Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Archive for May, 2006

Bedbug fame, and Hamptons flipping

Attorney Alan Schnurman of Zalman & Schnurman was recently in the news for filing a sensational $20 million claim of bedbug infestation against a Catskills hotel on behalf of a patron who, curiously, is said to have gone back voluntarily to stay at the same section of the hotel two weeks later (see Mar. 9). Now Peter Lattman at the WSJ law blog (May 5) brings word that Schnurman

from the looks of it, is trying to supplement the millions he earns from a lucrative personal-injury practice by flipping Hamptons real estate.

Last week the 60-year-old Schnurman reportedly listed a 41-acre parcel in the town of Sagaponack for $49.5 million. He paid $25 million for the non-oceanfront property last July. He’s also listed another parcel in Bridgehampton for $37.5 million, having purchased that 25-acre property nine months ago for $15 million.

Now back to your previously scheduled news story about excessive CEO compensation.

Where’s his Mother’s Day present?

More entrepreneurial lawyering in California:

A Los Angeles psychologist who was denied a tote bag during a Mother’s Day giveaway at an Angel game is suing the baseball team, alleging sex and age discrimination.

Michael Cohn’s class-action claim in Orange County Superior Court alleges that thousands of males and fans under 18 were “treated unequally” at a “Family Sunday” promotion last May and are entitled to $4,000 each in damages.

(Dave McKibben, “L.A. Psychologist Who Didn’t Get Tote Bag at Mother’s Day Angel Game Files Lawsuit”, Los Angeles Times, May 11). Cohn’s attorney is Alfred Rava, who (as the L.A. Times really should have found out by Googling Overlawyered, if not its own archives) was among the key figures in the 2003 spree by which owners of San Diego nightspots were hit up for handsome cash settlements for having held “Ladies’ Night” promotions. The Unruh Act, California’s distinctively liberal civil rights statute, allows complainants to demand $4,000 a pop for such misdeeds, and it’s no defense to suggest that the customer’s primary reason for getting involved in the underlying transaction may have been to set up the $4,000 entitlement. More: “Lex Icon” wishes to make clear that he’s not the kind of lawyer who files cases like this (May 13).

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UK: menace of ice-cream vans

Campaigners for compulsory health in Great Britain are pressing for new laws that could largely spell an end to old-fashioned roving ice-cream vans (which in that country, rather charmingly, are said to play “Greensleeves” or “O Sole Mio” as their jingles). (Rajeev Syal and David Sanderson, “Why ice-cream vans face total meltdown”, The Times (UK), May 8)(via A&LDaily).

Nor are grown-ups to be trusted with their own dietary choices any more than kids, at least not in Scotland:

Bar owners have warned they could be forced to stop serving chips and traditional pub meals under proposals by the Scottish Executive.

Under regulations being considered by the Executive, landlords – many of whom are still unhappy at the smoking ban – would be required to have policies to promote “sensible eating” as a condition of their licenses.

(Russell Jackson, “Publicans fear Executive wants ‘unhealthy’ bar meals banned”, The Scotsman, May 5)(via Stuttaford)(& welcome Andrew Sullivan, Stephen Bainbridge readers). Our UK page is here, and our page on food and beverage nannyism, regulation and litigation is here.

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Litigious animal rightsers

San Antonio:

An animal rights group has filed a lawsuit on behalf of seven chimpanzees and two monkeys, claiming the primates are not properly cared for at a Leon Springs sanctuary.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals wants a state district judge in Bexar County to appoint a guardian to oversee more than $235,000 provided for the animals’ care at Primarily Primates.

(“PETA Sues Local Primate Sanctuary “, KSAT, May 8)(via Strange in San Antonio).

Meanwhile, Dan McLaughlin at Baseball Crank reports (Apr. 19) on a Ninth Circuit decision (PDF) which “permitted an animal rights activist’s qui tam suit to go forward under the False Claims Act against a cancer researcher, principally on the theory that the researcher misrepresented the efficacy of his research.” McLaughlin does not pass judgment on whether the research project in question was a good use of public funds:

But I do know that allowing animal rights zealots an opening to use private litigation to harass medical researchers is a horrifying development. You will note, if you review the allegations on pages 6-7 of the slip opinion, that there are no allegations of the kind of things the False Claims Act is intended to protect against, i.e., personal enrichment, bill padding, and/or cost overruns by government contractors. Instead, there are a series of charges mainly relating to the medical merits of the research – a subject that will often be difficult for a judge without medical expertise to resolve on a motion to dismiss (where you assume the truth of the plaintiff’s allegations) or even on summary judgment (where the defendant only wins if it can show that there are no material factual disputes). Result: protracted and expensive litigation whenever anti-animal-research fanatics can gin up a factual dispute and hire an expert to bicker over anything said in a research application, with the attendant chilling effect on life-saving research. Indeed, from the docket numbers on the caption it appears that this particular case has already dragged on for five years just on the dispute over the legal merits.

Of course, harassment via legal process may compare favorably with some of the ways animal rights zealots have been known to harass researchers.

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Paternity fraud

National Law Journal takes a look at one of the hot issues in family law: whether a man can terminate child support payments if DNA testing reveals that he is not in fact the father of the child he has been supporting. Or should he perhaps be given some legal remedy against the mother other than the right to suspend support? (Tresa Baldas, “Parent Trap? Litigation Explodes Over Paternity Fraud”, Apr. 10).

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