Is the parking lot of the Newington, N.H. “normal[ly] configured,” had there been earlier drivers who bumped into the pole, and should either point matter in the lawsuit he’s filed as a result? [Seacoast Online via Siouxsie Law]
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Posts tagged as:
Wal-Mart
- EPA considers petition to ban lead sporting ammunition and fishing sinkers [National Shooting Sports Federation via Zincavage]
- Claremont-McKenna economist Eric Helland, known for his work on litigation policy, joins the group blog Truth on the Market;
- European Union expresses concern about provisions of Foreign Manufacturers Legal Accountability Act [Sidley Austin, PDF letter courtesy Learning Resources]
- Michigan judge rules two waitresses can proceed with weight discrimination claim against Hooters [WSJ Law Blog, earlier]
- San Francisco prosecutors charge former MoFo partner and wife with misappropriating nearly $400,000 from funds earmarked for autistic son’s services [The Recorder]
- When litigants demand to depose the opponent’s CEO [Ted at PoL]
- Wal-Mart seeks Supreme Court review of billion-dollar job-bias class action [Ohio Employer's Law]
- If you want to hire a home attendant to keep grandma from needing a nursing home, better hope you’re not in California [five years ago on Overlawyered]
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- “Wacky warning dept.: Steven Morris v. Harley-Davidson Motor Co.” [Wajert and Ted at PoL]
- “Are HOA Foreclosures a Necessary Tool or an Extortion Racket?” [Jurow, Business Insider]
- “Court Under Roberts Is Most Restrained in Decades” [Adler/Volokh, earlier]
- New Jersey Supreme Court confirms equestrian center’s legal protection in horseback-injury case [NJLRA]
- White-collar prosecution: Is “Conscious Avoidance” the Next “Honest Services”? [Christine Hurt, Conglomerate]
- Cy pres class action giveaways arrive in Canada [National Post]
- More on why Wal-Mart is spending big to fight a relatively low OSHA fine [Paul Greenberg, earlier]
- Older jobseekers find offers scarce? Someone should pass a law! Oh wait [four years ago on Overlawyered]
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Wal-Mart stores in many parts of the country are famous for letting motor-home travelers park overnight in their lots for free. One wonders whether that policy will last: a Florida couple is now suing the retailer over an incident in the parking lot of its Cedar City, Utah store, in which the family shot and killed a man who intruded in their parked home. They say they have suffered emotional distress and medical problems and that “store officials knew the man was loitering in the lot” but failed to act. [Salt Lake Tribune via Consumerist, where commenters haven't been conspicuously sympathetic to the plaintiffs]
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- Wal-Mart spending millions to fight $7,000 OSHA fine? Not so paradoxical when you think about it [Coyote]
- Proliferation of product recalls, as with warnings, can result in consumer fatigue and inattention [WaPo via PoL]
- Settlement said to be near between casino and gambler who lost $127 million [WSJ, UPI, earlier]
- “Think Globally, Sue Locally: Out-of-Court Tactics Employed by Plaintiffs, Their Lawyers, and Their Advocates in Transnational Tort Cases” [study, PDF and press release; Jonathan Drimmer for US Chamber, related WSJ]
- “End of an Era? Another Crunch Berries Case Dismissed” [Lowering the Bar, California Civil Justice, earlier on "froot" cases here, here, etc.]
- New Jersey: “School legal costs are a killer” [Rayner, Daily Record]
- ABA Journal profiles Ted Frank;
- We’re the ones who write the laws around here, not you legislators: Washington Supreme Court strikes down med-mal notice law [SeattlePI.com]
- Bay City, Mich. business finds itself the target of frequent litigant [Faces of Lawsuit Abuse (auto-plays video) via NJLRA]
- An “all-Taco-Bell future”: government nutrition guidelines press restaurants toward “standardization of recipes and methods of preparation” [Suderman, Reason "Hit and Run"]
- Class actions: thoughts on “professional objectors” [Ted at CCAF]
- Report on business influence on California politics smuggles in trial lawyers as “business” [Dan Walters, Sacramento Bee via CJAC]
- Those local homeowners protesting Wal-Mart may be getting support from a supermarket chain [WSJ via Coyote, Dan Mitchell]
- “Medicare soon to go after liability settlements” [Korris, LNL]
- “Use Your Law Deferment to Work for Liberty!” [Shapiro, Cato] And Cato’s also hiring for some video and new media positions;
- U.K.: “Drivers could be over limit after less than a pint under new law” [Daily Mail]
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- 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]
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“The American Booksellers Association loves people who buy books. It loves them so much that it wants to protect them from wicked retailers who sell popular titles at affordable prices.” [Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe] More: Mark Perry.
Related: antitrust laws mostly “used today by one group of competitors to try to hamstring another competitor in their business” [Coyote on IBM mainframe investigation]
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“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).
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- Recruiting municipalities to sue: “Class-action lawyers target online travel sites” [Roger Parloff, Fortune, earlier]
- “New York press shield law would extend to bloggers (and define blogging)” [Turkewitz]
- Keep publishing that paper or else? Arizona Attorney General sues Gannett to make it keep Tucson Citizen alive [Legal NewsLine] More: Ken at Popehat has further thoughts on entanglement of government and press.
- Prediction if the feds bail out Sacramento: “bondholders will get 10 cents on the dollar, and the SEIU will be given 55% ownership of California.” [Coyote, Nick Gillespie/Reason]
- “Top Conservatives on Twitter” organizer takes critic to court [Citizen Media Law, Patrick @ Popehat]
- Louisiana woman sues Wal-Mart over unwanted in-store encounter with nutria (muskrat-like rodent) [Lowering the Bar, On Point News]
- Annals of zero tolerance: student expelled over eyebrow trimmer [KDKA, Pittsburgh, via Obscure Store]
- Program encourages Brits to report their neighbors to the cops if they seem to be living beyond their means [Radley Balko]
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- “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]
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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]
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