Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Archive for 2006

$20 million for nursing home death

[84-year-old Loren] Richards died on March 2, 2002, at Beverly Health and Rehabilitation of Frankfort.

Richards’ daughter, Wanda Delaplane, sued the home, alleging that nurses had ignored her father’s repeated calls for help with abdominal pain. With an impacted bowel, he later died of a heart attack and a blood clot in his left lung.

The home argued that Richards had a heart attack because he had smoked for years and had severely blocked arteries. The Kentucky jury also awarded $200,000 for failing to immediately notify the family of a downward turn in Richards’ health. The Richards family had asked for over $150 million in total damages. Delaplane is an attorney with the Kentucky Attorney General’s office, so you know which government agency not to complain to when nursing home expenses go through the roof because of the liability insurance costs. (Greg Kocher, “Man’s estate to get $20 million”, Lexington Herald-Leader, May 5; Greg Kocher, “Nursing home provided proper care, attorney says in closing arguments”, Lexington Herald-Leader, May 3; Steve Lannen, “Nursing home sued for $155 million”, Lexington Herald-Leader, Mar. 23).

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NYC plans “interventions” with diabetics

More scary paternalism in the name of public health from the Bloomberg crew: the New York City government has begun “legally requiring laboratories that do medical testing to report to the Health Department the results of blood-sugar tests for city residents with diabetes — along with the names, ages, and contact information on those patients. City officials are not only analyzing these data to assess patterns and changes in diabetes prevalence in the city, but are planning ‘interventions.’ … If you wish to keep your medical data confidential, you cannot.” Coercive public-health techniques originally seen as needed to combat communicable and infectious disease will now be deployed in hopes of correcting less-than-healthy individual behavior. Where’s HIPAA, the manically overbroad federal patient-privacy law, now that it might actually do some good? (Elizabeth Whelan, “Big Brother Will See You Now”, National Review Online, Apr. 25).

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From the lawyers-as-legislators file

There’s nothing tremendously surprising about, say, a criminal defense lawyer winning election as a state legislator and then using his or her influence to strengthen due process protections for persons accused of crimes or to lower excessive penalties for those convicted. But what are we to make of the much rarer, opposite phenomenon — the criminal defense lawyer who gets elected and then pushes for the application of more stringent penalties against people like his own clients? Jerry Stratton, Charles Homiller, Radley Balko, and Lines in the Sand all discuss the case of Virginia Del. David Albo, a Fairfax Republican whose day job is as a lawyer defending motorists from DUI and other traffic charges. Del. Albo is also a sponsor of a bill in Richmond that would stiffen traffic fines as a way of providing money to fund transportation projects, and he has been the sponsor over the years of numerous other bills that make life more difficult for traffic defendants. Radley Balko is perhaps uncharitable when he suggests that the motive of lawyer/legislators like Albo is to “[steer] customers toward their criminal defense practices” — it’s possible, after all, for a lawyer to hold honest convictions that happen to be adverse to their clients’ interests. But it’s hard not to join in Balko’s parting observation: “I wonder if Albo tells his clients that he wrote many of the laws they’ve hired him to defend them from.” Update: Point of Law, Jun. 25, 2007.

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Deep pocket files: Stevens v. NYC Transit Authority

In this reported case, a nameless plaintiff was pushed onto the railroad tracks in front of an oncoming train by a nameless third party, and sued the NYCTA for her personal injuries because the train didn’t stop in time. A jury found the NYCTA 40% at fault for “speeding,” despite conflicting testimony whether it was even physically possible for the train to stop in time at the slower speed. The court was kind enough to reduce this to 20%, which still puts taxpayers on the entire hook for economic damages, if halving the noneconomic damages under New York’s version of joint and several liability.

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Update: Teflon class actions

Class action lawyers are seeking to roll together lawsuits against DuPont on behalf of persons in fifteen states who’ve bought the non-stick cookware, whether or not those persons feel aggrieved or have inadvertently left empty pans unattended on the heat with resulting fumes. The sum bandied about as a remedy, $5 billion, hasn’t changed since we covered the story last summer (Jul. 20), but the tone of the plaintiff’s lawyers has grown noticeably more alarmist, as in the case of Kim Baer of Des Moines, who claims that “the material could become toxic when heated ‘enough to fry an egg'”. (“Plaintiffs seek class action in DuPont Teflon lawsuit”, AP/Richmond Times-Dispatch, Apr. 21). And lead plaintiff’s counsel Alan J. Kluger contends: “This stuff shouldn’t be on the market, period.” (Peter Geier, “Teflon Litigators Hope Class Action Sticks”, National Law Journal, Apr. 26).

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