- Texas probate and estate lawyers seldom prosecuted when they steal funds, clients told they should just sue to get it back [Austin American-Statesman investigation]
- About a third of the way down the center strip, then just a bit to the right, you’ll find us on this much-linked map of the campaign season’s most influential websites [Presidential Watch ’08]
- Given the enormous liability exposure, would a doctor rationally want a major celebrity as a client? [Scalpel or Sword via KevinMD]
- The loser-pays difference: Canadian franchisees pursue failed class-action claim against sandwich shop Quiznos, judge orders them to pay costs of more than C$200,000 [BizOp via ClassActionBlawg]
- Annals of extreme incivility: judge condemns “heartless attack” at deposition on opposing lawyer’s pin honoring son killed in Iraq [Fulton County Daily Report]
- You keep an open wi-fi connection at home and your neighbor uses it to download music improperly. Are you an infringer too? [Doctorow via Coleman]
- As you’ve probably heard if you read blogs (but maybe not otherwise), one Canadian “human rights” tribunal has dropped action against Mark Steyn and Maclean’s; another still pursuing case [SteynOnline]
- Prison-overcrowding lawsuit could lead to early release of 27,000 California inmates [TalkLeft]
- “He absolutely would’ve gotten this DOJ job but for the anti-liberal bias … and he can’t land any other jobs?” [commenter KenVee on lawsuit over politicized Department of Justice Honors/Intern programs, Kerr @ Volokh, background]
Archive for July, 2008
Richard Neely’s lack of irony (III)
You may recall a manufactured dispute over the former West Virginia Justice Richard Neely‘s quote in The Product Liability Mess:
As long as I am allowed to redistribute wealth from out-of-state companies to in-state plaintiffs, I shall continue to do so. Not only is my sleep enhanced when I give someone else’s money away, but so is my job security, because the in-state plaintiffs, their families and their friends will re-elect me.
Sun glare on the diamond? You might hear from our lawyer
Parents of a young pitcher at an American Legion baseball game were worried that the way the sun shone right toward the pitcher’s mound could hurt their son’s eyes. The next thing you know they were talking about a future lawsuit and the risk managers swung into action. The upshot is that Northwestern University, owner of Rocky Miller Park in Evanston, have told the teams that they can no longer play their home games at the park. Head coach Frank Consiglio said, “When it comes to the sun, you could say that about any ballpark in the country at any time. … It’s unfortunate that one person can ruin this.” (Dennis Mahoney, “Lawsuit threat forces NU to ban evening Legion games”, Pioneer Local, Jun. 26 via Chronicle of Higher Education and Pero)
War crimes trials? No thanks
Stuart Taylor agrees that the courts are right to rebuke some of the Bush administration’s aggressive war-powers claims, but that doesn’t make it anything other than a “deeply misguided” notion to try its leaders for supposed “war crimes”, let alone encourage other countries to snatch traveling U.S. ex-officials for trial there (“Our Leaders Are Not War Criminals”, National Journal, Jun. 28).
One of the most dedicated enthusiasts for such trials is attorney/controversialist Scott Horton, who writes at Harper’s and Balkinization and is an adjunct faculty member at Columbia Law School; after noticing how often Horton’s output seemed to be in need of fact-checking, I spent a few minutes just for the fun of it stringing together a sampling of such instances which appears here (scroll).
Sorry, we’re not going to raise your neighbors’ taxes
Attorney Steven Irwin of Monmouth County, N.J., whose specialty is tax appeals, is apparently not trying to win any neighborhood popularity contests: he argued to the county tax board that his neighbors weren’t paying their fair share and that their property taxes should be raised as much as fourfold. The board unanimously ruled against him without comment; an assessor had testified that a couple of the neighbors had carried out major improvements, but only after the official cut-off date for taking such improvements into account in the tax valuation. (Bob Jordan, “Man loses try to hike neighbors’ taxes”, Asbury Park Press, Jul. 2; “Belmar man loses bid to boost neighbors’ property taxes”, AP/Newark Star-Ledger, Jul. 2).
Melbourne Mills acquitted; jury deadlocked
Melbourne Mills’s defense that he was too drunk to know what was going on when he and two other attorneys stole tens of millions of dollars appears to have created reasonable doubt in the mind of a Kentucky jury. Mills may have been helped by the revelation that his two co-counsel tried to hide $50 million from him, too, permitting his attorney to more plausibly blame the scheme on others. Or the jury may have believed the argument of Mills’s attorney that the three attorneys were too stupid to understand the settlement agreement and didn’t intend to steal any money (though they transferred a lot of money from their personal account to their clients when they learned the bar was investigating, and lied to the bar about how much money their clients received). (Jim Hannah, “One cleared in diet drug case”, Cincinnati Enquirer, Jul. 2; Beth Musgrave, “Fen-phen lawyer Mills is found not guilty”, Lexington Herald-Leader, Jul. 2; Beth Musgrave, “Jury hears closing arguments in fen-phen trial”, Lexington Herald-Leader, Jun. 24; AP/Kentucky Post, Jun. 23). The jury, today in its seventh day of deliberations, claims a deadlock on the other two attorneys, no doubt confused by why Judge Jay Bamberger and co-counsel and Democratic bigwig Stanley Chesley have not also been indicted. Defendants Cunningham and Gallion have sought to blame the tens of millions they stole on the fact that Bamberger (who was indirectly paid millions) judicially approved the settlement and Chesley (who was directly paid tens of millions) was allegedly the architect of the settlement that ensured lawyers would get far more than their contracts with their clients provided. Since there is no dispute that those two were indeed intimately involved in the scheme, the jury isn’t the only one confused why the Kentucky fen-phen three are being treated differently than the judge, the judge’s former law partner, and Stan Chesley, who all profited mightily.
“Please Disregard That ‘We’re Not Blaming the Park’ Thing”
(Post bumped with 12:20 AM update adding coverage of state Labor Department’s suggestion for new warnings.)
Roller-coaster enthusiast and torts professor Bill Childs is stealing our thunder in his coverage of the recent Georgia Batman roller coaster decapitation of Asia LeeShawn Ferguson IV, so there’s no point in rewriting his excellent post instead of quoting it:
Moe the chimpanzee escapes; St. James Davis v. West Covina update
The search is on for Moe, who opened his cage and left his home at Jungle Exotics, not the first time he’s escaped his surroundings. Moe is perhaps the most litigious chimpanzee in history, thanks to the efforts of Gloria Allred, who put the city of West Covina through years of litigation when they dared to suggest that a chimp who had mauled a policeman (who incurred $250,000 in medical bills) and bit off a woman’s fingertip was not appropriately kept within a residential area in city limits. Moe’s former owner, St. James Davis, was himself brutally attacked by a couple of chimpanzees that apparently didn’t have a lawyer handy and were shot in the aftermath of the incident without so much as a habeas corpus petition filed. (Davis “lost his nose, an eye, most of his fingers, both testicles and much of the flesh from his buttocks and face and left foot.” His wife just lost a thumb in the attack.)
Rolando Montez’s fatal phone call: JCW Electronics, Inc. v. Garza
On November 14, 1999, high-school dropout Rolando Domingo Montez, celebrating his 19th birthday, was arrested for public intoxication and trespass after the owner of the boat on which he and his friends were sitting complained. Police placed him in Cell No. 1 of the Port Isabel City Jail. The next morning, Montez was permitted to make some collect calls from his jail cell to seek bail money from his mother, Pearl Iris Garza. Mom, complaining that Montez was in jail again, refused. But she generously came to pick up Montez on the 16th when he was released on his own recognizance. Unfortunately, while Garza was waiting in the lobby, and while police were responding to a call for assistance regarding a suspicious vehicle, Montez hung himself with the 19-inch phone cord from the phone he had used to make the calls.
Leona Helmsley’s will
I’m not a fan of Leona Helmsley; among other traits that earned her the title of “Queen of Mean,” she sued her dead son’s estate, financially wiping his widow out with legal fees.