Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Archive for 2006

There oughta be a law!

A recent, much-talked-about New York Times article about middle-aged men who have been out of work for long periods and are not looking very hard for jobs (Louis Uchitelle and David Leonhardt, “Men Not Working, and Not Wanting Just Any Job”, Jul. 31) elicited the following, priceless letter to the editor (Aug. 2):

To the Editor:

The surest way to help these men (and women) is to pass anti-age job discrimination legislation.

There is nothing more repugnant than reading the phrase “but the publisher did not seem to want someone my age.”

This type of discrimination is widely accepted.

If a worker is capable of doing the job well, his age should not count against him.

If we do not address this problem soon, with increasing longevity among our citizens, we will become a nation of the underemployed, something our society can ill afford.

Bonnie Schultz
Princeton, N.J.

To which our correspondent appends the comment:

Wow. Pass some legislation outlawing discrimination against older workers? Now that’s brilliant! Why didn’t anyone do that yet? Oh, wait.

Why do they publish such a letter? Is someone at the NYT angry with Ms. Schultz and happy to put her in the worst light?

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Trial lawyer “Wikiality”

Stephen Colbert jokingly called Wikipedia’s strange notions of reality “wikiality”; his suggestions for edits to the Wikipedia articles about elephants caused the Wikipedia servers to crash and the article to be “protected.”

But Wikipedia in general suffers from a severe bias; articles about controversial topics reward persistence over accuracy. Wikiality is especially a problem in articles criticizing the plaintiffs’ bar. Articles on Fred Baron, ATLA, and John Edwards’s legal career have been sanitized into hagiographies; articles on medical malpractice and tort reform have been rewritten to emphasize the anti-reform position, deleting pro-reform statistics, arguments, and evidence.

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More on those Alltel ads

Wall Street Journal reporter Andrew Lavallee takes a thorough look at those buzz-creating “join the class action against Alltel” ads that have been running here (see right column) and on about 400 other weblogs (see Jul. 6). He quotes me and mentions this site at both the beginning and end of the article, and the graphic that runs with the article is none other than a screen capture of Overlawyered’s front page with a blowup of the ad. It’s in a section ordinarily available to WSJ subscribers only (“Alltel Spoofs Itself in Online Ads, But Not Everyone Gets the Joke”, Aug. 3) but seems to be temporarily available to non-subscribers here. (& WSJ law blog)

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Update: Michael Jordan lookalike drops suit

Updating our Jul. 8 item:

The Northeast Portland man who sought more than $800 million from Michael Jordan and Nike founder Phil Knight because he said he was tired of being mistaken for the famous basketball player is giving up his defamation lawsuit….

Vada Manager, Nike spokesman, said no payment was made to [Allen Ray] Heckard to get him to drop the lawsuit.

“It’s fairly simple,” Manager said Monday. “He finally realized he would end up paying our court costs if the lawsuit went to trial.”

(Holly Danks, “Man throws in towel on Jordan lawsuit”, The Oregonian, Aug. 1). For more on the principle that costs should follow the event — and not just in cases as wacky as this one — see our loser-pays page.

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Update: Diet-book author drops suit against Coke

The Coca-Cola Co. can rest easy: diet-book author Julia Havey has withdrawn her lawsuit (see Jul. 17) charging that one of the company’s product loyalty campaigns encourages kids to consume so many soft drinks that they could die. Havey declared herself satisfied that a Coke spokesman told the press that purchasers seeking to accumulate product credits could share the soft drinks with friends instead of being obliged to consume them all personally. Coke has said Havey’s lawsuit is a publicity ploy intended to call attention to her release of a new diet book. And this:

Havey said she wouldn’t be surprised if Coca-Cola sued her.

“The world of litigation is a crazy place,” she said.

(“Lawsuit Over ‘Lethal Doses’ Of Coca-Cola Dropped”, KPRC Houston, Aug. 2).

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Mich. high court reinstates Geoffrey Fieger reprimand

By a 4-3 margin, the Supreme Court of Michigan has ruled that the First Amendment does not protect “the interests of an officer of the court in uttering vulgar epithets toward the court in a pending case” (decision in PDF format, p. 19) and has therefore sent back a case involving the disciplining of Geoffrey Fieger with instructions to reinstate the reprimand. After seeing a $15 million medical malpractice verdict overturned, Michigan’s most prominent plaintiff’s lawyer had described the appellate judges who ruled against him as variously “jackasses”, “Hitler”, “Goebbels” and “Eva Braun”, said that he was declaring war on them, said that they could kiss a portion of his anatomy not generally revealed in public, and repeatedly proposed that various objects be employed to assault a similar location on their persons.

In dissent, Justice Michael Cavanagh wrote that it matters not whether Fieger violated “a disciplinary rule he swore to obey when admitted to the practice of law”. The point is instead that “the judiciary, upon which is conferred unique powers, significant influence and considerable insulation, must not be so shielded that the public is denied its right to temper this institution”. Which raises at least one question: in what sense should Fieger be counted as a member of the “public” for these purposes? As a lawyer deputized with power to initiate compulsory process to drag unwilling parties into the Michigan courts, wouldn’t it be fair to say that “unique powers, significant influence and considerable insulation” have been conferred on him, too, in exchange for which he might reasonably be asked to submit to professional rules not applicable to the general public to guard against the abuse of these unique powers? (Dawson Bell, “Fieger reprimanded for attacks on judges”, Detroit Free Press, Jul. 31; Charlie Cain, “High court reinstates Fieger reprimand for comments”, Detroit News, Aug. 1).

We covered the controversy at hand (and its underlying lawsuit) Sept. 14, 1999, May 3, 2001, and Apr. 3, 2006. Other coverage of Fieger’s antics can be found here.

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Fantasy sports leagues? Shut ’em down

A class-action law firm, Gardy & Notis, is suing ESPN, Viacom, Disney, CBS, Hearst, and The Sporting News, among others, alleging that their participation in the thriving field of fantasy sports leagues violates the anti-gambling laws of New Jersey. DeadSpin notes (Jul. 31) that named plaintiff Charles Humphrey “is a resident of Colorado, not New Jersey, and he points out in the suit that he, in fact, has never played any of these fantasy games, unlike you, you heathens.” Humphrey’s press release is here and the complaint (PDF) is here (via Bill Childs and Kevin Heller). The complaint asserts a right to recovery under qui tam (bounty-hunting) laws of Illinois, Georgia and the District of Columbia which allow random outsiders to file lawsuits to recover moneys reaped by way of unlawful gambling.

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Duly noted

Threats against federal judges are on a record-setting pace this year, nearly 18 months after the family of a federal judge was killed in Chicago….

The rise in civil lawsuits, especially those filed by people who do not have lawyers, and a change in criminal cases in federal courts help explain the increase, the marshals say.

Donald Donovan, chief deputy marshal in Baltimore, said people who file and lose multiple lawsuits account for the largest percentage of threats.

Federal courts now handle many more violent crime prosecutions, cases that were once the province of state and local courts….

(Mark Sherman, “An angry trend: Threats against federal judges set record pace”, AP/Boston Globe, Jul. 28).

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Dead man suing

Madison County, Illinois, inimitable as ever: “For two-and-a-half years the Lakin Law Firm has carried on a Madison County class action lawsuit with a dead plaintiff,” reports the Madison Record, which says Lakin lawyer Jeffrey Millar did not inform Circuit Judge Daniel Stack about his client’s having assumed room temperature. The defendant, American Family Insurance, eventually twigged to it, and now the Lakin firm plans to switch to a live plaintiff from Ohio so as to keep the suit going. “Millar has confirmed the death of [client Manuel Hernandez of Granite City], but he has not answered questions that American Family Insurance submitted about his knowledge of it. Millar objected to the questions, arguing to Stack that American Family Insurance should submit them not to Hernandez’s attorney but to Hernandez himself.” (Steve Korris, “Dead plaintiff should answer questions, class counsel argues”, Jul. 20)(via Insurance Coverage Blog).

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