The parents of a rock climber killed by a rock slide while climbing a face at Yosemite National Park have sued the National Park Service for $10 million, armed with the theory of a maverick professor who believes overflow from a waste-water system lubricated and weakened the face. An attorney for the park warns that if the suit is successful it could lead to bans on rock-climbing at Yosemite and elsewhere, and many climbers side with the park, saying those who take up the sport should assume the risk of rock slides. (Eric Bailey, “Another peril for climbers”, Los Angeles Times, Aug. 22; Jerry Bier, “Suit filed in Yosemite rock-slide death”, Fresno Bee, Nov. 4, 2001)(via Southern California Law Blog). Spartacus comments (Aug. 22). Update Dec. 17: court dismisses suit.
Archive for August, 2005
The amazing Lemelson
“Sit down, strap in, shut up”
Batch of reader letters
More reader correspondence appears on our letters page. Among topics this time: how to remove all the liability risks from a hotel shower; don’t blame all the woes of the litigation system on jury verdicts; after the Mississippi judicial bribery trial; and a rising political star in Connecticut.
Vioxx lawsuit advertising
Someone had been buying just about all of the advertising space on Google for most of the search terms relating to the recent Ernst v. Merck case with the headline “$250,000,000 Vioxx award,” (or, even more inaccurately, “$250,000,000 Vioxx settlement”) so I decided to see what new schemes the Internet had cooked up for chasing clients. The result is this page, which offers to “refer your Vioxx case” to “Mark Lanier law firm” to review.
The most entertaining part of the site is that there are eight check-boxes to describe the plaintiff’s symptoms, presumably so that lawyers can easily evaluate the submitted case:
Patient had Heart Attack
Patient had a Stroke
Patient had other Heart Problems
Patient Passed Away/Deceased
Patient had Unstable Angina
Patient had a Pulmonary Embolism
Patient had Arterial Thrombosis
Patient had Transient Ischemic Attack
Note the utter absence of an “arrhythmia” checkbox that would describe Robert Ernst’s symptoms, though hundreds of thousands of people suffer fatal arrthymias every year. On the other hand, given the fourth check-box, perhaps Vioxx plaintiffs’ attorneys plan to sue on behalf of everyone who took Vioxx, and then died. If they wait long enough, that will eventually be all of them. Earlier Vioxx ads/spam: Jan. 5; Dec. 22.
Campaign finance law censorship
Now it’s being deployed on behalf of Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) against the Scranton Times-Tribune. The National Republican Senatorial Committee, backing Santorum, filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission charging that the newspaper may have unlawfully made a “corporate contribution” to Santorum’s opponent, Bob Casey Jr., by printing in promotional material a mock headline that read “Casey to run for Senate”. (Carrie Budoff, “Scranton paper’s promo an issue”, Wilkes-Barre Times-Leader, Aug. 16; Brett Marcy, “GOP files complaint of paper’s Casey ‘ad'”, Aug. 19; Ryan Sager, “Dirty Speech Trick”, New York Post, Aug. 19; Sager’s blog, Aug. 19 and again). For more campaign finance law censorship, see Jul. 11.
Defensive coaching
Well, a different kind of defensive coaching than you normally think of when you think of high school sports coaches:
For the first time this season, Severna Park Athletic Director Wayne Mook required his coaches to record running times and player evaluation grades, then hand in that paperwork to him. It is an arduous process that many coaches find tiresome, but Mook instituted it for a reason: After a player was cut from the girls’ lacrosse team last spring, the family hired lawyers to meet with the school.
(Eli Saslow, “High Schools Address the Cruelest Cut”, Washington Post, Aug. 22).
“For many, Vioxx verdict may mean more suffering”
Lisa Stringer, 38, of Chicago, who suffers chronic pain from a spine condition and gets little relief from other drugs, “is saving her last three precious Vioxx tablets for the really bad days”; she’s one of thousands of patients upset that the drug is unavailable now. Even one of the plaintiff’s expert witnesses in Ernst seems to agree that it ought to be on the market — slim chance of that now (Bruce Japsen, Chicago Tribune, Aug. 21). WiredGC (Aug. 22) writes: “I know people who are desperate for it to go back on the market, as it was the only medication that made their pain bearable and a mobile life livable. They would gladly take the (slight) increased risk of stroke or heart attack, for the chance to be able to get out of bed in the morning.”
Derek Lowe (Aug. 21) doesn’t buy the notion that the execs, scientists and marketers at a company like Merck carry a map in their heads with a big line drawn between “Vioxx users” and “us”. And Ted has further expanded his big Point of Law post on the case to reflect new press accounts based on juror interviews: in particular, don’t miss the juror who wanted to be on Oprah, and the juror who bragged to the WSJ that he didn’t understand any of the medical evidence.
Another Republican trial lawyer senatorial candidate?
Social conservative trial attorney Mark Lanier, late of the Ernst v. Merck Vioxx verdict, is contemplating a 2008 Texas Senate run, sez the New York Times. (Alex Berenson, “Vioxx Verdict Raises Profile of Texas Lawyer”, Aug. 22).
The Democrats’ complete sell-out to the litigation lobby in 2004 quite likely cost them the presidential election because of the unprecedented counter-reaction by the business lobby, and the Dems have shown no signs of ceasing their self-destructive path of obstructing tort reform in the 109th Congress. It doesn’t even look like the Party is even going to get a mess of pottage out of it, because the litigation lobby isn’t going to keep funding the Democrats almost exclusively if they can protect their billion-dollar special interests through trial-lawyer RINO Republican politicians. See also Aug. 21 and Aug. 18.