In August Paula Burcham, who ran an unlicensed day-care from her Lakeland, Fla. home, was sentenced to eight years in prison for giving a lethal dose of the sedative/antihistamine Benadryl to 3 1/2 month old Grace Fields, a child under her care. Now the infant’s mother is suing not only Burcham but also the Eckerd drugstore chain; Pfizer, which makes Benadryl, and a Michigan firm that manufactures a generic version; Polk County, and its health department; and the Florida state Department of Children & Families. (“Mother sues baby sitter, drug maker, drugstore”, AP/Miami Herald, Dec. 22).
Archive for December, 2003
Homeless sue against closure of crime-plagued park
In Bakersfield, California, a group of homeless persons are suing to prevent the city from closing International Square Park, which municipal authorities say has become a magnet for alcohol, drugs and crime. The complainants, who are being assisted by a lawyer from the federally funded Legal Services Corporation affiliate Greater Bakersfield Legal Assistance, point out that the park has provided shade and comfort to many homeless people. (“Homeless Files Suit To Prevent Park’s Closure”, KERO-TV, Dec. 19).
Update: Aussie drunk driver loses case
Updating our Jul. 30 report: “A woman has lost a case in which she sued a pub where she had been drinking shortly before she crashed her car. …Justice Gerald Cripps said the defendants did not have a duty of care ‘to protect the plaintiff from the consequences of her own inebriation’.” (“Judge finds against drunk driver who sued hotel”, AAP/Sydney Morning Herald, Aug. 18)(opinion in Parrington v Hotelcorp Pty Ltd & Ors, New South Wales Supreme Court)
Morales: sealed papers could show tobacco-suit misconduct
“Dan Morales, the former attorney general jailed for scheming to steal millions of dollars from Texas’ tobacco settlement, says sealed court documents could show wrongdoing on the part of private lawyers who represented the state.” (see Nov. 2 and links from there). Morales said a year ago that he believed the Big Five tobacco lawyers he hired may have breached their loyalty to the state in the course of taking home $3.3 billion in fees, and now says documents sealed as part of his criminal case would show such misconduct if made public. The documents were sealed by U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks at the request of attorney Mike Tigar, representing the Five. “Also Friday, Marc Murr, a former Houston lawyer charged as a co-defendant to Morales, was sentenced to six months in federal prison. In October, Murr pleaded guilty to mail fraud.” (Janet Elliott, “Morales urges probe of tobacco attorneys”, Houston Chronicle, Dec. 20).
Dallas police fake-drug scandal
Hair-raising and, as Mark A.R. Kleiman (Dec. 16) points out, strangely underpublicized: “Dallas police paid their drug informants based on the quantity of drugs seized. So some informants decided to manufacture cases by planting fake ‘cocaine’ — variously described as the powder used to chalk billiard cues and as ground-up gypsum wallboard — on about 80 Mexican immigrants.” The bounty had been set at $1,000 per kilogram.
Canada: nine-year-old’s hockey suit
“Parents may stop helping out on their kid’s teams if a Springbank lawyer successfully sues volunteers within his own son’s league, says the head of minor hockey in Calgary. … Michael Kraik is suing the Springbank Minor Hockey Association because he says his nine-year-old son Alexander was deliberately placed on a weaker team due to favouritism from league officials for their own children.” The suit seeks C$50,000 and names two officials individually. (“Hockey crisis looms”, Calgary Sun, Dec. 19). Update Jan. 11: suit dropped.
Canada: curling accommodation demanded
A Winnipeg man with a bad knee has filed a human rights complaint challenging the refusal of curling authorities to permit him to use a “delivery stick” in competitions that would permit him to throw rocks without bending his knees. The devices have become popular among elderly and disabled curlers, but the Canadian and World curling associations (yes, there turns out to be curling outside Canada) have banned it as giving an unfair advantage, much as golf authorities in the U.S. tried to ban the use of golf carts as a substitute for walking until Casey Martin’s victorious Supreme Court challenge. (“New rule discriminates, says curler”, CBC, Dec. 10)(more on disabled-rights demands in sports competition)
ATLA: Avoid jurors with “strong religious beliefs”
CNSNews.com reports that an American Trial Lawyers Association publication, “ATLA’s Litigating Tort Cases,” an $800 manual advertised as “the inside track to establishing and maintaining a successful tort practice,” recommends quizzing jurors on their religious beliefs during the “voir dire” procedure meant to exclude biased jurors.
The chapter classifies certain individuals as “personal responsibility” jurors. “The personal responsibility jurors tend to espouse traditional family values.” Often, “these jurors have strong religious beliefs.” Because “personal responsibility jurors” hold values such as “People should be self-reliant, responsible, and self-disciplined. When people act irresponsibly and are not self-disciplined, there are consequences. People must be accountable for their conduct,” they may not be sufficiently sympathetic to the plaintiffs.
Thus, “the only solution is to identify these jurors during voir dire and exclude them from the jury.”
A spokesman for Americans United for Separation of Church and State objects: “‘Certainly a good lawyer will try to ferret out any evidence of prejudice, whether it’s religious prejudice or racial prejudice, prejudice against women, whatever, that’s legitimate,’ [Rob] Boston said. ‘But, for a lawyer to simply assume that certain religious beliefs will dictate certain behaviors is naive and I think it does a disservice to our legal system.'” (Jeff Johnson, “Trial Lawyers Question Jurors’ ‘Strong Religious Beliefs'”, CNSNews.com, Dec. 18).
Alas, the article uncomfortably and unnecessarily singles out the Judaism of the author of the book chapter in question. But the identification of trial lawyers’ strategy in such bald terms provides interesting insight.
Plaintiffs’ lawyers are fond of accusing tort reformers of attempting to remove certain decisions from “the people”. But under the current tort system, jurors in many cases are not so much “the people” as a hand-picked group selected to favor a certain result. When one combines this biased sampling with random variation, and then combine that with the possibility of jackpot damages awards, it takes only a small minority of “the people” to create a jury pool that creates dramatic shifts in wealth to lawyers from the rest of society.
Update: Mississippi Supreme Court
Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz, who was indicted in July for an alleged judicial bribery scheme (see Aug. 19), has been suspended with pay by a tribunal–a formality, says his lawyer, since Diaz was already on a voluntary leave of absence. (Jerry Mitchell, “Special tribunal suspends justice”, The Clarion-Ledger, Dec. 17; AP, “Panel orders Mississippi justice suspended”, Dec. 16). The Mississippi Supreme Court has had other troubles recently (see Oct. 1); the judicial misconduct case against lame duck Justice Chuck McRae remains pending, and probably will not be decided before he leaves the bench January 5. (Beth Musgrave, “Justice describes ‘hateful’ court full of ‘yes men'”, The Sun Herald, Oct. 31).
Update: Daytrader rampage suit
Mark Orrin Barton, like the overwhelming majority of day traders, lost money — approximately half a million dollars during the boom market of 1998-99. Unlike most losing day traders, Barton reacted by showing up at the day-trading offices and murdering nine people and wounding twelve before killing himself. The victims tried to hold the day trading firms liable, on the theory that day-trading companies are committing torts against their customers by letting them choose to lose money, thus causing them to snap. (See Jan. 9-10, 2002). The Georgia court of appeals has affirmed a summary judgment against such ludicrous claims–but in part because there had been no previous crime at the firm, which makes one wonder whether such an attenuated theory of causation might flower in the future. (Richmond Eustis, “Day Trader Firms Ruled Not Liable for Rampage”, Fulton County Daily Report, Dec. 19) (via Bashman). Curiously, a true-crime writer on the web quotes one of the wounded plaintiffs as saying “You can’t blame it on day trading.”