• Anyone suing over anything dept.: Kansas City attorney Mary Kay Green sues McCain, Palin, for supposed hate speech against Obama [KC Star, Feral Child, Above the Law; related, my article the other day for City Journal]
• Got $331K from victim fund claiming severe injuries from Pentagon 9/11 attack, yet “kept playing basketball and lacrosse and ran [NYC] marathon in under four hours two months after the attacks” [Maryland Daily Record]
• Krugman claims Fannie/Freddie not big culprits in mortgage meltdown, but Calomiris and Wallison show him wrong [Stuart Taylor, Jr., National Journal; also note this Goldstein/Hall unlabeled opinion piece from McClatchy pushing the Krugman line]
• Government bailout of newspapers? Who’s trying to float this idea, anyway? [Bercovici/Portfolio via Romenesko] Update: maybe this?
• Colluded with chiropractor to generate bills for imaginary treatment, then pocketed clients’ insurance settlements without telling them [Quincy, Mass., Patriot-Ledger; Bruce Namenson sentenced to 5 years and "cannot practice law for at least 10 years after he gets out of jail"]
• Ontario: “Killer awarded $6K over wrong shoes in prison” [National Post]
• “Is there any doubt that Lucy grew up to be a lawyer?” [Above the Law on Doyle Reports, Judge Robertson ruling in patent case]
• Jury hits Jersey City, N.J. rheumatologist with $400K verdict (including $200K punitives) for not hiring sign language interpreter at his own expense for deaf patient [NJLJ, Krauss @ PoL]

• Eeeeeeuw: House of Meats employees show reporter “they have all ten of their fingers” after customer reports human digit in her dish of oxtails [BayNews 9 Tampa]
• Press keeps digging into Joe Biden ties to asbestos bar [American Lawyer, more links in PoL roundup]
• Black eye for big law site FindLaw with reports that it’s been selling law firms links in editorial material, a practice sure to raise Google wrath [Oilman, Kevin O'Keefe/Real Lawyers Have Blogs, ABA Journal, Search Engine Land, National Post] More: WSJ on FindLaw’s denial; O’Keefe.
• Overlawyered favorite Fred Baron, of Rielle Hunter generosity, much in evidence at Democratic convention [Dallas Morning News, ABC News] Texas trial lawyer Steve Susman is only individual lawyer listed as convention sponsor [AmLaw Daily, scroll]
• As if legislative expansion of the Americans with Disabilities Act weren’t worry enough, 1,000 pages of new DoJ regulations will add billions in costs, as by requiring that 50 percent of miniature golf holes be wheelchair-accessible [Las Vegas Review-Journal via ABA Journal]
• “Bond reduced for two fen-phen attorneys” in Kentucky [Lexington Herald-Leader, more]
• Cozen O’Connor and insurers dealt big setback as Second Circuit’s Judge Jacobs rules they can’t sue Saudi government over 9/11 [Philadelphia Inquirer, more; related on FOIA, Legal Intelligencer; earlier here and here]
• Jury awards $500,000 in malpractice suit against D.C.-based plaintiffs’ firm Cohen Milstein Hausfeld & Toll [Legal Times]
• Australia: “A serial protester who injured a policewoman during the G20 riots wants her conviction overturned so she can still practise as a lawyer.” [Melbourne Herald Sun, Julia Dehm]

“A federal judge in Manhattan took the unusual step on Thursday of overturning settlements in four lawsuits filed on behalf of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, saying the firm that negotiated the deals was seeking excessive legal fees and that the settlement amounts themselves were unreasonable.” Judge Alvin Hellerstein declared that to give the Maryland-based firm, Azrael, Gann & Franz $7 million for representing four Pentagon workers’ families “would reflect a very large windfall,” given that the firm’s “entire strategy seems to have been to coast on the work of others.” Hellerstein also noted that the settlement figures, averaging $7 million per victim, seemed out of line with earlier 9/11 awards for the families of modest wage earners. (Benjamin Weiser, “Judge Overturns Accords in 4 Suits by 9/11 Victims”, New York Times, Jul. 26). More: David Giacalone.

• Monday’s polar bear panel at AEI is a panel about the law of polar bears and the effect of the FWS decision to list them as threatened, rather than a panel featuring polar bears. So no fish will be served. Volokh’s Jonathan Adler will be there, though. [Volokh; AEI]
• Limiting lawsuit abuses lowers costs from litigation, creates jobs in long run. [Engler & McQuillan @ Detroit News]
• HBO to small businesses: prepositions are okay, but conjunctions will lead to injunctions. [Baltimore Sun]
• A one-sided love letter to Cozen O’Connor in the Philadelphia Inquirer over its September 11 litigation is a bit too revealing about its deep-pocket searches: “Cozen lawyers also had to be sure that such a defendant made financial sense, for the firm and its clients.” Culpability, of course, isn’t in the equation; and the newspaper story fails to account for the public-policy implications of having trial lawyers stepping on foreign policy. [Philadelphia Inquirer]
• Life imitates “The Office”: law firm offers “love contracts” for dating workers. [ABA Journal]
• More evidence of FDA overwarning, even when the science and law does not justify it. [Kyle Sampson @ Product Liability Law 360]
• Business tries to bully small website with litigation; small website successfully fights back. [CL&P Blog]
• “[Ron] Paul accomplished the one thing he’s always been good at: using political appeals to get people to send money. I don’t feel freer.” [Henley via Kirkendall]
• “It’s infuriating how all three presidential candidates prattle on about the need to fight global warming while also complaining about the high price of gasoline.” [Postrel]
• Story on Vioxx settlement and Merck winning reversals heavily quotes me. [Product Liability Law 360 ($)]

Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee posed additional questions to me about my congressional testimony on the legislation to expand the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund to cover Ground Zero dust litigation and “psychological injury.” I have posted my answers on line.

I have an op-ed in today’s New York Sun on the affirmance of the “Port Authority is 68% responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center car bomb” verdict. Earlier.

In the wake of the September 11 bombings, Congress established a Victims Compensation Fund and limited liability for a number of deep-pockets who were also victimized by the attacks. A number of academics questioned that it was even conceivable that innocent third parties could be held liable for a terrorist attack. Anthony J. Sebok, What’s Law Got to Do With It? Designing Compensation Schemes in the Shadow of the Tort System, 53 DEPAUL L. REV. 901, 917 (2003); RICHARD A. NAGAREDA, MASS TORTS IN A WORLD OF SETTLEMENT 104 (2007); Peter Schuck, Special Dispensation, AM. LAWYER (June 2004); see also LLOYD DIXON AND RACHEL KAGANOFF STERN, COMPENSATION FOR LOSSES FROM THE 9/11 ATTACKS (RAND Institute for Civil Justice 2004).

Overlawyered readers knew better, because they had seen the Port Authority get socked with a $1.8 billion verdict (Oct. 27, 2005; Oct. 29, 2005; Nov. 2, 2005) after being held 68% responsible for the deliberate bombing of the World Trade Center by terrorists in 1993. The Port Authority appealed the absurd ruling, but the Appellate Division has affirmed unanimously (via) since, after all, such absurdities are central to the modern tort regime and thus not “legal error” to abandon the centuries-old concept of intervening causation. As I noted in a related Wall Street Journal editorial, contingent-fee attorneys’ incentives are not to seek out the truth behind wrongdoing, but to construct a narrative that will hold the deepest pocket the most responsible, regardless of the effect on justice. This distortion has worked its way into popular culture; a survey of family members of September 11 decedents found that the median respondent held the terrorists only 30% responsible for losses. Gillian Hadfield, Framing the Choice between Cash and the Courthouse: Experiences with the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund, 42 L. & SOC. R. __ (forthcoming 2008). See also my House testimony on the expansion of the 9/11 Fund.

Longtime Overlawyered readers may remember my tut-tutting the original proprietor of the Bizarro-Overlawyered site for misrepresenting a Southern District of New York opinion by claiming that its disposition of a Rule 12(b)(6) motion was an affirmative finding of fact that Christine Todd Whitman had acted improperly in the wake of the September 11 attacks. (In fact, all the court did was rule that the case could go forward on the allegations of the plaintiffs’ complaint.) The Second Circuit has now spanked the district court for going even that far, and tossed the entire case, ruling that this was not an appropriate inquiry for the judicial branch, given the risk that officials will be deterred from making public statements if they could be held liable for allegedly making a mistake. Good analysis of Benzman v. Whitman by Stephen Bergstein via Bashman.

The hearing is now on-line (I’m at the 55:18 mark; Maxine Waters is at the 2:10:20 mark), as is my written testimony.

Things I should’ve said: that a dictator did a good job in the past hardly means that a dictatorship is a good idea, even if you can reappoint the same dictator. But one can be dumbfounded by the stupidity of some questions.

Earlier: April 1 and March 31.

Speaking of Ground Zero dust lawsuits, I will be testifying Tuesday morning about H.R. 3543’s proposal to reopen the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund to potentially hundreds of thousands of new claimants.

(Bumped Tuesday with SSRN link to testimony.)

The families of 9/11 victims who refused the Feinberg fund results and demanded more through lawsuits piously reported repeatedly that it wasn’t about the money, that they just wanted to publicize the truth in their lawsuits against fellow victims such as the airlines and airports and multiple other deep pockets. Now that several cases have settled—and the plaintiffs have agreed to confidentiality clauses—Shaun Mullen and Ed Morrissey suggest that it was about the money after all.

“Laura Balemian, whose husband Edward J. Mardovich died in the World Trade Center, received one of the largest awards paid out by the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund: $6.7 million. But she in turn paid out what is almost certainly the highest legal fee. While the vast majority of victims were represented before the fund pro bono or for a nominal fee, Balemian paid her lawyer, Thomas J. Troiano, a one-third contingent fee, or over $2 million.” In an affidavit, 9/11 fund special master Kenneth Feinberg calls Troiano’s fee “shocking and unconscionable”, and says that fund guidelines recommend that attorney fees be kept under 5 percent of family recoveries; Troiano, however, says Mrs. Balemian knew what she was getting into and that his efforts produced outstanding results. (Anthony Lin, “Attorney’s $2 Million 9/11 Fee Called ‘Shocking, Unconscionable’”, New York Law Journal, Aug. 29; Alfonso A. Castillo, “9/11 widow battles over attorney’s fee”, Newsday, Sept. 1; MyShingle, Aug. 28).

Update: Story also covered in this American Justice Partnership publication (PDF).

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).

The plaintiffs don’t seem to have fully factored in the principle of foreign sovereign immunity, which leaves it to the democratically elected executive branch, rather than to the courts, to decide how to handle grievances against other nation’s governments. (Mark Hamblett, “Saudi Charity Dropped From Suit Over Sept. 11 Attacks”, New York Law Journal, Sept. 28). See Sept. 26 and Nov. 6, 2004.

Even Ken Feinberg, the man who ran it, acknowledges as much. Must-read column from Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby (”Why the 9/11 fund was a mistake”, Sept. 27). One remarkable passage among many:

“You would get situations like this,” Feinberg said. ” `Mr. Feinberg, I’m the brother of the victim. Don’t let my sister get a nickel. The victim hated his sister, trust me.’ Then the sister comes in. `Is my brother spreading rumors. . .? My [deceased] brother and I loved each other.’

“Or: `Mr. Feinberg, I’m the biological parent of my son who was killed. Don’t you dare give the fiancee any money. That marriage was never going to take place.’ Then the fiancee comes in. `We were going to be married on October 11th.’ And you go back to the biological parent. `They were going to be married October 11th. You threw a shower for them. You said you were gaining a daughter, not losing a son.’ `Yeah, but on Sept. 10, my son told me it was off.’ “

Even though the 9/11 commission (debunking certain widely circulated stories to the contrary) concluded that the government of Saudi Arabia did not fund al-Qaeda, several institutional victims of the terrorist attacks, including Cantor Fitzgerald Securities and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, recently filed suit against a long list of foreign entities including the Saudi government and various financial institutions for their alleged role in the attacks (Larry Neumeister, “Port Authority to Join Suit Against Saudi Arabia Over 9/11 Attack”, AP/Law.com, Sept. 13). The U.S. government has been highly critical of the freelance use of private litigation to second-guess the state of U.S.-Saudi relations, which has in no way deterred colorful asbestos-tobacco zillionaire Ron Motley from setting up his own mini-CIA-cum-State-Department-for-profit toward that end (Jennifer Senior, “Intruders in the House of Saud, Part II: A Nation Unto Himself”, New York Times Magazine, Mar. 14)(see Jul. 11, 2003). And in the New York Observer, Nina Burleigh in February profiled attorney Brian Alexander of the prominent plaintiff’s air-crash firm of Kreindler & Kreindler, who had “already filed a suit — on behalf of the families of more than 1,000 9/11 families?against a list of foreign entities hundreds of pages long.” (”Air Disasters, Legal Fees And Justice for the Victims”, New York Observer, Feb. 23).

“The million-dollar federal payments that Congress designed to help the nearly 3,000 families of people killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have sparked feuds within hundreds of the families.” Stepfamilies, domestic partners, and surprise claimants asserting previously unsuspected overseas marital or blood relationships have all gotten into bitter disputes. Understatement alert: “When money is involved, there’s even more incentive to come forward,” says a NYC court official. (Martin Kasindorf, USA Today, Jan. 19). See Sept. 11.

“Say what you like about Osama bin Laden. He’s done wonders for the defamation bar,” says a British barrister. A group of wealthy Saudi businessmen are engaging in “libel tourism,” suing in British courts to silence American critics. British libel law, unburdened by the First Amendment, puts the burden on defendants to prove that their stories are true; the threat of libel suits often acts to deter journalistic inquiries, but now suits are being aimed at American publishers. The Wall Street Journal faces two lawsuits for a February 2002 report on Saudi support for terror that was reprinted in its European edition. (Michael Isikoff & Mark Hosenball, “Libel Tourism”, Newsweek Web, Oct. 22). (via Postrel)