I’ll be a guest on the David Allen show, Jacksonville, Fla., this evening at 9 EDT to discuss John Roberts’ nomination.
Archive for September, 2005
Flood damage excluded? Pay anyway
Standard homeowners’ policies exclude coverage of flood damage unless it is purchased at a substantial additional premium, a fact well known to most property owners in high-risk areas. Mississippi lawyer Dickie Scruggs, a familiar figure to readers of this space, had the foresight to purchase flood insurance for his Pascagoula home, now partly destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Now he wants the world’s insurers to pay billions for the properties they didn’t collect a premium for insuring, as well — perhaps scores of billions, if the principle is to extend to Louisiana. “Mr. Scruggs said he plans to urge Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood to try to override flood-exclusion clauses in homeowners’ policies in that state in the interest of public policy, a move that could force insurers to pay many billions more toward rebuilding costs.” (Theo Francis, John D. McKinnon and Peter Sanders, “Paying for Flood Damage Looms as Big Challenge”, WSJ, Sept. 8)(sub). An operative with the Mississippi Trial Lawyers Association says he hopes that “people on the Coast and their friends statewide ratchet up the political pressure” to make the insurers pay. (Anita Lee, “Claims Dispute”, Biloxi Sun-Herald, Sept. 9). Megan McArdle thinks it’s all a brilliant way to scare insurers away from offering even conventional coverage in the future (Sept. 8). See also Point of Law, Sept. 9. More: Martin Grace Sept. 8, Sept. 8 again, Sept. 13.
Married man posed as single
And so Tiffany Wang and Jing Huang, who fell for Dr. Khaled Zeitoun’s online sweet-talk, want cash damages for infliction of severe emotional distress. Their lawyers are suing in Manhattan Supreme Court. (Kerry Burke and Helen Peterson, “Doctor real strange love”, New York Daily News, Sept. 9).
“$16.3 million in lawyer fees OK”
Waving big fees through the gate:
A Denver District Court judge overseeing a $50 million class-action settlement from Qwest Communications shot down a shareholder group’s request to limit plaintiff attorney fees to $10 million.
Judge John Coughlin gave short shrift to arguments presented by the Association of U S West Retirees, which asked the court — at the very least — to delay settlement approval until attorneys submitted detailed documentation of their hours and expenses.
At a fairness hearing [Aug. 30], the judge ruled the class counsel, led by Los Angeles law firm Lerach Coughlin, was entitled to $15 million, or 30 percent of the settlement, plus an additional $1.3 million in out-of-pocket expenses….
[The retiree association] wanted proof of each firm’s time records and questioned several six-figure expenses, including $176,000 for meals, hotel and travel and $105,000 for photocopying.
“That’s 25 cents a page using your own office copy machine,” Denver attorney Curtis Kennedy, representing the retirees, said Tuesday after the hearing. “Don’t we at least get a discount for volume? Why not 5 cents a page?”
…[L]ast month, the association filed its objections over attorney fees, complaining that the more than $16.3 million Lerach had requested would leave just $33 million to be distributed among the thousands of plaintiff shareholders they represented….
[Kennedy] said the blanket $15 million contingency award represented 2.3 times what the plaintiff lawyers actually put into the case. Paralegal time alone would be compensated at the rate of more than $400 an hour.
“Times are changing,” he told the judge. “Shareholders are beginning to feel they need to step up and object…that these attorney fees are getting out of hand.”
How often will they feel it worth objecting if, as here, they get the back of the judge’s hand for their troubles? (John Accola, Rocky Mountain News, Aug. 31).
“Ghost blurber” suit: lawyers got $458K, clients $5K
The Washington Post follows up on the class action filed against Sony over its use of a non-existent blurber to promote several movies (see Aug. 3, 2005, Mar. 13, 2004, Jun. 12, 2001) and finds that only 170 customers filed verified claims, resulting in a payout of $5,085 by the studio. Meanwhile, according to court papers, “the attorneys for the plaintiffs got $458,909. Sony paid an additional $250,000 for administrative fees and costs associated with alerting moviegoers to the settlement and processing the claims,” and donated to charity nearly all the $500,000 that had been set aside to pay consumers. As it happens, “news of the settlement went out on the news wires a month after the deadline to sign up as a claimant had passed”. California appellate judge Reuben Ortega, dissenting from his court’s decision to let the case go forward, had written: “This is the most frivolous case with which I have ever had to deal” and called it a “disgrace” and “farce”. (William Booth, “Big Payday for Lawyers In Sony Fake-Blurb Deal”, Washington Post, Sept. 10). More: Larry Ribstein comments (Sept. 10).
Tobacco do-re-mi
A further reminder just in case anyone’s still hazy on the nature of the fiscal partnership between government and cigarette-sellers ushered in by the 1998 state/tobacco settlement:
A sizeable boost in anticipated tobacco settlement funds for Steuben County could bolster a recent proposal to blacktop more than 10 miles of county roads.
County Administrator Mark Alger said Thursday the county will receive $6 million in new tobacco funds instead of the $792,000 to $1 million announced in late June. The new funds are due to a change in tobacco industry profits.
(Mary Perham, “County gets tobacco funds boost”, Corning (N.Y.) Leader, Sept. 9).
“Katrina as the feds’ Enron”
“The common complaint [by Republicans] is that the president has let the lawyers take over,” reports columnist Robert Novak (“Lawyers vs. Katrina”, syndicated/TownHall, Sept. 8). In all fairness, if that’s the common complaint, it would seem to be a little broad-brush, since NYC mayor Giuliani, whose disaster-response leadership passes as the gold standard, was a lawyer too. Meanwhile, Larry Ribstein (Sept. 6) says federal officials are lucky they don’t have to live by the standards they prescribe for private business on such matters as “internal controls” and security planning.
Update: chili finger couple plead guilty
His onion-scented handkerchief
Another tidbit from Sadakat Kadri’s colorful history The Trial, which I reviewed yesterday:
Howe’s [legendary NYC courtroom lawyer William Howe, whose heyday was the late 19th century] most remarkable talent, a skill that won him plaudits from colleagues and hoodlums alike, was an apparent ability to weep at will. Although [prosecutor Francis L.] Wellman suspected that he used an onion-scented handkerchief to get in the mood, the ducts, once opened, flowed steady as a siphon, and never were they deployed more effectively than during his summation in 1887 for a client named Edward Unger.
Army Corps sued over levee-building
Over the years the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has proposed numerous levee and other public works projects aimed at reducing hurricane dangers to New Orleans and elsewhere in the Mississippi/Missouri river system. Environmental groups have sued, and sued, and sued, and sued, and their lawsuits have often succeeded in stopping these flood-control measures. (John Berlau, “Greens Vs. Levees”, National Review Online, Sept. 8; Michael Tremoglie, “New Orleans: A Green Genocide”, FrontPage, Sept. 8). Plus: Prof. Bainbridge (Sept. 9) has more details and spots a Los Angeles Times article raising the issue (Ralph Vartabedian and Peter Pae, “A Barrier That Could Have Been”, Sept. 9). The article’s summary line: “Congress OKd a project to protect New Orleans 40 years ago, but an environmentalist suit halted it. Some say it could have worked.” More: Sept. 14 (environmentalists and project critics respond).