In December, the borough of Throop, Pa. settled a lawsuit against Gould Electronics Inc. over expenses related to contamination of the Marjol Battery industrial site. Gould agreed to pay $400,000. A big victory for the town? Well, it might have been, except that its lawyers had charged $800,000 to handle the case as well as other site-related work. (Jeremy R. Cooke, “Lawyer fees outweigh Marjol settlement”, Scranton Times Tribune, Jun. 24)
Archive for 2003
Class action objections: a mixed bag
St. Louis Post-Dispatch takes a close look at the activities of lawyers who specialize in filing objections to class action settlements. While some objections are substantive and genuinely aimed at protecting consumer interests, others appear geared toward extracting quick payoffs from settling parties, including lawyers eager to get a case over with and cash out the fees. Remarkably, class counsel sometimes get away with throwing a shroud of secrecy over their own agreements buying off objectors, so that class members are unable to learn who paid off whom for how much. So much for the much-touted cause of “sunshine in litigation”. (Trisha L. Howard, “More lawyers cash in on class-actions”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Jun. 21.) Plus: David Giacalone discusses story (EthicalEsq., Jun. 27)
New format, cont’d
A reader writes: “Love the new format of Overlawyered.com. One request, though: I have trouble reading the light font. Would it be possible to set it darker, or as text to be defined by the user’s browser settings?” We don’t know the answer — would any technically knowledgeable reader care to suggest a fix?
Others wonder: where are the permalinks to individual items, what we used to call “Durable Links” in the old format? You’ll find them by clicking the time-of-day-posted link at the bottom of each post.
Private club liable for sexist speech
The New Hampshire Supreme Court has upheld the decision of the state Commission on Human Rights to assess $64,000 plus attorneys’ fees against the Franklin Lodge of Elks for committing sex discrimination against four applicants including “derogatory and anti-female comments” by club members during discussions over whether to admit the applicants. “Of course, when clubs are held legally liable for their members’ speech, they will naturally be forced to suppress such speech, to avoid this liability.” (Eugene Volokh, “Club Codes”, National Review Online, Jun. 25.)
Nursed wrong baby: and what are the damages?
In Raleigh, N.C., Robyn Jones says she was brought the wrong baby to breast-feed and proceeded to nurse it for 30 (her version) or 5 (the hospital’s version) minutes. And what, ma’am, are the damages? Well, her lawyer says that the resulting devastating emotional distress not only has poisoned Jones’s relationship with her husband but has led her to neglect her own baby: “Without a normal mother-daughter relationship, Jones’ now 2-year-old daughter has become developmentally disabled, the lawsuit said.” Now there’s damages for you! In addition, Jones’s lawyer says his client has suffered from fear of having picked up some sort of bug in her brief encounter with the other woman’s infant. A hospital spokeswoman says all such tests came out negative, but that just sounds to us as if the hospital is setting itself up for an invasion-of-privacy claim next. (“Woman sues hospital for bringing wrong baby for feeding”, AP/Charlotte Observer, Jun. 25).
Format change
As of 3:30 p.m. EST Tuesday, Overlawyered has a new format, based on the Movable Type blogging system. (Thanks to Dean Esmay and the MT people for helping.) In addition to saving us a great deal of time and effort compared with the primitive hand coding we’d been using (“baking [my] HTML on clay tablets”, as Glenn Reynolds puts it), the new system gives us much wider scope for such features as guest blogging and on-the-road blogging, pings and trackbacks, and so on. The site’s existing archives can still be reached (follow links in right column of front page), but the search and archive functions will operate separately for postings after June 20. And there will now be topical archives which collect all the new postings on a single subject into a single file, saving readers a lot of clicking around.
What happened to the left column with its long list of links? Much of it is inside now at a new General Links page. One consequence of the new format is that we’ll probably drop our self-imposed norm of posting only once a day, around midnight, in favor of blogging at all hours as the rest of the world does. And: Thanks not only to Instapundit but to other sites that have noted the switch with kind words: Ernie the Attorney, Legal Reader (formerly Weird of the News), and Scott Ferguson (who recalls our editing as “affably ruthless”, and concludes with an assertion that is falsified by this very linkback).
“Loitering” outside their workplace?
Kim Phann and Bruce Rosaro say they were both hit with summonses for “loitering” when a cop spotted them smoking outside Sha’s Big Time, a barbershop in the Bronx. The two “weren’t just hanging outside the Bronx barbershop. They work there. ‘We can’t smoke inside because it’s against the law,’ Phann, 23, told the Daily News. ‘What are we supposed to do? Go home to have a cigarette?'” (Fernanda Santos, New York Daily News, Jun. 10) (via Eve Tushnet). Plus: New York Post’s Page Six has more (via Gene Healy).
Class Action Fairness Act editorials
“[N]o area of U.S. civil justice cries out more urgently for reform than the high-stakes extortion racket of class actions, in which truly crazy rules permit trial lawyers to cash in at the expense of businesses. Passing this bill would be an important start to rationalizing a system that’s out of control,” editorializes the Washington Post (“Reforming Class Actions”, Jun. 14). “Federal courts are better equipped to handle complex cases with national implications. Of course, they’re also more likely to dismiss class-action suits. So it’s no wonder that trial lawyers are up in arms about this legislation,” notes the Chicago Tribune, which likewise supports the bill (“The class action money-chase”, Jun. 18). As does the Las Vegas Review-Journal (“A real class act”, Jun. 13) (& see Apr. 25-27 (Christian Science Monitor).
The bill passed the House Jun. 12 by a 253-170 vote with not only near-unanimous GOP support but also significant backing among liberal lawmakers, including Emanuel (D-Ill.), Harman (D-Calif.), Ford (D-Tenn.), Peterson (D-Minn.) and McCarthy (D-N.Y.), according to roll calls posted by the National Association of Manufacturers, which like the U.S. Chamber and virtually every other business group supports the bill. See also Christopher Armstrong, “Class Action Reform Gets Verdict in the House, Jury Still Out in the Senate”, Center for Individual Freedom, Jun. 19. Opposed: New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Columbus Dispatch, Rep. John Conyers, as well as L.A. Times and Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel (not online).
For personal responsibility, a Custard’s Last Stand
Roundup of opinion on fast-food-made-me-fat lawsuits quotes our editor; his lame joke about personal responsibility facing a “Custard’s Last Stand” with these suits didn’t quite come through in the final copy (Steve Brown, “Possible Immunity for Fast Food Industry a ‘Different Ballgame’ From Tobacco”, Cybercast News Service, Jun. 24). Reason’s correspondents cover the recent AEI conference on “obesity policy” (Ronald Bailey, “Time for Tubby Bye Bye?”, Reason.com, Jun. 11; Jacob Sullum, “Thinning the Herd”, syndicated/Reason, Jun. 13). And the restaurant-defense Center for Consumer Freedom has dug up a bunch of alarming quotes from the activists propelling the campaign (“Cabal Of Activists And Lawyers Plot To Sue Food Companies”, Jun. 19)
EU: “Ban sought on sexual stereotyping”
According to EUObserver.com, “Brussels is said to be preparing new legislation to monitor sex discrimination outside the workplace. The proposal could lead to a ban on programmes and advertisements that stereotype women or men.” The idea is to ban “images of men and women affecting human dignity and decency”. At the same time, “safeguards on freedom of expression are thought to be included” — very comforting. In the spring of 2002 it was reported that Norway’s Ombudsman for Gender Equality, whose duties include monitoring sexism in toy ads, was proposing to ban a particular toy ad which referred to boys as “tough”. More: Daily Telegraph.