Posts tagged as:

pro bono

June 8 roundup

by Walter Olson on June 8, 2007

  • Litigation as foreign policy? Bill authorizing U.S. government to sue OPEC passes House, and is already contributing to friction with Russia [AP; Reuters; Steffy, Houston Chronicle; earlier here, here, and here]

  • Albany prosecutors charge boxing champion’s family with staging 23 car crashes, but a jury acquits [Obscure Store; Times-Union; North Country Gazette]

  • New at Point of Law: Bill Lerach may retire; Abe Lincoln’s legal practice; Philip Howard on getting weak cases thrown out; “Year of the Trial Lawyer” in Colorado; and much more;

  • Multiple partygoers bouncing on a trampoline not an “open and obvious” risk, says Ohio appeals court approving suit [Wilmington News-Journal]

  • Skadden and its allies were said to be representing Chinatown restaurant workers pro bono — then came the successful $1 million fee request, bigger than the damages themselves [NYLJ]

  • Who will cure the epidemic of public health meddling? [Sullum, Reason]

  • Turn those credit slips into gold, cont’d: lawsuits burgeon over retail receipts that print out too much data [NJLJ; earlier]

  • Lawprof Howard Wasserman has further discussion of the Josh Hancock case (Cardinals baseball player crashes while speeding, drunk and using cellphone) [Sports Law Blog; earlier]

  • “Women prisoners in a Swedish jail are demanding the ‘human right’ to wear bikinis so they can get a decent tan.” [Telegraph, U.K.]

  • Disbarred Miami lawyer Louis Robles, who prosecutors say stole at least $13 million from clients, detained as flight risk after mysterious “Ms. Wiki” informs [DBR; earlier at PoL]

  • Indiana courts reject motorist’s claim that Cingular should pay for crash because its customer was talking on cellphone while driving [three years ago on Overlawyered]

Tagged as: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

{ 6 comments }

“Pro Bono” doesn’t mean cheap

by David Nieporent on May 29, 2007

One of the secrets of so-called “pro bono” work is that it often isn’t pro bono at all. Instead, it’s really contingency work: firms don’t bill their clients, but if they win, they recover their fees under various statutes, such as the Voting Rights Act, that require the loser — often the government — to pay the attorneys fees of the winner. These statutes are designed to incentivize law firms to take these cases — cases where the plaintiffs often can’t pay and where there’s no big monetary award at stake from which the attorneys can take a cut.

But if the attorneys would take the cases anyway, even if they didn’t get paid all that money, does it really make sense for the courts to award them all their fees? Last month, in a Voting Rights Act case, the Second Circuit said, “Not necessarily.” (PDF.) Rather, the courts should look at how much the plaintiffs would have to pay in the marketplace to convince lawyers to take the cases, and should award fees on that basis. The courts should consider whether these lawyers are really taking the cases “to promote the lawyer’s own reputational or societal goals” — and if so, the court should only award a portion of the fees. (One factor the Second Circuit glosses over is that many of the large law firms that take these cases — Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher handled this particular case — don’t really care about the fees; they really use these cases as a way to provide free training to their younger attorneys without having to risk cases involving their paying clients.)

(Gibson, Dunn’s credibility when making their fee request presumably wasn’t enhanced by the fact that they had previously tried to bill over $100,000 for 300 hours of work when “the entire argument section of the brief on this single-issue appeal occupied barely six pages.”)

But Adam Liptak (Time$elect, May 28) reports that many civil rights groups and other “public interest organizations” are up in arms over this decision, terrified that they might be forced to shop around for attorneys instead of getting taxpayers to pay for attorneys at the highest big firm rates for their causes:

In a flurry of legal filings last week, the lawyers, supported by two bar associations and 29 public interest organizations — including the Urban Justice Center, Public Citizen, the Natural Resources Defense Council and several affiliates of the American Civil Liberties Union — begged the court to reconsider.

“It really is a dangerous decision,” said David Udell, a lawyer with the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, which represents the public interest groups. “What the court does is say that legal work is less valuable when the lawyers’ hearts are in it.”

That’s not actually what the court said at all; what the court said was that lawyers shouldn’t get paid more by taxpayers than they would if they were hired on the open market.

Tagged as: , , ,

{ 6 comments }

NJ comp fraud case: lawyers settle out, workers nailed

by Walter Olson on April 18, 2007

When the Melard bathroom-components factory closed in Passaic, New Jersey, 112 workers were laid off, and more than 80 filed workers’ comp claims alleging that they’d been injured on the job but just hadn’t gotten around to reporting it previously. Mass comp filings of this sort are by no means rare following plant closings, at least in some parts of the country. However, the employer, Bath Unlimited — a subsidiary of Masco that does business as Melard — sniffed fraud, and decided to fight back. It sued the workers and the law firm that represented them, Ginarte O’Dwyer and Winograd, alleging racketeering:

The company claimed in its 2004 federal lawsuit that the Ginarte law firm and attorney [Michael] Policastro encouraged workers angry at being fired to file claims, most of which were identical except for employees’ personal information. According to the suit, the law firm directed workers to provide false information to doctors, and “virtually all” of the employees examined by physicians for Bath had no disabilities or none attributable to the company, the complaint charged.

The 84 worker-defendants did not make an appearance to contest the charges, and last month a federal judge signed a default judgment against them which leaves them personally on the hook for at least $2.26 million. (Greg Saitz, “$2.26M fraud judgment against workers shakes labor landscape”, Newark Star-Ledger, Mar. 21; “Workers penalty to be reviewed”, Mar. 30; John Petrick, “Workers must pay ‘compensation’ after losing claims suit”, Bergen Record, Mar. 25; Workers Comp Insider, Mar. 21 and Mar. 30).

Not surprisingly, the ruling has sent shock waves through the workers’ compensation and labor bar. Some of these lawyers argue as if granting employers any right at all to pursue fraud sanctions will impermissibly chill legitimate claims; presumably they imagine that the right to sue should forever be left a one-way affair. Others not unreasonably take exception to the severity of federal racketeering law’s treble-damage remedy (although the default “progressive” position, or so it seems, is otherwise to defend that same treble-damage remedy). Finally, and most cogently, they have pointed to the intrinsic harshness of the default judgment as a procedural device, which in this case has laid heavy burdens on unsophisticated immigrant workers, some of whom might plausibly have advanced the merits of their individual comp claims even if the bulk of the other 80-plus cases should be shown to be bogus.

But what of the law firm of Ginarte O’Dwyer and Winograd, which was at the center of the fraud scheme, if a fraud scheme there was? Well, this is the piquant part: after denying the allegations in court papers and trying unsuccessfully to get the federal case dismissed, the law firm settled separately with Bath/Masco/Melard on undisclosed terms. That protected its own interests, but left its former clients … well, “twisting in the wind” may not be too strong a way of putting it. The large law firm of Lowenstein Sandler has now stepped forward, acting on what it says is a pro bono basis, to attempt to get the default judgment against the workers overturned. (Greg Saitz, “Defending factory workers”, Newark Star-Ledger, Apr. 11).

Tagged as: , ,

{ 7 comments }

Update: Neuborne fee fracas

by Walter Olson on March 18, 2007

A federal judge in Brooklyn has recommended that the NYU lawprof be given about $3 million, or $1 million less than what he asked, for representing Holocaust-assets claimants. Some clients say they understood Neuborne to have said he was working pro bono (Jones/WSJ law blog, Mar. 16; Tom Perrotta, “$3 Million Fee Suggested for Neuborne for Work on Holocaust Survivor Issues”, New York Law Journal, Mar. 16). Earlier: Oct. 6, etc.

Tagged as: ,

{ 1 comment }

OT: Abigail Alliance v. von Eschenbach

by Ted Frank on January 11, 2007

AEI lets me spend up to a day a week working on outside matters. I hadn’t done any litigating in a while, so when a pro bono opportunity for a good cause presented itself, I took it. Many other bloggers have already spoken on the issues presented by Abigail Alliance v. von Eschenbach, regarding the circumstances under which the FDA has the constitutional power to bar terminally-ill patients from being able to take potentially life-saving doctor-recommended drugs that have achieved Phase 1 approval, but have yet to receive Phase 2 approval from the FDA. (E.g., Jonathan Adler, Derek Lowe, Hans Bader, Orin Kerr, Eugene Volokh, Randy Barnett, Alex Tabarrok.) A 2-1 panel of the D.C. Circuit put limits on the FDA’s powers, but the full D.C. Circuit vacated for en banc review. With the able assistance of attorneys at O’Melveny & Myers LLP, Jack Calfee and I put together a group of all-star economists—Calfee, Dan Klein, Marginal Revolution blogger Alex Tabarrok, Ben Zycher, and one of my heroes, Sam Peltzman—and submitted an amicus brief on their behalf to the D.C. Circuit. While the case presents interesting issues of the due process clause and constitutional standing, the brief focuses on the economic issues underlying FDA drug regulation and the effect of the original panel’s decision on drug and medical safety.

Amicus brief (pdf).

Tagged as: ,

{ 3 comments }

Sen. Edwards’ record (and some kind words)

by Walter Olson on January 5, 2007

Bill Dyer (Dec. 30), following up on Stephen Bainbridge (Dec. 28), has some thoughts about “whether Edwards’ career as a lawyer who primarily represented plaintiffs in personal injury cases is, by itself, a factor that ought to cut against his being President.” Along the way, he has some kind things to say about the authors of this site, which are much appreciated.

The question of what sort of pro bono work Sen. Edwards did during his legal career has also been getting attention recently (as in this guest post at Andrew Sullivan’s). For our take on that, see Jul. 27, 2004.

Tagged as: , , ,

{ 5 comments }

And I think something else happened that day

by Ted Frank on August 29, 2006

Attorney celebrations in the news:

“Joseph P. Awad, the incoming president of the New York State Trial Lawyers Association and a partner in Garden City, N.Y.’s Silberstein, Awad & Miklos, was one of the lawyers who participated in TLC. He said the group was holding a dinner on the fifth anniversary of the [September 11] terrorist attacks to celebrate ‘the largest pro bono project in history.’”

(Anthony Lin, “Attorney’s $2 Million 9/11 Fee Called ‘Shocking, Unconscionable’”, New York Law Journal, Aug. 28).

Tagged as: ,

{ 2 comments }

Update: CAIR using litigation to silence critics?

by Ted Frank on April 25, 2006

The Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has settled its Canadian lawsuit against the Web site Anti-Cair-net.org, the Canadian terrorism expert David Harris, writer David Frum, and the National Post. The settlement is secret, but there was no retraction of the claim that CAIR is a “terrorist-supporting front organization . . .founded by Hamas supporters” that aims “to make radical Islam the dominant religion in the United States.” David Frum has details in the April 25 National Post, and expresses optimism that free criticism of terrorism supporters can now take place.

Update: As Bob B points out in the comments, elsewhere in the blogosphere, Israpundit, LGF, and Powerline. Daniel Pipes also writes with extensive detail. It reasonably appears CAIR dropped the suit, to avoid submitting to discovery: an important lesson for every libel plaintiff. Three cheers for Greenberg Traurig LLP, which did pro bono work that was actually pro bono.

Tagged as: , , , ,

{ 2 comments }

Suing Craigslist — with your money

by Walter Olson on March 6, 2006

The federal taxpayer, by way of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, funnels substantial sums to private “fair housing” advocacy groups for purposes of suing landlords, newspapers, and other likely suspects over alleged housing discrimination; raising consciousness among potential claimants and others; and generally promoting expansive readings of housing-bias law. For example, in this listing of $20 million worth of fiscal 2002 grants, HUD boasts of bestowing $242,339 on the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Inc. for something called its Private Enforcement Initiative (PEI), described as follows:

While addressing the needs of minorities in the metropolitan Chicago area, the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights will increase awareness of fair housing rights; empower victims to report incidents of discrimination; develop credible, legitimate evidence to support discrimination complaints; increase the number of complaints referred to HUD for enforcement; and provide relief to discrimination victims. Utilizing access to pro bono attorneys from Chicago’s most prominent law firms, as well as their resources, the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee will receive, document, and investigate individual complaints of discrimination.

If the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee sounds vaguely familiar, it’s probably because it’s the group that last month filed a widely criticized lawsuit against Craigslist (Feb. 9, Feb. 20) seeking to force the online service to pre-censor users’ postings of roommate and other housing classifieds (rather than just pull them off after complaints, as now).

Even if the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee suit fails in court — as is widely expected — the controversy is likely to continue. In yesterday’s New York Times, Adam Liptak says the activists are likely to push for federal legislation stripping website operators of their current protection against being held liable for users’ postings. (“The Ads Discriminate, but Does the Web?”, Mar. 5). Don’t assume that “fair housing” advocates are powerless on Capitol Hill these days, either: at one set of hearings last week, all the witnesses called (including this one (PDF), quoted in the Times piece) were there to speak up for expansive enforcement of the law, with nary a dissenting word about any possible competing values at stake. More: Maggie’s Farm.

Tagged as: , , , , , ,

Holocaust survivors protest Neuborne fees

by Walter Olson on February 27, 2006

Was high-profile civil rights lawyer and NYU lawprof Burt Neuborne working pro bono in the Swiss banks reparations case? Well, yes and no, it now seems. (William K. Rashbaum, “Lawyer’s $4.1 Million Fee Angers Holocaust Survivors”, New York Times, Feb. 25; Lattman, Feb. 27). Later updates: Jun. 30, Jul. 6, Oct. 6, 2006; Mar. 18, 2007.

Tagged as: , , ,

Speaking dangerously, online

by Walter Olson on January 19, 2006

“Lawsuits are occupational hazards for anti-cult blogger Rick Ross. Sued a half-dozen times during the past decade for his public pronouncements, especially on the Internet, he’s managed to win all but one case, with the help of pro bono counsel.” (Charles Toutant, “Suits Against Anti-Cult Blogger Provide Test for Online Speech”, New Jersey Law Journal, Jan. 10). In other news, a federal judge has thrown out the RICO and defamation lawsuit filed by the controversial healing-spiritualist Gentle Wind Project against former members of the group (see Aug. 30, 2004)(“Group’s Lawsuit Against Ex-Members Thrown Out”, WMTW, Jan. 9; “Court Rejects Online RICO Claims Based on Ex-Group Members’ Web Site”, Berkman Center, Jan. 11). Gentle Wind also happens to have sued Ross, unsuccessfully, according to the New Jersey Law Journal article.

Tagged as: , ,

Thanks, Palmer & Dodge

by Walter Olson on September 19, 2005

For stepping forward to represent the prison grievances of one of Massachusetts’s most infamous killers, Daniel LaPlante, supposedly on a pro bono basis; for your skill at turning into a civil rights claim LaPlante’s complaints that jailers were intercepting the pornographic pictures he was being sent in the mail, and that a guard had stolen his shower shoes; and for the smoothness with which you turned your supposedly pro bono efforts into a profit opportunity after you prevailed, submitting a $125,000 bill to state taxpayers of which federal judge Nancy Gertner approved $99,981. “We did it as efficiently as we could,” claimed George Olson [no relation], a partner at the elite Boston firm. “When we took the case, we didn’t expect to be compensated.” Thanks for that too! (Brian McGrory, “Injustice for almost all”, Boston Globe, Sept. 16).

Tagged as: , , ,

Update: New York pro bono

by Walter Olson on January 23, 2005

More on that proposal (see Dec. 15) to let New York attorneys take pro bono credit for more activities along the lines of “improv[ing] the legal system”, which some think should mean, e.g., lobbying in Albany against liability reform: critics are saying the idea is shaping up as a public relations disaster for the state bar, and threatens to divert resources from the goal of helping poor persons with their legal problems (Thomas Adcock, “N.Y. State Bar Draws Fire With Proposal to Change Pro Bono Definition”, Jan. 18); and David Giacalone blasts the idea (Jan. 19). See Monica Finch, “Working group seeks input on expanded definition of pro bono”, NYSBA State Bar News, Nov./Dec.

Tagged as: ,

“Public-interest lawyers cash in on classroom suits”

by Walter Olson on January 18, 2005

“Lawyers who recently won a very big public-interest lawsuit to make San Francisco schools more accessible to the disabled apparently hope that the case will produce some very big benefits for themselves as well — like $9 million in fees….

“Jose Allen, a partner at the San Francisco firm Skadden Arps, is asking for $810 an hour…. Allen is a local partner of the giant, New York-based Skadden Arps firm — whose Web site touts its commitment to pro bono law work.” City officials are protesting the fees as exorbitant, but lawyers say the city can if necessary sell off surplus property to pay the bill. (Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross, San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 17).

Tagged as: , ,

Lawyers’ pro bono obligations

by Walter Olson on December 15, 2004

Robert Starr, a Manhattan lawyer who is director emeritus of the New York State Trial Lawyers Association, suggests that working for groups like NYSTLA that oppose litigation reform should count as pro bono work for lawyers. According to the New York Law Journal, “In April, the [New York] state bar House of Delegates voted to expand its definition of pro bono to include: activities to improve the law, the legal system or the profession; financial assistance to legal services organizations and services to organizations that protect civil rights, liberties or public rights; or when standard legal fees would ‘deplete the organization’s economic resources.’” (Elizabeth Stull, “Many Solo, Small Firm Attorneys Lack Time, Resources for Pro Bono”, New York Law Journal, Dec. 13)(via Giacalone). Update Jan. 23: more controversy.

Tagged as: ,

{ 1 comment }

Self-Introduction

by KeyMonk on December 15, 2004

Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m a man of . . . pseudonyms and a small blog.

Greetings. I am The Monk, founder and primary author of The Key Monk a small politics-and-sports blog I started in April and which my old high school buddy and I now work on in our spare time.

I am a lawyer in Texas who has run the law firm private practice gamut: large general practice firm to medium-size insurance defense firm (where I was on the frontlines in the asbestos wars) to a small commercial litigation boutique. No, I haven’t seen it all, but I’ve seen a lot. I now practice primarily appellate litigation, which I prefer because it is analytical and there’s no discovery in appellate litigation. I have also worked as a prosecutor in North Carolina, a pro bono lawyer in Boston and was a journalist of sorts as the sports editor and advertising manager of my college newspaper.

The best work I’ve done as a lawyer is easy to select: my pro bono work for the Shelter Legal Services Foundation (formerly the Veterans Legal Services Project) — a foundation dedicated to providing legal help to homeless and indigent veterans, battered women and other people in the Boston area who cannot afford most legal services.

Hopefully I can bring some perspective as a practicing attorney who has worked in a variety of legal settings. I look forward to contributing to Overlawyered.com — long one of my bookmarks (sycophancy alert!) — for the next week.

[click to continue…]

Tagged as: , , , ,

Also at Point of Law

by Walter Olson on October 29, 2004

All sorts of other stuff is going on at our sister website:

* An all-new featured discussion on medical liability has just begun, proceeding from the publication of an important new empirical study by Stanford prof Daniel Kessler;

* Legal ethicist and law prof Lester Brickman has a commentary on a Manhattan judge’s questioning of legal fees in 9/11 cases;

* The Manhattan Institute is seeking applications for a research fellowship on legal issues;

* Law prof Michael DeBow, familiar to many readers for his guest postings here, is joining the Point of Law blog as a regular contributor, with comments already on flu vaccine, the dismissal of a charity hospital suit, FDA jurisdiction over tobacco, and a new antitrust blog;

* Ted Frank contributes items on malpractice by expert witnesses and on a new study suggesting that experts suffer from some of the same biases as lay observers in high-damage cases, on whether much “pro bono” litigation really helps the public, and on “Robin Hood” school-finance suits;

* Jim Copland welcomes a new and improved website, LegalReformNow;

* I’ve got posts on sanctions for wrongful litigation (did you know federal judges liked the sanctions in their old, stronger form?), collective business guilt, ski slope disclaimers, Sarbanes-Oxley, Judge Posner’s view that both Sherlock Holmes and law reviews are much overrated, liability’s burden on small businesses, and insurance broker scandals (posts in progress). Much more, too; bookmark the site today.

Tagged as: , , , , , , ,

A blawg’s pro bono trial

by Ted Frank on October 14, 2004

The Uncivil Litigator is a blog of a mid-level associate whose practice consists mostly of insurance disputes. The insights into his daily practice and the litigation culture, told with appropriate humility, will be interesting for law students and laypeople, but so are the unspoken assumptions behind UCL’s work, which unwittingly demonstrate some of the problems with the legal system.

In particular is a pro bono case taken on behalf of an elderly woman with a $800 dispute over an auto accident, resulting in a jury trial. The nine-post tale, told over several months on the blog, is an entertaining small story in and of itself. But, while he complains about the recalcitrance of the opposing defense attorney, at no point does UCL stop to think that he’s partially responsible for thousands of dollars of societal resources (including seven people are giving up a day of work to sit on a jury) that are going to resolve this dispute. Or that his client, the opposing party, the opposing party’s customers, and society as a whole would’ve been better off if he had spent the time he worked on this case with paying clients, and his firm simply wrote the plaintiff a check for a small fraction of those fees. Pro bono means uncompensated legal services for the public good, but here, as with too many law firm pro bono programs, a law firm imposed a huge externality on the public and an opposing party essentially for the purpose of subsidizing an expensive and inefficient training exercise to get a young lawyer experience. Junior stockbrokers aren’t given $20,000 from the public fisc to churn for practice, but when lawyers do the equivalent, it’s extolled as part of the category of cases where the pro bono lawyer really is working for the public good without pay.

Update: UCL responds, though he confuses a systemic criticism (are there better ways for society to handle small disputes than full-blown trials with all the trappings?) with a personal criticism that wasn’t there.

Another update: Professor Martin Grace initiates a discussion on his weblog.

[click to continue…]

Tagged as: ,

{ 6 comments }

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →