Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Archive for August, 2005

“Five orphaned siblings suing home makeover show”

Five orphaned siblings who received gifts and a new dream home on the hit ABC television show “Extreme Makeover, Home Edition” are suing the network, the company that built the house and the couple who took them in after their parents died.

The lawsuit is rooted in a falling out between the children -– who range in age from 15 to 22 -– and the couple, Phil and Loki Leomiti. The children ultimately moved out of the Leomitis’ home in Santa Fe Springs, a small city southeast of Los Angeles, and are living separately with friends, said Charles Higgins II, the eldest sibling….

Their lawsuit alleges that the Leomitis engaged in “an orchestrated campaign” to drive them away by insulting them and treating them poorly.

“We were promised a home,” said Charles Higgins II. “They broke that promise.”

[Patrick] Mesisca, the attorney [for the children], acknowledged Wednesday that the siblings were never promised a house in writing. But the network’s statements and actions could legally be considered a promise, he said.

(AP/San Diego Union-Tribune, Aug. 11). Jeff at Southern California Law Blog comments (Aug. 10): “Seems to me that ABC has no responsibility to manage the relationship between the kids and their adoptive family. But hey, that’s just me.”

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Connecticut: a little favor for Koskoff, Koskoff and Bieder

The Bridgeport law firm of Koskoff, Koskoff and Bieder, which accounts for many of Connecticut’s high-profile settlements against doctors and other defendants, isn’t shy about throwing its political weight around in Hartford. Consider what happened after the firm got hit with a legal-malpractice suit from a former client, a widow who allegedly hadn’t been properly advised by attorney Rosalind Koskoff to file for workers’-comp benefits for her late husband, and was later ruled to have waited too long. As the widow’s malpractice suit against the law firm headed toward trial, two friends of the trial bar in the state senate, deputy majority leader Andrew McDonald and Sen. Edith Prague, tacked onto an unrelated bill an amendment which would have the state fork over the benefits the widow was suing for — not as a general rule, just in that one case — which would have the probable effect of knocking out the malpractice case by mootness. The bill became law, and the influential law firm can now presumably breathe a bit easier, glad it has cultivated so many friends in high political places. (Meir Rinde, “A Legislative Rat? The Koskoff Clause”, Hartford Advocate, Aug. 4).

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Unisex pricing reaches Ontario

A ban on the charging of different prices for men’s and women’s services, a bad idea already enacted in California, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Miami and New York City, may soon be the law in Ontario if pending legislation is approved. One supporter thinks it’s unfair for hairdressers to charge more for women’s cuts than men’s, and it’s apparently beside the point that most women’s cuts are more complicated and take longer to perform. Ditto with women’s clothes at dry cleaners, which are less standardized and more likely to require individualized handling. Of course many discounts run in favor of women purchasers, most notably auto insurance for younger drivers; no word on whether Ontario legislators are hoping to defy actuarial realities on that front. (Christl Dabu, “For Canadian women, that haircut may soon get cheaper”, Christian Science Monitor, Aug. 10 — note the headline, whose counter-version about haircuts for men getting more expensive probably never stood a chance of running). For reports on legal action aimed at bar’s “Ladies’ Night” promotions, see Aug. 4, 2003 and Jun. 10, 2004.

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“Show of Minor support is major”

Latest on the money-for-judges scandal detailed here Aug. 7: “Biloxi attorney Paul Minor says friends are showing up to support him during a judicial bribery trial, but prosecutors think the defense team is manipulating the jury. …During the trial, defendants have stressed their empathy and support for ‘the little guy’ and minority causes.” The jury forewoman revealed in her questionnaire that she had handed out fliers for former U.S. Rep. Wayne Dowdy, and none other than Rep. Dowdy in person dropped by to sit behind the defense table on Monday, as did Rep. Bennie Thompson.

Questionnaires also revealed that the jury is highly religious, and the Rev. Joe Doss, who is at once a lawyer, a friend of the Minor family and a retired bishop, sits with the family in a clerical collar and bishop’s purple shirt; the Rev. Doss concedes he’s looked at the jury questionnaires, “but that’s not why I’m here”. “[Defense attorney] Michael Crosby, who represents [former circuit judge John] Whitfield, quoted from the Bible in closing arguments. Crosby also managed to work in a biblical phrase one juror included on her questionnaire: ‘I will lift up mine eyes to the hills from whence my help cometh.'” Doesn’t Americans United for Separation of Church and State ever worry about this sort of thing? (Anita Lee, Biloxi Sun-Herald, Aug. 10).

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“Fair housing” law vs. Craigslist

Roommate preferences, improper mention that a listed property is near churches or synagogues, hints about age or family status: it’s easy to step on a legal land mine when listing your apartment rental. “The Internet is like the Wild, Wild West. People just speak their minds,” tut-tuts D.C. civil rights attorney John Relman (Sarah Lesher, “Online housing ads spur concern over bias”, Washington Times, Aug. 9)(via David Bernstein, who comments). Update: Feb. 9, 2006 (suit filed).

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N.J. court chills job references

Management-side lawyers are predicting a further drying up of reference-giving in response to a New Jersey appellate court’s ruling “appl[ying] the tort of negligent misrepresentation to a situation where an employer allegedly gave false information in an employment reference.” Marsha Singer said she was fired after a manager called her previous employer and was given an incorrect job title for the post she had held there; a court dismissed her claims for defamation and wrongful interference but allowed the negligent misrepresentation claim to go forward. Richard J. Reibstein of the New York office of Philadelphia’s Wolf, Block, Schorr and Solis-Cohen called the ruling a “dramatic shift in the law of post-employment references everywhere” and said it would influence employers outside the Garden State. (Dee McAree, “Ruling Could Lead to Restrictions on References”, National Law Journal, Aug. 5). For more on the chill on reference-giving, see Aug. 7, 2003; as it happens, New Jersey is a state that figured prominently in the widely noted case of alleged killer nurse Charles Cullen (Dec. 18, 2003; Jan. 29, Mar. 3 and Mar. 30, 2004), in which litigation-shy hospitals did not give each other frank warnings of their doubts about Cullen.

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Don’t take his money, St. Luke’s

Many Houston doctors are outraged that St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital is preparing to rename its medical tower, a local landmark, after controversial plaintiff’s attorney John O’Quinn (Apr. 28, 2004, etc.) in exchange for a $25 million gift. O’Quinn was the chief driver of the silicone breast implant litigation, which though decisively refuted in its major scientific contentions inflicted billions of dollars in costs on medical device providers and, not incidentally, plastic surgeons. And just this year O’Quinn’s law firm was singled out for condemnation by federal judge Janis Graham Jack in her scathing ruling on the shoddy business of mass silicosis-screening — “diagnosing for dollars”. Doctors “last week began circulating a petition against [the renaming proposal] and Monday night convened an emergency meeting of the medical executive committee….By late Monday, about 80 had signed the petition. ‘It offends us to have money we earned — and which he took by suing us — going to name after him a medical building in which we work each day,’ says the petition.” The University of Houston law school has already renamed its law library after O’Quinn, a full-length oil painting of whom looms over the students. (Todd Ackerman, “Doctors push St. Luke’s to forgo $25 million gift”, Houston Chronicle, Aug. 9). More: Kirkendall and MedPundit comment; so do GruntDoc and Michigan Medical Malpractice.

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The Overlawyered iMix

On August 25, a San Mateo County court will hold a fairness hearing over a nationwide class action settlement over iPod batteries that will provide $50 coupons for class members and $2,768,000 in fees for the attorneys. Because the lawsuit was filed before the Class Action Fairness Act took effect, the state court does not have to comply with the new federal requirement that attorneys’ fees reflect the actual redeemed value of the coupons, rather than the face value, one of many sensible provisions of the Act that trial lawyers, the New York Times, and dozens of prominent Democrats (including leading 2008 presidential contenders Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and John Edwards) opposed. In honor of this fairness hearing (as well as in honor of a pending lawsuit alleging that Apple is monopolizing the music market by selling music in a proprietary format), Overlawyered presents the Overlawyered iMix:

Read On…

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