Stuart Taylor agrees that the courts are right to rebuke some of the Bush administration’s aggressive war-powers claims, but that doesn’t make it anything other than a “deeply misguided” notion to try its leaders for supposed “war crimes”, let alone encourage other countries to snatch traveling U.S. ex-officials for trial there (”Our Leaders Are Not War Criminals”, National Journal, Jun. 28).

One of the most dedicated enthusiasts for such trials is attorney/controversialist Scott Horton, who writes at Harper’s and Balkinization and is an adjunct faculty member at Columbia Law School; after noticing how often Horton’s output seemed to be in need of fact-checking, I spent a few minutes just for the fun of it stringing together a sampling of such instances which appears here (scroll).

Stuart Taylor Jr. arraigns the New York Times for the many weaknesses of the recent article by Duff Wilson and Jonathan Glater which sought to rehabilitate the prosecution’s crumbling case. “The Times still seems bent on advancing its race-sex-class ideological agenda, even at the cost of ruining the lives of three young men who it has reason to know are very probably innocent.” (Slate, “Witness for the Prosecution?”, Aug. 29). Earlier: Aug. 25, Jun. 24, etc.

Thomas Sowell nominates the controversy’s low point:

According to Newsweek, the young man at NCCU [North Carolina Central University] said that he wanted to see the Duke students prosecuted, “whether it happened or not. It would be justice for things that happened in the past.”

(”The Biggest Scandal in the Duke University Rape Case”, syndicated/Capitalism Magazine, May 17). The comment was hardly representative of anyone’s views but the one student’s, though, contends John Schwade in the Durham News (”Article opts to sensationalize with its color commentary”, Apr. 29). More: Dr. Helen, Apr. 22. Stuart Taylor Jr. has a powerful column on the subject which however is online only to National Journal/The Atlantic subscribers (”An Outrageous Rush to Judgment”, May 2). And guess who’s involved himself in the case, as an advisor to the complainant’s family? None other than ace money-extractor Willie Gary, long familiar to readers of this site (Wendy McElroy, “Is ‘Duke’ Case Headed to Civil Court?”, FoxNews.com, May 16).

I’ve been mostly out of commission owing to one of the bugs that’s been going around, so although there are a lot of great items in the pipeline, I expect they’ll have to wait a bit. Ted will be posting, though.

In the mean time, for readers who followed Stuart Taylor’s refutation (posted here Jan. 19, with comment) of Stephanie Mencimer’s tendentious Washington Monthly article of last October, the Washington Monthly has at length notified its online readers of Taylor’s response, and posted a (to me, very lame) defense by Mencimer of her article (Feb. 15).

Over the past year journalist Stephanie Mencimer, a frequent contributor to such publications as Mother Jones and the Washington Monthly, has written a series of articles intended to rebut what she calls “The Myth of the Frivolous Lawsuit”. In the course of these articles, Mencimer assails a wide range of writers, publications and institutions that have taken a visible public role criticizing excessive litigation, myself and this site included. Her research often seems to consist of little but the uncritical recycling of allegations circulated by the Litigation Lobby, some of them fifteen or twenty years old and many of them both baldly inaccurate and nastily ad hominem in tone.

I don’t make it a practice to respond to Mencimer’s writings, but the distinguished legal journalist Stuart Taylor, Jr., who writes an influential column for National Journal and contributes to Newsweek, was outraged by her attacks on his work in an article she wrote for the October Washington Monthly and took the time to craft a lengthy, devastating point-by-point rebuttal. He sent it on December 16 to the editors of the Washington Monthly including editor-in-chief Paul Glastris.

Remarkably, in the month since then, the Washington Monthly editors have neither posted the letter for their readers’ benefit nor made any attempt to rebut it. Now Taylor has generously consented to let me post his letter here. Readers can draw their own conclusions about how much of Mencimer’s credibility is left standing after his thorough dissection — and about what it means for the Washington Monthly’s reputation that it seems intent on stonewalling on her behalf. Update Feb. 16: Washington Monthly and Mencimer reply.

He reviews Edwards’s autobiography, Four Trials, which “provides a window into the faux-populist pretenses and other flaws of the system that made this millworker’s son into a multimillionaire.” Aside from Edwards’s cerebral palsy wins, much discussed in this space, there was the punitive damages award he obtained after a truck crash, against the trucking company for having paid its drivers by the mile: the justice of this $4 million award is open to much question as a matter of blame-fixing, aside from which it “ultimately came out of the pockets of the same ordinary, hardworking Americans whose champion he purports to be — and a big chunk of it went into the pockets of John Edwards. … Edwards’s business-bashing, anti-free-trade, us-against-them campaign rhetoric, unlike John Kerry’s, seems sincere. Edwards sounds as if he believes in his bones that behind every misfortune there must be a wealthy villain.” (Stuart Taylor, Jr., “John Edwards: The Lawsuit Industry Puts Its Best Face Forward”, National Journal/The Atlantic, Feb. 25).

Steve Bainbridge, noting Edwards’s jobs-jobs-jobs economic rhetoric, wonders whether the Senator pauses to worry about certain jobs destroyed by some of his main backers (Feb. 25). Edwards’s latest fund-raiser in Houston was hosted by John O’Quinn, who as the impresario of the breast implant litigation that bankrupted Dow Corning knows a thing or two about destroying jobs (Rachel Graves, “Fund-raisers bring Edwards to town”, Houston Chronicle, Feb. 24; Ken Herman, “The 2004 Election”, Cox/Palm Beach Post, Feb. 25). And on the Edwards-and-cerebral-palsy controversy that we and several other webloggers were pursuing earlier this month, Franco Castalone (The LitiGator) has added a pair of posts clarifying and extending his earlier comments, the first of which (Feb. 15) relays a wealth of information about no-fault birth injury compensation programs and the litigation they would replace, and the second of which (Feb. 16) makes some valuable points about civility in disagreement, and also says generous things about this site.

As mentioned in our last post, Stuart Taylor, Jr. has consented to let us reprint his point-by-point rebuttal to ATLA’s attack on his Dec. 15 Newsweek cover story “Lawsuit Hell” (see Dec. 8, Dec. 12, Dec. 15). We’ve split it into two posts of which this is the second.

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Newsweek, as is typical for a newsweekly, published only a terse editorial response (see previous post) to the litigation lobby’s concerted attack on its reporting. However, Stuart Taylor, Jr., the distinguished veteran journalist who (with Evan Thomas) was principal author of the feature, has kindly consented to let us reprint his more detailed point-by-point rebuttal to ATLA’s official gripe catalogue, published under the title “Spin or Facts? A Look Behind Newsweek’s Series ‘Lawsuit Hell’“. Because of the length of Taylor’s response, we’ve split it into two posts, the first responding to the first six points of ATLA’s critique and the second responding to the rest. Check out in particular, under heading #6, ATLA’s false (and remarkably brazen) assertion that the Tillinghast study’s $233 billion estimate of the cost of the liability insurance sector includes “the cost of the entire property/casualty insurance industry” and in particular the cost of hurricanes and similar damage. (It doesn’t.)

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Newsweek policy states that the “My Turn” reader-submitted essays should not be “framed as a response to a Newsweek story”, but the December 22 issue features precisely such a piece from Linda McDougal. The article includes almost verbatim the half-facts from ATLA’s press packet that we refuted earlier (see Dec. 12).

A final irony: McDougal concludes her essay with “I also know that if all those who want to restrict the legal rights of ordinary citizens have their way, I wouldn’t have waited seven months for an apology from the doctors, which I got only after my story became public. I would have waited forever.” I’ll leave aside the fact that many ordinary citizens are victims of societally harmful tort lawsuits (see, e.g., Feb. 7, 2000). Has McDougal considered that perhaps the reason that the doctors waited to apologize for a mistaken mastectomy until after she went public was because they were afraid that the apology would be used against them in a lawsuit? (Linda McDougal, “My Turn: I Trust Juries?and Americans Like You”, Newsweek, Dec. 22).

The “Civil Wars” author, Stuart Taylor, was confronted with a series of questions pulled from the same ATLA press release McDougal used, and responded to them in an on-line chat. (Stuart S. Taylor, MSNBC on-line chat, Dec. 11).

Sidenote: we covered a lawsuit of a Pennsylvania parents who sued their school board because their 13-year-old daughter was suspended for a consensual sex act on a school bus (see Sep. 19). Newsweek, in its story, mentioned a superficially similar Kentucky case that involved an alleged sexual assault of a 14-year-old on a school bus, resulting in criticism from McDougal and ATLA, but also going to show that Newsweek only scratched the surface of the problem by dint of its space-limited selections for the story.

The American Trial Lawyers Association is engaging in a campaign to discredit the recent Newsweek cover story (see Dec. 8) on litigation abuses. Their “fact sheet” is riddled with half-truths, however.

For example, ATLA’s response to Newsweek’s anecdote about the Reverend Singleton is “no cause of action for clergy malpractice (ie: negligent counseling) exists in South Carolina.” The response is disingenuous: first, plaintiffs’ attorneys regularly bring lawsuits to try to create a cause of action for clergy malpractice (see, e.g., this ATLA member law firm that advertises that it has “recover[ed] large verdicts and substantial settlements” in clergy malpractice cases; perhaps your Yellow Pages has a similar ad?); while courts have generally rejected “clergy malpractice”, they frequently let identical causes of action go forward under a “breach of fiduciary trust” theory. (Gerald J. Russello, “New Jersey Supreme Court Recognizes Tort Action Against Clergy”, Federalist Society, Spring 1998). Second, Rev. Singleton spoke of the fear of being sued for inappropriate contact, not clergy malpractice.

ATLA also repeatedly pooh-poohs other pieces of the Newsweek story with variations of the following statement: “Under the Volunteer Protection Act of 1997, volunteers for non-profit organizations or government programs around the country — even those dealing with children - cannot be held responsible for their negligence.” Notice the precise language “cannot be held responsible for their negligence.” What ATLA doesn’t say is that, to get around the Volunteer Protection Act of 1997, all a trial lawyer needs to do is add a single word to the complaint: the Act provides no immunity for allegations of “gross negligence.” While the legal standard is technically different for “gross negligence” than for “negligence”, few defendants are willing to bear the risk of a jury making that distinction, especially given the potentially bankrupting effect of punitive damages. This site has identified numerous lawsuits (e.g., Nov. 16 and Sep. 15) where volunteers or sponsors of non-profit activities continue to be sued.

ATLA also defends itself by noting “The McDonald’s obesity cases were dismissed.” Will ATLA take a public stance against future fast food obesity suits? Not likely: a September 16, 2002 column by ATLA President David S. Casey asked the public to withhold judgment on the McDonald’s lawsuit until we “have all the facts”; the later (but undated) official statement of ATLA President Mary E. Alexander was similarly neutral.

Newsweek has a new cover story (”Civil Wars”, Dec. 15) on “Lawsuit Hell”, with sidebars on what litigation is doing to schools, medicine, and municipal governance (Chicago), with balance from Sen. John Edwards. The good news to report is that it’s a superior package, no surprise since one of the lead writers is Stuart Taylor Jr. (writing with Evan Thomas). The less good news is that although many of the colorful cases cited will seem, um, familiar to our readers (see Nov. 26), this website wound up not getting mentioned in the final draft. (Maybe someone will recommend us in a letter to the editor). NBC/MSNBC is doing related broadcast features all week, and the authors will be taking part in a live Web discussion on Thursday 12/11 at 11 a.m. EST.

And it’s a busy week on the newsstands, since our friend Bill Tucker has a cover story in the new (Dec. 15) Weekly Standard entitled “In Defense (sort of) of Trial Lawyers”. We disagree with quite a bit of it, as you can imagine, but it does give us a couple of nice mentions, which counts for a lot, no?

March 10-11 – “Burglars to be banned from suing victims”. United Kingdom: “Burglars who are injured while committing a crime are to banned from suing their victims for compensation. David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, has bowed to public pressure after the outcry over the case of Brendon Fearon, the burglar who is trying to sue Tony Martin for £15,000 after being shot while breaking into his home.” (David Bamber, Daily Telegraph, Mar. 9). (DURABLE LINK)

March 10-11 – Clear Channel = Deep Pocket. “With damage claims in the Rhode Island fire expected to run up to $1 billion, two lawyers representing victims have set their sights on a potential defendant with very deep pockets: Clear Channel Communications. The broadcasting giant owns WHJY-FM, a Providence radio station that ran ads for the Great White concert at The Station that ended moments into the first song when pyrotechnics set off by the band ignited the nation’s fourth-deadliest fire. A popular disc jockey at WHJY, Michael Gonsalves, introduced Great White and was among the 99 who died in the fire or from injuries suffered in the blaze. The two Providence lawyers, who between them represent about a dozen victims, said yesterday their expected lawsuits will almost certainly name Clear Channel as a defendant. The company, the largest operator of radio stations in the country, has assets that far outstrip those of the 14 defendants who were named in the only lawsuit filed so far.” (Jonathan Saltzman, “R.I. fire victims’ lawyers eye firm”, Boston Globe, Mar. 8). (DURABLE LINK)

March 10-11 – New Medicare drug benefit? Link it to product liability reform. “Even drugs like aspirin, which cause hundreds of deaths each year, could not meet the safety standards patients expect today,” argues Scott Gottlieb of the American Enterprise Institute. ” … But putting [older] patients on the pills they need means we need to prepare to tolerate more side effects or tolerate more lawsuits. Litigation should not be a cost of commerce when government puts itself in the business of pushing pills. … Without product liability reform, prescription drug coverage will transform into a full employment act for the lawyers, limiting development of new drugs and driving up prices for everybody.” (Scott Gottlieb, “More Drug Use Will Mean More Lawsuits,” AEI On the Issues, Mar.). (DURABLE LINK)

March 10-11 – Lawsuits vs. free speech, cont’d: jailhouse rock. Last year VH1 aired a special entitled Music Behind Bars, featuring the music of prisoners. Now the family of a West Virginia man murdered in 1994 by one of the inmate-performers is suing the network. The family’s lawyers are arguing that whether or not the network compensated the convicted killer for his performance — it says it did not — its broadcast occasioned the family emotional distress for which it should have to pay compensatory and punitive damages. (Maria Lehner, “Murder Victim’s Family Sues VH1″, Fox News, Mar. 6). (DURABLE LINK)

March 8-9 – Tobacco fees: feds indict former Texas AG. One of the biggest developments yet in the tobacco-fee saga: a federal grand jury is charging former Texas attorney general Dan Morales and his friend Marc Murr with conspiracy and mail fraud over Morales’s attempt to gain hundreds of millions of dollars in fees for Murr from the state’s tobacco settlement. More recently, Morales has suggested that he might be able to furnish information that would throw in question the fee entitlements of five politically influential trial lawyers who managed the state’s case (R. G. Ratcliffe and Clay Robison, “Former Attorney General Dan Morales indicted”, Houston Chronicle, Mar. 6; April Castro, “Ex-Attorney General Morales Indicted”, AP/Washington Post, Mar. 6; “Former Texas Attorney General Surrenders”, AP/ABC News, Mar. 7). For earlier coverage, see Jul. 15, 2002 and links from there; Jan. 10-12, 2003. (DURABLE LINK)

March 8-9 – Should have watched his step answering call of nature. Update: an appeals court in the Australian state of New South Wales has overturned the $60,000 judgment (see Mar. 5, 2002) awarded to Paul Jackson, who after a night drinking with friends walked home along a highway and “stepped over a low guard rail in order to urinate, not realising there was a drop of several metres.” The “plaintiff was not taking reasonable care for his own safety as he was obliged to do,” the justices said. (”That’s a long drop”, Sydney Morning Herald, Mar. 5; “Wee change in fortune for Wollongong man”, Aust. Broadcasting Corp., Mar. 5). (DURABLE LINK)

March 5-7 – Update: hospital rapist’s suit dismissed. Sandusky, Ohio: “A judge has dismissed the $2 million lawsuit filed by a convicted rapist who claimed the hospital where he sexually assaulted a woman was negligent because it didn’t prevent the crime, according to court records.” ((Richard Payerchin, “Ruling: Convict responsible for his own crime”, Lorain Morning Journal, Feb. 20)(see May 22-23, 2002). (DURABLE LINK)

March 5-7 – Stuart Taylor, Jr., on lead paint litigation. At his most scathing: “[O]ne group deserves a special niche in the annals of those who have perverted the legal system for personal and political gain at the expense of everyone else: the politically connected trial lawyers who have signed up Rhode Island, Chicago, San Francisco, St. Louis, and dozens of other governments, school districts, and housing authorities to sue over health hazards associated with sales of lead pigment and paint for indoor use. The last of those sales took place more than 45 years ago.” With details on the unusual “retainer agreement” with which former Rhode Island AG Sheldon Whitehouse signed over the state’s sovereign authority to two influential private law firms: “It not only guaranteed the lawyers a contingent fee of 16.67 percent of any money recovered, plus all litigation expenses; it also gave them considerable control over whom to sue, what to claim, whether to settle, and on what terms.” (Stuart Taylor Jr., “Perverting the Legal System: The Lead-Paint Rip-Off”, National Journal/The Atlantic, Feb. 19) (DURABLE LINK)

March 5-7 – Incoming link of the day. From the website of a Fort Worth, Texas cardiology practice: “We do not provide ANY email advice regarding medical issues. DO NOT contact us by email with clinical questions. The email addresses above are for business correspondence only. For some insight as to why, click here.” (DURABLE LINK)

March 5-7 – $6 million fee request knocked down to $25,000. Ouch! An appeals court in El Paso has upheld a trial judge’s decision to “award a group of plaintiffs’ lawyers $25,000 in attorney fees instead of the nearly $6 million they sought under a contingent-fee contract.” However, the attorneys, led by brothers Stephen F. Malouf and E. Wayne Malouf, are unlikely to go hungry; they’ve apparently obtained upwards of $2 million in fees from other aspects of the case, a complex litigation over oil rights. (Brenda Sapino Jeffreys, “Appeals Court Says Trial Judge Had Discretion to Reduce Fees”, Texas Lawyer, Feb. 26). (DURABLE LINK)

March 4 – “The Tort Tax”. “According to a new study by Tillinghast-Towers Perrin, the total cost of the U.S. tort system reached $205.4 billion in 2001, an increase of 14.3% over the previous year — far faster than the rate of economic growth. This is like a tax of 2% on everything in the American economy that takes $721 per year out of the pockets of every citizen.” Also cites a certain “excellent website that, unfortunately, I find too depressing to read regularly”. (Bruce Bartlett, syndicated/National Review Online, Mar. 3). (DURABLE LINK)

March 4 – Thrill of the chase. NYC: “A half-dozen personal-injury lawyers were charged [last week] in a scam that allowed a network of corrupt hospital employees to do the ambulance-chasing for them, authorities said. In at least three hospitals — Elmhurst, New York Presbyterian and Lincoln — emergency-room workers sold the attorneys confidential medical records of car-accident victims, evaluating the sales potential of the information as doctors were evaluating the patients for treatments, authorities said. Officials were clued in on the scheme — which ran for seven years — by a hospital employee after patients began complaining about calls at home from strangers who knew a lot about their medical conditions, according to Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau.” (Tom Perrotta, “Personal Injury Lawyers Indicted for Soliciting Scam”, New York Law Journal, Feb. 27; Laura Italiano, “Lawyers Charged in Hosp. E.R. Scam”, New York Post, Feb. 27). (DURABLE LINK)

March 4 – “Edwards doesn’t tell whole story”. In stump speeches since the outset of his political career, Sen. John Edwards has invoked the case of little Ethan Bedrick, a cerebral palsy victim, as emblematic of “the kids and families I’ve fought for.” One reporter was curious to learn more about Bedrick’s case, but Edwards’s campaign press secretary “told me if I wanted to know any details, I should ‘look it up.”’ So she did. It turns out Edwards’ firm obtained a settlement, often described as being for $5 million, of a lawsuit charging that asphyxiation during delivery caused Ethan’s disability. Edwards’s speech picks up the story only later, when Ethan’s family battled a health insurer to obtain needed therapy (Lynn Sweet, Chicago Sun-Times, Feb. 27) (& see letter to the editor, Mar. 31). (DURABLE LINK)

March 3 – By reader acclaim: “Man who threw dog into traffic sues dog’s former owner”. “A man who threw a dog to its death in a fit of road rage is suing the dog’s former owner and a newspaper, alleging mental anguish and seeking more than $1 million in damages. … [Andrew] Burnett was sentenced in July 2001 to three years in jail in the death of Leo, a bichon frise whose owner tapped Burnett’s bumper in rainy-day traffic in February 2000 near the San Jose Airport. Burnett threw the little dog into traffic before driving off.” (AP/San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 28; Dan Reed, “Leo the dog’s killer claims mental anguish in suit”, San Jose Mercury News, Feb. 28). (DURABLE LINK)

March 3 – Update: Lockyer sues complaint mill. Following a continuing furor in California (see Jan. 15-16) about entrepreneurial lawyers’ practice of filing assembly-line complaints against thousands of small businesses, which then are informed that they must pay thousands of dollars to get the charges dropped, state Attorney General Bill Lockyer has announced that he is suing the most-publicized such law firm, Trevor Law Group, under the same unfair-business-practices law that it employs in its complaints. “Trevor Law Group operates a shakedown operation designed to extract attorneys’ fees from law-abiding small businesses,” Lockyer said. “They’ve abused one of the state’s most important consumer protection statutes and dishonored attorneys who practice law in the public interest. There’s some delicious irony in turning the weapon around and using it on them.” (Monte Morin, “State Accuses Law Firm of Extortion”, Los Angeles Times, Feb. 27; Dan Walters, “In ironic twist, law firm finds itself on other end of suit”, Sacramento Bee, Mar. 3). See also Jessica V. Brice, “Wave of lawsuits threatens 70-year-old consumer law”, AP/Sacramento Bee, Jan. 21). (DURABLE LINK)

October 10-11 – “U.S. to Fully Compensate Victims’ Kin”. In a step virtually unprecedented in a government-run program, the new Sept. 11 fund will assign a dollar value to, and compensate at taxpayer expense, the emotional pain and suffering experienced by survivors (David G. Savage, Los Angeles Times, Oct. 5). Wealthier victims’ families could be the ones who mostly opt out of the federal plan and into private litigation, because of the proviso by which payments from the federal fund will be reduced to reflect amounts families can recover from insurance and other contractual sources, which will often amount to a large offset in the case of high-paid execs (Harriet Ryan, “Victims’ families face choices in collecting compensation”, CourtTV.com, Sept. 28). With damages for airlines limited to their insurance, “the hunt is on for additional defendants with deep pockets. Lawyers say these could include wealthy supporters of terrorism; private baggage-screening firms hired by airlines; contractors that may have improperly screened service personnel allowed on planes; and the operators of the airports where the hijackers boarded.” (Martin Kasindorf, “Families seeking compensation face a choice”, USA Today, Oct. 2) And see if you can spot the implicit assumption in this headline: Seth Stern, “Who pays the damages for Sept. 11?”, Christian Science Monitor, Sept. 27.

October 10-11 – “Never far from school halls: the lawsuit”. “Schools have always been fertile ground for lawsuits over religious observance and free speech. But educators say the volume of suits is on the rise, forcing them to siphon time and money away from learning.” (Seth Stern, Christian Science Monitor, Oct. 9).

October 10-11 – “Man Thought He Was Dead, Sues Airline”. Scott Bender of Philadelphia was snoozing when the U.S. Airways flight from North Carolina landed at the Birmingham, Alabama airport and the crew left him there in the little plane until he woke up. It was really dark, says his lawyer, and Bender “didn’t know if he was alive or dead” — it turned out the former. Now he wants money for the fright and other harms. (Chanda Temple, Birmingham News, Oct. 4).

October 9 – Employee’s right to jubilate over Sept. 11 attack. Kenneth Bredemeier, “On the Job” columnist for the Washington Post, yesterday ran the following remarkable communication from one of his readers, which we take the liberty of quoting at length since it deserves to be read word for word:

“On the day of the World Trade Center and Pentagon disasters, a Muslim woman at work jumped for joy in the cafeteria saying, ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ upon hearing the news.“Apparently nothing was said to her at the time of her ‘celebration.’ Her supervisor consulted the HR manager for advice. He suggested a group meeting to explain that this is a very sensitive time for everyone and that it is probably best to not discuss the disasters at all. He also said to not single out anyone or specifically mention her actions.

“When I heard about it, I wanted to know why she is still at work. I was told to not say anything. Is that right? I have no intention of starting a riot, but I feel this incident should not be ignored. What, if anything, can I do?”

Don’t say anything to her; hold a group meeting; tell other workers to stop talking about the attacks. Could this be just one supremely craven HR manager, at one sensitivity-addled company? No, it gets worse. Bredemeier then consults an expert named Laurie Anderson, a “Chicago clinical psychologist and organizational consultant”. Her advice? As “uncalled for [!] as the impromptu celebration might have been, corporations ‘can’t fire someone for violating something that was never spelled out.’ She said the employee who was upset by her co-worker’s joy at the attacks ought to go to management and say that she wants ‘to be a part of the ongoing conversation about our policies.’” And Anderson adds: “It’s horrifying, but there’s no law against being insensitive.”

But of course Anderson gets it exactly, 180-degrees wrong on that last point. There is a federal law against being insensitive in ways that make co-workers feel disliked or disparaged because of their ethnic or national affiliation — it’s called the “hostile environment” branch of harassment law, and lawyers have deployed it repeatedly to win big bucks for workers who have testified that they were upset by hearing slighting comments aimed at their ethnic or national group. If an employer in this country learns that one of its workers has burst into applause in the cafeteria at learning of, say, a massacre or assassination aimed at a protected ethnic minority, then its failure to discipline that worker would create something approximating a dream case if and when a member of that minority chooses to sue the company charging hostile environment. (Nor will it get the company off the hook, in explaining its failure to discipline, to plead that it had not previously warned its workers specifically not to jubilate in such circumstances.)

The difference between the two fact patterns? So far as we can tell, it’s mostly that “American” doesn’t operationally count as a protected ethnicity under federal law. And so we arrive at a supposed right to jubilate, among Americans, over the deaths of Americans without having to worry about the risk of dismissal or even harsh words or shunning. Could anything be crazier? (Kenneth Bredemeier, “At Some Companies, An All-Too-Rapid Response to Attacks”, Washington Post, Oct. 8).

Addendum: no more than urban legend? Reader John Kingston of Carle Place, N.Y., in a letter to Washington Post columnist Bredemeier which he cc’s to us, writes:

Your column on workplace reaction to September 11 may have come closest to actually identifying the jubilant Muslims, a story sweeping the country that has all the earmarks of an urban myth. It appears the person who wrote you the note at least claims to have actually seen the jubilant worker. Every other reference to the jubilant workers has several key omissions: the name of the workplace where it happened (as in your case); the name of the jubilant person (OK, understandable); or an actual first-person account (which you sort of have, but do not actually identify the first-person). Yet these stories of the celebrating Muslims have come from all over the country, and none of them have been proven.Please do your readers a service in a future column. Put the name of this correspondent in print. And if the correspondent does not want to be put in print, please call him up and grill him on the facts of the case. Because quite frankly, this story sounds like a pile of baloney, and I was shocked to see it repeated and given credence, without what I would consider significant attribution, in a fine paper like yours.

Adds reader Kingston: “And to make it worse, Overlawyered.com repeats it as well. OK, its point was regarding what a workplace could do if it actually had a publicly jubilant Muslim. But my guess is that nobody actually did. This story, Mr. Olson, sounds like a close cousin of junk science.” (DURABLE LINK) [And see Letters, Oct. 22]

October 9 – “Plaintiff’s lawyers going on defense”. In at least two major areas of mass tort litigation now under way, plaintiff’s lawyers well known from asbestos and tobacco work have crossed the aisle to work for defendant businesses: Sulzer Orthopedics Inc. has hired Mississippi’s Richard Scruggs to represent it in hip joint cases, and Bridgestone Firestone has hired Texas’s Wayne Reaud to settle tire cases. “Already this year, Reaud has negotiated 117 settlements for Firestone in Texas, including 22 cases involving deaths.” (Mark Curriden, Dallas Morning News/Austin American-Statesman, Sept. 4, Googlecached) On Reaud and Firestone, see also Michael Freedman, “The Informer: It Takes One to Know One”, Forbes, Sept. 17. (DURABLE LINK)

October 8 – Why we fight, #2. Reason #1 is of course what happened on Sept. 11; but how strangely constricted would be our war aims if they did not also by this point include the final overthrow of the Taliban. (Sam Handlin, “Justice takes on a different meaning in Afghanistan”, CourtTV.com, Sept. 28; Jan Goodwin, “The first victims: the Taliban have been terrorizing women for years”, New York Daily News, Oct. 4; Vincent Laforet, “At Kabul’s door, an army of addicts”, New York Times, Oct. 7 (reg) (arms chopped off by the Taliban for smoking opium in an Afghan school, Mooruddin Aki now begs on a street in Quetta, Pakistan, where passersby stuff bills into his mouth)).

Among pieces we’ve liked recently: Peter Ferrara, “What is an American?” (National Review Online, Sept. 25). And what’s the opposite of Osama bin Laden? Here’s one answer: “The men and women of the space program, and their legions of scientific antecedents, spent countless hours acquiring the knowledge and developing the moral values that led to the moon landing. Not many years later, Osama bin Laden and his fellow terrorists also spent many hours of planning, sitting not in laboratories and libraries, but in tents and caves, with one goal: not to create, but to annihilate human creations. The scientists measured their success by how much they could produce. The terrorists measure their success by how much they can destroy.” (Michael Berliner, “Terrorists vs. America”, Ayn Rand Institute, Oct. 5) (via InstaPundit).

October 8 – “Hama to sue bridge owners over her daughter’s fall”. When Kaya, a 17-month-old with Down’s syndrome, fell from her mother’s arms and off the Capilano Suspension Bridge in Vancouver, she miraculously escaped with only scratches, tree boughs breaking her fall. But her mother, Nadia Hama, is suing the bridge operator anyway; her lawyer says she was traumatized by the aftermath of the incident which included a police investigation and press coverage that “was largely very negative”. (Andy Ivens, “Hama to sue bridge owners over her daughter’s fall”, The Province (Vancouver), Sept. 25).

October 5-7 – Feds’ Lanning v. SEPTA turnabout. The U.S. Justice Department has unexpectedly dropped its support of a long-running lawsuit which sought, in the name of female applicants, to weaken the physical fitness standards used in hiring by the Philadelphia transit police. The Department did not cite the Sept. 11 attacks in explaining its abrupt shift, but its spokesman Don Nelson explained the new stand as follows: “Our position is that we believe it is critical to public safety for police and firefighters to have the ability to run and climb up and down stairs under the most extraordinary circumstances”. In earlier rounds of litigation the feds had sided with plaintiffs lawyers from the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia, whose chief counsel calls the new turnabout “a slap in the face of women” and a breach of what he said was a promise made by Attorney General John Ashcroft not to retreat on any civil rights issue. (Joseph A. Slobodzian, “U.S. backs away from suit against SEPTA test”, Philadelphia Inquirer, Oct. 2) (see Sept. 15, 1999). Maybe someone at the Department has been listening to our commentaries of Sept. 13 and other dates. Update Oct. 25-27, 2002: Third Circuit panel rules for SEPTA.

October 5-7 – Civil liberties roundup. What Alexander Hamilton (who used to hang out a lot in New York’s financial district) would want us to remember (Andrew Ferguson, “Strange Bedfellows in This War”, Bloomberg.com, Oct. 2). The left-right civil liberties coalition that has urged scrutiny of the counter-terrorism bill doesn’t agree within itself on much more than platitudes, argues James DeLong of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (”Liberty and Order”, National Review Online, Oct. 2). And London’s invaluable Spectator points out some of the very real costs of national identity cards, whose use would probably not have done much to hinder last month’s suicide attacks, the ringleaders of which were mostly traveling under their own names with valid ID (”Fighting for Freedom” (editorial), Sept. 29).

October 5-7 – “Attorney Ordered to Pay Fees for ‘Rambo’ Tactics”. “Clifford Van Syoc, a solo practitioner in Cherry Hill, N.J., is known for his zealotry in pursuing plaintiffs’ employment-discrimination claims. But now a federal judge, comparing Van Syoc to Rambo, says he’s gone over the line. The judge excoriated him for unreasonably pushing a meritless reverse-bias claim and assessed Van Syoc personally for $59,216 in fees and expenses.” (Tim O’Brien, New Jersey Law Journal, Sept. 6).

October 5-7 – Utah lawmakers: don’t smoke in your car. Legislators in that state have “approved in concept” the idea of legally banning parents from smoking in cars in the presence of their kids, but some among them are reluctant to put their names on such a measure as sponsors given its appearance of extreme meddlesomeness in what was once considered private life (James Thalman, “Lawmakers may up ante for smoking around kids”, Deseret News, Sept. 15).

October 3-4 – Anti-bias law not a suicide pact. “Earlier this summer, U.S. officials told airlines that conducting extra checks on passengers of Arab origin was a violation of the passengers’ civil rights. Also, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta ordered a federal investigation into complaints by Arab-Americans that they were being unfairly targeted by security screenings.” (Catherine Donaldson Evans, “Terror Probe Changes Face of Racial Profiling Debate”, FoxNews.com, Oct. 1; Stuart Taylor Jr., “The Case for Using Racial Profiling at Airports”, National Journal/The Atlantic, Sept. 25). But of Arab Americans in metropolitan Detroit, “61 percent said such extra questioning or inspections are justified, according to a poll conducted last week by the Detroit Free Press and EPIC/MRA. Twenty-eight percent disagreed; 11 percent were undecided.” (Dennis Niemiec and Shawn Windsor, “Arab Americans expect scrutiny, feel sting of bias”, Detroit Free Press, Oct. 1). “Federal regulations give commercial captains the right to remove anyone from a flight without reason.” (Jonathan Osborne, “Passenger ejections seen as profiling”, Austin American-Statesman, Sept. 29).

In reaction to the horrors of World War II, the federal constitution of Germany curbs what might be termed religious profiling in law enforcement, and authorities in Hamburg, where preparations for last month’s attack were apparently made, acknowledge that their monitoring of extremist Islamic activity has been sharply limited as a result: “police are severely restricted in probing groups defined by faith”. (Carol J. Williams, “German Hunt for Terrorists Haunted by Past”, Los Angeles Times, Oct. 1). Detailed passenger profiling is essential to the much-admired security record of the Israeli airline El Al (Vivienne Walt, “Unfriendly skies are no match for El Al”, USA Today, Oct. 2). Updates: see Nov. 2-4, Nov. 9-11.

October 3-4 – “Follow the money … but don’t hold your breath”. Shutting down sham ‘charities’ and terrorist-owned businesses can’t hurt the war effort,” and it’s also worth investigating the possibility that persons with foreknowledge of the attack might have engaged in options speculation before and since Sept. 11, which would leave a relatively robust paper trail. Don’t expect much, however, from more generalized efforts to prevent terrorist supporters from moving less-than-enormous sums around the globe; there are too many ways around such rules, which are also highly onerous to the non-terrorist economy (James Higgins, Weekly Standard, Oct. 8; Michael Lynch, “Following the Money”, Reason.com, Oct. 4).

October 3-4 – Fear of losing welfare benefits deemed coercive. “A Nova Scotia woman who confessed to cheating the welfare system out of more than $70,000, can’t have her admission used against her in court because she gave it only out of fear that her benefits would be cut off.” Judge Peter Ross of Nova Scotia Provincial Court conceded that Brenda Young’s case was a “particularly glaring instance of welfare fraud”, but “said her fear of impoverishment meant her confession was effectively coerced by the state, an action which violated her constitutional right not to incriminate herself.” Young is no longer on the welfare rolls, however. (Richard Foot, “Judge: confession by welfare cheat cannot be used”, National Post, Sept. 29).

October 3-4 – Victory (again) in Connecticut. “A unanimous state Supreme Court Monday threw out Bridgeport’s lawsuit against dozens of gun manufacturers and retailers, saying the city’s claims of injury to its citizenry, budget and reputation are too specious and indirect to litigate.” (Lynne Tuohy, “Court Disarms Gun Lawsuit, Hartford Courant, Oct. 2) (see Dec. 11-12, 1999)

October 3-4 – “Proposed Law Would Consider Alcohol As Date-Rape Drug”. Liquor may be something that prospective sexual assault victims consume voluntarily and knowingly, while substances such as Rohypnol get sprung on them unawares; but backers of the bill introduced into the Wisconsin legislature by Rep. Terese Berceau (D-Madison) say that shouldn’t make a difference in regarding both substances alike as date-rape drugs. (WISC-TV/Channel 3000/Yahoo, Sept. 27).

October 1-2 – “Litigation threatens to snarl recovery”. “[S]ome lawyers are already gearing up for what could be the most complicated web of litigation in American history. Lawyers across the country are looking for ways around the victims’ fund established as part of a $15 billion government bailout of the airline industry in the wake of the attacks.” During the (still-continuing) litigation over the previous bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, plaintiff’s lawyers suing the Port Authority insisted that it turn over as part of “discovery” its internal reports on terrorist threats and security, even though “Port Authority lawyers at the time argued that providing the reports would leave security information open to terrorists for another attack.” (Kate Shatzkin, Baltimore Sun, Sept. 30).

MORE: Signe Wilkinson cartoon, “Unleashing Our Most Feared Weapon Against Afghanistan” (guess who), Philadelphia Daily News/Slate (”Get Image” for Sept. 27); Alan Fisk, “Calculation of Losses, Liability to Be Major Insurance Issues in Wake of Terrorism”, National Law Journal, Sept. 28; Michael Freedman and Robert Lenzner, “Lawyers Won’t Sue, But For How Long?” Forbes.com, Sept. 19.

October 1-2 – Ralph Nader is heard from. Addressing students at the University of Minnesota, the prominent litigation advocate — always willing to impute the most evil of motives to his adversaries at home — “asked audience members to consider why U.S. foreign policy is creating enemies. ‘We have to begin putting ourselves in the shoes of the innocent, brutalized people in the Third World and ask ourselves, why do they dislike our foreign policy?’” Maybe if we referred to the Trade Center murderers as “Terrorism Inc.” he’d mistake them for a legitimate business and start turning up the rhetorical heat (Jessica Thompson, “Nader calls for ‘permanent patriotism’ in Northrop speech”, Minnesota Daily, Sept. 26). (DURABLE LINK)

October 1-2 – Chemical-plant vulnerabilities: read all about them. A “provision of the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act requir[ed] that thousands of industrial facilities develop risk management plans (RMPs) and submit them to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).” One part of the required analysis “documents the potential impacts of a catastrophic accidental chemical release assuming the ‘worst case scenario.” The [analysis] includes the number of potential fatalities that an accidental release could cause to the surrounding community. The law then demands that EPA make this information available to the public.” When an initial plan was floated to publish such reports on the Internet, “security experts — the FBI, CIA, the International Association of Fire Chiefs and various other groups — raised alarm.” The plan was soon shelved, but “public interest groups” vowed to make the information broadly anyway in defiance of the warnings, and a current public availability scheme involving drop-in “reading rooms” appears highly vulnerable to exploitation by advance scouts for terrorist operations, who need only present an identification card, something the Sept. 11 terrorists had little trouble obtaining (Angela Logomasini, “Innocent no more”, Competitive Enterprise Institute/Washington Times, Sept. 27). (DURABLE LINK)

October 1-2 – “Polls say blacks tend to favor checks”. “African-Americans, whose treatment by the criminal justice system gave rise to the phrase ‘racial profiling,’ are more likely than other racial groups to favor profiling and stringent airport security checks for Arabs and Arab-Americans in the wake of this month’s terrorist attacks, two separate polls indicate.

“The findings by the Gallup Organization and Zogby International were met with varying degrees of disappointment and disbelief by black activists and intellectuals, who struggled with explanations.” (Ann Scales, Boston Globe, Sept. 30) (see Sept. 19-20).

October 1-2 – Propulsid verdict: “Robbery on Highway 61″. A jury in Claiborne County, Mississippi deliberated just over two hours before voting $100 million in compensatory damages to 10 plaintiffs in the first suit to reach trial against a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary over alleged side effects of the anti-heartburn medication Propulsid. “Defense attorney Robert Johnson III of Natchez said in closing arguments Friday that no evidence was presented in the four-week trial that showed Propulsid caused any of the plaintiffs’ health problems. He said the plaintiffs’ own doctors said there was no evidence the drug was to blame. … Stop Lawsuit Abuse in Mississippi executive director Chip Reno called the decision ‘unbelievable.’ ‘This was highway robbery on Highway 61,” Reno said. ‘Our system is broke.’” (Jimmie E. Gates, “$100M verdict: Propulsid at fault”, Jackson Clarion-Ledger, Sept. 29). Judge Lamar Pickard later ruled out punitive damages. (Deborah Bulkeley, “Judge Bars Drug Trial Punitive Damages”, AP/Yahoo, Sept. 29). Update May 15, 2004: Miss. Supreme Court vacates verdict and orders individual trials, after earlier reduction of award by trial judge.

September 28-30 – Draconian hacker penalties? The counter-terrorism act (whose contents, as we have mentioned before, keep changing) was drafted to include what critics say are extraordinarily severe penalties for low-level forms of computer trespassing that bear no relation to terrorism. (Matthew Broersma, “EFF: Bill treats hackers as terrorists”, ZDNet (UK), Sept. 27; Kevin Poulsen, “Hackers face life imprisonment under ‘Anti-Terrorism’ Act”, SecurityFocus.com, Sept. 23). More on the bill’s progress: Declan McCullagh, “Congress Weighs Anti-Terror Bill”, Wired News, Sept. 25; “Wiretap Bill Gets Third Degree”, Sept. 26; Jonathan Ringel, “Surveillance Major Sticking Point in Anti-Terrorism Legislation”, American Lawyer Media, Sept. 26.

September 28-30 – Terrorists, American business execs compared. Was it a passing lapse of taste, sense and perspective in the early shock of the disaster that led New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman to compare the struggle against terrorism to the campaign against … cigarette companies? In his first column after the attacks, Friedman wrote that we need to encourage defections from within the world of Muslim extremism, just as “Americans were really only able to defeat Big Tobacco when whistleblowers within the tobacco industry went public and took on their own industry, and their own bosses, as peddlers of cancer.” A very fair analogy, that! (”Smoking or Non-Smoking?”, Sept. 14). And the way-out-there-leftist website TomPaine.com, from which we don’t really expect better, gave us this gem in January of last year: “The hype [about a terrorist threat] is unfounded, largely because there is no evidence of a world wide terrorist conspiracy against the U.S., and the few alleged terrorists that have actively targeted U.S. citizens have done so infrequently.” From stupidity the article proceeded to viciousness: “The actions of business executives — from tobacco sellers to weapons manufacturers — claim the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans every year — 38,505 gun-related deaths in 1994, 6,112 workplace fatalities and 500,000 deaths from smoking in 1996 — many times more than the handful of terrorist incidents. These are the people we should be afraid of, and seek to restrain, rather than fictional characters that have more to do with Hollywood hype than political reality.” (Roni Krouzman, “The Terrorism Scare”, TomPaine.com, Jan. 19, 2000) (via WSJ OpinionJournal.com “Best of the Web”, Sept. 17). What is it to bomb the World Trade Center, after all, compared to the more menacing status of being the sort of business exec who would work in it? See also MichaelMoore.com, “Mike’s Message”, Sept. 19 (attributing character of Osama Bin Laden to his family’s being in the building contractor trade). (DURABLE LINK)

September 28-30 – Privacy claim by Bourbon Street celebrant. Just because she cavorted topless in New Orleans’ French Quarter during Mardi Gras doesn’t mean it was okay to videotape her and use the resulting footage in a compilation release entitled “Girls Gone Wild!”. “They’re really exploiting her, victimizing her,” says one of her lawyers; the idea that there might be cameras around doesn’t seem to have crossed her mind at the time. (James L. Rosica, “Poster girl sues makers of videos”, Tallahassee Democrat, Sept. 18)(& see update Mar. 6, 2002).

September 27 – Rush to reconcile. Different things seem important now, cont’d: “Dismissals in divorce cases have skyrocketed in the Harris County Family Law courts since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. Family-law attorneys have found that clients contemplating divorce, as well as those in the middle of one, now say they will try to patch things up.” (see Sept. 18) (Mary Flood, “Couples want peace at home”, Houston Chronicle, Sept. 25).

September 27 – “Shooting range sued over suicide”. “The family of a woman who shot herself in the head sues a business for renting her the gun.” She came in to the shooting range with her husband; the lawyer says the attendant should have seen that she’d been drinking (St. Petersburg Times, Sept. 25).

September 27 –Force majeure fights. Do the events of September 11 constitute a material change in circumstances, thus entitling businesses to get out of merger deals and other contractual obligations? Squabbling over that issue “should keep attorneys busy for years. ‘Unfortunately, there will be litigation, whether it’s meritorious or not,’ says James Salzman, a law professor at American University.” (”Collateral Damage”, Michael Freedman and Daniel Kruger, Forbes, Oct. 15).

September 27 – Where towers stood.

Who knows how empty the sky is
In the place of a fallen tower.
Who knows how quiet it is in the home
Where a son has not returned.

— Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) (via Alex Beam, Boston Globe, Sept. 18, who says it’s from a cycle of poems, “Youth”)

September 25-26 – Vast new surveillance powers for state AGs? Mickey Kaus, on Kausfiles.com, expresses rightful unease about a most unpleasant little surprise in the counterterrorism package: he doesn’t “see why state attorneys general, the biggest showboaters in American politics, need to be given the power to employ the FBI’s ‘Carnivore’ email-tapping program without a court order.” He suggests they’ll “probably use it to ferret out tobacco users and sue them”. (”Hit Parade”, Sept. 22; see also Jacob Weisberg, “Microsuits: Why state attorneys general are suddenly suing everybody”, Slate, May 22, 1998). (But note that the contents of the legislative package keep changing rapidly; we couldn’t locate such a provision in the draft versions we consulted on the Electronic Frontier Foundation site.)

September 25-26 – Legal botches encouraged terrorists. “The international jihad arrived in America on the rainy night of Nov. 5, 1990, when [El Sayyid] Nosair walked into a crowded ballroom at the New York Marriott on 49th Street and shot and killed [extremist political figure] Rabbi Meir Kahane… With a room full of witnesses and a smoking gun, the case against Nosair should have been a lay-down. But the New York police bungled the evidence, and Nosair got off with a gun rap. At that moment, Nosair and [sidekick Mahmud] Abouhalima may have had an epiphany: back home in Egypt, suspected terrorists are dragged in and tortured. In America, they can hire a good lawyer and beat the system.” (Evan Thomas, Newsweek/MSNBC, Oct. 1).

September 25-26 – Third Circuit cuts class action fees. In a long-awaited ruling, the 3rd Circuit federal court of appeals last month ordered that a $262 million award of lawyers’ fees be slashed to a yet undetermined level in a $3.2 billion settlement of class action securities litigation against Cendant Corp. and its auditors, Ernst & Young. Objectors had argued that the case had been relatively easy to prove and that the award would pay lawyers at least 45 times their usual rates. The court “also criticized the use of ‘auctions’ to appoint lead plaintiffs’ counsel in securities class action cases”. (Shannon P. Duffy, “Cendant $3.2 Billion Settlement Upheld, but Attorneys’ Fee Award Must Be Reduced”, The Legal Intelligencer, Aug. 29) (see June 20 and Sept. 4, 2000).

The fee squabble had cast a spotlight on the tendency of many big class action firms to contribute heavily at campaign time to elected officials who by controlling state pension funds can put these lawyers in line for big fees by designating them to represent the state in such actions. “Milberg Weiss gave $127,125 to New York state candidates since 1999, including $16,000 to state auditor Carl McCall’s campaign for the Democratic nomination for governor,” and Barrack Rodos and Bernstein Litowitz have pumped big contributions into such states as Pennsylvania, California and Louisiana. The lawyers hired Harvard law prof Arthur Miller to defend their $262 million fee. (Tim O’Brien, “3rd Circuit Reviews Fees, Counsel Choice in Cendant Class Action Settlement, New Jersey Law Journal, June 4).

In a separate decision, involving a suit against CBS, the same appeals court ruled that “lawyers who represent shareholders in derivative actions [i.e., vicariously on behalf of the corporation] are not entitled to any fees unless the suit benefited the corporation.” It overturned a deal which would have given attorneys more than $580,000 in fees; the attorneys had claimed that the settlement of their derivative suit benefited shareholders by clearing the way for a $67 million settlement of a class action suit, but the judge said the test of benefit was whether shareholders were better off for its having been filed in the first place, not for its having been settled. (Shannon P. Duffy, “3rd Circuit Takes Back $580K in Lawyers’ Fees”, The Legal Intelligencer, Sept. 21).

September 25-26 – “Asbestos column raised awareness”. Steven Milloy of JunkScience.com fields reader reaction to his column raising the question whether asbestos insulation might have enabled the WTC towers to hold out longer before their collapse (FoxNews.com, Sept. 21) (see Sept. 17, 18).

September 24 – From mourning to resolution.

There is sobbing of the strong,
And a pall upon the land;
But the People in their weeping
Bare the iron hand;
Beware the People weeping
When they bare the iron hand.

— Herman Melville, “The Martyr”, on Lincoln’s assassination (via AndrewSullivan.com and John Ellis, FastCompany)

September 24 – “Despite Protection, Airlines Face Lawsuits for Millions in Damages”. The newly passed bill puts the federal government and its taxpayers on the hook for costs of further terrorist strikes in the near term, and assists the airlines in their quest for insurance, but does less than one might imagine to shield them (and a long list of other defendants) from lawsuits over the Sept. 11 attack. (Charles Piller, L.A. Times, Sept. 22). It does not restrict filing of mass suits on creative theories based on damage on the ground, but instead gives victims a choice of whether to apply for government compensation through a “special master” in lieu of suing. Trial lawyers have already begun volunteering to help claimants with the special master process, which could put them in a position to steer those claimants back toward court-based options, especially if the taxpayer-funded compensation packages prove less than generous. And the airline bailout, which includes billions in cash subventions, may come at a high cost of future Washington entanglement for the industry: “A last-minute addition to [the bill] will let the federal government take equity stakes in the cash-strapped carriers and may even open the door to a government role on their corporate boards, lawmakers said on Friday.” (Adam Entous, “Airline Bailout Allows US to Take Stake”, Reuters/Yahoo, Sept. 21) (Yahoo Full Coverage).

September 24 – Blame video games, again. Expect renewed scrutiny of both videogames and flight simulator software, either of which might assist bad guys as well as good guys in honing skills relevant to lawlessness in the air. (David Coursey, “How video games influenced the attack on America”, ZDNet, Sept. 21; Marc Prensky, “Video games and the attack on America”, TwitchSpeed.com, undated). On earlier rounds of agitation against game makers and entertainment companies, see Gwendolyn Mariano, “Columbine victim families sue over violent games”, ZDNet, April 24, and collected commentaries on this site.

September 24 – Miami jury to Ford: pay $15 million after beltless crash. It wasn’t one of the much-publicized Explorer/Firestone cases, but instead arose from the rollover accident of an Econoline van none of whose twelve occupants was wearing seatbelts. A Ford spokeswoman criticized the verdict: “‘No proof of a manufacturing defect was shown,’ she said. ‘This was simply a tragic accident compounded by passengers not being belted.”’ (”Ford to Pay $15 Million in Rollover Case”, Reuters/FoxNews.com, Sept. 21). And the Association of Trial Lawyers of America is showcasing on its website an $18 million jury verdict against GM in favor of an 18-year-old driver who fell asleep at the wheel at 70 mph in his Chevrolet S-10 Blazer SUV. The automaker “tried to introduce evidence that plaintiff had a blood alcohol level between .04 and .07 at the time of the accident, which was illegal given his age. [Plaintiff's attorney Michael] Piuze successfully moved to exclude this fact on the ground that plaintiff had admitted his responsibility for the accident.” (ATLA Law Reporter, May — Lambert v. General Motors).

September 21-23 – “The high cost of cultural passivity”. “FAA’s silly rules did exactly nothing to stop the hijackers” (Mark Steyn, National Post, Sept. 17; “Making it safe to fly” (letters to the editor), Washington Post, Sept. 21). What did help was the revolt of the heroic passengers on United Flight 93 (Rick Reilly, “Four of a Kind”, Sports Illustrated, Sept. 19; Dan LeBatard, “Final heroic act not forgotten by the many saved”, Miami Herald, Sept. 20; some particularly good commentaries from Virginia Postrel on Sept. 20 and earlier days; proposal for a monument to them). Writes Lisa Snell: “I would rather be on a hijacked airplane with someone inoculated by Power Rangers than someone who believes the inherent message of every school institution: that weapons are bad and that the authorities and the government will solve all problems and protect you” (quoted by Joanne Jacobs, Sept. 14).

September 21-23 – Judge to “Sopranos” suit: Fuhgetaboutit. Free speech prevails: “A judge on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit filed by an Italian-American organization that accused the makers of the HBO television series ‘The Sopranos’ of offending Italian-Americans by depicting them as mobsters. ….The American Italian Defense Association sued Time Warner Entertainment Co. under the ‘individual dignity’ clause of the Illinois Constitution.” (AP, link now dead; “Judge dismisses ‘Sopranos’ lawsuit”, MSNBC/Reuters, Sept. 19) (see April 6-8).

September 21-23 – “Don’t sacrifice freedom”. We can win this one without giving up what makes us Americans (Glenn Reynolds, FoxNews.com, Sept. 14; Dave Kopel, “Don’t Press the Panic Button”, National Review Online, Sept. 21; Stuart Taylor Jr., “Thinking the Unthinkable: Next Time Could Be Much Worse”, National Journal/The Atlantic, Sept. 19; E. J. Dionne, “To Go On Being Americans”, Washington Post, Sept. 14).

September 21-23 – “Lawsuits From Attacks Likely to Be in the Billions”. Trial lawyers speculate about various targets for the vast amount of litigation they intend to file; on the list are airlines, New York’s much-sued Port Authority and a great many others. (Robert Gearan, New York Daily News, Sept. 19; “In aftermath of terror attacks, lawyers holding off on lawsuits, but they’re coming”, ABCNews.com, Sept. 20; “Attorneys hold off on flurry of lawsuits”, USA Today, Sept. 21; “S&P: Airlines Need Relief From Lawsuits”, Reuters/Yahoo, Sept. 20).

April 20-22 – Quite an ankle sprain. Michele Nations, 26, who sprained her ankle five years ago when she tripped into a hole at a municipal park in Tucson, has now been awarded $450,000 by a local jury. Nations’ attorney “says the case hinged on the city’s responsibility to post adequate warning about burrowing animals [such as squirrels and gophers] and to provide a safe alternative to dodging holes and caved-in tunnels.” An attorney for the city differs, and calls the outcome astonishing: “You would think in a park — in a natural space — people should have to watch where they’re going.” (April 19: Maureen O’Connell, “Gopher hole may cost city $450K”, Arizona Daily Star; “Jury awards Tucson woman who stepped into hole at a park”, AP/Arizona Republic). (DURABLE LINK)

April 20-22 – Thank you, Your Honor. The May Brill’s Content has a cover story (teaser only online) entitled “Human Portals: How people with an obsession — and a website — are upstaging big media”. It tells how weblogs, link-rich sites regularly updated and often zeroing in on a specialized theme, are the new Big Thing in online media; typically “curated by one person”, according to editor in chief David Kuhn, they “could teach big media portals a lot about engaging their audience”. Happy to read all this, we were particularly pleased to turn to the sidebar feature in which the magazine surveys a group of public luminaries about their favorite websites, which range from eBay (Nora Ephron) to 10KWizard.com (Gretchen Morgenson). And here’s Alex Kozinski, distinguished federal judge on the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, on his favorite: “Overlawyered (overlawyered.com) provides pointers to legal-system horror stories: the accused rapist who pockets disability checks for his ’sexual compulsion’; the drunk who climbs a voltage tower and sues the utility company when he gets injured; the guy who murders his mom and sues his shrinks for not stopping him. The site is run by Walter Olson, who likes nothing better than reporting on legal overkill, and he’s compiled serious research tools for anyone interested in trends and abuses within the civil litigation system.” Thank you, Your Honor! (DURABLE LINK)

April 20-22 – Comparable worth in Maine. Despite widespread criticism of the idea from economists and others, Maine has enacted new rules opening private employers to a serious threat of legal action if they pay less to a worker of one gender than to a worker of the opposite gender “for comparable work on jobs with comparable requirements related to skill, effort and responsibility”. Some other states have had “comparable worth” or “pay equity” laws on the books, but Maine is the first to enact regulations giving such laws serious teeth. “We won”, said an official with the state AFL-CIO. “The business community has not awakened to the fact that this is going to cost them.” Disagreements are all but inevitable as to whether (say) secretaries’ work should be regarded as just as valuable as that of (say) truck drivers, and the Maine law will allow lawyers to march into such controversies with class action suits for unlimited damages — won’t that be fun? The state chamber of commerce did not oppose the enactment. (”Equal pay advocates tout new state rules”, AP/Bangor Daily News, April 4; “Maine Becomes First State Requiring Pay Equity”, Women’s ENews, April 3 (via Freedom News Daily); Maine Equal Justice Partners, 2000 Docket Report (scroll down to “Pay Equity”)).

SEE ALSO May 17, 2000; Diana Furchtgott-Roth, “Suicide Mission: The Union Push for Comporable Worth”, Capital Research Center Labor Watch, Dec. 1999; Lawrence W. Reed, “Comparable Worth or Incomparably Worthless?”, Mackinac Center, Sept. 6, 1994. The late Clarence Pendleton Jr., chairman of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, called comparable worth “the looniest idea since Looney Tunes came on the screen” (Simpson’s Contemporary Quotations #519). (DURABLE LINK)

April 20-22 – “Lie-tery winners”. All sorts of basically decent people, from cops to grandmothers, would never think of shoplifting or forging checks but do seem to think it’s okay to lie in lawsuits. “Just ask anyone who has taken more than a handful of depositions or cross-examined witnesses at trial — especially witnesses in tort cases. … the oath has become virtually meaningless,” writes Kirkland & Ellis partner Michael Jones (”Lie-tery Winners”, National Law Journal, March 22).

April 18-19 – Mistletoe dangerous even when absent. LeRoy Crawford says his female boss at the New York Stock Exchange behaved seductively and made remarks such as “if there were mistletoe, I would give you a kiss,” when giving him a Christmas bottle of cologne. Things went from bad to worse, and he now wants $1 million in compensatory damages and $1 million for “special damages as a result of physical and mental injury”. (Peter Noel, “Sex on the floor”, Village Voice, April 11-17).

April 18-19 – Randomness of case assignments questioned. San Francisco assigns cases for pre-trial motions to one of two judges, and it seemed that the plaintiff’s firm of Wartnick, Chaber, Harowitz & Tigerman kept getting lucky by drawing the more favorable judge to hear its asbestos cases. Lucky, indeed: over the past two years, 94 percent of the firm’s cases were assigned even numbers, instead of the odd numbers that would have sent the cases to the other judge. (Dennis J. Opatrny, “Playing the Numbers”, The Recorder, April 9).

April 18-19 – “Guests sue inn for overbooking”. When five Massachusetts couples arrived at Vermont’s romantic Woodstock Inn for an investment club weekend last April, they found the inn had inadvertently overbooked its rooms, and three of the couples had to stay at a local B&B. The inn proprietors were terribly apologetic and treated all five couples to the weekend’s lodging for free, as well as giving them a free dinner. Nonetheless, four of the couples are suing for a sum “substantially in excess of $25,000″ in a Boston court. (AP/Boston Globe, April 17).

April 18-19 – Tempest in an arsenic-laced teacup? President Bush deserves credit for standing up to demagogues by pulling back this bad regulation: Steve Chapman, “Who’s really poisoning our drinking water?”, Chicago Tribune, April 12; George Will, “The costs of moral exhibitionism”, Washington Post, April 15; Jason K. Burnett and Robert W. Hahn, Brookings/AEI Joint Center study, “EPA’s Arsenic Rule: The Benefits of the Standard Do Not Justify the Costs”, abstract, Jan. 2001; Mercatus Center (George Mason U.) Public Interest Comment series, Sept. 19, 2000; Michael Kinsley, “Bush is right on arsenic. Darn!”, Washington Post, April 13; Michael Y. Park, “Study: Arsenic Rule Would Have Increased Deaths”, FoxNews.com, April 17; Nick Schulz, “Poisoner-in-Chief Is Saving Lives”, American Spectator Online, April 17; Diane Rehm show transcript (National Public Radio), March 28.

April 17 – Reparations: take a number. National Journal columnist Stuart Taylor Jr. traces the link between demands for compensation for century-old evils such as slavery and colonization and legal battles over liability for decades-ago sales of products like lead paint and asbestos (”Paying Reparations for Ancient Wrongs Is Not Right”, The Atlantic/National Journal, April 11; our take, Reason, Nov. 2000). The group of lawyers mapping out slavery-reparations suits are scheduled to huddle on strategy today in Washington, and say they plan to name businesses as well as the U.S. government as defendants (Jamal E. Watson, “Lawyers plan suit for slavery reparations”, Boston Globe, April 13). The conservative magazine Insight has given uncritically positive coverage to demands for compensation over Japan’s World War II mistreatment of American servicemen, despite the clear laying to rest of such claims by postwar treaty. You’d think victims of the crimes of communism over its long reign would be even better placed to score positive ink in the conservative press, but we seem to hear little about them — not that we would want to load up the reparations bandwagon even further, you understand (Stephen Goode, “New book documents Japanese exploitation”, Insight, undated).

April 17 – A Pulitzer for Dorothy Rabinowitz. The Wall Street Journal editorialist, whose searing commentaries on dubious child-abuse prosecutions have helped expose some of the most glaring injustices to flow from sentimentalism and credulity in our legal system, snags one of this year’s Pulitzer Prizes for her commentaries on American society and culture (Yahoo Full Coverage — Pulitzers). OpinionJournal.com keeps an archive of her media criticism; her articles on abusive prosecution, when online at all, are found at far-flung corners of the web (”A Darkness in Massachusetts” -I-, -II-, -III- (RickRoss.com); more columns on Amirault case; “Through the Darkness” (the Grant Snowden case, forever linked with the name of Janet Reno) (DennisPrager.net); Wenatchee case -I-, -II-).

April 16 – “Woman settles hot pickle lawsuit with McDonald’s”. Or at least its local franchisee: “A woman who claimed she was permanently scarred by a hot McDonald’s hamburger pickle has settled her lawsuit against the restaurant chain. MAR Inc., which does business as McDonald’s in Knoxville, admitted no wrongdoing in the agreement signed by a judge Thursday. Other details of the settlement are to remain confidential. ” (see Oct. 10, 2000) (AP/CNN, April 13).

April 16 – New batch of reader letters. Our correspondents tell why the law makes it perilous to hire a home renovation contractor in New York, ask about buying T-shirts from us, wonder whether Indian-derived place names such as Wichita and Massachusetts are next up for abolition, lament American law’s resistance to the obvious fairness of the loser-pays principle, and hail a Supreme Court decision upholding employment arbitration.

April 16 – Big numbers. It is a truth universally acknowledged that if the injuries resulting from a transportation accident are sufficiently severe, a wealthy business must have been at fault. Teledyne Continental Motors of Mobile, Ala. has agreed to pay $27 million to settle a suit on behalf of survivors of five skydivers killed in the crash of a Cessna, though its attorney said the company’s oil tube design does not cause engine failure as the plaintiffs alleged (Joe Lambe, “$27 Million Settlement in Skydiving Plane Crash”, DropZone.com, March 16; “Poor Preflight Probably Killed Skydivers: NTSB”, Aero-News.Net, June 29, 2000). An Indiana appellate court has upheld a $55 million jury verdict against the Kroger Co. over a truck accident at a company terminal, rejecting the company’s contention that the award was excessive and in conflict with workers’ compensation laws (th