Chronicling the high cost of our legal system
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Rob McKenna, attorney general of the state of Washington, is among many state AGs who has joined in courtroom challenges to ObamaCare. Now a local “public interest” law firm, Smith & Lowney, has sued McKenna on behalf of a group of residents who disagree with that decision, saying he is breaching his duty to represent the state’s citizenry by taking a view contrary to theirs. [KOMO]
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“The Spokane City Council voted [unanimously Feb. 27] against a settlement in which a Spokane police officer fired in 2009 after a DUI and hit and run, would have been rehired and received $275,000. … Councilmember Mike Fagan said during the City Council meeting, ‘I not only say no, but I say hell no.’” [KREM] Attorney Bob Dunn, representing former officer Brad Thoma, said “his client was fired after the city refused to accommodate Thoma following a doctor’s diagnosis of alcoholism. ‘Disability law clearly identifies that alcoholism is just that a disability. Washington follows the ADA.’ The case started in 2009 when Thoma hit another vehicle while driving drunk then fled the scene.” Dunn said he would file a $4 million suit on behalf of Thoma. [same]
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“OLYMPIA — A Senate Republican senior attorney is seeking a $1.75 million settlement from the state, saying that Senate Republicans have created a hostile work environment by allowing Sen. Pam Roach back into the caucus in exchange for a vital vote on their budget plan last month. … Roach was banned from the Republican caucus two years ago after an investigation concluded that she had mistreated staff.” [Seattle Times]
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Washington: “Lawyers on Monday spent more than two hours arguing over whether a woman charged with aggravated murder should have access to coffee, tea, Cocoa Puffs and candy bars while she’s locked up in the Snohomish County Jail.” [Diana Hefley, "Murder suspect wants Cocoa Puffs in jail," Everett Herald]
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“Washington [the state] is getting hit with so many lawsuits over budget cuts that it’s not clear at times who controls the state’s purse strings: lawmakers or the court system. … Overall, the state has been sued more than a dozen times because of cuts lawmakers made in recent years to curtail state spending and balance the budget.” A spokesman for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), one of the groups suing the state over cuts, describes program cuts as “violating people’s rights” and says the state should raise revenue if it doesn’t want to be sued. [Seattle Times] (& Bainbridge).
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After the Olympia Food Co-op in Washington removed products from Israel from its shelves, it was sued by several members who claimed that it had violated its bylaws. “A motion filed by attorneys with Davis Wright Tremaine in Seattle and by attorneys with the Center for Constitutional Rights asserts that the lawsuit is a ‘Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation,’” banned under a Washington statute; one of the attorneys who filed the suit says “it is ‘absolutely, positively not’ a SLAPP suit.” [The Olympian, more here and here]
The story everyone’s talking about: if you wanted a definitive example of the dangers of overbroad “cyber-stalking” statutes, here you go. [WSJ Law Blog, Balko, Volokh, Reason, Popehat]
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Horrifying Seattle Times investigation:
For a quarter century [Stuart] Greenberg testified as an expert in forensic psychology, an inscrutable field with immense power. Purporting to offer insight into the human condition, he evaluated more than 2,000 children, teenagers and adults. His word could determine which parent received custody of a child, or whether a jury believed a claim of sexual assault, or what damages might be awarded for emotional distress. …
His peers elected him their national president. But his formidable career was built upon a foundation of hypocrisy and lies.
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The Washington Supreme Court opens a product liability can of worms by abandoning a traditional doctrine that prescribes that when there was a contract between the parties, remedies for purely economic loss blamed on product defectiveness must be based on principles of contract law, not tort law. [Russell Jackson]
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Updating our August 12 item: “A King County Superior Court judge refused Monday to vacate a nearly $13 million award to a Seattle firefighter who was injured at a fire station in 2003. The city of Seattle appealed the award after an investigator it hired captured Mark Jones on surveillance video dancing, chopping wood, playing horseshoes and bocce ball this past spring.” Judge Susan Craighead said the city should have developed its evidence earlier and that the standard for demonstrating fraud is an extremely high one in cases of this kind. [KOMO]
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“In Brownfield v. City of Yakima, the Ninth Circuit held that the City did not violate the ADA by requiring a police officer employee to undergo a fitness for duty exam following several incidents of erratic behavior by the employee.” [Robin Weideman, California Labor and Employment Law Blog]
Attorney General Rob McKenna of Washington discusses the need to roll back a combination of legislation and judicially created doctrine that leaves the state uniquely exposed to liability lawsuits. “Calls to attorneys general offices in other states reveal we pay much more than states with similar-sized populations: eight times more than Tennessee, five times more than Arizona and at least three times more than Massachusetts. These disparities date back at least 15 years.” [Seattle Times; my 2005 take]
Washington Supreme Court Justice Richard Sanders, who won a moment of fame nationally for heckling then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey at a dinner, may conceive himself as a champion of the underdog, but if the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s coverage is accurate, he doesn’t always manage to convey that stance in the most felicitous way: “Sanders said his job as a Supreme Court justice is to make sure ‘the smallest dog can lift its leg against the largest tree.’”
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