July 12 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Client-chasing roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

February 11 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Houston trial lawyer John O’Quinn saved Democrat Chris Bell’s struggling gubernatorial campaign from financial oblivion this week by making a record $1 million donation. …

“There’s something about a million-dollar check that really warms the heart,” said Bell.

O’Quinn has promised to raise another $4 million for Bell’s campaign, and that could make the Democrat more competitive with all his opponents [incumbent Republican Rick Perry, independent Carole Keeton Strayhorn (herself heavily backed by trial lawyers), and independent Kinky Friedman]. …

Bell said O’Quinn is not looking for special favors from state government.

“There’s nothing that state government can do for John, nor is he asking for anything but good government,” Bell said. …

O’Quinn, Williams and Umphrey were part of a legal team that shared in a $3.3 billion legal fee for settling the state’s lawsuit against the tobacco industry.

(R. G. Ratcliffe and Janet Elliott, Houston Chronicle, Oct. 11).

Election watch: “Lawyer’s $1 million keeps Bell in game” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Now back to your previously scheduled news story about excessive CEO compensation.

Party like you’re a tobacco lawyer is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Here is the press release from ATRA. The highlights, including the top nine worst areas (seven counties and two regions — all of West Virginia and all of South Florida) and a salute to Mississippi for its tremendous and far-reaching tort reforms are on this page. The full report is in PDF format here.

But there may yet be hope:

In Palm Beach County (which is in South Florida, the #7 hellhole on the ATRA list) a change in presiding judge has resulted in a 20% decrease in asbestos cases, according to the Palm Beach Post. Why? Because “Circuit Judge Timothy McCarthy, who presides over the court’s asbestos division, began questioning why thousands of claims were showing up in South Florida, even though they had no local connection.”

On a personal note: The Monk has practiced before one of the court systems on ATRA’s list — Jefferson County, Texas. The county seat is Beaumont, a dumpy town in the industrial belt about 80-90 miles east of Houston that is home to famous plaintiffs’ firms Reaud Morgan & Quinn and Provost Umphrey. The courts there are famous for high jury awards, railroading out-of-town lawyers, and hammering large corporations. I’ve appeared in front of the worst judge of the bunch. This is how two of the 16 plaintiffs’ law firms in the United States with revenues over $50,000,000 (as listed by the Litigation 2004 supplement to American Lawyer magazine) make their cash in one of the poorest parts of Texas. If you click that link, note that 6 of the 16 highest grossing plaintiffs’ firms are in Texas.

Judicial Hellholes III Report is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Update: judge OKs tire settlement is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

On July 25 the judge held a further hearing which even fewer press outlets seem to have covered — the only account we’ve seen ran on the Bloomberg wire (“N.Y. Judge Calls Tobacco Pact Legal Bills ‘Offensive”, Bloomberg News Service, Jul. 25, fee-based archive (search on date in litigation category, pulling up additional screens if necessary)). Judge Ramos pointed out that the $625 million fee amounted to $13,000 an hour, a figure he described as “offensive”. Although the trial lawyers who are set to collect those fees include many powerful insiders in New York politics — the sort of men who can make or break the career of an elected judge — the judge seemed admirably uncowed by them. He compared the lawyers’ overcompensation to “the problems now emerging in large corporate America”, which prompted Philip Damashek of Schneider, Kleinick, Weitz, Damashek & Shoot, which was awarded $98.4 million in fees, to demand an apology for “comparing me and my colleagues to these Enron people’”. And Ramos “ordered another attorney at the firm, Harvey Weitz, removed from the courtroom when he loudly told partner Brian Shoot not to let the judge interrupt him. ‘You’re sandbagging us,’ Weitz shouted at Ramos as he was escorted out. The judge threatened to hold him in contempt.” The judge “ordered the attorneys to file a new application supporting their fee request by August 30, or submit papers challenging his jurisdiction in the matter. The attorneys declined to say after the hearing how they planned to respond.” Addendum: Daniel Wise of the New York Law Journal also covered the July 25 hearing and provides further details of an oral argument that was “unparalleled — for its vitriol, much of it aimed at the judge.” (“New York Tobacco Fee Hearing Has Lawyers Smoking”, Jul. 26).

More: in Texas, Attorney General John Cornyn’s ethics investigation is turning up the heat on the Big Five tobacco lawyers who for years now have dodged being put under oath over the terms of their hiring by Cornyn’s predecessor Dan Morales (Brenda Sapino Jeffreys, “Investigation of Texas Tobacco Litigators Still Smokin’”, Texas Lawyer, Jul. 22)(see Jul. 15 and links from there). (DURABLE LINK)

July 30-31 – Lying’s not nice, especially when representing the bar. “Oregon’s highest court has suspended for two years an insurance defense lawyer who lied, while being deposed, to conceal a strategy that allowed his client to control both sides of a claim. … The lawyer, John P. Davenport of Portland, Ore., represented the Professional Liability Fund, an insurer established by the State Bar to provide mandatory malpractice insurance.” The Fund used a shell corporation to buy up unpaid malpractice judgments at a discount from claimants, which it could then dismiss; the strategy is not in itself illegal, but the court found that Davenport had not provided forthcoming answers to a bankruptcy examiner about the shell’s dealings with a bankrupt couple who had sued their lawyer for malpractice. (Annie Hsia, “Two-year Ban for Oregon Lawyer Who Lied”, National Law Journal, Jul. 18). In other sanctions news, a federal judge has ordered French drug company Aventis “to pay $32.6 million in attorney fees for vexatious conduct in patent litigation against Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. Southern District of New York Judge Robert P. Patterson said last week that [the company] ‘defiled the temple of justice’ by obstructing depositions and discovery, instructing a witness not to answer questions at a deposition and advancing baseless claims.” The finding of vexatious conduct is on appeal (Tom Perrotta, “Drug Company Must Pay Fees of $32 Million”, New York Law Journal, Jul. 29). (DURABLE LINK)

July 29 – “Bush Urges Malpractice Damage Limits”. “President Bush urged Congress today to impose substantial nationwide restrictions on medical malpractice cases, arguing that million-dollar verdicts are driving up health care costs and forcing doctors out of business.” Sen. John Edwards (D-T.Law.) promptly charged that under the White House proposal, when a child is blinded or paralyzed for life, “He [Bush] proposes what they get for that is $250,000.” (Mike Allen and Amy Goldstein, Washington Post, Jul. 26). In fact, as Edwards cannot but be aware, damages to cover the costs of care, lost income and other monetizable damages, which commonly would run into the millions in the case of a paralyzed child, would remain fully collectable as before; the mooted limit would apply only to the portion of awards which covered “non-economic” elements such as pain and suffering. (Bush remarks; White House “Policy in Focus“; HHS report on effects of medical liability, PDF format). The Senate Republican Policy Committee has published a paper collecting some of the malpractice-suit-crisis “horror stories” from recent months, with links to accounts in the press (Jul. 25). See also Steve Friess, “Liability costs drive doctors from practice”, Christian Science Monitor, Jul. 17; “Soaring Liability Costs Blamed for Non-Profit Nursing Home Closures”, Dallas Morning News, Jul. 25 (reg); Corpus Christi (Tex.) Caller special section, letters. Sasha Volokh and correspondents discuss the federalism angles (Jul. 27). (DURABLE LINK)

July 29 – Law lectures needn’t be dull. We were familiar with some of the writings of Harvard law prof David Rosenberg, but we had no idea his lecture style was so … colorful, as evidenced by this best-of collection (Harvard Law Record, 1999) (via Eve Tushnet, Jul. 25, who got it from Stuart Buck, Jul. 22 and Jul. 25; and thanks to Dan Lewis for the web-archive link). (DURABLE LINK)

July 29 – New medium, new opportunities. John Steele Gordon, the history-of-business columnist for American Heritage and author of such acclaimed books as A Thread Across the Ocean and The Business of America, devotes his new column to comparing the rise of online publishing with the technological developments, such as the rotary press, that ushered in the era of the metropolitan newspaper in the years before the American Civil War. “When the young can enter a business and experiment with new technology at little risk, revolution is on the way.” Small internet news-gathering and news-assemblage sites can now “have a great impact. … [One of them] has been giving tort lawyers and activist judges fits by assembling in one much-visited site called overlawyered.com the most egregious lawsuits and decisions from around the country and beyond. It makes for reading that is often hilarious, infuriating, and sad at the same time.” (“The Man Who Invented the Newspaper”, Aug./Sept.). (More on weblog impact: John Leo, “Flogged by Bloggers”, U.S. News, Aug. 5). While on the subject of nice publicity, we won’t even try to summarize all the additional exposure this site and its editor have gotten in the past few days from the lawyers-sue-fast-food controversy, but we will note that our editor’s O’Reilly Factor appearance of last Tuesday, on educational lawsuits, is now online at FoxNews.com (“Watch out Teachers!”, Jul. 24). (DURABLE LINK)

July 26-28 – Fat suits, cont’d. George Washington University law prof John Banzhaf, who got himself so much publicity in the tobacco round, says he’s advising the plaintiff who just announced that he’s suing fast-food chains, so we know the suit must be serious (right?) (Geraldine Sealey, “Fat suits filed”, ABC News, Jul. 25; BBC, “Fat Americans sue fast food firms”, Jul. 25, and “Talking Points“). As for our editor, he’s in considerable demand on the subject, having appeared over the past day on (among others) Fox News Network, CBS radio, and the BBC. This just in: debating our editor on Laura Ingraham’s radio show Friday evening, Banzhaf announced that he is working up a possible suit against milk marketers which will charge that the “Milk Moustache” campaign should give rise to liability because it doesn’t warn consumers that skim milk is sometimes better for you than whole milk. Is he serious? He sure sounded like it (discussion on Democratic Underground). (DURABLE LINK)

July 26-28 – Third Circuit: prisoners may be entitled to watch R-rated films. “Inmates in federal prisons who challenged a ban on allowing them to watch movies rated R or NC-17 have won a new shot at making their case now that a federal appeals court has ruled that a Western District of Pennsylvania judge was too quick to rule in favor of the government. In Wolf v. Ashcroft, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that U.S. District Judge Sean J. McLaughlin of the Western District of Pennsylvania ‘did not conduct a proper, thorough analysis’ of whether the ban is ‘reasonably related to legitimate penological interests.’” The trial judge’s ruling against the prisoners, furthermore, “improperly relied on ‘common sense’”. (Shannon P. Duffy, “Prisoners’ Suit Over R-Rated Movies Worth Another Look, Says 3rd Circuit”, The Legal Intelligencer, Jul. 25). (DURABLE LINK)

July 26-28 – Skittish at Kinko’s. The clerk at the copy shop raises objections to a request to photocopy a newspaper column: “Do you have permission to duplicate this copyrighted material?” But it’s my column, the customer protests — I wrote it! “Look — my picture is on the top.” “He told me that didn’t matter, that corporate Kinko’s was overburdened with copyright lawsuits, and consequently he wasn’t about to run my copy job. Sheesh.” (“Inane Laws and Egotistical Copy Men”, Cornell Daily Sun, Mar. 4). (DURABLE LINK)

July 26-28 – Update: cost of clipboard-throwing only $8 million. A San Diego judge has reduced the damage award from $30 million to $8 million in a case against the Ralphs supermarket chain over the conduct of a manager who over the course of a decade is alleged to have verbally harassed female employees and thrown such objects as a telephone and clipboard at them. Superior Court judge Michael Anello called the damages “grossly excessive” and the result of the jury’s “passion and prejudice,” and said “the evidence was insufficient to support the conclusion that defendant [corporation] approved of or ratified [the manager's] conduct.” The decision is “a slap in the face of women’s rights,” countered the plaintiffs’ co-counsel (see Apr. 19-21) (Alexei Oreskovic, “Judge Slashes Sex Harassment Damages Against Ralphs Grocery”, The Recorder, Jul. 17). (DURABLE LINK)

July 25 – “Ailing Man Sues Fast-Food Firms”. You knew it was coming: “A New York City lawyer has filed suit against the four big fast-food corporations, saying their fatty foods are responsible for his client’s obesity and related health problems. Samuel Hirsch filed his lawsuit Wednesday at a New York state court in the Bronx, alleging that McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s and KFC Corporation are irresponsible and deceptive in the posting of their nutritional information, that they need to offer healthier options on their menus, and that they create a de facto addiction in their consumers, particularly the poor and children.” Quotes our editor, who takes the dim view of the suit that you would expect (Michael Y. Park, FoxNews.com, Jul. 24). (DURABLE LINK)

July 25 – “Surgeon halts operation over foreign nurses’ poor English”. Britain: “A surgeon at a leading hospital has said he had to stop halfway through an operation because foreign nurses could not follow his instructions. As a result, he said he has been threatened with disciplinary action for racism. David Nunn, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at Guy’s and St Thomas’s Hospitals, in London, told The Telegraph that he was unable to complete the operation last week without certain instruments. When he asked the nurses, all of whom were foreign, to find them, ‘I was met with a selection of bemused reactions,’ he said. ‘They were produced only when the scrub nurse de-scrubbed and went to find them herself.’ Mr Dunn, 48, said his superiors had accused him of racism and threatened him with being disciplined.” Dunn said the influx of nurses from outside Britain are “without doubt well-trained and dedicated professionals, but if medical staff cannot communicate effectively then patients’ care may be put at risk.” Careful what you say, doc… (Richard Eden, Daily Telegraph, Jul. 22). (DURABLE LINK)

July 25 – “Licensing Deadline Sneaks Up In District”. “Consultants, landlords, music teachers, nannies, massage therapists and other home-based workers in the District face fines of as much as $500 if they do not obtain a new type of city license by Aug. 31, but most are unaware of it. Self-employed individuals and District firms, including nonprofit groups, that collect more than $2,000 in annual revenue will have to obtain a master business license to legally sell their services.” More “than 60,000 businesses and individuals in the District face fines of as much as $500 if they don’t obtain a new type of city license by Aug. 31″ — and have things really reached the point where it’s going to require a license from the government to practice independent journalism from your apartment? (Avram Goldstein, Washington Post, Jul. 21; “How D.C. Creates Chaos” (editorial), Jul. 23; Eugene Volokh, Jul. 23). (DURABLE LINK)

July 24 – Smog fee case: “unreal world of greed”. A California appeals court has thrown out an arbitration panel’s $88.5 million award of attorneys’ fees, amounting to an estimated $8,800/hour, to five law firms which had prosecuted a case against the state of California arguing the unconstitutionality of its former assessment of “smog impact fees” on cars registered from out of state. “The justices called the panel’s $88.5 million fee award ‘an unconstitutional gift of public funds’ that was not authorized by the Legislature. In a scathing concurring opinion, Justice Richard Sims said the award from the arbitration panel was ‘completely in outer space.’ ‘The fact that attorneys even requested a fee award of that magnitude from the taxpayers,’ Sims wrote, ‘is a testament to the unreal world of greed in which some attorneys practice law in this day and age.’” The five law firms included Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach, long a major political donor in California, as well as “New York’s Weiss & Yourman; San Diego’s Sullivan, Hill, Lewin, Rez & Engel; La Jolla, Calif.’s Blumenthal & Markham, and Berkeley, Calif., solo practitioner Richard Pearl.” (see Dec. 5, 2000, Jun. 22, 2001)(Robert Salladay, “Court rips $8,800 an hour in attorneys’ fees”, San Francisco Chronicle, Jul. 23; Mike McKee, “California Appeals Court Rips $88M Fee Award in Smog Case”, The Recorder, Jul. 23). (DURABLE LINK)

July 24 – Update: “Harassment by kids gets ex-teacher 50G” Following up on a story from last month: the city of New York has agreed to pay $50,000 to settle a lawsuit by a former Queens teacher who says his students had harassed him by way of derogatory comments about his immigrant status (from Sri Lanka), accent and ethnicity. “Legal experts said the suit was the first of its kind in which a teacher successfully brought a civil rights action alleging that students had created a ‘hostile work environment.’” The other noteworthy feature of the dispute (see Jun. 26) is the defense the city put forth, namely that it was powerless to discipline the students, who had special education (disabled) status, for insulting the teacher “because students with that classification have already been identified as having behavioral problems, and the verbal misconduct might be considered a manifestation of their disability,” as a city lawyer put it (John Marzulli, “Harassment by kids gets teacher 50K”, New York Daily News, Jul. 22). (DURABLE LINK)

July 23 – Welcome O’Reilly Factor viewers. Our editor was a guest on the top-rated TV talk show this evening, interviewed one-on-one by host Bill O’Reilly on the subject of parents threatening to sue teachers over their kids’ bad grades. We mentioned the recent Arizona case and an earlier Ohio case that we understand has been dismissed by the court; and here’s our theme page on overlawyered schools. (DURABLE LINK)

July 22-23 – Politicos’ “stagey” outrage at balance-sheet sins. “John Walker Lindh got 20 years this week for joining a terrorist network at war with his country. Lucky for him he didn’t try something really bad, like capitalizing an expense item. … President Bush, who spent 56 years on this earth without revealing the slightest passion for corporate reform, now says life will be intolerable if he doesn’t have a bill to sign within a couple of weeks. And he has sent signals that he doesn’t give much of a hoot what is in it.” (Michael Kinsley, “Stock Option Cure-All”, Washington Post, Jul. 19). “Even now, the mob waving pitchforks and torches finds the details of accounting, compensation and corporate governance too tedious to take seriously. But ‘reforms’ that ignore the role of incentives and competition will turn out to be monsters themselves.” (Virginia Postrel, “Business ‘Reforms’ Should Not Ignore Incentives and Competition”, New York Times, Jul. 18 (reg)). (DURABLE LINK)

July 22-23 – Nightmare under the palms. You retire to a Florida condo, and imagine that the hassles of life are over — that is, until you discover that a couple of your neighbors have turned asserting their legal rights into an art form. (Joe Kollin, “Sunrise condo residents get socked with bill because neighbors won’t pay”, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Jul. 19). (DURABLE LINK)

July 22-23 – Disabled testing: hence, loathèd asterisk. In a settlement with a disabled-rights litigation group, the College Board has agreed to stop flagging the test scores of students who got extra time or other accommodations in taking its college admissions test. The effect will be to allow applicants to conceal from colleges whether they “took the test under normal conditions, or used a computer, worked in a separate quiet room, and had four and a half hours for the three-hour test. … High school guidance counselors said the elimination of flagging could set off a wave of new applications for accommodations, including some from students without real disabilities. … most of those who are accommodated have attention deficit problems or learning disabilities like dyslexia, a reading disorder.” “It’s very clear who’s been getting extended-time: the highest-income communities have the highest rates of accommodations,” said Bruce Poch, the dean of admissions at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif. “I think what’s going to have to happen now is that everyone will, in effect, get more time.” (Tamar Lewin, “Abuse Is Feared as SAT Test Changes Disability Policy”, New York Times, Jul. 15 (reg)). Among commenters: Kimberly Swygert at No. 2 Pencil (Jul. 15 and 17) and Joanne Jacobs (Jul. 15 and Jul. 17). We covered the controversy back in February 1999, May 10, 2000 and Feb. 9-11, 2001. (DURABLE LINK)

July 22-23 – Last-minute friends in Texas politics. “In 1998 [John] Sharp narrowly lost the lieutenant governor’s race to Republican Mr. Perry, who later became governor when George W. Bush became president.” Sharp drew about 15 percent of his financial backing from trial lawyers in that race, which actually probably isn’t all that high a percentage for a Lone Star Democrat. What was interesting was the timing: “A review by The News of finance reports in that matchup indicates that nearly half Mr. Sharp’s trial lawyer support came in the final eight days of the campaign and was not reported until after the race. For example, a few days before the election, Mr. Sharp collected $250,000 from Houston trial lawyer John Eddie Williams and $150,000 apiece from lawyers Walter Umphrey of Beaumont and Harold Nix of Daingerfield. And he got $15,000 from Michael Gallagher of Houston.” Reports of trial lawyer backing can damage a candidate in Texas campaigns, but when the lawyers donate at the last minute the voters may be none the wiser as they troop to the polls (Wayne Slater, “Trial lawyers’ cash at issue”, Dallas Morning News, Jul. 13). (DURABLE LINK)

July 2002 archives, part 3 is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Other links of note from a Nader-watcher’s scrapbook: Doug Henwood, “1.75 cheers for Ralph”, Left Business Observer, Oct. 1996; discussion on LBO mailing list re RN finances, Sept. 9, 1998; RN denounces tort reform in campaign press release, VoteNader.org, Aug. 11; Robert Bryce, “Naturally Nader”, Austin Chronicle, April 7; Mike Allen, “Nader: The Little Guy’s Multimillionaire” (worth $3.8 million, heavily invested in tech stocks, still refuses to reveal income tax records), Washington Post, June 18; Paul West, “Corporate gadfly turns out to be rich”, Baltimore Sun, June 17; Michael Lewis, “Campaign Journal: The Normal Person of Tomorrow”, The New Republic, May 20, 1996.

September 22-24 – From our mail sack: hyperactive lawyers. Reader Scott Replogle, M.D., writes from Colorado: “I see (Sept. 18) that trial lawyer Richard Scruggs is suing psychiatrists and the makers of the drug Ritalin, alleging they conspired to ‘create’ a disease, Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, and then overdiagnose it for monetary gain. Which raises the question: when can we sue the people who not too long ago ‘created’ the previously unknown disorders of ‘silicone disease’ and ‘human adjuvant disease’ during the breast-implant controversy, and conspired to overdiagnose those diseases for monetary gain? And does it matter that many of those people were trial lawyers?” (see also April 13, 2001)

September 21 — Missouri tobacco fees. Lawyers stand to make $100 million or more for representing the state of Missouri in the Medicaid-tobacco litigation and the state’s largest newspaper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, says that sum “is out of proportion to the work performed and the risk involved … troubling … grossly overpays the lawyers involved … creates an unholy alliance between the state and tobacco interests” It’s also “a political gravy train” since “the five law firms involved in the case donated a total of more than $500,000 in campaign contributions over the past eight years, mostly to Democrats”; a prominent Republican former judge and Democratic former mayor of St. Louis were also cut in. “An important issue of public policy — the lawyers’ fees — will be determined outside the public forum” given that a secret arbitration proceeding will be employed to set the fees. “…It is private money in the public trough. But that doesn’t make the sight of the lawyers lining up to feed any prettier.” (“All aboard the gravy train” (editorial), St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sept. 17).

Brent Evans, a state senate candidate in Missouri, has posted extensive documentation on the circumstances surrounding state attorney general Jay Nixon’s hiring of outside lawyers to prosecute the suit. According to Evans, the lawyers’ campaign contributions of $561,000 included $139,000 for Nixon himself and $113,000 for Democratic Gov. Mel Carnahan (“The Tobacco Papers“; the lawyers; their generosity; the work they might have done to justify the fees; “Attorneys mum about how much they’re seeking” (fee request “confidential”), Jefferson City News-Tribune, April 26, 1999; Jack Cashill, “Warning: Tobacco Settlements May Endanger The Integrity of Your Elected Officials” (also discusses Kansas fees), Cashill.com, undated 1999; “Appeals court sides with Nixon on legal fees in tobacco settlement”, Jefferson City News-Tribune, May 31, 2000; James Baughn, The Cape Rock webzine (Cape Girardeau, Mo.), June).

Last year Missouri Digital News reported that Paul Wilson, lead attorney on the matter with AG Nixon’s office, “urged lawmakers to pass legislation that will protect the major tobacco companies from a market-share loss once the impact of the tobacco settlement sets in. Off-brand cigarette companies, those not participating in the settlement, could otherwise undercut the prices of the major tobacco companies. Missouri will keep getting its billions so long as the market share of the signatories does not dip below 95 percent. If it were to do so and Missouri had no off-brand tobacco law, explained Wilson, the terms of the settlement let the major tobacco companies stop paying.” (Anna Brutzman, “Legislators Bewildered By Settlement”, April 4, 1999). Update Oct. 5, 2003: Missouri Supreme Court refuses to entertain challenge to tobacco fees.

September 21 – Dangerous divorce opponents. It’s tough enough going through a divorce in any case, but you’d really better watch out if your spouse is a successful lawyer, according to the New York Post. Advice: try for a change of venue. (Laura Williams, “Attorneys’ Wives Court Disaster”, Sept. 20).

September 21 – Eastwood trial begins. Jurors will hear an Americans with Disabilities Act complaint against the actor’s Mission Ranch hotel in Carmel. For our coverage of the Eastwood case and related Congressional hearings, see May 18, March 7, Feb. 15 and Jan. 26. (“Eastwood to Jurors: ‘Make My Day’”, AP/Fox News, Sept. 20; Shannon Lafferty, “Eastwood in the Line of Fire,” The Recorder/CalLaw, Sept. 21).

September 2000 archives, part 3 is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

In the New York Times Sept. 11, Keith Bradsher reports that by the end of 1998 trial lawyers “had already sued Firestone, and sometimes Ford as well, in cases involving 22 deaths and 69 serious injuries”. However, few of these cases had come to the attention of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration; until recently NHTSA had received very few complaints, and none of fatalities. In fact, Bradsher reports, trial lawyers were pursuing a conscious policy of not reporting tire incidents to the agency, apparently because of tactical concerns — if the agency learned about such cases too early and in too small a number, it might do a perfunctory investigation and miss the pattern of defectiveness, and then the lawyers would have more trouble winning their cases. This strikes us as a fairly damning indictment to be leveling against the trial lawyers — they flout the public interest in learning crucial safety information, just in order to angle for monetary advantage? Isn’t that what Firestone is accused of doing? — but Bradsher quotes Ralph Hoar, a well-known plaintiff’s-side consultant in auto-design cases who provided the numerical tabulation cited at the beginning of this paragraph, as cheerily portraying the lawyers as just doin’ their job, saying they have to concern themselves with their clients’ best interests, not anyone else’s.

Meanwhile, Ford Motor had been named in a few suits but “paid little attention, because automakers routinely face thousands of lawsuits after crashes.” In other words, the background level of litigation against a company of that size is so high that it’s hard to notice patterns that do turn out to be meaningful (Keith Bradsher, “Documents Portray Tire Debacle as a Story of Lost Opportunities”, New York Times, Sept. 11 (reg)). (DURABLE LINK)

September 15-17 – Ciresi bested in Senate bid. Michael Ciresi, the trial lawyer who sought to parlay his representation of the state of Minnesota in the tobacco litigation into a seat in the U.S. Senate, has lost the Democratic nomination to department store heir Mark Dayton by a margin of 41 to 23 percent, with other candidates dividing the rest. (Dan Bernard, “Dayton Grabs DFL Nomination”, WCCO/Channel 4000, Sept. 13; St. Paul Pioneer Press; Minneapolis Star-Tribune).

September 15-17 – Cash return sought by murder-for-hire convict. “A criminal defense attorney who paid an undercover agent $11,000 in a failed murder-for-hire plot is asking the government to return the money. Frederick Ford, 48, who is serving an eight-year prison term for planning to kill two former clients he thought could implicate him in a kidnap plot, is seeking the return of the money he admitted he gave to a U.S. Department of Labor agent last year.” (“Convicted attorney seeks return of murder-for-hire retainer”, AP/CNN, Sept. 13; Shelley Murphy, “Hit man hirer wants money back”, Boston Globe, Sept. 13).

September 14 – “I know [you] will give $100K when the president vetoes tort reform, but we really need it now.” The New York Times reports in today’s editions that Justice Department campaign finance investigators have launched a preliminary probe into documents that have surfaced from the Clinton/Gore 1996 fundraising operation, including a “call sheet” prepared for Vice President Gore regarding Beaumont, Texas lawyer Walter Umphrey, a major Democratic benefactor who shared in Texas’s $3.3 billion tobacco contingency fee and is well known to readers of this space. The sheet describes Umphrey as “closely following tort reform” and suggests asking him for $100,000 to finance Democratic Party TV commercials. The White House claims that Gore did not make the call, but two weeks later a staffer for then-Democratic National Committee chairman Donald Fowler prepared a call sheet reading as follows: “Sorry you missed the vice president. I know [sic] will give $100K whn [sic] the president vetos [sic] tort reform, but we really need it now. Please send ASAP if possible.” DNC officials propose that the “missed” might have referred to the two men not connecting at an in-person event; Fowler disclaims any memory of talking with Umphrey about campaign donations and says he would never have used the language on the call sheet. According to the Times, “Trevor Potter, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, called the call sheet’s language ‘extraordinarily ill-advised,’ saying prosecutors would probably be investigating whether the solicitation violated either a bribery statute or a law prohibiting ‘illegal gratuities,’ a ‘gift’ given after an elected official takes a public action.”

The Washington Post reports that Umphrey says he doesn’t recall “any of that” and otherwise declines comment, while Payne was talking to the Times only through her lawyer. And attorney Michael Tigar, who represents Umphrey and the rest of the Big Five Texas tobacco lawyers, issued this small gem of legalistically worded denial: “Tying campaign contributions to legislative or executive action has never been illegal in the United States unless there is proof that the public official extorts the money by threatening to give or withhold action based on the contributions,” he said; moreover, his clients, including Mr. Umphrey, “have repeatedly been asked in many forums whether they have ever given money to a candidate or officials as a quid-pro-quo for official action, and they have repeatedly said under oath that they have never done so.” The Times account adds considerable background on the epic pace of Clinton/Gore fundraising among Texas plaintiff’s lawyers of late, including a little-reported fundraiser thrown for Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Senate campaign by Big Five stalwart John Eddie Williams of Houston. (Don Van Natta Jr. with Richard A. Oppel Jr., “Memo Linking Political Donation and Veto Spurs Federal Inquiry”, New York Times, Sept. 14 (reg); Susan Schmidt, “1995 Documents Appear To Link Lawyer’s Contribution To Veto”, Washington Post, Sept. 14; more on Umphrey and the Big Five: Sept. 1, May 22; more on trial lawyers’ political clout). More breaking coverage (via Drudge): Time, Fox News, AP. (DURABLE LINK)

September 13-14 – “Violent media is good for kids”. Good kids, as well as bad ones, are naturally fascinated with violence, catastrophe and retribution, and letting them explore these matters in the relatively safe territory of the printed page and popular entertainment is part of the process by which they learn how to fit themselves into a frightening world, argues cartoonist Gerard Jones, in an excerpt from a book due out next year from Basic with co-author Melanie Moore (“Reality Check”, Mother Jones, June 28; Reason magazine, “The Kids Are All Right“, “Breaking Issues”; Christopher Stern, “Violent Material Marketed To Youth”, Washington Post, Aug. 27; Mike Allen and Ellen Nakashima, “Clinton, Gore Hit Hollywood Marketing”, Washington Post, Sept. 12).

September 13-14 – Gregoire’s home front. Washington state attorney general Christine Gregoire gained a high national profile jetting around the country to take a leading role in the tobacco-Medicaid affair and other big-case AG litigation, and followed up by assuming the presidency of the National Association of Attorneys General (see July 17). Now it may be time to wonder whether she was keeping enough of an eye back home on the unglamorous routine of the AG’s office, which plays a vital role in protecting the state’s legal interests. In March a Pierce County jury awarded the largest verdict ever against the state, $17.8 million, on behalf of three developmentally disabled men whose families said they were abused in a state-supported home. Gregoire’s office announced plans to appeal but, embarrassingly, proceeded to lose the state’s right to do so by missing a filing deadline. With interest, the total bill has now mounted to $18.7 million. (Eric Nalder and Mike Carter, “State won’t give up bid to appeal $17.8 million verdict”, Seattle Times, Sept. 12; Eric Nalder, “No excuse for missed appeal, court says”, Seattle Times, Aug. 22; see also update Nov. 30). The Capital Research Center has issued a new report critical of recent attorney general activism, by Ron Nehring of Americans for Tax Reform (“National Association of Attorneys General: Opening the Door to a New Era of Regulation Through Litigation”, Organization Trends (CRC), Sept.)

September 13-14 – Prescription: 24-7 monitoring. Adding to Evergreen State taxpayers’ legal woes, a Pierce County, Wash. jury Sept. 1 ordered the state government to pay $22 million to survivors of a driver killed in an auto accident by a man who was at the time serving the community-supervision portion of a sentence for third-degree assault. The verdict broke an earlier $17.8 million record for lawsuits against the state, set in March by the same plaintiff’s attorney, Jack Connelly (see above item). Gov. Gary Locke vowed to appeal the verdict, saying if upheld it could make the entire enterprise of community supervision unworkable. “This man was convicted of … third-degree assault connected with a domestic dispute,” he said. “Imposing liability for his involvement in an auto accident extends public liability too far.” A Locke aide questioned whether the state could monitor the 55,000 persons on community supervision adequately to prevent any of them from being a menace on the highway. One of the alternatives to risking failure-to-supervise liability — keeping the 55,000 locked up — would apparently be okay with lawyer Connelly, who said, “If you’re not even going to try to do your job, then don’t put these guys on community supervision. Put them in jail.” (Eli Sanders, “Family awarded $22.4 million in wrongful death lawsuit against state”, Seattle Times, Sept. 2). See also Chris Solomon, “Cities leery of new probation rules”, Seattle Times, July 11 (local governments fear being financially wiped out by Washington Supreme Court ruling allowing negligence lawsuits against municipalities over crimes committed by probationers).

September 13-14 – More bank spying? Despite strongly negative public reaction to withdrawn “Know Your Customer” regulations that would have accelerated banks’ sharing of customer “profiles” with law enforcement, legislators like Rep. James Leach (R-Iowa) are back with proposals that raise similar civil liberties concerns (Scott C. Rayder, “The Counter-Money Laundering Act: An Attack on Privacy and Civil Liberties”, Heritage Foundation Executive Memorandum, Aug. 31; our take on the last round).

September 13-14 – Judges’ words, copyrighted. Officials in the California judiciary would like to revamp the instructions that judges give juries before trial deliberations, in hopes of making them clearer and more understandable, but have run into an unexpected problem. The Los Angeles County courts turn out to hold copyright in the most widely used current instructions and collect royalties when other California courts use them, which have generated $2.5 million for the county’s use over the past decade. “‘When we first began this effort three years ago, all of us just assumed that we would take [Los Angeles instructions] and improve on them,’ said Associate Justice James D. Ward of the state Court of Appeal in Riverside, vice chairman of the task force. ‘Then they announced to us that they owned them.’” The L.A. courts have held back from cooperating in the statewide revision efforts, which if successful would result in a set of instructions that courts could use for free. (Caitlin Liu, “Say What, Your Honor?”, Los Angeles Times, Sept. 7).

September 12 – Goodbye to gaming volunteers? Online multiplayer gaming has grown to be a big Internet institution in no small part because large numbers of unpaid enthusiasts join in on a volunteer basis to suggest and beta-test new features, run discussion boards and perform countless other services. “But maybe not for long. On Monday, August 28 … Origin Systems Inc. (OSI) [makers of Ultima Online, one of the leading fantasy role-playing games], announced the termination of free game account privileges for hundreds of community volunteers…. While company representatives have not said so outright, it appears the move to eliminate what amounted to a $10 a month gratuity for volunteers is related to a recent New York class action lawsuit, brought by former volunteers at America Online (AOL)” (see Sept. 7, 1999). The class action lawyers in that case are charging that because AOL benefits from the content devised by its volunteers, and has given them at least nominal compensation in the form of free services and the like, it is therefore obliged to keep track of how much time they put into volunteering and pay them at least the minimum wage. If the lawyers succeed in their efforts, online community providers could find themselves facing large retroactive wage bills. “Origin is just the first game company to move to protect itself legally by removing any perks that could be seen as differentiating its volunteers from all the other players. The major subscription-based role-playing services may soon follow suit. While the short-term effects may be limited (some volunteers may quit, but could be replaced), the long-term future of volunteer work on online releases seems doubtful all of a sudden.” (Bruce Rolston, “The End of the Smurfs?”, Adrenaline Vault, Sept. 1).

September 12 – Curious feature of lawyer’s retainer. Texas trial lawyers are in a flutter over a Waco case in which an appeals court ruled that a client family in an industrial accident case was within its rights to withdraw from a contingent-fee legal contract it had signed. The agreement the lawyer had gotten the family to sign included a curious feature: a provision entitling him to settle the case without their consent. Such a provision, the court ruled, “clearly violates” the Texas professional code for lawyers, making the entire contract voidable. The lawyer, J.W. Stringer, plans motions for rehearing and appeal. (Jenny Burg, “Opinion Has Lawyers Reviewing Contingent-Fee Contracts”, Texas Lawyer, Aug. 21).

September 12 – This little piggy got taken to court. More pig farmers are facing legal action as outlying towns change “from rural, mind-your- own-business farm communities to residential, what’s-that-smell, suburban neighborhoods,” according to a Cleveland Plain Dealer report. Five residents of Medina County, Ohio, including a truck driver and two auto mechanics, have been sent to jail this summer for refusing to clean up pig living arrangements on their properties (Stephen Hudak, “Proud Pig Man’s smelly pork farm lands him in poke”, Sept. 7) (via Romenesko’s Obscure Store) And a Marlin County, Florida pig farmer sued by an adjoining golf course has put up a website which solicits moral support and legal defense contributions, as well as purchases of the squiggle-tailed offenders (Pigfarmer.com) (more on pig litigation: Oct. 4, 1999).

September 11 — “Feeding Frenzy Over Firestone”. “Lawyers all over the country see opportunity in the escalating legal, commercial and public relations disaster for Ford and Firestone.” (Bob Van Voris and Matt Fleischer, National Law Journal, Sept. 5; Yahoo Full Coverage).

September 11 – Harassment law roundup. At an Alcoa plant in North Carolina, one of the black complainants in a race discrimination suit went out to the parking lot, made a list of all the workers’ vehicles with Confederate flag stickers on them, and filed this as evidence of “hostile racial environment” in the case. The company promptly banned employees from having such stickers on their cars, a ban it insists had absolutely nothing to do with the lawsuit (Steve Chapman, “Trouble in Mind: Is the First Amendment Void in the Workplace?” Chicago Tribune, Aug. 24). In an excerpt from his book The Unwanted Gaze: The Destruction of Privacy in America, New Republic legal correspondent Jeff Rosen urges courts to reconsider the “hostile environment” analysis that has become an accepted part of harassment law: “A jurisprudence originally designed to protect privacy and dignity is inadvertently invading privacy and dignity” (“Fall of Private Man”,New Republic, June 12; more on book). Clarence Thomas, alone among the nine Justices of the Supreme Court, wanted to tackle the “troubling First Amendment issues” raised by a court’s injunction against workers’ use of racial epithets on the job at an Avis Rent-a-Car franchise; a California court had ordered the drawing up of a list of words that employees were to be forbidden to use in conversation with each other, whether anyone present found the words objectionable or not (Tony Mauro, Freedom Forum, May 23). And early this year it was reported that an “affirmative action officer in Falmouth, Massachusetts — whose job it was to enforce the town’s sexual harassment policy — has been fired for sexually harassing a town employee. The official, Jayme Dias, was in charge of promoting and enforcing fairness in hiring and employment practices.” (Monster.com, “Week in Work”, Jan. 31).

September 11 — “Mother sues over lack of ice time for goalie son”. In Rimouski, Quebec, “Hélène Canuel is seeking $1,000 in damages from the Rimouski Minor Hockey Association because her son, David, was denied the right to play in a critical game during a hockey tournament last December.” David is 14 years old. (Arpon Basu, Montreal Gazette/National Post, Aug. 24).

September 2000 archives, part 2 is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system