Because if your insurer wasn’t willing to pay for damages to your car incurred after your family member led police on a high-speed chase, why was it willing to collect the premiums in the first place? (Beth Warren, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Apr. 6).
Archive for 2007
Ontario lottery scandal
A major scandal has erupted in Ontario in recent weeks following reports that some lottery retailers have for years been cheating their customers out of winning tickets, instead cashing in the tickets themselves. Now the law firm of McPhadden, Samac, Merner & Barry has filed a would-be class action lawsuit on behalf of all persons who bought lottery tickets since 1975, charging that the lottery failed to exercise its responsibility to prevent cheating, and demanding C$1.1 billion including C$100 million in punitive damages.
Perhaps the most interesting question raised by the legal action is: assuming a remedy cannot be had against the rogue retailers, what is a suitable remedy against the allegedly negligent lottery authorities? According to CTV, the law firm has proposed to hold a “free lottery”, or, perhaps more precisely, a lottery that would compensate for past unfairness by enabling Ontarians to buy a ticket which would be eligible for a payoff above the usual. (Those who could prove they had played the lottery in the past would be entitled to one free ticket.) (“Class-action suit launched against lotto agency”, Mar. 28).
Details of the proposed “remedial” lottery are hazy in the CTV account, but a couple of practical difficulties immediately come to mind. Start with the assumption that a “remedial” pot would be fixed at a certain lump sum intended to punish the province for its past negligence — let’s say C$100 million — and that such a sum greatly exceeds a typical lottery pot. Since there is no upper limit to the number of tickets that purchasers could buy in pursuit of the extra-large pot, the province might in fact wind up making money on its penitential lottery, even taking into account the obligation to dispense a certain number of free single tickets to persons who could bring in the paperwork to show they were past lottery players. Alternatively, assume that the province undertakes to run a one-time penitential lottery with a higher payout than usual — say, 95 percent rather than the usual 40 or 60 percent or whatever. Again it’s possible that by stoking player interest in a much-publicized “good-odds” lottery, the authorities will come out ahead (perhaps having hooked many novices into buying their first lottery tickets).
The practical difficulties if the province is so rash as to promise a lottery with a payout of, say, 110 percent of the money put in, will be left as an exercise to the reader.
“Twelve Angry Men”
At American Thinker, Michael Margolies notes the fiftieth anniversary of “one of Hollywood’s most revered, indeed sacrosanct films”, but finds the work on calmer viewing to be emotionally manipulative, stacked from first frame to last, and even “dishonest”. (“12 Angry Men Turns 50”, Mar. 31).
Kentucky fen-phen court: “Chesley was paid more than he should have been”
So wrote Boone Circuit Court Senior Judge William Wehr in a motion denying both Stan Chesley’s motion to dismiss a suit against him in the Kentucky fen-phen fee scandal. But, with plaintiffs’ summary judgment motion also denied, a jury will ultimately decide how much that “more” should be, and whether a fiduciary duty was broken. The same order denied a request by Melbourne Mills to reconsider the finding that a fiduciary duty was broken. Chesley’s attorneys state that he will pay back $7 million of his $20 million fee. (Jim Hannah, “Chesley made too much”, Cincinnati Enquirer, Apr. 5). Earlier: OL Mar. 26 and links therein. (Cross-posted at Point of Law.)
To the Moon, Alice
Great moments in school discipline, Clearwater, Florida, edition:
I don’t know if I can possibly do justice to this story. In February, an 18-year old Florida high school senior named Tyler Tillung was upset at his teacher because she wouldn’t let him into the auditorium to see the high school talent show (the “annual Lip Sync show,” so perhaps “talent” is an overstatement) because the auditorium was full. So… no, I don’t think I can type this without laughing, so I’ll just cut and paste from the story:
After she declined, he mooned the teacher. The lawsuit concedes that he made the act worse “by spreading his buttocks for an instant.”
Yes, you read that right. The word “lawsuit” was in there. Tillung proceeded to metaphorically moon the rest of us by following this up with a lawsuit. For some inexplicable reason, the school decided to punish him for what he calls a “childish joke.” They suspended him for six days, and then transferred him to a school across town. So of course he’s suing.
A lawsuit filed Tuesday in Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court alleges the transfer was unreasonably harsh because it denies him the once-in-a-lifetime chance to graduate next month with his class, participate in senior activities leading up to graduation and play his final season on Palm Harbor’s varsity baseball team.
But don’t worry: we have it on good authority (from Tillung’s lawyer) that the lawsuit has merit:
To those who say the family is taking the issue too far, Tillung’s lawyer, B. Edwin Johnson, said “they don’t know the facts.” He added: “We’re talking about his graduation. That’s an important event in a guy’s life. … This kid deserves a break.”
As do the rest of us. And especially Clearwater taxpayers.
(Some of you kind-hearted folks may be tempted to give him the benefit of the doubt. You may think that while it’s frivolous to argue that the chance to graduate with one’s friends is an injury which the courts should consider, the chance to play with his team is more important, because it could affect his college chances. Don’t think that. First, he already has his acceptance. Second, there are only six games left on the school’s schedule, all but the last within the next two weeks; he wouldn’t get back on the team in time even if he won.)
Deep pocket files: Newark police chase
The outrage is so common, we may have to create its own category. This one is in Newark, New Jersey: three car thieves running from police in a stolen SUV swerved into a group of pedestrians. Taxpayers are on the hook for a $3.6 million settlement, a substantial chunk of which will go to attorneys. [AP/Newsday] The Newark police department has “changed its chase policy” as a result; no mention in the press coverage that now criminals know that they are more likely to escape if they engage in a dangerous high-speed getaway, they’re more likely to engage in a high-speed getaway that will endanger the public. Earlier: Feb. 28; Feb. 27; Jan. 9; Nov. 27, 2005 and links therein.
Jackpot?
An eighteen-year old named Jesse Tribble had a history of drug abuse. His mother, who had a prior history of drug dealing, gave him money when he told her that he wanted it to buy drugs. (She claimed she thought he was joking.) He then died of a drug overdose.
Obviously, a tragedy. And where there’s tragedy, there’s a lawsuit. In this case, Tribble’s father sued… Jack Whittaker, the man in whose house Tribble died. The theory? Whittaker didn’t supervise his 17-year old granddaughter adequately, and gave her too much money, so she might have bought the drugs with which Tribble overdosed.
The lawsuit settled last week. And you guessed it:
After the settlement was announced, Jimmy Tribble said his lawsuit was not about money but about getting the subpoenas to learn what led to his son’s death.
Conveniently, though, Tribble died at the home of a former Powerball winner, so even though it was really about information, according to media reports, “Money was involved in the settlement.” I wonder if Tribble’s parents would have been so eager to get answers if he had died in a janitor’s home.
Setting aside the fact that an 18-year old is apparently not responsible for his own choices, another disturbing aspect of the story is that nobody finds it remarkable that a lawsuit was purportedly filed solely to get information — as if a lawsuit were a therapy session rather than a method for assigning responsibility. (Of course, one may — and hopefully will — learn something in the course of a lawsuit, but information-gathering is not a legitimate purpose for a lawsuit.)
Age before wisdom
Let’s suppose that a company is losing buckets of money, and needs to cut costs to stay afloat. It might start cutting back on various perks — a company jet, health club memberships for employees, whatever. And it might make the business judgment that cutting more expensive perks first is the smartest decision. But under California law, applying the same logic to employees — that the more expensive ones ought to be replaced first — can get an employer sued. Ask Circuit City, which laid off more than 3,000 employees last week, only to be hit with a lawsuit seeking class action status:
“The workers terminated were those with greater seniority and length of service — mostly likely the older members of the work force,” the lawsuit said. It cites California law, which states that “the use of salary as the basis for differentiating between employees when terminating employment may … constitute age discrimination.”
The wisdom of the California legislature never ceases to astound. The law does not require evidence of discriminatory intent on the part of the employer; the mere fact that older workers were disproportionately affected by the layoffs may be sufficient.
Roundup
Follow-ups to some stories I’ve posted in the last few weeks:
- Last month we reported on the lawsuit against Cory Lidle, alleging that he piloted his plane into someone’s apartment building in the crash which killed him last October. Now Lidle’s widow is suing MetLife, baseball’s insurer, for denying her payment under its accidental death benefit coverage. The policy had an exclusion for accidents in which players are piloting airplanes; Lidle’s widow is denying that Lidle was the pilot. In case you’re counting, that’s at least three lawsuits over this accident, despite the fact that the NTSB still hasn’t made any final determinations about the crash. (And I assume that we’ll see more from other residents of the apartment building.)
- In February we discussed a ruling in the lawsuit against New York City over the Staten Island Ferry crash; at the time, the lawyers for the plaintiffs convinced a judge not to cap the damages the plaintiffs could recover from the city. The lead attorneys were so proud of their work that they felt they deserved a bonus; now they’re asking the court to cut other law firms’ fees so they can receive it. And they’re bickering over the request:
“They didn’t do anything to help us,” said Michael H. Bush of the New Dorp firm of Chelli & Bush. “They never updated us with anything. We never got a phone call. We never got e-mails. We settled all of our cases prior to the motion being settled, and they just did nothing to help.”
“They’re motivated by their own interests,” he continued. “They’re getting the publicity and they have their own million-dollar cases, too.”
And
Chelli & Bush didn’t attend any of “15 meetings” with the firms involved, nor did they show up for any of the court dates during the trial, Bisignano contended.
“They contributed nothing, and yet they claim there was no benefit to them,” Bisignano said. “No honorable law firm would deny our right to be compensated for the services we performed that benefited every law firm and every complainant in this case.”
Children, play nice.
- Findlaw columnist Julie Hilden discussing Carol Burnett’s chances in suing Family Guy.
“Fen-Phen Zen”
Hey, I just write the American.com column about the Kentucky fen-phen fraud, not the headlines. Earlier on Overlawyered: Mar. 26 and links therein. (Cross-posted at Point of Law.)