The Montana governor now claims he was just making up all those stories about using underhanded tactics to make sure his candidate won the U.S. Senate race, but his audience at the trial lawyers’ convention seemed to lap it up at the time. (Kirk Johnson, “Montana Officials Chastise Governor Over Boasts in Speech to Lawyers’ Group”, New York Times, Sept. 12; Rusty Shackleford, MT Pundit, Sept. 8; Robert Struckman, “Gov. Schweitzer’s Tampering Comments Spark Controversy”, New West Network, Sept. 10; Charles S. Johnson, “Schweitzer catches heat over July speech”, Helena Independent Record, Sept. 11; Jennifer McKee, “Bit of truth found in Gov. Schweitzer’s joke”, Missoulian, Sept. 12; speech).

It started as a joke, but Bozeman, Mont. attorney Christopher Gillette is going through with the ambitious aquarium installation, whose saltwater inhabitants will include venomous fish as well as sharks. [Bozeman Daily Chronicle; AP/El Paso Times] In the 1980s the now well-known law firm of Bickel & Brewer adopted the snake exhibit at the Dallas Zoo. (Mark Donald, “Rambo Justice”, Dallas Observer, Mar. 19, 1998).

Via Childs, PBS will be running a documentary on the vermiculite mine at Libby, Montana. For another perspective on the Libby incident that includes actual data, see the links in the Point of Law posts of May 8 and Jul. 19, 2006.

• RIP, Ladies Nights in Denver [Denver Westword; earlier Feb. 12; earlier i in California: Jun. 7, Aug. 19, Aug. 2003; and New Jersey, Jun. 2004]

• “A cop sues McDonalds because of the slimy stuff a couple of teens put in his sandwich. His biggest problem may be that he didn’t even take a bite” [Turkewitz]
• Montana Supreme Court: hunter can’t blame state for being attacked by bear [On Point]
• Don’t: provide your criminal client with means to escape [Fulton County Daily Report]; alter documents responsive to discovery requests [The Recorder]; hide evidence in multi-billion dollar insurance litigation [NY Sun via Lattman]; or videotape your fellow lawyers changing clothes [ATL].

• Reason #473 why I live in Virginia instead of DC: DC police catch two in middle of attempted burglary, just after being released from prison, decide to let them go because they can’t figure out what to charge them with. Good thing residents aren’t allowed to own guns to defend themselves, right? [PTN]

Something you’d think he’d want to address/get out of the way/rethink/apologize for sooner rather than later, since it calls into question his judgment in a whole range of different ways (Jacob Sullum, Reason “Hit and Run”, Apr. 12; “The Right to Hunt in Montana”, Reason/syndicated, Apr. 11). Earlier: Jun. 21 and Jun. 28, 2000, etc.

Via the WSJ Law Blog, the Montana Supreme Court has upheld a verdict against the law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher for pursuing a meritless lawsuit; we covered the trial Feb. 9, 2005. The Wall Street Journal weighed in Mar. 16, 2006. Punitive damages were reduced from $20 million to $9.9 million. Gibson Dunn has indicated it will appeal.

• Divorcing Brooklyn couple has put up sheetrock wall dividing house into his and hers [L.A. Times, AP/Newsday]


• Boston Herald appeals $2 million libel award to Judge Ernest Murphy, whom the paper had portrayed as soft on criminals (earlier: Dec. 8 and Dec. 23, 2005) [Globe via Romenesko]


• Updating Jul. 8 story: Georgia man admits he put poison in his kids’ soup in hopes of getting money from Campbell Soup Co. [AP/AccessNorthGeorgia]


• Witness talks back to lawyer at deposition [YouTube via Bainbridge, %&*#)!* language]


• Prominent UK business figure says overprotective schools producing generation of “cotton wool kids” [Telegraph]


• State agents swoop down on Montana antique store and seize roulette wheel from 1880s among other “unlicensed gambling equipment” [AP/The Missoulian]


• “You, gentlemen, are no barristers. You are just two litigators. On Long Island.” [Lat and commenter]


• Some Dutch municipalities exclude dads from town-sponsored kids’ playgroups, so as not to offend devout Muslim moms [Crooked Timber]


• As mayor, Rudy Giuliani didn’t hesitate to stand up to the greens when he thought they were wrong [Berlau @ CEI]


• Australia: funeral homes, fearing back injury claims, now discouraging the tradition of family members and friends being pallbearers [Sydney Morning Herald]


• Asserting 200-year-old defect in title, Philly’s Cozen & O’Connor represents Indian tribe in failed lawsuit laying claim to land under Binney & Smith Crayola factory [three years ago on Overlawyered]

Regarding our recent post, David Giacalone takes issue with our “recycling of stale pro se cases.” If I may defend our site:

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The Surgeon General of the United States last week claimed that “breathing secondhand smoke for even a short time” can “potentially increas[e] the risk of heart attack”. How much evidence is there for that proposition? Michael Siegel inquires (Jun. 28; Jacob Sullum, Reason “Hit and Run”, Jun. 28 and Jun. 29). According to Brooke Oberwetter of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the same new report from the Surgeon General uncritically passes along the much-ballyhooed “miracle of Helena” study purporting to find a correlation between a ban on smoking in bars and an immediate 40 percent drop in heart attacks in that Montana community — really more like a miracle of small sample sizes (Jun. 27; see Oct. 6, 2003). Finally, a spokeswoman for the bossyboots American Heart Association is quoted praising a new Colorado law that forbids smoking in most restaurants and bars statewide no matter what the owners and patrons happen to prefer:

“We know from research that we’ve done that over 80 percent of Colorado residents don’t smoke,” said Erin Bertoli with the American Heart Association.

“The majority of them really look forward to going out to new restaurants and new bars and taking their families and experiencing new venues that have technically been closed to 80 percent of Colorado residents up until this point.”

thus demonstrating a Pickwickian understanding of such words as “technically” and “closed”. (Jeffrey Wolf, “Effort to stop statewide smoking ban underway “, KUSA-TV, Jun. 15). Plus: Radley Balko weighs in.

Animal rights activists on the march against owners and breeders of dogs and other animals in Bozeman, Montana, and Albuquerque, New Mexico (Stephen Bodio’s Querencia, May 24).

My company is in the business of managing recreation sites, many of which are located in the National Forest. I deal with local Forest Service rangers all the time, and I’ll tell you they have an almost impossible job. They all joined the Forest Service because they wanted to be close to trees, but many of them find that the closest they get to trees every day is via the reams of paper they must generate in environmental impact studies and motions in lawsuits. Everything they try to do in the forest tends to be blocked legally by somebody, the most common opposition coming from environmental groups.

One federal judge may be raising the costs of filing such suits against everything.

In November, U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy ordered a halt to logging on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest, outside of Butte, after three environmental groups appealed the judge’s earlier decision to allow the 2,600-acre timber harvest. Then, on Dec. 20, Molloy ordered the groups to post a $100,000 bond. Should the groups lose their appeal before the 9th Circuit Court, the money would help compensate the Forest Service and a private contractor for losses due to the delay, such as decaying timber. The agency had requested a $400,000 bond.

“We have asked for this kind of accountability for years,” says Ellen Engstedt, executive vice president of the Montana Wood Products Association. “Ninety-eight percent of these cases are not legitimate. These groups have nothing to lose.”

While this is not really a true loser-pay system, and appeal bonds are fairly normal, they seldom cover the true costs of the delay and extra litigation. Apparently this bond is getting attention for being 10x larger than is typical. (Brett Wilkison, “Judge orders litigating enviros to pony up”, High Country News, Feb 6).

On Thursday the Baltimore Sun quoted me saying unflattering things about Stephen L. Snyder, the successful local attorney who’s taken out very costly ads ostensibly aimed at attracting a $1 billion case (see Feb. 16). I said Snyder has probably has made it onto the Top Ten list of tasteless lawyer-advertisers, having particularly in mind the cheesy way his website flips off would-be clients whose cases, however meritorious, lack a big enough payoff (Jennifer McMenamin, “In search of a $1 billion case, fielding 100 calls”, Baltimore Sun, Feb. 16)(reg). A week earlier the same paper quoted me commenting on the likely impact on civil litigation of a federal grand jury’s indictment of the W.R. Grace Co. and seven of its current or former executives; the charges arise from the widely publicized exposure of townspeople and others to asbestos hazards from the company’s vermiculite mine at Libby, Montana. (William Patalon III, “Grace’s plight made worse”, Feb. 9).

And: Rob Asghar of the Ashland (Ore.) Daily Tidings devoted two recent columns to the problem of overlawyering and was kind enough to quote my opinions (”Law and disorder”, part 1 (Feb. 7) and part 2 (Feb. 14)). NYC councilman David Yassky, sponsor of the let’s-sue-over-guns ordinance that I criticized in the New York Times two weeks ago (see Feb. 6), responds today with a letter to the editor defending the legislation (Feb. 20). My Manhattan Institute colleague Jim Copland, writing in the Washington Times on the passage of the Class Action Fairness Act, quotes my Feb. 11 post on the subject (”Tort tax cut”, Feb. 15). Finally, the New York Sun covers a recent Institute luncheon at which I introduced ABC’s John Stossel (Robert E. Sullivan, “John Stossel Chides the ‘Liberal’ Press for Spinelessness”, Feb. 9)(sub-$).

Steve Morton, heir to the salt fortune, asked Steve Seltzer to evaluate the early 20th-century painting “Lassoing a Longhorn”, thought to be a C.M. Russell; Seltzer instead identified it as the work of a less famous artist, his own grandfather, the Russell contemporary O.C. Seltzer. This meant the painting’s value was not about $650-800 thousand, but perhaps a tenth of that. So Morton hired the big law firm Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, and sued Seltzer in federal court for the difference plus punitive damages. Unfortunately, though Morton did have evidence the Russell signature wasn’t altered, he couldn’t find any experts who backed his theory of the painting’s provenance, while Seltzer lined up nine affidavits that supported his conclusion. Morton dropped the lawsuit, and Seltzer then sued Morton, the law firm, and the apparently-now-retired lawyer, Dennis Gladwell. A Montana state court jury found malicious prosecution, and awarded $21 million in damages, based in part on Gibson Dunn’s earnings. The damages award seems improper (it’s punishing the law firm for being large, rather than for wrongdoing); one hopes it is reduced to something in line with the actual damages to Seltzer–legal fees, any economic damages from the brief loss in reputation (though Seltzer doesn’t charge for his authentications), plus perhaps some reasonable non-economic damages for the stress of litigation.

But one would have more sympathy for the defendants if they hadn’t been the first to be using litigation to make unreasonable demands; if all Morton and his attorneys wanted, as they claimed, was to clear the painting’s title, he didn’t need to seek punitive damages against Seltzer. The defendants will appeal. (Kathleen Schultz, “Jury awards artist $21 million”, Great Falls Tribune, Feb. 8; Kathleen A. Schultz, “Seltzer jury may receive case today”, Great Falls Tribune, Feb. 4; Kathleen A. Schultz, “Art collector defends position in malicious prosecution trial”, Great Falls Tribune, Feb. 3; Kathleen A. Schultz, “Seltzer outlines personal suffering in civil suit”, Great Falls Tribune, Feb. 2; David Hewett, “Owners Sue Art Expert, Art Expert Sues Owners”, Maine Antique Digest, Oct. 2003).

Montana:

The parents of two 11-year-old boys who died of exposure and alcohol poisoning last winter after cutting class to go drink have sued Ronan Public Schools for $4 million.

They allege the school district failed in its duty “to follow its policy and protect and safeguard children that were entrusted to their care.”

The lawsuit also alleges that [the school district] has discriminated against American Indians by “failing to properly select, train and implement Native American staff who are sensitive to the disability of alcoholism,” thus making Pablo School District partially responsible “for the actions of children who were allowed to leave school and die of alcohol and hypothermia.”

(John Stromnes, “Parents sue Ronan school over deaths of their sons”, The Missoulian, Nov. 6). Update Mar. 2, 2006: jury renders defense verdict.

In 1955, there was a gasoline pipeline leak at the Sunburst Works Refinery that caused minor contamination of a 19-acre underground site. Texaco cleaned the spill at the time, and did further millions of dollars of cleanup starting in 1993. State regulators determined that there was no health effects, and that benzene levels in Sunburst, Montana were no different than in areas unaffected by the spill. The state Department of Environmental Quality ruled that nothing more needed to be done beyond additional monitoring, not least because the groundwater at issue isn’t used for anything–even livestock find it “naturally too briny” to drink.

Not good enough, say some residents and their lawyers, who blame the half-century-old spill for a variety of illnesses from arthritis to mononucleosis. They sued to require additional multi-million dollar cleanup. The plaintiffs originally sought damages for decreased property values, though townpeople who refused to join the lawsuit say that the main cause of the decreased property values is bad publicity from the 2001 lawsuit. (There are only 82 plaintiffs in a town of about 400.) Texaco acknowledges responsibility for the spill, but disputed the need to spend millions more on a clean-up methodology of little efficacy. The judge refused to allow Texaco to introduce evidence that they did exactly what the Montana regulators asked them to do, and a jury awarded a $41 million verdict, including $25 million in punitive damages. Texaco will appeal. The case is important because the verdict could encourage other “double-whammy” lawsuits on companies who have already been spending millions to comply with the extensive state and federal environmental regulations. (Kathleen A. Schultz, “Texaco to appeal Sunburst ruling”, Great Falls Tribune, Aug. 20; “Jury Rules Against ChevronTexaco In Cleanup Suit”, Wall Street Journal, Aug. 20 (sub - $); Reuters, Aug. 20; Kathleen A. Schultz, “Texaco must pay Sunburst $41M”, Aug. 19; Kathleen A. Schultz, “Texaco-Sunburst trial gets under way”, Jul. 26).

Jacob Sullum eviscerates an embarrassingly bad op-ed that the New York Times chose to run yesterday (Rosemary Ellis, “The Secondhand Smoking Gun”, Oct. 15) on the issue of smoking in public places, based on the supposed “Helena miracle” — heart attacks in the Montana capital (population 26,000) are said to have dropped suddenly by 58 percent when smoking in public buildings was banned. The claim, he says, is based on a single unpublished study “involving tiny, highly volatile numbers”. Had the Times been interested in whether the asserted result would hold up as a matter of epidemiology, it could easily have checked out the experience of other jurisdictions which could offer much, much larger sample sizes than wee Helena: “why have we not heard about a dramatic drop in heart attacks [in New York City itself] since the city’s smoking ban took effect in April”? A few phone calls to Columbia-Presbyterian, St. Lukes-Roosevelt and the city’s other big hospitals should suffice to establish whether there had been any massive effect of this sort on New Yorkers’ proneness to cardiac arrest. (Reason Hit & Run, Oct. 16; Jacob Sullum, “Heartstopping Discovery”, Reason, Apr. 4). More: Cato’s Steven Milloy weighs in (”Secondhand smoke scam”, FoxNews.com, Oct. 17).

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“Theodore J. Kaczynski, the onetime UC Berkeley math professor better known as the Unabomber, wants the federal government to return all his stuff — including one of his bombs — that the FBI confiscated when he was arrested in his tiny Montana cabin seven years ago.” (Michael Taylor, San Francisco Chronicle, Aug. 11).

January 10-12 – Tobacco fees, cont’d: “Not a pretty picture”. What with our hiatus, we’ve been remiss in updating readers about it, but the neglected story of how lawyers carted off billions from the 1998 tobacco heist has been breaking into the news in increasingly noisy fashion. In November, former Texas Attorney General Dan Morales, who’d previously stonewalled efforts to investigate the private lawyers who worked under contract with his office, surprised observers by approaching his successor’s office with word that he has information about how at least one of those lawyers (unnamed thus far) may have breached his fiduciary duty to the state and may be subject to a potential forfeiture of fees. (Brenda Sapino Jeffreys, “Former Texas AG Offers Info on Tobacco Lawyers’ Conduct”, Texas Lawyer, Nov. 18). The Dallas Morning News calls for the private lawyers to stop dodging the state’s efforts to put them under oath about the fee affair, as they have been doing for years now (”Clearing the air: Abbott should examine new tobacco claims” (editorial), Dallas Morning News, Nov. 15)(reg).

Last month, American Lawyer published what seems to be the first major journalistic account of one of the most secretive aspects of the whole scandal: the unaccountable arbitration panel that has repeatedly awarded unheard-of sums to the trial lawyers. We’ve covered the doings of this panel many times on this site, and our editor discusses its rulings at some length in his new book The Rule of Lawyers, but we’re delighted to see a professional news organization finally devote its resources to scrutinizing the arbitration panel’s role in the fee scandal. Reporter Susan Beck digs up a large trove of material previously unknown to us in what the magazine terms “a behind-the-scenes account of the controversial awards. Warning: It’s not a pretty picture.”

“The proceedings were private, and only the awards were made public. According to transcripts and interviews with more than 20 participants, the hearings were loosely run events. A labor mediator, Wells had never conducted an arbitration. Testimony was not taken under oath. Celebrity witnesses — some paid, others with personal ties to the parties — offered testimonials in person and on professionally produced videotapes. The hearings were punctuated with folksy aphorisms and down-home appeals to [arbitrator John Calhoun] Wells, whose swing vote determined the outcome every time.” The whole article (and its sidebars) deserve close study. (Susan Beck, “Trophy Fees”, The American Lawyer, Dec. 2; “As Murky as a Clay Hole”, Dec. 2; “And the Winners Are…”, Dec. 2). And this month, the same reporter details the internecine strife that has gone far to tear apart the firm that made off with the greatest share of the ill-gotten gains from tobacco, Charleston, S.C.’s Ness Motley Loadholt Richardson & Poole, as the formerly cordial partners spar about … well, it basically seems to come down to money. “So maybe a couple billion dollars can’t buy happiness after all.” (Susan Beck, “Jet Blues”, The American Lawyer, Jan. 9). (DURABLE LINK)

January 10-12 – China: lawyer sues over 4-minute cinema delay. Emulating the American way of doing things, with a vengeance? “A disgruntled cinema-goer who went to watch the hit Chinese film Hero is suing the picture house and a movie production company because the movie started four minutes late. Zhang Yang, a lawyer, took action after being forced to watch four minutes of advertisements, which delayed the start of the film until 9.34pm when his ticket said it was due to commence at 9.30pm, according to the weekly Beijing Today.” However, Zhang does not appear to have adopted American lawyers’ ideas of suitable compensation: he appears to be asking for a mere $17, “a refund of his 40 yuan ($8.50) ticket and 40 yuan ($8.50) in compensation.” (”Chinese man sues after adverts delay movie by four minutes”, Sydney Morning Herald, Jan. 6)(& see Feb. 20). (DURABLE LINK)

January 9 – “Drunk Driving Victim Sues Designated Driver”. New frontiers of liability dept.: in Boulder, Colo., a lawyer for car-crash victim Doris Gray is suing not just the drunken driver whose vehicle hit her car but also “the driver’s friend, who reportedly failed to keep her promise to be a designated driver”. Although none of the participants could think of any earlier cases in which persons have been held liable for shirking a designated-driver role, a former head of the Colorado Trial Lawyers Association claims the new theory is “pretty solid”. (TheDenverChannel.com, Jan. 7). (DURABLE LINK)

January 9 – Playing chicken on malpractice reform. New Jersey’s Democratic pols propose dealing with their state’s medical liability crisis by enacting a cap on insurance rates while doing nothing to reduce the spiraling cost of judgments, settlements and defense costs. Columnist Paul Mulshine of the Newark Star-Ledger isn’t impressed. (”MDs will fly the coop rather than play chicken”, Jan. 7). (DURABLE LINK)

January 9 – “The Lawyers Are Lurking Over S.U.V.’s”. “The beginning of a new year is a good time for predictions, so here’s mine: S.U.V.’s are next on the agenda for the plaintiff’s bar. … [Suits of this kind] have less to do with the law or the facts than with the social climate… Don’t be surprised if some ambitious state attorneys general get into the act, too.” (Daniel Akst, New York Times, Jan. 5)(reg). (DURABLE LINK)

January 7-8 – Disabled-access suit could stop Super Bowl. “Super Bowl XXXVII may have to move from Qualcomm Stadium unless the city expands access for the disabled at the stadium. Attorney Amy Vandeveld filed an application for an injunction Friday in U.S. District Court in an attempt to get the city to comply with the terms of a 2001 a settlement aimed at expanding access for disabled people at the stadium.” (”Super Bowl XXXVII may be blocked in San Diego”, The Sports Network, Jan. 3). In the March 2001 settlement, San Diego officials agreed to spend more than $6.5 million in taxpayer funds to improve access to the stadium; attorney Vandeveld “received $1.3 million in attorney fees and other payments”. Linda Woodbury, the city’s disability services coordinator, estimated that the city’s overall “to-do” list of accessibility projects would cost at least $175 million. (Caitlin Rother, “Disabled activists threaten suit on Padres’ new ballpark”, SignOnSanDiego, Feb. 11, 2002). And ABC correspondent John Stossel recently devoted a segment to lawyers’ use of the ADA to extract settlements from retailers and other defendants (”Equal Access to the ‘Wild Side’”, 20/20, Nov. 9). (DURABLE LINK)

January 7-8 – Trial lawyer’s purchase of Alabama governor’s house said to be “arm’s-length”. “Wray Pearce, the Birmingham accountant who bought Gov. Don Siegelman’s Montgomery home for twice its appraised value, was acting as an intermediary for trial lawyer Lanny Vines, who subsequently bought the house from Pearce, according to court records filed last month in a lawsuit involving the two men. … The governor and his representatives have described the house sale as an arm’s-length transaction, with the governor and his wife placing the property on the market, and a buyer coming along and paying the asking price. … None of the records in the court file specifically state why Vines used his longtime accountant as an apparent straw buyer for the home. Nor do they explain why Vines was willing to pay a sum that a county appraisal and a Register review showed was about twice the home’s value.” Vines is considered one of the most politically influential plaintiff’s lawyers in Alabama. (Eddie Curran, “Papers show trial lawyer paid accountant for Siegelman house”, Mobile Register, Nov. 11). Also catch the editor’s note at the end of the article: “The governor’s office has a stated policy of refusing to comment to Register Reporter Eddie Curran.” (DURABLE LINK)

January 7-8 – “The Politics of Family Destruction”. Scorching indictment of the divorce industry by Howard University professor and fathers’ rights advocate Stephen Baskerville (Crisis, Nov.). And civil liberties advocates are uneasy about a developing trend in which courts in Ohio and Wisconsin have ordered men behind in their child support payments not to father any more children. (Dee McAree, “Deadbeat Dads Told to Stop Having Kids”, National Law Journal, Sept. 26; see Nov. 28, 2001). (DURABLE LINK)

January 3-6 – “Courting stupidity: why smart lawyers pick dumb jurors”. If you’d like an advance peek at our editor’s forthcoming bookThe Rule of Lawyers, this is your chance: the chapter on jury excesses is excerpted in January’s Reason. (DURABLE LINK)

January 3-6 – “Doctors strike over malpractice costs”. “More than two dozen orthopedic, general and heart surgeons in West Virginia’s Northern Panhandle began 30-day leaves of absence Wednesday or planned to begin leaves in the next few days.” Doctors in Pennsylvania are also on the brink of a job action to protest the legal system, despite a letter from a state official menacing them with having their licenses revoked for patient “abandonment”. (MSNBC, Jan. 2; Josh Goldstein, “Pa. warns doctors not to quit”, Philadelphia Inquirer, Dec. 28; Google news; see Jan. 21, 2002) (DURABLE LINK)

January 3-6 – U.K.: “Killer claims over loss of interest”. “A murderer is demanding thousands of dollars in lost interest because his prison savings were not invested wisely.” John Duggan, 53, jailed for life in 1984 after he admitted battering his girlfriend to death, says officials of the British Prison Service wrongfully left his money “in a zero-interest prison account designed for spending in jail on phonecards and toiletries” and says they had a duty to invest his earnings in an interest-bearing account. (Melbourne Herald Sun, Dec. 29). (DURABLE LINK)

January 3-6 – “Jack Ass blasts ‘Jackass’”. “A Montana man who legally changed his name to Jack Ass in 1997 (to raise awareness of the perils of drunk driving) says Jackass, the controversial MTV stunt-fest and subsequent film, has besmirched his sterling reputation, and … has filed a $10 million lawsuit against Viacom.” (Julie Keller, E! Online, Jan. 2; Michael Rosenwald, “The Appellative Court: The Real Jack Ass”, The New Yorker, Jan. 6). (& letter to the editor). (DURABLE LINK)

January 3-6 – Milberg copyrights its complaints. The leading class-action law firm has sent cease-and-desist letters to about ten other law firms, informing them that they are in violation of its rights when they swipe large amounts of language from Milberg Weiss suits — sometimes pretty much the entire complaint — for purposes of filing their own copycat lawsuits against the same defendants. Annoyed by the free riders, star litigator Bill Lerach “started putting copyright notices on some of his complaints, and registering those notices with the U.S. Copyright Office last September.” (Janet L. Conley, “Milberg Weiss Tries to Nail Class Action Imitators”, Fulton County Daily Report, Nov. 20). (DURABLE LINK)