the county’s jurors as easily played on by lawyers “‘sounds racist’, since the jury pool is predominantly black”. He also brushes off defendants’ complaints about forum-shopping with all the wit and sensibility at his command: “They want to tell me where I can sue them for the damage they caused? They can kiss my a**.” (Mark Ballard, “Mississippi becomes a mecca for tort suits”, National Law Journal, April 30).
May 4-6 – Agenda item for Ashcroft. Attorney General Ashcroft could make a real difference for beleaguered upstate New York communities by backing off the Justice Department’s Reno-era policy of avid support for revival of centuries-dormant Indian land claims, which went so far as to include the brutalist tactic of naming as defendants individual landowners whose family titles had lain undisturbed since the early days of the Republic (see Oct. 27, 1999, Feb. 1, 2000) (John Woods, “Long-Running Indian Land Claims in New York May Hinge on Ashcroft’s Stance”, New York Law Journal, April 16).
May 3 – “Family of shooting victim sue owners of Jewish day-care center”. If the gunman doesn’t succeed in wiping out your institution, maybe the lawyers will: “The parents of a boy who was shot by a white supremacist at a Jewish day-care center have filed a lawsuit claiming the center’s owners failed to provide the necessary security to prevent hate crime attacks.” Buford O. Furrow fired more than 70 shots at the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Los Angeles on Aug. 10, 1999 (AP/CNN, May 1).
May 3 – Update: mills of legal discipline. They grind slow, that’s for sure, but does that mean they grind exceeding fine? A disciplinary panel has ended its investigation of New Hampshire chief justice David Brock, letting him off with an admonishment, in the protracted controversy over the conduct (see April 5 and Oct. 11, 2000) which also led to his impeachment and acquittal in the state senate; Brock’s lawyer had threatened to sue the disciplinary panel if it continued its probe, and a dissenting committee member called that lawsuit-threat “intended to intimidate” (“Threat of lawsuit ended Brock case”, Nashua Telegraph, April 23; Dan Tuohy, “Finding bolsters call for reform”, Foster’s Daily Democrat, April 26). A hearing committee of the District of Columbia Board on Professional Responsibility has recommended that Mark Hager be suspended for three years over the episode [see Feb. 23, 2000] in which he and attorney John Traficonte “began negotiations with [drugmaker] Warner-Lambert to make refunds to consumers, and to pay himself and Hager $225,000 in exchange for which they would abandon their representation, agree to hold the agreement and fee secret from the public and their clients, and promise not to sue Warner-Lambert in the future. Traficonte and Hager accepted the offer without first obtaining the approval of any class member.” The disciplinary committee “found that Hager’s conduct was shockingly outrageous, and that his status as a law professor was a factor in aggravation.” We’ve seen no indication that anyone in the administration of American University’s law school, where Hager continues to teach, has expressed the smallest misgivings about the example that students are supposed to take from his conduct (Denise Ryan, law.com D.C., Board on Professional Responsibility No. 31-98, In re Hager, issued Nov. 30, 2000). (Update Jul. 19, 2003: Hager resigns AU post in April 2003). And off-the-wall Michigan tort lawyer and politician Geoffrey Fieger faces charges before the state attorney grievance commission following reports that he used his radio show to unleash “an obscenity-laced tirade” against three state appeals judges (“Fieger Under Fire For Alleged Swearing Fit”, MSNBC, April 17).
May 3 – “Valley doctors caught in ‘lawsuit war zone’”. A report from the Texas Board of Medical Examiners finds medical malpractice cases approximately tripled in 1999 in Texas’s McAllen-Brownsville region compared with the previous year. Among short-cuts lawyers are accused of employing: suing doctors without an authorization from the client, and hiring as their medical expert a family doctor who charges $500 an hour and has reviewed 700 cases for lawyers, second-guessing the work of such specialists as cardiovascular surgeons, but has not herself (according to an opposing lawyer) had hospital privileges since 1997. (James Pinkerton, Houston Chronicle, March 2 — via Houston CALA). State representative Juan Hinojosa has introduced a bill that would allow doctors and hospitals to countersue lawyers and clients who file suits with reckless disregard as to whether reasonable grounds exist for their action. (“Doctors seek new remedy to fight frivolous lawsuits”, CALA Houston, undated).
May 2 – Suing the coach. “A teenager, who felt she was destined for greatness as a softball player, has filed a $700,000 lawsuit against her former coach, alleging his ‘incorrect’ teaching style ruined her chances for an athletic scholarship. Cheryl Reeves, 19, of Rambler Lane in Levittown, also alleges that her personal pitching coach, Roy Jenderko, of Warminster, not only taught her an illegal style of pitching but also used ‘favorite players’ which resulted in demoralizing the teen. ” (Dave Sommers, “Legal Pitch”, The Trentonian, May 1).
May 2 – Trustbusters sans frontieres. Truly awful idea that surfaced in the press a while back: a bipartisan group of senators led by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) say they’re trying to pressure the Bush administration to file an antitrust suit against the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, accusing it of restricting the output of oil in order to raise prices to consumers in countries like ours — which is, of course, OPEC’s reason for existence. “Most antitrust and foreign policy experts interviewed say they cannot imagine a scenario in which such legal action would succeed, or that any president would risk his foreign policy goals for such a lawsuit”, reports the National Law Journal. But even the gesture of inviting unelected judges and unpredictable juries to punish sovereign foreign powers would increase the chances of our landing in a series of confrontations and international incidents that would be at best imperfectly manageable by the nation’s executive branch and diplomatic corps (which cannot, for example, necessarily offer to reverse or suspend court decisions as a bargaining chip).
The United States’s relations with OPEC countries, it will be recalled, have on occasion embroiled us in actual shooting wars, which are bad enough when entered after deliberation on the initiative of those to whom such decisions are entrusted in our system of separation of powers, and would be all the less supportable if brought on us by the doings of some rambunctious judge or indignant jury. Wouldn’t it be simpler for Sen. Specter to just introduce a bill providing that the courts of the United States get to run the world from now on? (Matthew Morrissey, “Senators to Press for Suing OPEC Over Pricing”, National Law Journal, March 1).
May 1 – Columnist-fest. Scourings from our bookmark file:
* Mark Steyn on the Indian residential-school lawsuits that may soon bankrupt leading Canadian churches (see Aug. 23, 2000): (“I’ll give you ‘cultural genocide’”, National Post, April 9). Bonus: Steyn on protectionism, globalization and Quebec City (“Don’t fence me in”, April 19).
* Federalists under fire: there’s a press campaign under way to demonize the Federalist Society, the national organization for libertarian and conservative lawyers and law students. The Society has done a whole lot to advance national understanding of litigation abuses and overuse of the courts — could that be one reason it’s made so many powerful enemies? (Thomas Bray, “Life in the Vast Lane”, OpinionJournal.com, April 17; Marci Hamilton, “Opening Up the Law Schools: Why The Federalist Society Is Invaluable To Robust Debate”, FindLaw Writ, April 25; William Murchison, “In Defense of the Federalist Society”, Dallas Morning News, April 25).
* A Bush misstep: the White House has named drug-war advocate and Weekly Standard contributor John P. Walters as head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. “Walters, almost alone among those who have spent serious professional time on drug abuse in America, harbors no misgivings over the fact that we’ve been crowding our prisons almost to the bursting point with nonviolent drug offenders.” (William Raspberry, “A Draco of Drugs”, Washington Post, April 30) (Lindesmith Center).
* “Overreaching IP legal teams kick the firm they supposedly represent”: Seth Shulman of Technology Review on the “patented peanut butter sandwich” case (see Jan. 30). (“Owning the Future: PB&J Patent Punch-up”, May). Also: California judge William W. Bedsworth (“Food Fight!”, The Recorder, March 16).
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