I’m scheduled to be on Bloomberg TV at 5 pm Eastern talking about the Stoneridge case. See also Point of Law October 6 for more links.
Archive for October, 2007
October 8 Roundup
- The DC Examiner quotes both Walter and me in their series on corruption in the trial bar.
- Damned if you do, damned if you don’t: privacy laws interfere with college mental-health treatment, which of course doesn’t keep them from being sued when the treatment doesn’t work. [LA Times; earlier in April; and May 2006]
- Charlie Weis didn’t just lose his first several games of the season at Notre Dame; he also lost his silly medical malpractice case retrial. [Childs; February in Overlawyered]
- Ninth Circuit revives one claim in deep-vein thrombosis litigation against airlines. [Montalvo v. Spirit Airlines; San Francisco Chronicle; earlier on Overlawyered]
- Hugh Hewitt discusses tort reform with Overlawyered bloggers. [Ted on Hugh Hewitt; Walter on Hugh Hewitt]
- Overlawyered and Public Citizen agree: it’s silly for law firms to try to copyright their nastygrams. [CL&P Blog]
- More on the Target website disability suit. [Open Market; Oct. 3 and links therein]
- Utah Supreme Court adopts common-sense product liability rule. [Products Liability Law Prof]
- DC City Council objects to recovering millions spent by city on medical care of patient who sued city after gouging out his own eyes. [DC Examiner; Washington Post; BLT]
- The most embarrassing thing Joe Stiglitz ever wrote? [Manne via Boudreaux; Cowen; Frum]
- Are Overlawyered readers “fringe element” “sycophants”? From the same blogger who says no one can criticize Lynne Stewart unless they personally know her, but I presume that’s “For thee, but not for me”-style hypocrisy. [Scott Greenfield]
“Disrespectful cockalorum…mordaciously sarcastic”
It would appear U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn has reached the end of his patience with attorney Mark E. Brennan, and then some. Throwing out a $1.2 million verdict obtained by Brennan against the city of Denver on a claim of age discrimination against a firefighter, Judge Blackburn condemned Brennan’s courtroom antics as “disgraceful” as well as “boorish and unprofessional”:
“In over 19 years on the bench, I have seen nothing comparable,” the judge wrote. “Such disrespectful cockalorum, grandstanding, bombast, bullying and hyperbole as Mr. Brennan exhibited throughout the trial are quite beyond my experience as a jurist, and, I fervently hope, will remain an aberration during the remainder of my time on the bench.”
(Daniel J. Chacon, “Judge points to lawyer’s antics in junking $1.2 million ruling”, Rocky Mountain News, Oct. 6). No response from Mr. Brennan is recorded yet in the news coverage assembled by Google. The dictionary, incidentally, defines “cockalorum” as “boastful talk; crowing”. P.S. Brennan’s response, as reported in the Rocky Mountain News (via ABA Journal); also more details at On Point News.
No CLE credit for Stewart panel
Hofstra’s Monroe Freedman announces the news (cross-posted from Point of Law; earlier coverage).
$222,000 for sharing 24 songs
Good thing copyright infringement law isn’t punitive or anything (David Kravets, “RIAA Trial Produces Playlist of the Century”, Wired News, Oct. 4; more; Recording Industry vs. The People, Oct. 5; via Sullivan). Meanwhile, from the same state, same day, comes word that a school bus driver who pleaded guilty to drinking on the job has been fined $482. (“Bus driver pleads guilty to alcohol charge”, AP/Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Aug. 5; Lileks via Reynolds). More: Declan McCullagh, “Why the RIAA should have won (though the fine was too high)”, CNet, Oct. 5.
Update: Object to a class action settlement, face a RICO suit
Updating our Jun. 22 item: Madison County, Ill. Circuit Judge Andy Matoesian has dismissed without prejudice a racketeering suit brought by class action lawyers against outside class members and lawyers who’d raised objections to the alleged inadequacy of a settlement. Attorneys Stephen Swedlow and Stephen Tillery, who’d reached a $63.8 million settlement with GlaxoSmithKline over its marketing of the drug Paxil, claimed the objections of lawyers N. Albert Bacharach, Jr. and Paul S. Rothstein and citizen Lillian Rogers were frivolous and extortionate. (Steve Gonzalez, “Matoesian dismisses suit against Paxil objectors”, Madison St. Clair Record, Sept. 7).
9/11 suits: I guess it was about the money after all
The families of 9/11 victims who refused the Feinberg fund results and demanded more through lawsuits piously reported repeatedly that it wasn’t about the money, that they just wanted to publicize the truth in their lawsuits against fellow victims such as the airlines and airports and multiple other deep pockets. Now that several cases have settled—and the plaintiffs have agreed to confidentiality clauses—Shaun Mullen and Ed Morrissey suggest that it was about the money after all.
$6.1 million verdict in McDonald’s strip-search case
I’m going to have much much more to say about this case, but for now, let us simply note that a jury found for the plaintiff in a lawsuit against McDonald’s over her victimization by a perverted prank phone call, and awarded $6.1 million; we mentioned the incident in the comments to this lengthy September 2006 discussion of a similar lawsuit that was thrown out of court, and first noted the potential for litigation in April 2004, days before the actual incident took place in this suit.
What the press coverage to date has not mentioned is that the person who almost certainly perpetrated the incident was acquitted after the Kentucky case fell apart because the criminal defense attorney was able to impeach the witnesses by noting their financial stakes in the civil litigation decided today. Thus, thanks to our civil litigation system’s quest for the deep pocket, the guilty party went free and a tertiary innocent victim got hit with damages. Which is precisely why it’s a misnomer when trial lawyers rename themselves associations for “justice.”
Backfire in Bloomberg lawsuit
NYC Mayor Bloomberg’s lawsuits against out-of-state gun dealers continue in New York City, thanks to Judge Weinstein (see Aug. 27, and links therein), but it’s not all rosy for the mayor. As we previously reported, some of the gun dealers targeted by Bloomberg’s sting are fighting back, and one of them won a victory last month:
Questioning the legality of tactics used by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to sue gun dealers, a federal judge in Atlanta has allowed a defamation suit by a Smyrna, Ga., gun shop against Bloomberg and other New York City officials to go forward.
Although the judge dismissed the Smyrna gun seller’s negligence claims against New York officials, he declared that six of 13 potentially defamatory statements were actionable and cleared the way for a tortious interference with business claim.
[…]
Bloomberg, accompanied by other New York public officials, announced the results of the sting — and the accompanying suit — in May 2006 at a news conference. According to court records in the case, Bloomberg called the gun dealers “a group of bad apples who routinely ignore federal regulations,” and Feinblatt said that the targeted gun dealers had “New Yorkers’ blood on their hands.” Forrester ruled that both of those statements are vulnerable to liability claims.
More importantly, the judge denied Bloomberg’s request to transfer the case to New York, where it would have been heard by Judge Weinstein. (Bloomberg is attempting to get the decision reversed, but for now, the suit against him is active.)
In other gun-related litigation, it seems that Gary, Indiana’s lawsuit against gun manufacturers may continue, despite the fact that Congress passed a law explicitly banning such lawsuits; as in New York City’s war on gun manufacturers, activist judges seem to want to interpret away Congress’s words. (Last week, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in Manhattan in an appeal of Judge Weinstein’s ruling allowing the city’s lawsuit to proceed. (Earlier: Nov. 2005)
Lynne Stewart/Hofstra furor
I’ve got a new piece up at City Journal (a slightly different version appears in today’s New York Post) on the controversy over the disbarred lawyer’s role as designated faculty at the upcoming Hofstra legal ethics conference. Thanks for links to Instapundit, NRO “The Corner”, Brothers Judd (cross-posted from Point of Law).