- Shop worker prevails in U.K.: no need to pay music royalty fees for singing while stacking shelves [BBC]
- Word arrives that Eric Turkewitz has been named a New York Super Lawyer, but he manages to control his enthusiasm [New York Personal Injury]
- In which a columnist criticizes a post-election Tweet of mine, labels me “socially liberal libertarian” [Carney, DC Examiner; Roger Simon, "The Strange Case of NY-23"]
- Plaintiff’s lawyers may bag $28 million in Wal-Mart wage/hour class actions [ABA Journal]
- Contestant’s million-dollar suit against California pageant ends abruptly after surfacing of too-racy-to-post video [TMZ; irony-fraught background at Brayton and Good As You]
- News bulletin: lawyers shouldn’t trade on inside information [Cunningham, Concur Op]
- Possession, not just wrongful use: “L.A. Halloween Silly String Ban” [Volokh]
- Video of man who runs giant soda pop store in L.A., includes his thoughts on recycling law and the way regulation often works to big businesses’ advantage against small [Boing Boing]
Tagged as:
attorneys' fees,
RIAA and file sharing,
small business,
United Kingdom,
wage and hour suits,
Wal-Mart
“It was obvious from the facts that she did not intend to steal any items from Wal-Mart,” says Denise Macon’s St. Clair County Circuit Court lawsuit, which seeks $150,000 plus punitive damages. Macon left the store with two unpaid items underneath her purse in the shopping cart, and claims this was just forgetfulness, but Wal-Mart called police who charged her with misdemeanor shoplifting. Macon was acquitted after a two-day trial and says she never should have been charged. The Wal-Mart security officer is a co-defendant, presumably to keep the case in state court by defeating complete diversity. (Kelly Holleran, “Shopper who forgot to pay for pajamas sues Wal-Mart over her arrest”, Madison-St. Clair Record, Oct. 7).
Tagged as:
Illinois,
personal responsibility,
Wal-Mart
- “Texas Judge Orders 178 Anonymous ‘John Does’ Who Posted on Topix Be Revealed” [Citizen Media Law]
- $4 billion lawsuit over racially insensitive Miley Cyrus eye gestures [Michelle Malkin, TMZ.com]
- Update: “Tulsa World drops lawsuit after writer apologizes” [Romenesko/Tulsa World, earlier]
- Also update: “Seventh Circuit Affirms Dismissal of John Lott’s Libel Lawsuit Against Steven Levitt” [Volokh, earlier]
- “M-I-C — Cease and desist! K-E-Y — Why? Because we caught you! M-O-U-S-E” [Ron Coleman]
- California: “Another Step Toward Shielding Good Samaritans From Civil Damages” [Calif. Civil Justice Blog, more]
- Montana lawmakers consider bill saying hazardous recreation goes on at your own risk [PoL]
- Senior writer at Wired decides to go work for Wal-Mart, what he found departed from the Barbara Ehrenreich formula [BoingBoing]
Tagged as:
assumption of risk,
California,
Good Samaritan,
Lott v. Levitt,
Montana,
online speech,
recreation,
Wal-Mart
by SSFC on December 25, 2008
Ron Miller at Maryland Personal Injury thinks the filing of suits only days after an event like the Long Island Wal-Mart trampling, at a point when key facts relevant to the nature and extent of liability have yet to be brought out, “don’t help the clients and also don’t help the general public perception of personal injury lawyers or their clients.” There are, of course, numerous tactical reasons for a race to the courthouse in various legal situations, particularly in likely class actions where lawyers who file early may seize control of the management of a collective suit. Where class action handling of cases is unlikely, however, as in the trampling case, I’ve long suspected that the main reason for the race to the courthouse is that it enables the lawyer to get his own name in the papers, thus pulling in other claimants, including some who might otherwise have signed up with less noisy lawyers.
Bill Childs at TortsProf speculates that another reason is to obtain discovery immediately before memories fade or evidence becomes unavailable in some other way. Again, I’m sure there are some cases where this factor is at work, but I also suspect there are many where the lawyer does not follow up on the hasty filing by plunging into discovery as rapidly as is practicable.
P.S. Some new reporting out on the events leading up to the shopper crush that morning, and a blog roundup from Carolyn Elefant. At “Freakonomics”, Ian Ayres: “To say that the low prices were a but-for cause of this man’s death is not to say that Wal-Mart should be legally or morally culpable for low prices.” Further thoughts from White Coat Rants. And from commenter “Dan”, below, a naughty suggestion for how to treat the claims from not-especially-injured crowd members:
…how about this idea. Everyone who self-identifies as being in the trampling crowd so they can share a jackpot for the psychological horror of it also gets put on the list of people included in a share of a manslaughter charge. Seems like a good trade; a coupon for $10 off your next Wal-Mart purchase in exchange for a few years in prison. Any takers?
P.P.S.: Eric Turkewitz advances an alternative motivation for haste, in that it might encourage potential witnesses to get in touch with the lawyer; yet another possibility, he says, is that the plaintiff family might have demanded haste.
Tagged as:
chasing clients,
race to the courthouse,
Wal-Mart
Father and son Fritz Mesadieu and Jonathan Mesadieu say they were in the crowd during the now-notorious Black Friday crowd-crush episode at a Long Island Wal-Mart. They say they were left with neck and back pain for which they want $2 million. (Wisecracks about a stampede to court are in extremely poor taste and should be avoided.) Their attorney, who gets a prominent mention in the CNN coverage, is named as Kenneth Mollins, apparently the very same attorney Kenneth Mollins whose skill in transforming seemingly minor or transient injuries into litigation Ted saluted in June (h/t commenter Don Parks). (”Customers injured in crush suing Wal-Mart”, CNN, Dec. 2). More: Eric Turkewitz has some thoughts on the underlying liability issues, the Mesadieu/Mollins claim aside.
Tagged as:
Kenneth Mollins,
Long Island,
Wal-Mart
- Nothing new about lawyers stealing money from estates, but embarrassing when they used to head the bar association [Eagle-Tribune; Lawrence, Mass., Arthur Khoury]
- Unusual “reverse quota” case: black job applicant wins $30K after showing beauty supply company turned her down because it had a quota of whites to hire [SE Texas Record]
- Who knew? Per class action allegations, pet food contains ingredients “unfit for human consumption” [Daily Business Review]
- U.K.: “A divorcee who won a £1.4million payout from her multi-millionaire husband is suing her lawyers because she claims she should have got twice that amount.” [Telegraph]
- UW freshman falls from fourth-floor dorm window after drinking at “Trashed Tuesday”, now wants $ from Delta Upsilon International as well as construction firm that put in windows [Seattle P-I, KOMO]
- After giant $103 million payday, current and former partners at Minneapolis law firm are torn by feuds and dissension — wasn’t there a John Steinbeck novella about that? [ABA Journal and again, Heins Mills]
- Small firm that used to make Wal-Mart in-house videos sets up shop at AAJ/ATLA convention hawking those videos for use in suits against the retailer [Arkansas Democrat Gazette, earlier]
- When the judge’s kid gets busted [Eric Berlin; Alabama]
Tagged as:
Alabama,
alcohol,
bar associations,
class actions,
colleges and universities,
divorce,
feeing frenzy,
for me but not for thee,
Massachusetts,
Minnesota,
personal responsibility,
sued if you do,
Wal-Mart,
Washington state,
wills and trusts
Updating our Mar. 29, 2006 post: “Computer store owner Charles Smith has won a two-year legal battle with Wal-Mart, which has demanded he stop making and selling T-shirts and other items with slogans such as ‘Wal-ocaust’ and ‘Wal-Qaeda.’ U.S. District Judge Timothy C. Batten Sr. found that Smith’s products qualified as protected noncommercial speech because his goal was to criticize Wal-Mart, not to make a profit from his products. The judge noted that Smith had sold only 62 T-shirts, including 15 to one of Wal-Mart’s outside law firms.” (Janet L. Conley, “Parody of Wal-Mart Trumps Its Trademark”, Fulton County Daily Report, Mar. 26; Likelihood of Confusion, Mar. 22; Randazza, Mar. 23).
Tagged as:
free speech,
parody,
trademarks,
Wal-Mart
Pharmacist Cynthia Haddad, when she left the pharmacy unattended, allowed a technician to use her computer security code to issue prescriptions, including a fraudulent prescription for a painkiller, something that could have exposed Wal-Mart to enormous liability if someone had been injured by the illegally dispensed drugs. So Wal-Mart fired Haddad. Haddad sued, claiming that the real reason Wal-Mart fired her was because she had asked for a raise to a manager-level salary, though she did not perform manager-level duties such as budgeting, and that it was thus sex discrimination. (Haddad claims that Wal-Mart “never” fired a male manager for her infraction, which seems implausible at best; Wal-Mart says it did fire male pharmacists for this. Why is this even a factual dispute for decision for a jury? This seems like a matter that merits a partial summary disposition to prevent one side from out-and-out lying.) This somehow got to a jury, which awarded $2 million, including $1 million in punitive damages. Among the questionable procedures used to railroad Wal-Mart at trial was permitting Haddad to present an attorney to testify as an expert witness on human resources procedures. Wal-Mart indicated it disagrees with the jury’s decision and is studying whether an appeal is worthwhile. Massachusetts courts are not a friendly place for defendants. Wal-Mart’s attorney did not comment to the press, permitting the plaintiffs’ lawyer to generate rather one-sided press coverage. [Berkshire Eagle June 19; Berkshire Eagle June 20; Reuters/USA Today; Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly]
Tagged as:
expert witnesses,
Massachusetts,
sued if you do,
Wal-Mart,
workplace
In 1995, 70-year old Marlene Fett pressed the wrong pedal on her Lincoln Town Car, and smashed into a carousel in front of an Arkansas Wal-Mart, killing one boy and severely injuring his brother. The Chapman family settled with Fett, and blamed Wal-Mart and Ford, Wal-Mart on a theory that it should have anticipated the possibility of a car hitting a merry-go-round at 30 mph, and Ford on that old plaintiffs’ lawyer claim of “sudden acceleration,” a “defect” that somehow is six times more likely to strike elderly drivers. The case made the front page of USA Today in 2004 (resulting in an Apr. 19, 2004 Overlawyered story), though the newspaper kindly noted the lack of science behind the claim:
Little Rock attorney Sandy McMath, who is representing the Chapmans, says the Town Car’s cruise control put Fett on a “rocket ship to Mars” after she pulled out of her parking place. He petitioned NHTSA to investigate what he says is a defect in Ford and Lincoln models’ cruise control that causes the accelerator to stick.
In a lengthy 1999 [sic] report denying McMath’s petition, NHTSA investigator Bob Young wrote that even if such an occurrence took place and didn’t leave evidence of a mechanical malfunction, the situation should be reproducible through in-vehicle and laboratory tests. None of NHTSA’s testing could do so.
The Wal-Mart theory was similarly bogus, and refuted when an expert demonstrated that the plaintiffs’ proposed safety measure wouldn’t have stopped the speeding car. (For Illinois’ take on premises liability for auto accidents: Jun. 23.) An Arkansas jury also rejected the claims, and, after years of litigation, now the Arkansas Supreme Court has affirmed that decision in a not-especially-interesting Dec. 14 opinion, Chapman v. Ford Motor Co. Wal-Mart and Ford are still out the hundreds of thousands of dollars they spent defending themselves in the lottery litigation, not to mention the cost of bad publicity from sudden acceleration claims and quacks like the Center for Auto Safety trumpeting a non-existent problem. Arkansas acquits itself better than a South Carolina federal court did in a story we covered Aug. 7.
Tagged as:
Arkansas,
autos,
Ford Motor,
junk science,
sudden acceleration,
Wal-Mart
For those who care about these things, Justinian Lane demonstrates a fundamental lack of reading comprehension in a response to my earlier post. Lane writes: “If I do the very thing I oppose, that does indeed make me a hypocrite.” This is technically inaccurate in a prescriptivist sense (look it up), but even under the descriptivist definition, Lane continues to confuse the idea of “I believe that X is bad public policy” with “I believe those who take advantage of X are immoral.” This is precisely the error I pointed out in the original post, but Lane says nothing to rationalize the conflation other than to repeat the assertion. He then proceeds to insult me for taking a legal tax deduction. Let’s be clear: I don’t oppose individuals taking Schedule A deductions for state taxes; that’s just common sense, and one’s tax rate is already higher to reflect the fact that deductions are available. I oppose the government’s policy of offering deductions for state taxes. There’s no hypocrisy, any more than there is hypocrisy because Lane pays his federal taxes even though his taxes are used to support the war in Iraq or some other government spending that he might object to, or because Lane votes for an elected official who doesn’t agree with Lane on every single jot and tittle.
Lane opposes making people better off through lower prices and higher wages, as Wal-Mart does; that is his right, and (unlike John Edwards) he can feel good about his abnegation that he goes without a toolbox because Wal-Mart is the only store that provides a reasonably priced model (though I don’t see Lane demanding to pay his supermarket and other stores more money to reflect the fact that they lowered prices to match Wal-Mart’s competition, so he’s not completely innocent of taking advantage of the benefits Wal-Mart brings to the economy). But it’s not remotely analogous to the scenario I describe.
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Tagged as:
Justinian Lane,
Wal-Mart
If the Forces of Disapproval ever tire of beating up on Wal-Mart, they’ll need a new business to blame for the world’s not being everything it ought. George Will thinks Coca-Cola might fill the bill (”Liberalism as Condescension”, syndicated/RealClearPolitics, Sept. 14).
Tagged as:
Coca-Cola,
soft drinks,
Wal-Mart
News clips reporting on large verdicts and settlements cross my desk regularly, and most do not seem on their surface to be worth blogging about. Most are terse summaries of a case’s outcome, and others do not present any indication (again, on the surface at least) that a case might have problematic aspects. The other day, however, I ran across a story in the Charleston (W.V.) Gazette describing a case in which a plaintiff had been terribly injured after a retailer sold what the reporter bluntly stated was a “defective mower.” This particular newspaper story was so one-sided that I thought there almost had to be more to it than was being reported — and I had no idea how right I was in that suspicion. This is a long post, but I hope worth readers’ while. It certainly makes me wonder how much I’m missing when I don’t go into the dockets to fact-check other seemingly run-of-the-mill cases.
[click to continue…]
Tagged as:
bankruptcy,
deep pocket,
lawn mowers,
media bias,
product liability,
Wal-Mart,
West Virginia
It’s blatantly a parody, coupled with social criticism of the world’s largest retailer, but Wal-Mart had its lawyers fire off nastygrams to computer store owner Charles Smith and, perhaps more effectively, to CafePress. Now things have proceeded to court. Smith’s website is here. (Abigail Goldman,”Wal-Mart Parodist Sues to Sell Products”, L.A. Times/Chicago Tribune, Mar. 7)(via Housing Panic).
Tagged as:
nastygrams,
parody,
Wal-Mart
Is the nation’s largest grocer being ignorant or overcautious? Or has it reckoned that even a “gross negligence” standard will not prevent it from being a target after some future incident of food poisoning?
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., the nation’s largest food retailer, said Thursday it will no longer donate nearly-expired or expired food to local groups feeding the hungry….
Olan James, a Wal-Mart spokesman, said the policy, which applies to all 1,224 Wal-Marts, 1,929 Supercenters and 558 Sam’s Clubs, is an attempt to protect the corporation from liability in case someone who eats the donated food gets sick….
Ernie Brown, a spokesman for Sacramento’s Senior Gleaners, which received about 25,000 pounds of food in 2005 from Sam’s Club on Greenback Lane in Citrus Heights, said most food is fine to eat for days after the “sell-by” date.
He said Wal-Mart’s concerns about liability seem misplaced in light of the Good Samaritan Food Donation Act, a federal law passed in 1996 offering food donors wide-ranging protections from civil lawsuits or criminal prosecution. The law states that donors can be held liable only in instances of “gross negligence.”
“Lord, we get millions and millions of pounds from Raley’s and Bel-Air and Albertson’s, and they don’t have a problem understanding the law,” Brown said. “Why don’t Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club understand the law?”
The food will be thrown out instead. (Todd Milbourn, Sacramento Bee, Jan. 6). More: Dvorak Uncensored, Jan. 11.
Tagged as:
food safety,
Good Samaritan,
Wal-Mart
Kevin Brancato, a Ph.D. candidate at George Mason who heads the masthead at the economics blog Truck and Barter, also publishes a weblog entirely devoted to following the fortunes (policy and otherwise) of the Wal-Mart Corporation, by the name of AlwaysLowPrices.net (see our cites to it on Apr. 13, 2004 and Apr. 6, 2005). In contrast to the Wal-Mart-bashing line taken by so many other sites, Brancato frequently, though not invariably, rises to the defense of the company and the efficiencies of its way of doing business. This has done nothing to prevent Wal-Mart’s lawyers from sending him a cease and desist letter ordering him to vacate the name and URL “AlwaysLowPrices”, a phrase which is of course Wal-Mart’s service mark. (T&B, Apr. 5). Kevin Heller at TechLawAdvisor (Apr. 6) doesn’t think he stands much of a chance if Wal-Mart goes to court.
Tagged as:
bloggers and the law,
online speech,
trademarks,
Wal-Mart
