Thanks to MedPundit for her prolific and excellent posts over the past week. Her regular blogging, which includes a steady supply of items about malpractice and other medico-legal topics, can be found here, and should be on your regular round of blog stops if you are even slightly interested in matters medical.
Archive for August, 2004
Stella Liebeck and McDonald’s coffee revisited II
More discussion of the McDonald’s coffee case, the blogosphere discussion of it, and why it’s relevant today on our sister blog, Point of Law (Aug. 4).
One additional point merits discussion: “PG” of Blog de Novo (Aug. 3) makes the oft-heard argument that it was alright for Stella Liebeck to sue McDonald’s for millions because she first tried to settle for her medical expenses. I recently had an experience that shows why this thinking is fallacious.
A tomb with a ($150M) view (of the Major Deegan)
Real estate tycoon Leona Helmsley is suing Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx for $150 million in compensation, including $100 million for “severe anguish and emotional distress”, because she says her late husband Harry’s family mausoleum has lost the views, serenity and solitude it once had. “Mrs. Helmsley’s complaint, first reported Monday in The New York Post, is that the ‘perpetual beauty’ and ‘peaceful solitude’ of the spot have been destroyed by the latest of many community mausoleums to be built at Woodlawn. But the view Mrs. Helmsley describes as forever lost is bleak: the access ramps to the Major Deegan Expressway, a traffic light at Jerome Avenue and 233rd Street, and locked gates where the cemetery’s grand entrance once was.” Woodlawn’s president says he has been unable to find any precedent for a lawsuit complaining of loss of views from a mausoleum. (Jane Gross, “Tomb Trouble: Nimby Strikes at Woodlawn”, New York Times, Jul. 29; “NY property tycoon sues cemetery”, BBC News, Jul. 27).
The helping professions
North Carolina: “Raleigh lawyer Larkin Kirkman was paid more last year for representing poor people in court — more than $137,000 — than I. Beverly Lake earned as chief justice of the N.C. Supreme Court. … [Kirkman] represents juveniles, parents accused of abusing or neglecting their children and defendants charged with low-level felonies and misdemeanors.”
“Senior Resident Superior Court Judge Donald W. Stephens questioned whether some lawyers are being honest about the hours they spend defending those cases. ‘Many of us were shocked to find that some of the highest-paid lawyers on this list participated in no jury trials during that payment period and represented very few indigent defendants charged with serious felonies,’ Stephens said.” However, Kirkman said that some of the money paid him in 2003 was for 2002 work and that his previous years’ earnings from the county had been lower, at $87,750 for 2002 and $76,648 for 2001. (Andrea Weigl, “Lawyer fees criticized in Wake”, Raleigh News & Observer, Jul. 16).
Stella Liebeck and McDonald’s coffee revisited
A sad example of how the Democratic party has become the political wing of the plaintiffs’ bar is a recent post in the Daily Kos defending John Edwards by lionizing the result in the infamous McDonald’s coffee case, where a jury awarded Stella Liebeck $2.9 million for spilling a 49-cent coffee on herself. (Daily Kos, Aug. 1). Professor Bainbridge refutes (Aug. 1), with reference to our Dec. 10 entry. Blogger “Curmudgeonly Clerk” (Aug. 2) continues to insist that hot coffee is unreasonably dangerous, which sidesteps the question why our legislatures continue to permit it to be sold. Strangely, the Clerk is aware of and cites McMahon v. Bunn-O-Matic, a Seventh Circuit case that should’ve ended the coffee debates once and for all, but doesn’t reconcile that decision with his defense of the Liebeck case.
Meanwhile, Maxine Villegas’s sister spilled McDonald’s coffee on her, and she’s hired Liebeck’s lawyer to sue McDonald’s. (Matt Fleischer-Black, “One Lump or Two?”, American Lawyer, Jun. 4.) Though scheduled to go to trial last month, there hasn’t been additional press coverage.
Buys $29 truck, complains of not feeling safe
Bryan Banquells bought a 1985 Nissan King Cab from the El Cajon Ford dealership for $29 — that’s right, $29. But the dealership soon thereafter learned, and notified Banquells, that the vehicle was legally in “salvaged” status and should not have been sold without a disclosure to that effect. It offered to buy the truck back but Banquells, who has retained attorney Hal Rosner, doesn’t like that idea; he “refuses to drive the car and feels the dealership should provide him with a new one”. Reader Steve Headley comments: “Guy buys $29 truck, truck is bad, now wants brand new truck. Yeah…. that makes sense to me.” Banquells says he does not feel safe taking his small children around in his $29 truck now that he knows it was salvaged. (“Dealer, Customer Face Off Over Salvaged Car”, NBCSanDiego.com, Jul. 26). P.S.: reader Chuck Shepherd interprets the quoted material from the article as signifying only that Banquells wants a “new” truck in the sense of “replacement used”, rather than in the sense of “brand-new”.
Calif. scales back sue-your-boss law
Ending a standoff, Democrats and Gov. Schwarzenegger have agreed to scale back but not eliminate the already-notorious SB 796 or Labor Code Private Attorneys General Act, signed by recalled Gov. Gray Davis as a favor to trial lawyers during his waning days, which allows all and sundry to sue over labor code violations whether or not any worker was injured by the violation or complained. The compromise will eliminate most suits over non-posting of signs and will give employers a grace period to respond to allegations of a violation before exposing them to suit. (Dale Kasler, “Labor law was budget blocker”, Sacramento Bee, Jul. 29; Calif. Labor & Employment Law Blog, Jul. 29; Jul. 30). For our previous coverage, see Oct. 20, 2003.
Batch of reader letters
We’ve posted another four letters from our backed-up pipeline on our letters page. Among the topics this time: what skillful malpractice defense lawyers talk about at trial, and what they don’t; sudden acceleration litigation; what should you do with a class action settlement check, if you don’t approve of the lawsuit?; and the curiously uncontroversial powers of Eliot Spitzer.
Won its case, still paid $300M to settle
Michael Krauss at Point Of Law today reports on a securities action against drugmaker Bristol-Myers Squibb in which the company won an outright dismissal of the case (“with prejudice” = cannot be filed again), but paid $300 million anyway rather than take its chances on appeal. Also at Point Of Law today: the Federal Trade Commission is throwing a conference next month on the subject of protecting consumers in class actions; and if you want a press pass to the ATLA convention, be aware that certain kinds of press are not welcome. Update Mar. 2, 2005 (judge in Bristol-Myers case slashes fees).
Under the Reign of Edwards
One North Carolina doctor’s story.