Chronicling the high cost of our legal system
Posts tagged as:
T-shirts tweaking San Francisco transit? “Like so many things, it’s all fun and games, until you get sued” — in this case, a threat of suit from New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority. [SF Weekly] And the MTA has dropped its claims against Greenwich, Ct. blogger Chris Schoenfeld (”Station Stops“), who puts out an iPhone app providing train schedule information [Greenwich Time]
{ 2 comments }
{ 1 comment }
{ 3 comments }
“Throwing orange peels, coffee grounds and grease-stained pizza boxes in the trash will be against the law in San Francisco, and could even lead to a fine.” [San Francisco Chronicle and "Thin Green Line" blog via Coyote] And a Coyote commenter reports from a Connecticut town where
they force us to separate everything. They pick up cans, glass, plastic and newspaper. However, all the other [mandatory recycling including catalogues] must be driven to the dump/recycling center – which conveniently closes by 3pm on weekdays and by noon on Saturday. We spend at least 1.5 hours every week sorting and delivering our recycling. EVERY week.
{ 25 comments }
Ride the Ducks says it has been inviting customers to toot on kazoos for a decade as part of its water-land tours in various cities. Now it is suing competitor Bay Quackers, which pioneered the duck tour concept in San Francisco (and was more recently joined there as a competitor by Ride the Ducks) for infringing its “sound mark”, an “auditory equivalent of a trademark”. [New York Times] [Corrected 2:30 p.m. after reader Kim S. pointed out that I hadn't correctly conveyed the details of which company operated where and when.]
{ 3 comments }
“The San Francisco Zoo agreed Thursday to pay $900,000 to two brothers who survived the fatal attack by an escaped tiger on Christmas Day 2007, sources familiar with the case told The Chronicle.” Earlier here, here, etc.
{ 11 comments }
According to a San Francisco supervisor, a succession of such traumas dating back to childhood predisposed him to the bribery/extortion rap that eventually tripped him up. He drew a maximum 64 month sentence anyway.
{ 2 comments }
The Recorder: “A federal judge turned down a request for more than $2 million in fees and sanctioned a San Francisco plaintiffs lawyer $25,000 for submitting false fee applications in civil rights litigation against FedEx.” Judge Susan Illston wrote that Waukeen McCoy’s “acts of misconduct with regard to the fee petitions are among the most egregious that this court has seen in almost 14 years on the bench.” More: California Civil Justice. Earlier: Nov. 14, 2007 (McCoy’s firm “billed [opponent] Federal Express for 23.5 hours of one of its attorneys’ time over a single day”), and, on the same lawyer, July 10, 2000.
The California state bar has charged San Francisco attorney Philip Kay, famed for sexual harassment lawsuits, “with turning two cases before three San Diego judges into three-ring circuses by repeatedly impugning court orders and caustically accusing the judges of misconduct in front of jurors. Prosecutors also claim Kay entered into an illegal fee-splitting agreement in his most high-profile case — a sexual harassment suit against mega-law firm Baker & McKenzie that in 1994 resulted in a $6.9 million San Francisco jury award for his client, former legal secretary Rena Weeks. (The judgment was later reduced to $3.5 million.)” The title quote is from San Diego judge Joan Weber, and refers to Kay’s conduct in a sexual harassment suit against Ralphs Grocery. (Mike McKee, “Famed Plaintiffs Lawyer Faces Bar Charges Over Conduct”, The Recorder, Dec. 5).
{ 3 comments }
ApartmentRatings.com is a site that invites users to post their opinions about good and bad experiences as renters with particular buildings, complexes and landlords. The owners of two Bay area apartment complexes, Parkmerced in San Francisco and Larkspur Shores in Larkspur, have now sued eighteen unnamed defendants over negative comments such as “Construction noise, poor management, tacky decor, and an indifferent staff”, “I do not think the new management is sincerely trying to improve anything”, “stay far away and never look back,”, “worst place I’ve ever lived”, and “a real dump”. The real estate firms, Parkmerced Investors Properties LLC and Stellar Larkspur Partners LLC, claim libel, tortious interference with contract, and perhaps most creatively violations of the federal Lanham Act (their basis for getting into federal court). The Lanham Act is more usually encountered in complaints of false advertising, but the plaintiffs say it applies here “because Defendants misrepresent the nature, characteristics and qualities of the Apartments”. (Sam Bayard, Citizen Media Law, Nov. 24). According to CalBizLit (Nov. 20):
The two plaintiffs allege that “on information and belief” the posting reviewers included persons who were not tenants, but were employees, agents, etc. of competing apartment house communities. “On information and belief.” That’s often lawyer language for “I got no idea whether it’s true or not, but let’s do some discovery and see what happens.”
San Francisco: “Chris Norberg left a negative review on Yelp after he got into a billing dispute with chiropractor Steven Biegel. Instead of quietly fuming like most people who get bad reviews on Yelp do, Biegel sued Norberg for defamation.” (Consumerist, Nov. 25, via Happy Hospitalist; defendant’s website).
{ 4 comments }
The long-expected suit was filed in federal rather than state court, and one attorney speculates that the reason was to get more suburbanites on the jury panel, on the theory that they will be less hostile to the plaintiffs than San Francisco residents. Federal theory? Well, “Kulbir Dhaliwal contends his federal civil rights were violated because he was deprived the use of his BMW M3, the car the three took to the zoo.”
The suit also accuses Sam Singer, a well-known crisis management spokesman whose firm was retained by the zoo after the attack, of libel and slander.
The Dhaliwals contend Singer and city officials engaged in a smear campaign to suggest the young men were disreputable and had taunted the tiger before the escape.
“There’s no merit to the lawsuit whatsoever,” Singer said. “More importantly, I’d like to remind people that [plaintiff's lawyer Mark] Geragos was the one who said his client, Michael Jackson, was a perfectly normal human being and Scott Peterson was an innocent man. I leave it up to the judgment of the public as to how accurate he is on any of his claims.”
Watch out getting into a fight with a crisis management specialist, they have sharp tongues. (John Coté, “Tiger attack victims file suit in federal court”, San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 13; more Chronicle coverage; earlier).
{ 14 comments }
Many small businesses in the historic and much-visited neighborhood have been hit with ADA complaints, often from the law offices of famed serial ADA filer Thomas Frankovich. (Carol Lloyd, “Surreal estate: ADA accessibility lawsuits causing headaches for small business owners”, San Francisco Chronicle, Jun. 13). “I’ve seen the ADA racket threaten businesses in other towns, and they ended up closing. The owner [of a small chocolate shop that has now laid off three workers] has never gotten a formal complaint from a wheelchair-bound person, except for this suit.” (”SF_Anna”, “North Beach Block Threatened by ADA Suits”, MetBlogs, Aug. 20).
“The family of a 26-year-old man who died two years ago after an off-duty firefighter tried to rescue him from the edge of a roof will receive a financial settlement from The City, after claiming the firefighter was at fault.” Fire Lt. Victor Wyrsch tried to grab the suicidal Nick Torrico from the roof, but Torrico tore himself loose and fell to his death, and now the city’s taxpayers will pay Torrico’s family based on their contention that Wyrsch should have held back. (Beth Winegarner, “San Francisco pays up for failed rescue”, San Francisco Examiner, Aug. 26).
{ 7 comments }
Residents of San Francisco who fail to separate food scraps from general waste “would face fines of up to $1,000 and eventually could have their garbage service stopped”. Many other cities and jurisdictions in the U.S. have made recycling mandatory as to other waste categories, but apparently none has done so with food waste. (John Coté, “S.F. mayor proposes fines for unsorted trash”, San Francisco Chronicle, Aug. 1)(via Ed Morrissey).
{ 11 comments }
When meter maid Mercy Zamora’s cart crashed, she was injured — with such serious and permanent injuries, testified her husband, that she could no longer engage in strenuous or demanding physical activities. Then a defense lawyer introduced a photo showing Zamora with arms thrown over her head in triumph after completing a 10-kilometer race. If you think that spelled an ignominious end to the case, you must be a new reader here: the jury nonetheless “awarded about $1.6 million against Cushman Inc., maker of the cart Zamora was driving, and employer city of San Francisco, which had already settled out.” (Scott Graham, CalLaw “Legal Pad”, Jul. 22; CJAC, Jul. 24).
{ 11 comments }
Under established disabled-rights law, store owners and other business people very seldom have a right to exclude the “service animals” that accompany blind and deaf visitors. Relatively few inconveniences ensue, in part because such animals tend to be few and extremely well trained. However, the idea has begun to catch on that persons disabled in other ways also have a right to the company of assistance animals; California regulators issued such a ruling as to dogs two years ago. Now a rapidly rising number of San Francisco residents are applying for tags for assistance dogs; the city has issued 658 tags for them. “‘The bottom line is that we’re seeing a lot of people come down here with notes from their doctors saying they need a companion dog to improve their quality of life,” said Carl Friedman, director of the city animal control agency. ‘Now we’re seeing a lot of people applying for the tags who have psychological issues.”’ Landlords and restaurants are not allowed to enforce no-dog policies against a registered animal. As for the pets’ required “training”, that “can be done by the owner and can be as simple as teaching the dog to wag a tail and lick a face if that’s what it takes to make someone with a diagnosed depression feel better.” (Rachel Gordon, “‘Assistance dog’ designation opens doors for pooches”, San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 19). We were on to this trend very early: see Jul. 9, 1999.
{ 3 comments }
Point of Law Volokh