A suit by the estate of the late DJ AM says a 2008 plane crash that he survived helped cause his 2009 drug overdose death [ET Online, TortsProf]
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proximate cause
One can almost fill an entirely separate blog with variations on the McDonald’s hot coffee case. In Manhattan, 77-year-old Rachel Moltner ordered a hot tea from a Starbucks, but had trouble removing the tightly-secured lid, spilling the beverage all over her. (You will recall other lawsuits complaining that the Starbucks lids are not tight enough.) Moltner not only blames Starbucks for her resulting second- and third-degree burns (and recall that the raison d’être of the Stella Liebeck suit was the false claim that only McDonald’s served beverages that were hot enough to cause third-degree burns), but for the broken bones she suffered when she fell out of bed in Lenox Hill Hospital while being treated for burns. Moltner’s asking for $3 million.
Press coverage in the NY Post (h/t P.G.) is short on legal details (though one is encouraged to see Starbucks publicly defending themselves, an apparent change in policy). But I’ve downloaded and uploaded the complaint, which was filed in state court and removed to federal court. The kitchen-sink allegations include a defective cup, defectively hot tea, and a failure to warn. Right now the parties are haggling over federal removal jurisdiction, as Starbucks waited more than thirty days after receiving the complaint–until a formal demand for money was made–to seek removal. This is an interesting example of sandbagging; if defendants remove cases simply on the possibility that alleged damages will exceed the amount-in-controversy requirement, they may incorrectly remove cases that should remain in state court, but if they wait for the formal confirmation from the plaintiff, they may face the allegation that they’ve missed the 30-day window to remove a case–something to consider when plaintiffs’ attorneys complain that defendants reflexively remove cases to federal court that don’t belong there. Moltner has a good argument that Starbucks waited too long to remove, because alleged damages would have clearly exceeded $75,000 despite the lack of an ad damnum clause in the complaint citing a number, but the consequence of such a ruling will be that defendants will be forced to prematurely remove cases that perhaps should not be removed. (Moltner v. Starbucks Coffee Co., #: 1:08-cv-09257-LAP-AJP (S.D.N.Y.)).
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Hear, hear. (In re Apollo Group, Inc. Securities Litigation (D. Ariz. 2008) via WSJ Law Blog; Bloomberg). Plaintiffs will appeal the trial court’s decision to throw out the $277 million verdict.
At least that was Thomas Guhl’s theory as to why the ball struck his windshield with high velocity while he was driving near the Eagle Oaks Golf and Country Club, injuring him. His $725,000 settlement is based on the theory that the golf club was negligent for not installing netting along Asbury Avenue that would have kept balls from landing on a neighboring homeowner’s lawn, and that Canfield Lawn and Landscaping was negligent because it hadn’t checked that lawn for golf balls before mowing. (”Man injured by golf ball gets $725K”, AP/Newark Star-Ledger, Jul. 31).
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The trial bar’s efforts to broadly expand the securities laws through judicial fiat is challenged in an amicus brief filed in Stoneridge v. Scientific-Atlanta (earlier: Jul. 31, etc.), including former SEC chairs Roderick Hills, Harvey Pitt and Harold Williams; and law professors Richard Epstein, Joseph Grundfest, Stephen Bainbridge, and Larry Ribstein.
Update: Not only has the Department of Justice come out in favor of affirmance (despite extensive lobbying by the plaintiffs’ bar), but both major stock exchanges—who interests unquestionably parallel the interests of investors as a group—filed amicus briefs seeking affirmance. But watch the press portray this as “businesses versus investors” instead of “businesses and investors versus trial lawyers and government officials seeking donations from trial lawyers.”
Update: Oral argument is October 9. AEI will hold a panel discussing the case October 5.
