As Snopes demonstrates, the oft-told tale of the 27,000-word cabbage-sale regulation is an urban legend. But Stuart Buck notes a nine-year FDA battle over “whether ‘peanut butter’ should be 87.5% or 90% peanuts” where the hearings took up 7,736 pages of transcript. (“The Buck Stops Here”, Dec. 31, citing Corn Products Co. v. Department of Health, Education & Welfare, 427 F.2d 511, 513 (3d Cir. 1970)).
Archive for January, 2004
2003’s largest verdicts
The Associated Press uncritically reports Lawyers Weekly USA’s claim that the top ten jury verdicts of 2003 were supposedly “unusually” small, with the biggest “only” $254 million (Dec. 15). (“Juries Hand Out Fewer Big-Ticket Verdicts”, Jan. 2). Which is funny, because the same publication names Stephen Tillery (Jun. 12) a “lawyer of the year” for winning a substantially larger award in judicial hellhole Madison County (Mar. 24). (Jaclyn Jaeger, “Landmark $10.1B Light Cigarette Award A ‘Career Event’ For Veteran Litigator”, Lawyers Weekly USA, 2003). Of course, that was a judge who made that decision (Apr. 30), but the publication seems to have also missed November’s $11.9 billion Alabama jury award (Dec. 1).
Update, April 6, 2004: A Lawyers Weekly USA writer writes to tell me that there is no inconsistency, because the “Top Ten” list was limited to “individual” awards. Which is fair enough, but that only accentuates the main point that the publication–and the Associated Press–has no basis to claim that 2003 featured fewer “big-ticket” awards in a year where multi-billion dollar awards were shockingly commonplace. For what it’s worth, the #1 “individual” award on the list involved more than one plaintiff.
Speaking of year-end awards, if I may toot my own horn, my firm, O’Melveny & Myers, received the “Litigation Department of the Year” award from American Lawyer magazine. (Jim Schroeder, “O’Melveny & Myers Lawyers Named as Top Litigators”, Dec. 31).
Yet more from the publicity file
Your editor was recently quoted in Reason (Brandon Turner, “Citings: Snow Job”, Jan., not online), where he predicted (in an interview conducted this fall) that the U.S. Supreme Court would overturn the Ninth Circuit’s decision in Hernandez v. Hughes Missile Systems, the ADA right-to-return-after-drug-misconduct case. (How accurate was this prediction? See Dec. 13). I also contributed a quote this fall when the New York Times took a look at New Jersey’s office charged with cracking down on unethical attorneys, which it’s fair to say has its hands full (John Sullivan, “In New Jersey, Rogue Lawyers Are on the Rise”, New York Times, New Jersey edition, Oct. 19, not online). And the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, covering local attorney Elliot Rothenberg’s challenge to a rule requiring all Minnesota attorneys to enroll in “elimination of bias” classes, mentions this website and our description of the program as “compulsory chapel” (see Nov. 21) (“Attorney challenging state requirement of anti-bias classes for lawyers” Jan. 2).
Back in October, we were quoted by Legal Times’s Jonathan Groner in an interesting piece on a little-publicized crusade by “public interest” lawyers to extend the constitutional right to taxpayer-provided counsel, ushered in with Gideon v. Wainwright for persons facing criminal prosecution, to civil matters such as child custody fights (“On a Crusade for a ‘Civil Gideon'”, Legal Times, Oct. 20). The idea, quietly promoted by the Soros-backed Public Justice Center and by NYU Law’s Brennan Center, is far-reaching and actually quite scary in its implications. See George Liebmann, “‘Civil Gideon’: An idea whose time has passed”, Daily Record, Jul. 18, reprinted at Calvert Institute site. Advocates were hoping to convince the Maryland high court to embrace civil Gideon, in what would have been the first such ruling in the nation, but this month the court dodged the issue in ruling on the case, Frase v. Barnhart. (Ann W. Parks, “Top court sidesteps ‘Civil Gideon’ issue, strikes down custody conditions”, Daily Record, Dec. 12; Jonathan Groner, “Inadmissible — No ‘Civil Gideon’ — for Now”, Legal Times, Dec. 15).
“Woman Files $10M Suit Vs. Starbucks”
Janine Arslanian alleges “extensive and gross second and third degree burns to her right hand and arm” from a spill of Starbuck’s coffee. Gee, it couldn’t possibly be the case that the plaintiffs’ bar misled us when they said the Stella Liebeck v. McDonald’s coffee case (which we discussed Dec. 10) was unique because it was only McDonald’s coffee that was hot enough to cause serious burns, could it? (Jamie Herzlich, Newsday, Dec. 30).
Anthrax vaccination pseudoscience
Possum party poopers
The Appalachian town of Brasstown, North Carolina, had a tongue-in-cheek tradition of celebrating the new year by lowering, instead of a ball, a captured and fattened possum in a plexiglass cage, followed by a release of the animal. This New Year’s Eve, however, the hundreds of attendees were disappointed when, hours before the event, a PETA member threatened legal action against the organizer, who was sufficiently frightened off by the possibility of needing to hire lawyers to back off the annual event. (Jeffrey Gettleman, “A New Year’s Tradition Lives, but the 4-Legged Star Doesn’t”, New York Times, Jan. 2; Jeffrey Gettleman, “Keep Your Ball. We’ve Got the Possum.”, New York Times, Dec. 31). I suppose PETA wasn’t deterred by the anti-tort-reform propaganda going around the blogosphere that falsely implies that volunteers are protected from lawsuit (Dec. 12).