Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Archive for 2010

Why would a union favor its own decertification?

The better to sue, it seems [Marcia McCormick/Workplace Prof]:

The NFL Players Association is seeking player approval to decertify in advance of a potential lockout by owners in March when the current collective bargaining agreement expires, according to the SportsBusiness Journal. Decertifying would allow players to sue the owners under antitrust laws if the owners did lock the players out. And any effort to impose a labor agreement on the players could provide the players with treble damages.

This was the tactic the players resorted to in 1989, and it eventually gave them enough leverage to establish free agency in 1993, when the players recertified the association as their exclusive representative.

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Judge: lawyers’ acts of misbehavior “make me feel like a school marm scolding little boys”

After reading deposition exchanges “related in excruciating, repetitive detail,” Nevada U. S. Magistrate Peggy A. Leen felt called on to admonish lawyers on both sides:

If I was an elementary school teacher instead of a judge I would require both counsel to write the following clearly established legal rules on a blackboard 500 times:

I will not make speaking, coaching, suggestive objections which violate Rule 30(c)(2). I am an experienced lawyer and know that objections must be concise, non-argumentative and non-suggestive. I understand that the purpose of a deposition is to find out what the witness thinks, saw, heard or did. I know that lawyers are not supposed to coach or change the witness’s own words to form a legally convenient record. I know I am prohibited from frustrating or impeding the fair examination of a deponent during the deposition. I know that constant objections and unnecessary remarks are unwarranted and frustrate opposing counsel’s right to fair examination. I know that speaking objections such as “if you remember,” “if you know,” “don’t guess,” “you’ve answered the question,” and “do you understand the question” are designed to coach the witness and are improper. I also know that counsel’s interjection that he or she does not understand the question is not a proper objection, and that if a witness needs clarification of a question, the witness may ask for the clarification.

[Order in Mazzeo v. Gibbons et al., Trial Ad Notes via Day on Torts]

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On the road: preparing Spring speaking/book tour

Last night I sent off the source notes for my forthcoming book Schools for Misrule: Legal Academia and an Overlawyered America, on track for publication by Encounter Books Feb. 15. Now it’s time to lay the plans (with help from Encounter and my own Cato Institute) for me to hit the road next year to address audiences at single-author events, panels and forums. Why not add your group or city to the tour? Email at [editor] – at – [thisdomainname] – dot – com and we’ll see what we can do. If you’re active with a chapter of the Federalist Society, contact the national office and they can help coordinate.

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September 13 roundup

  • “Court Vacates $99,000 Fee to Counsel for Plaintiff Who Won $650” [NJLJ]
  • Libel-suit target: “Author Simon Singh Puts Up a Fight in the War on Science” [Wired]
  • No, they weren’t “worst”: RIP injury lawyer who hyped “10 Worst Toys” list each Christmas [WSJ Law Blog]
  • New credit card regulations squeeze small business [John Berlau letter in Washington Post]
  • District attorney’s case intake desk should screen out many unjust prosecutions, but often doesn’t [Greenfield]
  • AGs’ campaign to drive sex pros off Craigslist has failure built in [William Saletan, Slate; LNL; Declan McCullagh]
  • “Nursing Home Company Settles $677 Million Lawsuit for $50 Million” [AP]
  • “Judge accused of sexual harassment once helped women sue” [Orlando Sentinel]

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On the John Stossel show: video


Cato has posted a video on YouTube from my appearance on the John Stossel show on ADA the other week (related syndicated column). There’s also this clip on the Cato site. And a post from the American Association of People with Disabilities encourages constituents to express discontent with us.

P.S. Note that by editing down Stossel’s words AAPD has made it appear that his harsh criticism of “parasites” was somehow aimed at disabled persons generally, rather than, as was entirely clear from the context, at opportunistic lawyers and litigants who generate complaints to obtain assembly-line cash settlements. Sure enough, I’ve been getting cc’s of furious letters to Stossel saying, “How dare you call disabled persons parasites?!” He didn’t say that, folks. The AAPD should consider carefully whether it wants to go on claiming that he did.

P.P.S. I respond at more length at Cato at Liberty.

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