Last month Vice Chancellor Leo E. Strine Jr. of Delaware’s Chancery Court slashed by three-quarters a $4.95 million fee request by class action lawyers who intervened on behalf of shareholders in a dispute involving Cox Enterprises, the media company; he blasted some of the lawyers’ filings as “dashed off complaints” and “hastily drafted throwaways” and questioned whether they had done much to influence the final disposition of the transaction. In Atlanta, on the other hand, “Fulton Superior Court Judge Constance C. Russell awarded all of the requested $1.25 million in fees to Atlanta lawyers Corey D. Holzer and Michael I. Fistel Jr. of Holzer & Holzer; Steven J. Estep of Cohen, Cooper, Estep & Mudder; and other lawyers” in parallel class action litigation arising from the same dispute. “A key difference between the two cases was that a group of shareholders in the Delaware case filed official objections to the fee requests, while in Atlanta, the lawyer for those shareholders informally submitted information from the Delaware case to argue that the lawyers in the Fulton case provided little, if any, benefit to the shareholders they represented.” The objecting lawyer in both the Delaware and the Georgia proceedings was Elliott J. Weiss, a professor at the University of Arizona’s James E. Rogers College of Law. Apparently feeling that Weiss’s less-than-official submission could be brushed aside, Judge Russell issued an order approving the fees without elaboration. (Steven H. Pollak, “Ga. Lawyers in Cox Case Escape Fee-Slashing Endured by Delaware Counterparts”, Fulton County Daily Report, Jul. 18). More: Francis Pileggi (Jun. 24) has posted a copy of the Delaware decision (PDF) and Larry Ribstein has commented Jul. 20 (referring to “Chancellor Strine’s classic-to-be opinion”) and again Jul. 29 (“The vice chancellor paints a picture of truly parasitic lawyers inserting themselves into a corporate transaction and demanding to be paid big bucks to go away.”)
Archive for July, 2005
Willy Wonka as defendant
Batman and The Incredibles aren’t the only ones who might want to worry about being taken to court over their astounding feats. (Christine Hurt, The Conglomerate, Jul. 24; scroll down for a comment from Ted).
And now the lawsuits…
As we predicted on July 16, the ridiculous lawsuits over the Grand Theft Auto video game “scandal” have begun. The lead plaintiff in the putative class action is an 85-year-old grandmother, Florence Cohen, who bought the game for her 14-year-old grandson, who may have his own claims for emotional distress when his ninth-grade classmates beat him up. I suspect the eventual lead-plaintiff deposition I imagined is likely to be more entertaining than the game itself.
“Laurence D. Paskowitz, the lawyer who filed the lawsuit on behalf of Cohen, said no parent would knowingly buy an adult-only video game for their children.” Because a “M-for-Mature” 17-or-over game featuring graphic violence, profanity, and “strong sexual content” is so much more appropriate. The sex scenes that are the subject of the lawsuit are only available by taking affirmative steps to download a modification from the Internet and install it: if her 14-year-old grandson has that much freedom with a computer to be able to experience the pixeled sex (an allegation that is missing from press accounts), what else is he downloading?
The Class Action Fairness Act is already paying dividends; the case was filed in federal court, which increases the likelihood that federal judges will correctly decide that class certification is inappropriate. (AP, “Grandmother sues maker of ‘Grand Theft Auto'”, Jul. 27; hat-tip to W.F. and A.B.). Update: Jul. 28.
TrackBack mostly suspended
Until early this year, TrackBack spam was not a problem for this site. Now it’s risen in volume to hundreds per day, outrunning the willingness of our hosting service, Verio, to support the resulting burdens on its servers. As part of the steps needed to resolve yesterday’s technical crisis, we’ve unfortunately had to disable TrackBack for older posts site-wide. We hope to make an exception for some new posts, but even on those it will probably stay open for no more than a few days.
It may be hoped that eventual improvements to Movable Type will admit the legitimate TrackBacks while screening out the rest, bringing us closer to that day when the drug sites cease from spamming and the hold’ems ping no more. In the mean time, Technorati (when operational) remains a reasonably current way of seeing who’s been discussing our posts, and site owners that link to our posts should consider dropping us a contemporaneous email to let us know (editor at [this-domain-name] or tedfrank at [this-domain-name]), which affords us the clearest shot at installing a manual linkback should we decide to go that route.
“Gun Liability Control”
The Wall Street Journal editorial page celebrates the likelihood that the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act will pass, which would end the gun-control-through-litigation movement.
State legislatures have been rolling back firearm laws because the restrictions were both ineffectual and unpopular. Gun-controllers have responded by avoiding legislatures and going to court, teaming with trial lawyers and big city mayors to file lawsuits blaming gun makers for murder. Companies have been hit with at least 25 major lawsuits, from the likes of Boston, Atlanta, St. Louis, Chicago and Cleveland. A couple of the larger suits (New York and Washington, D.C.) are sitting in front of highly creative judges and could drag on for years.
Which seems to be part of the point. The plaintiffs have asked judges to impose the sort of “remedies” that Congress has refused to impose, such as trigger locks or tougher restrictions on gun sales. Some mayors no doubt also hope for a big payday. But short of that, the gun-control lobby’s goal seems to be keep the suits going long enough to drain profit from the low-margin gun industry.
(Wall Street Journal, Jul. 27 ($)). Democratic Senator John D. Rockefeller IV yesterday became the sixtieth co-sponsor. Still, the Journal may be celebrating prematurely. Last term, the legislation was scuttled by the attachment of clever poison-pill amendments that caused the most fervent guns-rights advocates to withdraw support for the bill, so the fact that the current bill has supermajority support surprisingly doesn’t mean that it’s out of the woods yet. For more, see our ongoing coverage.
N.J. solons: let’s ban smoking while driving
It’s a distraction, the same as using a cell phone while driving, claim state reps John McKeon (D-Essex) and Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen), who are co-sponsoring a bill that would impose $250 fines on those caught with lighted cigarettes behind the wheels of their own cars. The bill is given scant chance of passage — this year, at least (“No butts behind wheel? N.J. moves on smokers”, AP/MSNBC, Jul. 25; “Jersey going too far with anti-smoking bill” (editorial), Camden Courier-Post, Jul. 27; Reason “Hit and Run”, Jul. 25; Outside the Beltway, Jul. 25). Blog reaction has been overwhelmingly negative. Mark at Curious Character (Jul. 27) believes “it’s bad policy to pass laws that you can’t (and won’t) be able to enforce”. Functional Ambivalent (Jul. 26) points out that a study of drivers’ distraction-related accidents shows drivers’ fumbling with climate controls and stereo systems causes many more accidents than fumbling with cigarettes, but no one is proposing to ban music in cars (yet). Jeff Goldstein (Jul. 25) sees a Kelo angle, while KipEsquire (Jul. 25) points out that smokers allowed to indulge in their habit make calmer drivers than those suffering from prolonged nicotine deprivation. For more on the ever-widening reach of smoking bans, see our tobacco page, including Jul. 12, 2005 and Jul. 29, 2004 (smoking in apartments and condos), Jun. 24, 2004 (on the beach), and May 29, 2004 (in cars when children are present).
More on orphan copyright
“This week, at the urging of prominent legal scholars, academic-library organizations, technology companies such as Google and Microsoft, and many other interested parties, the U.S. Copyright Office is holding a series of hearings to determine whether copyright law should change to allow for more liberal use of orphan works” — that is, works whose copyright holders cannot be tracked down with reasonable diligence. The Chronicle of Higher Education has a good roundup on an issue last seen in these columns Apr. 14. (Scott Carlson, “Whose Work Is It, Anyway?” Jul. 29)(via Arts & Letters Daily).
Technical difficulties
For the past 24 hours+ the site has labored under technical difficulties which prevented new posting and also disabled internal site functions such as search. These functions are back up again, but the situation is not yet stable and it looks like I’ll be scrambling for a bit to get the site’s technical aspects on a sounder basis.
Incidentally, if the internal site search stops functioning again at a time when the site itself is accessible, try this Google-search link.
Evan Schaeffer…
…certainly is feeding me material lately (Jul. 25).
Wisconsin ADA suits, cont’d
The Appleton Post-Crescent has now completed publishing its investigation of the Ms. Wheelchair America pageant, including the pageant’s apparent role in client recruitment strategies for the Florida-based law firm of Schwartz Zweben & Associates (see “Behind a pageant, busy lawyers”, Jul. 21). The overall series roundup can be found here; among the more topical stories in the series are “Law firm’s ties to pageant”, Jul. 16 (firm filed 54 lawsuits on behalf of Jaclyn Kratzer, Ms. Wheelchair Pennsylvania 2003, and 37 lawsuits on behalf of Jeri Wasco, coordinator of the Ms. Wheelchair Washington D.C. pageant); J.E. Espino, “Businesses settle suits out of court”, Jul. 17, and Ed Lowe, “Local lawsuits trigger debate over ADA compliance”, Jul. 24 (quotes me on the question of whether serial complainants were just really unlucky or went out in search of reasons to sue).