- Vioxx settlement is good for Merck and the trial lawyers suing it, the price being paid in legal ethics [Gryphon/City Journal]
- Australia: will-contest lawyers “will have their fees capped after a string of cases where the bill has exceeded the final inheritance.” [Sydney Morning Herald]
- ADA obliges golf courses, at least Marriott’s, to furnish accessible carts to disabled golfers, federal judge rules [Egelko, SF Chronicle]
- Henry Fonda/Sidney Lumet jury-deliberation classic Twelve Angry Men normally spoken of in tones of reverence. But what’s this? [Leo McKinstry, U.K. Spectator; Gracchi, Westminster Wisdom]
- Columnist and talk show host Michael Smerconish, himself former trial lawyer, is among latest to be sued by inmate/fantasist J*nath*n L** R*ch*s [Philadelphia Inquirer; earlier]
- Biggest-ever EEOC settlement for individual racial discrimination will bring Lockheed Martin electrician $2.5 million [Reuters/NYT]
- U.K.: Coast guard wins award for saving teen from cliff, then loses job because he didn’t follow prescribed health and safety precautions [Times Online, Sun]
- Lawsuit by baseball pros who missed out on big careers because they never abused steroids? [RedBirdsFan]
- Until Sarkozy, French heads of state liked to cancel outstanding parking tickets on taking office; contrast with American practice of pardons as departing Presidential gesture [Rittelmeyer/Cigarette Smoking Blog]
- New at Point of Law: Ted on med-mal statistics; Prof. Richard Nagareda on recognizing that mass torts are lawyer-driven; voter intimidation and union card check; state AGs and letters of marque and reprisal; Prof. Michael Krauss on thread-count class action; IRBs vs. hospital safety; Ted’s continuing coverage of the Vioxx settlement; and much more.
- OSHA backs down from its plan to regulate hazards like trippable power cords and rickety chairs in telecommuters’ home offices [eight years ago on Overlawyered]
Filed under: Australia, baseball, card check, France, hospitals, Jonathan Lee Riches, Philadelphia, prisoners, roundups
2 Comments
Marie Gryphon, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute’s Center for Legal Policy, wrote the article sited in the Roundup about Vioxx. She claims that the Vioxx litigation inventory consists of strong cases (deserving) and nuisance cases. Since it is impossible to prove that any particular heart attack or stroke was cause by Vioxx, how can there be any strong cases? At the height of the hysteria some juries awarded absurd awards, those cases were strong only in being idiosyncratic.
Ted Frank reports that Vioxx will increase heart attacks by roughly 25%. I suspect that that number is just statistical overkill. We know that many people used Vioxx before it was pulled from the market. The pulling of Vioxx off the market should show up as a notch in the monthly heart attack data. I wnonder if anybody did this simple test?
Regarding the UK coastie, there are two problems.
First, the Times story says the rescuer was a volunteer and that he quit. He was not fired.
Second, there is this paragraph buried in the story without noticeable irony:
“Faye, now 14, from Saltburn-by-the-sea, east Cleveland, said that Mr Waugh, who also rescued her on another occasion when she was trapped by the tide, was a ‘true hero’.”
“Another occasion”? How likely is that to have happened by chance?