Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Client-chasing roundup

  • Screening firm hired by Beaumont, Tex.’s Provost Umphrey to do mass silicosis x-rays at Pennsylvania hotels is fined $80,500 for breaking various state rules, like the one requiring that a medical professional be on hand [Childs]
  • Milberg Weiss’s special way of obtaining perfectly pliant clients — that is to say by bribing them under the table — harmed other class members by increasing fees but not settlement sums, suggests a new study by St. John’s lawprof Michael Perino for Ted’s project at AEI [Carter Wood @ PoL]
  • Time for Texas to join many other states in requiring lawyers to inform clients when practicing without professional liability insurance [SE Texas Record; earlier here, here and here]
  • Lawyers, in concert with their public pension fund allies, jockey for control of securities case against Bear Stearns [Gerstein/NY Sun]
  • Another court, this time in California, rules that a screw maker can’t sue a law firm on the claim that its solicitation of potential claimants wrongly portrayed the company’s products as defective; amicus brief from state trial lawyers group and Sen. Sheila Kuehl says relevant provisions of state’s “SLAPP” law were “meant to protect plaintiffs groups, not companies” [The Recorder via ABA Journal; earlier case from Tennessee]
  • Most lucrative Google AdSense words still dominated by asbestos and other personal injury practice, the top terms being “mesothelioma treatment options” ($69.10 per click, and the point of obtaining the click is not to provide treatment options), “mesothelioma risk” ($66.46), and “personal injury lawyer michigan” ($65.85) [CyberWyre via NAM “Shop Floor”; more here, here, etc.]

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3 Comments

  • Well, I say we should all go and click on all the Mesothelioma Attorney sponsored sites at least once a day. Transfer a little income from non-productive sector attorneys to highly innovative, highly productive Google.

    Just think, with a few clicks every day, you too can do your little bit to promote the productive economy every day!

    • By AMcA

  • Let’s see; a company, a legal entity, takes action against a party that is allegedly defaming the company. And yet the company, a plaintiff, is denied certain rights under the law because it is a company. Have I got that right.

    How much you wanna bet the state of California will be enacting another law so companies will enjoy the same protection under the original SLAPP legislation as ‘real plaintiffs’ do? And so we will see yet again what happens when we allow fuss budget nit picking to add to our supply of effectively redundant laws.

    I’ve got news for people; it doesn’t matter how the victim died, what matters is why the victim died.

  • […] marketing tactics are also of the sophisticated variety. As Overlawyered readers are aware, the most expensive Google ad-search terms involve “asbestos” and […]