Chronicling the high cost of our legal system
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A breastfeeding activist promotes, inter alia, t-shirts with the slogan “The other white milk.” This has the National Pork Board, with its slogan “The other white meat,” up in arms, and a Faegre & Benson attorney issued a ceast-and-desist letter. The shirt wasn’t a big seller (and CafePress quickly acceded to the threat), so it’s really not about the money, but Jennifer Laycock isn’t happy about the bullying (h/t W.C.).
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If you ever want to see a trial lawyer manipulate the press, and the press unskeptically eat it up, you could do worse than to watch the recent performance of Steve Yerrid (Oct. 5-6) in a recent Tampa trial.
The facts convey an undeniably terrible accident. Fifty-year-old high-school-dropout Denzil Blake was cleaning an Isuzu Rodeo at Town ‘N Country Car Wash when he accidentally hit the gearshift, sending the car (which should not have been running) out of neutral. Blake didn’t know how to drive (Florida law allows a person without a driver’s license to operate a vehicle on private property, so there was nothing illegal about allowing unlicensed drivers to move cars in a carwash), panicked, and accidentally hit the accelerator instead of the brake, sending the car speeding into 43-year-old Brenda Lee Brown, striking her just after she pushed her young son’s stroller to safety; she died of her injuries two days later. Blake was not criminally charged.
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“It was never about the money for me, this litigation,” said Dickie Scruggs, who stands to collect between $26 million and $46 million from a settlement accomplished by the use of the state attorney general, Jim Hood, to extort State Farm with the threat of criminal proceedings for daring to enforce their flood exclusion clauses in their contracts. [Lattman] Many many posts on the subject at Point of Law.
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Some quick links:
“Of course, all of this gets pretty far afield from what I originally wrote and that you’ve conceded, which is that you (unintentionally but sloppily) misrepresented the facts of the Pinto memo, failed to research its background beyond what was apparently represented to you, and still haven’t (last time I checked, at 9:10 p.m.) updated your site to reflect your error. Nor have you approved the trackback I sent to the site. You’ve posted comments to that very entry and another entry has gone up on the site, but readers still see the plainly inaccurate statement that the memo excerpt you show was Ford evaluating tort liability for rearendings, when in fact it was Ford evaluating a regulatory proposal for rollovers using numbers from NHTSA.
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Reader D.B. of Cincinnati writes, regarding “not about the money” lawsuits (Sept. 1, Sept. 7, etc.):
You may be interested in the tragic story from Cincinnati. Three year old Marcus Fiesel was taken from his mother. She had three children by three fathers and they lived in a flea infested place which was smeared with feces and lacked food. She told police that the children were “their problem” now. The children were put into foster care. Marcus was placed in a home where he should not have been, as the foster father had a police record that was not discovered. His foster mother pretended to faint at a local park, and when she awoke she said Marcus was missing. There was a huge community search, but Marcus was never found. Later police discovered that the foster parents had wrapped him in a blanket and left him in a hot closet for 2 days while they attended a family reunipn.Then the foster father burned his body. The birth mother is suing everyone she can for $5 million and saying it is “not about the money.” There is outrage in Cincinnati first over the circumstances of his death and now over this outrageous lawsuit. The Cincinnati press has covered the story for the last 2 weeks with almost daily updates. Here is a report on the lawsuit and a Cincinnati Enquirer editorial.
Update: Sept. 26.
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Myrtle Beach, South Carolina: “Police said Jeffrey Rothman died in March 2001 at age 20 after jumping off Second Avenue Pier, and an autopsy determined that he had taken the drug Ecstasy and died accidentally. His father, David Rothman, charges that the police department did not follow proper procedures, did not treat the case as a possible homicide and showed a general lack of professionalism.” The senior Rothman, who is filing his suit without a lawyer, says it’s not about the money and talks of using the $10 million for charity. (Lisa Fleisher, “Trial date set in lawsuit against MB, police”, Myrtle Beach (S.C.) Sun-News, Aug. 24; comments at Fark).
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September 11 litigation as an industry, courtesy of the asbestos/tobacco zillionaires from South Carolina:
While other lawyers have resolved most or all of their cases — at least 32 of the roughly 90 total lawsuits have settled — Motley Rice has settled only three. …According to several lawyers and plaintiffs in the case, Motley Rice has made unusually high settlement demands, often 5 to 10 times higher than similar plane crash cases. The higher demands stem from Motley’s calculations for what it calls “terror damages” — compensation for the amount of time frightened victims knew they were fated to die — of between $750,000 and $1 million a minute, according to those lawyers and clients, who requested that their names not be used because the settlement process is confidential.
The story deserves a place in the “Not About The Money” files because client after client informs the Boston Globe that their litigation stance is entirely unrelated to that disdained cash nexus; presumably it’s just happenstance that they have wound up represented by lawyers who are making monetary recovery a very high priority indeed. Somehow one is reminded of the character in Flannery O’Connor: “Mrs. Hopewell had no bad qualities of her own but she was able to use other people’s in such a constructive way that she never felt the lack.” (via Lattman)(cross-posted from Point of Law).
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One of our favorite clichés is repeated in a tale of a lawsuit over a tragic electrocution. Because it’s BGE’s fault Gary Dart’s trailer caught on fire, because, after all, powerlines never go down during a snowstorm without negligence. Good thing it’s not about the money, or they might have asked for a lot more than $175 million. The attorney is Dave Ellin. (Joseph M. Giordano, “BGE Is Sued Over Electrocution”, Dundalk Eagle, Mar. 27). Because BGE is a regulated utility (whose maintenance budget is set in negotiations with the governmental public utility commission), the expenses of the lawsuit, including any damages, will eventually be passed on to local ratepayers. (Update: or not. See comments.)
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Updating our Nov. 8, 2004 entry, plaintiffs’ attorney Gary Zadik made our favorite argument when asking a jury to award $1.7 million of damages against the school district for the parents of schoolchildren who cut class and died after imbibing a half-gallon of vodka.
“This case is not about money,” plaintiffs lawyer Gary Zadik of Great Falls told the jury in his closing statements Wednesday morning.
Members of the jury apparently took him at his word, because they awarded none.
The parents argued that if the school had called them earlier, they would’ve been able to find the boys, a claim that is somewhat weakened by the fact that their bodies weren’t found until three days after they died, as well as the fact that one of the parents was called. Justin Benoist’s mother testified that “she was an alcoholic, that one of her sons had recently died in a fire because he had passed out drunk at a party and failed to smell the smoke, that none of her surviving children remained in her legal custody, and that Justin at age 11 already had a probation officer supervising him because of behavioral problems.” (John Stromnes, “Jury finds Ronan School District not liable for drinking deaths of two boys”, The Missoulian, Mar. 2; John Stromnes, “Trial over boys’ drinking deaths opens”, The Missoulian, Feb. 28).
My op-ed on the litigation against Big Cola (see Feb. 2) draws an L.A. Times reader letter (Feb. 7). Also welcome Andrew Sullivan readers (Jan. 27). More by Sullivan: “Hey, these adverts are making me fat”, The Times (U.K.), Jan. 29; blog posts including Jan. 25 and Jan. 26. And see Philip Wallach, “There Are Deeper Pockets than ‘Big Soda’”, The American Enterprise, Dec. 15; John Luik, “Sponge Bob, Wide Pants?”, TCS Daily, Jan. 25; and Rogier van Bakel, Jan. 23.
On allegations of a link between food advertising and childhood obesity, see Todd Zywicki, Dec. 21 and links. According to John Hood (“Bill Won’t Stop War on Ads”, Carolina Journal, Nov. 11):
American children are now gaining weight even as they watch somewhat less commercial television than previous generations did. One study estimated that children saw about 15 percent fewer TV ads in 2003 than their counterparts did in 1994. Alas, that does not mean today’s kids are playing outside more. They simply have many more commercial-free alternatives such as premium cable, tapes and DVDs, and video and computer games.Another unfortunate fact for advocates of regulating food advertising is that their pet idea has already been done to the max – that is, in the form of outright bans of ads targeting children – in places such as Sweden and Quebec. The obesity rate of Swedish children differs little from that of British children, however. The same is true in Quebec vs. other Canadian provinces.
Meanwhile, Jacob Sullum (“Dora the Exploiter”, syndicated/Reason, Jan. 25) comments on the Center for Science in the Public Interest’s suit against Viacom/Nickolodeon and Kellogg (see Jan. 20):
The plaintiffs say it’s not about the money. I believe them. This lawsuit, which CSPI and its allies plan to file under a Massachusetts consumer protection statute prohibiting “unfair or deceptive acts or practices,” is really about censorship. By threatening onerous damages, CSPI aims to achieve through the courts what it has unsuccessfully demanded from legislators and regulators for decades: a ban on food advertising aimed at children.
Earlier, Sullum reported on the CDC venturing into West Virginia to stalk obesity “vectors” (“Watching the Detectives”, syndicated/Reason, Aug. 26).
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Amazingly, our Nov. 17 report wasn’t even the first time this year a Florida jury held Ford liable for millions because a driver fell asleep.
28-year-old Tami Martin was a passenger in her mother’s Ford Aerostar, but her mother fell asleep at the wheel and plowed into the back of an ambulance. The mother walked away from the accident, but Martin was reclining in her seat with her feet against the dashboard. So, though the airbag deployed, it did not provide protection. Martin jackknifed over the seatbelt, damaging her vertebrae and spinal cord, leaving her a paraplegic. Martin sued Ford for not putting the “Do not recline your seat in a moving vehicle” warning more prominently on the windshield visor next to the airbag warnings; Ford had made the warning in the owner’s manual, but Martin felt that insufficient because she didn’t read the manual. (Of course, if every potentially fatal injury in the owner’s manual is placed on the windshield visor, then the visor looks like the owner’s manual and doesn’t provide any warning at all.)
A Jacksonville jury has held Ford liable for $16.95 million. You’ll be pleased to know it’s “not about the money,” as supposedly demonstrated by Martin’s willingness to surrender half her award if Ford follows Martin’s preferences about warnings (which, of course, will lead to other lawsuits). The offer is considerably less generous than it sounds if Martin’s attorney, Robert Langdon, thinks she has a substantial chance of losing on the appeal Ford plans to take (plaintiffs frequently settle for a fraction of a verdict for precisely this reason), but at least one press account breathlessly and gullibly reports it as generous. (News4Jax, “Jacksonville Jury Awards $17 Million in Reclining Seat Case”, Nov. 18; Kyle Meenan, “Lawsuit Winner May Reject Millions”, First Coast News, Oct. 24; Pittsburgh Tribune-Review editorial, “Driving & sleeping”, Oct. 29). Special quote for H.M.D.: “‘I knew God would use me to reach other people,’ Martin said.” Overlawyered is proud to assist in God’s mission: read your owner’s manual, don’t recline your seat while in a moving vehicle, and don’t fall asleep while driving.
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“A man who sued Home Depot claiming that a prank left him glued to a restroom toilet seat has passed a lie detector test, a newspaper reported.” After Bob Dougherty made headlines with his allegations that employees of the home improvement chain failed to respond to his calls for help, “Ron Trzepacz, former director of operations in Nederland, where Dougherty lives, said that Dougherty claimed in 2004 that he was glued to a toilet seat in the town’s visitor center but pulled himself free.” However, Dougherty said he knew nothing of Trzepacz or of such an incident and offered to take the polygraph test, which was arranged by a local television station. (AP/CNN, Nov. 11). Amid the numerous puzzling aspects of the case, one aspect is reassuringly familiar, namely that it’s Not About the Money (see Nov. 7, etc.) “It’s not about the money. I want my health back. I want to be back to normal,’ Dougherty said. ‘I want to make sure this doesn’t happen to anybody ever, ever again.’” His lawsuit asks $3 million for pain, humiliation and other losses. (AP/CNN, “Man glued to toilet may have history”, Nov. 8). Possibly the most groanworthy headline, of several candidates, was the Dallas Morning News’s: “Toilet allegation: Was it stunt No. 2?” (Nov. 8).
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In our continuing series (see Jul. 5): the family of 58-year-old Gerald Glover, who became ill following the recent Toronto outbreak of Legionnaire’s Disease, is suing. “It’s never been about the money,” said his daughter Cheryl. The suit seeks class action status and asks C$600 million. (“Legionnaires’ class action suit seeks $600M”, CTV, Oct. 26) (via KevinMD). Other suits that were not about the money: Apr. 30, Jun. 15, Jun. 30, and Jul. 5, 2005; Aug. 16, 2004; Mar. 27-28 and Sept. 3-4, 2002; Apr. 24 and May 9, 2001; Jul. 26-27, 2000. And one that was: Jun. 14, 2001.
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With yesterday’s successful crash into a comet by NASA’s “Deep Impact” probe, the press is remembering a Russian astrologer’s nine-billion-ruble lawsuit in Moscow court claiming that the mission will “deform her horoscope.” (She claims it’s not about the money.)
We covered this on May 19, and the press reports that the case is scheduled for trial July 28. NASA representatives did not attend a July 4 hearing. Russian law supposedly allows “plaintiffs to recover an amount equal to the cost of the undertaking that allegedly does the harm.” (“Lawsuit aims to halt comet bomb”, Baltimore Sun, Jun. 27; AP, Jul. 5; Itar-TASS, Jul. 4).
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It wasn’t about the money, which doesn’t keep the lawyer from complaining that the award was too low:
A jury found a cardiologist at Lenox Hill Hospital liable yesterday for the death of the sports journalist Dick Schaap after hip replacement surgery and awarded his family $1.95 million in compensatory damages….His family had sought $21 million.
“This case was never about the money,” his widow, Trish, said after the verdict….
[Attorney Thomas Moore, who represents the family of the 67-year-old Schaap], also expressed some disappointment with the jury’s monetary award, saying it failed to consider Mr. Schaap’s future earnings. “He was at the zenith of his career when he died,” he said.
A lawyer for the defendant cardiologist, meanwhile, takes strenuous exception to the verdict against his client, contending it was based on erroneous science. (Andrew Jacobs, “Jury Awards Family $1.95 Million in Dick Schaap’s Death”, New York Times, Jul. 2). More: don’t miss Ted’s comments above, and welcome KevinMD readers.
…results in courtroom commotion in Mississauga, Ont., Canada. (“Boy, 10, sues hockey association over demotion”, CBC News, Jun. 19; “Hockey lawsuit put off until fall”, Mississauga News, Jun. 24). Brendan Butrimas allegedly got booted from the Applewood Hockey Association because of conflicts between his father and officials. His family says the C$10,000 suit is — had you guessed? — Not About The Money. “It’s not a money grab. This is a case to protect the rights of children,” said attorney Harry Kopyto, the family’s legal agent. (“Boy sues over fight between his father and hockey league”, CP/Globe and Mail, Jun. 19). (Corrected Nov. 27 to specify standing of family’s legal agent; a reader writes in to say that Kopyto was disbarred by Ontario legal authorities but “is allowed to appear as an agent/paralegal in Small Claims Court”.)
“The Incredibles” made this point (Dec. 2 and links therein), but, with the critical and box-office success of the comic-book movie “Batman Begins,” it’s worth exploring how today’s litigation culture would make sequels impossible in real life. (Lots of spoilers after the jump.)
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September 9-10 – Mississippi doctors win a round. “[L]egislators passed new restrictions today [Friday] on lawsuits against doctors in Mississippi, the latest spasm in a national convulsion over sharply increasing medical malpractice insurance rates.” (Adam Nossiter, “Miss. Lawmakers Set Limits on Medical Lawsuits”, Washington Post, Sept. 7). “Mississippi’s legislature is the third in less than a year to be called into special session over the issue, an ‘extraordinary trend,’ said Cheye Calvo, an insurance specialist at the National Conference of State Legislatures.” The fate of the legislation remains uncertain, however. (Patrice Sawyer, “Plenty of talk, but no action”, Jackson Clarion-Ledger, Sept. 8).
It’s far too early for doctors to jubilate, anyway: if the measure makes it to into law, the trial lawyers will predictably commence efforts to convince the Mississippi Supreme Court to strike it down as unconstitutional, as they have gotten other state courts to do with many liability reforms of the past. (e.g. Ohio: Aug. 18, 1999). Some expect the re-election bid this fall of state supreme court justice Charles McRae, to serve as a kind of referendum on whether the court’s pro-plaintiff tilt has gone too far. McRae, a past president of the Mississippi Trial Lawyers Association, is the author of some of the court’s decisions most hostile to defendants. (Bobby Harrison, “McRae a lightning rod for business groups”, Daily Journal, Jul. 23; Jimmie E. Gates, Clarion-Ledger, Jul.29, Ben Bryant, Biloxi Sun-Herald, Aug. 15). (DURABLE LINK)
September 9-10 – Hiring apple pickers = racketeering. “A federal appellate court has revived a racketeering lawsuit filed by Washington state farm workers who claim apple growers and packers intentionally hired undocumented workers to depress wages. The suit says that Zirkle Fruit Co. and Matson Fruit Co., both based in Washington state, created an employment agency to recruit illegal immigrants, mainly from Mexico, knowing that many of the workers were providing false documentation. At the same time, the suit says, the companies rejected job candidates known to be legal aliens or U.S. residents.” Which naturally leads to the question: should those who knowingly hire undocumented gardeners, nannies and house painters be deemed racketeers as well? The pending suit demands monetary damages from the apple growers and packers, and is being pressed by superrich Seattle attorney Steve Berman, well known to readers of this column (Aug. 21, 1999; Oct. 16, 1999; Jan. 19, 2000; May 11, 2001). (“Racketeering suit vs. apple growers, packers is revived”, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Sept. 6). (DURABLE LINK)
September 9-10 – Free legal services! (except when they aren’t). The Association of Trial Lawyers of America has derived great publicity mileage by saying it will help victims of last year’s terrorist attacks obtain legal representation for free, but it and its members have also worked quietly behind the scenes to defeat legislation that would in any way curb the amounts that lawyers could keep for themselves from 9/11 awards. “Senator [Charles] Schumer [D-N.Y.] is drafting legislation that would let attorneys collect between 8 and 12% of a family’s payout from the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, a victims’ advocate said. The Schumer plan is a compromise between Senator [Don] Nickles [R-Okla.], who did not want lawyers to take any money from the fund, and the trial lawyers themselves, who want no limit on their contingency fees.” (Timothy Starks, “Schumer Pushes Fees”, New York Sun, Aug. 5). (DURABLE LINK)
September 9-10 – Ignominious wind-down to Norplant campaign. At one time, trial lawyers must have had high hopes that their campaign against the contraceptive Norplant, which is administered in the form of under-the-skin silicone arm implants, would bring down drugmaker Wyeth the way their breast implant campaign bankrupted silicone maker Dow Corning. The litigation dragged on for years and cannot have been encouraging to firms pursuing contraceptive research, but it now appears to be winding down with a whimper, reports Texas Lawyer. In an August 14 ruling, “a federal judge in Texas granted partial summary judgment to the makers of Norplant and dismissed the claims of most of the remaining 3,000 women, leaving only 10 plaintiffs to pursue their cases.” Earlier, a large class of plaintiffs “settled out of court for a payment of $1,500 each”, a paltry sum by the standards of what must originally have been expected. “Notably,” wrote U.S. District Judge Richard Schell, “in the three years since Defendants filed this motion for partial summary judgment, Plaintiffs have not produced a shred of evidence or expert testimony that supports an association between Norplant and” such conditions as polyarthralgia, fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis. (Pamela Manson, “Federal Judge Dismisses Norplant Damage Claims”, Texas Lawyer, Aug. 27)(see Aug. 11 and Aug. 27, 1999). (DURABLE LINK)
September 6-8 – “Doctors hope fines will curb frivolous lawsuits”. Lawyers are seldom made to pay any tangible price when they wrongly accuse a doctor, but South Texas doctors are hoping District Judge Ronald M. Yeager of Corpus Christi will set a precedent by granting a motion for $50,000 sanctions against local attorney Thomas J. Henry for filing false claims against Dr. Steven Smith and Dr. Robert Low. “The case Henry originally brought to court alleged that the doctors had prescribed the drug Propulsid to Henry White, a patient at Northbay who eventually died of complications from a stroke. Propulsid is an acid reflux medicine that has been taken off the market. According to court documents, neither of the doctors had issued the prescription. Henry, who declined comment on the fines, filed a notice of appeal Friday. … Low said he will never forget the embarrassment the case caused and hopes the fines will deter similar suits in the future. … ‘It takes time away from your practice and these things can be emotionally devastating to a physician,” Low said. Attorney Henry is a high-profile local advertiser: “Many in the community know him by the prominent ad on the back of the local phonebook”. (Jesse Bogan, San Antonio Express-News, Aug. 5). (DURABLE LINK)
September 6-8 – Slippery slope on terrorism compensation. Just as skeptics predicted would happen, survivors of earlier terrorist attacks and outrages are looking at the generous payments forthcoming from the taxpayer-staked 9/11 compensation fund and asking: why shouldn’t we get retroactive compensation for our losses too? And so legislators are busily introducing bills to compensate victims of the Oklahoma City bombing, the first World Trade Center bombing, Pan Am Flight 103, the sailors on the U.S.S. Cole, and others. (Michael Freedman, “Compensatory Damages”, Forbes.com, Sept. 16)(reg). (DURABLE LINK)
September 6-8 — Update: government can be sued for not warning of Yellowstone thermal-pool dangers. “A Wyoming federal judge has refused to dismiss a lawsuit brought by a Utah teenager who was severely burned when he and two others jumped into a thermal pool in Yellowstone National Park. Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Roberts had asked the U.S. District Court in Cheyenne to reject Lance Buchi’s complaint, which alleges the federal government failed to adequately warn of dangers posed by thermal pools in the park.” (see Jun. 26, 2001) (“Judge won’t dismiss Yellowstone burn victim’s lawsuit”, AP/Billings Gazette, Aug. 30)
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September 5 – “Disabled Entitled to Same Sight Line in Theaters”. Departing from decisions handed down by other courts, a federal judge in Albany, N.Y. “has held that a movie theater providing handicapped patrons with an unobstructed sight line to the screen has not necessarily complied with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Rather, U.S. District Judge David N. Hurd found, the law implicitly requires a qualitative element demanding an analysis into whether the lines of sight available to ambulatory and wheelchair customers are comparable.” Although Judge Hurd held that it might constitute an ADA violation for wheelchair-using patrons to be given less desirable viewing angles, he found that Hoyts Theaters had sufficiently complied with the mandate in the case at hand. (John Caher, New York Law Journal, Aug. 28). (DURABLE LINK)
September 5 – Missouri: a judge speaks out. Ralph Voss, recently retired from the Missouri bench, has launched a website that minces no words about what he sees as wrong with the local civil courts. “My story begins around 1985. By that time it was possible to see major inroads the plaintiffs’ lawyers were making in asserting control over the civil justice system. They exercised tremendous influence in the Missouri legislature, but also in the judiciary. Their influence came from their money and their money came in large part from huge and relatively easily-obtained victories in the courts of St. Louis and Kansas City. … The contingent fee has gotten so out of hand something needs to be done. I am told by one judge that 50 and 60 percent contingent fees in Kansas City are not uncommon. This same judge reports that the fee comes on top of charging the client for the expenses of depositions taken at 5-star resorts.” There’s much more, including critiques of forum-shopping, of lawyers who pocket big contingent fees on sure-thing insurance settlements, and of some fellow judges whom he names elsewhere on the site as (in his view) undeserving of re-election this November. (RalphVoss.com, “Opening Statement”, Aug. 16). (DURABLE LINK)
September 5 – A Gotham lawyer’s complaint. Outside the courthouse in Brooklyn, the New York Press‘s Johnny Dwyer transcribes the gripes of a local personal injury attorney who “only wants his first name used — Dan”. Not only are verdicts down and settlements harder to get in the formerly bounteous borough, but clients aren’t willing to accept the bad news. “Plaintiffs have a skewed view on what a case is worth. I’ve never seen a more obsessional group of people. The case becomes their whole life. And it’s the newer immigrants that are suing the most — at least in Brooklyn. …That’s become the new American dream.” (“Lawsuits: A Lawyer’s Dilemma”, New York Press, vol. 15, #36 (recent)). More: “Jane Galt” and her readers weigh in. (DURABLE LINK)
September 3-4 – By reader acclaim: “Airline sued for $5 million over lost cat”. “A couple sued Air Canada for $5 million, claiming the airline lost their tabby cat during a flight from Canada to California. … ‘It’s not about the money,’ [Andrew] Wysotski said.” (AP/CNN, Aug. 29). (DURABLE LINK)
September 3-4 – “Federal authorities say judge offered illegal payoff”. Pittsburgh: “In a meeting secretly taped by federal authorities, Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Joseph A. Jaffe told a lawyer how he could use his judicial powers to pay back $13,000 in cash that the lawyer had given him in an envelope.” Judge Jaffe, who is presiding over thousands of asbestos cases, “said the attorney could file 26 motions in settled asbestos cases, and he would order insurance companies to pay the lawyer’s firm $500 per motion in legal fees, or $13,000.” He also said that by holding a mass settlement conference he could “put pressure on defendants to favorably settle the claims. …Jaffe evidently did not know that the lawyer, Joel Persky, was cooperating with federal investigators after receiving what he considered an improper request for money from the judge.” Persky’s firm, Goldberg, Persky, Jennings & White, represents thousands of asbestos complainants. Who says plaintiff’s attorneys don’t sometimes figure as heroes in these chronicles? (Marylynne Pitz, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Aug. 29). Update: Mar. 25-30, 2003. (DURABLE LINK)
September 3-4 – “Crime pays for teenage lout”. Australia: In a decision that “stunned the legal community and victim’s groups”, a “teenager who broke into a nightclub was yesterday awarded nearly $50,000 damages for injuries he received in an attack by the publican. Joshua Fox was a ‘grossly stupid, totally irresponsible drunken lout’, according to a court assessment. But a [New South Wales] judge said the force used against him was excessive. Mr. Fox’s mother was awarded $18,000 for nervous shock upon seeing her son’s injuries.” (Steve Gee and Patrick O’Neil, Melbourne Herald-Sun, Aug. 30). (DURABLE LINK)
September 3-4 – 2002′s least surprising headline. [Sen. John] “Edwards has been on a fundraising frenzy over the last three months, raising nearly $2 million in ‘soft money’ — the type of donation soon to be banned, with three-quarters of it coming from trial lawyers.” (Jim VandeHei, “Trial Lawyers Fund Edwards”, Washington Post, Sept. 3). (DURABLE LINK)
September 3-4 – A breast-cancer myth. For years many have held it as an article of faith that synthetic chemicals in the environment are an important contributor to American cancer rates, the best-known example being the supposedly inexplicably high rates of breast cancer occurring on New York’s Long Island. But as a new $8 million study from National Cancer Institute researchers concludes, science has not found evidence to document the thesis. (“Federal study shows no link between pollution and breast cancer”, AP/MedLine, Aug. 6; Gina Kolata, “Looking for the Link”, New York Times, Aug. 11; “Epidemic That Wasn’t”, Aug. 29)(both reg)). See Ronald Bailey, “Cluster Bomb”, Reason Online, Aug. 14. This weekend, in a perhaps surprising development, the New York Times‘s editorialists joined the chorus (“Breast Cancer Mythology on Long Island”, Aug. 31)(reg).
Who should be embarrassed by these developments? Well, for starters, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (Margaret Costello, “Elmirans to testify about cancer”, Elmira (N.Y.) Star-Gazette, June 11, 2001); Ms. magazine (Sabrina McCormick, “Breast Cancer Activism”, Summer); activist groups like the Breast Cancer Fund and the Nader-orbit New York Public Interest Research Group (Stony Brook chapter). And perhaps more than any other well-known group, the Sierra Club, which notwithstanding its sometimes warm-huggy image has published spectacularly wrongheaded and irresponsible coverage of the issue (Sharon Batt & Liza Gross, “Cancer, Inc.”, Sierra Magazine, Sept./Oct. 1999). For similar myths about “cancer alley” in Louisiana, see Nov. 8, 2000. (DURABLE LINK)
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