Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Archive for September, 2007

More managers being sued personally

It’s not just organizations and enterprises who have to worry about these things, as the National Law Journal takes note in a trend story:

An increasing number of executives, managers and other company leaders are being sued personally for their work-related decisions….

“State laws are constantly being broadened and liberally construed by the courts to allow for potential lawsuits against individuals,” said Thomas Lewis, chairman of the employment litigation group at Stark & Stark in Lawrenceville, N.J. In the last five years, Lewis has seen a 50 percent increase in his own practice defending executives in personal lawsuits.

“[Plaintiffs’ attorneys’] desire is to strike fear into the executive to try and force a settlement,” he said.

Plaintiffs attorneys don’t see it that way. “Sometimes you’ve got to hit the executive between the eyes with a lawsuit,” said S. David Worhatch, an employee rights attorney in Stow, Ohio, who is currently handling a half-dozen employment-related lawsuits targeting individuals directly….

“Individuals will think twice before engaging in such conduct if they realize they can be personally exposed to liability.” he said….

Ginger McRae, an employment law expert who testifies in employment lawsuits and consults businesses on employment practices… noted that “[i]n the past few years, I’ve definitely seen more of a trend to this, and definitely in the state cases where there are state tort claims. That is where the plaintiffs lawyers really have the most freedom to name who they want.”

Plaintiffs attorneys note that state courts are easier venues in which to try personal lawsuits, largely because state discrimination and employment laws are looser than federal ones and allow for individuals to be held personally liable for various workplace violations.

Query: where the story reads “Plaintiffs attorneys don’t see it that way,” wouldn’t it make more sense for it to have read “Plaintiffs attorneys see it exactly the same way”? (Tresa Baldas, “Employment Litigation Gets Personal for Company Managers”, National Law Journal, Aug. 16).

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“Limits proposed on fast-food restaurants”

“Amid worries of an obesity epidemic and its related illnesses, including high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease, Los Angeles officials, among others around the country, are proposing to limit new fast-food restaurants — a tactic that could be called health zoning.” Zoning restrictions on fast-food outlets in towns such as Concord, Mass. and Calistoga, Calif. are typically based on traffic or aesthetic concerns, rather than a determination to second-guess what residents choose to eat. The proposed L.A. restrictions would not be city-wide but would instead be specifically targeted to the city’s poorest sections in and around South Central. Mark Vallianatos, director of something called the Center for Food and Justice at Occidental College (more about it), says “bringing health policy and environmental policy together with land-use planning” is “the wave of the future.” (Tami Abdollah, L.A. Times, Sept. 10)(via FEE).

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Emily Bazelon on personal responsibility

Slate’s Emily Bazelon doesn’t read the owners’ manual for her car, does something the owners’ manual explicitly says not to do—recline a seat in a moving car—and hurts herself. Bazelon blames… the automaker and NHTSA for not doing more to warn her, and serves as a mouthpiece for plaintiffs’ lawyers who specialize in such arguments, lionizing one who won a $59 million verdict against Toyota for his client’s own foolhardiness.

The NHTSA official Bazelon talks to points out that she’s taking one safety issue out of context; Bazelon pooh-poohs it because, after all, it happened to her and some other people, too! But Bazelon ignores that there are several dozen other dangerous problems addressed in the owners’ manual, many of which would kill or injure far more passengers than reclined drivers’ seats. One cannot just look at the idea of putting a single additional sticker on the dashboard: the car would have to be literally wallpapered with additional warnings to cover every warning of a matter at least as hazardous as car-seat reclining, at which point we’re back to the problem of owners ignoring warnings. Bazelon simply fails to address this reality.

But, hey, I’ll join Bazelon in telling you: don’t recline your car seat in a moving vehicle. (Long-time Overlawyered readers already know this from two separate posts.) Also, don’t drive with your windows open, your doors unlocked, or your seatbelt unfastened. Reattach your gas cap after filling the tank. Look behind you and ensure the path is clear before going in reverse. Keep your eyes on the road. Don’t pass a car in a no-pass zone or drive twice the speed-limit. Sit up straight, especially in a front seat with airbags. Don’t have loose heavy objects (including unbelted passengers) in the passenger compartment of the car. Don’t permit children to play with power windows; don’t leave children unattended in a car that is on; don’t leave the car on when you’re not in it; don’t try to jump into a moving vehicle. Don’t leave your shoes loose while driving. Be careful when shifting gears. Do not violently swerve an SUV, especially if there are unbelted passengers. Always be aware of the danger of pedal misapplication. Don’t fall asleep while driving. Don’t drive recklessly, and if you do, don’t leave the road. Use your parking brake when you park. Replace a tire after repeatedly patching it; don’t drive on bald tires in the rain; and replace your ten-year old tires before you have to drive on a spare. Make sure your floor mat isn’t interfering with the pedals. Don’t drive into the back of a truck at 60 mph without braking. Et cetera.

(And welcome, Instapundit readers. Check out our vast selection of automobile and personal responsibility articles.)

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Chicago parking tickets

The city known for ghost voters also has ghost parking signage, it would seem:

[Heather Thome] was dismayed when she returned to find a police officer had just written a ticket for violating a parking ban from 4 to 6 p.m.

“I asked him where the sign was,” said Thome, 35, a temp worker. “He said there used to be a sign on ‘that’ pole, and it hasn’t been there for two years. My logical question was, ‘How can you write a ticket?’ And he told me he doesn’t want to, but his boss tells him he has to go out every day and write tickets.” … She [appealed but] still was found liable.

(Gary Washburn, “City rakes in revenue from tickets”, Chicago Tribune, Aug. 12). More: Cernovich.

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“Everybody, that is, except the guys who did it.”

Mark Steyn throws down the gauntlet:

Last week the New York Times carried a story about the current state of the 9/11 lawsuits. Relatives of 42 of the dead are suing various parties for compensation, on the grounds that what happened that Tuesday morning should have been anticipated. The law firm Motley Rice, diversifying from its traditional lucrative class-action hunting grounds of tobacco, asbestos and lead paint, is promising to put on the witness stand everybody who “allowed the events of 9/11 to happen.” And they mean everybody – American Airlines, United, Boeing, the airport authorities, the security firms – everybody, that is, except the guys who did it.

According to the Times, many of the bereaved are angry and determined that their loved one’s death should have meaning. Yet the meaning they’re after surely strikes our enemies not just as extremely odd but as one more reason why they’ll win. You launch an act of war, and the victims respond with a lawsuit against their own countrymen.

But that’s the American way: Almost every news story boils down to somebody standing in front of a microphone and announcing that he’s retained counsel. Last week, it was Larry Craig. Next week, it’ll be the survivors of Ahmadinejad’s nuclear test in Westchester County. As Andrew McCarthy pointed out, a legalistic culture invariably misses the forest for the trees. Sen. Craig should know that what matters is not whether an artful lawyer can get him off on a technicality but whether the public thinks he trawls for anonymous sex in public bathrooms. Likewise, those 9/11 families should know that, if you want your child’s death that morning to have meaning, what matters is not whether you hound Boeing into admitting liability but whether you insist that the movement that murdered your daughter is hunted down and the sustaining ideological virus that led thousands of others to dance up and down in the streets cheering her death is expunged from the earth.

(Mark Steyn, “No terrorism, just war?”, Orange County Register, Sept. 9; Anemona Hartocollis, “Little-Noticed 9/11 Lawsuits Will Go to Trial”, New York Times, Sept. 4; also to the point).

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September 10 roundup

All-New England edition:

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“Inappropriate and unethical behavior”

Litigious populist Larry Klayman, once a legal scourge of the Clinton White House and a repeat mentionee on this site (May 7 and links from there), has once again drawn rebuke from the bench. This time Judge Walter Tolub has denied Klayman the right to appear in his Manhattan courtroom, saying Klayman’s “record demonstrates more than an occasional lapse of judgment, it evinces a total disregard for the judicial process”:

The judge cited seven instances in which Klayman had been rebuked or sanctioned by federal judges. One of those was Southern District of New York Judge Denny Chin, who in 1997 sanctioned Klayman for making “preposterous” claims and engaging in “abusive and obnoxious” behavior.

Klayman, who vows to appeal the ruling, is seeking the right to represent former New York Post gossip reporter Jared Paul Stern in a lawsuit against billionaire Ronald Burkle. (Anthony Lin, “Klayman Denied N.Y. Admission in Former Gossip Reporter’s Suit Against Billionaire”, New York Law Journal, Sept. 7).

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Mississippi judicial scandal: Paul Minor sentenced to 11 years

Once among the South’s most financially successful and politically influential plaintiff’s lawyers, attorney Paul Minor was sentenced on Friday to 11 years in federal prison following his conviction in a judicial bribery scandal we’ve covered extensively at this site. Two former judges convicted in the case, John Whitfield and Wes Teel, drew sentences of 110 months and 70 months respectively. Minor’s lawyers had asked that he be sentenced to time served, and supporters had sent letters by the sackful asking for leniency. (“Gulf Coast lawyer Paul Minor gets 11 years in prison for bribing Miss. judges”, AP/Natchez Democrat, Sept. 7; Jimmie Gates, “Minor, ex-judges sentenced in bribery case”, Jackson Clarion Ledger, Sept. 7).

Judge Henry Wingate also fined Minor $2.75 million and ordered him to pay $1.5 million in restitution, not quite as telling a blow to his fortunes as one might assume, given that “Minor earns up to $2.5 million a year from a settlement with tobacco companies,” not to mention all the other money he’s made (Robin Fitzgerald, “‘Lady Justice Is Sobbing”, Biloxi Sun-Herald, Sept. 8). Minor is also being sued by insurer USF&G, which paid out a $1.5 million settlement to a bank represented by Minor in a case before Judge Teel. (Julie Goodman, “Minor’s legal woes won’t end when he goes to prison”, Jackson Clarion Ledger, Sept. 8).

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Did we mention the Overlawyered.com Facebook Group?

(Bumping September 6 post. Still only 113 members. Which means (1) without some more recruiting, we’re not going to hit the charity goal; and (2) the rest of you are missing the discussion Walter and I had over the Democrats and tort reform, plus the bonus links Walter and I are providing.)

I’ll be forthright: the Overlawyered.com Facebook Group was created as an experiment to see whether there were other media by which Overlawyered could deliver its content. (And it did have the side effect of getting Walter Olson to join Facebook.) And we’re providing extra content there that isn’t on the blog, plus the opportunity of open threads that our Movable Type blogging software doesn’t provide.

Perhaps our readers are too mature for Facebook. (The #1 “related group” for the Overlawyered group isn’t something libertarian or law-related, but “Unlike 99.99% of the Facebook population, I was born in the 70s”—and Walter and I are too old even for that group.) And we’re not asking you to join Facebook if you’re not already a member. But, if we do have readers on Facebook, we’d like to see you in our group: your membership passively helps promote the site and spread the word in the increasingly crowded legal blog market. The larger our readership, the easier it is for Walter and I to self-justify spending time blogging instead of writing for conventional mainstream publications. Everyone wins!

The question is whether Facebook is a good vehicle to accomplish this goal. With so few members in our Facebook group, I’m skeptical: it’s not worth the effort to create extra content for a few dozen extra readers, and the group would become dormant. So I’m going to try another experiment. I’m setting a goal of getting 1000 members into our Facebook group by September 30. If we reach that membership goal, I promise to donate up to $2000 to a sympatico tax-deductible charity chosen by a thread or poll in the Facebook group—$1000 for the thousandth member, $1 more for every additional member (up to 2000) we have at 11:59 pm Eastern on September 30. What say you, the loyal Overlawyered readership? If you’re a Facebook member, come join our group, and tell your friends about us.

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