“A Mississippi Supreme Court justice and a wealthy attorney who helped land the state millions in tobacco settlement money were among five people indicted Friday on federal fraud and bribery charges. Biloxi attorney Paul Minor is accused of funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars to Justice Oliver Diaz Jr., Diaz’ former wife, Jennifer, and to two lower court judges. In return, Minor allegedly received favorable treatment for Minor and his clients in cases involving multimillion dollar judgments.” The 16-count indictment also names former Harrison County Judges Wes Teel and John Whitfield. Prominent in the state’s tobacco litigation, Minor is the son of a well known Magnolia State political columnist, Bill Minor. (Jack Elliott Jr., “Justice, Attorney Charged in Mississippi”, AP/Sarasota Herald Tribune, Jul. 25; Jerry Mitchell, “Justice, 4 others indicted”, Jackson Clarion Ledger, Jul. 26; Jerry Mitchell, “Charges may alter opinions of Miss. judiciary”, Jackson Clarion Ledger, Jul. 27; Jack Elliott Jr., “Indictment of justice and lawyer come amid debate between Mississippi business, trial lawyers”, AP/New Orleans Times Picayune, Jul. 27). More: Beth Musgrave, “‘Go see Paul Minor’”, Biloxi Sun Herald, May 18. For our earlier coverage, see: Oct. 9-10 and Oct. 11-13, 2002; May 7 and Jul. 24, 2003.
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tobacco settlement
Former Texas Attorney General and key tobacco-suit figure Dan Morales, long a focus of scrutiny on this page, has withdrawn his former plea of innocent and has agreed to a four-year prison term, pleading guilty to one count each of mail and tax fraud; he will also pay fines of up to $1.25 million (Ken Herman & David Hafetz, “Morales pleads guilty to mail fraud, tax evasion”, Austin American Statesman, Jul. 17; more stories). The mail fraud charge relates to a backdated contract in which Morales purported to bestow a chunk of the state’s tobacco-settlement booty on his friend Marc Murr (see Jun. 26 and links from there). Our big question — our only question, really — is: does this mean he’ll talk?
“Former Texas Attorney General Dan Morales was ordered to remain in jail while awaiting trial on federal fraud charges after a judge determined today that he may have lied on two recent car loan applications and was a risk to commit financial crimes.” Morales, a key figure in the multistate tobacco litigation and long a familiar figure to readers of this site (see Jul. 15, 2002 and links from there; Jan. 10-12, 2003), was indicted in March (see Mar. 8-9) along with his friend Marc Murr and pleaded innocent to charges of having made improper efforts to gain hundreds of millions of dollars in fees for Murr from the state’s tobacco settlement. In the new development, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jim Blankinship presented U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks “with documents that he said showed Morales had purchased two used cars — a Mercedes and a Lexus — within days of filing a sworn affidavit with the court indicating that he had no income,” entitling him to representation by an appointed public defender. “According to Blankinship, Morales paid about $70,000 for the Mercedes and Lexus, both 2000 models. On loan applications to buy the cars, Morales listed his income as either $20,000 a month or $20,800 a month.” Judge Sparks remanded Morales into custody. (“Judge orders former attorney general to remain in jail”, AP/Houston Chronicle, Jun. 26; “Judge orders ex-AG Morales to remain jailed until October”, AP/Dallas Morning News, Jun. 26; David Pasztor, “Dan Morales jailed”, Austin American-Statesman, Jun. 25.)
Florida class action (Engle), 2003: “A $710 million loose end“, Jun. 24; ““Trial lawyers get spanked’“, May 24-26; “Court overturns $145 billion Engle award“, May 22-23. 2001: “Angles on Engle“, May 24. 2000: “‘Not even thinking about’ fees“, Aug. 11-13; “Smoking and responsibility: columnists weigh in“, Jul. 28-30; “‘Poll: majority disapprove of tobacco fine’“, Jul. 24-25; “Florida verdict: more editorial reaction“, Jul. 24-25; “Smoking and responsibility: columnists weigh in“, Jul. 28-30; Editorial roundup“, Jul. 19-20; “Florida tobacco verdict“, July 18; “Tobacco: why stop at net worth?” (punitive damage rulings by judge), Jul. 10; “Another Mr. Civility nominee” (Stanley Rosenblatt), Jun. 2-4. 1999: “$49 million lawyers’ fee okayed in case where clients got nothing” (secondhand smoke class action), Sept. 28; “Personal responsibility takes a vacation in Miami“, Jul. 8; “The Florida tobacco jurors: anything but typical“, Wall Street Journal, Jul. 12, 1999.
Tobacco fees reconsidered, 2003: “Senate panel nixes tobacco-fee clawback“, May 9-11; “Feds indict former Texas AG“, Mar. 8-9; “‘Not a pretty picture’“, Jan. 10-12. 2002: “Judge overturns $1.3 billion tobacco fee award” (Castano Group), Sept. 27-29; “Welcome Fox News viewers/ readers“, Aug. 2-4; “Tobacco fees: one brave judge” (New York), Jul. 30-31 (& Aug. 2-4, Jun. 21-23, Oct. 16-17, Oct. 25-27, 2002; Feb. 11 & Jun. 6-8, 2003; May 11, 2001).
“‘Lawyers who won $10 bil. verdict had donated to judge’“, Apr. 30, 2003; “A bond too far“, Apr. 4-6; “Appeals bonds, again“, Apr. 2-3; “Mad County pays out again” (“light” cigarette class action), Mar. 24, 2003.
“‘Nanny Bloomberg’” (NYC smoking ban), Oct. 22, 2002.
Tobacco fees, state by state, 2003: “‘Law firms in tobacco suit seek $1.2b more’” (Mass.), May 19 (& Jan. 2-3, 2002, Dec. 22, 1999); “Feds indict former Texas AG“, Mar. 8-9 (& May 22, Sept. 1-3, 2000; Jun. 21, Aug. 29-30, Nov. 12, 2001, Jul. 15, Jul. 30-31, 2002; Jan. 10-12, 2003). 2002: “Judge overturns $1.3 billion tobacco fee award” (Castano Group, California), Sept. 27-29; “Tobacco fees: one brave judge” (N.Y.), Jul. 30-31 (& Aug. 2-4, Jun. 21-23, 2002, Oct. 16-17, 2002, Feb. 11, 2003, May 11, 2001); “Dewey deserve that much?“, Mar. 6; “Mass., Ill., NYC tobacco fees“, Jan. 2-3. 2001: “Michigan tobacco fees“, Sept. 19-20; “Tobacco-fee tensions” (Fla. resumes investing in tobacco cos.), Jun. 21 (& letter to editor, Jul. 6); “Missouri’s tagalong tobacco fees“, Jun. 5 (& Sept. 21, 2000); “‘Lungren now a paid advocate for his former foes’” (Calif.), Apr. 5; “(Another) ‘Monster Fee Award for Tobacco Fighters’” (Calif. cities and counties), Mar. 21-22; “Reclaiming the tobacco loot“, Mar. 15; “Lawyers get tobacco fees early“, Mar. 5; “Tobacco arbitrator: they all know whose side I’m on“, Feb. 16-19. 2000: “Beehive of legal activity: Utah tobacco fees“, Nov. 6; “South Carolina tobacco fees: how to farm money“, Oct. 25; “Gore amid friendly crowd (again)” (Fla.), Apr. 12 (& “Dershowitz’s Florida frolic?“, Jul. 17; also see Dec. 8-10, 2000, Aug. 8-9, 2000, Dec. 27-28, 1999); “Sooner get rich” (Oklahoma), Jun. 7; “‘Lawyers’ tobacco-suit fees invite revolt’” (Ohio), May 23; “North Carolina (& Kentucky & Tennessee) tobacco fees“, May 2; “Connecticut AG has ‘no idea’ whether lawyers he hired are overcharging“, Feb. 3 (& update Feb. 16); “Pennsylvania tobacco fees: such a bargain!“, Jan. 10 (& Oct. 24, 2002). 1999: “Maryland’s kingmaker” (Peter Angelos), Oct. 19 (& Dec. 9, 1999, Oct. 16-17, 2000, June 21, 2001, Apr. 10, 2002); “Illinois tobacco fees“, Oct. 16-17; “My dear old tobacco-fee friends” (Kansas AG, like Connecticut’s, gave tobacco business to her old law firm), Oct. 11 (see also Sept. 21, 2000); “Boardwalk bonanza” (N.J.), Oct. 1-3; “News judgment“, Aug. 6; “Puff, the magic fees” (Wisc.), Jul. 13.
Tobacco-fee tycoons, 2003: “Class action lawyer takes $20 million from defendant’s side” (Joseph Rice), Mar. 15-16; “‘Not a pretty picture’“, Jan. 10-12; 2002: “Rumblings in Mississippi” (Scruggs, Minor), Oct. 9-10 (& Nov. 6); “Judge overturns $1.3 billion tobacco fee award” (Castano Group), Sept. 27-29. 2001: “Settle a dispute today” (O’Quinn vs. Jamail), Sept. 18; “Ness monster sighted in Narragansett Bay” (Rhode Island, Ness Motley), Jun. 7 (& see Oct. 6-9, 2000, July 17, 2000, Nov. 1, 1999). 2000: “Punch-outs, Florida style” (Robert Montgomery), Nov. 17-19 (& see Aug. 8, April 12, 2000; Aug. 21-22, 1999); “Friend to the famous” (Williams Bailey), Oct. 12; “Senator Lieberman: a sampler” (voted to curb tobacco fees), Aug. 8-9; “Trial lawyer candidates” (Minnesota’s Ciresi), Jul. 6 (& update Sept. 15-17; loses primary bid); “‘Lawyers’ tobacco-suit fees invite revolt’” (USA Today editorial), May 23. 1999: “Who’s afraid of Dickie Scruggs?“, Dec. 2; “Maryland’s kingmaker” (Peter Angelos), Oct. 19 (& Dec. 9, 1999, Oct. 16-17, 2000, June 21, 2001); “The Marie Antoinette school of public relations” (tobacco lawyers pose for photo shoot on their yachts, horse farms, etc.), Aug. 21-22; and see lawyers’ campaign contributions.
Humor: “Dave Barry on tobacco settlement, round III“, Sept. 16-17, 2002; “Dave Barry on tobacco suits, round II“, March 16, 2000; “Dave Barry on federal tobacco suit“, Oct. 26, 1999; “Cartoon that made us laugh” (“….We can’t take those off the market! Dangerous products are a gold mine for the government!”), Jan. 21-23, 2000.
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Terms of state tobacco settlement, 2003: “Appeals bonds, again“, Apr. 2-3. 2002: “We did it all for the public health, cont’d” (Alabama devotes more proceeds to tobacco farmers than to smoking reduction), Aug. 22; “Tobacco settlement funds go to tobacco promotion” (N.C.), Jun. 28-30; “‘Bush budget surprise: $25M for tobacco suit’” (Martha Derthick, Up in Smoke), Feb. 20. 2001: “Tobacco-fee tensions” (Fla. resumes investing in tobacco cos.), Jun. 21 (& letter to editor, Jul. 6); “Reclaiming the tobacco loot“, Mar. 15; “Push him into a bedroom, hand him a script” (Bill Clinton testimonial for tobacco lawyers), Mar. 9-11; “Lawyers get tobacco fees early“, Mar. 5; “Tobacco arbitrator: they all know whose side I’m on“, Feb. 16-19; “Safer smokes vs. the settlement cartel“, Feb. 7-8. 2000: “Missouri tobacco fees“, Sept. 21, 2000; “Tobacco- and gun-suit reading” (Stuart Taylor, Jr.), Aug. 21-22, 2000; “Challenging the multistate settlement“, Jul. 17, 2000. 1999: “‘Few Settlement Dollars Used for Tobacco Control’“, Dec. 27-28; “Tobacco bankruptcies, and what comes after” (state gov’ts, trial lawyers would become cigarette producers), Dec. 13; “How the tobacco settlement works” (the more cigarettes sold, the more money states get), Nov. 2; “Addictive tobacco money” (states sued over alleged burden on their taxpayers — so are they using the proceeds to cut taxes?), Sept. 7; “Collusion: it’s an AG thing” (terms of settlement cartelize cigarette industry), Jul. 29. Also see Walter Olson, “Puff, the magic settlement“, Reason, Jan. 2000.
“‘Tough tobacco laws may not deter kids’“, Jun. 7-9, 2002; “Blind newsdealer charged with selling cigarettes to underage buyer“, Sept. 16, 1999.
“Sin-suit city” (Banzhaf), Jun. 10, 2002.
“Ad model sues tobacco company“, May 1-2, 2002.
“Australian party calls for banning smoking while driving“, Jun. 3-4, 2002; “‘Positive nicotine test to keep student from prom’” (over-18 student, off-premises consumption), Apr. 26-28, 2002 (& update May 10-12: school backs down); “Judge orders woman to stop smoking at home“, Mar. 27-28, 2002; “‘Smokers told to fetter their fumes’” (smoking in homes that bothers neighbors), Nov. 26, 2001; “Utah lawmakers: don’t smoke in your car” (when kids present), Oct. 5-7, 2001; “Apartment smoking targeted“, Jan. 3, 2000.
“Australian party calls for banning smoking while driving“, Jun. 3-4, 2002 (document retention case); “International tobacco suits: not quite such easy pickings“, Feb. 1-3, 2002; “‘Saudi Arabia finally gets tough on terrorism!’“, Dec. 10, 2001; “More from Judge Kent” (Bolivian suit), Aug. 3, 2001; “Smoker’s suit nixed in Norway“, Dec. 18-19, 2000; “They call it distributive justice” (government of Saudi Arabia sues tobacco cos.), Nov. 16, 2000; “Spreading to Australia?“, Dec. 29-30, 1999; “Israeli court rejects cigarette reimbursement suit“, Oct. 7, 1999.
“Veeps ATLA could love” (Durbin, D-Ill., as guardian of tobacco lawyers’ fees), July 7, 2000 (& see Apr. 25, 2002).
“Competing interests: none declared”. “The unconflicted Prof. Daynard“, April 21-23, 2000 (& update: letters, Jan. 2001, June 2001; Aug. 2, Dec. 17, 2001).
Federal tobacco suit: our views: “‘Bush budget surprise: $25M for tobacco suit’“, Feb. 20, 2002; “Judge throws out half of federal tobacco suit“, October 2, 2000; “Good news out of Washington…” (House votes to cut off funding for suit), June 21, 2000 (& update June 26: action reversed, funds approved); “Feds: dissent on smoking = racketeering“, Sept. 23, 1999; “Guest column in Forbes by Overlawyered.com‘s editor“, Oct. 25, 1999.
“Prison litigation: ‘Kittens and Rainbows Suites’” (cellmate’s smoking violates rights), Jan. 11-13, 2002.
Boeken v. Philip Morris: “Boeken record“, June 19, 2001; “$5,133.47 a cigarette“, Jun. 11, 2001; “Tobacco plunder in Los Angeles” ($3 billion damage award), Jun. 8-10, 2001.
Federal tobacco suit: others’ views: “Columnist-fest” (Jacob Sullum), Jun. 22-24, 2001; “Blatant end-runs around the democratic process” (former Labor Secretary Robert Reich), Jan. 15-16, 2000; “Dave Barry on federal tobacco suit” (plus novelist Tom Clancy’s critique), Oct. 26, 1999; “‘This wretched lawsuit’” (Jonathan Rauch in National Journal ), Oct. 13, 1999; “Feds’ tobacco shakedown: ‘A case of fraud’“, Sept. 29, 1999 (roundup of editorial pages); “Feds as tobacco pushers” (columnist Andrew Glass recalls encouragement of smoking in U.S. Army), Sept. 24, 1999; “Hurry up, before the spell breaks” (leading plaintiff’s lawyer wants feds to sue fast since public losing interest), Sept. 24, 1999.
Regulation by litigation: “Tobacco- and gun-suit reading” (law prof Michael Krauss), Aug. 21-22, 2000; “Convenient line at the time” (tobacco is unique, said state attorneys general — sure), May 15; “Stuart Taylor, Jr., on Smith & Wesson deal” (“Guns and Tobacco: Government by Litigation”), Apr. 11, 2000; “Arbitrary confiscation, from Pskov to Pascagoula” (Michael Barone in U.S. News on threat to rule of law), Jul. 24-25, 1999; “Guns, tobacco, and others to come” (Peter Huber in Commentary on the new mass-tort cases as “show trials”), Jul. 20; “‘A de facto fourth branch of government’” (prominent trial lawyer Wendell Gauthier’s view of plaintiff bar’s role), Jul. 4, 1999.
“Dewey deserve that much?“, Mar. 6, 2002; “Health plans rebuffed in bid to sue cigarette makers“, Jan. 11, 2000.
“Terrorists, American business execs compared“, Sept. 28-30, 2001.
“Columnist-fest“, Jun. 22-24, 2001 (Amity Shlaes on asbestos synergy case); “Best little forum-shopping in Texas” (state’s Medicaid suit got filed in Texarkana, contributing $6.1 million to local economy), Aug. 27, 1999.
“The Kessler agenda” (former FDA chief calls for cigarette ban), Jan. 12-14, 2001; “Kessler rebuked” (FDA claim of authority over tobacco), March 27, 2000.
“Updates” (baby Castano suit nixed in N.Y.), Dec. 26-29, 2000.
“Wal-Mart’s tobacco exposure“, Sept. 25-26, 2000; “The Wal-Mart docket” (sued over tobacco sales), July 7, 2000.
“Another billion, snuffed” (antitrust lawsuit between snuffmakers), May 10, 2000.
“Hollywood special: ‘The Insider’“, Mar. 30, 2000.
“Because they still had money” (Hausfeld’s price-fixing suit), Mar. 2, 2000.
“Tobacco lawyers’ lien leverage“, Feb. 29, 2000.
“Feds’ tobacco hypocrisy, cont’d: Indian ‘smoke shops’“, Jan. 25, 2000; “Do as we say, please” (Indian tribes, after profiting immensely from tax-free smoke shops, turn around and sue suppliers), Jul. 14, 1999.
“The joy of tobacco fees“, Jan. 20, 2000.
“Calif. state funds used to compile ‘enemies list’“, Jan. 5, 2000.
“‘Trial lawyers on trial’” (Trevor Armbrister, Reader’s Digest), Dec. 23-26, 1999.
“Philadelphia Inquirer Tech.life: ‘Web Winners’” (this page is recommended), Dec. 15, 1999.
“Ohio tobacco-settlement booty“, Nov. 8, 1999.
“Public by 2-1 margin disapproves of tobacco suits“, Nov. 5-7, 1999.
“Not-so-Kool omen for NAACP suit“, Nov. 1, 1999.
“Minnesota to auction seized cigarettes“, Oct. 21, 1999.
“Reform stirrings on public contingency fees“, Oct. 15, 1999.
“Big guns” (tobacco example shaped gun litigation), Oct. 5-6, 1999.
“Plus extra damages for having argued with us” (“lesson of tobacco”: you can get punished for defending your product), Aug. 19, 1999.
“‘Settlement bonds’: are guns next?” (how Wall Street finances expropriation of industries), Aug. 5, 1999.
Do the tobacco wars that began in the mid-1990s represent an unprecedented triumph for public health? Are they an inevitable response to legislative gridlock on smoking policy? Or are they our legal system’s own updated version of the Gilded Age scandals that brought American government into disrepute a century ago, siphoning billions of dollars of publicly obtained money into the hands of politically connected attorneys? Commentaries on Overlawyered.com (above) may help you decide. In the mean time, the following links offer a way into the wider tobacco controversy:
Anti-tobacco groups, most of which are supportive of litigation as well as other coercive government actions aimed at curtailing tobacco sale and use, are well represented on the web. They include Tobacco.org, federally funded antitobacco activist Stanton Glantz’s Tobacco Control Archives, Americans for Non-Smokers’ Rights, Action on Smoking and Health, and the American Council on Science and Health. Tobacco.org’s links list is especially comprehensive. The empire associated with Prof. Richard Daynard, participant in tobacco suits, oft-quoted expert, and professor at Northeastern U., includes the Tobacco Products Liability Project and Tobacco Control Resource Center, as well as the State Tobacco Information Center. The Castano Group, a vast joint venture of trial lawyers cooperating to file tobacco class actions, maintains a website that is distinctly uninformative (unless you’re a lawyer/member or a cooperative pressie).
Relatively neutral sites include Yahoo Full Coverage.
Critics of the anti-tobacco crusade often note that it curtails individual liberty, freedom of contract and freedom of association. As part of its Breaking Issues series (“Fining Smokers“), Reason magazine includes a list of online articles skeptical of the government’s role in the tobacco field, while Reason senior editor Jacob Sullum is the author of 1998′s For Your Own Good : The Anti-Smoking Crusade and the Tyranny of Public Health. At the libertarian-oriented Cato Institute, Robert Levy has criticized “The Tobacco Wars“, written that “States Share Blame for Tobacco Lawyers’ Greed“, and called tobacco settlements “Dangerous to Your Liberty“; the state Medicaid suits, he argues, are “Snuffing Out the Rule of Law“. Cato’s Jerry Taylor describes the battle as “The Pickpocket State vs. Tobacco“. “The Anti-Tobacco Crusade” by Joseph Kellard, Capitalism magazine, March 1998, argues from a viewpoint supportive of Ayn Rand’s Objectivism. In Colorado, the Independence Institute maintains a Center for Personal Freedom run by Linda Gorman which draws the connection to other paternalist crusades on issues like drinking, seatbelt use and mandatory helmet laws. The Heritage Foundation’s Todd Gaziano makes the case that a proposed federal lawsuit against tobacco companies is “elevating politics over law” (July 30, 1999 Backgrounder). Overlawyered.com‘s editor has taken exception to the retroactivity of the crusade, to its manipulative treatment of children, and to the hardball or demagogic tactics used in the Castano and Engle cases. Rep. Chris Cox (R-Calif.) delivered a notable critique of the tobacco litigation at a Congressional hearing held Dec. 10, 1997 (no longer online).
An extensive site offering an aggressive defense of smoking and smokers, along with a large collection of links, is Forces International (“Fight Ordinances and Restrictions to Control and Eliminate Smoking”).
May 9-11 – Senate panel nixes tobacco-fee clawback. “Senators working on a tax bill Thursday stripped a proposal that would have forced attorneys in a landmark tobacco lawsuit to give $9 billion in fees back to the states they represented.” Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., had proposed requiring plaintiff’s lawyers in the tobacco affair to return to their state-government clients fees in excess of $2,500/hour or thereabouts. “But Democrats, led by Sen. John Breaux, D-La., and joined by Republican Sens. Orrin Hatch of Utah and Gordon Smith of Oregon, won a 12-8 vote to strike the language. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said that if Congress can change the terms of the tobacco settlement, there is nothing to stop it from telling every business in America to change the way they pay their executives.” It’s almost as if Sen. Kerry doesn’t realize that 1) a host of federal laws already on the books, notably tax provisions, do purposely shape the way businesses compensate their executives; 2) lawyers, unlike business execs, practice under professional ethical codes which are supposed to bar them specifically from charging excessive fees; 3) lawyers who claim to represent the government (and thus the public) come under some of the most stringent ethical constraints of all. (“Senate Democrats Strike Proposal to Limit Fees for Lawyers in Tobacco Case”, AP/Tampa Bay Online, May 8; Stephen Moore, “Targeting lawyers who got rich off tobacco trials”, Scripps Howard/Nando Times, May 2) (& welcome Law.com readers). (DURABLE LINK)
May 9-11 – Update: “U.S. is sued for deaths of crossers”. “The families of 14 illegal entrants who died crossing the desert east of Yuma in May 2001 have filed a $42 million lawsuit against the U.S. Department of the Interior.” As we reported a year ago when the cases were at an earlier procedural stage, “The suit charges the government with failing to authorize the placement of water stations intended for use by unlawful visitors, though it knew smugglers of immigrants were active in the desert area.” (Michael Marizco, Arizona Daily Star (Tucson), May 8). (DURABLE LINK)
May 8 – “No Crueler Tyrannies”. Dorothy Rabinowitz’s long-awaited book on the mass-child-abuse accusation frenzy of the 1980s and 1990s is now available at this link. It collects and extends the widely acclaimed Wall Street Journal reporting that prepared the way for the author’s 2001 Pulitzer Prize (review by Carol Iannone, Commentary, May; C-SPAN “Booknotes” interview with Brian Lamb, May 4; Suzanne Fields, “A cruel tyranny at home”, syndicated/TownHall, Apr. 3; other reviews at Amazon site). (DURABLE LINK)
May 8 – More on Edwards’ law-firm donations. Washington periodical The Hill digs deeper into the curiously uniform $2,000 contributions Sen. John Edwards’ presidential campaign got from so many receptionists, paralegals and other low-level staffers at plaintiff’s law firms. The $2,000 donors include many employees who had not given to candidates or even voted in the past, and others who are listed on the voting rolls as Republicans. Many spouses and relatives of the staffers likewise contributed the maximum. Some of the munificent staffers have recently gone through the kind of personal financial reverses — bankruptcy filings, for example — which would not seem to correlate in the natural order of things with having a large available checkbook for political donations. “In many instances, all the checks from a given firm arrived on the same day — from partners, attorneys, and other support staff.” Employees denied that their law-firm employers had signaled any willingness to reimburse the donations, which would constitute a violation of federal law. (Sam Dealey, “Donations to Sen. Edwards questioned”, The Hill, May 7). (DURABLE LINK)
May 7 – Mississippi investigation heats up. Per the Times of South Mississippi (Hattiesburg), the “net may be widening” in the FBI’s previously reported investigation of improper ties between Mississippi judges and well-known trial lawyers (see Oct. 9-10 and 11-13, 2002). “Sources said this week as many as 25 indictments could be issued …While reports of the investigation have focused on the Gulf Coast, sources said the probe now includes campaign contributions from trial lawyers connected to Southwest Mississippi,” renowned as the center of intense litigation against pharmaceutical companies. (“Bob Pittman, “FBI widening its investigation of campaign funding”, Times of South Mississippi (Hattiesburg), May 5. See also “Diaz’s dad testifies before grand jury”, Jackson Clarion Ledger, Apr. 12; Jerry Mitchell, “Judicial probe intensifying”, Jackson Clarion Ledger, May 2).
“Meanwhile,” the Hattiesburg paper continues, “four trial lawyers who have been active in lawsuits against prescription drug manufacturers are named as defendants in a growing number of court actions in Jefferson County. In at least four suits filed to date, trial lawyers Dennis Sweet, Shane Langston, Richard Freese and Richard Schwartz, all of Jackson, have been named as defendants in cases in which it is alleged that the four either withheld settlement money from clients or failed to pay hired ‘runners’ who were employed to enroll plaintiffs in cases which the lawyers filed in several different counties in Mississippi, including Jasper County.” (May 5 article, cited above). See also Bob Pittman, “Judge asked to step aside in trial lawyer suit”, May 1; Bob Pittman, “Suit alleges lawyer used ‘fake clients’”, May 1. (DURABLE LINK)
May 7 – Jury selection in Britain. Notwithstanding the understandable outcry over a recent case in which a British judge excluded prospective jurors from a politically sensitive trial based on their religion, the general rule in the English system is for jurors to be drawn from a near-universal pool and selection to be made at random. “English lawyers are not pestered by jury consultants: they do not exist here. We do not have days of jury selection before a trial starts, as I have seen for myself several times in the United States, with prospective jurors questioned in depth and sometimes with aggression by lawyers anxious to explore possible prejudices. Defense barristers in England used to have the right of seven (then whittled down to three) peremptory challenges without any need for courtroom interrogation….But Parliament abolished peremptory challenges by the defense in 1989, and although not technically abolished, ‘standing by for the Crown’ [the equivalent for the prosecution] now seldom occurs.” For-cause challenges are rare as well. (Fenton Bresler, “Picking juries — or not”, National Law Journal, Mar. 17, not online). (DURABLE LINK)
May 6 – “Robber sues clerk who shot him during holdup”. Muncie, Ind.: “A convicted robber is suing the convenience store clerk who shot him as he fled after a holdup. Willie Brown, 44, claimed the clerk acted ‘maliciously and sadistically’ in firing five shots as Brown ran out of Zipps Deli with money from the store’s cash register.” Brown, who was struck by bullets in the back and side, pleaded guilty to robbery and was sentenced to four years in prison. His earlier convictions included one for robbery and two for burglary. (AP/Indianapolis Star, Apr. 18). And in Great Britain, “Government lawyers trying to keep the Norfolk farmer Tony Martin behind bars will tell a High Court judge tomorrow that burglars are members of the public who must be protected from violent householders.” (Robert Verkaik, “Government lawyers say burglars ‘need protection’”, The Independent (UK), May 5). Plus: in Bentonville, Ark., inmate Kenneth J. Lewis II is suing Nina Baugh for $140,000 in damages; according to affidavits, Lewis was shot by Baugh after he attempted to burglarize her family’s pawn shop and another business. Lewis was sentenced in January to 12 years’ imprisonment after he pleaded guilty to commercial burglary and aggravated assault (Tracy M. Neal, “Convicted burglar sues woman who shot him during crime”, Benton County Daily Record, Apr. 19). (DURABLE LINK)
May 6 – Year’s most injudicious judges. The National Law Journal‘s annual survey of misbehavior on the bench includes jurists alleged to have slept with litigants, offered to fix cases, set new records for rudeness, and run a Ponzi scheme from chambers, not to mention the jurist who is said to have referred to himself as “God”. (Gail Diane Cox, “The Injudicious: Judges who crossed the line — or erased it”, May 5). (DURABLE LINK)
May 5 – Friends in high places, cont’d. A bill expanding wrongful death damages — a top priority of the state’s trial lawyer association — is moving quickly through the GOP-controlled New York state senate; it happens that the “head of the Judiciary Committee and the sponsor of the bill is big-time trial lawyer John DeFrancisco (R-Syracuse). It’s not just Democrats like Assembly Speaker (and trial lawyer) Shelly Silver who are in the lawyer lobby’s pocket.” (“Lawyer leeches would bleed N.Y.C.” (editorial), New York Daily News, Apr. 18)(more on bill, Business Council of New York State)(see Dec. 13-15, 2002, Oct. 4, 2000). And in Kansas, “Gov. Kathleen Sebelius used her first veto to reject a bill designed to promote rural tourism. Specifically, the bill would shield from lawsuits farmers and ranchers who, for a fee, let people watch and take part in some farm activities. … The strongest opposition to the bill came from the Kansas Trial Lawyers Association, which employed Sebelius as executive director before her election to the House in 1986.” (Steve Painter, “Sebelius vetoes farmer liability shield”, Wichita Eagle, Apr. 16). While with the KTLA Sebelius “worked closely with the Legislature as a lobbyist” (bio) and then went on to attract widespread notice as her state’s insurance commissioner before running for governor. (DURABLE LINK)
May 5 – Prospering despite reform. Some observers thought the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 law “was aimed at putting [class action firm] Milberg Weiss — and especially partner William Lerach, the lawyer many corporate executives love to hate — out of business. … Instead, according to a new study by Stanford Law School’s Securities Class Action Clearinghouse and Cornerstone Research, Milberg Weiss is doing better than ever.” (Tamara Loomis, “Milberg Weiss Stronger Than Ever Despite Reform Act”, New York Law Journal, Apr. 24). An analysis for the Cato Institute by Adam S. Pritchard of the University of Michigan Law School concludes that the law has, as intended, worked to raise the average quality of securities suits and weed out those with least merit. (“Should Congress Repeal Securities Class Action Reform?”, Cato Policy Analysis, Feb. 27 (executive summary, full text in PDF format)). (DURABLE LINK)
May 3-4 – “Streets Strewn With Glass, Gold”. Don’t miss this profile of D.C.’s subculture of “accident investigators” who solicit participants in car crashes to file lawsuits, often bombarding their phones with evening and early-morning calls for days. “The lawyer who introduced him to the business was killed by a car while standing on an exit ramp, apparently talking with accident victims, ["personal injury specialist" Warren] Johnson says.” (Libby Copeland, Washington Post, May 1). (DURABLE LINK)
May 3-4 – By reader acclaim: “Student sues over top title”. “A Moorestown [N.J.] High School senior, contending that the district superintendent is engineering new rules that would force her to share the title of valedictorian with another student, sued school officials yesterday. Blair L. Hornstine, 18, who aspires to be a lawyer, asked a federal judge to prevent the school from declaring valedictorian anyone other than the student with the highest GPA.” (John Shiffman, Philadelphia Inquirer, May 2; Tanya Barrientos, “Student’s lawsuit shows lack of class”, May 3). Update May 13: Hornstine wins suit (DURABLE LINK)
May 1-2 – It ain’t heavy to him, he’s my brother. In September, according to the National Law Journal‘s “Verdicts and Settlements” column (Oct. 7, 2002, not online) a Texas jury awarded $134,000 to Jennifer Grobe, an employee of the Granite & Iron Store in Fredericksburg. “According to Grobe, she suffered two herniated lumbar discs when she lifted one of two 100- to 125-pound granite tables that the store’s owners had left in the entrance”. Why Grobe’s claim went to a jury in the form of a lawsuit, rather than to the workers’ comp system, is not clear from the context.
The bit in the NLJ‘s report that drew our attention was the following: Grobe’s suit alleged that her employer was negligent “for placing the tables in the entrance and for failing to comply with store policy by not having two male employees available.” Perhaps we’re missing something, but wouldn’t the employer have faced likely liability exposure if it had enforced a policy of “having two male employees available” to handle heavy deliveries? As any self-respecting sex-discrimination litigator would point out, such a policy closes off some work opportunities to women and trades on impermissible (no matter how generally accurate) stereotypes of men as wielding greater upper-body strength. (DURABLE LINK)
May 1-2 – Those litigious Americans. “An ad for Dutch brewer Heineken NV depicts lawsuit-happy Americans suing each other over spilled beer…The idea is that Heineken is so good it makes Americans abandon their litigious natures.” (Erin White, “National Lampoon: U.K. Ads Satirize American Demeanor”, Wall Street Journal, Apr. 28, online subscribers only). (DURABLE LINK)
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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)
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October 9-10 – Rumblings in Mississippi. Two big stories out of the Magnolia State: the legislature on Monday passed, and Gov. Ronnie Musgrove indicates that he will sign, a compromise malpractice reform bill intended to relieve the state’s worst-in-the-nation medical liability crisis. Among its terms: capping non-economic damages at $500,000, restricting venue to the county where alleged wrongdoing occurred, and requiring that plaintiffs line up an expert before a suit can proceed. (Patrice Sawyer and Julie Goodman, “Legislature passes civil justice reform”, Jackson Clarion-Ledger, Oct. 8). It also curtails but does not eliminate joint and several liability in medical cases and shortens some time limits for suing. (“Other provisions”, sidebar; Jackson Clarion-Ledger editorial, Oct. 8).
In a separate story that will bear close watching as it unfolds, “Federal authorities are investigating whether state court judges took out loans that were repaid by nationally prominent trial lawyers from South Mississippi whose cases the judges handle. Investigators believe the judges, including state Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz Jr. of Biloxi, borrowed thousands of dollars from The Peoples Bank, which has headquarters in Biloxi, and Merchants & Marine Bank in Jackson County. Plaintiffs’ attorneys who try multimillion-dollar cases before the judges subsequently repaid the loans, investigators believe. Paul Minor of Ocean Springs and Richard ‘Dickie’ Scruggs of Pascagoula are being investigated by the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office in Jackson, according to a source close to the investigation.” Scruggs, of course, is among the most powerful lawyers in the country and did more than any other figure to engineer the $200-billion-plus settlement between the tobacco industry and state governments; he is also the brother-in-law of Sen. Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) Scruggs “has said that he expects to earn about $844 million from tobacco settlements” while Minor expects to receive something like $70 million from tobacco settlements. (Anita Lee, Tom Wilemon and Beth Musgrave, “Loans to Judges Probed”, Biloxi Sun-Herald, Oct. 7; Jerry Mitchell, “Judges’ loans focus of probe”, Jackson Clarion-Ledger, Oct. 8; “Coast newspaper reports lawyer-judge link to loans being checked”, AP/Alabama Live, Oct. 7). Scruggs “denies that he repaid loans for Diaz or any other judge.” (“Investigation Targets Lawyers, Judges & Loans”, WLOX, Oct. 7). Update Oct. 11-13 more allegations; May 7, 2003 investigation widens. (DURABLE LINK)
October 9-10 – Trial lawyers and politics: Michigan, Texas. Two legal reform groups have released studies documenting the flow of trial lawyer money into their states’ politics. Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch reveals that the state’s personal injury lawyers “have contributed a total of $426,280 to [Democratic gubernatorial nominee Jennifer] Granholm’s campaign. This is more than the $394,209 she has received from the PACs of all other Michigan special interest groups backing her. Personal injury lawyers have given just $2,900 to Granholm’s opponent, Dick Posthumus.” And Texas Trial Lawyer Watch has a new report out on the gargantuan sums spent by lawyers in that state, with special emphasis on the lengths to which the attorneys are willing to go to conceal their generosity (“Hiding Their Influence“, PDF format) (DURABLE LINK)
October 9-10 – Latest sacked-Santa suit. In Edinburgh, Scotland an actor “hired to play Santa Claus at a shopping centre who was sacked for his allegedly lugubrious manner is suing his former employers for more than £1,500.” Television actor Colin Brown, 50, says he had fulfilled the role for many years past with no complaints of insufficient jolliness. “He is also seeking £10 compensation for a 12-inch square cushion he supplied for the padding and £30 for his size nine wellington boots.” (Edward Black, “Sacked Santa sues ex-employers”, The Scotsman, Oct. 8). For further annals of Santa employment litigation, see Oct. 12 and Dec. 13-14, 2000. (DURABLE LINK)
October 7-8 – Malpractice-crisis latest: let ‘em become CPAs. Detailed report in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch of malpractice woes in Missouri and (especially) in adjoining counties of Illinois known for litigiousness, Madison and St. Clair, where “doctors are handing off more patients needing risky procedures to St. Louis medical centers. Doctors in the two counties pay double the premiums of most surrounding Illinois counties because of the flurry of claims filed there,” according to the head of underwriting at the doctors’-mutual insurer that writes more than half of Illinois policies. Insurance is becoming unaffordable for many doctors with records considered less than pristine, such as those with past claims that were resolved for token payments or even for no payment at all.
In litigious Belleville, Ill., patients can obtain a long list of medical services only by heading over to St. Louis. “Several years ago, Belleville physicians decided to transfer all critically ill children to St. Louis Children’s Hospital or Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital. Anne Thomure, public relations director for Memorial Hospital in Belleville, said many of these young patients could have gotten comparable care in the community, but liability risks were deemed too great”. “Trauma is routinely sent to St. Louis because of the medical-legal climate,” said one doctor. Other Belleville doctors have stopped handling high-risk pregnancies, administering clot-busting TPA to stroke patients, and performing surgery on complex elbow fractures, which often lead to complications. Many neurosurgeons are shunning brain surgery in favor of relatively safe spinal procedures. Dr. Kathy Maupin “said almost every doctor involved in trauma care gets sued, because outcomes are unpredictable and patients do not have a pre-existing relationship with the doctors.” Don’t miss this priceless quote from the other side, from “Bruce Cook, a personal injury lawyer in Belleville” who “has little sympathy for doctors lamenting liability coverage costs.” “Perhaps the doctors retiring early are the doctors who are sued too much,” he said. “Perhaps they should have been accountants.” (Judith VandeWater, “Insurance rates pinch doctors, care”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Oct. 6).
The Bloviator (Sept. 27) summarizes the terms of the federal malpractice-reform bill, H.R. 4600 Help Efficient, Accessible, Low-cost, Timely Healthcare (HEALTH) Act of 2002″, which passed the House Sept. 26 but is considered unlikely to make it past the litigation lobby’s grip on the U.S. Senate. Last Thursday, Pennsylvania doctors held rallies in Philadelphia and Scranton to protest the state legislature’s inaction on malpractice reform (AP/New York Times, undated; MedRants, Oct. 4; Politically Active Physicians Association, organization of Pa. doctors). New York doctors may not be holding demonstrations yet, but according to William Tucker in the New York Post, they pay the highest malpractice premiums in the country. From “1994 to 1999, the average New York jury verdict tripled, from $1.7 million to $6 million. Empire State physicians settled $633 million in malpractice claims in 2000, 80 percent more than second-place Pennsylvania ($352 million) and triple third-place California ($200 million, for twice the population)”. California, unlike New York and Pennsylvania, has a strong cap on noneconomic damages. (New York Post, Sept. 26).
The disarray in Mississippi’s malpractice system “extends to the state’s ambulance companies and their workers”, reports AP. (Matthew Volz, “Paramedics face malpractice suits, too”, AP/Jackson Clarion-Ledger, Sept. 19). A past president of the Mississippi Trial Lawyers Association pooh-poohs the concerns, saying he “cannot recall off the top of my head a single substantial or even moderate verdict against an ambulance company in the state of Mississippi” — note how by framing the issue as one of verdicts only, he gets to sidestep the question of how often ambulance operators are named in complaints resolved before that point. On the Mississippi legislature’s lack of seriousness in pursuing tort reform, see the Clarion-Ledger‘s editorial, Sept. 25.
A study from the American Association of Neurological Surgeons and other neurosurgery groups finds that liability woes have plunged that specialty into a state of emergency across the country. (Sept. 25 study in PDF format, press release, resource page). And while litigation lobby stalwarts such as the misnamed “Center for Justice and Democracy” have tried to scapegoat malpractice insurance providers as the source of the crisis (Sept. 25), a report last month from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services thoroughly refutes that contention, pointing out that: 1) states that have enacted serious liability limits are not undergoing a crisis; 2) actuarial data show a sharp upturn in the past few years in large medical claims in unreformed states, as well as in the high verdicts which influence the magnitude of settlements; 3) medical malpractice insurers have not generally suffered major losses due to speculative or volative investments, and a relatively small share of their investment is in the stock market; 4) the decreasing competitiveness of the insurance market is itself a reflection of the liability-driven increase in claims expense; and 5) liability reforms in states like California have not made it impossible to sue — the number of claims has not been declining there lately — but have kept medical care affordable, notwithstanding the influence of the much-cited “insurance cycle”. (“Update on the Medical Litigation Crisis: Not the Result of the ‘Insurance Cycle’”, HHS, Sept. 25). (DURABLE LINK)
October 7-8 – “Judge Throws Out ‘Harry Potter’ Copyright Suit”. “”A federal judge has sanctioned an author $50,000 for submitting false evidence in an unsuccessful copyright lawsuit against the publisher of the blockbuster ‘Harry Potter’ series of children’s books. Southern District of New York Judge Allen G. Schwartz found that Nancy Stouffer had knowingly submitted fraudulent documents to the court in an attempt to bolster claims that the author of the ‘Harry Potter’ series, J.K. Rowling, copied several ideas from Stouffer’s unsuccessful children’s stories.” In addition to the $50,000 sanctions, Judge Schwartz ordered Stouffer to pay Rowling’s and her publisher’s attorneys’ fees and costs. Stouffer’s lawyer says he is considering appellate options. (Tom Perrotta, “Judge Throws Out ‘Harry Potter’ Copyright Suit”, New York Law Journal, Sept. 19). (DURABLE LINK)
October 7-8 – Cutting edge of discrimination law. Near Seattle, the Puyallup School District has agreed to settle a two-year-old civil rights suit by paying $7.5 million and instituting diversity training, administrative and curriculum changes to encourage racial diversity. Four black families had sued the school district in 1999 saying it “tolerated and encouraged a racially hostile environment. ‘One specific complaint was against the use of racial slurs in exams and class discussion of books like ‘Huckleberry Finn’ and ‘The Grapes of Wrath.”" (Mike Roarke and Candace Heckman, “Civil rights suit settled in Puyallup schools”, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Sept. 18 (via Scott Norvell, FoxNews.com, Sept. 23). And the Denny’s restaurant chain says it is looking into contentions that one of its outlets in Springfield, Ill. is behaving in a racially discriminatory manner by not staying open all night. The restaurant in question “recently started locking its doors between 3 and 5 a.m. Sundays, reportedly because a large number of patrons, many of whom have been at nearby clubs that close at 3 a.m., were descending on the restaurant and causing problems, including not paying for food.” The president of the local NAACP branch is hinting at a lawsuit: “Denny’s [on the East Side] will stay open, or other Denny’s worldwide will close from 3 a.m. to 5 a.m.,’ he said. ‘If there’s one Denny’s out there that is closing from 3 a.m. to 5 a.m., then either they’re going to do it worldwide, or they’ll remain open 24 hours.” (Jayette Bolinski, “Denny’s accused of discrimination”, State Journal-Register (Springfield, Ill.), Sept. 12). (DURABLE LINK)
October 7-8 – Blue-ribbon excuses. New York City: “A lawyer representing a couple accused of taking part in three-way sex on a train says they were helping road safety.” Vincent Siccardi says his clients “should be praised for taking the train instead of driving while drunk. Mr Siccardi told the New York Post: ‘Here are two responsible people. They were at a party. They were drinking. It shows that they are responsible. If more people did that, we’d have fewer problems on the road.’” (“Lawyer says couple accused of sex on train were helping road safety”, Ananova.com, Oct. 1). (DURABLE LINK)
October 4-6 – Breaking: L.A. jury docks Philip Morris $28 billion. The plaintiff had been smoking since age 17 and developed lung cancer; the sum awarded by the jury approximately equals the annual gross domestic product of Lithuania. The smooth lawyer who represented Mrs. Bullock, named Michael Piuze, has coaxed a whole series of bizarrely high verdicts out of West Coast juries. (Fox News, Oct. 4). (DURABLE LINK)
October 4-6 – Pets Warehouse owner sues Google. Robert Novak, owner of PetsWarehouse.com, has filed two earlier rounds of pro se lawsuits arising from his claim that his business was defamed in online discussion forums (see May 22 and May 27, 2002 and links from there). Now, in a third round, he is suing search engine Google and several other defendants. His complaint (PDF format) charges that Google failed to remove Usenet archive postings even after being informed that they were defamatory. It also demands damages for Google’s and other search engines’ use of keyword-based “sponsored links”, by which a user’s search on the phrase “pets warehouse” calls up advertising for another online pet store that has paid for the privilege. (Slashdot thread) (overview of case by defense attorney) Further update: Oct. 5, 2003. (DURABLE LINK)
October 4-6 – Commentary-fest. Henry Mark Holzer believes he’s identified the appropriate social response to the campaign for slave-reparations lawsuits: it’s called “Rule 11 sanctions”. (“The Achilles’ Heel of the Reparations Lawsuits”, FrontPage, Oct. 3). The Onion reports that record companies are suing radio stations to stop them from infringing their intellectual property by playing music over the air for free — oh wait, it’s just a parody (we think)(“RIAA Sues Radio Stations for Giving Away Free Music”, Oct. 2). And: “With the assistance and backing of trial lawyers, small and extreme groups are finding it increasingly easy to bypass and subvert the democratic process and impose their agenda on the rest of society by abusing litigation and manipulating the courts,” writes former Wyoming Sen. Malcolm Wallop (“Litigation: The Death of Democracy”, TownHall, Sept. 25). (DURABLE LINK)
October 4-6 – Lawsuit threats vs. campaign speech. “Television station managers in small communities across the nation are being forced this fall to adjudicate a barrage of demands from Democratic and Republican Party lawyers pressuring them to pull political advertisements in closely fought Congressional races — or face the risk of a defamation suit.” (Adam Nagourney and Adam Clymer, “Local Television Stations Become the New Arbiter of Political Fair Play,” New York Times, Oct. 2) (reg). (DURABLE LINK)
October 3 – Lawyers fret about bad image. Bar associations are resorting to all sorts of measures to try to counter the profession’s perceived unpopularity: the Wisconsin Bar has hired consultants “to institute a branding campaign based on focus group response”, while the Florida Bar has budgeted a contemplated $750,000 for its new “Dignity in Law” program (see Jul. 10) which targets 1,000 journalists and government officials described by the group’s president as “influential decision-makers” who will be sent “blast e-mails describing the great work that lawyers and judges do for our clients, in our courtroom and in our communities.” (We hope those 1,000 journalists and influentials have all previously opted into those “blast e-mails” — spam doesn’t make friends, you know.) “Prior to launching the campaign, the Florida Bar surveyed 880 journalists about their attitudes toward the legal profession and rated their stories as positive or negative. As the campaign continues, it will monitor their changing attitudes toward lawyers to measure the campaign’s effectiveness.” If we were Florida journalists, we’re not sure we’d be thrilled to learn that a group of dissatisfied newsmakers who wield writs had decided to “rate” and then “monitor” the tone of our coverage of them.
Meanwhile, on a national level: “Disenchanted with the public outcry against attorneys and the legal profession, Robert Clifford, who heads the American Bar Association’s Litigation Section and is a founding partner of Clifford Law Offices, a personal injury firm in Chicago, personally financed a $250,000 national telephone survey for the ABA of 750 households.” The results could hardly have been welcome. “Only 19 percent of the respondents expressed confidence in lawyers’ work compared with a 50 percent confidence rating for doctors.” (Physician readers, take note, and heart.) The survey effort “also included 10 focus groups in five cities including Chicago and Los Angeles whose respondents repeatedly described attorneys as ‘greedy, manipulative and corrupt.’ … The public lambasted criminal defense, personal injury and divorce lawyers”, praising only real estate and civil rights attorneys. (& see letter to the editor, Oct. 23)
To its credit, the National Law Journal‘s roundup of the matter airs not only the legal establishment’s view — which is that the profession is merely misunderstood and suffering from bad public relations — but also the views of critics both inside and outside the profession who think the best way to improve lawyers’ image would be, well, to start cleaning up the bad things that go on in legal practice. Tallahassee Democrat columnist Bill Cotterell, a critic of the Florida bar program, notes: “People don’t like lawyers gaming the system for personal profit — enormous profit — and not caring who gets hurt.” Cotterell “recommended adopting ‘a loser pays‘ system under which the losing plaintiff in a meritless suit would pay the defendant’s legal expenses.” And Catherine Crier, the Court TV host and former judge whose book “The Case Against Lawyers” is forthcoming momentarily, says bar p.r. campaigns “don’t do anything to address the underlying areas. I’d rather see a campaign that introduces ethics classes.’ Crier would prefer to see the law ‘eliminate contingency fees except in cases aimed at the poor and institute loser pays in all categories. In that way, good lawyers can proceed with dignity and pursue cases that are meritorious, and those pressing frivolous actions corrupting our system will no longer have a forum.’” Hear, hear! (Gary M. Stern, “Polishing the Image”, National Law Journal, Sept. 16). (DURABLE LINK)
October 1-2 – FTC cracks down on excessive legal fees. Here’s an important story that’s flown mostly under the radar: the new leadership of the Federal Trade Commission is taking pioneering steps to protect consumers from exploitative legal fees, under the same mandate by which it cracks down on deceptive or unfair overcharging by businesses generally. “So far this year, the FTC has challenged attorney fees in three proposed class action settlements, winning in two cases. It also has urged the Judicial Conference, which oversees the federal court system, to amend its class action rules in a way that could limit attorney fees, particularly in cases that rely on information already uncovered by government agencies. And the agency recently published a guide for consumers, ‘Need a Lawyer? Judge for Yourself,’ giving advice on how to pick a lawyer — and seek a lower fee. … Trial lawyers and their allies aren’t happy about the FTC initiative.” (Caroline E. Mayer, “FTC Seeks to Limit Attorney Fees in Class Action Suits”, Washington Post, Sept. 30). (DURABLE LINK)
October 1-2 – Australia: seized by the Spirit, wants church to compensate her. Loraine [elsewhere reported Lorraine] Daly, 40, is suing an Assemblies of God-affiliated church in Sydney, saying she was injured one Sunday in 1996 when, gripped by religious enthusiasm, she fell over onto a carpeted floor and was not caught by anyone. “The court was told by Ms Daly’s lawyer that the Sydney Christian Life Centre had been negligent in failing to ensure there were enough ‘catchers’ — people appointed by the church to cushion the fall of those experiencing what is referred to within the Pentecostal movement as being ‘slain in the spirit’. It was also claimed that the church had failed to ensure that the catchers were in position before the Rev Tim Hall started the prayer service which usually brought on such fainting episodes. And the church had not provided falling members of the congregation with a sufficiently padded area to prevent injury.” Ms. Daly wants up to A$750,000 in damages, including future loss of earnings and compensation for “disabilities including headaches, nausea, memory loss, impaired concentration and a feeling of vagueness. …The court also heard, however, that Ms Daly had previously suffered similar ailments after two car accidents in 1986 and 1993.” (Kelly Burke, “Fallen Christian puts faith in the law”, Sydney Morning Herald, Sept. 27). Update Oct. 25-27: judge rules against Ms. Daly. (DURABLE LINK)
October 1-2 – Updates. Judges pull the plug on various bright ideas discussed previously in these pages:
* A judge has dismissed attorney Peter Angelos’s effort to bring the cellphone industry to trial on the theory that using its wares causes brain tumors, ruling that the proffered scientific evidence for that proposition is insufficient (see Apr. 23 and Jan. 11, 2001) (Gretchen Parker, “Judge Dismisses $800M Cell Phone-Brain Tumor Suit “, AP/Washington Post, Sept. 30) (opinion in PDF format)
* In a unanimous decision written by Judge Alex Kozinski, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit has ruled that Judge Vaughn Walker should not have interpreted the 1995 Private Securities Litigation Reform Act as a mandate to take an active lead in selecting plaintiffs’ counsel to run lucrative securities fraud cases. The decision, which may put the kibosh on “auction” methods by which courts induce plaintiff’s counsel to accept work at lower fees, was a victory for Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach in its quest to represent security holders in a suit against Copper Mountain Networks Inc. (Jason Hoppin, “9th Circuit Strikes Down Class Action Fee Experiment”, The Recorder, Sept. 17) (opinion in PDF format)(see Sept. 25, 2001)
* Well, that’s a relief: “A British Telecommunications Inc. patent issued prior to the advent of the Internet does not cover hyperlinking, a New York federal judge ruled … Tossing out British Telecom’s infringement suit against Prodigy Communications Corp., U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon of the Southern District of New York said no jury could find that Prodigy infringes the patent by providing hyperlinks, the coded, highlighted text that links one Web page to another.” (see Feb. 13) (Brenda Sandburg, “Closely Watched Hyperlink Patent Case Tossed”, The Recorder, Aug. 23). (DURABLE LINK)
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September 20-22 – How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is/To have a precociously musical child. “James Brown’s daughters have filed a federal lawsuit against the Godfather of Soul, seeking more than $1 million in back royalties and damages for 25 songs they say they co-wrote…. Even though they were children when the songs were written – 3 and 6 when ‘Get Up Offa That Thing’ was a hit in 1976 – Brown’s daughters helped write them, said their attorney, Gregory Reed.” (“Singer James Brown Sued by Daughters”, AP/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Sept. 18). (DURABLE LINK)
September 20-22 – “Patient pays price of suing over cold”. Salutary effects of loser-pays, cont’d: “A patient who claimed £227 damages from his doctor, insisting that she had given him her cold during an examination, was ordered to pay almost £1,000 in costs yesterday after his case was thrown out by a court. Trevor Perry, 47, sued Dr Helen Young for personal injury, stating that he went down with a sore throat, runny nose and a headache after a consultation with her when she had a cold.” (Stewart Payne, “Patient pays price of suing over cold”, Daily Telegraph (U.K.), Sept. 19). And don’t miss the very curious addendum to the case on the question of why Mr. Perry was observed running from the court with a jacket over his head (“The Broadsheets: Cold comfort”, Anorak, Sept. 19). (DURABLE LINK)
September 20-22 –Times on 9/11 fund. The New York Times editorially defends the federal 9/11 compensation fund from charges that its awards are inadequate in a way “especially prejudicial to high-income families”, who may be offered only a few million dollars of taxpayers’ money each. It is entirely legitimate, the paper believes, to seek to avoid “extravagant awards at the top”. We might add that if top-earning families want to feel secure in their living standards in case of disaster, the logical (and socially desirable) course is for them to make provision in advance through privately purchased insurance — which we suspect most of the higher-ups at places like Cantor Fitzgerald did in fact have in place. (“The Perils of Valuing Lives” (editorial), New York Times, Sept. 19). (DURABLE LINK)
September 18-19 – Claim: docs should have done more to help woman quit smoking and lose weight. “A Wilkes-Barre woman is suing several doctors at the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, saying the physicians did not do enough to assist her in making life changes — including quitting smoking and losing weight — that might have prevented a debilitating heart attack she suffered.” Kathleen Ann McCormick’s suit “says the physicians knew she had multiple risk factors to develop heart disease” but dismissed her symptoms as “basically normal and non-life threatening” and failed to put her on aggressive anti-cholesterol medication, as well as failing to help her with the smoking and weight issues. (Terrie Morgan-Besecker, “Woman suing VA doctors”, Wilkes-Barre (Pa.) Times-Leader, Sept. 11). (DURABLE LINK)
September 18-19 – Voltaire spinning in grave. If you disagree with what someone says, but would defend to the death his right to say it, chances are you aren’t running things in today’s France. Prominent French author Michel Houllebecq (pronounced “Wellbeck”) went on trial this week for “inciting racial hatred” on the grounds that he had aimed contemptuous comments at Islam. The case, which evokes parallels with that of author Salman Rushdie, is “being brought by the largest mosques in Paris and Lyon, the National Federation of French Muslims (FNMN) and the World Islamic League. France’s Human Rights League has also joined them, saying that Mr Houellebecq’s comments amount to ‘Islamophobia’” (see Aug. 23-25) (Charles Bremner, “I attack … I insult”, The Times (London), Sept. 18; “French author denies racial hatred”, BBC, Sept. 17). More: Christopher Hitchens on the case (“The stupidest religion”, Free Inquiry, v. 21, #4). Update Oct. 25-27: Houellebecq acquitted. (DURABLE LINK)
September 18-19 – Canada: “Woman freezes, sues city, cabbie”. “A Winnipeg woman who nearly froze to death after a night of drinking is suing the city, emergency personnel and the taxi driver who dropped her at home.” Emergency workers left Kim Simon at her residence but “she was later found outside with her pants pulled down, her winter jacket open and a cut on her lip. The woman claims that emergency personnel and the taxi driver should have made sure Simon was safely inside her house before leaving.” (Canadian Press/Canada.com, Sept. 16). (DURABLE LINK)
September 18-19 – Mississippi: eyeing the exits. Washington Mutual, the giant lender and the nation’s largest thrift institution, “is in the process of suspending all its lending channels in the state of Mississippi due to litigation risk and other factors. ‘We are evaluating the litigation environment and business climate in the state,’ WaMu senior vice president and associate general counsel Jim Garner told MortgageWire. ‘That is why we are suspending loan originations.’” Last year a Mississippi jury hit one of the company’s subsidiaries with a $71 million verdict. (Origination News — will scroll off site’s front page soon). (DURABLE LINK)
September 18-19 – AVweb case and chatroom liability. Eugene Volokh (his site) comments regarding the litigation referenced below: “Incidentally, not supervising one’s chat room is *not* actionable, even if the chatters make libelous statements and you could have stepped in to stop them; that’s what 47 U.S.C. sec. 230 says, see also Zeran v. America Online (4th Cir.) (both available on Findlaw).” See also ChillingEffects.org, Mar. 8; summary of Zeran case, TechLawJournal. (DURABLE LINK)
September 16-17 – Free speech & web litigation: the theory…. Los Angeles Times columnist Norah Vincent, the target of a remarkably silly recent smear (summarized and refuted by, among others, Stuart Buck, Juan Non-Volokh and Megan McArdle) got so angry at her online attackers that she wondered aloud whether she should think of suing them for defamation. Our editor wrote in at her suggestion (Sept. 13) to offer some reasons why, no, she shouldn’t. (DURABLE LINK)
September 16-17 – Right to break workplace rules and then return. This summer the Ninth Circuit ruled that it was an unlawful violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act for a company to follow an otherwise neutral policy barring the rehire of employees who had been terminated (or resigned in lieu of termination) over violations of company rules. In the case at hand, an employee had resigned after testing positive for cocaine, had completed a rehabilitation program, and now wanted to return to the company. Although Hughes Missiles Systems’ rule did not bar the hiring of rehabilitated drug users as such, the court nonetheless ruled that “Hughes’ unwritten policy against rehiring former employees who were terminated for any violation of its misconduct rules, although not unlawful on its face, violates the ADA as applied to former drug addicts whose only work-related offense was testing positive because of their addiction. If Hernandez is in fact no longer using drugs and has been successfully rehabilitated, he may not be denied re-employment simply because of his past record of drug addiction.” (Hernandez v. Hughes Missiles Systems, No. 01-15512, June 11, 2002, write-up at Jackson Lewis site). Update Dec. 13, 2003: Supreme Court rules in favor of employer. (DURABLE LINK)
September 16-17 – Dave Barry on tobacco settlement, round III. Okay, maybe it’s easy to satirize (rounds I and II), but he still does it so well. “The underlying moral principle of these lawsuits was: ‘You are knowingly selling a product that kills tens of thousands of our citizens each year. We want a piece of that action!’” (“In War On Tobacco, money goes up in smoke”, Miami Herald, Sept. 15) (DURABLE LINK)
September 13-15 – Patriotic, or promotional? Mickey Kaus nominates this “Patriot Troll” and this “Twin Towers handbag” (appears as popup ad when link is clicked) as among the tackiest commercial tie-ins to arise from 9/11. We might also call to his attention this billboard from a personal injury law firm in Schenectady, New York (photographed by reader Steve Furlong) which isn’t going to win prizes for either taste or subtlety. (DURABLE LINK)
September 13-15 – “Epileptic ordered to pay £3,500 for contorted face”. “A man who suffers from epilepsy has been ordered to pay compensation to a student who was upset by his contorted face during a seizure. In a case described by an epilepsy charity as ‘like something you would see on the Ally McBeal show’, Edwin Young has been told to pay £3,500 to Yvonne Rennie for the mild post-traumatic stress that she suffered. Mrs Rennie sued after Mr Young suffered an epileptic fit while driving four years ago and crashed into her car at traffic lights in Perth.” In addition to awarding Mrs. Rennie £1,500 for slight personal injuries and £1,000 for a fear of driving that she had developed, the magistrate accepted that she had suffered emotional injuries from observing the contorted look on Mr. Young’s face during his fit, which made her think he was going to die. “Epilepsy Action Scotland described the case as ‘bizarre’.” (Auslan Cramb, Daily Telegraph (U.K.), Sept. 9).
Addendum: one of our less sympathetic readers calls to our attention this Sept. 13-dated press release and article from Epilepsy Action Scotland (EAS), describes it as proving that the above report is “not true”, and chides us for not referencing it in our original post. To begin with a minor housekeeping point, this reader is apparently unaware that items on this site dated “Sept. 13-15″ will in most instances have been posted in the final hours of Sept. 12, so that a fair bit of clairvoyance would be required to anticipate the contents of a press release issued the next day (even in Scotland, which is a few time zones ahead).
More substantively, although it may well be that other press reports did misstate the Rennie/Young case, it is by no means clear that EAS is questioning the accuracy of the Daily Telegraph report linked above. Both EAS and the Telegraph (and our excerpt) make clear that the overall award arose in the context of a car crash and drew on a number of factors. EAS is at pains to emphasize that the court did not rule that “watching a seizure in itself [emphasis added] provides grounds to sue for compensation” absent some other entitlement to compensation such as a physical injury — and of course it’s a familiar practice in compensation systems to let mental injury piggyback on physical injury but not stand alone as a claim. The one interviewee quoted in the Telegraph piece as wondering aloud whether a bystander’s distress at watching a person collapse might stand alone as a damage claim was the spokesman for EAS itself (“Does this mean…?”). This makes it less surprising that the organization would four days later make a point of reassuring the public that, no, it probably doesn’t mean that.
Does Epilepsy Action Scotland, as our reader seems to think, now therefore regard the Rennie/Young case as some kind of overblown urban legend that should never have gotten play in the papers, and regret that its spokesman had been so critical of the ruling before? Quite the contrary: it makes clear the extent to which it continues to be alarmed and upset at the case (“we have forcefully put across the points that this is a shocking case”), it has called for investigations and organized protests, and it “has offered its full support if [Mr. Young] decides to pursue the matter” on appeal. Nothing inaccurate in our post that we can see. (DURABLE LINK)
September 13-15 – We have competition! Or at least sorta-kinda competition, from Colorado humorist Randy Cassingham. But the more the merrier, say we. (DURABLE LINK)
September 12 – Personal responsibility roundup. New York attorney Samuel Hirsch, who made big headlines a few weeks ago by filing a lawsuit on behalf of an overweight man against fast-food chains, has now added another car to the train in the form of a suit on behalf of several obese teens who “say the restaurant chain used marketing practices such as toy and value meal promotions to entice its patrons to eat the food.” (No! Not value meals!) “Mr. Hirsch said his clients ate at McDonald’s almost every day for at least five years. One teenager, who is 5-foot-9-inches tall, now weighs 270 pounds; another, who is 5-foot-3-inches tall, now weighs 200. The parents of the teenagers, either unemployed or on disability, filed the lawsuit on behalf of their children.” Note to parents: those benefit checks will stretch further if you teach kids how to make sandwiches at home (Ellen Sorokin, “McDonald’s marketing cited for teens’ obesity”, Washington Times, Sept. 10). Director Tom Grey of the National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling, who has been beating the drums for years in hopes of making the wagering business the next tobacco, hopes governors and attorneys general will pile on in support of the latest lawsuit by a compulsive bettor claiming his losses were the casino’s fault for luring him in (Rod Smith, “Gambling foes hope federal lawsuit will lead casinos into tobacco industry’s fate”, Gaming Wire/Las Vegas Review-Journal, Sept. 10). The Wyoming Supreme Court has ruled that an employee who tried to commit suicide after being depressed over a work-related injury can collect workers’ compensation from his employer for the injuries inflicted by his attempt (Brierley v. Wyoming, Aug. 14). And the editorialists of Canada‘s National Post applaud Ontario judges’ refusal to follow the lead of many American courts in making party hosts legally responsible if their guests drive away drunk (“Blame drunks, not hosts” (editorial), Sept. 5). (DURABLE LINK)
September 12 – “9/11 aid bill contains giant bonus for trial lawyers”. “Sacramento — Saying that it was primarily a bill to help families of Sept. 11 victims, Gov. Gray Davis on Tuesday signed a sweeping change in California tort law backed by trial lawyers, some of his biggest contributors. In a bill signing ceremony, the Democratic governor focused on only four paragraphs of the seven-page bill that allows relatives of the terrorist attacks more time to file civil lawsuits. Davis did not mention that the bulk of the bill — which extends from one year to two the filing period for all personal injury or wrongful death lawsuits in California — is opposed by more than 80 companies and business groups. They say the measure will sharply increase their insurance and litigation costs.” (Greg Lucas and Lynda Gledhill, San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 11). (DURABLE LINK)
September 12 – No joy in Mudville. “Saying America’s favorite pastime had become a ‘nuisance’ to a northwest Houston man, a Harris County jury awarded him more than $75,000 Tuesday. ‘I’m happy that 12 people were in full agreement,’ said plaintiff E.S. Armstrong after the verdict was read. Armstrong filed a lawsuit in December 2000 in state district court against Baseball U.S.A., claiming games played on the group’s fields adjacent to his home in the Spring Shadows subdivision are too noisy and the field lights too bright. The lawsuit also claimed that baseballs from the fields, near Sam Houston Tollway and Gessner, twice crashed through Armstrong’s bedroom window.” Baseball U.S.A., a nonprofit group, may appeal. (Dale Lezon, Houston Chronicle, Sept. 11). (DURABLE LINK)
September 11 – Never forgotten. For this site’s commentaries from a year ago, begin here with Sept. 12 items and then scroll upwards. (DURABLE LINK)
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August 30-September 2 – Banish those desk photos of spouse at beach. A few years ago, when a Nebraska graduate student was targeted with a complaint from a university colleague for displaying a photo at his workplace of a woman in skimpy beachwear who happened to be his wife, some assumed it was a fluke case. But it wasn’t. “[D]esktop photographs of bikini-clad girlfriends or bare-chested husbands … could result in sexual harassment claims, lost productivity or a tarnished company image, say employment experts. ‘Employers have a duty to provide a work environment that is not objectionably and subjectively hostile, so the days of pinups in the locker room should be past,’ says John Lowe IV, an attorney in Kegler Brown Hill & Ritter’s Columbus labor and employment practice group.” Yep, they’re perfectly serious (Betsy Butler, “Dress code good strategy for desktop photo display”, Columbus Business First, Aug. 23). (DURABLE LINK)
August 30-September 2 – Intel sued in notorious county. Lawyers have filed a lawsuit seeking class-action status on behalf of personal computer owners “against Intel, Gateway, and Hewlett-Packard alleging the companies misled them into believing the Pentium 4 was a superior processor to Intel’s own Pentium III and AMD’s Athlon. The complaint — Neubauer et al v. Intel et al — was filed June 3 in the Third Judicial Circuit in Madison County, Illinois.” (Tom Mainelli, “Intel, PC Makers Sued Over P4 Performance”, PCWorld.com, Aug. 16; discussion, StorageReview forums). Litigation buffs will immediately recognize the chosen venue, Madison County, Ill., as being perhaps the most celebrated destination in the country for class-action “forum-shopping”, its courts recognized as unusually accommodating to the designs of the lawyers who file such suits. For one recent view of the county’s reputation, see: Adam Liptak, “Court Has Dubious Record as a Class-Action Leader”, New York Times, Aug. 15 (reg) (DURABLE LINK)
August 30-September 2 – Second Circuit: we mean business about stopping frivolous securities suits. The New York law firm of Jaroslawicz & Jaros “faces nearly $200,000 in sanctions after a federal appeals court said it had not received a severe enough penalty for an abusive securities fraud suit.” The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has weighed in three times on the case; among its rulings was that “the presence of some nonfrivolous claims in an otherwise frivolous complaint is not sufficient, standing alone, to establish that either the violation of Rule 11 [the main federal rule providing sanctions against meritless litigation] was de minimis or that the sanctions would create an unreasonable burden, for purposes of overcoming the statutory presumption of the PSLRA [Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995].” (Tom Perrotta, “2nd Circuit Imposes Stiff Fine in Securities Fraud Case”, New York Law Journal, Aug. 27). Mr. David Jaroslawicz, of Jaroslawicz & Jaros, last figured in these chronicles on Jan. 17, 2000, after he was quoted in the New York Observer as hoping to spearhead a wave of sexual-harassment suits against the then-flush firms of New York’s Silicon Alley. (DURABLE LINK)
August 29 – 7.000 missing colors, many of them crisply green. Last week Palm, the handheld computer maker, conceded that although it had advertised its m130 model, introduced in March, as displaying 65,536 different colors or color combinations, the actual number is a mere 58,621 — “approximately 11 percent fewer color combinations than we had originally believed”, as a Palm spokeswoman said. Attorneys with the Philadelphia law firm of Sheller, Ludwig & Bailey promptly filed a lawsuit in Santa Clara, Calif. Superior Court seeking class-action status on behalf of Palm’s customers, traumatized as they no doubt were by this hue shortfall. Legal experts predict that Palm will most likely settle rather than face the legal uncertainties and bad publicity of a protracted suit, but that customers shouldn’t expect anything more than coupons, future discounts and the like. “It’s hard to put a dollar figure on how much you have been damaged because your computer won’t do some particular feat you might never ask it to do anyway,” said Norman Spaulding, a professor at the Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California at Berkeley. (Elisa Batista, “Palm Handed Suit Over Colors”, Wired News, Aug. 24). (DURABLE LINK)
August 29 – Discrimination suit roundup. “The state of New Jersey has agreed to pay $250,000 to settle claims by three black men who said they were victims of racial profiling by the New Jersey state police. Attorney Stefan Presser of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania said the settlement is the largest ever in a civil rights suit in which the victims were neither physically injured nor jailed” and says New Jersey should adopt it a model for other cases where black motorists were stopped and questioned without adequate justification. (Shannon P. Duffy, “New Jersey Settles Profiling Suit for $250,000″, The Legal Intelligencer, Aug. 22). The Taco Bell chain has agreed to pay $160,000 to settle the racial discrimination claims of a St. Louis family who, traveling 24-strong on a chartered bus through Cullman, Ala. in July 1998, waited about 15 minutes after requesting service. Each of the 24 will get about $1,000; the settlement “includes another $111,000 for attorney expenses and more than $17,000 in attorney fees.” (“Taco Bell settles discrimination lawsuit”, AP/NBC13.com, Aug. 26). And New York gubernatorial hopeful Andrew Cuomo, the former federal housing secretary and gun-suit backer, has called for legislation to make discrimination a felony — we’ll sleep a lot sounder knowing errant taco-chain managers are behind bars. (“Cuomo: Make Discrimination a Felony”, News12/The Bronx, Aug. 25). (DURABLE LINK)
August 28 – “Parents suing youth football league”. Texas: “Parents of a fifth-grade boy asked the courts Tuesday to throw a yellow penalty flag on Katy Youth Football over a rule change that switched players to different teams after practice started. In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, an attorney sued the Katy Youth Football league on behalf of his son. The boy had played with his grade-level team before being switched because of age to a junior high-level group with “significantly larger” players. Russell Van Beustring and his wife, Pamela Van Beustring, are asking a judge to order the league to revert to rules in place when children registered in May.” (Jo Ann Zuniga, Houston Chronicle, Aug. 20). (DURABLE LINK)
August 27 – Ford rollover verdict: you read it here first. We usually refrain from running items pointing out that we covered one or another litigation story before the major media picked it up. However, we can’t help noting for the record that we were three years (!) early in beating the New York Times to the facts of the case they gave front page treatment to yesterday, namely Romo v. Ford Motor, “the largest punitive award ever affirmed by an American court in a personal injury case: $290 million to the family of three people killed in the rollover of a Ford Bronco.” (Ford has asked the California Supreme Court to review an intermediate court’s upholding of the award.) We’re glad to see this case finally getting some attention, and glad to find the Times highlighting the same angle of the case that we found most striking, the very strange goings-on in the jury room: one juror recounted to her colleagues a gruesome, omen-like dream revealing Ford’s guilt, while another juror passed on to her colleagues the contents of a badly misremembered “60 Minutes” episode also supposedly establishing the carmaker’s malign state of mind. The Times sees all this as reason to hold a public debate about whether juries’ determinations of such issues as punitive damages are sufficiently reliable to count as law at all. We don’t mind having such a debate — we just wonder why we couldn’t have had it three years ago, when all the same facts were on the public record (see this site’s entries for Aug. 24, 1999 and Sept. 17-19, 1999). (Adam Liptak, “Debate Grows on Jury’s Role in Injury Cases”, New York Times, Aug. 26 (reg))(& update Oct. 24: California Supreme Court leaves verdict intact)
P.S. While on the subject of juror misconduct, Vanderbilt University law professor Nancy J. King found in a study “that modern-day judges, while acknowledging that sleeping jurors are a fairly common sight, do not see them as a serious threat to the fairness of trials.” So comforting! “In June, two members of the jury that convicted the accounting firm [Arthur Andersen] of obstruction of justice told Texas Lawyer, an affiliate of The National Law Journal and law.com, that two colleagues slept through parts of the six-week trial, and that the alleged nappers were in such a fog that one thought NASA was involved in the case and the other believed that prosecution star witness David Duncan was the one on trial.” In a 1987 case, Tanner v. United States, 483 U.S. 107, “a majority composed of the U.S. Supreme Court’s most conservative members” declined to overturn Anthony Tanner’s conviction for mail fraud despite testimony from two jurors that several of their colleagues had dozed off; one juror in his affidavit said “the jury was on one big party,” and that consumption of marijuana, liquor and cocaine at lunch all contributed to later drowsiness. (Gary Young, “Asleep at the Trial”, National Law Journal, Aug. 21). (DURABLE LINK)
August 27 – OxyContin wins one in West Virginia. A judge has dismissed a case filed against Purdue Pharma, maker of the pain medication, on behalf of the estate of a 41-year-old drug abuser who died after crushing the pills and injecting them into her bloodstream. The Charleston Daily Mail editorially draws some lessons about personal responsibility (Aug. 23)(see Apr. 10 and links from there). (DURABLE LINK)
August 26 – “Junk fax” suit demands $2 trillion. The Federal Communications Commission recently took enforcement action against the enterprise Fax.com for (it said) extensively violating the federal law banning unsolicited commercial fax-sending. Last week Silicon Valley entrepreneur Steve Kirsch (more) and another plaintiff filed suits demanding the federal statutory penalty of $500 for each unsolicited fax sent, trebled to a sum he estimates at $2.2 trillion; Kirsch says Fax.com boasts that it sends 3 million faxes a day. The gross national product of all countries on the globe stands at $29 trillion or thereabouts, which would leave the plaintiffs if successful with a claim on something like 7 percent of the earth’s annual output if they could collect it. And although it is not clear how many assets Fax.com will be found to have at the end of a suit, Kirsch is also suing for $500 per offending transmission Fax.com’s telecommunications provider, Cox Communications, as well as its advertisers. “‘We believe that there are companies with substantial assets in this group. We will seek treble damages of $1,500 per unsolicited fax from Fax.com and Cox Communications,’ Kirsch said in a statement.” (Bob Egelko, “2 trillion junk fax suit: Silicon Valley man demands Fax.com end unsolicited messages”, San Francisco Chronicle, Aug. 22; Andrew Quinn, “Lawsuits Seek $2.2 Trillion over ‘Junk’ Faxes”, Reuters/IEEE Spectrum, Aug. 23). Cox Communications is a NYSE-listed company with assets of $25 billion, according to Fortune. More on junk-fax suits as “Powerball for the clever”: July 24, 2001 and links from there. Fax.com’s own website seems to be doing its best to portray the company as dedicated to charitable endeavors for the recovery of missing children, with a remarkable lack of emphasis on how it actually makes its money. (DURABLE LINK)
August 26 – R.I.: no more cheap car leases? “A Rhode Island jury has held a car-leasing company vicariously liable for the negligence of a leased car driver, resulting in a $28 million personal injury award. The verdict against the Chase Manhattan Automotive Finance Corp. — one of the largest personal injury verdicts in the state’s history — followed the Rhode Island Supreme Court’s April ruling that long-term car-leasing companies can be held liable for the actions of leased car operators under the state’s owner and lessor liability statutes.” A lawyer for Chase warned of the impact on consumers: “‘There are about one million people in Rhode Island,’ he said. ‘Assuming only 50,000 people lease their cars, leasing can become prohibitively expensive’ if lessors have to pass on the cost of multimillion-dollar verdicts.” (Annie Hsia, “Car-Leasing Company Held Liable in Crash”, National Law Journal, Aug. 19). Updates: see Mar. 12-14 and May 21, 2003. (DURABLE LINK)
August 23-25 – Prominent French author sued for “insulting Islam”. In France, the latest chapter in the hate-speech-laws vs. free-speech saga: “Prize-winning French novelist Michel Houellebecq is being sued by four Islamic organisations in Paris after making ‘insulting’ remarks about the religion in an interview about his latest book. The action against Mr Houellebecq, 44, is being launched on 17 September by plaintiffs including Saudi Arabia’s World Islamic League and the Mosque of Paris.” The plaintiffs have also brought charges against a literary magazine, Lire, in which Mr. Houellebecq reportedly said that reading the Koran is “so depressing” and called Islam “the stupidest religion”. (“Author sued over Islam ‘insult’”, BBC, Aug. 22)(see Jun. 11-12). Update Oct. 25-27: Houellebecq acquitted. (DURABLE LINK)
August 23-25 – Canada: cash demanded for drug users and panhandlers inconvenienced by film crews. In Vancouver, B.C., which has become a popular site for Hollywood location filming, a group representing sex workers, drug users and homeless people has demanded compensation for film crews’ tendency to displace or disrupt illegal street activity. “The Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, which represents about 1,000 residents of the seedy Downtown Eastside, has sent a letter demanding compensation to 30 production firms. They include Club Six Prods., currently filming MGM’s ‘Agent Cody Banks’ starring Frankie Muniz and Angie Harmon.” The letter states: “Sex trade workers must be compensated for displacement they experience at your hands in the same manner you would compensate a business if you were to use their locale during operating hours. The same must hold true for homeless people you push from beneath a bridge or doorway, and drug users you move from a park.” The letter also asks for financial compensation for loss of residents’ panhandling opportunities. (Don Townson, “Canadian Hookers Campaign Against Hollywood”, Variety/Yahoo, Aug. 21). (DURABLE LINK)
August 23-25 – Don’t ban peanut butter from schools. A small number of kids have serious peanut allergies, and schools — under pressure from activist parents and fearful of litigation — are beginning to ban the nutritious foodstuff from their cafeterias and halls. Don’t be stampeded, advises columnist Dennis Prager: there would be less overall disruption to children as a group if schools just made a point of keeping a stock of epinephrine, the antidote to allergic shock, on hand (syndicated/Town Hall, Aug. 21). (DURABLE LINK)
August 22 – Defying the link-banners. David Sorkin, “associate professor of law at The John Marshall Law School in Chicago, Ill., is the man behind Don’t Link to Us, a Web site that exists merely to flout what it terms ‘stupid linking policies.’ Sorkin’s site was launched in reaction to recent legal decisions in which courts upheld Web site terms and conditions that prohibited or restricted links,” including a decision in which a Danish court ruled that the NewsBooster site could not link to internal story pages within various news organizations’ sites. (Paul Festa, “Site fights ‘stupid linking’”, ZDNet News, Aug. 21). (DURABLE LINK)
August 22 – Jury clobbers NYC with $21 million slip/fall verdict. “A Manhattan jury has awarded more than $21 million to a woman who tripped over a four-inch protrusion of a broken parking sign and suffered serious head injuries as a result — the largest slip-and-fall verdict ever leveled against the city. Aides to Mayor Bloomberg are calling the verdict excessive, and have vowed to use it to illustrate why limits need to be placed on the city’s liability in personal injury cases.” (Errol Louis, “A Record Liability Verdict Is Brought In Against City”, New York Sun, Aug. 21). More coverage: Susan Huners, “Sidewalk Hazard Costs NYC $21 Million”, National Law Journal, Sept. 12. (DURABLE LINK)
August 22 – We did it all for the public health, cont’d. Although fewer than 300 acres of tobacco are grown in Alabama, “Tobacco farmers in Alabama have received $500,000 from the national tobacco settlement. … [Meanwhile,] only $350,000 is being spent for anti-smoking programs, with most of that aimed at young people. Let that sink in: More money from Alabama’s portion of the national tobacco settlement goes to people who grow tobacco than to those who are trying to get people to kick their tobacco habits.” (“Strange truths” (editorial), Birmingham News, Aug. 21). (DURABLE LINK)
August 21 – Judge questions “shotgun” naming of 282 defendants in trailer-mold case. According to a May 22 report in the Baton Rouge Advocate, the Fifth Circuit has agreed to examine a dispute between Lafayette, La. attorney Barry Domingue and U.S. District Judge Tucker Melancon, who is hearing a case filed by Domingue against no fewer than 282 manufacturers. The lawsuit, which seeks certification as a class action, purports to represent plaintiffs who “unknowingly bought poorly made manufactured homes defective in design, composition and construction. The lawsuit alleges that the defective design allowed condensation to create formation of a toxic mold in the walls, making occupants sick. The companies have denied that they produce an inferior product, and they are seeking dismissal of the case. During a hearing last month, Melancon ordered Domingue to disclose to the court all investigative files and any other materials used to develop the lawsuit. The judge said Domingue would have to explain why he included the 282 companies as defendants, even though many of them haven’t done business in Louisiana and many others have gone bankrupt. The judge said Domingue would be required to pay legal fees of any companies included in the lawsuit without proper justification.” The judge also expressed skepticism toward Domingue’s contention that the manufacturers had collectively conspired to conceal the dangers of mold in trailers and were thus each open to suit. Domingue contends that Judge Melancon has become an advocate for the defense side in the litigation. (Bruce Schultz, “Lawyer attacks critical judge in mobile-home suit”, Baton Rouge Advocate, May 22). (DURABLE LINK)
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August 5-15 – On hiatus. We’ll be taking a break for the next week and a half or so. While we’re away, check out the world’s funniest police log (Arcata, Calif.); the Manhattan Institute (with which our editor is associated), whose email announcement list you really ought to be on, and whose Center for Legal Policy has been publishing a series of important papers on such topics as asbestos litigation, class actions, and forum-shopping; and of course this site’s very own archives, which date back to July 1999, and which you can search. See you (more likely than not) on Friday, Aug. 16. (DURABLE LINK)
August 2-4 – Lawyer’s suit against airline: my seatmate was too fat. “A pretrial hearing is scheduled in an Ashland attorney’s civil lawsuit against an airline that sold him a seat next to an obese man. Philip Shafer will meet representatives from Delta Air Lines Inc. in Ashland Municipal Court at 3:30 p.m. Sept. 19. Shafer seeks $9,500 from Delta. The suit stems from a two-hour November flight from New Orleans to Cincinnati. Shafer claims Delta breached its contract to provide him with a full seat and reasonable comfort because the obese man crowded onto his seat.” (Mark Caudill, “Ashland attorney sues over ‘jet jam’”, Mansfield, Ohio News Journal, Aug. 1) (see Dec. 20, 2000). (DURABLE LINK)
August 2-4 – Dense yet sieve-like. “The INS has no real idea who’s within America’s borders. One reason they have no idea is because it takes them a decade to process a routine green-card application by a highly-employable, high-earning, law-abiding citizen of America’s closest ally.” (Mark Steyn, National Post (Canada), Aug. 1). (DURABLE LINK)
August 2-4 – Welcome Fox News viewers/ readers. We suggested on Tuesday that the media should take a closer look at the tobacco-fee saga unfolding in the Manhattan courtroom of Justice Charles Ramos, and Fox News Channel wasted no time stepping into the breach; its news coverage gave this site’s editor generous time on screen to describe the case’s significance. However, none of the lawyers requesting the $13,000/hour fees were willing to go on camera to defend those fees — funny about that. (“Tobacco Settlement a Windfall for Lawyers”, Fox News, Aug. 1). And as if that weren’t enough publicity for one week, our editor is also interviewed on camera in a Fox News segment on school lawsuits (Liza Porteus, “Flunking Out of School? Get a Lawyer”, Fox News, Aug. 2) (DURABLE LINK)
August 2-4 – LexisOne “Site of the Month”. We’re one of the picks for the month of August at the major legal research service’s Legal Web Site Directory. (DURABLE LINK)
August 1 – You mean I’m suing that nice doctor? When Hazel Norton of Rolling Fork, Mississippi, read that the drug Propulsid might cause harm, she stopped taking it and signed up for a lawsuit. “‘Actually, I didn’t get hurt by Propulsid,’ Norton, who had the drug prescribed for her heartburn, said. But because she had taken the drug, she said she thought she could join a class-action lawsuit ‘and I might get a couple of thousand dollars.’
“The last thing she intended, Norton said, was for Kooyer to be sued. [Dr. Kirk Kooyer, who "arrived in the Mississippi Delta in 1994 to serve the poor."] ‘He’s really a good doctor, very intelligent,’ said Norton, who’s been Kooyer’s patient since 1994. ‘He makes you feel so comfortable.’
“She said she intended for the drug company to be sued, but that lawyers told her it would be better for her case to sue Kooyer in order to keep the case in Mississippi. After finding out Kooyer had been sued, she said she wrote a letter to her attorneys, objecting. ‘I’m kind of upset. I do not want him leaving because of all the suits,’ she said. ‘If we run off all the doctors, what are the people gonna do?’ Kooyer was eventually dropped from the litigation but not before he made up his mind to leave Mississippi.” (Jerry Mitchell, “Tort reform: just what the doctor ordered?”, Jackson Clarion-Ledger, Jul. 29 — many other good details)(more on Propulsid suits: Oct. 1, 2001; FindLaw). (DURABLE LINK)
August 1 – Sic ‘em on Segway. As the Los Angeles Times reported July 23 (registration process too frustrating to give them a link), one law firm is already announcing plans to organize lawsuits against Segway (also known as “It” or “Ginger”), the smart scooter whose backers think it could revolutionize urban transportation (see Dec. 13, 2001). “We believe that the Segway HT is potentially a legal nightmare and will be the basis for many lawsuits, both from the corporate and consumer side,” explains the website, which sports the tastefully restrained name of Sue-It.com and was put up by a “successful corporate law firm” calling itself the “USA Immigration Law Center”.
Wait a minute. Immigration? Well, that might shed light on why the “successful corporate law firm” argues its case in language that sometimes reads as if it has been inexactly translated into English from a foreign tongue. “We are successful corporate law firm with offices in Washington, DC and Baltimore named the USAILC. We are planning to further specialize in new areas associated with suing It [Segway]. … [W]e view the potential onslaught of cases against It as more than just a basis for strong financial profits. … Get ready to Sue-It!” A bunch of wild and crazy guys, no? As for the website USAILC puts up to promote its major line of practice, among its first sentences is the following: “The United States of America Immigration Law Center is the official online home for US Immigration Legal Matters and Issues” — which brought us up short since we had always imagined that “the official” site was this one. (DURABLE LINK)
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July 30-31 – Tobacco fees: one brave judge. Although most of the press from the New York Times on down continues to ignore this developing story, on July 10 Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Charles E. Ramos “told lawyers for six law firms that were awarded $625 million for their work in the historic 1998 tobacco settlement in no uncertain terms that he will examine whether the fee award is unethical. The April 2001 decision of the arbitration panel that issued the award set off ‘a flashing light that got my attention’ that the $625 million fee might violate the New York Code of Professional Responsibility’s proscription against illegal or excessive fees, Ramos told the throng of lawyers that filled his courtroom,” reports Daniel Wise in the New York Law Journal. Virtually the entire array of lawyers in the case was lined up against Judge Ramos: the trial lawyers themselves of course were furious, the tobacco companies were disputing his jurisdiction over the matter, and New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s office was defending the mega-fees in a brief. Outside the courtroom, meanwhile, establishment legal ethicist Stephen Gillers was scoffing that “There doesn’t seem to be any legal or ethical basis for this inquiry.” There doesn’t? The state’s Disciplinary Rule 2-106 bars lawyers from collecting “an illegal or excessive fee,” and it says nothing about excessive fees being okay so long as the other parties in the case have been dragooned into not objecting. (Daniel Wise, “New York Judge Begins Query Into Tobacco Fees”, New York Law Journal, Jul. 12)(see Jun. 21-23 and Oct. 25-27, 2002; May 11-13, 2001). Correction Jul. 31: our first report mistakenly named the scene of these proceedings as the Superior Court; it is in fact the Supreme Court (which in New York is a trial court and not the highest appellate body).
On July 25 the judge held a further hearing which even fewer press outlets seem to have covered — the only account we’ve seen ran on the Bloomberg wire (“N.Y. Judge Calls Tobacco Pact Legal Bills ‘Offensive”, Bloomberg News Service, Jul. 25, fee-based archive (search on date in litigation category, pulling up additional screens if necessary)). Judge Ramos pointed out that the $625 million fee amounted to $13,000 an hour, a figure he described as “offensive”. Although the trial lawyers who are set to collect those fees include many powerful insiders in New York politics — the sort of men who can make or break the career of an elected judge — the judge seemed admirably uncowed by them. He compared the lawyers’ overcompensation to “the problems now emerging in large corporate America”, which prompted Philip Damashek of Schneider, Kleinick, Weitz, Damashek & Shoot, which was awarded $98.4 million in fees, to demand an apology for “comparing me and my colleagues to these Enron people’”. And Ramos “ordered another attorney at the firm, Harvey Weitz, removed from the courtroom when he loudly told partner Brian Shoot not to let the judge interrupt him. ‘You’re sandbagging us,’ Weitz shouted at Ramos as he was escorted out. The judge threatened to hold him in contempt.” The judge “ordered the attorneys to file a new application supporting their fee request by August 30, or submit papers challenging his jurisdiction in the matter. The attorneys declined to say after the hearing how they planned to respond.” Addendum: Daniel Wise of the New York Law Journal also covered the July 25 hearing and provides further details of an oral argument that was “unparalleled — for its vitriol, much of it aimed at the judge.” (“New York Tobacco Fee Hearing Has Lawyers Smoking”, Jul. 26).
More: in Texas, Attorney General John Cornyn’s ethics investigation is turning up the heat on the Big Five tobacco lawyers who for years now have dodged being put under oath over the terms of their hiring by Cornyn’s predecessor Dan Morales (Brenda Sapino Jeffreys, “Investigation of Texas Tobacco Litigators Still Smokin’”, Texas Lawyer, Jul. 22)(see Jul. 15 and links from there). (DURABLE LINK)
July 30-31 – Lying’s not nice, especially when representing the bar. “Oregon’s highest court has suspended for two years an insurance defense lawyer who lied, while being deposed, to conceal a strategy that allowed his client to control both sides of a claim. … The lawyer, John P. Davenport of Portland, Ore., represented the Professional Liability Fund, an insurer established by the State Bar to provide mandatory malpractice insurance.” The Fund used a shell corporation to buy up unpaid malpractice judgments at a discount from claimants, which it could then dismiss; the strategy is not in itself illegal, but the court found that Davenport had not provided forthcoming answers to a bankruptcy examiner about the shell’s dealings with a bankrupt couple who had sued their lawyer for malpractice. (Annie Hsia, “Two-year Ban for Oregon Lawyer Who Lied”, National Law Journal, Jul. 18). In other sanctions news, a federal judge has ordered French drug company Aventis “to pay $32.6 million in attorney fees for vexatious conduct in patent litigation against Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. Southern District of New York Judge Robert P. Patterson said last week that [the company] ‘defiled the temple of justice’ by obstructing depositions and discovery, instructing a witness not to answer questions at a deposition and advancing baseless claims.” The finding of vexatious conduct is on appeal (Tom Perrotta, “Drug Company Must Pay Fees of $32 Million”, New York Law Journal, Jul. 29). (DURABLE LINK)
July 29 – “Bush Urges Malpractice Damage Limits”. “President Bush urged Congress today to impose substantial nationwide restrictions on medical malpractice cases, arguing that million-dollar verdicts are driving up health care costs and forcing doctors out of business.” Sen. John Edwards (D-T.Law.) promptly charged that under the White House proposal, when a child is blinded or paralyzed for life, “He [Bush] proposes what they get for that is $250,000.” (Mike Allen and Amy Goldstein, Washington Post, Jul. 26). In fact, as Edwards cannot but be aware, damages to cover the costs of care, lost income and other monetizable damages, which commonly would run into the millions in the case of a paralyzed child, would remain fully collectable as before; the mooted limit would apply only to the portion of awards which covered “non-economic” elements such as pain and suffering. (Bush remarks; White House “Policy in Focus“; HHS report on effects of medical liability, PDF format). The Senate Republican Policy Committee has published a paper collecting some of the malpractice-suit-crisis “horror stories” from recent months, with links to accounts in the press (Jul. 25). See also Steve Friess, “Liability costs drive doctors from practice”, Christian Science Monitor, Jul. 17; “Soaring Liability Costs Blamed for Non-Profit Nursing Home Closures”, Dallas Morning News, Jul. 25 (reg); Corpus Christi (Tex.) Caller special section, letters. Sasha Volokh and correspondents discuss the federalism angles (Jul. 27). (DURABLE LINK)
July 29 – Law lectures needn’t be dull. We were familiar with some of the writings of Harvard law prof David Rosenberg, but we had no idea his lecture style was so … colorful, as evidenced by this best-of collection (Harvard Law Record, 1999) (via Eve Tushnet, Jul. 25, who got it from Stuart Buck, Jul. 22 and Jul. 25; and thanks to Dan Lewis for the web-archive link). (DURABLE LINK)
July 29 – New medium, new opportunities. John Steele Gordon, the history-of-business columnist for American Heritage and author of such acclaimed books as A Thread Across the Ocean and The Business of America, devotes his new column to comparing the rise of online publishing with the technological developments, such as the rotary press, that ushered in the era of the metropolitan newspaper in the years before the American Civil War. “When the young can enter a business and experiment with new technology at little risk, revolution is on the way.” Small internet news-gathering and news-assemblage sites can now “have a great impact. … [One of them] has been giving tort lawyers and activist judges fits by assembling in one much-visited site called overlawyered.com the most egregious lawsuits and decisions from around the country and beyond. It makes for reading that is often hilarious, infuriating, and sad at the same time.” (“The Man Who Invented the Newspaper”, Aug./Sept.). (More on weblog impact: John Leo, “Flogged by Bloggers”, U.S. News, Aug. 5). While on the subject of nice publicity, we won’t even try to summarize all the additional exposure this site and its editor have gotten in the past few days from the lawyers-sue-fast-food controversy, but we will note that our editor’s O’Reilly Factor appearance of last Tuesday, on educational lawsuits, is now online at FoxNews.com (“Watch out Teachers!”, Jul. 24). (DURABLE LINK)
July 26-28 – Fat suits, cont’d. George Washington University law prof John Banzhaf, who got himself so much publicity in the tobacco round, says he’s advising the plaintiff who just announced that he’s suing fast-food chains, so we know the suit must be serious (right?) (Geraldine Sealey, “Fat suits filed”, ABC News, Jul. 25; BBC, “Fat Americans sue fast food firms”, Jul. 25, and “Talking Points“). As for our editor, he’s in considerable demand on the subject, having appeared over the past day on (among others) Fox News Network, CBS radio, and the BBC. This just in: debating our editor on Laura Ingraham’s radio show Friday evening, Banzhaf announced that he is working up a possible suit against milk marketers which will charge that the “Milk Moustache” campaign should give rise to liability because it doesn’t warn consumers that skim milk is sometimes better for you than whole milk. Is he serious? He sure sounded like it (discussion on Democratic Underground). (DURABLE LINK)
July 26-28 – Third Circuit: prisoners may be entitled to watch R-rated films. “Inmates in federal prisons who challenged a ban on allowing them to watch movies rated R or NC-17 have won a new shot at making their case now that a federal appeals court has ruled that a Western District of Pennsylvania judge was too quick to rule in favor of the government. In Wolf v. Ashcroft, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that U.S. District Judge Sean J. McLaughlin of the Western District of Pennsylvania ‘did not conduct a proper, thorough analysis’ of whether the ban is ‘reasonably related to legitimate penological interests.’” The trial judge’s ruling against the prisoners, furthermore, “improperly relied on ‘common sense’”. (Shannon P. Duffy, “Prisoners’ Suit Over R-Rated Movies Worth Another Look, Says 3rd Circuit”, The Legal Intelligencer, Jul. 25). (DURABLE LINK)
July 26-28 – Skittish at Kinko’s. The clerk at the copy shop raises objections to a request to photocopy a newspaper column: “Do you have permission to duplicate this copyrighted material?” But it’s my column, the customer protests — I wrote it! “Look — my picture is on the top.” “He told me that didn’t matter, that corporate Kinko’s was overburdened with copyright lawsuits, and consequently he wasn’t about to run my copy job. Sheesh.” (“Inane Laws and Egotistical Copy Men”, Cornell Daily Sun, Mar. 4). (DURABLE LINK)
July 26-28 – Update: cost of clipboard-throwing only $8 million. A San Diego judge has reduced the damage award from $30 million to $8 million in a case against the Ralphs supermarket chain over the conduct of a manager who over the course of a decade is alleged to have verbally harassed female employees and thrown such objects as a telephone and clipboard at them. Superior Court judge Michael Anello called the damages “grossly excessive” and the result of the jury’s “passion and prejudice,” and said “the evidence was insufficient to support the conclusion that defendant [corporation] approved of or ratified [the manager's] conduct.” The decision is “a slap in the face of women’s rights,” countered the plaintiffs’ co-counsel (see Apr. 19-21) (Alexei Oreskovic, “Judge Slashes Sex Harassment Damages Against Ralphs Grocery”, The Recorder, Jul. 17). (DURABLE LINK)
July 25 – “Ailing Man Sues Fast-Food Firms”. You knew it was coming: “A New York City lawyer has filed suit against the four big fast-food corporations, saying their fatty foods are responsible for his client’s obesity and related health problems. Samuel Hirsch filed his lawsuit Wednesday at a New York state court in the Bronx, alleging that McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s and KFC Corporation are irresponsible and deceptive in the posting of their nutritional information, that they need to offer healthier options on their menus, and that they create a de facto addiction in their consumers, particularly the poor and children.” Quotes our editor, who takes the dim view of the suit that you would expect (Michael Y. Park, FoxNews.com, Jul. 24). (DURABLE LINK)
July 25 – “Surgeon halts operation over foreign nurses’ poor English”. Britain: “A surgeon at a leading hospital has said he had to stop halfway through an operation because foreign nurses could not follow his instructions. As a result, he said he has been threatened with disciplinary action for racism. David Nunn, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at Guy’s and St Thomas’s Hospitals, in London, told The Telegraph that he was unable to complete the operation last week without certain instruments. When he asked the nurses, all of whom were foreign, to find them, ‘I was met with a selection of bemused reactions,’ he said. ‘They were produced only when the scrub nurse de-scrubbed and went to find them herself.’ Mr Dunn, 48, said his superiors had accused him of racism and threatened him with being disciplined.” Dunn said the influx of nurses from outside Britain are “without doubt well-trained and dedicated professionals, but if medical staff cannot communicate effectively then patients’ care may be put at risk.” Careful what you say, doc… (Richard Eden, Daily Telegraph, Jul. 22). (DURABLE LINK)
July 25 – “Licensing Deadline Sneaks Up In District”. “Consultants, landlords, music teachers, nannies, massage therapists and other home-based workers in the District face fines of as much as $500 if they do not obtain a new type of city license by Aug. 31, but most are unaware of it. Self-employed individuals and District firms, including nonprofit groups, that collect more than $2,000 in annual revenue will have to obtain a master business license to legally sell their services.” More “than 60,000 businesses and individuals in the District face fines of as much as $500 if they don’t obtain a new type of city license by Aug. 31″ — and have things really reached the point where it’s going to require a license from the government to practice independent journalism from your apartment? (Avram Goldstein, Washington Post, Jul. 21; “How D.C. Creates Chaos” (editorial), Jul. 23; Eugene Volokh, Jul. 23). (DURABLE LINK)
July 24 – Smog fee case: “unreal world of greed”. A California appeals court has thrown out an arbitration panel’s $88.5 million award of attorneys’ fees, amounting to an estimated $8,800/hour, to five law firms which had prosecuted a case against the state of California arguing the unconstitutionality of its former assessment of “smog impact fees” on cars registered from out of state. “The justices called the panel’s $88.5 million fee award ‘an unconstitutional gift of public funds’ that was not authorized by the Legislature. In a scathing concurring opinion, Justice Richard Sims said the award from the arbitration panel was ‘completely in outer space.’ ‘The fact that attorneys even requested a fee award of that magnitude from the taxpayers,’ Sims wrote, ‘is a testament to the unreal world of greed in which some attorneys practice law in this day and age.’” The five law firms included Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach, long a major political donor in California, as well as “New York’s Weiss & Yourman; San Diego’s Sullivan, Hill, Lewin, Rez & Engel; La Jolla, Calif.’s Blumenthal & Markham, and Berkeley, Calif., solo practitioner Richard Pearl.” (see Dec. 5, 2000, Jun. 22, 2001)(Robert Salladay, “Court rips $8,800 an hour in attorneys’ fees”, San Francisco Chronicle, Jul. 23; Mike McKee, “California Appeals Court Rips $88M Fee Award in Smog Case”, The Recorder, Jul. 23). (DURABLE LINK)
July 24 – Update: “Harassment by kids gets ex-teacher 50G” Following up on a story from last month: the city of New York has agreed to pay $50,000 to settle a lawsuit by a former Queens teacher who says his students had harassed him by way of derogatory comments about his immigrant status (from Sri Lanka), accent and ethnicity. “Legal experts said the suit was the first of its kind in which a teacher successfully brought a civil rights action alleging that students had created a ‘hostile work environment.’” The other noteworthy feature of the dispute (see Jun. 26) is the defense the city put forth, namely that it was powerless to discipline the students, who had special education (disabled) status, for insulting the teacher “because students with that classification have already been identified as having behavioral problems, and the verbal misconduct might be considered a manifestation of their disability,” as a city lawyer put it (John Marzulli, “Harassment by kids gets teacher 50K”, New York Daily News, Jul. 22). (DURABLE LINK)
July 23 – Welcome O’Reilly Factor viewers. Our editor was a guest on the top-rated TV talk show this evening, interviewed one-on-one by host Bill O’Reilly on the subject of parents threatening to sue teachers over their kids’ bad grades. We mentioned the recent Arizona case and an earlier Ohio case that we understand has been dismissed by the court; and here’s our theme page on overlawyered schools. (DURABLE LINK)
July 22-23 – Politicos’ “stagey” outrage at balance-sheet sins. “John Walker Lindh got 20 years this week for joining a terrorist network at war with his country. Lucky for him he didn’t try something really bad, like capitalizing an expense item. … President Bush, who spent 56 years on this earth without revealing the slightest passion for corporate reform, now says life will be intolerable if he doesn’t have a bill to sign within a couple of weeks. And he has sent signals that he doesn’t give much of a hoot what is in it.” (Michael Kinsley, “Stock Option Cure-All”, Washington Post, Jul. 19). “Even now, the mob waving pitchforks and torches finds the details of accounting, compensation and corporate governance too tedious to take seriously. But ‘reforms’ that ignore the role of incentives and competition will turn out to be monsters themselves.” (Virginia Postrel, “Business ‘Reforms’ Should Not Ignore Incentives and Competition”, New York Times, Jul. 18 (reg)). (DURABLE LINK)
July 22-23 – Nightmare under the palms. You retire to a Florida condo, and imagine that the hassles of life are over — that is, until you discover that a couple of your neighbors have turned asserting their legal rights into an art form. (Joe Kollin, “Sunrise condo residents get socked with bill because neighbors won’t pay”, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Jul. 19). (DURABLE LINK)
July 22-23 – Disabled testing: hence, loathèd asterisk. In a settlement with a disabled-rights litigation group, the College Board has agreed to stop flagging the test scores of students who got extra time or other accommodations in taking its college admissions test. The effect will be to allow applicants to conceal from colleges whether they “took the test under normal conditions, or used a computer, worked in a separate quiet room, and had four and a half hours for the three-hour test. … High school guidance counselors said the elimination of flagging could set off a wave of new applications for accommodations, including some from students without real disabilities. … most of those who are accommodated have attention deficit problems or learning disabilities like dyslexia, a reading disorder.” “It’s very clear who’s been getting extended-time: the highest-income communities have the highest rates of accommodations,” said Bruce Poch, the dean of admissions at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif. “I think what’s going to have to happen now is that everyone will, in effect, get more time.” (Tamar Lewin, “Abuse Is Feared as SAT Test Changes Disability Policy”, New York Times, Jul. 15 (reg)). Among commenters: Kimberly Swygert at No. 2 Pencil (Jul. 15 and 17) and Joanne Jacobs (Jul. 15 and Jul. 17). We covered the controversy back in February 1999, May 10, 2000 and Feb. 9-11, 2001. (DURABLE LINK)
July 22-23 – Last-minute friends in Texas politics. “In 1998 [John] Sharp narrowly lost the lieutenant governor’s race to Republican Mr. Perry, who later became governor when George W. Bush became president.” Sharp drew about 15 percent of his financial backing from trial lawyers in that race, which actually probably isn’t all that high a percentage for a Lone Star Democrat. What was interesting was the timing: “A review by The News of finance reports in that matchup indicates that nearly half Mr. Sharp’s trial lawyer support came in the final eight days of the campaign and was not reported until after the race. For example, a few days before the election, Mr. Sharp collected $250,000 from Houston trial lawyer John Eddie Williams and $150,000 apiece from lawyers Walter Umphrey of Beaumont and Harold Nix of Daingerfield. And he got $15,000 from Michael Gallagher of Houston.” Reports of trial lawyer backing can damage a candidate in Texas campaigns, but when the lawyers donate at the last minute the voters may be none the wiser as they troop to the polls (Wayne Slater, “Trial lawyers’ cash at issue”, Dallas Morning News, Jul. 13). (DURABLE LINK)
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June 28-30 – Lawyer’s 44-hour workday. “Cook County State’s Attorney Dick Devine is investigating charges a lawyer routinely billed the state’s child welfare agency for more than 24 hours’ work a day on uncontested adoptions.
“According to records obtained by Cook County Public Guardian Patrick Murphy, Joyce Britton had a busy week in April 2001: On Monday, April 9, she worked 34 hours. On Tuesday, she worked 44 hours. On Wednesday it was 29; 33 on Thursday, 25 on Friday, 42 on Saturday. … Britton billed the agency $862,000 for fiscal years 2000 and 2001. The second-most-active attorney handling uncontested adoptions billed $285,000.” (Abdon M. Pallasch, “Did adoption lawyer really work 44 hours in one day?”, Chicago Sun-Times, Jun. 25). (DURABLE LINK)
June 28-30 – Tobacco settlement funds go to tobacco promotion. An investigation by the Charlotte Observer finds that of the $59 million that the state of North Carolina has spent so far in proceeds from the tobacco settlement, nearly three-quarters — “about $43 million — has gone toward production and marketing of N.C. tobacco”. (Liz Chandler, “N.C. spends settlement on tobacco, not health”, Charlotte Observer, Jun. 23) (via Andrew Sullivan — scroll to third item). (DURABLE LINK)
June 28-30 – Ambulance driver who stopped for donuts loses suit. Sad news for the hero of our Nov. 2-4 item: “A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by a former ambulance driver who claimed he was wrongfully fired after stopping for doughnuts while transporting a patient to a hospital.” Larry Wesley “stopped for doughnuts in July 2000 while he was taking an injured youth to Ben Taub Hospital” and was fired after the boy’s mother complained. U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal “ruled that Wesley’s claims that other employees received lesser sanctions were not supported by the record, and he also failed to show that he was treated more harshly than other drivers.” (“Judge dismisses lawsuit filed by ambulance worker fired for doughnut stop”, AP/KRTK Houston, Jun. 27). (DURABLE LINK)
June 28-30 – More on gambling as next-tobacco. The Newark Star-Ledger‘s take; quotes our editor (Judy DeHaven and Kate Coscarelli, “Gaming Industry Could Be Next Target of a Big Tobacco-Type Lawsuit”, Newhouse News Service, Jun. 24)(see May 20-21). (DURABLE LINK)
June 27 – Pledge marathon. Even Justice William Brennan seemed to recognize that it tends to damage the good name of religious unbelief to associate it in the public mind with theories of hair-trigger unconstitutionality which encourage running to court over the most minute details of official ceremony. See Eugene Volokh (multiple posts); “One Nation Under Blank” (editorial), Washington Post, Jun. 27; Megan McArdle (and reader comments); Walter Dellinger, “Logically Speaking, the 9th Circuit Doesn’t Exist”, Slate, Jun. 27; David G. Savage, “9th Circuit just following form”, L.A. Times/ Houston Chronicle, Jun. 26. Update: also see columns by Steve Chapman, “Coming to terms with our Constitution”, Chicago Tribune, Jun. 30; Jonathan Foreman, “The real pledge problem”, New York Post, Jul. 1. (DURABLE LINK)
June 26-27 – “Win Big! Lie in Front of a Train”. Per a case summary in a recent New York Law Journal, “A State Supreme Court jury in Manhattan had awarded $14.1 million to a woman who was hit by an E train. The accident occurred on May 3, 2000, in a subway tunnel just north of the 34th Street station on the Eighth Avenue line. … What was she doing in that strange place to begin with? It seems the woman, then 36, had entered the tunnel and lain down on the tracks. The police concluded later that she was trying to kill herself. She denied it, though she also said she could not remember how she had ended up there.” No wonder the Bloomberg administration is pushing municipal tort reform (Clyde Haberman, New York Times, Jun. 25)(see also Oct. 23, 2001, Dec. 17, 2001). (DURABLE LINK)
June 26-27 – Asbestos: saving the Crown jewels? “In a decision that is sure to grab the attention of the asbestos personal injury bar, a Philadelphia Common Pleas judge has dismissed Crown Cork & Seal as a defendant in 376 pending asbestos cases. Judge Allan J. Tereshko found that Philadelphia- based consumer packaging company Crown Cork & Seal qualifies for relief under a new Pennsylvania law that limits the successor liability of asbestos defendants whose liability results only from merging or acquiring companies that produced asbestos products. Under the law, the company must be incorporated in Pennsylvania prior to May 2001 and must show that its liabilities in asbestos lawsuits have equaled or exceeded the ‘fair market value’ of the company whose acquisition resulted in the successor liability.” (Shannon P. Duffy, “Pennsylvania Court Upholds Law Limiting Asbestos Liability”, The Legal Intelligencer, Jun. 13)(see Jun. 27, 2001). (DURABLE LINK)
June 26-27 – “Ex-Teach’s Suit: Kids Abused Me”. Sued if you do, sued if you don’t dept.: trial is set to start today in Brooklyn “in a ground-breaking lawsuit filed by a former special education teacher who charges he was harassed by students. … Vincent Peries, who is from Sri Lanka, says students at Francis Lewis High School in Queens mimicked his accent, tossed paper balls at him,” and made fun of his ethnic background. “School officials don’t deny Peries was harassed — but argue that they can’t discipline special ed students for slurring a teacher. ‘This is because students with that classification have already been identified as having behavioral problems, and the verbal misconduct might be considered a manifestation of their disability,’ city lawyer Lisa Grumet wrote in court papers. Special ed students can be suspended only for incidents involving physical violence, drugs or a dangerous weapon, according to Board of Education regulations.” (John Marzulli, New York Daily News, Jun. 25)(& welcome Joanne Jacobs readers) (& update Jul. 24; city settles with him for 50K). (DURABLE LINK)
June 26-27 – “‘Vexatious litigant’ vows he’ll keep coming back”. Portrait of a Texas frequent litigant who’s filed more than twenty lawsuits over the past two years, against a list of defendants that includes more than a dozen judges and assorted other officials. Among factors working in his favor, aside from our general lack of a loser-pays rule: “pauper status” rules providing for the waiver of filing fees, and a lack of cross-checking that might allow the clerk in one county to learn that Mr. O’Dell is under a court order handed down in another county to petition for approval before filing any more suits in the state. (Lisa Sandburg, San Antonio Express-News, Jun. 24). (DURABLE LINK)
June 24-25 – Reparations roundup. Someone should start a weblog devoted to reparations links, it’d be easy to fill:
* In the fall of 2000, ABC’s “20/20″ and New York Times reporter Barry Meier distinguished themselves by collaborating on a devastating exposé of “personal injury lawyer Edward D. Fagan, [who] recreated himself four years ago as [a] media-savvy figure behind huge lawsuits on behalf of Nazi victims” as the Times‘s abstract puts it. The investigation (to quote ABC) “found serious questions being raised about this so-called savior, now accused of ignoring and neglecting some of the very clients he had promised to help”. ABC interviewed well-known legal ethicist Stephen Gillers, who spoke in startlingly blunt terms of his opinion of Fagan’s client-handling record (“I think it’s despicable”; “This is client abuse, in my view, and it should not be allowed to continue”.) As for Fagan’s allegedly pivotal role in developing the WWII claims, “‘We essentially worked around him,’ says New York University law professor Burt Neuborne. ‘I mean, he was, he was there, but, but he played, if I tell you zero, I mean zero role in developing the legal theory, in presenting the legal theory, and in participating as a lawyer,’ says Neuborne.” (Brian Ross, “A Case of Self-Promotion?”, ABCNews.com, Sept. 8, 2000; Connie Chung, Sam Donaldson and others, “The Survivors” (transcript), ABCNews “20/20″, Sept. 8, 2000; Barry Meier, “An Avenger’s Path: Lawyer in Holocaust Case Faces Litany of Complaints”, New York Times, Sept. 8, 2000 (abstract leads to fee-based archive); Barry Meier, “Judge Warns Lawyer to Pay Past Penalties”, Sept. 13, 2000 (same)).
But credulity springs eternal — at least in those portions of the press not industrious enough to do a Google search or two to check out the background of a lawyer re-emerging into the headlines. Last week, Fagan was all over the papers announcing that he was going to file reparations suits against Western corporations on behalf of victims of the late apartheid regime in South Africa. Britain’s Observer swallowed his pitch whole, bannering its article “Lawyer who championed those who suffered in the Holocaust fights for South Africa’s oppressed” and calling Fagan the “American lawyer who won compensation for Holocaust victims”. We’re sure that would come as news to Prof. Neuborne. (Terry Bell, “Apartheid victims sue Western banks and firms for billions”, The Observer, Jun. 16).
* On New York’s Niagara Frontier: “Thousands of Grand Islanders were thankful and relieved Friday after a federal judge ruled that the Seneca Indians do not own the land beneath their homes, businesses and public buildings”. U.S. District Judge Richard C. Arcara ruled that not only did the Seneca tribe relinquish any legal claim they might have had to the relevant tracts of New York state way back in 1764, but “there is no archaeological evidence that the Senecas ever actually set foot on the Niagara Islands.” But landowners on the island are nowhere near achieving clear title to the properties they once thought they owned, since the Senecas vow to appeal. (Dan Herbeck and T.J. Pignataro, “Sigh of relief”, Buffalo News, Jun. 22).
Meanwhile, litigation by other tribes continues to wreak havoc across a wide swath of New York State (see Nov. 3-5, 2000 and links from there). Last fall another such case ended with a federal judge’s ruling in favor of the Cayuga tribe, which 200 years ago sold the 64,000-acre tract to the state in violation of the U.S. Trade and Intercourse Act. The verdict was $36.9 million to which the judge added $211 million in interest for a grand total of $247.9 million, considerably below the $2 billion that the tribe’s lawyers had been asking for, a request that had reflected the tendency of a sum starting off long enough ago to grow to the sky through the miracle of compound interest. (Margaret Cronin Fisk, “200-Year-Old Land Dispute Nets $247.9 Million”, National Law Journal, Oct. 17). See also John Caher, “New York State May Be Solely Liable for Indian Land Claims”, New York Law Journal, Apr. 2 (suit by Oneidas “demand ‘ejectment’ of the City of Syracuse”). Update Jun. 29, 2005: Second Circuit panel throws out Cayugas’ suit and damage award as inconsistent with recent Supreme Court decision in City of Sherrill.
* Ah, the healing and emollient qualities of the reparations movement, which holds out the promise of putting racial frictions finally behind us: “A new Mobile Register - University of South Alabama survey shows that while 67 percent of black Alabamians favor the federal government making cash payments to slave descendants, only 5 percent of white Alabamians agree. Among the supporters is J.L. Chestnut, a black Selma lawyer who is part of a national legal team preparing to file reparations litigation. … ‘In five years of polling in Alabama, I have never seen an issue that was so racially polarizing,’ Nicholls [Keith Nicholls, the University of South Alabama political science professor who oversaw the survey] said. He added that the mere mention of reparations and an official U.S. government apology for slavery — another issue addressed in the poll — caused many white respondents to get so angry that they had trouble completing the interview.” (Sam Hodges, “Register-USA poll: slavery payments a divisive question”, Mobile Register, Jun. 23). (DURABLE LINK)
June 21-23 – “Trolling for litigation on eBay”. Via Ernie the Attorney: “Someone bought a packaged cheese stick that supposedly had a human hair. They want to sue, and have posted the following description of the item bid for on Ebay: ‘You are bidding on the opportunity to represent us in a civil proceeding. Naturally, our discovery of this apparently tainted product has traumatized us, and we may never be able to truly enjoy cheese (or other dairy products, or other processed foods, or other food for that matter) ever again. We reserve the right to review winner’s qualifications upon auction end. Winner must be a licensed attorney.” Before you ask, no, we don’t know whether the person who posted the auction is serious or not, though our guess is that they’re not. Update 20:45 EDT Friday: it looks as if the eBay authorities have removed the auction. It was discussed by users on eBay Forums (Jun. 21). (DURABLE LINK)
June 21-23 – Tobacco fees: a judge gets interested. Here’s one to watch closely: a Manhattan judge may finally be getting ready to delve into some of the ethical questions raised by the 1998 tobacco settlement, or at least the $25 billion portion of it that covers New York state. The judge “has asked the New York attorney general’s office and several law firms to justify $625 million in attorney fees awarded” as part of New York’s settlement with the tobacco industry (see May 11, 2001). “Citing unspecified ethical concerns, Supreme Court Justice Charles E. Ramos ordered state lawyers and attorneys from six firms that represented the state to explain why the fees should not be set aside. One ground for vacating the fees, the judge said, could be that the arbitrators who awarded them may have ‘manifestly disregarded well established ethical and public policies.’ Ramos suggested that the court had the power to not only ask a new panel of arbitrators to determine reasonable fees, but to vacate the entire $25 billion settlement, approved by another judge in 1998, if such action was warranted. He also said the issue could be referred to the Departmental Committee on Discipline and require the outside firms to produce time sheets detailing their roles in the litigation.” (Tom Perrotta, “New York Judge Cites Ethics Concern Over Tobacco Case Fees”, New York Law Journal, Jun. 20). (DURABLE LINK)
June 21-23 – 11th Circuit reinstates “Millionaire” lawsuit. “A federal appeals court has reinstated a lawsuit alleging that ABC discriminates against disabled people trying to become contestants on ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire.’ The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided that the lawsuit contained a valid claim that the show’s qualifying system, which uses touch-tone phones, violates the Americans with Disabilities Act.” (see Nov. 7, 2000; Brian Bandell, “Lawsuit Reinstated Against ABC Show”, AP/New York Post, Jun. 19; Susan R. Miller, “Disabled Floridians Get Shot at ABC’s ‘Millionaire’”, Miami Daily Business Review, Jun. 21). (DURABLE LINK)
June 21-23 – Welcome Grouse.net.au readers. We’re picked as link of the day on this Australian site for June 21. Also for Jun. 21, we’re Mr. Quick’s “Link of the Day”. Among blogs sending us visitors lately: Tres Producers, Flyover Country, Aaron Haspel’s God of the Machine, Hollywood Investigator, Bob Owen of the Twin Cities, Ross Nordeen, Ravenwolf, Jon Garthwaite’s TownHall C-Log, Junkyard Blog, Now You Listen to Me Little Missy, and many others, as well as the links page of premier Cathblogger Amy Welborn. (DURABLE LINK)
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March 8-10 – Will EU silence the pipes? Some Scottish members of the European parliament are warning that new noise regulations could make it unlawful to play their nation’s musical instrument: lowering maximum noise levels to 87 decibels, as is being proposed, could “silence the bagpipes for the first time since Culloden”. “If this goes through then the Queen will have to be without her piper every morning who wakes her up at Buckingham Palace,” said Jim Banks, the head of the Piping Centre in Glasgow. “It is just daft.” An EU spokeswoman denied that the authorities in Brussels wished to suppress bagpipes, but a Tory MEP said the application of the rules to employment contexts could result in the end of professional pipe bands. Two years ago the British defense ministry announced that the din of military brass bands was in violation of job-safety noise limits (see Dec. 22, 2000) (Hamish Macdonell, “EU threat to noisy bagpipes”, The Scotsman, Mar. 6)(more on bagpipers in trouble: June 21, 2001).
March 8-10 – Inability to get along with co-workers. An assembly worker with bipolar disorder “fired in 1996 following a series of conflicts with her fellow employees and what court papers termed ‘her confrontational and irrational behavior’ with her supervisor” is entitled to sue her employer under the Americans with Disabilities Act since the ability to interact or get along with others is “a major life activity”, a federal judge ruled in New York. The employer had responded to the woman’s lawsuit with a counterclaim against her, charging that her erratic and hostile behavior had cost it $500,000 in losses to its operations, but Judge Frederic Block suggested that its counterclaim was “in terrorem tactics” and “a naked form of retaliation” against “a vulnerable plaintiff who suffers from a significant mental impairment, for filing her lawsuit,” and suggested that he might impose sanctions on the company for so foolishly imagining that the accusation game might work in both directions. (Mark Hamblett, “Plaintiff With Bipolar Disorder Protected Under ADA”, New York Law Journal, March 4).
March 8-10 – Near and dear to their hearts. Florida trial lawyers are up in arms over the merest suggestion, from a committee on jury innovations, that it might be time to start rethinking their cherished right to kick prospective jurors off panels without offering reasons or explanations. Thomas Scarritt, chair of the Florida bar’s trial lawyers section, “called any discussion of eliminating peremptory challenges ‘a dangerous move.’ Scarritt told the [state supreme] court ‘that is a subject that is near and dear to the hearts of trial lawyers and we do not think there should be any change whatsoever.’” (Susan R. Miller, “Juror Power?”, Miami Daily Business Review, Feb. 6).
March 8-10 – Crestfallen at the news. “Obviously, we’re disappointed.” — Len Selfon, director of benefits programs for the Vietnam Veterans of America, on word that the Institute of Medicine had found no evidence that the herbicide Agent Orange, to which many veterans were exposed, has contributed to the risk of a form of leukemia in children (“Washington in Brief: Science Panel Retreats On Agent Orange Risks”, Washington Post, Feb. 28) (via Health Facts and Fears (American Council on Science and Health), March 5).
March 6-7 – Updates. Stories that kept on developing:
* “A judge dismissed a lawsuit Monday that claimed several video game and movie makers shared blame for the 1999 Columbine High School massacre. … [Federal judge Lewis] Babcock said there was no way the makers of violent games and movies could have reasonably foreseen that their products would cause the Columbine shooting or any other violent acts. ‘Setting aside any personal distaste, as I must, it is manifest that there is social utility in expressive and imaginative forms of entertainment, even if they contain violence,’ Babcock wrote.” (“Columbine Family’s Lawsuit Against Video Game Makers Dismissed”, AP/Tampa Bay Online, Mar. 5)(see April 24, 2001).
* A Southwest Texas University student who bared her breasts at a wet T-shirt contest in Mexico over spring break 2000 has won a $5 million default judgment against the makers of a Wild Party Girls video who used the resulting topless picture of her in their promotions. She continues to pursue a lawsuit against the E! cable network for airing the “Too Hot for TV” ads with her image. (“Woman in ‘too hot for TV’ suit gets $5 million”, Cox/AZCentral, Feb. 27) (Update Apr. 15: default judgment thrown out). And the quest for a very private Mardi Gras continues as a Florida State University business major “has sued producers of the ‘Girls Gone Wild’ videos, claiming they invaded her privacy and used her image without permission. … [She] admits in her lawsuit that she was among the women on the streets and balconies of the French Quarter last year who removed their tops in exchange for Mardi Gras beads and trinkets.” (Janet McConnaughey, “Coed files suit over nude video”, AP/Polk County Online, Jan. 23)(see Sept. 28, 2001). At Metafilter, user “Mikewas” has some advice (Oct. 1) for how a defense lawyer might try such cases after first determining whether the local jury is of liberal or conservative leaning.
* ” In what is being described as a major victory for the so-called ‘visitability’ movement, two cities in disparate parts of the country [last month] started requiring all new homes to be accessible to the handicapped.” Besides the expected passage of such an ordinance in Naperville, Ill. (see Feb. 6), a new ordinance in Pima County, Arizona “includes the significant additional requirement of a zero-step entrance.” “I thought homes were for the owners,” says University of Chicago law professor Richard Epstein. A suburban Chicago homebuilder says the added expense could run as high as $3,000 a house: “it’s real easy to spend somebody else’s money,” adds J. Mark Harrison, executive director of the Home Builders Association of Illinois. (“Activists Win New Rules Requiring Handicapped-Accessible Private Homes”, FoxNews.com, Feb. 10).
March 6-7 – Quest for deep pockets in Ga. crematory scandal. “But while relatives focus their anger on the Marshes, their lawyers have deeper pockets in mind — the funeral homes that sent bodies to Tri-State. The reason is simple: Funeral homes have more insurance. Lawyers know the Marshes’ assets are likely to be eaten up in criminal court defending Ray Brent Marsh, the man charged with theft by deception in the Tri-State case. That leaves the funeral homes, who carry multimillion-dollar liability policies.” (Duane D. Stanford, “Big bucks at stake as lawsuits hit funeral homes that sent bodies to Tri-State Crematory”, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Mar. 3).
March 6-7 – Washington eyes your 401(k). At Reason Online, Mike Lynch explains why the Enron collapse doesn’t prove what members of Congress keep saying it does about the supposed laxity of pension regulation (“Political Returns”, April) (see Feb. 15).
March 6-7 – Dewey deserve that much? Dig deeper into your pockets, smokers: federal judge Jack Weinstein of the Eastern District of New York “has awarded nearly $38 million in legal fees to New York-based Dewey Ballantine for representing Blue Cross and Blue Shield in a suit against the tobacco industry — more than twice the amount of a jury verdict in the case last year.” (Tom Perrotta, “Dewey Ballantine Given $38 Million Fee Award”, New York Law Journal, Mar. 1). (Update Oct. 23, 2004: New York high court derails award and underlying case.) And Loyola University law professor Dane Ciolino has dropped his challenge of the $575 million in legal fees private lawyers got for representing the state of Louisiana in the national tobacco settlement. Terms were confidential; Ciolino said he is not receiving personal benefit from the deal. “When they signed on to represent the state, the lawyers from 13 different firms became Louisiana assistant attorneys general. The lawyers claimed they acted as independent contractors, not government employees.” (Marsha Shuler, “Tobacco fee challenge dropped”, Baton Rouge Advocate, Feb. 15).
March 5 – Scenes from a malpractice crisis. “In Las Vegas, more than 10% of the doctors are expected by summer to quit or relocate, plunging the city toward crisis. … In California — where juries hearing malpractice lawsuits are limited to maximum awards of $250,000 for pain and suffering — [ob/gyn Dr. Cheryl] Edwards’ insurance premium this year is $17,000 [it had been $150,000 when she practiced in Nevada]. Because of 1975 tort reform, doctors in California are largely unaffected by increasing insurance rates. But the situation is dire in states such as Nevada where there is no monetary cap.”
“Doctors in Oregon have been told to brace for ‘breathtaking’ increases in malpractice insurance premiums in coming weeks. … When the Oregon Supreme Court in 1999 rejected as unconstitutional a $500,000 lid on pain- and- suffering awards in malpractice cases, jury awards of $8 million, $10 million and $17 million swiftly followed. … The Arizona border town of Bisbee has lost its hospital maternity ward because four of the town’s six obstetricians can no longer afford to practice. … Both trauma centers in Wheeling, W.Va., have closed because their neurosurgeons couldn’t pay their new malpractice premiums. The trauma center at Abington Memorial Hospital outside Philadelphia faces closure next month as its doctors scramble to find affordable insurance.” (Tom Gorman, “Physicians Fold Under Malpractice Fee Burden”, Los Angeles Times, Mar. 4; also (same story) Boston Globe; Joelle Babula, “Malpractice Crisis: Trauma unit faces cuts”, Las Vegas Review-Journal, Feb. 7). In Mississippi, where trial lawyers hold great sway in many courts and recently blocked tort reform in the state legislature, an 18-doctor group of emergency physicians in Hattiesburg two years ago “paid $140,000 for malpractice insurance. Last year, the premium went to $250,000. The next annual premium would be $437,500 or $475,000…” (“Cost to cover errors in ER to rise for doctors”, Hattiesburg American, Jan. 26). See also Geekemglory blog, Dec. 13. (DURABLE LINK)
March 5 – Case for declaring wars, cont’d. “The framers had good reason to separate the dangerous power to declare (and finance) war from the power to command the armed forces.” Unfortunately, Congress nowadays tends to abdicate its responsibility by delegating to the White House discretion on whether to institute hostilities. (Sheldon Richman, “Anything to declare?”, Foundation for Economic Education, Feb. 16) (see Sept. 13, 2001) (via Free-Market.Net).
March 5 – “Man awarded $60,000 for falling over barrier”. Australia: “A surfer who fell and injured his back when he stepped over a guard rail to urinate has been awarded more than [A]$60,000 in compensation. Paul Andrew Jackson was aged 35 when he crossed a bicycle bridge on the Pacific Highway at Kanahooka, in Wollongong South, and stepped over a barrier to relieve himself in what he thought was ground level bush.” (The Age (Melbourne), Mar. 4). Update Mar. 8-9, 2003: award overturned.
March 4 – 9/11: grab for the gems. Lawyers have sued large Manhattan jewel dealer STS Jewels Inc., the Tanzanian Mineral Dealers Association and other defendants, seeking to attach proceeds from the sale of the popular gemstone tanzanite on behalf of victims of Sept. 11 terror. Muslim radicals with links to Al-Qaeda are widely believed to have engaged in trading in the gem, which is extensively smuggled out of Tanzania, the East African country where it is mined. “Yesterday, representatives of STS and the Tanzanian Mineral Dealers Association vehemently denied any connection between their industry and al Qaeda. ‘My sympathies to the victims, but this is ridiculous,’ said STS owner Sunil Agrawal.” Among lawyers involved in filing the action are Texas asbestos lawyer Mark Lanier, corporate defense lawyer Paul Hanly and celebrity lawyer Ed Hayes. (Jerry Markon, “Tanzanite Dealers Named in Suit Brought by the Families of Victims”, Wall Street Journal, Feb. 15 (online subscribers only)). See also Ralph R. Reiland, “Lawyers Lust for 9-11 Gold” (The American Enterprise, Feb. 18). And a great Stuart Taylor, Jr. column from January that we somehow missed back then: “How 9/11 Shines a Spotlight on Litigation Lottery”, (National Journal/The Atlantic, Jan. 8).
March 4 – No reply. Lawyers from Jacoby & Meyers have filed a class action suit against online payments firm PayPal alleging all manner of atrocities in its customer service. “PayPal’s spokesman said he could not comment on the suit because his company is in the midst of a [legally mandated] post-IPO [initial public offering] quiet period.” You get to accuse them, and they can’t answer back — isn’t it fun being a lawyer? (Cheryl Meyer, “Class Action Filed Against PayPal”, The Deal, Feb. 25).
March 4 – A menace in principle. Under a law that took effect in New Hampshire last year, police are required to arrest and hold until arraignment anyone accused of violating a domestic protective order. So when a woman in the town of Farmington charged her estranged husband with placing harassing phone calls, they had to haul him in, even after a visit to his house revealed that he is blind, uses a wheelchair, and is on dialysis, leaving him not much of a credible threat to anybody. “Police had to wait three hours for an ambulance to bring [him] to the jail, but the jail wouldn’t hold him because of potential liability.” (“State domestic violence law puts police in bind”, AP/Manchester Union-Leader, Feb. 25) (via Free-Market.Net).
March 1-3 – Should have arrested him faster. “A convicted sex offender wanted in Florida who fled into the Maine woods from police is complaining that he got frostbite and lost a few toes because he wasn’t arrested fast enough. Harvey Taylor, 48, who spent at least three nights in the woods in Mattawamkeag after running from a Penobscot County Sheriff’s detective a few weeks ago, is threatening to sue the detective for not arresting him promptly.” (Mary Anne Lagasse, Flight from law leads to frostbite, threat of lawsuit”, Bangor Daily News, Feb. 27).
March 1-3 – Too much Nintendo. “A Louisiana woman is suing Nintendo, alleging her 30-year-old son suffered seizures after playing video games for eight hours a day, six days a week.” (AP/Minneapolis Star Tribune, Feb. 24; Brett Barrouquere, “Woman sues Nintendo in death of her son, 30″, Baton Rouge Advocate, Feb. 23).
March 1-3 – Batch of reader letters. We’ve fallen far behind both on posting reader letters and in answering our mail (and unfortunately we can’t answer all of it). Still, we’ve managed to put up a batch of letters from the closing weeks of last year. Topics include safe deposit boxes at the WTC, a federal judge’s decision striking down high school sports schedules that put boys’ and girls’ sports in different seasons, and discrimination against motorcyclists.
March 1-3 – Entitled to jobs that kill? On Wednesday the Supreme Court heard argument on the case of Echabazal vs. Chevron, which poses the question: “Does the Americans with Disabilities Act force employers to hire disabled workers for a job, even when the position could cause injury or death to the worker?” The Bush administration and business groups are trying to advance what turns out to be the controversial proposition that “employers have an interest in keeping their employees from being hurt or killed.” (Michael Kirkland, “Are disabled entitled to jobs that kill?”, UPI, Feb. 27; Warren Richey, “Can a disabled worker put himself at risk?”, Christian Science Monitor, Feb. 27; Marcia Coyle, “Rejecting a Worker”, National Law Journal, Feb. 26)(see Nov. 5, 2001). Update: Court unanimously rules for defense (see Jun. 19-20, 2002).
March 1-3 – Launder mania. Rushed through Congress in the weeks after Sept. 11, the USA Patriot Act “requires every financial institution — not just traditional banks — to monitor and to report suspicious customers to federal officials.” The paperwork and compliance burdens will be enormous, but there is little assurance that the program will make much difference in preventing terrorism, which tends to be accomplished on relatively small budgets. (Krysten Crawford, “On the Home Front”, Corporate Counsel, Jan. 22) (see Nov. 29, 2001).
March 1-3 – Welcome Boortz.com listeners. Popular Atlanta-based broadcaster Neal Boortz calls this site “one of my frequent stops” in researching his show (Feb. 27). He sure does have a lot of listeners — our traffic on Wednesday, when he did a segment paying us this tribute and endorsing loser-pays, was among the best ever.
Another noteworthy bit from his commentary: “Day after day people file lawsuits just to ‘see if we can get the other side to pay something.’ I’ve been there, folks. I’ve seen it. I was a member of the Georgia Trial Lawyers Association and the American Association of Trial Lawyers. I went to the conventions. I sat in the meetings. I participated in those discussions where lawyers would say ‘I know we don’t have a case — but maybe they would rather fork over a hundred thousand or so rather than taking the chance of going to trial. Hell, their expenses alone would be more than we’re asking!’”.
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August 31-September 2 – Study: DPT and MMR vaccines not linked to brain injury. Some children experience fever and febrile (fever-related) seizures after being given the diphtheria- tetanus- pertussis (DTP) vaccine and measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and it has long been feared, to quote the New York Times‘s summary of a massive new study, “that those rare fever-related seizures may be linked to later autism and developmental problems. The fears are unfounded, the [new] study concluded.” The study, which appears in the New England Journal of Medicine, was of medical data for 639,000 children and was conducted with the assistance of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “There are significantly elevated risks of febrile seizures after receipt of DTP vaccine or MMR vaccine, but these risks do not appear to be associated with any long-term, adverse consequences,” concludes the abstract.
All of which comes too late to prevent the legal devastation of much of the childhood vaccine industry at the hands of trial lawyers, an episode that climaxed in 1986 when Congress stepped in and established a no-fault childhood vaccine compensation program (see Nov. 13, 2000). According to the Washington Post, one Milwaukee lawyer alone “has won million-dollar judgments or settlements in nearly a dozen DPT cases.” “The jury hated the drug companies so bad when we got through with them that they would have awarded money no matter what,” boasts the lawyer, Victor Harding. (Arthur Allen, “Exposed: Shots in the Dark”, Washington Post Magazine, Aug. 30, 1998). If the new study is correct, however, the vaccines may not have been responsible for the occurrences of permanent developmental disability that so often led to high awards. Worldwide alarm over the vaccines’ feared side effects, stoked in no small part by the litigation, contributed to a decline in immunization rates that resulted in a resurgence of the diseases in several countries, killing many children. (DURABLE LINK)
SOURCES: William E. Barlow, Robert L. Davis et al, “The Risk of Seizures after Receipt of Whole-Cell Pertussis or Measles, Mumps, and Rubella Vaccine”, New England Journal of Medicine, Aug. 30 (abstract); Philip J. Hilts, “Study Clears Two Vaccines of Any Long-Lasting Harm”, New York Times, Aug. 30 (reg); and dueling headlines: Daniel Q. Haney, “Two Vaccines Linked to Seizures”, AP/Yahoo, Aug. 29, and Gene Emery, “Researchers: Vaccines Carry Little Risk of Seizures”, Reuters/Yahoo, Aug. 29. Adds AP: “In April, an Institute of Medicine committee issued a report saying there is no evidence that MMR causes autism, as some have speculated.” (more)
August 31-September 2 – Radio daze. The nation’s largest radio chain, Clear Channel, is known for hardball lawyering — as when it sued Z104, a rival station in Washington, D.C., for having the temerity to hold a listener contest in which the prize was tickets to an outdoor concert in Los Angeles staged by a Clear Channel subsidiary. Violated their client’s “service mark”, the lawyers said (Frank Ahrens, “Making Radio Waves”, Washington Post, Aug. 22).
August 31-September 2 – “Man Pleads Guilty to Use of Three Stooges’ Firm in Fraud Scheme”. In Lubbock, Texas, Patrick Michael Penker has admitted bilking banks and other institutions out of $1 million in a scheme in which he “used the name of the slapstick comedy trio’s fictional law firm Dewey, Cheatham and Howe to obtain cashier’s checks” (more on that illustrious firm: Google search). “It did seem just a bit unusual for a company name,” said a bank officer who alerted the FBI (AP/FoxNews, Aug. 27).
August 29-30 – Washington Post on class action reform. “No portion of the American civil justice system is more of a mess than the world of class actions. None is in more desperate need of policymakers’ attention.” Excellent Post editorial which should help fuel reform efforts (“Actions Without Class” (editorial), Washington Post, Aug. 27).
August 29-30 – Firefighter’s demand: back pay for time facing criminal rap. David Griffith, a Hispanic firefighter in Des Moines, Iowa, “has sued city officials, alleging racial bias in their refusal to give him back pay for a leave of absence after he was arrested.” Griffith went on a six-month unpaid leave after he “was arrested in December 1999 on three counts of third-degree sexual abuse involving a then-22-year-old woman. The charges were dropped in May 2000 after Griffith pleaded guilty of assault with intent to inflict injury and harassment. … In his lawsuit, Griffith said he ‘was treated less favorably than non-Hispanic employees and believed such treatment was based on race’. … City attorney Carol Moser said Des Moines officials never forced Griffith to take a leave of absence but simply granted his request.” (Jeff Eckhoff, “D.M. firefighter sues for back pay after arrest, alleges discrimination”, Des Moines Register, Aug. 24).
August 29-30 – “Trolling for Dollars”. Lawyers are turning aggressive patent enforcement into a billion-dollar business, and companies on the receiving end aren’t happy about it (Brenda Sandburg, “Trolling for Dollars”, The Recorder, July 31).
August 29-30 – Negligent to lack employee spouse-abuse policy? The husband of a Wal-Mart employee in Pottstown, Pa., came to the store and shot her, then killed himself. Now her lawyer is suing the retailer, arguing (among other theories) that it should have had a policy to protect its employees from spousal abuse. (Shannon P. Duffy, “Employee Sues Wal-Mart Because Store Didn’t Protect Her From Husband’s Attack”, The Legal Intelligencer, Aug. 24).
August 29-30 – Updates. Further developments in perhaps-familiar cases:
* Extremist animal-rights group PETA, which not long ago cybersquatted on the domain ringlingbrothers.com where it posted anti-circus material, has prevailed in its legal battle (see July 3, 2000) to wrest the domain peta.org away from a critic which had used it for his contrarian “People Eating Tasty Animals” site (more/yet more). (Declan McCullagh, “Ethical Treatment of PETA Domain”, Wired News, Aug. 25).
* The Big Five Texas tobacco lawyers have enjoyed an almost perfect record of success so far in dodging investigation of their $3.3 billion-fee deal to represent the Lone Star State in the national tobacco litigation, but Texas Attorney General John Cornyn should not be counted out yet (see Sept. 1, 2000, May 22, 2000, June 21, 2001): last month he scored an advance for his long-stymied ethics probe when the Fifth Circuit ruled he should be given a chance to pursue state court proceedings aimed at putting the Five under oath about the lucrative arrangements (Brenda Sapino Jeffreys, “Texas Attorney General May Depose Tobacco Lawyers in State Court”, Texas Lawyer, July 30).
* Conceding that one of its execs did indeed use a disrespectful nickname for its Denver stadium (“the Diaphragm”, referring to its shape), the Invesco financial group agreed to drop its threatened defamation lawsuit (see July 5) against the Denver Post for reporting the remark (“Invesco won’t sue Post”, Denver Post, July 6).
August 27-28 – Clinical trials besieged. Since the Jesse Gelsinger case, where survivors of an 18-year-old who died in a gene-therapy experiment brought a successful lawsuit against the University of Pennsylvania, lawsuits have been burgeoning against universities, private health-research foundations and other sponsors of clinical trials and experimental medical treatments; one recent high-profile case targets the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. The “suits have sent shudders through the biomedical community. … Some experts in the biomedical field believe the litigation will have a chilling effect on research that benefits humankind through scientific advancement. They also worry that volunteers will dry up.” A lawyer who specializes in the new suits makes a practice of suing not only researchers and deep-pocket institutions but also “bioethicists as well as members of institutional review boards, the volunteers charged with reviewing and approving clinical trials.” (on bioethicists, see also Oct. 6, 2000) (Vida Fousbister, “Lawsuits over clinical trials have doctors wary, but not quitting research yet”, American Medical News, April 16; Maureen Milford, “Lawsuits Attack Medical Trials”, National Law Journal, Aug. 21; Kate Fodor, “Insurance Companies Get Stricter on Clinical Trials “, Reuters/CancerPage.com, June 27; Christy Oglesby, “Volunteers sustain clinical trials”, WebMD/CNN, July 23).
August 27-28 – Recommended new weblog. Launched a few weeks ago, Instapundit by U. of Tennessee law prof Glenn Reynolds has already made it onto our must-read list with frequently updated commentary on such topics as gun laws, patients’ bill of rights legislation, abusive prosecution, the tobacco settlement, and stem-cell research. Also new among our “dailies” links (left column of front page) are Joshua Micah Marshall’s and Marshall Wittmann’s weblogs, both oriented toward political matters.
August 27-28 – “Jailed under a bad law”. “The arrest by federal authorities of a Russian computer programmer named Dmitry Sklyarov is not the first time the so-called Digital Millennium Copyright Act has led to mischief. It is, however, one of the most oppressive uses of the law to date — one that shows the need to revisit the rules Congress created to prevent the theft of intellectual property using electronic media,” contends the Washington Post in an editorial. Sklyarov wrote a program, legal in Russia, that enables users to defeat the copy-protection on Adobe’s eBook Reader system; the DMCA bans such programs even though they have uses unrelated to unlawful copying, and it does not require the government to prove in prosecution that facilitating piracy was part of a defendant’s intent. (Washington Post, Aug. 21; Julie Hilden, “The First Amendment Issues Raised by the Troubling Prosecution of e-Book Hacker Dmitry Sklyarov”, FindLaw, Aug. 10; Declan McCullagh, “Hacker Arrest Stirs Protest”, Wired News, July 19; Glenn Reynolds (see also other items in his weblog). More ammunition for anti-DMCA sentiment: Amita Guha, “Fingered by the movie cops”, Salon, Aug. 23.
August 27-28 – Urban legend alert: six “irresponsibility” lawsuits. Much in our inbox recently: a fast-circulating email that lists six awful-sounding damage awards (to a hubcap thief injured when the car drives off, a burglar trapped in a house who had to eat dog food, etc.). Circumstantial details such as dates, names, and places make the cases sound more real, but all signs indicate that the list is fictitious from beginning to end, reports the urban-legends site Snopes.com (Barbara Mikkelson, “Inboxer rebellion: tortuous torts“). Snopes also has posted detailed discussions of two of the other urban legends we get sent often, the “contraceptive jelly” yarn, which originated with a tabloid (“A woman sued a pharmacy from which she bought contraceptive jelly because she became pregnant even after eating the jelly (with toast).” — “Jelly babied“) and the cigar-arson fable (“A cigar aficionado insures his stogies against fire, then tries to collect from his insurance company after he smokes them.” — “Cigarson“). What we wonder is, why would people want to compile lists of made-up legal bizarreries when they can find a vast stockpile of all-too-real ones just by visiting this website? (DURABLE LINK)
NAMES IN STORIES: The never-happened stories include tales about “Kathleen Robertson of Austin Texas” (trips on her toddler in furniture store); “Carl Truman of Los Angeles” (hubcap theft) “Terrence Dickson of Bristol Pennsylvania” (trapped in house), “Jerry Williams of Little Rock Arkansas” (bit by dog after shooting it with pellet gun), “Amber Carson of Lancaster, Pennsylvania” (slips on drink she threw), and “Kara Walton of Claymont, Delaware” (breaks teeth while sneaking through window into club). All these incidents, to repeat, appear to be completely fictitious and unrelated to any actual persons with these names.
August 27-28 – “Incense link to cancer”. Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the Sixties (BBC, Aug. 2). But not to worry, since it seems everything else in the world has also been linked to the dread disease: Brad Evenson, “Everything causes cancer — so relax”, National Post (Canada), Aug. 4.
August 24-26 – “Delta passenger wins $1.25 mln for landing trauma”. Outwardly uninjured after a terrifying emergency landing en route to Cincinnati in 1996, Kathy Weaver has nonetheless won $1.25 million from Delta Air Lines after her lawyer persuaded a Montana jury that the episode had caused her to suffer post-traumatic stress syndrome and an aggravation of her pre-existing depression. The judge ruled that “her terror during the landing led to physical changes within the brain that could be defined as injury”. (Reuters/Yahoo, Aug. 23; PPrune thread) (more on white-knuckle lotto: Oct. 19, 2000, Oct. 8, 1999).
August 24-26 – “Cessna pilots association does some research…” “Last week’s decision by a Florida jury to ding Cessna to the tune of $480 million for allegedly faulty chair railings in a Cessna 185 has raised more than a few eyebrows,” reports AvWeb. “Cessna’s lawyers blamed the crash on pilot error — as did the NTSB final report — but the plaintiffs’ attorneys argued that the seat-latching mechanism was defective, and the seat slipped back suddenly as the pilot was trying to land. A plaintiff’s attorney was quoted in the Wall Street Journal last week as saying that Cessna ‘knew the seats could slip, but they never told the pilots that.’” On the contrary, says the Cessna pilots association: the company issued a service advisory in 1983, a Pilot Safety and Warning Supplement in 1985, and in 1989 offered all owners a free secondary seat-stop kit “that would provide positive retention of the seat in the event that the primary system failed. Owners had to pay for about three hours’ labor at a Cessna Service Center to install the free kit.” In 1987, the FAA issued its own Airworthiness Directive “with detailed instructions for inspecting the seat-latching system for wear, pin engagement and cracks”. (AvWeb, undated). More of what general aviation folks have to say about that jury award (much of it highly uncomplimentary): AvWeb reader mail; Pprune threads #1, #2.
August 24-26 – Can I supersize that class action for you? The FBI has charged eight persons in the conspiracy, allegedly dating back to 1995, to steal the winning pieces in McDonald’s promotional Monopoly game. Although the fast-food chain was among the victims of the scheme and has already promised a make-it-up sweepstakes promo, can we doubt that the class action lawyers will soon descend? “And never mind those gloomy folk who say the lawyers will win millions while the rest of us each gets a coupon for a packet of fries.” (“They Knew It” (editorial), Washington Post, Aug. 23); Yahoo Full Coverage).
August 24-26 – The document-shredding facility at Pooh Corner. “A family-owned company that receives royalties from the sale of Pooh merchandise says that Walt Disney Co. has cheated it out of $US 35 million … by failing to report at least $US 3 billion in Pooh-related revenue since 1983. … the case has been entangled in Los Angeles Superior Court for a decade …. Last year a Superior Court judge sanctioned Disney for deliberately destroying 40 boxes of documents that could have been relevant to the case, including a file marked ‘Winnie the Pooh-legal problems’”. (“Claimants call Pooh a bear of very little gain”, L.A. Times/Sydney Morning Herald, Aug. 17). Update Mar. 30, 2004: court dismisses suit after finding misconduct on plaintiffs’ side. (DURABLE LINK)
August 24-26 – More traffic records at Overlawyered.com. What summer slowdown? Last week set a new record for pages served, and so did last month … thanks for your support!
August 22-23 – Meet the “wrongful-birth” bar. “BIRTH DEFECTS — When did your doctor know? … You may be entitled to monetary damages,” according to an advertisement by the law firm of Blume Goldfaden Berkowitz Donnelly Fried & Fortea of Chatham, N.J. The theory behind “wrongful-life” and “wrongful-birth” suits? “If the health team had done its job, the [parents] would have known of the defect — and could have chosen not to have the baby. … Lawyers file the cases if — and only if — the parents are prepared to testify that they would have aborted the pregnancy.” Many disabled persons, joined by others, are not exactly happy about the premise that it might be better for some of the physically imperfect among us never to have been born. Attorneys believe such cases “will become more common as prenatal sonograms, blood tests, and genetic counseling become routine, and the public learns of the potential for large financial awards when genetically defective babies are born.” “Any child born with a birth defect has a potential wrongful birth or wrongful life claim,” says one optimistic lawyer. (Lindy Washburn, “Families of disabled kids seek peace of mind in court”, Bergen Record, Aug. 19; “N.J. has taken lead in allowing parents, children to sue”, Aug. 19). Note the bizarre headline on the first of the two stories: just how likely is it that “peace of mind” will be found by having the parents swear out a permanent public record to the effect that they wish their child had never been born? (more on wrongful birth/life: Nov. 22-23, Sept. 8-10; June 8, May 9, Jan. 8-9, 2000). (DURABLE LINK)
August 22-23 – Pricing out the human species. According to Idaho governor Dirk Kempthorne, the federal government’s proposal to reintroduce grizzly bears into Idaho “assumed injury or death to people and even calculated the value of human life. A human killed by a grizzly bear in Idaho would cost the federal Treasury between $4 million and $10 million, and the plan even amortized the annual costs at $80,000-$200,000. As far as we know, this is the first time that death or injury to humans has been factored into a program proposed by the federal government under the [Endangered Species Act].” (“Risk to humans too great”, USA Today, Aug. 17). And did reluctance to draw water from a river containing threatened fish contribute to the deaths of four firefighters during a big wildfire in Okanogan County, Wash. last month? (Chris Solomon, “Why Thirty Mile Fire raged without water”, Seattle Times, Aug. 1; “Endangered Fish Policy May Have Cost Firefighters’ Lives”, FoxNews.com, Aug. 2).
MORE: “NWFP [Northwest Forest Plan] standards and guidelines and other agency policies such as PACFISH set streamside buffers with virtually zero risk to fish species, regardless of the effects of large buffers to other management objectives. Managing risks requires value-based decisions. We understand that the zero-risk [to fish -- ed.] approach is largely a result of lawsuits….” (James E. Brown of the Oregon Department of Forestry at a House Agriculture Committee oversight hearing, June 21, 1999 — scroll to near end of document). (DURABLE LINK)
August 22-23 – Slavery reparations suits: on your mark, get set… “By year-end, an all-star team of lawyers calling themselves the ‘Reparations Coordinating Committee’ plans to file a suit seeking reparations for slavery. … Multiple cases in multiple forums are likely. The defendants will come from both the public and private sectors”; among businesses likely to be named as defendants is J.P. Morgan Chase. (Paul Braverman, “Slavery Strategy: Inside The Reparations Suit”, American Lawyer, July 6). Harvard Law prof Charles Ogletree said “‘an amazing series of possible actions’ is slated for early next year.” (Emily Newburger, “Breaking the Chain”, Harvard Law Bulletin, Summer). Some of the reasons it’ll be a terrible idea: John McWhorter, “Against reparations”, The New Republic, July 23 (more on reparations: July 6-8, April 17, Dec. 22-25, 2000 and links from there). (DURABLE LINK)
August 22-23 – “New York State’s Gun Suit Must Be Dismissed”. No, bad lawsuits don’t always prosper: “The New York state attorney general’s novel lawsuit to find the gun industry liable under a nuisance theory must be dismissed,” Justice Louis B. York has ruled in Manhattan. New York was the only state to have joined 32 municipalities in suits against the gun industry that aim to extract money from gunmakers as well as arm-twist them into adopting various gun controls that legislatures have declined to enact. New York AG Eliot Spitzer is said to be “dismayed” by the decision. Good! (Daniel Wise, New York Law Journal, Aug. 15).
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July 9-19 – Overlawyered.com takes a summer break. We’ll be taking off the next week and a half or two weeks and may update the site sporadically, or more likely not at all; the same goes for reading email. We reserve the right to come back in if we get even more upset than usual about something. Looking for reading material in the mean time? This makes the perfect chance to catch up on our voluminous archives, dating back to July 1999. Most of this older material is (in our opinion) pretty much as pertinent as the newest entries, since so little ever really seems to change in the beats we write about. (Jump in: 7/99, 10/99, 1/00, 4/00, 7/00, 10/00, 1/01, 4/01, 7/01)
July 7-8 – Update: Alabama high court reverses conviction in campaign-tactics case. In an 8-1 decision, the Alabama Supreme Court overturned the misdemeanor convictions for criminal defamation and witness tampering of Jasper attorney Garve Ivey and ordered him acquitted. The case arose (see Aug. 26, 1999; Sept. 1, 1999; Aug. 31, 2000) after an ex-prostitute leveled lurid sex charges against Lieutenant Governor Steve Windom. “The Supreme Court said the convictions can’t stand because Alabama’s criminal defamation law is unconstitutionally worded and because the witness tampering charge was brought in the wrong county,” reports AP. “‘Because of this disposition, this opinion cannot and should not be viewed as vindication of Ivey’s version of the evidence,’ Justice Champ Lyons wrote in the majority decision. …Ivey’s attorney, Barry Ragsdale, said the decision shows the Republican- dominated court can rise above politics to rule in favor of someone who has been a big supporter of Democrats.” Civil suits by Ivey and Windom against each other remain pending. (Phillip Rawls, “Supreme Court reverses attorney’s conviction in 1998 lt. gov. race”, AP/AlabamaLive, July 6).
July 6-8 – The rest of Justice O’Connor’s speech. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s speech earlier this week to a group of Minnesota women lawyers got front-page publicity because of its reflections on the shortcomings in the administration of the death penalty. That was not the only topic of her remarks, however. “O’Connor also said she is bothered by contingency fees that allow for big payoffs for victorious lawyers, especially in class-action lawsuits. ‘Such arrangements have made more overnight millionaires than almost any other businesses and the perverse incentives and the untoward consequences they are creating within our profession are many,” O’Connor said, adding that lawyers become ‘business partners of plaintiffs in seeking large-dollar recoveries rather than act as objective servants of the law.’ O’Connor also said she is worried that zero tolerance laws were too willing to sacrifice common sense for the politics of public safety.” (“O’Connor, in Speech, Blasts Death Penalty, Lawyer Fees and Zero Tolerance”, AP/ FoxNews.com, July 3).
July 6-8 – Batch of reader letters. Another large sack of correspondence in which readers send us moral support in the “Love Your Neighbor” affair; propose what to do with the trial lawyers who held secret what they knew about Firestone hazards while motorists perished; ask why Florida is investing in those demon tobacco companies; explain why the “tipsy topless dancer” injury case wasn’t one for the workers’ compensation system; criticize local TV’s coverage of the Manhattan drugstore handicapped access suit; and discuss the bagpiper “zero tolerance” case, Ohio auto insurance, and loser-pays. Two readers take us to task for our qualms about the negligent-homicide prosecution of the Tennessee mom who let her ill-fated two-year-old sit in her lap during a car ride; and a “proud lawyer” writes in to say “I think your website sucks”, and the rest of his letter doesn’t get any more complimentary from there.
July 6-8 – Research for lawyers, courtesy of their targets. A rash of age-discrimination suits is expected to follow recent business layoffs, especially given the impact of a federal law called the Older Workers Benefit Protection Act of 1990 which “requires companies to provide workers with age-specific data about who is targeted and who remains on the job after layoffs or early-retirement buyouts.” Put differently, the law requires employers to compile and hand over statistical ammunition so as to make life easier for lawyers who want to take them to court. It even requires them to inform workers of the exact, not just approximate, age of their departing colleagues — doesn’t that count as some sort of privacy violation? (Adam Geller, “A gray area”, AP/Austin American-Statesman, July 5). And the Sacramento Bee provides more details on that California legislation, authored by former state senator Tom Hayden, which furthers the cause of reparations litigation by “requir[ing] insurance companies doing business in the state during the 1800s to hand over archival records of insurance policies issued on the lives of slaves” and also directs the taxpayer-backed University of California to conduct research linking the modern California economy to the efforts of slaves. (“Slavery reparation movement advances with state legislation”, Fahizah Alim, Sacramento Bee, June 30). Gee, who do you think lobbies for laws like these?
July 6-8 – Estate-law temptations. According to Dominic Campisi, a San Francisco litigator who heads a committee on estate malpractice for the American Bar Association, ‘there are lots of attorneys that steal from estates.’ … Bad estate lawyers can easily skate free because their clients aren’t around to oversee them.” And do be extra careful around lawyers who are willing to be named beneficiaries in their clients’ wills. (Brigid McMenamin, “Lawyer Take All”, Forbes, May 28)(reg).
July 5 – Welcome Slashdot readers. Our coverage of Barney’s blustering lawyers is here. Also check out Declan McCullagh’s article on Wired News for more details (“Lawyers: Keep Barney Pure”, July 4). And another Slashdot poster points out that satire site Cybercheeze, the target of Barney’s lawyers, has its own permissions page which purports to ban linking to its site without using its logo — whoops, looks like we’ve just violated that policy. Or have we?
July 5 – Disparaging stadium nickname leads to suit. “Invesco Funds Group, which bought the naming rights to the new Denver Broncos stadium, announced Sunday that it plans to sue The Denver Post and sports columnist Woody Paige over Paige’s column in Sunday’s newspaper. Paige wrote that an unidentified Invesco executive told him some people in the company call Invesco Field at Mile High ‘The Diaphragm’ because they say it resembles the birth-control device.” The company says none of its execs would talk that way, even in private. Conclusion: it’s been defamed. (“Invesco to sue over column”, Denver Post, July 2).
July 5 – Harvard Law’s new Bob Barker program in animal rights. In recognition of a $500,000 gift, Harvard Law School has established the Bob Barker Endowment Fund for the Study of Animal Rights — the esteemed Mr. Barker, of course, being the longtime host of the TV game show “The Price Is Right” and a prominent supporter of the animal rights movement. “The Fund will support teaching and research at the Law School in the emerging field of animal rights law. The income generated by the gift will fund periodic courses and seminars at the Law School on animal rights taught by visiting scholars with a wide range of views and perspectives.” (HLS press release, June 13). Despite the nod toward “a wide range of views and perspectives”, we wonder whether Harvard would really have welcomed a mirror-image endowed fund on the study of animal law named after, say, Fred the Furrier. And if not, can we doubt that its imprimatur is effectively going to one side of this debate? Bonus: polymathic judge Richard Posner engages Princeton’s Peter Singer in a recent Slate online dialogue on critters’ entitlements (June 11: parts -1-, -2-, -3-, -4-) (via Arts & Letters Daily).
July 5 – “Scruggs interested in buying Saints”. “A multimillionaire trial lawyer says he would buy the New Orleans Saints and move them to Mississippi if it becomes an option. Richard Scruggs, a Mississippi plaintiffs lawyer who made several hundred million dollars from tobacco settlements, said he is interested in buying the team and moving it to Mississippi.” That money must just be burnin’ a hole in his pocket — or is it Angelos envy? And one of the rival groups of investors interested in the team is headed by another plaintiff’s lawyer, Walter Leger Jr. (AP/Jackson Clarion Ledger, June 29).
July 5 – Connecticut to “mainstream” retarded kids. In a recent disabled-rights court settlement, the state of Connecticut has agreed to educate many more retarded students in regular classes alongside other kids. There are good reasons to fear that such placements will often lead to serious disruption of the class for other students and the teacher — and also a slower learning pace for many retarded kids themselves than if they were in a class tailored to their needs. But given the binding nature of a court order, schools will probably find it hard to undo placements on a case-by-case basis when they don’t work out (“State agrees to mainstream more disabled kids”, AP/Christian Science Monitor, June 19). This site’s editor was on the Fox News Channel last Thursday predicting that (alas) lawyers in the rest of the country will soon be trying to bring the new Connecticut system to their states (see Heather Nauert, “Connecticut Agrees to Teach Some Mentally Retarded Children in Regular Classes,” FoxNews.com, July 6).
July 3-4 – “Reflections of a Survivor of State Judicial Election Warfare”. In this speech to the Manhattan Institute, Justice Robert Young of the Michigan Supreme Court, who with two colleagues survived vicious attacks to retain his seat in last fall’s elections, argues that the mounting acrimony and expense of state judicial campaigns arises from a philosophical clash between activist and traditionalist views of the judicial role, made worse by interest-group warfare, with trial lawyers intent on keeping state judiciaries in the hands of their friends (Manhattan Institute Civil Justice Report #2, June: html, PDF formats)
July 3-4 – “Lawyer says Yellow Book ad made him look bad, sues for damages”. Attorney Harvey W. Daniels of Greensburg, Pa. has sued the publishers of the Westmoreland County Yellow Book “for $500,000 in punitive damages and an unspecified amount in compensatory damages. … Daniels alleges the advertisement in the 2000-01 Yellow Book failed to mention that he is a personal-injury lawyer. He also claims that a photo with the previous year’s ad was ‘so grotesque that the plaintiff looked like an albino and discouraged any client from contacting’ him.” (AP/Boston Globe, June 29) (sorry, no illustration).
July 3-4 – “You get a coupon, he gets a fortune”. Vince Carroll of Denver’s Rocky Mountain News on the Blockbuster Video class action settlement (June 13).
July 3-4 – “Court Says Tipsy Topless Dancer Can Sue Club”. A Texas appeals court has ruled that dancer Sarah Salazar of San Antonio, who left work tipsy and had a car accident, can sue her employer, the now-defunct Giorgio’s Men’s Club, for encouraging her to drink with customers “so they would buy more drinks at inflated prices.” If she was employed by the club, shouldn’t this be a workers’ comp claim rather than a lawsuit? Or are we missing something? (Reuters, June 28) (& letter to the editor, July 6).
July 3-4 – Welcome Online Tonight listeners. Our editor was a guest Friday night on the radio show hosted by David Lawrence. Also: Virginia Postrel’s “The Scene“, congratulating us on our second birthday; Slithy Tove’s Live Journal (scroll to May 23); GrassRoots GunRights South Carolina; Infodrome.nl (in Dutch); San Francisco law firm Cox, Wootton, Griffin & Hansen; Declan McCullagh’s politechbot, June 26.
July 2 – Two views of Microsoft ruling. Richard Epstein finds the court of appeals’ unanimous ruling to be reasonably good news for Microsoft, and in line with the market’s expectations; but Jonathan Groner says the company is now in more trouble on the private suits and might still face a breakup down the road (Richard A. Epstein, “Phew!”, Wall Street Journal/ OpinionJournal.com, June 30; Jonathan Groner, “Not Good News for Microsoft”, American Lawyer Media, June 29; U.S. v. Microsoft (PDF — courtesy Law.com)).
July 2 – Facial-jewelry discrimination charged. Phone company Ameritech has told three line workers that it will not let them go to work with eyebrow rods and other inserted facial-piercings jewelry, which it worries could obstruct their vision or conduct electricity in an accident. The three say they’re being discriminated against and have filed a grievance. However, the company may risk being sued if it does let them wear the metal items, given OSHA rules calling for technicians who work near power lines to forgo wearing anything that conducts electricity, even wedding rings (Jon Van, “Piercings pit workers against Ameritech”, Chicago Tribune, June 21).
July 2 – Bounties for ratting out taxpayers? For nearly 10 years private San Francisco attorneys Michael Mendelson and Wayne Lesser have been goading the city to pursue IBM over its alleged use of property transfers to underpay city real estate taxes. The city did investigate and negotiated a deal in which the giant computer maker agreed to fork over more tax money, but that deal has been rejected by the board of supervisors and the eventual outcome remains uncertain. In the mean time, Mendelson and Lesser say they want “attorneys’ fees of about $14 million — 25 percent of the $56 million in back property taxes, interest and penalties they say the city is owed” — for having pushed the issue onto city lawyers’ agenda. Deputy City Attorney Owen Clements says the city neither needed nor wanted their help and “says city officials were on top of the matter before the two attorneys started making noise.” He’s also “adamant that, whatever the outcome of the case, the two lawyers have no fee due them. ‘There’s no such thing as tax bounty money.’” (Dennis J. Opatrny, “Battle Over Big Blue”, The Recorder, June 5).
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October 10 – Hot pickle suit. Veronica Martin of Knoxville, Tenn. has sued a local McDonald’s restaurant, alleging that last October it sold her a hamburger containing an overly hot pickle that dropped onto her chin, burning it so badly as to leave a scar. She’s asking $110,000 for medical bills, lost wages, physical and mental suffering, while her husband Darrin says he deserves $15,000 for being deprived of her services and consortium. The complaint was filed by attorney Amelia G. Crotwell, of a Knoxville law firm coincidentally known as McDonald, Levy & Taylor. (Randy Kenner, “Couple sue McDonald’s over spilled ‘hot’ pickle”, Knoxville News-Sentinel, Oct. 7; “Couple Sues Over Hot Pickle Burn”, AP/Yahoo, Oct. 7). (case settled: see April 16, 2001)
October 10 – “Gunshot wounds down almost 40 percent”. The steep decline took place between the years of 1993 and 1997, well before the unleashing of mass litigation against gunmakers by way of big-city lawsuits (AP/USA Today, Oct. 8). And despite attempts to redefine private ownership of guns as some sort of out-of-control public health epidemic, “the number of fatal gun accidents is at its lowest level since 1903, when statistics started being kept.” (Dave Kopel, “An Army of Gun Lies”, National Review, Apr. 17). The Colorado-based Independence Institute, of which Kopel is research director, maintains a Second Amendment/criminal justice page which includes a section on gun lawsuits.
October 10 – Spread of mold law. Injury and property damage claims arising from the growth of mold in buildings were “virtually unheard of a few years ago” but are now among the “hottest areas” in construction defect and toxic tort law, reports Lawyers Weekly USA. “I view these mold claims as similar to asbestos 30 years ago,” Los Angeles lawyer Alexander Robertson told the Boston-based newspaper. “Mold is everywhere,” another lawyer says. “There are no specific government guidelines and not a whole lot of medical information on it. It’s ripe for lawyers to get into and expand it.” Most commonly found when water gets into structures, mold has been blamed for a wide variety of health woes including “respiratory problems, skin rashes, headaches, lung disease, cognitive memory loss and brain damage, common everyday symptoms that could be caused by other factors. That’s where lawyers and expert witnesses come in.” (“Toxic mold a growing legal issue”, UPI/ENN, Oct. 6) (via Junk Science).
October 10 – Updates. Following up on stories covered earlier in this space:
* Amid “tense confrontations”, attempts to disrupt and block the march, and the arrest of 147 protesters, Denver’s Columbus Day parade (see Oct. 3) went on without actual bloodshed: Rocky Mountain News, Denver Post and New York Post coverage, and National Review commentary.
* At the time of our June 12 commentary, hyperactive Connecticut attorney general Richard Blumenthal was up for a Second Circuit federal judgeship; now, the window of opportunity for confirmation having slammed down on Clinton nominees, he’s angling for the Senate seat that Dems hope Joe Lieberman will soon vacate. David Plotz in Slate profiles the ambitious pol as state AG, “always trolling for power and press”. (Sept. 15).
* In the race-bias case filed by 21 workers at a northern California Wonder Bread bakery (July 10, Aug. 4), a judge has reduced the jury’s punitive damage award from $121 million to $24 million (Dennis J. Opatrny, “Dough Sliced in Wonder Bread Case as Punitives Cut by $100 Million”, The Recorder/CalLaw, Oct. 9).
* An English instructor at the City College of San Francisco has dropped his suit against the proprietor of a “course critique” Web site that posts anonymous critiques of teachers (see Nov. 15, 1999). Daniel Curzon-Brown agreed to drop his defamation suit over comments posted about him at the site and pay $10,000 in attorneys’ fees to the American Civil Liberties Union, which had represented the proprietor of the website, Teacherreview.com. An ACLU lawyer hails the outcome as a victory for free speech on the Web. (Lisa Fernandez, “Instructor at City College settles suit on Web critiques”, San Jose Mercury News, Oct. 3).
October 6-9 – Owens Corning bankrupt. The building materials giant, known for its Pink Panther fiberglass insulation mascot, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, thus becoming one of the biggest of the 25+ companies to be bankrupted so far by the ongoing litigation over injuries attributed to asbestos. Between 1952 and 1972 it sold a pipe insulation product trade-named Kaylo containing the mineral, which brought it total revenues of $135 million over that period; since then it’s paid or committed to pay $5 billion in resulting injury claims, with billions more still looming ahead (Oct. 5: CNNfn; AP; Reuters; company site). Over the years, Owens kept coming back to set aside one more supposedly final reserve to cover its remaining lawsuit exposure, but was proved wrong each time as claims accumulated (representative sunny-side-up profile: Thomas Stewart, “Owens Corning: Back from the Dead”, Fortune, May 26, 1997). In late 1998 it agreed to pay $1.2 billion to settle what were billed as 90 percent of the claims then in its pipeline, but that pipeline soon filled up again as lawyers filed new suits (“Owens Corning settles suits”, CNNfn, Dec. 15, 1998). Regarding the irrationality of the current asbestos litigation system as a way to compensate injured workers, its high overhead and delay, the capriciousness of its outcomes, and its burdensomeness to the thousands of businesses that by now have been pulled in as defendants, see the testimony of several witnesses at the House Judiciary Committee hearing held July 1, 1999, in particular Harvard prof Christopher Edley, former HHS secretary Louis Sullivan, and GAF’s Samuel Heyman; regarding the quality of many of the claims, the means by which many were recruited, and the techniques used to maximize the number of defendants named in each, see our “Thanks for the Memories”, Reason, June 1998.
Owens Corning at various times acquired a reputation as the asbestos defendant that would try to meet the plaintiff’s lawyers halfway rather than fight them ditch by ditch. It opposed last year’s proposal for a legislated federal system of asbestos compensation, saying that it placed more confidence in the arrangements it was negotiating with trial lawyers to resolve claims (Owens testimony and attachment). This testimony was delightedly seized on by the bill’s opponents (dissent by twelve Democratic members, see text at note 8; note the striking similarity in the dissent’s overall arguments to those in earlier ATLA testimony). Earlier, the company had even gone so far as to fund discovery by trial lawyers aimed at uncovering other asbestos defendants for them to sue in hopes of taking some of the pressure off itself, according to Michael Orey’s Assuming the Risk: The Mavericks, The Lawyers and the Whistle-Blowers Who Beat Big Tobacco (Little, Brown, 1999, p. 255). In the end, these methods seemed to work no better in saving it from ruin than the ditch by ditch style of defense worked for others.
Iin their dissenting opinion, the twelve Democratic House members also wrote as follows: “We also find little evidence to support the proponents’ claim that the legislation is needed because we will otherwise face a growing stream of bankruptcies by defendant companies. …Our review of the specific liability statements by publicly traded asbestos defendants confirms that the principal remaining asbestos defendants are not facing any significant threat of bankruptcy.” They name, as particular examples of companies for which there is no such threat, W.R. Grace and Owens Corning. “The situation is much the same with other significant asbestos defendants – U.S. Gypsum, Federal Mogul, Armstrong World Industries, and Pfizer (parent company of Quigley) all have indicated there is little likelihood that asbestos liability could lead to bankruptcy.” (see text at notes 10-15). Pfizer aside, most of these stocks were hit Thursday on Wall Street with losses of 20 to 35 percent of their value, and many have lost 75 percent or more of their value over the past year (Jonathan Stempel, “Owens Corning Woes Hit Other Firms”, Yahoo/Reuters, Oct. 5). It would be remiss of us not to name the twelve Judiciary Democrats responsible for this peer into a decidedly clouded financial crystal ball: they are John Conyers, Jr. (Mich.), Howard L. Berman (Calif.), Rick Boucher (Va.), Robert C. Scott (Va.), Melvin L. Watt (N.C.), Zoe Lofgren (Calif.), Sheila Jackson Lee (Texas), Maxine Waters (Calif.), William D. Delahunt (Mass.), Steven R. Rothman (N.J.), Tammy Baldwin (Wisc.), and Anthony D. Weiner (New York). (DURABLE LINK)
October 6-9 – Bioethicist as defendant. Arthur Caplan of the University of Pennsylvania, perhaps the nation’s most quoted medical ethicist, is now also apparently the first to face a lawsuit over his advice. “The father of Jesse Gelsinger, an 18-year-old from Arizona who died a year ago during experimental therapy for his inborn metabolic disorder, named Caplan in a lawsuit against several Penn doctors and two hospitals,” saying he should not have advised researchers to use full-grown research subjects on ethical grounds (because they could give knowing consent), as opposed to infants, in their experimental therapy. Some say that for practitioners to start getting sued represents a sign that bioethics has finally made it as a discipline. (Arthur Allen, “Bioethics comes of age”, Salon, Sept. 28).
October 6-9 – Car dealers vs. online competition. The Internet could make car buying a lot cheaper and easier; unfortunately, existing dealers have a strong lobby in state capitals and have been working hard to block online competition (Solveig Singleton, “Will the Net Turn Car Dealers Into Dinosaurs?”, Cato Briefing Papers #58, July 25 (study in PDF format); James Glassman, “Car Dealers Declare War on the New Economy”, TechCentralStation/ Reason Online, April 3; Murray Weidenbaum, “Auto dealers quash Internet competition”, Christian Science Monitor, Aug. 17; Scott Woolley, “A car dealer by any other name”, Forbes, Nov. 29, 1999).
October 6-9 – Blue-ribbon excuses. In Bucks County, Pa., Samuel Feldman has been convicted of mutilating baked goods in stores over a two-year period; merchants complained of thousands of dollars of losses including 3,087 loaves of sliced bread, 175 bags of bagels, and 227 bags of potato dinner rolls. An Archway distributor said that after the defendant visited shelves of packaged cookies, each was found to have a thumb-poke through its jelly center. Feldman’s wife Sharon told the jury that the couple are “picky shoppers” and inspect products carefully: “Freshness is important.” And his attorney, Ellis Klein, “asked the jury to be tolerant of different styles of bread selection. ‘Not everybody just takes a loaf and puts in their cart.’” (Oshrat Carmiel, “Judge clamps down on bread squisher”, Philadelphia Inquirer, Sept. 22) (see update Nov. 30).
Meanwhile, in West Palm Beach, Fla., after being found guilty of bribery, former criminal defense lawyer Philip G. Butler “decided he had done a bad job of defending himself. So Butler appealed his felony conviction, arguing that he failed to tell himself about the danger of waiving competent counsel.” An appeals court wasn’t buying. (Stephen Van Drake, A Fool for a Client”, Miami Daily Business Review, Sept. 8).
October 6-9 – “Money to burn”. American Lawyer profile of Charleston, S.C.’s Ness, Motley, Loadholt, Richardson & Poole talks about some of the ways the firm’s trial lawyers are handling their enormous income from the state tobacco settlement (156-foot yacht, new office building, hanging out with Hillary Clinton and Al Gore a lot) but doesn’t get into the question of what their aggregate take from the tobacco caper will be — elsewhere it’s been reported to be in the billions, with a “b”. (Alison Frankel, American Lawyer, Sept. 27).
October 6-9 – “Attorneys general take on Mexican food industry”. A parody we missed earlier, appearing in the online Irk Magazine (March 24). As always with these things, do as we do and keep repeating to yourself: it’s just a parody … it’s just a parody … it’s just a parody.
October 5 – For Philly, gun lawsuits just the beginning. Philadelphia’s city solicitor, Kenneth I. Trujillo, is forming a new “affirmative-litigation unit” within his department to file lawsuits against national and local businesses and recover (he hopes) millions of dollars for the city, teaming up with private lawyers who will work on contingency. “He said he hoped the city’s pending lawsuit against gun manufacturers would prove to be just the beginning. ‘It’s really about righting a wrong,’ Trujillo said about the cases he plans to pursue. ‘Not only do they have a public good, but they’re rewarding in other ways. They’re rewarding financially.’” While in private practice, Trujillo founded a firm that specialized in filing class-action suits. He declines to discuss possible targets, but other cities and states have sued lead paint and pigment makers, and San Francisco, which pioneered the idea of a municipality-as-plaintiff strike force, has gone after banks and other financial companies. (Jacqueline Soteropoulos, “City solicitor banks on lawsuits”, Philadelphia Inquirer, Sept. 26). (also see Oct. 13-15)
October 5 – New feature on Overlawyered.com: letters page. We get a lot of mail from readers and have thus far been able to fit only a very few highlights from it onto our front page. This new separate page series should give us a chance to publish a wider selection without interrupting the flow of main items. We start with two letters, from PrairieLaw columnist David Giacalone and HALT counsel Thomas Gordon, reacting to reader David Rubin’s criticism of small claims court earlier this week.
October 5 – Scarier than they bargained for. When lawyers’ promotional efforts go wrong: California law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedge, to call attention to its new San Francisco office, sent hundreds of potential clients brown cardboard boxes filled with realistic-looking grenades, along with a promotional note advising businesses to “arm” themselves against legal dangers. Unfortunately, two of the recipients thought the devices were real and called the bomb squad (Gail Diane Cox, “Law Firm’s Explosive Ad Campaign Draws Critics, Attention”, CalLaw/The Recorder, Sept. 22).
October 5 – Judge tells EEOC to pay employer’s fees. “Calling it ‘one of the most unjustifiable lawsuits’ he ever presided over, U.S. District Judge Robert Cleland in Bay City, Mich., ordered the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to pay a Burger King owner more than $58,000 in his legal costs fighting discrimination charges. The judge also ordered five EEOC lawyers to present the commission with his findings that they mishandled the case,” brought against E.J. Sacco Inc. (Winston Wood, “Work Week”, Wall Street Journal/Career Journal, Aug. 8 (next to last item)).
October 5 – Sidewalk toilets nixed again. Boston is the latest city whose plans to become more Paris-like have run into trouble, as its planned $250,000 outdoor commodes fail to comply with handicap-access laws. (Steven Wilmsen, “State approval denied for city’s new ‘street furniture’”, Boston Globe, Sept. 26).
October 4 – Presidential debate. Vice President Al Gore: “I cast my lot with the people even when it means that you have to stand up to some powerful interests who are trying to turn the policies and the laws to their advantage.” He mentions HMOs, insurance, drug and oil companies, but omits an interest group that’s backed him with great enthusiasm over the years, trial lawyers. “I’ve been standing up to big Hollywood, big trial lawyers,” responds Texas Gov. George W. Bush. And later: “I think that people need to be held responsible for the actions they take in life.” (CNN transcript; scroll 3/4 and 7/8 of way down)
October 4 – Aviation: John Denver crash. Survivors of singer John Denver, who was killed three years ago in the crash of a do-it-yourself amateur airplane he was flying off the Pacific coast, have obtained a settlement in their lawsuit against Gould Electronics Inc. and Aircraft Spruce & Specialty Co., which made and sold a fuel valve on the craft. An investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board concluded that the accident happened because Denver knowingly took off with low fuel in a plane with which he was unfamiliar, the fuel lever was hard to reach, and when he reached around to grab it he lost control of the aircraft. A commentary on AvWeb describes the evidence in the manufacturers’ defense as “seemingly overwhelming”: “Everyone involved in general aviation knows that out-of-control lawsuits are the reason a flange on a car costs a quarter and the same flange for a Mooney will run you 150 bucks, and it only seems to be getting worse. …Perhaps in addition to asking the presidential candidates their stands on user fees, the aviation industry should demand to know their positions on tort reform.” The commentary goes on to discuss lawsuits filed over the Air France Concorde crash and over Northwest Airlines’ New Year’s Day 1999 customer delay fiasco at the snowbound Detroit airport (“John Denver’s relatives settle lawsuit against manufacturers”, AP/FindLaw, Sept. 29; “John Denver’s Heirs Settle Lawsuit Over His Death”, Reuters/ Yahoo, Sept. 30; “Run Out Of Fuel? Stuck In A Storm? File A Lawsuit And Win!”, AvWeb, Oct. 2; “Close-Up: The John Denver Crash”, AvWeb, May 1999; NTSB synopsis; rec.aviation.homebuilt (Usenet discussions — check recent thread on Denver crash)).
October 4 – School now says hugs not forbidden. Euless Junior High School, in suburban Dallas, now denies that it punished eighth-graders Le’Von Daugherty, 15, and Heather Culps, 14, for simply hugging each other in the hallway, as was widely reported last week. Instead it says the girls had been repeatedly insubordinate and that hugging as such is not against the rules, only “overfamiliarity”. However, last week Knight-Ridder reported that the school’s principal, David Robbins, “says such physical contact is inappropriate in school because it could lead to other things. Robbins said he stands by his rule that no students should hug in school. … [It] increases the chances of inappropriate touching and creates peer pressure for students who may not want that type of contact.” (“Texas school defends punishing girls for hug”, Reuters/ FindLaw, Oct. 2; Gina Augustini Best, “Texas junior high punishes girls for hugging in hallway”, Knight-Ridder/Miami Herald, Oct. 1; see also March 2 (Halifax, N.S.)). And in suburban Atlanta, school officials have explained why 11-year-old Ashley Smith will not be allowed to appeal her two-week suspension over the 10-inch novelty chain that hangs from her Tweety bird wallet (see Sept. 29): “They noted that students are routinely shown samples of items banned under the weapons policy at the beginning of the school year. ‘These items have been used in the past as weapons. A chain like the one in question can have any number of devices attached to it and it becomes a very dangerous weapon,’ said Jay Dillon, communications director for Cobb County school district.” (“Feathers fly over school suspension”, Reuters/ Excite, Sept. 29).
October 4 – Trial lawyers’ clout in Albany. “Albany insiders say David Dudley — a former counsel to Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno who now lobbies for the state trial lawyers association — was a key figure behind Senate passage of a bill to lift caps on fees lawyers earn in medical malpractice cases,” Crain’s New York Business reported this summer. The measure, long sought by trial lawyers, “had the support of the Democrat-run Assembly, but could never win backing from Mr. Bruno and the Republican-controlled Senate. Insiders believe Mr. Dudley reminded Senate Republicans that failure to give the trial lawyers at least one victory this election year could prompt the lawyers to fund Democratic opponents.” Mr. Dudley would not comment; since passing both houses, the bill has been sent to the desk of Republican Governor George Pataki. (“Bruno ex-counsel key to lawyer bill”, Crain’s New York Business, July 24, fee-based archives).
October 4 – New visitor record on Overlawyered.com. We set another weekly and daily traffic record last week. Thanks for your support!
October 3 – U.S. Department of Justice vs. Columbus Day? The Italian-American organizers of Denver’s Columbus Day parade are in hot water because they’d like the event to include some reference to the man for whom the holiday is named. Local American Indian and Hispanic groups have protested honoring someone they see as symbolizing European settlement, native displacement, slavery and even genocide; heeding their concerns, the city and federal governments pressed organizers to accept permit conditions under which the parade would avoid mentioning the explorer, according to attorney Simon Mole of the American Civil Liberties Union. “With the help of the U.S. Justice Department, Italian-Americans and American Indians reached agreement [earlier in September] to hold a ‘March for Italian Pride’ on Oct. 7 that would exclude any references to Christopher Columbus,” reports the Denver Post, but the agreement fell through after the organizers decided they had been giving away their First Amendment rights under government pressure. Menacingly, however, “LeRoy Lemos, who represents a group called Poder, a Hispanic community rebuilding program, said references to Columbus at the parade will not be tolerated. ‘After seven years of peace, our position remains that there will never be a Columbus Day parade in Denver – not this year, not next year, not ever,’ Lemos said. ‘If they violate the terms of the agreement, there will be no parade. Period.’” Who’s the Justice Department protecting, anyway?
SOURCES: J. Sebastian Sinisi, “Columbus’ name banned from ‘Italian Pride March’”, Denver Post, Sept. 21; J. Sebastian Sinisi, “Columbus parade pact fails”, Denver Post, Sept. 29; “The right to march” (editorial), Denver Post, Sept. 30; Al Knight, “Webb deaf to free speech”, Denver Post, Oct. 1; related articles; Peggy Lowe and Kevin Flynn, “Italians renege on renaming parade”, Rocky Mountain News, Sept. 29; Vince Carroll, “Let Columbus rest in peace”, Rocky Mountain News, Sept. 24; Bill Johnson, “Columbus, well, that’s not all this parade’s about”, Rocky Mountain News, Oct. 1; Columbus bio courtesy of student projects, St. Joseph’s School, Ireland. Update: parade held with disruptions and mass arrests, no bloodshed (see Oct. 10). (DURABLE LINK)
October 3 – From our mail sack: small claims court. David Rubin writes from Los Angeles: “I am a defense lawyer who generally supports the ideas which you espouse on this forum. However, I can safely say that out in Los Angeles, the small claims court (see Sept. 29) is more akin to a Kangaroo court than anything else. The reason cases can be heard so quickly in small claims is that judges spend so little time on them. The average small claims case lasts 5 minutes. I had a client who had a small claims judgment entered against him, based on a contractual debt owed to a company. This company had been shut down by the Corporations Department for fraud, based on the very contract the client had been found liable on. The client had evidence of this, but the judge wouldn’t hear of it.
“The judge simply asked ‘Did you sign this contract?’ – Client: ‘Yes’. – Judge: ‘Did you pay this debt?’ – Client: ‘Well, you see…’ – Judge: ‘Yes or no?’ – Client: ‘No’ – Judge: ‘Judgment for the plaintiff’.
“Speedy justice isn’t always justice, you know…”
October 3 – Volunteer gamers’ lawsuit. Heated discussions in progress around the Net re Fair Labor Standards Act lawsuit demanding retroactive minimum wage pay and benefits for volunteer fans who’ve helped administer online role-playing games (see Sept. 12): Nihilistic.com discussion; “GamerX”, “Money Changes Everything”, CNET GameCenter, Sept. 22; CNET discussion; complaint (Lum the Mad).
October 3 – More things you can’t have: raw-milk cheeses. “The Food and Drug Administration is considering new rules that either would ban or drastically limit the manufacture and import of raw milk, or unpasteurized, cheeses.” These include most of the interesting ones that one would go out of one’s way to eat. Safety grounds, of course, are cited: the more the compulsory assurances that we will live to a healthy old age, the fewer the reasons to want to do so. (Eric Rosenberg, “U.S. ponders ban on raw milk cheese”, San Francisco Examiner, Sept. 18; “Do dangerous organisms lurk in your favorite unpasteurized cheese?”, Reuters/CNN, Sept. 27).
October 2 – Killed his mother, now suing his psychiatrists. “Two summers ago, Alfred L. Head drove his car through the front wall of his family’s Reston[, Va.] home, then walked in with a baseball bat and beat his mother to death.” Found not guilty by reason of insanity and sent to a mental hospital, he’s now suing the psychiatrists he says should have prevented him from doing it. According to the Washington Post, “a number of experts said Head may have a strong case. They point to Wendell Williamson, a North Carolina man who went on a shooting rampage that killed two people and later won $500,000 after suing a psychiatrist who had stopped treating him eight months before the shooting….. Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert F. Horan Jr., who prosecuted Head, said he had ‘a history of manipulating the mental health community.’ Head knew the right words and behaviors to avoid hospitalization, Horan said. ‘It’s hard for me to believe,’ he said, ‘that the very guy who manipulated the system now says the system screwed up while he was manipulating them. He successfully conned all of them.’” (Tom Jackman, “Reston Family Sues in Insanity Case”, Washington Post, Oct. 1).
October 2 – No fistful of dollars. After deliberating for four hours, a San Jose jury found that Clint Eastwood does not have to pay damages to a disabled woman who said his inn/restaurant violated the Americans with Disabilities Act. The jury found him liable for two minor violations of the law but declined to assign damages. (Brian Bergstein, “Eastwood cleared in disabled case”, AP/Yahoo, Sept. 29; Reuters/Yahoo; “Clint Eastwood Explains His Beef With the ADA”, Business Week, May 17; Sept. 21 and earlier commentaries linked there).
October 2 – Judge throws out half of federal tobacco suit. In a 55-page opinion, U.S. district judge Gladys Kessler last week threw out the health-cost reimbursement portions of the Clinton Administration’s much-ballyhooed federal lawsuit against tobacco companies, while allowing to proceed, for now at least, its claims under the dangerously broad and vague RICO (racketeering) law. “Congress’ total inaction for over three decades precludes an interpretation … that would permit the government to recover Medicare” and other expenses, Kessler ruled. Both sides claimed victory, but cigarette stocks rose sharply on Wall Street.
According to Reuters, ‘Kessler expressed reservations about whether the racketeering claims would ultimately prove successful. ‘Based on the sweeping nature of the government’s allegations and the fact the parties have barely begun discovery to test the validity of these allegations, it would be premature for the court to rule (now),’ Kessler wrote. ‘At a very minimum the government has stated a claim for injunctive relief: whether the government can prove it remains to be seen.’” (Pete Yost, “Judge: 2 Claims Out in Tobacco Case”, AP/Yahoo, Sept. 28; Lyle Denniston, “Federal judge throws out half of tobacco industry lawsuit”, Baltimore Sun, Sept. 29; Reuters/FindLaw; MS/NBC; Washington Post)(U.S. v. Philip Morris — main decision in PDF format via Findlaw).
October 2 – Malpractice outlays on rise in Canada. “Damage claims arising from medical malpractice are costing Canadian doctors and taxpayers an arm and a leg, especially in Ontario,” according to estimates from the Canadian Medical Protective Association, which defends doctors in court. There are pronounced regional differences, with average settlements in closed cases running C$172,000 in Ontario, C$67,000 in Quebec, and in between elsewhere. The projected cumulative cost of all pending claims is expected to reach C$3 million per Canadian doctor by the end of 2000 — a number that seems strangely high given the reported size of claims, but which is not further elucidated in the story. (Dennis Bueckert, “Malpractice awards averaging $3 million per doctor are a major cost to taxpayers”, CP/St. Catharines (Ont.) Standard, Oct. 1) (more on regional differences).
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September 29-October 1 – Disabled rights roundup. The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether the PGA golf tour must bend its rules to allow disabled golfer Casey Martin to ride in a golf cart (“U.S. High Court To Decide Case of Disabled Golfer”, Reuters/FindLaw, Sept. 26; see April 10, our May 1998 take). The government of Great Britain is considering legislation that would compel its armed forces to accept disabled recruits, and pressures are rising to accept handicapped military personnel in front-line as well as auxiliary positions, given the principle of nondiscrimination (Michael Smith, “Disabled want frontline jobs in ‘pc’ Services”, Daily Telegraph (London), Sept. 26; “Forces may have to admit disabled”, Aug. 21; UK Disability Discrimination Act). And a trend that has been well established under U.S. disabled rights law for some time — doctors’ having to hire sign-language translators at their own expense when a deaf patient wishes to call on them for a consultation — is exemplified by a consent decree negotiated by the office of New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, requiring an upstate doctors’ group to provide interpreters-on-demand for “all significant medical encounters” (“Spitzer Announces Agreement With Upstate Physician’s Practice To Provide Sign Language Interpreters for Deaf Patients”, press release, June 21; see also May 31).
September 29-October 1 – Annals of zero tolerance: Tweety bird chain. In suburban Atlanta, the Garrett Middle School has suspended 11-year-old Ashley Smith from sixth grade for two weeks on charges of breaking its zero-tolerance weapons policy by bringing a chain to school. It’s a 10-inch novelty chain that dangles from her Tweety bird wallet. “It’s only a little chain, and I don’t think it can really hurt anyone,” said Ashley, a “Tweety fan who publishes her own Web site devoted to the cartoon character.” Earlier, the ACLU successfully represented an Atlanta public school student who was charged with criminal weapons possession after she brought African tribal knives to school for a project (“Girl suspended for Tweety chain”, AP/Salon, Sept. 28; UPI/Virtual New York) (Ashley Smith’s guestbook) (update Oct. 4: school’s explanation).
September 29-October 1 – French crash, German victims, American payout levels? Air France has sued Continental Air Lines to recoup its costs from the July Concorde disaster in Paris that killed 113 people, charging that a strip of metal that fell off a Continental DC-10 caused the incident. The French airline has already offered to compensate survivor families, who are mostly German, but “German lawyers are pushing for a settlement in the United States, where courts order higher payouts.” (“Airline files Concorde suit”, Reuters/CNNfn, Sept. 27).
September 29-October 1 – “Denny’s fights back against false suits”. The restaurant chain, dogged by past charges of racial discrimination, releases more details on how it uses videotapes and other techniques to disprove dubious copycat claims (see Aug. 29-30). In Oakland, Calif., the lawyer son of John S. Harrison Sr. sued Denny’s claiming that a white couple had been served before his father though they had arrived later. “Mr. Harrison conceded he had been a customer for 20 years and ate at that Denny’s counter twice a day for 10 to 12 years with no problems in a store whose clientele was 50 percent black.” He had been happy with the meal and had left a tip. A federal magistrate threw out the suit and gave Denny’s legal fees. (Frank Murray, Washington Times, Sept. 25).
September 29-October 1 – “Supersize small claims”. Prairielaw columnist David A. Giacalone argues for reviving the nearly moribund institution of small claims court by boosting the threshold value of claims handled by such courts to $20,000, a change also endorsed by the HALT legal reform group. Thresholds around $3,000 are now common. Such a shift might relieve some of the docket pressure on regular courts while allowing ordinary citizens to vindicate more claims without lawyers’ assistance, a feature that may help explain why the bar shows little enthusiasm for the idea (undated, but appeared Aug.) (see also Oct. 3).
September 27-28 – Welcome UserFriendly.org readers. We’re picked as the link of the day by the website for the cartoon strip User Friendly, by Illiad.
September 27-28 – “Blind customers want to touch club lapdancers”. In East Sussex, England, the Brighton and Hove municipal council says it will consider a request by the Pussycats Club that its blind patrons be permitted to touch the exotic dancers as a form of handicap accommodation. The club says its vision-impaired customers appreciate the proximity of the lapdancers and their perfume but would get a better idea of what they looked like if they were allowed a hands-on experience, which is currently forbidden by the club’s license. (David Sapsted, Daily Telegraph (London), Sept. 26).
September 27-28 – Welcome Toronto Star readers. “One of my favourite Web sites is overlawyered.com, a collection of the most asinine stories from the admittedly ordinarily twisted universe of American law,” writes columnist Jason Brooks. He interviews our editor about a current proposal for Ontario to enact its own law emulating the Americans with Disabilities Act. No one seems to have any very clear idea what such a law would cost, but the Ontarians with Disabilities Act Committee says “the idea of a total cost figure misses the point.” Uh-oh…. (Jason Brooks, “Will new act go too far for the disabled?”, Toronto Star, Sept. 25).
September 27-28 – “Controversial drug makes a comeback”. A small Canadian firm, Duchesnay Inc., wants to reintroduce to the U.S. market Bendectin, the pregnancy-nausea drug driven off the market by mass litigation claiming that it caused birth defects. “Bendectin was the archetypical case of junk science scuttling a perfectly safe product,” Dr. Michael Greene, director of maternal-fetal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, tells New York Times science correspondent Gina Kolata. “It was a sad episode in American jurisprudence.” Although ultimately the manufacturer never paid damages, it spent $100 million in defense costs, says Prof. David Bernstein of George Mason University (Sept. 26)(reg).
September 27-28 – Stuart Taylor, Jr. on Gore and Vetogate. Another scathing, must-read column on trial lawyers and politics by the National Journal columnist, written before Janet Reno’s announcement last week that the Justice Department would not pursue an investigation of the Umphrey call sheet affair. Did you know that lawyers as a group have donated nearly ten times as much to the Democrats during this election cycle as the tobacco industry has given Republicans? (“Gore’s Shameless About Posing As A Populist”, National Journal/Atlantic Unbound, Sept. 26) .
September 27-28 – Microsoft wins one. The U.S. Supreme Court has turned down a Justice Department request that it hear the Microsoft case immediately, instead allowing the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to review the case, which is what the company preferred; past D.C. Circuit rulings suggest that it may be more sympathetic to Microsoft’s position than was the trial judge. (“High Court Defers to Microsoft”, AP/Wired News, Sept. 26; Declan McCullagh, “Microsoft gets what it wants”, Wired News, Sept. 26). And a number of courts have thrown out statewide consumer class actions against Microsoft based on the sale of Windows, although this doesn’t really come as much of a surprise in the case of states that bar indirect (end-user) antitrust claims, since cases filed in those courts were always long shots (Jonathan Groner, “The Cases Microsoft Is Winning”, Legal Times (Washington), Sept. 18).
September 27-28 – Bank error in your favor. Latest coins- found- under- the- sofa- cushions class action settlement: Wilmington, Del.-based credit card giant MBNA Corp. agrees to pay $3.57 each to current and former customers to settle claims that its ads were misleading in the early 1990s when they promoted a low interest rate for balances transferred from another card, but did not warn that the low rate did not apply to newly incurred charges. Lawyers for the plaintiff class, meanwhile, are set to pocket $1.3 million. Major credit card companies are frequent targets of class action litigation; Chase Manhattan and Providian Financial have recently settled such actions, and Citibank and Bank One/First USA face pending claims (Joseph N. DiStefano, “MBNA settles suit over card ads”, Philadelphia Inquirer, Sept. 26).
September 27-28 – Final innings for Kennewick Man. Score stands at archaeologists 0, multiculturalists 1, as Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt announces that the 9,000-year-old skeleton found along the Columbia River four years ago will be given to local Indian tribes, who intend to bury the remains without allowing a complete examination. “If Babbitt’s ruling stands, the loss to science is beyond comprehension,” writes National Review Online‘s John Miller (“Kennewick Man’s last stand”, Sept. 26; see also Oct. 11, 1999).
September 25-26 – New data on state campaign contributions. Triallawyermoney.org, the project of the American Tort Reform Foundation that tracks plaintiff lawyers’ political contributions, has just expanded its coverage to include local elections in seven key states as well as federal elections. The states include Alabama, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and Texas; there is also a link to similar data collected by the Civil Justice Association of California (launched Sept. 19 — “State Races“).
September 25-26 – “Skier to be tried for manslaughter in Colorado in fatal collision”. Although two county courts ruled that a reasonable person would not have expected skiing too fast to result in another person’s death, prosecutors in Denver have insisted on pressing a manslaughter rap against Chico, Calif. college student Nathan Hall, who in 1997, at the age of 18, headed down Vail Mountain and collided with 33-year-old Denverite Alan Cobb on the slope, killing him almost instantly. (AP/CNN, Sept. 11). Update Nov. 21: Hall convicted of criminally negligent homicide.
September 25-26 – Wal-Mart’s tobacco exposure. Through a little-known subsidiary named McLane Co., the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer is the largest distributor of cigarettes to convenience stores, which makes it the biggest handler of that commodity aside from the tobacco companies themselves. Despite Wal-Mart’s deep pockets, plaintiff’s attorneys seem not to have noticed it yet. (Kelly Barron, “Smoking gun”, Forbes, Aug. 21) (see also July 7).
September 25-26 – A job offer for the judge. Following protests from defendants, Judge Edward Angeletti of Baltimore, Maryland Circuit Court removed himself from a series of asbestos-injury cases over which he was presiding and declared a mistrial after it was revealed that he had received a job offer from plaintiff’s attorney and political kingmaker Peter Angelos (see Oct. 19 and Dec. 9, 1999, March 15, 2000). According to AP/CNN, “Angelos has said that he made a ‘very substantial’ offer for Angeletti to head his office’s pursuit of lawsuits against lead paint manufacturers.” Angelos, who has become immensely wealthy through his handling of asbestos litigation, controls about three of every four asbestos cases in the Baltimore court. (“Job offer from lawyer leads judge to step down from asbestos trial”, AP/CNN, Aug. 1; “Judge removes himself from absbestos [sic] trials”, AP/Prince George’s County [Md.] Journal, Aug. 2)
September 25-26 – Kopel on zero-tolerance policies. Dave Kopel, Paul Gallant, & Joanne D. Eisen of the Independence Institute comment on the school zero-tolerance policies under which possession of an obvious toy gun — or sometimes just making a thumb-and-first-finger “gun” gesture — is considered grounds for punishment. (“Gunning for the Kiddies”, National Review Online, Sept. 22).
September 25-26 – Treaties rule. A federal judge in San Francisco has thrown out a lawsuit against Japanese defendants over World War II atrocities. In 1951 we signed a peace agreement with Japan which prohibited exactly these sorts of claims. Now we have to live up to our end of the treaty — period. (Louis Sahagun, “Suit on WWII Slave Labor in Japan Voided”, L.A. Times, Sept. 22; Reuters/FindLaw; see Sept. 20, 1999).
September 22-24 – “N.Y. Lawyer Charged in Immigrant Smuggling”. In a 44-count indictment, federal prosecutors on Wednesday charged the Manhattan lawyer who runs the country’s largest political asylum practice, Harvard Law-educated Robert Porges, with a wide range of offenses including concocting thousands of fictitious stories of persecution by which detained aliens could avoid deportation, advising smugglers how best to avoid detection by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and “helping smugglers detain illegal immigrants until debts were paid.” According to prosecutors, paralegals wrote out longhand accounts of persecution, claiming of women clients, for example, that they had suffered forced abortions under China’s “one-child” policy, and then coached the immigrants on how to carry off the story convincingly. Porges is said to have “collected as much as $13 million in fees for helping to transport as many as 7,000 illegal immigrants from mainland China to the United States”. (Hanna Rosin and Christine Haughney, Washington Post, Sept. 21). Update Sept. 21, 2003: Porges and wife sentenced in 2002 to about eight years.
September 22-24 – RN’s illusions. Ralph Nader campaigns on the theme that anti-business advocates like himself are somehow kept from circulating their message or swaying policy. Is he really so disconnected from reality as to think that? (Sebastian Mallaby, “Victim of His Success”, Washington Post, Sept. 17). Before you get too enthusiastic about the Greens, suggests James Lileks, take a look at their platform: “They want your money, your job, your freedom and your car.” (“A look at Nader and his merry Greens”, San Francisco Examiner, July 14). And since some Nader groups have proposed the setting aside of a new .sucks domain to express discontent with powerful institutions (ibm.sucks, mcdonalds.sucks, etc.) some Seattle libertarians have turned the tables by founding the rudely named but inevitable Nadersucks.org, which bills itself as the largest collection of critical links about him online, outpacing the “Nader Skeleton Closet” feature at Realchange.org.
Other links of note from a Nader-watcher’s scrapbook: Doug Henwood, “1.75 cheers for Ralph”, Left Business Observer, Oct. 1996; discussion on LBO mailing list re RN finances, Sept. 9, 1998; RN denounces tort reform in campaign press release, VoteNader.org, Aug. 11; Robert Bryce, “Naturally Nader”, Austin Chronicle, April 7; Mike Allen, “Nader: The Little Guy’s Multimillionaire” (worth $3.8 million, heavily invested in tech stocks, still refuses to reveal income tax records), Washington Post, June 18; Paul West, “Corporate gadfly turns out to be rich”, Baltimore Sun, June 17; Michael Lewis, “Campaign Journal: The Normal Person of Tomorrow”, The New Republic, May 20, 1996.
September 22-24 – From our mail sack: hyperactive lawyers. Reader Scott Replogle, M.D., writes from Colorado: “I see (Sept. 18) that trial lawyer Richard Scruggs is suing psychiatrists and the makers of the drug Ritalin, alleging they conspired to ‘create’ a disease, Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, and then overdiagnose it for monetary gain. Which raises the question: when can we sue the people who not too long ago ‘created’ the previously unknown disorders of ‘silicone disease’ and ‘human adjuvant disease’ during the breast-implant controversy, and conspired to overdiagnose those diseases for monetary gain? And does it matter that many of those people were trial lawyers?” (see also April 13, 2001)
September 21 — Missouri tobacco fees. Lawyers stand to make $100 million or more for representing the state of Missouri in the Medicaid-tobacco litigation and the state’s largest newspaper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, says that sum “is out of proportion to the work performed and the risk involved … troubling … grossly overpays the lawyers involved … creates an unholy alliance between the state and tobacco interests” It’s also “a political gravy train” since “the five law firms involved in the case donated a total of more than $500,000 in campaign contributions over the past eight years, mostly to Democrats”; a prominent Republican former judge and Democratic former mayor of St. Louis were also cut in. “An important issue of public policy — the lawyers’ fees — will be determined outside the public forum” given that a secret arbitration proceeding will be employed to set the fees. “…It is private money in the public trough. But that doesn’t make the sight of the lawyers lining up to feed any prettier.” (“All aboard the gravy train” (editorial), St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sept. 17).
Brent Evans, a state senate candidate in Missouri, has posted extensive documentation on the circumstances surrounding state attorney general Jay Nixon’s hiring of outside lawyers to prosecute the suit. According to Evans, the lawyers’ campaign contributions of $561,000 included $139,000 for Nixon himself and $113,000 for Democratic Gov. Mel Carnahan (“The Tobacco Papers“; the lawyers; their generosity; the work they might have done to justify the fees; “Attorneys mum about how much they’re seeking” (fee request “confidential”), Jefferson City News-Tribune, April 26, 1999; Jack Cashill, “Warning: Tobacco Settlements May Endanger The Integrity of Your Elected Officials” (also discusses Kansas fees), Cashill.com, undated 1999; “Appeals court sides with Nixon on legal fees in tobacco settlement”, Jefferson City News-Tribune, May 31, 2000; James Baughn, The Cape Rock webzine (Cape Girardeau, Mo.), June).
Last year Missouri Digital News reported that Paul Wilson, lead attorney on the matter with AG Nixon’s office, “urged lawmakers to pass legislation that will protect the major tobacco companies from a market-share loss once the impact of the tobacco settlement sets in. Off-brand cigarette companies, those not participating in the settlement, could otherwise undercut the prices of the major tobacco companies. Missouri will keep getting its billions so long as the market share of the signatories does not dip below 95 percent. If it were to do so and Missouri had no off-brand tobacco law, explained Wilson, the terms of the settlement let the major tobacco companies stop paying.” (Anna Brutzman, “Legislators Bewildered By Settlement”, April 4, 1999). Update Oct. 5, 2003: Missouri Supreme Court refuses to entertain challenge to tobacco fees.
September 21 – Dangerous divorce opponents. It’s tough enough going through a divorce in any case, but you’d really better watch out if your spouse is a successful lawyer, according to the New York Post. Advice: try for a change of venue. (Laura Williams, “Attorneys’ Wives Court Disaster”, Sept. 20).
September 21 – Eastwood trial begins. Jurors will hear an Americans with Disabilities Act complaint against the actor’s Mission Ranch hotel in Carmel. For our coverage of the Eastwood case and related Congressional hearings, see May 18, March 7, Feb. 15 and Jan. 26. (“Eastwood to Jurors: ‘Make My Day’”, AP/Fox News, Sept. 20; Shannon Lafferty, “Eastwood in the Line of Fire,” The Recorder/CalLaw, Sept. 21).
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