Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Archive for 2008

College should have warned student not to run on street

From the “Not About the Money” files; reader D.W. writes:

Seguin is about 35 miles east of downtown San Antonio. The deceased student/athlete was an adult, chose to run on a busy street despite ample on-campus facilities, and chose to run with traffic instead of facing it. The story doesn’t say, but the street in question is actually US90, possibly the heaviest traveled street in town aside from I-10. So naturally it’s the university’s fault she was struck and killed. Oh well, it could have been worse, at least they were only held 5% responsible.

(Ron Maloney, “Jury finds TLU partially responsible”, Seguin (Texas) Gazette-Enterprise, Aug. 29; more background here and here).

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“Zapped Amtrak trespasser sues”

Brian Hopkins, 25, of Astoria, Queens, New York City, “who survived an electric shock and fire two years ago when he climbed atop an empty, stopped Amtrak train after a night of bar hopping in Boston is suing the railroad – because Amtrak didn’t do enough to protect trespassers like him.” (Kathianne Boniello, New York Post, Aug. 31).

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Juror privacy and voir dire, cont’d

If you apply for a job handling million-dollar financial exposures or life-and-death safety risks, your prospective employer generally won’t be allowed to ask at the interview what prescription medications you may be taking. On the other hand, if you’re called as a potential juror on a case, the lawyers may enjoy carte blanche to probe and dig to their heart’s content, and you may be obliged to answer the questions proposed by their jury consultants. “A secondary reason for asking is strategic — to bounce jurors they don’t want and use medications as an excuse.” How about requiring the voir dire inquisitors to restrict themselves to the same formulas employers are supposed to use to avoid ADA liability, e.g., “Is there any reason why, with suitable accommodation, you would not be able to concentrate, sit for long periods of time, apply unclouded judgment, and do the other things expected of jurors?” (Julie Kay, National Law Journal, Aug. 26).

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Christiansen, Pellicano convicted in wiretap case

The high-level Hollywood lawyer plans an appeal. A Los Angeles lawyer says his colleagues will have to “be more careful than in the past” about employing private investigators who use unlawful means to dig up dirt on opponents. A private investigator confirms his lawyer-clients are beginning to ask things like “I need you to keep it on the up-and-up”. Won’t that cramp their style? [L.A. Times]

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Jury Awards Paralegal $700,000 in Pregnancy Discrimination Case

Some time ago, Baker & McKenzie got sued for sexual harassment. That case sent shockwaves throughout lawfirms nationwide.

A case out of New York last week  (ABA Journal Online, 8/22) will not reverberate nearly that loudly but considering how some lawfirms are still perceived (fairly or unfairly) as not being “family-friendly”, the case should be of concern nonetheless.  

A jury has awarded about $720,000 in damages to an associate and paralegal who claimed they were forced out of their New York law firm because of their pregnancies.

Garden City, N.Y., tax law firm Siegel, Fenchel & Peddy will only have to pay about $266,000 if the verdict is upheld because of a punitive damages cap, the firm’s lawyer told the New York Law Journal.

Obviously, there’s always more to the story than the headlines (and, it should be noted that the lawfirm strongly denied the allegations), but I can’t help but wonder how many other lawfirms are ripe for such lawsuits because of the perception of the firm.  Given stereotypes of the hard-charging lawyer, it’s not that hard to then believe that a firm would discriminate against someone perceived to be not working as hard because of their pregnancy. 

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“Hit-and-run driver claims city didn’t take care of his Bentley after crash”

“A Coney Island businessman is suing the city for damaging the Bentley he was driving when he killed a Brooklyn dad in a hit-and-run accident. Harry Shasho, who pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident, says the NYPD failed to safeguard the battered black 2005 Bentley GT luxury sedan that was impounded as evidence of the fatal crash. He’s asking for at least $190,000.” However, Shasho “denied filing a lawsuit” when contacted by a Daily News reporter. (John Marzulli, New York Daily News, Aug. 24).

I’m going to take a wild guess here and speculate that Shasho’s auto insurer will turn out to have been a force in the decision to sue. Under most property insurance policies, after paying a loss the insurer reserves the right to go after third parties it thinks it can be blamed, and the policyholder must up to a reasonable point cooperate in such lawsuits (which may be filed in the policyholder’s name). The insurer needn’t and probably won’t take into its calculations the effect of such a suit on its policyholder’s reputation, which in this case for Shasho include being called “shameless” and worse in the comments section at Gothamist. Such insurer-prompted suits on behalf of wrongdoers are fairly common, and should be kept analytically distinct from the (also fairly common) situations where the wrongdoer himself decides to sue and is the one to pocket any proceeds.

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August 29 roundup

  • One for your “firefighter’s rule” file: firefighter perishes in blaze, his widow sues security alarm company [SF Chron, San Pablo, Calif.]
  • And another: Nassau County, N.Y. cop injured by drunk driver while on duty is suing the county over Long Island Expressway design and signage [Newsday; Kenneth Baribault]
  • Stop fighting over the $60 million in fees, judge tells feuding lawyers, your lawsuit has been over for four years now [Legal Intelligencer, corrugated paper antitrust class action]
  • Public-health prof: red-light cameras “don’t work” and instead “increase crashes and injuries as drivers attempt to abruptly stop” [Bruce Schneier via Instapundit]
  • Criminal prosecution of political attack ads? Time to rethink campaign finance law [Bainbridge]
  • Teenagers send each other racy cellphone videos, and then their legal nightmare begins [Des Moines Register]
  • Sounds interesting but haven’t seen a copy: “How To Get Sued: An Instructional Guide” by well-known blawger J. Craig Williams [Giacalone, Ambrogi]
  • Mississippi AG Hood goes after MillerCoors over caffeinated alcohol drinks, but Anheuser-Busch hired Mike Moore and sprang big for DAGA, hmmm [Alan Lange, YallPolitics]

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