Overlawyered » Tillinghast

January 31 roundup

Walter Olson — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 05:06:21 +0000

Latest of periodic Towers Watson (formerly Towers Perrin/Tillinghast) surveys: tort costs fell in 2010 excluding oil spill liability [Towers Watson]
“Will Newt Neuter the Courts?” [James Huffman, Defining Ideas] Obama’s high court appointees are fortunately friendlier toward civil liberties than he is [Steve Chapman]
Unanimous Cal Supremes: companies not legally responsible for other companies’ asbestos products used as replacement for theirs [Cal Biz Lit, Jackson, Beck, Mass Tort Prof]
Claim: jurors considered policy implications of verdict and you can’t have that [On Point; defense verdict in Baltimore, Maryland school-bullying case]
Airfare display mandate: “‘Protecting’ Consumers from the Truth About the Cost of Government” [Thom Lambert, TotM]
Critical assessment of AP-backed new copyright aggregator “NewsRight” [Mike Masnick] Promises not to be “Righthaven 2.0″ [Cit Media Law]
Restatement (Third) of Torts drafters vs. Enlightenment scientific views of causation [David Oliver in June]

Tags: airlines, asbestos, Baltimore, Barack Obama, bullying, California, deep pocket, juries, Newt Gingrich, RightHaven, taxes, Tillinghast, toxic torts

December 18 roundup

Walter Olson — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 00:50:10 +0000

“Of all the body parts to Xerox!” Another round of stories on efforts to reduce liabilities from office holiday parties [ABA Journal, Above the Law, and relatedly Megan McArdle]

New edition of Tillinghast/Towers Perrin study on insurance costs of liability system finds they went down last year, which doesn’t happen often [2007 update, PDF]

Vermont student sues Burger King over indelicate object found in his sandwich; one wonders whether he’s ruled out it being a latex finger cot, sometimes used by bakery workers [AP/FoxNews.com]

Good discussions of “human rights commission” complaints against columnist Mark Steyn in Canada [Volokh, David Warren and again @ RCP, Dan Gardner; for a contrasting view, see Wise Law Blog]

Having trousered $60-odd million in fees suing Microsoft in Minnesota and Iowa antitrust cases, Zelle Hofmann now upset after judge says $4 million in fees should suffice for Wisconsin me-too action [Star-Tribune, PheistyBlog]

Australian rail operator will appeal order to pay $A600,000 to man who illegally jumped tracks, spat at ticket inspectors, hurt himself fleeing when detained [Herald Sun]

Lawyers’ fees in Kia brake class action (Oct. 29, Oct. 30) defended by judge who assails honesty of chief defense witness [Legal Intelligencer]

Who deserves credit for founding Facebook? Question is headed for court [02138 mag]

Yes, jury verdicts do sometimes bankrupt defendants, as did this $8 million class action award against a Kansas City car dealer [KC Star, KC Business Journal]

Dispute over Burt Neuborne’s Holocaust fees is finally over, he’ll get $3.1 million [NY Sun]

So long as we’re only fifty votes behind in the race for this “best general legal blog” honor, we’re going to keep nagging you to vote for Overlawyered [if you haven't already]

Tags: antitrust, Australia, Facebook, free speech in Canada, Iowa, Mark Steyn, Minnesota, roundups, Tillinghast, Vermont, Wisconsin

Pacific Research Institute: Cost of American jackpot justice: $865 billion

Ted Frank — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 06:14:59 +0000

I’ve long complained that the Tillinghast/Towers Perrin estimate of the cost of the tort system is a fundamental underestimate because of its lack of measurement of second-order effects.

I haven’t had a chance to analyze the PRI report in detail, but their figure of $865 billion/year (6.6% of the GNP), which includes the effect of the tort system on safety, employment, innovation, rent-seeking, and rent-avoidance, is around the right order of magnitude, though it’s a little much to expect three-digit accuracy from the estimates the study makes. (Cross-posted at Point of Law.)

Tags: product liability, Tillinghast

Watch what you say about lawyers, cont’d

Walter Olson — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 00:15:04 +0000

The West Virginia Trial Lawyers Association says it will file a Federal Communications Commission complaint unless radio stations yank ads from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce which compare injury lawyers to crocodiles and cite the widely circulated (but trial-lawyer-loathed) Tillinghast studies on the cost of the liability insurance system. (Jake Stump, “Trial lawyers want radio ads pulled”, Charleston Daily Mail, Apr. 6). Carolyn Elefant, Mike Cernovich and Prof. Childs comment. More watch-what-you-say-about-lawyers stories: Jan. 13, 2005, Dec. 23, 2004, and links from there.

Tags: state trial lawyers groups, Tillinghast, watch what you say about lawyers, West Virginia

Litigation-driven surgery

Ted Frank — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 08:20:57 +0000

Another cost of the litigation system not measured by the Tillinghast Towers Perrin study: pregnant women across the country are being required to undergo unnecessary C-sections so the doctors can avoid John-Edwards-style demagoguery in the event of pregnancy complications. C-sections now comprise 27.6% of pregnancies, and the cerebral palsy rate hasn’t declined at all.

Doctors and hospitals say they fear lawsuits if they allow a patient to attempt a vaginal birth after a C-section — called a VBAC — and something goes awry.

“We think the risk is more of a legal risk than a medical risk,” acknowledges Bob Wentz, CEO of California’s Oroville Hospital, which banned VBACs two years ago.

Thomas Frank asks what’s the matter with Kansas: it might be that a woman wanting to avoid a C-section has to travel 280 miles to find a hospital that will allow a VBAC. (Rita Rubin, “Battle lines drawn over C-sections”, USA Today, Aug. 23).

Tags: hospitals, medical, Tillinghast

Newsweek vs. ATLA: Stuart Taylor, Jr. responds (I)

Walter Olson — Fri, 09 Jan 2004 13:52:16 +0000

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.)

Stuart Taylor?s point-by-point response follows (points 1 through 6):

1. Kentucky oral sex lawsuit: ATLA’s characterization of the December 18, 2002 Lexington Herald-Leader article is false. That article merely reported — as did Newsweek — the lawsuit’s claim that the school board had ruled that the act was forced and the girl was sexually assaulted.

In addition, school officials have specifically denied — both in court papers and in interviews with Newsweek — the lawsuit?s allegations that the girl was forced; that the Board of Education had so ruled; and that the girl?s two-day suspension was “for not promptly reporting the assault.” School officials say the incident was consensual. The lawsuit admits that the girl did not yell or scream. Adult chaperones on the bus heard nothing unusual. And ATLA?s implication that the lawsuit demands only a “training program” is deliberately misleading. The lawsuit demands money for the “pain and suffering” of both the girl and her mother and other alleged damages. (See also Newsweek?s “editor’s note.”)

2. $70 million California malpractice judgment: See Newsweek “Editor’s Note” as to the amount. In addition, ATLA?s implication that this was a clear case of medical negligence is wrong. For example, Stanford University Hospital, one of three defendants, presented unrefuted expert testimony that it had followed standard procedure in California for such cases.

3. Ryan Warner, Dr. Sandra Scott, and the Rev. Ron Singleton: The cover package made it clear that (as ATLA purports to reveal) none of them has ever been sued. But Ryan Warner (who has already had to hire a lawyer and give a sworn deposition) fears that he will be added as a defendant in a pending $100,000 lawsuit by a man who broke his ankle sliding into third base in a softball tournament that Warner had organized. Dr. Scott has often been threatened with lawsuits by emergency room patients she has treated.

ATLA?s assertion that the federal Volunteer Protection Act of 1997 gives Warner and others like him immunity from suit is false. That law?s protection is narrow and full of holes. To name just one, plaintiffs can get around the law simply by claiming “gross negligence.” The law provides no protection at all for the many coaches, referees, and other part-time helpers with kids’ sports who are paid more than $500 a year.

The fact that South Carolina and other states have so far rejected claims for clergy malpractice has not prevented plaintiffs from suing clergy and imposing years of legal costs and other burdens in efforts to create such a cause of action. In any event, Singleton spoke mainly of his fear of being sued for improper contact, not for “malpractice.”

As the web site Overlawyered.com points out, courts frequently allow lawsuits against clergy for “breach of fiduciary trust,” which is virtually the same as clergy malpractice. And at least one ATLA-member law firm has advertised that it has “recover[ed] large verdicts and substantial settlements” in clergy malpractice cases.

The main point of this package was not to provide a list of unwarranted lawsuits, although it cites plenty and could have cited thousands more. The main point was to show how the readiness of many plaintiffs and lawyers to bring unwarranted lawsuits has cast a chill of legal fear over the daily lives of many professionals and other ordinary Americans, including many who have never been sued.

4. ATLA asserts: “The McDonald’s obesity cases were dismissed? The sex offender could not find a lawyer willing to take his case and never filed suit? The Cheerleader’s parents never filed suit? The lightning strike case was lost at every level due to governmental immunity.”

But Newsweek:

–did not suggest that any McDonald?s obesity lawsuits have been successful–yet. (ATLA?s leaders have studiously avoided expressing disapproval of them.)

–fully disclosed that the sex offender could not find a lawyer and never sued.

–cited the case of one disappointed would-be cheerleader whose parents sued and another whose parents complained up the administrative ladder without going to court.

–did not suggest that this particular lightning-strike lawsuit was successful.

5. ATLA?s assertion that “litigation is down and awards are steady” is a gross misrepresentation of the statistical trends, which do not undermine anything in the Newsweek cover package. Newsweek was correct in saying that “the ‘litigation explosion’ of the past 30 years may be leveling off (though one study shows a sharp recent uptick).” And the sharp recent uptick is quite dramatic. Details:

The same (somewhat dated) National Center for State Courts report that says tort filings declined by 9 percent from 1992 to 2001 also says that almost all of that decline came in routine car-crash lawsuits, which were unmentioned in the Newsweek package. The report shows that medical malpractice claims, a major focus of the Newsweek package, increased by 24 percent from 1992-2001 (in line with population growth); that the median malpractice award was $280,000, 16 times the median car-crash award; and that total tort filings soared by 40 percent from 1975 and 2001, despite the dip during the 1990’s.

ATLA’s claim that “Federal civil filings are not only down, but the percentage of civil filings that are personal injury cases has also declined” was contrary to the latest data available at the time of Newsweek’s cover package. Chief Justice Rehnquist released new data on January 1 showing an 8 percent drop in civil filings in fiscal 2003, “primarily as a result of decreases in personal injury/product liability cases involving asbestos (such filings had soared 98 percent the previous year).” Still more recent data show that asbestos filings have begun to soar again.

More important than such fluctuations in the number of lawsuits is the cost of the tort system to society, both direct and indirect. After leveling off during the 1990?s, the system?s direct costs soared by a stunning 14.4 percent in 2001 and another 13.3 percent in 2002, to a 2002 total of $233 billion, the equivalent of a 5 percent tax on wages, according to a report released on December 10 by Tillinghast-Towers Perrin, which publishes the most definitive trend statistics on tort system costs. (The Newsweek package, which came out before this new report, cited the $205 billion figure for 2001.)

Inflation-adjusted direct U.S. tort costs per person have shot from $89 in 1950 to $809 in 2002, the Tillinghast report says. The direct costs of medical malpractice claims jumped by an average of 11.9 percent a year from 1975 to 2002. Of the $233 billion total, only 22 cents on the dollar went to compensate alleged victims’ economic losses; almost as much (19 cents) went to their lawyers; 24 cents went to payments for noneconomic losses, mainly pain and suffering; 14 cents went to defense costs; and 21 cents went to insurance overhead costs, according to the Tillinghast report. The tort system’s indirect costs — including many thousands of lost jobs at the more than 60 companies bankrupted by asbestos lawsuits and tens of billions of dollars in medically unnecessary tests to insulate doctors from liability — are impossible to measure precisely. (So are the system?s indirect benefits, including safer products.) The indirect costs probably exceed the direct costs.

6. Every sentence (save one irrelevancy) of ATLA?s characterization of the Tillinghast firm is false, even aside from ATLA?s continued use of the now-outdated 2001 figure of $205 billion in direct tort system costs. Although the actuarial and consulting firm does provide services to insurance companies and self-insured businesses?as well as insurance regulators?its reports on tort system costs are funded internally. Its $233 billion total is not “the cost of the entire property/casualty insurance industry”; the only insurance costs included are liability payments to allegedly injured parties and their lawyers, payments for legal defense and other costs of insured parties, and administrative costs (overhead) directly attributed to tort liability coverage. Nor does the $233 billion include any investment costs or ?non-tort claims, like property damage caused by a storm.” Insurance overhead amounts to 21 percent?not 40 percent–of the $233 billion. If it were omitted, the current rate of increase in total tort system costs would be larger, since insurance overhead has declined as a percentage of the total. The annual Tillinghast reports stress that their purpose is “to provide a straightforward, objective analysis of cost and trends, and not to support any particular point of view.”

Tags: AAJ, asbestos, hospitals, Kentucky, South Carolina, Stuart Taylor Jr., Tillinghast

Cost of U.S. liability sector in 2002: $233 billion

Walter Olson — Thu, 11 Dec 2003 14:39:19 +0000

“The U.S. tort system cost $233 billion in 2002, a $27.4 billion increase over 2001, representing the largest dollar increase in U.S. history. Current costs translate into $809 per U.S. citizen, $87 more than in 2001 and $797 more than in 1950.” So say the people at Tillinghast Towers Perrin, who’ve issued the newest update to their widely followed series of estimates of the size of the liability insurance sector of the U.S. economy. Liabilities tied to asbestos payouts jumped to $11 billion, double the level of just two years earlier, and medical malpractice, class actions and shareholder suits all exerted upward pressure on the totals. Less than 50 cents on the dollar of these costs were returned to claimants, and only 22 cents went to compensate actual economic losses, the report says. “Tort costs increased by a total of 30% in the last two years — the largest two-year increase since 1986/1987.” (”U.S. Tort Costs Climbed to Record $233 Billion in 2002, According to Tillinghast Study”, Dec. 10, executive summary (PDF).

Tags: asbestos, Tillinghast

March 2003 archives, part 1

Walter Olson — Mon, 10 Mar 2003 14:06:33 +0000

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)

Tags: attorneys general, Australia, Bill Lockyer, Clear Channel, contingent fee, deep pocket, emotional distress, free speech, hospitals, Houston, Italian, John Edwards, lead paint, Ohio, Rhode Island, Rhode Island Station nightclub fire, Stuart Taylor Jr., Tillinghast, tobacco, tobacco settlement, West Virginia

Overlawyered » Tillinghast

January 31 roundup

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Pacific Research Institute: Cost of American jackpot justice: $865 billion

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Watch what you say about lawyers, cont’d

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Litigation-driven surgery

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