• Nothing new about lawyers stealing money from estates, but embarrassing when they used to head the bar association [Eagle-Tribune; Lawrence, Mass., Arthur Khoury]
• Unusual “reverse quota” case: black job applicant wins $30K after showing beauty supply company turned her down because it had a quota of whites to hire [SE Texas Record]
• Who knew? Per class action allegations, pet food contains ingredients “unfit for human consumption” [Daily Business Review]
• U.K.: “A divorcee who won a £1.4million payout from her multi-millionaire husband is suing her lawyers because she claims she should have got twice that amount.” [Telegraph]
• UW freshman falls from fourth-floor dorm window after drinking at “Trashed Tuesday”, now wants $ from Delta Upsilon International as well as construction firm that put in windows [Seattle P-I, KOMO]
• After giant $103 million payday, current and former partners at Minneapolis law firm are torn by feuds and dissension — wasn’t there a John Steinbeck novella about that? [ABA Journal and again, Heins Mills]
• Small firm that used to make Wal-Mart in-house videos sets up shop at AAJ/ATLA convention hawking those videos for use in suits against the retailer [Arkansas Democrat Gazette, earlier]
• When the judge’s kid gets busted [Eric Berlin; Alabama]

Yesterday the New York Times reported on the longstanding problem of patient assaults on medical personnel, particularly in psychiatric care: citing Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers, it said “half of all nonfatal injuries resulting from workplace assaults occur in health care and social service settings”. (David Tuller, “Nurses Step Up Efforts to Protect Against Attacks”, Jul. 8). So it’s worth noting what happened to Northfield City Hospital in Northfield, Minnesota when a man showed up at the emergency room at 2 a.m., ranting and yelling in an increasingly agitated manner. Hospital staff finally called the police, who arrived on the scene at 7 a.m., assessed the situation and tasered the man. (He was uninjured otherwise and was subdued without losing consciousness.) “Now federal and state health officials have cited the Northfield hospital for violating the patient’s rights,” a development that has outraged hospital officials in the state. The state health department says it believes that staff at the facility, a small one with fewer than 100 beds, “needs more training in deescalation techniques”. The hospital has hired two security guards and is negotiating other steps with the state (Maura Lerner, “Hospital calls cops and feels the sting”, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Jun. 15). A commenter at KevinMD asserts:

A few years ago, Medicare tried to prohibit physicians from discharging a patient for any reason, up to and including physical attacks on physicians and staff.

Just as the doctors were required to hire translators at the doctor’s expense, they would be required to hire security at the doctor’s expense.

They backed off then, when they physicians called them on it. Not surprised they would try again.

In hospitals; Minnesota; sued if you do

Industrial safety specialists have long warned of the hazards of letting employees wear baggy garments around assembly-line machinery, hence the snug uniform, including pants, prescribed for both sexes by Mission Foods at its tortilla-making plant in New Brighton, Minn. Fatuma Hassan, an employee of Somali descent, claims it’s religious discrimination not to let her wear traditional garb. Thanks in part to activist groups eager to provide backup, Minnesota has become a flashpoint for Muslim employees’ demands for religious accommodation on the job: the cab drivers who refused to transport arriving airline passengers carrying duty-free alcohol and the Target cashiers who declined to scan pork apparently never made it to court, but complainants in the state filed 45 other cases with the EEOC last year. A class action is in progress against circuit-board maker Celestica on behalf of 22 employees, many of whom “were fired or suspended for taking unauthorized breaks at sunset. The changing Islamic prayer schedule was a key reason.” (”Cultural traditions can lead to conflict on the job”, AP/Rochester (Minn.) Post-Bulletin, Jun. 17)(via Michelle Malkin).

• “I believe it’s frivolous; I believe it’s ridiculous, and I believe it’s asinine”: Little Rock police union votes lopsidedly not to join federal “don/doff” wage-hour lawsuit asking pay for time spent on uniform changes [Arkansas Democrat Gazette courtesy U.S. Chamber]
• Must-read Roger Parloff piece on furor over law professors’ selling of ethics opinions [Fortune; background links @ PoL]
• Too rough on judge-bribing Mississippi lawyers? Like Rep. Conyers at House Judiciary, but maybe not for same reasons, we welcome renewed attention to Paul Minor case [Clarion-Ledger]
• American Airlines backs off its plan to put Logan skycaps on salary-only following loss in tip litigation [Boston Globe; earlier]
• U.K.: Infamous Yorkshire Ripper makes legal bid for freedom, civil liberties lawyer says his human rights have been breached [Independent]
• In long-running campaign to overturn Feres immunity for Army docs, latest claim is that military knowingly withholds needed therapy so as to return soldiers to front faster [New York Rep. Maurice Hinchey on CBS; a different view from Happy Hospitalist via KevinMD]
• Profs. Alan Dershowitz and Robert Blakey hired to back claim that Russian government can invoke U.S. RICO law in its own courts to sue Bank of New York for $22 billion [WSJ law blog, earlier @ PoL]
• Minnesota Supreme Court declines to ban spanking by parents [Star-Tribune, Pioneer Press]
• Following that very odd $112 million award (knocked down from $1 billion) to Louisiana family in Exxon v. Grefer, it’s the oil firm’s turn to offer payouts to local neighbors suffering common ailments [Times-Picayune, UPI]
• AG Jerry Brown “has been suing, or threatening to sue, just about anyone who doesn’t immediately adhere” to his vision of building California cities up rather than out [Dan Walters/syndicated]
• Virginia high school principal ruled entitled to disability for his compulsion to sexually harass women [eight years ago on Overlawyered]

We had a request to post the District of Minnesota opinion dismissing the meritless Sinclair v. Obama litigation (discussed May 15), so I have uploaded the magistrate’s thorough report and recommendation in Case No. 08-cv-00360-JMR-RLE (D. Minn.).  Sinclair failed to file objections to the February 25 report, and Judge James M. Rosenbaum adopted it in a summary order dated March 19, issuing final judgment the same day.

Note that the magistrate applied 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2)(B)(i) to dismiss the plainly frivolous case sua sponte without requiring the victimized defendants to expend legal fees in responding; in December 2006, I discussed the underuse of this provision in pro se litigation.  More on delusional pro se cases.

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).

• Speaking of prostitutes and politicians, Deborah Jeane Palfrey has come to recognize that Montgomery Blair Sibley (Oct. 29; May 4; etc.) may not be the best lawyer for her. [WTOP via BLT]
• Update: Nearly two years later, trial court gets around to upholding $2 million verdict in lawn-mower death we covered Jun. 16 and Aug. 18, 2006. [Roanoke Times (quoting me); opinion at On Point]
• In other lawn mower news, check out Jim Beck’s perceptive comment on a Third Circuit lawn-mower liability decision.
• Update: Willie Gary wins his child-support dispute. [Gary v. Gowins (Ga.); Atl. Journal-Const.; via ABA Journal; earlier: Nov. 2]
• Tobacco-lawyer Mike Ciresi drops out of Minnesota senate race. [WCCO]
• Belfast court quashes libel ruling against restaurant critic. [AFP/Breitbart]
• Trial-lawyer-blogger happy: jury returned $1.25 million med-mal verdict for death of totally disabled person suffering from end-stage renal disease, pulmonary hypertension, oxygen dependent lung disease, and obesity, after rejecting businessperson from jury “for cause” because he was head of local Chamber of Commerce. [Day]
• Car-keying anti-military attorney Jay Grodner faced the law in January; here’s the transcript. [Blackfive]
• Anonymous blog post not reliable evidence of factual allegations. [In re Pfizer, Inc. Sec. Litig., 2008 WL 540120 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 28, 2008) via Roberts, who also reports on fee reduction in same post]
• Clinton’s nutty mortgage plan. [B&MI (quoting me)]
• A supposed DC cabbie’s take on DC v. Heller. [DC Cabbie blog]

The lowest medical malpractice insurance rates are found in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and the Dakotas. Why is that? Probably not because doctors there have managed to achieve anything resembling error-free practice; and probably not because the five states, taken as a whole, are distinguished by any unusually pro-defendant set of tort laws. MedInnovationBlog takes up the question here and here, and speaks with a mutual insurer executive in search of explanations, which may include (among others) a “culture of collegiality among doctors and society as a whole”, a hard line against doubtful claims, and a paucity of giant verdicts of the John Edwards variety. (cross-posted from Point of Law).

• “Of all the body parts to Xerox!” Another round of stories on efforts to reduce liabilities from office holiday parties [ABA Journal, Above the Law, and relatedly Megan McArdle]
• New edition of Tillinghast/Towers Perrin study on insurance costs of liability system finds they went down last year, which doesn’t happen often [2007 update, PDF]
• Vermont student sues Burger King over indelicate object found in his sandwich; one wonders whether he’s ruled out it being a latex finger cot, sometimes used by bakery workers [AP/FoxNews.com]
• Good discussions of “human rights commission” complaints against columnist Mark Steyn in Canada [Volokh, David Warren and again @ RCP, Dan Gardner; for a contrasting view, see Wise Law Blog]
• Having trousered $60-odd million in fees suing Microsoft in Minnesota and Iowa antitrust cases, Zelle Hofmann now upset after judge says $4 million in fees should suffice for Wisconsin me-too action [Star-Tribune, PheistyBlog]
• Australian rail operator will appeal order to pay $A600,000 to man who illegally jumped tracks, spat at ticket inspectors, hurt himself fleeing when detained [Herald Sun]
• Lawyers’ fees in Kia brake class action (Oct. 29, Oct. 30) defended by judge who assails honesty of chief defense witness [Legal Intelligencer]
• Who deserves credit for founding Facebook? Question is headed for court [02138 mag]
• Yes, jury verdicts do sometimes bankrupt defendants, as did this $8 million class action award against a Kansas City car dealer [KC Star, KC Business Journal]
• Dispute over Burt Neuborne’s Holocaust fees is finally over, he’ll get $3.1 million [NY Sun]
• So long as we’re only fifty votes behind in the race for this “best general legal blog” honor, we’re going to keep nagging you to vote for Overlawyered [if you haven't already]

For a while now, lawyers in Minnesota, Oklahoma and elsewhere have been suing companies that make over-the-counter cold remedies containing ephedrine and pseudoephedrine on the grounds that they were aware some buyers were using the drugs as raw material for illegal methamphetamine labs. Now such litigation appears to be gaining momentum in Arkansas, where many county governments have signed up to sue Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, and other companies. “If successful, it could open up litigation against manufacturers of other produce used in making meth, such as drain cleaners and acetone.” (E. Alan Long, “Williams updates JPs on methamphetamine litigation”, Carroll County News, May 29; and see this, on anhydrous ammonia). As of last month, twenty-two counties had enlisted in the litigation, which seeks to recoup, among other things, money spent on the processing of criminal methamphetamine cases. “What more could we have done with a million dollars a year for our county? Would that have meant a half dozen more police officers? Would that have meant a better solid waste program? Who knows, what could your county have done with an extra million dollars,” asked Judge Bill Hicks of Independence County, a backer of the suits. (”Special Report: Meth Related Lawsuit Filed Against Pharmaceutical Companies”, KAIT, Aug. 1; Pharmalot via Childs)(& welcome Megan McArdle readers).

A federal judge has rebuked a large Minnesota personal-injury law firm that, even before rescuers had emerged from the treacherous waters, had petitioned for access to the I-35W site for three attorneys and two expert witnesses. And Democrat-Farmer-Labor State Rep. Ryan Winkler has suggested establishing a public compensation fund, along the lines of the 9/11 fund, for victims who agree not to sue:

The legal spectacle about to play out threatens to drag on for years and impose huge costs on some defendants.

In the future, as Winkler has pointed out, even the largest contractors may hesitate to work on Minnesota’s riskiest projects: repairs to crumbling infrastructure. “If engineers and constructors are scared away from bidding,” he warns, “it will be a long time before our infrastructure is adequate and safe.”

(Katherine Kersten, “After I-35W bridge collapse, lawyers promptly pounced”, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Sept. 2). Earlier: Aug. 9, Aug. 2.

Professor Stephen Bainbridge springboards off of our August 24 post to take a cut in the Examiner at a principled distinction between banning dogfighting and foie gras.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m quite happy with a state of the world where dogfighting is banned but foie gras isn’t. But I’m not persuaded that the good professor has made the case for a principled distinction. Discussion of this (and of the almost entirely unrelated Larry Craig case) after the jump:

Continue Reading »

While “the divers are still in the river looking”:

Omar Jamal of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center in Minneapolis said he has received at least a dozen telephone calls from law firms, most of them local, since it became public knowledge that a pregnant Somali woman, Sadiya Sahal, and her 2-year-old daughter, Hanah Mohamed, were among those missing after the collapse.

The calls started coming about 4 p.m. Thursday, less than 24 hours after the collapse, and haven’t stopped, Jamal said. Some of the attorneys have asked for telephone numbers and other personal information about Sahal’s family, Jamal said.

“This is the worst form of ambulance-chasing,” Jamal said. “The divers are still in the river looking, and the attorneys keep calling us.”

(Chris Serres and Matt McKinney, “Question of liability rises”, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Aug. 8)(via Ambrogi who got it from Minnesota Lawyer Blog).

• Can’t possibly be true: Tampa man sentenced to 25 years for possession of pills for which he had a legal prescription [Balko, Hit and Run]


• Plaintiff’s lawyers “viewed [Sen. Fred Thompson] as someone we could work with” and gave to his campaigns, but they can’t be pleased by his kind words for Texas malpractice-suit curbs [Washington Post, Lattman; disclaimer]


• Pace U. student arrested on hate crime charges after desecrating Koran stolen from college [Newsday; Volokh, more; Hitchens]


• Little-used Rhode Island law allows married person to act as spouse’s attorney, which certainly has brought complications to the divorce of Daniel and Denise Chaput from Pawtucket [Providence Journal]


• Lott v. Levitt defamation suit kinda-sorta settles, it looks like [Adler @ Volokh]


• Trial lawyer Mikal Watts not bowling ‘em over yet in expected challenge to Texas Sen. Cornyn [Rothenberg, Roll Call, sub-only via Lopez @ NRO]


• Frankly collusive: after Minnesota car crash, parents arrange to have their injured son sue them for negligence [OnPoint News]


• Canadian bar hot and bothered over Maclean’s cover story slamming profession’s ethics [Macleans blog]


• Five Democratic candidates (Clinton, Obama, Edwards, Biden, Richardson) auditioned at the trial lawyers’ convention earlier this month in Chicago [NYSun]


• Donald Boudreaux’s theory as to why Prohibition ended when it did [Pittsburgh Trib-Rev via Murray @ NRO]


• Speaker of Alaska house discusses recent strengthening of that state’s longstanding loser-pays law [new at Point of Law]

Hospital X was grossly — if not criminally — negligent, and you ought to award zillions of dollars in punitive damages for their misconduct! Consider this list of sins: this hospital knew that its surgeon was mentally ill. He had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and they knew it. He had been locked up in mental institutions at least twice before. The danger here was very real. Don’t let them try to claim they didn’t foresee danger. Why, once when that surgeon was operating on a patient, multiple witnesses will tell you that he “became disoriented during the surgery, forgot the names of certain instruments and at one point appeared to be talking to the wall!” Even after he was treated, two different psychiatrists who evaluated him refused to unequivocally state that he was competent. And they let him continue to operate on vulnerable patients. Without any supervision. Even though they knew he had a history of failing to take his medication.

Well, that would be the summary of my argument to the jury if the surgeon in question botched my poor client’s operation and left him permanently injured. So a hospital would have to be crazy to let this state of affairs go on, right?

Right. Except that when Wyoming Valley Health Care System decided not to take any chances, and refused to let mentally ill surgeon Jonathan Haas operate without supervision, he sued the hospital in federal court for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act. And this week, a Pennsylvania jury awarded $250,000 to Haas for this violation of his rights. That’s the case, even though the Americans with Disabilities Act ostensibly has an exception for situations where employing the disabled person would be a threat to the health or safety of other people.

Haas’s complaint was that since he couldn’t find anybody to supervise him, the hospital’s condition effectively prevented him from acting as a surgeon. (Oddly, once this happened, Haas moved on to a hospital in Minnesota which imposed exactly the same supervisory requirement on him, which he accepted. But neither the judge nor jury found that relevant to the question of whether the requirement was reasonable.)

In short, the hospital had the choice of risking a patient’s life and being sued for malpractice, or restricting the privileges of the surgeon and being sued for discrimination. (And we know that had a patient sued for malpractice, the hospital couldn’t possibly have defended itself by pointing to the requirements of the ADA and saying that it was forced to employ the surgeon.)

Following up on Mar. 15 and before that Dec. 6: “Lawyers and a Muslim group say they will defend at no cost airline passengers caught up in a lawsuit between a group of imams and U.S. Airways if the passengers are named as ‘John Does’ and sued for reporting suspicious behavior that got the Muslim clerics booted from a November flight. … Gerry Nolting, whose Minnesota law firm Faegre & Benson LLP is offering to represent passengers for free, says the judicial system is being ‘used for intimidation purposes’ and that it is ‘just flat wrong and needs to be strongly, strongly discouraged.’” Also offering help is “Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, a Phoenix-area physician and director of American Islamic Forum for Democracy — a group founded in 2003 to promote moderate Muslim ideas through its Web site — [who] told The Washington Times his group will raise money for legal fees for passengers if they are sued by the imams.” (Audrey Hudson, “Muslims offer to help ‘John Does’ sued by imams”, Washington Times, Mar. 21).

The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota, described as the nation’s most heavily visited wilderness area, is a part of the Superior National Forest. These days the forest’s managers

face the financial repercussions of legal decisions they say are stripping scarce resources from their wilderness budget, undermining maintenance work, and leaving many wilderness restoration projects on hold….

While many environmentalists fervently believe that such suits help protect the wilderness, Forest Service officials say many of the agency’s legal expenses come straight from the Superior’s wilderness budget— money that would otherwise pay for the kind of on-the-ground maintenance and restoration work that everyone seems to agree is badly needed in the nation’s most heavily-visited wilderness area.

“When you start figuring out what that means in terms of hiring wilderness rangers or buying fire grates or latrines, it has a huge impact,” said Barb Soderberg, public affairs officer for the Superior National Forest. …

The local forest officials receive a modest $1.5 million a year to manage the 1.1 million-acre wilderness area. According to its supervisor, the forest has been in court continuously since 1949. Under the “one-way” fee structure of federal environmental law, the forest like other defendants can be ordered to pay a plaintiff’s full attorneys’ fees even if the plaintiff wins on only some issues in a case, but cannot collect itself even if it manages to prevail on all issues. Last year a court ordered the forest to fork over $90,000 to prevailing environmentalist lawyers from the elite Twin Cities law firm of Faegre & Benson. Not by coincidence, the forest has found itself obliged to slash its budget for temporary wilderness rangers, from $240,000 to $135,000, “in large part due to ongoing litigation costs”.

The environmental representatives contacted for this story all acknowledged they don’t weigh the costs to the Forest Service when deciding whether or not to file suit against an agency decision….Brad Sagen, the new board chairman of Northeastern Minnesotans for Wilderness, said it isn’t his organization’s job to consider costs of lawsuits— indeed, he called the question “absurd.”

In fact, Sagen and another environmentalist expressed surprise that legal expenses and payouts come out of the agency’s operating budget, apparently unaware that such a practice is widespread in government, commonly defended as a variety of accountability that helps give agency officials proper incentives to bring their activities into full compliance with all applicable laws (if that’s possible).

Meanwhile, environmentalists are piling on with more new lawsuits, over a new forest management plan and a snowmobile trail, while continuing to pursue an old one about motor quotas. Much, much more here for those with an interest in this area. (Marshall Helmberger, “Environmental lawsuits sap U.S.F.S. wilderness maintenance budgets”, Ely, Minn. Timberjay, Jan. 26)(profile of author at Minnesota Public Radio).

Not according to the view of many in Britain:

The London Solicitors Litigation Association has attacked Government proposals to allow some judges to return to private practice, warning that public perception of judicial impartiality could be compromised. The body, which represents around 800 City litigators, called the proposals “a retrograde step”.

(”The Water Cooler”, Times Online, scroll to Dec. 13). For the benefit of international readers, it should be noted that retired judges in the U.S. can and often do return to private practice. Most elect to practice relatively sedate forms of law, but an exception familiar to Minnesotans is former federal judge Miles Lord, whose personal injury practice, established after he departed his controversial tenure on the bench, has taken out full-page Yellow Pages ads touting his background.