The pre-eminent class action firm (see Jul. 1 and earlier coverage) has been splitting into two separate firms, and in case you doubted it, the New York and San Diego offices have taken positions adversarial to each other in securities class actions filed against the NYSE’s specialist trading firms. Lyle Roberts at 10b-5 Daily comments (Dec. 22; Jason Hoppin, “Firm at War With Itself”, The Recorder, Dec. 22). See also Sue Reinsinger, “Milberg’s Breakup Isn’t a Quickie”, National Law Journal, Dec. 16; Anthony Lin, “Milberg Weiss Taken to Task For Conduct in WorldCom Case”, New York Law Journal, Nov. 19)
Archive for January, 2004
Welcome Miami Herald readers
Some credit card customers got checks for as little as two cents, while the lawyers split $7.2 million. “For that reason, say some critics, the case of Schwartz vs. Citibank sent a priceless message about what’s wrong with the nation’s class-action legal system.” Mentions a certain website whose readers had a lot to say about the settlement (Gregg Fields, “No settlement? Grab your microscope”, Jan. 8).
Texas lawyers raced to beat damages limit
Although Texas legislators and voters last year approved broad limits on medical malpractice lawsuits, the benefits may be slower to materialize than hoped. The medical liability insurance “market is still reeling from an avalanche of suits filed in anticipation that lawmakers would cap noneconomic damages. … The equivalent of four years of medical liability lawsuits were dumped on Harris County courts in the first nine months of [last] year — prior to the effective date of the medical liability limits. This pattern of flooding the courts was repeated statewide. All of the cases have to be defended, and all are governed under the old law, which imposes no cap.” (Bruce Ehni & Jon Opelt (Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse Houston), “Rush to courthouse delays benefits of Prop. 12”, Houston Chronicle, Dec. 30)
Update: litigious Oz murderer
Australia: “The [Victoria] State Government has rejected triple murderer Paul Denyer’s bid to have a sex change and will seek legal advice on whether he can be declared a vexatious litigant. … This followed an unsuccessful bid for permission to wear make-up in Barwon Prison,” in a legal action that (see Oct. 15) had been assisted by taxpayer-funded Legal Aid. (Andrea Petrie and Chee Chee Leung, “State turns down triple murderer’s bid for sex change”, Melbourne Age, Jan. 9).
There goes the library budget
Atlanta, Georgia: “The Fulton County Commission has opted for an $18 million settlement of a lawsuit filed by librarians who claimed they were discriminated against because they are white. The settlement ends four years of litigation but represents more than half the entire library department’s budget for 2003, which was $29 million. It is also more than the county spends each year on functions such as planning and zoning, parks and recreation or family and children services.” The case was a reverse discrimination suit, which presumably means (or does it?) that conservatives are obliged to be happy about its success (“Fulton County settles $18 million bias suit by librarians”, AP/AccessNorthGa.com, Jan. 7). The “suit also accused the library system of shifting money away from ‘white’ libraries to ‘black’ libraries.” (“Librarians get $25 million in reverse discrimination case against Fulton”, Atlanta Business Chronicle, Jan. 16, 2002)(via George Lenard, who has additional comments).
Newsweek vs. ATLA: Stuart Taylor, Jr. responds (II)
Newsweek vs. ATLA: Stuart Taylor, Jr. responds (I)
Newsweek, as is typical for a newsweekly, published only a terse editorial response (see previous post) to the litigation lobby’s concerted attack on its reporting. However, Stuart Taylor, Jr., the distinguished veteran journalist who (with Evan Thomas) was principal author of the feature, has kindly consented to let us reprint his more detailed point-by-point rebuttal to ATLA’s official gripe catalogue, published under the title “Spin or Facts? A Look Behind Newsweek’s Series ‘Lawsuit Hell’“. Because of the length of Taylor’s response, we’ve split it into two posts, the first responding to the first six points of ATLA’s critique and the second responding to the rest. Check out in particular, under heading #6, ATLA’s false (and remarkably brazen) assertion that the Tillinghast study’s $233 billion estimate of the cost of the liability insurance sector includes “the cost of the entire property/casualty insurance industry” and in particular the cost of hurricanes and similar damage. (It doesn’t.)
Newsweek responds to trial lawyers
In response to the fusillade of abuse it got from trial lawyers and their allies over its Dec. 15 cover story “Lawsuit Hell” (see Dec. 8, Dec. 12, Dec. 15), Newsweek has now published (Jan. 12 issue) a short editor’s note (reprinted at end of this post) standing by its reporting as “both accurate and fair”. (More later today on this.)
ATLA, Public Citizen et al. had complained loudly about how the magazine reported a jury award against Stanford University’s hospital as being $70 million while supposedly concealing from readers that the “present value” of this future stream of outlays was only $8 million. Newsweek’s editors respond effectively to this charge, but we will add one further point to what they say, namely that other major press outlets likewise reported the (accurate) $70 million figure at the time of the Stanford verdict. ATLA would have looked rather silly had it made clear that its complaint was about the magazine’s having followed the lead of the AP, the San Jose Mercury News, and the Recorder (PDF reprint) on this point. More: Lawyers’ Weekly USA now trumpets the Stanford case under the $71 million banner as one of its “Top Ten Jury Verdicts of 2003“.
Newsweek’s editorial note follows:
Satanic abuse trials
Canada had them too, in places like Saskatoon and Martensville, Saskatchewan. Colby Cosh elucidates (“Which witch will we hunt next?”, National Post, Jan. 2)(his weblog)(our earlier coverage: Sept. 4, 1999, Apr. 17, 2001, etc.). More: Gerry Klein, “Saskatchewan not sorry for malicious prosecution: Family accused of sadistic child abuse”, CanWest/National Post, Jan. 9.
New reader letters
Latest batch includes letters upbraiding us for our ignorance of the Olympic sport of curling; calculating the impact of head-on crashes; wondering about how things may look when judges get awards; and offering a proposal for trial lawyer accountability.
As an experiment, we have occasionally been enabling comments to entries in our letters section. In the case of the letter we ran Dec. 14 on the Schwartz v. Citibank late-fee class action, this resulted in more reader discussion than we could have anticipated, with more than 80 readers putting in their two cents (or 5 cents, or 17 cents, depending on how big their refund was from the legal settlement). We’ve now closed the comments, but left the discussion intact.