- Unsafe at any read: new Ralph Nader novel panned by Chris Hayes, Washington editor of The Nation [Barnes and Noble Review via Suderman, Reason]
- Microsoft says “most, if not all” customer data from T-Mobile Sidekick smartphones has been recovered, but class action lawyers say they’re undeterred [Seattle P-I]
- Sue them all and sort things out later? Lawsuit over Air France Airbus crash off coast of Brazil names long list of aerospace suppliers as defendants [Reuters]
- “No cash for this clunker”: opposition mounts to proposal for Massachusetts public law school [Boston Herald editorial via Legal Blog Watch, earlier link roundup at Point of Law]
- Ralph Lauren experiences Streisand Effect over skinny-model nastygram [Althouse, earlier]
- High-profile L.A. plaintiff’s lawyer Walter Lack speaks under questioning about role in Nicaraguan banana-worker suit against Dole [Recorder, earlier, background] And: “Dole on a Roll: Court Declines to Enforce $97M Judgment” [WSJ Law Blog, Bloomberg]
- Miller-Jenkins lesbian custody case, much meddled in by conservative religious groups, recalls the ways divorced dads get cut out of their kids’ lives [Glenn Sacks/Ned Holstein via Amy Alkon, background]
- Daniel Kalder speculates on why the New York Times editorially “purred with approval” of the new FTC blogger regulations in such an “impressively superficial” way [Guardian Books Blog]. More on FTC’s semi-backtracking on the controversy: Media Bistro “Galleycat”, Publisher’s Weekly, Galleysmith. And having been hoping for ages to get a link some day from blogging legend Jason Kottke, this one will go in the souvenir file [Kottke.org]
Tagged as:
aviation,
banana pesticide litigation fraud,
cellphones,
child custody,
class actions,
FTC endorsement rules,
Microsoft,
Miller-Jenkins case,
Ralph Nader,
shotgun defendant selection,
Streisand effect
Medford, Mass.: 14-year-old Ashley Burns was performing an airborne role in a cheerleading routine when she fell and fatally ruptured her spleen. Now her mother is suing the gym where it happened, two accrediting organizations (the U.S. All Star Federation for Cheer and Dance Teams, and the American Association of Cheerleading Coaches and Administrators) and other defendants. (Donna Goodison, “Mom files lawsuit in cheerleader’s ’05 death”, Boston Herald, Oct. 21).
Tagged as:
cheerleading,
Massachusetts,
shotgun defendant selection,
sports
The (genuine) International Olympic Committee and other defendants should be made to pay, according to Texas-based class-action lawyer, Jim Moriarty, who wants “millions of dollars” for 400 victims worldwide. “The lawyer alleges the IOC was aware beijingticketing.com was operating with trademarked Olympic symbols emblazoned on the site,” but failed to act speedily enough or effectively in getting the impostor site shut down. (”Olympic ticket scam: class action”, Sydney Morning Herald, Sept. 23).
Tagged as:
Australia,
class actions,
shotgun defendant selection,
sports,
trademarks
- Another compilation of the hundred best law blogs, with a familiar name among the nine “general” picks, so thanks for that ["Criminal Justice Degrees Guide" via ABA Journal]
- Europe has a transnational association of personal injury lawyers, funded by the EU, but with no wheeler-dealer, masters-of-the-universe vibe in evidence [PoL]
- Delta wasn’t liable in Kentucky Comair crash, but some plaintiffs sued it anyway in what their lawyer describes as an “abundance of caution” — that’s a diplomatic way to put it [Aero-News Net; link fixed now]
- U.K.: Mom told she’d need to pass criminal record check before being allowed to take her own son to school [Telegraph]
- Regular coverage of the litigious exploits of delusional inmate Jonathan Lee Riches, if you’ve got the stomach for them [Dreadnaught blog]
- Federal Circuit reverses $85 million infringement verdict won by Raymond Niro, blasted by critics as original “patent troll” [AmLaw Daily]
- “Determined to defeat lawsuits over addiction, the casino industry is funding research at a Harvard-affiliated lab.” [Salon]
- Hired through nepotism by in-laws, then fired after divorce, sues on grounds of “marital status discrimination” [eight years ago on Overlawyered]
Tagged as:
accolades,
airlines,
child protection,
compulsive gambling,
Europe,
Jonathan Lee Riches,
patent trolls,
Raymond Niro,
shotgun defendant selection,
United Kingdom
Sealed Air makes polyethylene foam for packaging material. The Great White plaintiffs allege that polyethylene foam in the soundproofing was part of the reason the Rhode Island Station nightclub fire spread so fast, killing 100–though they have no evidence that Sealed Air manufactured the foam in the club, not to mention the fact that the packing foam was never intended to be used as building material. Not to worry: with joint and several liability in Rhode Island, Sealed Air faced billions of dollars of potential liability because all of the other deep pockets (dozens of defendants ranging from a radio station to four other foam manufacturers to Anheuser-Busch to the bus that transported the band to the concert to a television station that covered the fire) have settled, Sealed Air couldn’t risk being held even 1% liable, especially given that at a trial plaintiffs would have no incentive to blame empty-chair or empty-pocket or settling defendants. Sealed Air will pay $25 million in protection money. (AP; Providence Journal; TortsProf). The miscarriage of justice continues, but the remaining defendants are apparently judgment-proof.
Tagged as:
deep pocket,
fires,
legal extortion,
Rhode Island,
Rhode Island Station nightclub fire,
shotgun defendant selection
Filling in a detail readers wondered about before, on why Little League was named as a defendant: “The game in which Steven Domalewski sustained the injury was a Police Athletic League contest rather than a Little League event. Attorney Ernest Fronzuto countered that Little League Baseball officially approved the bat and by its actions led players, coaches and parents to believe the bat was safe for play among 10-, 11- and 12-year-olds.” (Bob Condor, “Living Well: Youth baseball injury stats: Ouch!”, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Jun. 1).
Tagged as:
baseball,
baseball bats,
deep pocket,
Little League,
shotgun defendant selection
We wrote about this lawsuit when it was first filed in 2006, and were curious what was up with it. Bentey flunked St. Thomas U Law School; he then retained an attorney, Michael Lombardi, to sue numerous defendants alleging that it was consumer fraud for St. Thomas to admit him in the first place and seeking an injunction over Bentey’s contracts grade, suggesting a second person who should’ve flunked law school. The case was transferred from New Jersey to the Southern District of Florida in December 2006, and the multiple defendants filed a joint motion to dismiss in March 2007. The parties then apparently agreed that Bentey would voluntarily dismiss his case in April 2007; the terms of the settlement were not publicly discussed, but I’d be surprised if they weren’t simply a walk-away.
A Thomas Bentey who lives in New Jersey has a public Facebook page, though we make no representation that it’s the same Thomas Bentey.
Tagged as:
law schools,
personal responsibility,
shotgun defendant selection
One of the 16 other physicians hit in the “shotgun” pleading reports that the process was neither easy nor painless nor without its lingering costs to the present day. (Mitchell S. Cappell, “A baseless malpractice suit still cost me”, Medical Economics, Feb. 1)(via KevinMD).
Tagged as:
medical,
shotgun defendant selection
A federal judge has rebuked a large Minnesota personal-injury law firm that, even before rescuers had emerged from the treacherous waters, had petitioned for access to the I-35W site for three attorneys and two expert witnesses. And Democrat-Farmer-Labor State Rep. Ryan Winkler has suggested establishing a public compensation fund, along the lines of the 9/11 fund, for victims who agree not to sue:
The legal spectacle about to play out threatens to drag on for years and impose huge costs on some defendants.
In the future, as Winkler has pointed out, even the largest contractors may hesitate to work on Minnesota’s riskiest projects: repairs to crumbling infrastructure. “If engineers and constructors are scared away from bidding,” he warns, “it will be a long time before our infrastructure is adequate and safe.”
(Katherine Kersten, “After I-35W bridge collapse, lawyers promptly pounced”, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Sept. 2). Earlier: Aug. 9, Aug. 2.
Tagged as:
chasing clients,
Minnesota,
roads and streets,
shotgun defendant selection
Thomas Joseph Bentey flunked out of St. Thomas University School of Law of Miami, and claims it was a conspiracy of the school to admit students it knew would flunk out, and wants his tuition and room and board back (as well as damages for lost wages and “embarrassment”). (The complaint also complains that Bentey’s mother called the law school, but that it refused to review his C grade in Contracts II, and seeks an injunction for a review of the grade.) The attorneys seek class action status, which is frivolous on its face, because the individualized issue of whether a St. Thomas student flunked out because of their own underachieving would clearly predominate any group inquiry even if the conspiracy theory had any basis in rationality. One might also make some adverse inferences about Bentey’s attorney, Michael Lombardi of Lombardi & Lombardi, for coming up with such a cockamamie theory of recovery that will only result in more embarrassment for his client, but he is a “Super Lawyer.” Other defendants in the shotgun complaint include the ABA and the Department of Education, suggesting hopes for a number of nuisance settlements. (Bentey v. St. Thomas University School of Law, No. 2:06-cv-03463-PGS-RJH (D.N.J.); Leigh Jones, “Law School Sued for Expelling Students”, National Law Journal, Sep. 1).
Update: Orin Kerr comments at the VC blog.
Tagged as:
class actions,
law schools,
personal responsibility,
shotgun defendant selection
The New Jersey court’s opinion yesterday in Verni v. Harry M. Stevens ordered a new trial because of the unfairly prejudicial evidence introduced at trial. (Laura Mansnerus, “Court Overturns Jury Award Against Stadium Concessionaire”, NY Times, Aug. 4; Kibret Markos, “Paralyzed Cliffside girl may have to go through new trial”, NorthJersey.com, Aug. 4).
Plaintiffs sought to blame a drunk-driving accident several hours after a Giants game on stadium beer vendors, a feat eased when the drunk driver, Daniel Lanzano, settled with plaintiffs and changed his testimony to be consistent with their theory of the case. Lanzano drank at two go-go bars after the game. The court also noted the failure of the jury to be instructed to consider the relative liability of other settling parties that the plaintiffs had sued in a shotgun complaint, including the NFL, the Giants, Toyota, and Michael Holder, who committed the sin of drinking with Lanzano that day. We had provided extensive coverage from the beginnings of the suit: Oct. 10, 2003; Jan. 21, 2005; a must-read Feb. 2, 2005 post; Jun. 6.
Update: another aspect of the appellate court opinion is that it recognized corporate boundaries. The trial court sought to hold Aramark liable for alleged negligence of its subsidiaries.
Tagged as:
alcohol,
Aramark,
deep pocket,
New Jersey,
shotgun defendant selection,
third party liability for crime,
Toyota
In the comments section at Sebastian Holsclaw’s, following a long discussion of the recent Mello-Studdert study on medical malpractice, talk turns to the practice of naming every doctor in the vicinity as a defendant when filing a medical liability claim. A couple of trial lawyer advocates defend that unsavory practice, and Holsclaw responds (via Rovito):
The problem is that extraneous defendants are often not dropped quickly. In many complex cases you can’t possibly get through the discovery phases without plunking down huge amounts of money. Maybe I’ve just been remarkably unlucky, but when I’ve worked on the defense side the vast majority of cases involved defending people who were just tack-on defendants. In all of these cases $30-60,000 (in fees) was spent before the defendants could get out of the case. Often an additional sum (usually in the $5-10,000 range) was paid to stop the bleeding even though everyone (including/especially the plaintiff’s attorney) that the defendant would never be found liable. One plaintiff’s attorney was well known to push for largish settlements from innocent parties — if you refused he would drag you until the day of trial (throwing up just enough smoke to avoid summary judgment) and then drop you without comment on the morning of the trial (after you had incurred all the expense of expert retention, expert testing and all of the trial preparation). It is the kind of thing that gives lawyers a bad name, but it happens in every city.
(cross-posted from Point of Law).
Tagged as:
medical,
shotgun defendant selection
Why sue every physician on the patient’s chart? One reason, via KevinMD (May 6): “Plaintiffs’ lawyers love it when physicians point fingers at each other. They can just sit back and watch the doctors destroy each other.” (Berkeley Rice, “Watch out for this malpractice trap!”, Medical Economics, May 5).
Tagged as:
medical,
shotgun defendant selection
Not only that, but she assumed the whirring video cameras were just for onlookers’ personal use. Certainly she wasn’t expecting the spring break footage to turn up in commercially available compilations. So Monica Pippin is now extracting legal settlements from entities including Playboy and Anheuser-Busch; however, the Daytona Beach hotel at which the contest took place objects to being sued on the grounds that it “had no role in producing or distributing the videos and did not profit from them”. (Kevin Graham, “Lawsuit says video exploits teen’s naivete”, St. Petersburg Times, Apr. 28). Similar: Sept. 28-30, 2001; Mar. 6-7, 2002.
Tagged as:
Anheuser-Busch,
child protection,
deep pocket,
Florida,
movies film and videos,
shotgun defendant selection
Today’s W$J has an editorial about the ill consequences of the trend in recent years for lawyers prosecuting asbestos and silicosis cases to add makers of commonly used industrial masks and respirators as defendants in their suits:
The Coalition for Breathing Safety, an industry group, reports that between 2000 and 2004 plaintiffs attorneys filed more than 326,000 claims against its five members. Some of these are asbestos-related, although the recent deluge has been all silicosis. One manufacturer (which prefers not to be named lest it become a bigger target) says that prior to 2002 it faced about 200 silicosis claims a year. In 2003-4, it got hit with 29,000….The industry coalition estimates its members have spent the equivalent of 90% of their 2004 net income fighting suits in recent years.
The suits have fared poorly — none of the respirator makers have lost a case in court — but the making of industrial respirators and masks is a low-margin line of business, and companies that invest heavily in the business may simply be buying themselves legal risk. And now comes the scare over avian flu:
Respirator manufacturers are still going strong overseas, but the U.S. could find itself unable to purchase these products in a crisis. Worried about a possible flu pandemic, many governments are snapping up masks; France is acquiring 685 million. In previous disease scares (say, China and SARS), countries have blocked mask exports. Local U.S. governments and hospitals are already having a hard time finding supplies.
It might be added that the plight of respirator makers is attributable in large part to the economics of what has been called the shotgun approach to defendant-naming. It is very unlikely that lawyers would have filed 300,000 claims against mask makers, or anything approaching that number, if each suit had to be filed as a freestanding matter. However, it costs very little to add 3M or another respirator defendant when a case is already been judged to be worth filing against other, more vulnerable defendants. For more on the mask litigation, see Sept. 15, 2004 and Jan. 22, 2005. More: Point of Law, May 9.
Tagged as:
asbestos,
hospitals,
product liability,
shotgun defendant selection,
silicosis
In 2003, a terrible fire in a Providence night club killed a hundred people and injured many more. The fire apparently started when Great White’s (the live band) pyrotechnics ignited soundproofing foam around the stage. The victims initially filed suit against “four dozen defendants, include club owners Jeffrey and Michael Derderian and former Great White tour manager Daniel Biechele.” Biechele recently plead guilty to a hundred counts of involuntary manslaughter for igniting the pyrotechnics, and the club owners are fighting the same charges.
Now, as the statutory deadline (3 years apparently in Rhode Island) for new suits approaches, and perhaps given the disappointing depth of the current defendants’ pockets, the victims and their families have filed suit against “dozens” of others in the fire. The suit now names individual members of the band, the company that distributed the acoustic foam, and even Home Depot, for not “warning of the potential hazards” of the insulation they sold the club, despite the fact that the insulation Home Depot sold “is different from the foam ignited by the pyrotechnics”. (Eric Tucker, “New complaint filed in nightclub fire case”, Houston Chronicle, Feb 15)
Tagged as:
deep pocket,
fires,
Rhode Island,
Rhode Island Station nightclub fire,
shotgun defendant selection
