Overlawyered » Ted Frank

December 19 roundup

Walter Olson — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 05:09:06 +0000

Too much of a stretch: US nixes copyright in yoga exercises [Bloomberg, earlier]
“Know your rights dealing with cops” material construed as probative of criminality [Popehat] Is Justice Scalia really an “unlikely” champion of defendants’ Constitutional rights? [LATimes, Adler] “Overcriminalization: The Legislative Side of the Problem” [Larkin/Heritage, related Meese] When feds spring false-statements trap, it won’t matter whether you committed underlying offense being investigated [Popehat] “‘Clean Up Government Act’ sparks overcriminalization concerns” [PoL]
Former Attorney General Mukasey on ObamaCare recusal flap [Adler]
American Antitrust Institute proposals might be discounted given group’s longstanding pro-plaintiff bias [Thom Lambert]
NYC: “The tour guide said that the way to get rich is to be a zoning lawyer.” [Arnold Kling]
“Obama’s Top Ten Constitutional Violations” [Ilya Shapiro, Daily Caller] In at least two major areas, “Obama has broken with precedent to curtail religious freedom” [Steve Chapman]
Ted Frank-Shirley Svorny med mal debate wraps up [PoL, Bader]

Tags: antitrust, Barack Obama, constitutional law, crime and punishment, land use and zoning, medical malpractice, police, recusals, Ted Frank

November 23 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 13:02:02 +0000

Big win for Ted Frank against cy pres slush funds [CCAF, Fisher, Zywicki, CL&P, @tedfrank ("Ninth Circuit rules in my favor ... but I still think I'm right".)]
“Can the Vatican Be Subject to ICC Prosecution?” [Ku/OJ]
“Tennessee: ATS Sues City Over Right Turn Ticket Money” [The Newspaper]
“Law firms dominating campaign contributions to Obama” [WaPo]
Does that mean it’s an entitlement? Punitive damage limits face constitutional challenges in Arkansas, Missouri [Cal Punitives]
Businessman sues to silence critical blogger, case is dismissed, now files suit #2 [Scott Greenfield]
Going Hollywood? “The Supreme Court should move to Los Angeles” [Conor Friedersdorf]

Tags: Arkansas, Barack Obama, bloggers and the law, Catholic Church, cy pres, Missouri, punitive damages, red light cameras, Supreme Court, Ted Frank

WSJ profiles Ted Frank

Walter Olson — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 05:01:52 +0000

Ted makes it big with a profile that focuses on his class-action objection work (as opposed to his stellar blogging at this site). More: Larry Ribstein.

Tags: Ted Frank

June 22 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 05:20:49 +0000

Supreme Court disbars Bill Lerach [Richard Samp, WLF] And check out the byline of the former class-action king’s recent contribution to The Nation; do you think it omits anything material? [h/t Bob Lenzner]
Ted Frank guessed right on outcome of Wal-Mart case but still lost big betting on it [PoL]
After feds seize online bettors’ money, Anne Arundel County, Maryland police department crows over windfall [CEI] And c’mon Maryland, surely we in the home state of H.L. Mencken and Frederick Douglass can do better in the liberty rankings than this;
“Wrongful-Death Lawsuit Filed After Man Killed by Rooster” [Lowering the Bar]
Hotel union behind California bill mandating fitted sheets [Daily Caller, earlier]
Fifth Circuit upholds constitutionality of Texas law banning barratry (stirring up litigation) [Christian Southwick, Legal Ethics Forum]
A Linda Greenhouse column I agree with? One of us must be slipping [vagueness in criminal statutes, see related Harvey Silverglate]

Tags: animals, Bill Lerach, chasing clients, crime and punishment, gambling, hotels, Maryland, New York Times, Ted Frank, Texas

June 8 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 18:12:04 +0000

Law firm settles with employee who said required high heels led to back injury [ABA Journal]
Stock listings fleeing U.S. for overseas, legal environment a factor [Ribstein, TotM]
Partial solution to above? Ted Frank places a stock bet on the Wal-Mart case [PoL, more]
Wider press coverage of hospital drug shortage [AP, Reuters, my March post]
Trial judge up north supports certifying as class action unusual suit blaming Newfoundland for moose collisions [Canadian Press via Karlsgodt, earlier here and here]
Academic revolt against copyright overreach [Chron of Higher Ed]
Sues deceased grandmother over trampoline injury [Madison County Record]

Tags: animals, Canada, colleges and universities, copyright, hospitals, pharmaceuticals, Securities and Exchange Commission, Ted Frank, Wal-Mart

CCAF announces “multiple victories”

Walter Olson — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 05:24:12 +0000

Ted Frank’s class action settlement reform group, the Center for Class Action Fairness, has announced “multiple victories” in ongoing cases arising from settlements by Apple, Classmates.com, Toyota, HP, and gasoline retailers. Among the topics addressed in objection: exaggeration of benefits supposedly provided for the class, excessive attorney fees, and diversion of proceeds to groups unrelated to the class. Details here.

Tags: class action settlements, cy pres, Ted Frank

Court throws out verdict because defense mentioned Liebeck case

Walter Olson — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 05:04:33 +0000

“A defense lawyer’s fleeting reference to the ‘uniquely iconic’ McDonald’s coffee case was enough for the Utah Supreme Court to order a new trial in a pedestrian accident lawsuit and allow the plaintiff to seek a larger damages award.” [Matthew Heller/OnPoint News; Jodie Hill/Downtown Lawyer] And Abnormal Use is out with a new interview of Ted Frank, who has written frequently on the hot-coffee case for this site, and who says:

The Stella Liebeck case was exactly the sort of thing that turns into an urban legend, and there are certainly a lot of inaccuracies that crept into the story as it went viral. The Liebeck case got politicized, however: it was an outrageous result and picked up as a poster child for tort reform, and, fascinatingly, the trial lawyer lobby, instead of reasonably saying “Look: the justice system is never going to be 100 percent correct, there have been a dozen hot coffee cases before this one where the courts got it right and threw it out, and you can’t make public policy based on a single anecdote just because the judge made a mistake here” decided to engage in a misinformation campaign to argue that the Liebeck case was both correct and an aspirational result for our tort system – and a disturbing number of law professors joined that cause. If you Google for the case, the vast majority of results are trial-lawyer sites filled with misstatements of the facts and laws. It’s gotten to the point that, in the majority of tort reform debates I participate in, it’s the trial lawyer who is the first to introduce the subject. I’ve been following the case and rebutting the misinformation on both sides since it first made the news, and it just so happens that the majority of misinformation is coming from the plaintiffs’ lawyer side these days. One of these days, I’ll lock myself in a room for a couple of weeks and write a law review article on the subject so there can be a one stop place for truthful information and arguments about the case.

I, too, gave a lot of thought to writing up the long controversy over the Liebeck case in my latest book, precisely because academic sources, and not just trial-lawyer publicists, persistently spread distortions and misconceptions about the case. Eventually it seemed like too wide a digression from the book’s main themes — but someone still needs to write up that story.

Tags: hot coffee, Ted Frank

“And you thought you billed a lot of hours…”

Walter Olson — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 14:58:34 +0000

Ted Frank, who’s challenging the Cobell (Indian trust) class action fees as part of his work with the Center for Class Action Fairness, catches out a lawyer who claims to have worked for more than nine hours a day on the case for 14 years, including a 7-year stretch in which he purportedly worked “an average of eleven hours a day, every day seven days a week without a single day off.” [Above the Law, earlier]

Tags: attorneys' fees, class action settlements, Indian tribes, Ted Frank

March 15 roundup

Walter Olson — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 13:37:58 +0000

“A conversation with class action objector Ted Frank” [American Lawyer]
Reviews of new Lester Brickman book Lawyer Barons [Dan Fisher/Forbes, Russell Jackson] Plus: interview at TortsProf; comments from Columbia legal ethicist William Simon [Legal Ethics Forum]
“Collective Bargaining for States But Not for Uncle Sam” [Adler] Examples of how Wisconsin public-sector unionism has worked in practice [Perry] Wisconsin cop union: nice business you got there, shame if anything were to happen to it [Sykes, WTMJ] “Union ‘rights’ that aren’t” [Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe]
“Minnesota House Considering Significant Consumer Class Action Reform Measures” [Karlsgodt]
10,000 lawyers at DoD? Rumsfeld complains military overlawyered [Althouse via Instapundit]
“Are Meritless Claims More Prevalent in Copyright?” [Boyden, Prawfs]
Claim: availability of punitive damages reduces rate of truck accidents. Really? [Curt Cutting]
Now with improved federalism: “The Return of the Lawsuit Abuse Reduction Act” [Carter Wood, more, earlier here].

Tags: class actions, copyright, labor unions, Lester Brickman, military, Minnesota, police, public employment, punitive damages, sanctions, Ted Frank, Wisconsin

Ted Frank on the Dukes v. Wal-Mart class action

Walter Olson — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 15:06:19 +0000

The problem, Ted writes in the Examiner, isn’t that the class action is “too large” — even very large classes can sometimes fit the law’s requirements that each claim be identical in nature and capable of standing or falling together.

But the theory of the Dukes lawsuit is exactly the opposite: the plaintiffs claimed that Wal-Mart’s central office did not exercise enough authority over each of its 3,400 stores; each of the individual managers’ discretionary employment or promotion decisions–whether made by male or female managers–was, on average, discriminatory; and thus Wal-Mart was responsible for a policy that “fosters or facilitates” discrimination. …

The discrimination laws permit Wal-Mart to defend itself by demonstrating that the challenged job decision was made for a reason other than gender. For example, looking at Betty Dukes, the named plaintiff, alone, we learn that she had a female manager and that she was repeatedly disciplined for returning late from lunch breaks. …Wal-Mart is stripped of its defense because the individualized defense would be inconvenient to trying the case as a class action. …

If the Supreme Court rules in Wal-Mart’s favor later this year, it will not be to protect business, but to protect due process.

Tags: class actions, Ted Frank, Wal-Mart v. Dukes

Overlawyered » Ted Frank

December 19 roundup

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November 23 roundup

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June 22 roundup

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June 8 roundup

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