Chronicling the high cost of our legal system
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Steve Malanga on New Jersey’s perennially activist Supreme Court [City Journal]. We’ve periodically discussed the court’s lamentable jurisprudence in its Abbott (school finance redistribution) and Mount Laurel (towns given quotas to build low-income housing) decisions. The court has also nullified constitutional limitations on borrowing by the state.
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Ocean City, N.J., a municipality of 12,000 residents, has recently been coping with nine lawsuits filed by municipal workers. Among them: lifeguards aged 66 and 68 who alleged employment discrimination against them based on their age. [Douglas Bergen, Ocean City Patch via AnnMarie McDonald, New Jersey Lawsuit Abuse Watch; Press of Atlantic City].
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According to attorney Jeffrey Newman in the Times of Trenton, New Jersey law allows class actions and consumer fraud suits to be based on paperwork infractions with no showing of actual harm, creating openings for opportunistic litigation:
As an attorney, I have defended numerous business owners against frivolous claims in which the plaintiff could prove absolutely no injury and he or she had received whatever service or product that was promised. Yet there was language in the purchase agreement that was found to be considered “non-compliant” with the Contractors Registration Act and the Consumer Fraud Act’s Home Improvement Contract regulations.
…Contractors who choose to use boilerplate contracts often sold in office supply stores are playing with fire, as such agreements would never withstand the scrutiny of the state’s consumer protection laws. When contractors use these forms and are sued, the courts can rule that they have to hand back to the consumer every penny — even the money they laid out for materials to do the job. … In another case, we represented a contractor whose advertisements were not in compliance. Even though the plaintiff never bought anything, our client was still sued!
The New Jersey Supreme Court is being asked to review a case against a car dealer in which the plaintiff’s lawyer obtained a $99,000 fee award; the client’s actual recovery was $650, and the underlying disputed charge was $51.50. In a companion case, a complaint over inadequate handicapped parking won a $2,500 payout for the complainant and $74,000 for her lawyer. The cases could determine whether New Jersey retreats from a relatively liberal formula in which courts enhance many fee awards to prevailing plaintiffs above market rates. [New Jersey Law Journal]
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“Kyleigh’s Law,” which imposed an 11 p.m. curfew on younger drivers and required them to affix red reflective decals on their vehicles, was really not a very good idea, but New Jersey lawmakers figured that not voting for it might seem to insult Kyleigh’s memory. Much could be said as well against Megan’s Law, Hannah’s Law, Jessica’s Law, Chelsea’s Law … might one discern a pattern here? [Michael Tracey, Reason]
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If prosecutors are to be believed, Paul Bergrin not only defrauded lenders on a grand scale but “set up witnesses to be murdered before they could testify against his clients”. “I can’t have some [expletive] lawyer in suspenders and I’m supposed say thanks because he got my sentence down to twenty years,” said one murder-rap defendant client. “I’m paying top dollar, and I demand legal brilliance. Someone who will consider all the options.” [New York magazine]
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Although the New Jersey legislature enacted a law in 1997 flatly barring drunk drivers from recovering damages over their own car crashes, the state’s supreme court ruled that because the law did not explicitly override the state’s dramshop (liquor-server liability) law, it would be read as having left it intact. [NJLJ, NJLRA, more]
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New at Cato: I blast a weak NYT editorial, and explain how school finance litigation exemplifies the phenomenon some have nicknamed The Permanent Government. More on Abbott v. Burke here.
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Well-written article about the lengthy career of one pro se litigant in Newark who has been tying up landlords and others in court for years; it took a fair bit of gumption to publish, given the tendency of many litigious persons to sue those who would expose their litigiousness to public notice. Worth careful study for the light it sheds on the difficulty our legal system so often has in bringing down the curtain on determined perennial litigants [Barry Carter, Newark Star-Ledger]
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Writing on the latest usurpation of budgetary authority by a state judiciary, Hans Bader is kind enough to cite some of the related analysis in Schools for Misrule. [Examiner; Amanda Carey, Daily Caller; more on Abbott and on school finance litigation]
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