Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Archive for October, 2005

John Torkelsen in plea deal

John Torkelsen, once described by Fortune as “the damages expert of choice for the entire plaintiffs side of the securities bar”, is “expected to plead guilty to reporting false information to a government agency in a D.C. federal court Oct. 21.” The charge arises from Torkelsen’s actions in handling a venture capital fund, rather than from his courtroom work. Before now, however, Torkelsen has declined to cooperate with prosecutors, and a change in that posture could give new impetus to the ongoing federal investigation of the law firm of Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach, for whom Torkelsen was a “notoriously effective expert witness … in dozens of securities suits throughout the 1990s,” according to sources interviewed by Law.com. (Justin Scheck, “Charge Against Expert May Spur Probe of Milberg Weiss”, The Recorder, Oct. 10).

For more on Torkelsen and the venture capital controversy, see Barbara Fox, “Unraveling the Torkelsen Case”, U.S. 1, May 7, 2003. Peter Elkind’s Sept. 4, 2000 expose for Fortune (“The King of Pain is Hurting“) reported:

Torkelsen’s calculations of shareholder losses routinely supported the hundreds of millions of dollars Lerach sought — and he was fabulous in front of a jury should a company decide to fight….Over more than 20 years, Torkelsen’s firm, Princeton Venture Research, not only had made tens of millions working for Lerach’s firm Milberg — by far its biggest client — but also had become the damages expert of choice for the entire plaintiffs side of the securities bar….

He sent thousand-dollar gift baskets as baby presents, and he invited his many friends in the plaintiffs’ bar to an annual black-tie Christmas party that was mind-boggling in its extravagance. At one, guests arriving in Torkelsen-provided stretch limos were heralded by buglers and greeted by costumed Disney characters. Entertainment was invariably provided by a big-name act: Little Richard one year, Aretha Franklin another.

For more on the Milberg probe, see Jun. 27, Jun. 28, Aug. 29, Point of Law Aug. 8, etc. On the reliability of Torkelsen’s numbers as submitted to courts, see the Delaware Chancery Court’s memorandum (PDF) in Cinerama v. Technicolor (2004), a non-Milberg case, pp. 10 et seq.

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Update: suing Madison taverns again

As readers may recall (May 2; Mar. 29, 2004) a judge this spring dismissed an antitrust class action suit filed by a Minneapolis law firm which had claimed that Madison, Wis. campus-area taverns unlawfully colluded to discontinue “happy hour” and similar discounts. As the taverns showed, the demise of the happy hour discounts came after pressure from university and government-sponsored groups which alleged that the discounts contributed to overuse of alcohol on campus. Now, nothing discouraged, the same law firm is back, suing in federal court this time. Its action “accuses 25 downtown bars of charging patrons excessive amounts for drinks, and names Chancellor John Wiley and two city officials for conspiring” in the price rises. (Daily Cardinal, Oct. 6)(via Althouse).

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Planning litigation fraud at Best Buy

Craig Newmark pointed me to this post exploring how Best Buy’s poorly-structured sales incentives allegedly permits a clever customer to negotiate for an HDTV below cost. But what really fascinated me was the first comment to the post (creative capitalization and spelling as in original):

If you are daring and want an easy $7,000, just act REALLY suspicous, and once you got everyone in the store asking if they can help you and the Loss Prevention guy up front staring at you, walk out the door. If they stop you, get everyones info who was involved in the stop. MAKE SURE YOU LET THEM KNOW YOU WERE EMBARRASED!!

Call a lawyer (this may cost you a few bucks). One letter or phone call to the district loss prevention manager will result in them settling, which in my experience has always been $7000.

We covered similar shakedowns Mar. 1 and Jul. 12.

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Update: custard finger-finder sues

Clarence Stowers, the North Carolina man who gained notoriety (see May 9) for refusing to return the employee’s fingertip he found in a mouthful of frozen custard, thus preventing doctors from reattaching it to its owner — it was more valuable to Stowers as evidence, you see — has now filed the inevitable lawsuit against Kohl’s Frozen Custard and the Carvel Corporation, which made the mixing machine. Stowers says he suffered post-traumatic syndrome and nightmares and wants money for that. People who have nightmares about Stowers himself, however, are out of luck lawsuit-wise. (“Man Who Bit Finger In Custard Sues”, AP/CBS News, Oct. 7).

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Wesley Snipes exonerated

Lanise Petits, alleged to be a delusional crack addict, filed suit accused actor Wesley Snipes of fathering her baby in a Chicago crack house, and successfully persuaded a court to require Snipes to submit to a paternity test. Snipes refused out of principle, noting that he had never met Petits, much less slept with her; moreover, Petit had filed various lawsuits with various accusations against Bill Clinton and Oprah. For his trouble, arrest warrants were issued, and Snipes suffered more adverse publicity. However, the child’s real father came forward, and the paternity suit has been dismissed. Snipes is suing the woman, albeit in the wrong forum, for the embarrassment. (AP, Oct. 7.)

Not that Snipes is innocent of legal abuse. In 2001, Snipes tried to obtain a $7 million federal tax refund using a bogus tax protester scheme.

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The Eddy Curry quandary

Prawfsblawg can be remarkably entertaining sometimes thanks to the efforts of Kate Litvak, who should have her own blog. Basketball player Eddy Curry may or may not have a genetic heart condition that could kill him. The Chicago Bulls refused to let him play without a DNA test that (perhaps) could determine whether he has the condition. Curry refused the test, and the standoff was resolved by a trade to a different team that didn’t require the DNA test.

The Bulls’ concern was no doubt magnified by the fear of liability and the inability to trust Illinois courts to enforce a waiver as legally binding, raising second-order questions of genetic privacy and discrimination. Cf. the similar questions in the Johnson Controls case, 499 U.S. 187 (1991).

The post is interesting enough. But if you have an aversion to sports, you might have missed the real fun in the comments.

Read On…

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Site upgrade update

* After much tinkering over the past two days I’ve settled for the moment on a modified version of Lilia Ahner’s style Stevenson from the Movable Type style library. Fonts are bigger than in the first Wednesday design, and readability better, but I’m still hearing from readers saying they’d like access to a style-switch or font-enlargement option. Anyone know of one that’s easy to install on a MT site?

* TrackBacks are back, at least for the moment. MT 3.2 supports TrackBack preapproval, and it remains to be seen whether the former rate of 200+ spams a day will resume now that TrackBacks do not appear automatically.

* I’ve installed a handy new archives page collecting links to archives through mid-2003 (earlier archives are here), and fixed (via redirects) the broken URLs on monthly and category archives generated by the earlier version of Movable Type. That still leaves a problem with the 2,700 or so individual links generated by the earlier version, each of which now exists in two versions: a new descriptive-word-URL version, and the old numbered-individual-URL version. Rather than let the old links break, I moved the whole lot of them to the new site via FTP, but this leaves two problems: 1) each exists in two versions now, which is likely to confuse the many visitors who reach this page via search engines; 2) the old version now fails to display styles properly. The logical next step would be to install redirects for all the old URLs, but MT seems unable to generate a simple list mapping old onto new posts for this purpose. If any technically inclined readers can help out on this, drop me a line.

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Suing anonymous bloggers

The Delaware Supreme Court has ruled that a defamation plaintiff is not automatically entitled to compel an internet service provider to lay bare the blogger’s identity, absent a showing of sufficient facts supporting the defamation case to defeat a motion for summary judgment. (J.L. Miller, “Del. court protects blogger’s identity”, WIlmington News-Journal, Oct. 6; Francis Pileggi, Oct. 6). Prof. Bainbridge (Oct. 6) calls it “a major win for bloggers and the First Amendment.”

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The bear’s death warrant? Public liability

We’ve reported before (Mar. 18, 2004) on how, after court decisions in Arizona eroded the state’s longstanding immunity from being sued over the actions of wild animals, lawyers began obtaining large verdicts from public managers over humans’ harmful encounters with wildlife — with the result that managers began moving to a “when in doubt, take it doubt” policy of slaughtering wild creatures that might pose even a remote threat to people. The continuing results of the policy came in for some public discussion last month after a bear wandered into a residential area near Rumsey Park in Payson, Ariz. and was euthanized by Arizona Game and Fish personnel:

[Ranger Cathe] Descheemaker said that the two Game and Fish officials were no doubt following procedure, and that bears are routinely destroyed ever since the agency was sued when a bear mauled a 16-year-old girl in 1996 on Mt. Lemmon near Tucson.

“Since Game and Fish lost that lawsuit, they do not relocate any bears,” she said. “The fact that bear was in town was its death warrant.”

(Jim Keyworth, “Bear found near Rumsey Park destroyed”, Payson Roundup, Sept. 6). For another set of complications that can arise from public liability for wildlife — namely, pressure to close off the general public’s access to wilderness — see Mar. 29.

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