A state appeals court has ordered ex-lawyer Richard Dangler Jr. of Sacramento to pay $25,000 in sanctions for operating “a ‘writ mill’ where law students and disbarred lawyers worked without supervision in filing pointless petitions for paying inmates”. The attorney had filed “a series of what he conceded were ‘patently frivolous and contemptuous’ habeas corpus petitions. Dangler resigned from the State Bar in May with charges pending against him.” (Jill Duman, “Court Says Ex-Lawyer Put Students to Work in Writ Mill”, The Recorder, Sept. 3).
Archive for September, 2004
Disappearing swings, cont’d
In addition to liability and safety fears, the Americans with Disabilities Act turns out to play a role in the decline of swing sets at public playgrounds: it seems the least expensive way to make a swing set safer is to surround it with sand, but sand is considered a non-accessible surface for wheelchairs which makes it suspect under the ADA. (Scott Simonson, “Safety rules retiring playground standby”, Arizona Daily Star, Sept. 7). See Mar. 28, Aug. 23, etc.
Lawyer bills $300/hour for sleeping
Amazing story from South Texas of six lawyers who got themselves appointed guardians ad litem to represent minors’ interests in a bus-crash case called Goodyear Dunlop Tires vs. Gamez et al. “Four of the six lawyers were appointed less than three weeks before Goodyear settled the case, and one only eight days before the settlement. Yet according to Austin lawyer Debora Alsup, who worked on the appeal, all six asked for $100,000 in fees,” payable by the tire company. They asked for $400-500 an hour, two or three times their customary fee, arguing that “those rates were customary for ad litem fees in Webb County.” As for the lawyers’ self-report of hours worked, well, suffice it to say that one of them was so bold as to bill for more than 24 hours in a single day, while another billed 48 hours for travel over a two-day period, including compensation for being asleep. And on and on, as the Houston Chronicle’s Rick Casey reports (“Lawyer bills for missing tuck-in time”, Aug. 31):
?One lawyer billed 53 separate entries of 0.1 hour each in one day for reviewing 16 filings by plaintiffs, “which were identical except in minor respects,” according to the appeals court.
?One lawyer billed between two and four hours at $500 per hour to review each of numerous one-page deposition notices, for a total of 50 hours for reviewing the notices.
District Judge Raul Vasquez of Laredo gave the lawyers a lot of what they sought, but a three-judge panel in San Antonio disagreed, calling the fees “unconscionable”. And here is the perfect grace note to the affair, as reported by Casey:
One appeals judge, Sarah Duncan, wrote a concurring opinion concluding the full court should “report these attorneys to the grievance committee.”
In Laredo the grievance committee is chaired by Marcel Notzon III, the lawyer whom Judge Vasquez awarded the most fees in this case.
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CD price fixing settlement, cont’d
Ted Frank reported Aug. 23 on the Compact Disc Antitrust Litigation Settlement, in which music distributors and retailers agreed to donate 5.5 million CDs to libraries, valued at 20% below retail, as part of the rationalization for a multi-million-dollar payment of fees to plaintiff’s counsel. Now the Washington Post has more details about how the musical selections — by and large, unpopular stuff that had been sitting unsaleable in warehouses — were stuffed randomly into boxes for shipping, so that libraries wound up getting large multiples of CD titles they would not have greatly coveted in the first place (Karin Brulliard, “An Influx of Outmoded CDs”, Washington Post, Sept. 6). Alex Tabarrok also comments (Sept. 6). Coming up next: will Newsday and other newspapers plagued by circulation scandals agree to make it up by shipping libraries bundles of week-old papers?
Texas: libel not a function of the dumbest readers
In 1999, 13-year old Christopher Beamon of Denton County’s Ponder, Texas, was assigned to write a Halloween story, but when he wrote a horror tale of accidentally shooting a teacher, he earned more than an A+: the local district attorney, Bruce Isaacks, prosecuted him, and Judge Darlene Whitten ordered him detained for a week at a juvenile center.
Already one for the overlawyered files, but then the Dallas Observer printed a parody having Isaacks and Whitten go after Cindy Bradley, a fictional six-year-old girl who read Where the Wild Things Are for first-grade story time. Isaacks and Whitten sued for libel, under the theory that because the story wasn’t labeled satire, some readers might think it’s the real thing. Amazingly, a lower court was ready for this to go to a jury trial before the Texas Supreme Court stepped in Friday and unanimously voted to throw out the case. The Court noted, among other things, that the Beijing Evening News took seriously an Onion story about Congress requesting a dome with a retractable roof and that another Onion story titled “Al-Qaida Allegedly Engaging in Telemarketing” provoked a Michigan sheriff to issue a warning in a press release. (AP, “Court rules for Dallas Observer in libel suit”, Sep. 3; Jesse Walker, “Where the Wild Suits Are”, Reason, Feb.; New Times Inc. v. Isaacks opinion; Daniel Terdiman, “Onion Taken Seriously, Film at 11”, Wired, Apr. 14) (via Hit & Run).
Update, Sep. 9: Howard Bashman has a comprehensive run-down of coverage, and points us to this Dallas Observer story gloating in victory.
Bad lawyer files: Fourth yacht’s the charm
Or, “Not only loose lips sink ships.”
Bloggers Grace and Wallace point us to the tale of the infamous (and now suspended) attorney Rex DeGeorge, which has important lessons how the plaintiffs’ bar has made insurance more expensive for all of us: because insurers who suspect fraud risk substantial liability for “bad faith” denial of coverage (e.g., May 5, where an insurer who merely investigated an $8,000 chiropractor’s bill was hit with a $150,000 judgment), insurance scamsters can manipulate the system by threatening a suit. For an individual case, simply defending the non-payment may be more expensive than making the payment; even on a systematic basis, the risk of losing a case and facing punitive damages can put insurers in a bind. This is lengthy, but worth it.
Malpractice insurance: around the country
In West Virginia, insurer NCRIC was paying out $1.07 in claims for every $1 in premiums collected; it almost left the state until regulators allowed them to raise rates to make up the difference. Of course, some doctors can’t afford the new rates, and have had to stop practicing at hospitals and nursing homes that require insurance. ATLA once again blames the insurance companies for failing to invest premiums in such a way to pay the rising claims. The insurer’s problems were exacerbated when a D.C. jury levied a $18 million countersuit verdict against NCRIC when it tried to collect $3 million in unpaid premiums from the defunct Columbia Hospital for Women Medical Center. (Dina ElBoghdady, “D.C. Malpractice Insurer Feels Squeeze”, Washington Post, Sep. 6).
In Illinois, the political debate continues over the need for tort reform, as doctors continue to flee the state. Ed Murnane, of the Illinois Civil Justice League, notes that 40% of the doctors in St. Clair and Madison Counties have been named as defendants in lawsuits between 2000 and 2003; even though the overwhelming majority of plaintiffs collect nothing from such cases, the costs of defense are high. (Mark Samuels, “Group: Tort Reform Can Stop Malpractice Crisis”, The Southern, Sep. 3; Rob Stroud and Herb Meeker, “Illinois physicians say insurance rates are driving them out of state”, Journal Gazette/Times-Courier, Sep. 3).
An editorial signed by 25 Washington County, Maryland doctors protests the legislature’s failure to reform the medical malpractice system. (“Lawsuits will drive doctors away”, The Herald-Mail, Sep. 5).
In Nevada, the trial lawyers groups are trying to obstruct reform by putting forward faux reform measures on the initiative ballot that would wipe out the real reform measure, Question 3. For example, Question 5, proposes penalties for filing or defending “frivolous” lawsuits–but redefines “frivolous” to narrow the classification as to be meaningless. At the same time, it bars the legislature from ever implementing caps. An earlier attempt to stop Question 3 with a last-minute lawsuit failed. (Tanya Albert, “Nevada tort reform ballot fight now brewing”, American Medical News, Sep. 13; AP, Aug. 25; No on 4 and 5 website).
Washington state doctors are traditionally politics-free, but the medical malpractice crisis could change that and force them to lobby for the reform Initiative 330. “‘Physicians in the main have an aversion to mixing politics with their professional medical practice,’ said Dr. Kevin Ware, president of the county medical society. ‘But under the current circumstances, the need for malpractice insurance reform is so desperate that physicians are having to look seriously at departing from that custom.'” (Sharon Salyer, “Doctors may lift ban on politics”, The Herald, Sep. 6; Wallace blog, Aug. 31).
Wyoming has lost 10 percent of its doctors in the last eighteen months, and the state’s largest malpractice carrier will stop renewing policies October 1. A constitutional amendment is necessary for reform there. (Lee Lockhart, “Lawmaker predicts heated debate over damage caps”, Casper Star Tribune, Aug. 27).
Diving’s decline
The once dominant U.S. men’s and women’s diving teams suffered their worst performance ever at the Athens Olympics, shut out from medals for the first time since diving was introduced at as an Olympic sport 92 years ago. (“Chinese dive to record haul”, AFP/Independent Online (South Africa), Aug. 29). Why the falloff? “After a golden age in the seventies — a decadent, late-Roman last hurrah — the American pool has suffered a gradual decline: thanks, for the most part, to concerns about safety and liability, diving boards have been removed and deep ends undeepened. At municipal pools across the country, the once-ubiquitous one-metre springboard has become an endangered species; and the three-metre high dive — the T. rex of the community pool — is now virtually extinct. … Ron O?Brien, U.S.A. Diving?s national technical director, and the former coach of Greg Louganis, said last week, ‘You can’t put your finger on any one thing, but having so many diving boards taken out around the country has had a serious impact on our sport, no question about it.'” (Field Maloney, “Cannonball!”, The New Yorker, Aug. 30 issue (posted Aug. 23))(via Common Good)(more about pool and diving liability).
Update: N.Y. auto leasing still stalled
New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver is still dug in to protect the state’s ultra-harsh law holding auto lessors liable for accidents involving the cars they lease, although it’s had a devastating effect on car leasing in the Empire State (Jun. 9, 2003 and links from there). Here’s the New York Daily News blasting him in a recent editorial:
The Senate wants to abolish vicarious liability, bringing New York into line with 49 other states, but Silver’s Assembly wants to have car companies pay hundreds of millions of dollars into an insurance pool that would cover accidents in leased cars. The trial lawyers are all for it because the pool would give them lots of money to grab, cash that would come from drivers in the form of higher leasing fees. And who are the trial lawyers? Arthur Luxenberg is the group’s second vice president, while Perry Weitz serves on the board of directors. And who are they? They’re the name partners of Weitz & Luxenberg, the law firm that lists Silver as of counsel.
The law “costs consumers more than $130 million a year and has led to a 36 percent decline in the number of vehicles leased in New York each year, according to the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers (Alliance) and the Greater New York Automobile Dealers Association (GNYADA).” (“Vicarious liability costs New York consumers and businesses millions”, Business Council of New York State, Jun.). “More than 19 automakers and every major retail bank in New York have stopped or curtailed car leasing. …In addition, [according to trade groups], vicarious liability has contributed to the closing of 70 leasing companies since September 2000.” (“N.Y.’s Vicarious Liability Costly for Consumers and Auto Dealers”, Insurance Journal, Jul. 19). For more, see the New York State Auto Dealers Association website.