Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Archive for 2006

Why they aren’t running the cartoons

The Boston Phoenix (“World of Pain”, Feb. 9) tells readers that “frankly, the primary reason” it isn’t going to run the Danish Muhammed cartoons:

Out of fear of retaliation from the international brotherhood of radical and bloodthirsty Islamists who seek to impose their will on those who do not believe as they do. …Simply stated, we are being terrorized, and as deeply as we believe in the principles of free speech and a free press, we could not in good conscience place the men and women who work at the Phoenix and its related companies in physical jeopardy. As we feel forced, literally, to bend to maniacal pressure, this may be the darkest moment in our 40-year publishing history.

Somewhere there’s probably an issue of vicarious/employer liability lurking in here — if printing the cartoons did lead to violence, the Phoenix’s owners might well end up having to pay. But of course the venerable alt-weekly’s stance is practically a profile in courage compared with that of editors, publishers, governments and university officials in many other places, including South Africa (bans publication of images), Sweden (reported to have shut down website carrying them), Canada’s Prince Edward Island (university confiscates student newspaper, edict forbids weblog comments) and so on (Michelle Malkin roundup, Feb. 9). Commentaries worth reading: Krauthammer, Kinsley, and, from a different perspective, a commenter at Andrew Sullivan’s. (More on the cartoons here and here.)

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“Hells Angels get $990 K for dead dogs”

Rottweilers can be expensive dept.: “A California county will pay nearly $1 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club after police shot and killed three guard dogs during raids of the group’s headquarters and suspected members’ homes.” Santa Clara County supervisors okayed the $990,000 settlement “two months after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the county’s arguments that sheriff’s deputies should be immune from liability in the case.” The city of San Jose has refused to settle and may go to trial as a defendant. “Lower court judges ruled that actions of the deputies and San Jose police officers during the January 1998 were unreasonable, most of the evidence obtained was unnecessary and the officers did nothing to avoid killing the animals. A lawyer for club members says a lot of property was destroyed in the raids and some evidence was kept for more than a year.” (AP/CNN, Feb. 7). “Although they had a week to plan for the raids and knew of the existence of guard dogs, including a Rottweiler, the San Jose police officers failed to do anything to find a non-lethal way of incapacitating the animals, the courts said.” (Barry Witt, “Hells Angels win nearly $1 million from Santa Clara County”, San Jose Mercury News, Feb. 6). More than half the settlement, $530,000, will go to the lawyers representing the club, with the remaining $460,000 to be divided up among victims of the raid.

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“Not for diagnostic purposes”

That’s a legally-driven warning formula, of course, intended to repel the specter of liability lawsuits if a diagnosis goes wrong and the lawyers begin casting around for parties to sue. GruntDoc notices it being used on an item that plainly is for diagnostic purposes (Feb. 6).

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Flying shrimp not so fatal after all

Peter Lattman reports that a jury took two hours to reject the claim that dodging a flying shrimp at a Benihana restaurant caused Jerry Colaitis’s death ten months later. Some opponents of liability reform might use this as evidence that the system works, but Benihana is still out the exorbitant cost of the attorney time required to prepare for and defend a four-week trial, which was certainly in the six digits, and perhaps the seven digits, effectively punishing them for not paying protection money. (Corey Kilgannon, “Jury to Decide if Flying Sizzling Shrimp Led to Man’s Death”, New York Times, Feb. 9). We were way in front of this story in the blogosphere, reporting on it Nov. 23, 2004 and Jan. 13.

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Where are the privacy advocates?

Years worth of an executive’s personal emails, discussing details of his finances and purchases, are obtained and combed over by dozens of people against his will, and some are even posted on the Internet for all to see.

If I relayed that scenario to you, you would probably expect the San Francisco Chronicle and CNN to express outrage and concern, bemoan the lack of privacy in today’s society, and canvas public-interest groups for quotes calling for public and private action; if it turned out it had been done by a member of the executive branch, some would call for impeachment. But when the emails are Larry Ellison’s, they were obtained through civil discovery (Jan. 31) by plaintiffs’ lawyers in a lawsuit rehashing allegations made in two other completed lawsuits, and released to the public by a judge, the Chronicle and CNN shrug their shoulders and print them in a front-page article. (Carrie Kirby, “Inside look at a billionaire’s budget”, San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 31; CNN, Feb. 1). More on the Ellison litigation at Point of Law Nov. 23 and links therein.

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“Fair housing” suit against Craigslist

“The Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law sued San Francisco-based Craigslist, claiming that during a six-month period beginning in July, the site ran more than 100 ads in Chicago that violated the federal Fair Housing Act. The committee, a public interest consortium of the city’s leading law firms, said in a federal suit that those ads discriminated on race, religion, sex, family status or national origin.” Craigslist does not screen ads in advance, although it gives readers a way to flag unlawful or inappropriate content for possible removal. According to the complaint (Chicago Lawyers Committee v. Craigslist, PDF format), some of the rental ads carried such damning indicators of putative bigotry as “Perfect place for city single” (unfair to families of eight!) and “very quiet street opposite church” (trying to screen out atheists, are you?), and many are plainly for roommate shares or other live-in situations. Paging David Bernstein! (Mike Hughlett, “Craigslist sued over housing ad bias”, Chicago Tribune/Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, Feb. 8)(via Reynolds). Eric Goldman says a similar earlier suit against Roommate.com did not fare well (Feb. 8). For more on the issue of “discrimination” in roommate selection, see Jul. 10-11, 2002; for more on such complaints against Craigslist, see Aug. 10, 2005. (& welcome Instapundit readers).

P.S. As requested, David Bernstein weighs in (Feb. 9), as does Eugene Volokh.

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Pirate’s booty indeed?

Speaking of which: “A New York appeals court has thrown out a $3.5 million class action settlement — and $790,000 in attorney fees — over snack foods that were found to have more fat than advertised. The court found that the trial judge who approved the settlement did not adequately consider the relevant factors in certifying a class over Pirate’s Booty snacks. The opinion also said the attorneys who worked on the case had offered an insufficient explanation of their work to justify the fees.” Manhattan journalist Meredith Berkman, who had filed the original suit, objected to the settlement and attempted to opt out of the class; her lawyer, David Jaroslawicz, said: “This is the type of thing that brought class settlements into disrepute”. (Tom Perrotta, “Court Rejects Class Settlement and Attorney Fees in Suit Over Nutrition Data”, New York Law Journal, Feb. 7). See Apr. 23-24, 2002.

More: Ted is covering the case in considerably more detail at Point of Law. Plus: David Giacalone (Feb. 10).

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“Low-Fat Diet Does Not Cut Health Risks, Study Finds”

A big oooops for one whole sector of obesity litigation and food nannyism in general:

“These studies are revolutionary,” said Dr. Jules Hirsch, physician in chief emeritus at Rockefeller University in New York City, who has spent a lifetime studying the effects of diets on weight and health. “They should put a stop to this era of thinking that we have all the information we need to change the whole national diet and make everybody healthy.”

(Gina Kolata, New York Times, Feb. 8). On the other hand: Cathy Young (Feb. 17) says the new study may not after all prove as much as it might seem to.

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