Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Archive for October, 2005

Book review: “J. Anthony Froude”

Not really any legal content here, but I’ve got a review in today’s Sunday New York Times Book Review of a new biography of a distinguished Victorian figure. First paragraph:

Among the leading British historians, few have suffered as steep a decline in public estimation as J. Anthony Froude. With Gibbon and Hume, Froude played a key role in the advance of religious doubt; with Macaulay, he shaped Britain’s view of itself as a nation whose greatness was intimately linked to the liberty of its political institutions. Even those who found him partisan and factually careless conceded his literary merit; in Lytton Strachey’s words, he gave to historical events the “thrilling lineaments of a great story, upon whose issue the most blasé reader is forced to hang entranced.” One of his latter-day admirers, the historian A. L. Rowse, has called him “the last great Victorian awaiting revival.”

The whole thing, again, is here.

P.S.: Herbert Paul’s 1905 biography of Froude, mentioned in the review, is available at Gutenberg.org. A Wikipedia entry on Froude is here.

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Update: Michael J. Zwebner and John Faro

You may recall the entertainingly stupid lawsuit filed by Michael J. Zwebner and his penny-stock holding company Universal Communication Systems against CNN and Wolf Blitzer (Feb. 17). No surprise, Rule 11 sanctions were granted—the judge found that each of the three independent reasons for granting sanctions under Rule 11 applied to this case. Zwebner’s attorney, John H. Faro, demonstrates his uncertain grasp of the law by continuing to blizzard the court with papers, including filing a premature appeal purporting to divest the district court of jurisdiction and fundamentally misunderstanding the concept of “bad faith” litigation by arguing that the Rule 11 sanctions were inappropriate because the lawsuit was filed for “tactical” (!) purposes. One hopes that the court awards fees over the collateral litigation tactics so that the defendants are not worse off for having sought Rule 11 sanctions. One further hopes that the Florida Bar steps into protect other defendants and clients from Faro. A similar lawsuit brought by Zwebner and Faro against Lycos appears to have been dismissed this week; the same message board has fun discussing these and other Zwebner lawsuits. See also Mar. 12.

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“Next tobacco” watch: many Wall Street suits fizzle

After the stock market’s tech-driven bubble popped a few years back, lawyers advertised heavily for burned-investor clients, hoping to reap billions at the expense of Wall Street firms whose research had been exposed as shoddy or worse. But expectations have deflated, and now Pensacola, Fla.’s Levin, Papantonio, Thomas, Mitchell, Echsner & Proctor, whose doings are often chronicled in this space, has settled about 300 or so investor claims against Merrill Lynch “for approximately three cents on the dollar”. Although it is far from unusual for plaintiffs to recover sums in arbitration, lawyers have had trouble proving that most of their clients relied on the tainted research in making investment decisions. A Merrill Lynch spokesman claims the firm has “overwhelmingly prevailed in these cases”, while a plaintiff’s lawyer counters that “we are not doing too badly”. (Susanne Craig, “Heard on the Street: Payouts low in research suits”, Wall Street Journal/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Oct. 13). More: Jul. 10, 2003.

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Drowns while fleeing cops, family sues for $50M

New Jersey: “A $50 million lawsuit is being filed against Hoboken and its police department by the parents of a 16-year-old boy who drowned in the Hudson River shortly after escaping from Hoboken Police Headquarters.” On Oct. 5, 2004 Vincent “Woody” McConnell Jr. was arrested on an outstanding warrant and on being taken in asked if he could use the public rest room at the station house. According to police, he then unscrewed the security grate on the small window in the rest room and escaped; with cops in pursuit, he climbed a railing, “escaped from an officer holding his arm and jumped into the water,” which has dangerous currents at that point in the river. Friends of McConnell say they don’t believe he would have jumped. He’s being represented by attorney Robert Bianchi. (Michelangelo Conte, “Suit Blames Cops”, Jersey Journal, Oct. 12).

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Font size, redesign, newsletter, cont’d

As regular readers may have noticed, we’ve tried out a variety of design tweaks over the last week. In response to reader requests, we’ve also installed a simple font size switcher toward the top of the right-hand column, which however works only for users of the Internet Explorer browser. Users of Firefox, Opera and most other browsers can alter font sizes relatively easily by executing simple commands from their mouse or keyboards. To enlarge the fonts on a page viewed in Firefox, for example, press Ctrl-+ (“Control” key simultaneously with plus sign).

Our thanks also for the patience of bulletin subscribers: Google Groups took more than twelve hours to deliver many copies of last night’s newsletters, and some users (including ourselves) have run into technical difficulties lately with the Google Groups site. To change your subscription, visit this site (requires Google registration). And should you ever wish to unsubscribe from the newsletter without going on the Web, just send an email from the relevant account to Overlawyered-unsubscribe – [ at] – googlegroups – [dot]- com.

Also: after installing the redesign/rehosting, we got word that our RSS feeds were returning broken links to those of you who keep up with the site that way. We think we’ve fixed that problem now, but if not, please let us know.

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Deep pocket files: Foradori v. Captain D’s

On December 22, 2000, 15-year-old Michael Foradori Jr. walked into a Captain D’s seafood restaurant in Tupelo, Mississippi for dinner; while there, he started flirting with the girlfriend of one of the employees, which resulted in a shouting match. “‘This (employee) was kind of picking on him, he started threatening him, he even hit him with a wadded up paper,’ said Joey Langston, Foradori’s attorney.” (More on Langston at Point of Law, May 13.) A manager restored order by kicking everyone out of the restaurant; outside, a cook who clocked out for the evening got into an altercation with Foradori, and pushed him over a wall, breaking his neck and paralyzing him. (Naomi Snyder, “Captain D’s customer gets $20.8M”, Tennesseean, Oct. 13; “Jury awards paralyzed man $21M”, Clarion-Ledger, Oct. 13; Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, Oct. 13).

For this, the national Captain D’s chain in Nashville was held responsible to the tune of $20.8 million by a federal jury that deliberated for two hours. Foradori’s attorneys argued that the manager should have “stopped the argument” and that training about workplace violence would have prevented the accident.

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A war story

On Evan Schaeffer’s blog, the pseudonymous junior associate “Stan Stankowski” tells a ribald tale (which may or may not be true or exaggerated) of dealing with a foul-mouthed plaintiff’s attorney who demonstrates that it’s not just defense attorneys who can be obstructionist.

Read On…

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Latest newsletter

Our free periodic newsletter went out to subscribers last night, summarizing recent postings in terse yet wry style. There is some evidence, however, that the mailing has still not reached many subscribers. To read the latest installment — or to join or leave the list, change your address, etc. — visit this page (requires Google registration).

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