Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Archive for January, 2006

Lawyer-promotion spam, cont’d

Jerry Pournelle of sci-fi fame (Oct. 11, scroll down) got an unsolicited email from an outfit called “National Association of Personal Injury Lawyers” offering a “limited-time, complimentary membership” allowing for a listing on its website http://www.napil.com as a nifty “method to get more personal injury clients”.

I could compare notes on the subject, since I got a (somewhat differently worded) email from the same outfit in October (sent to an email address which is available to website visitors, but which I don’t use to subscribe to anything; it receives a lot of spam). And I, too, can vouch with confidence that I never requested or invited email from NAPIL.

According to the email I got, “There is no Sign-up fee, no annual fee. You only pay a voluntary referral fee when we give you a lead and you settle the case and earn your fee. To comply with most State Bars’ prohibition against fee sharing, we have no mandatory fee sharing agreement. When you do pay us a fee, you will share fee with a lawyer.” In the “P.S.”, it said: “Our website www.napil.com is on the top on Yahoo and MSN” — not a very useful boast without any specification of which search term results in their being “on the top”.

More on spam promoting lawyers and lawsuits: Jan. 5, 2005, Mar. 29-31, 2002.

P.S.: Well, that didn’t take long. This morning (Monday), less than a day after posting the item, I got an email from NAPIL, by its appearance sent to a wide audience rather than to me alone, adding specificity to the “at the top” boast. It says: “www.napil.com is on the top of Yahoo search. If you search for the term Personal Injury Lawyers on Yahoo, NAPIL is the Number One Result.” This claim checked out as true, as a visit to Yahoo confirmed. It goes on to claim: “We are also on the top on MSN.” When I visited MSN, I found that NAPIL turned up on the first page of results (at #9) when I entered the search phrase “personal injury lawyers” with quotation marks around it, but did not turn up on the first page when I omitted the quotation marks.

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Deep pocket files: blaming banks for terrorist attacks

In the Middle East dispute, it’s not just the Left that files silly lawsuits (Mar. 16). A Hamas suicide bomber, Raed Abdul Hamid Misk, injured Tzvi Weiss in an August 19, 2003 attack. Weiss and his family seek damages—against a British bank, National Westminster Bank, and no one else. Why? Hamas receives money from a group called “the Union of Good [sic].” The Union of Good raises funds that are channeled through Interpal. And Interpal, which was designated as a terrorist organization by the United States on August 22, 2003 (three days after the suicide bombing), has some bank accounts at NatWest. (The U.K., however, where the bank is located, disagrees with the U.S. assessment, and refuses to label Interpal as a terrorist organization.) Thus, the plaintiffs seek to hold the bank (and only the bank) liable. (Carrick Mollenkamp, “Making Banks Accountable for Terror”, Wall Street Journal, Jan. 6). Why stop with banks? Why not the grocers? The AEI Liability Project has a copy of the memorandum in support of the motion to dismiss on its “Documents In The News” page. Earlier successful deep-pocket search holding innocents liable for act of terrorist: Oct. 27. Update Oct. 8: judge denies motion to dismiss.

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“Ovenware will get hot when used in oven” and other wacky warnings

Everyone loves M-LAW‘s annual Wacky Warning awards (2005, 2004, and links therein), and this year’s winners in the ninth edition of the contest are no exception. Bobcat-urine users are informed that it’s not for human consumption; “Never try to catch a falling knife”; and don’t try to use a 1000-degree paint-removing heat-gun as a hair dryer are among other winners.

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Little white lies — to protect the bar’s image

The Texas Young Lawyers Association has published one of those “Fact/Fiction” guides to the jury selection process. Among its assertions: “Fiction: Lawyers ask questions designed to figure out who will help reach a verdict in their client’s favor.” And, by contrast, “Fact: The main thing we’re looking for from potential jurors is the ability to be open to both sides of a debate.”

Clay Conrad at JuryGeek (Dec. 18) finds this a good example of “Why People Think Lawyers Are Liars” and explains:

Let me make it clear: any associate with my law firm who looks mainly for jurors to be open to both sides of a debate will be unemployed before Voir Dire is over. We want jurors who will NEVER, EVER under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, WHATEVER THE EVIDENCE consider the other side of the debate. We want jurors who are 100% biased towards our side, 100% hostile to the other side, and if we can get 12 of them, we want them.

We will settle for a fair and impartial jury, as a bare minimum. We assume, and have never seen this assumption proven wrong, that the other side is also seeking jurors who will be committed to their case, and biased against ours. That’s the way the game is played – and shame on TYLA for lying to the public and prospective jurors about it….

Any lawyer who says he wants a fair and impartial jury is either incompetent (being deluded by bar association PR) or is simply lying, lying, lying. The public knows that. I’ve spoken to many high school classes. I ask them what they think a lawyer wants out of a jury, and they tell me a jury that will vote for their client. We know they know. Yet we strangely persist in lying to them when we know we’ll be caught. That’s either insane or stupid.

What is weird is that bar associations lie, to people who they know will KNOW they are lying, in a vain attempt to improve the public image of the bar. What they are in fact doing is proving to the general public that lawyers are liars and manipulators who cannot be trusted – because they lie when, if they gave any thought to it, they’d know they’d be caught by anyone with two brain cells to rub together.

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Islamic Society of Boston

It’s filed lawsuits against “Fox Channel 25, the Boston Herald, and 14 other private citizens and organizations for having conspired to defame the organization.” Its critics aren’t easy to silence, though. (Dean Barnett, “A Mosque Grows in Boston”, Weekly Standard, Dec. 14; Mark Jurkowitz, “Trial and terror”, Boston Phoenix, Nov. 18-24; Jeff Jacoby, “Questions the Islamic Society should answer”, Boston Globe, Jan. 1 (via Dan Kennedy)).

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Hiring illegals = racketeering, cont’d

Plaintiff’s class action lawyers have been making progress lately on theories of this sort, which doesn’t thrill Tom Veal at Stromata (Jan. 3). More: PoL Jul. 17, 2005, Jul. 12, 2004; this site Dec. 13-14, 2001.

More: the Supreme Court has agreed to review carpetmaker Mohawk Industries’ claim that it shouldn’t have to face a hiring-aliens-as-racketeering lawsuit (see PoL Jul. 12, 2004)(Meredith Hobbs, “High Court Will Hear Mohawk’s Bid to Toss RICO Suit by Employee”, Fulton County Daily Report, Dec. 20).

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Overlawyered Italy

Gadfly Signor Cascioli has engaged in three years of litigation against local priest Father Enrico Righi on the grounds that Christianity violates Italy’s version of consumer fraud laws. A court of appeal reinstated the suit after the trial court threw it out. (Richard Owen, “Prove Christ exists, judge orders priest”, The Times, Jan. 3; Phil Stewart, “Did Jesus exist? Italian court to decide”, Reuters, Jan. 3) (via Bashman). Update Feb. 11: case thrown out again.

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Bounced check can secure car insurance

Thus ruled the West Virginia Supreme Court in a 4-1 decision, over a heated dissent from Justice Spike Maynard. Reports the Charleston Daily Mail: “Stephanie Michelle Conley sent West Virginia National a worthless check just days before she was involved in an accident on Aug. 31, 2001. According to the suit, Conley’s negligence behind the wheel caused injury to three people.” A lower court ordered the insurance company to make good on the policy. Justice Joseph P. Albright, in the majority, said the high court was simply applying existing precedent. (Bryan Chambers, “Car insurance ruling raises concerns”, Huntington Herald-Dispatch, Dec. 10; “Court Upholds W. Va. Woman’s Coverage, Despite Bounced Check”, Insurance Journal, Dec. 12; “Maynard is wrong, Albright contends”, Charleston Daily Mail, Dec. 22).

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