Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Archive for 2013

NYT breaks open Pigford case, cont’d

Megan McArdle says the judge seems to have dreaded only Type A and not Type B error when it comes to compensating discriminated-against farmers, and quotes more from the great Times piece:

“It was the craziest thing I have ever seen,” one former high-ranking department official said. “We had applications for kids who were 4 or 5 years old. We had cases where every single member of the family applied.” The official added, “You couldn’t have designed it worse if you had tried.” …

Accusations of unfair treatment could be checked against department files if claimants had previously received loans. But four-fifths of successful claimants had never done so. For them, “there was no way to refute what they said,” said Sandy Grammer, a former program analyst from Indiana who reviewed claims for three years. “Basically, it was a rip-off of the American taxpayers.” …

In 16 ZIP codes in Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi and North Carolina, the number of successful claimants exceeded the total number of farms operated by people of any race in 1997, the year the lawsuit was filed. Those applicants received nearly $100 million.

At Prawfsblawg, Paul Horwitz notes that legal scholars active in areas like reparations and discrimination law have up to now said little or nothing about the high quantum of fraud in the much-publicized Pigford settlements and asks (perhaps a bit rhetorically?) whether they will soon be taking note of the “public interest graft” revealed in the Times piece. And Hans Bader wonders whether the Obama administration might have avoided going down the embarrassing settlement route had it taken more seriously the Supreme Court’s 2001 decision in Alexander v. Sandoval. More: Ted Frank, Point of Law; Daniel Foster, NRO. Joel Pollak: “Even the Kinko’s guy knows about Pigford.” Earlier here, etc.

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“Student Who Sued GVSU Over Campus Pet Rule Honored”

First the complaint, then the money, now the public accolade: as we noted last month, student Kendra Velzen filed a complaint — and got a $40,000 settlement — after administrators at Grand Valley State University in Michigan declined to allow her emotional-support guinea pig to live with her in the dorm, even though she had a doctor’s note for it. Now the “Fair Housing Center of West Michigan has given … Velzen its annual Outstanding Effort by an Individual award. The group says Velzen was honored for promoting ‘equal housing opportunity for university students throughout the country.'” The center has a previous connection with the case, having assisted Velzen in her complaint. [AP/WILX]

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“It’s good to know that Ignatius J. Reilly is alive and well, and working in customer service”

Patrick at Popehat takes on the case of a beaded-necklace purveyor whose idea of how to respond to a dissatisfied customer leaves something to be desired (“We will send a copy of your e-mail and all your data to our lawyers. If You keep on with your defamations and write anything on blogs, forums or social networks, We will immediately start a lawsuit against You.”)

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Overlawyered joins Cato: some reactions

  • An Instalanche from Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit, and Prof. Bainbridge remembers the phrase “takes the Boeing;” R.S. McCain on blogging communities and linkiness; Coyote (“Congrats… The Overlawyered blog is one of the blogs I read every day, and is one of the grand old blogs of the Internet”); Joe Patrice/Above the Law; Chris Fountain/For What It’s Worth (“If you haven’t used it to keep track of the inanities of our modern society of flawed men and laws, here’s a good opportunity.”); Think Tank Watch.
  • From Twitter: Tunku Varadarajan (“I love — and recommend — ‘Overlawyered'”), Alan Gura (“so the lawyers have gone over all the details and finalized the documents?”), Sohrab Ahmari (“sharpest critic of our litigious culture… must-read”), Popehat (“indispensable”), David Boaz, Danny Alvarez, Sr. (“REALLY? Congrats. You better keep that flippant attitude now that you are part of ‘The Man!'”), Jack Robling (“I’d love to meet the lawyer who lawyered @overlawyered and @CatoInstitute’s marriage”); occasional guestblogger Ron Coleman (“So, hey, am I now retroactively a prestigious ‘Cato blogger’?”), Kurt Loder, Andrew Stuttaford, John Carney (“Surprised it took this long”), Massimiliano Trovato (“must read for anyone interested in law and liberty”), Jeremy Kolassa (“must [follow] if you want to know how litigation is screwed up in this country”), Scott Greenfield (“indie blogs bite the dust. Congrats to Wally, but I hate to see it go ‘corporate'” — and exchange with Popehat), Tom Kirkendall, Susan Cartier Liebel, Business Roundtable, Bob Lucas Jr., and many others.
  • At Facebook, various reactions including from longtime reader Doug Iverson: “I’d just like to say that I think Overlawyered was better before Walter turned it over to Cato to market. I think it’s hyped more.” My response, in part: “Ian, my colleague at Cato, now writes the regular Facebook links, which are the chief reason visits to the site via Facebook are up tremendously in recent weeks. If Doug writes to Cato to say that Overlawyered’s Facebook presence has become a flagrant puffery scheme designed to lure readers into giving the website a try, I think they will give Ian a raise.”
  • If you missed it, Friday’s announcement.

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Food roundup

  • Colony collapse disorder, the honeybee ailment, was expected to have a dire effect on U.S. agriculture. Market-driven adjustments have helped prevent that [Walter Thurman, PERC]
  • Adieu, Mimolette? Feds may be readying crackdown on imports of artisanal cheeses [Baylen Linnekin] “Food Safety Modernization Act Far More Costly Than Supporters Claimed” [Hans Bader, earlier here, here]
  • “There may be no hotter topic in law schools right now than food law and policy” [Harvard Law School, quoted by Baylen Linnekin] New book, haven’t seen yet: Jayson Lusk, “The Food Police: A Well-Fed Manifesto About the Politics of Your Plate” [Amazon]
  • Further thoughts on hot coffee injuries and lawsuits [Ted Frank]
  • The gain in plains is mainly due to grains: residents of mountains and high-altitude areas have less obesity [Edible Geography] Restaurant labeling: per one study, “some evidence that males ordered more calories when labels were present” [Tim Carney] NYT’s Mark Bittman endorses tax on prepared food [SmarterTimes] “Michael Poppins: When the nanny acquired a police force” [Mark Steyn, NR on Mayor Bloomberg]
  • Who’s demonizing Demon Rum these days, together with Wicked Wine and Baleful Beer? Check out an “alcohol policy” conference [Angela Logomasini, Open Market] Scottish government lobbies itself to be more prohibitionist [Christopher Snowdon]
  • Bill filed by Rep Aaron Schock (R-Ill.) would cut off taxpayer funding of food-bashing propaganda [Michelle Minton; earlier here, etc.]

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U.K.: bags of nuts recalled for lack of “Contains Nuts” warning

I’ve had fun before at the expense of warnings like “Contains Nuts” on a container of nuts. It’s not a phenomenon limited to the United States. From the BBC via Perry de Havilland, Samizdata:

A supermarket chain has withdrawn bags of nuts – after failing to declare they may contain peanuts.

The Food Standards Agency issued an allergy alert saying the presence of peanuts was not declared on Booths’ own brand packets of monkey nuts.

“Monkey nuts” is the local name for peanuts sold in the shell, which to most of us are even more immediately identifiable as peanuts than those sold without. The Express rounds up a couple of reactions from Britons on the street:

Pensioner Peter Davy, 73, of Preston, fumed: “It says monkey nuts on the packet. What do they think is in it? Cheese?” Jenny Harpin, 56, said: “If I bought a bag of monkey nuts I wouldn’t be too surprised to find they contained nuts.”

The government agency inevitably took a different view: “Without the correct information on the packaging, people with an allergy to peanuts who might not know or make the connection between peanuts and monkey nuts, for example children, might eat the product and experience an adverse reaction.” More: Lowering the Bar.

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A reminder (evergreen post)

Since it looks as if we’ll have thousands of new readers today, this might be a good time to reprint in slightly updated form an evergreen post that first appeared in 2007:

* When we post on Overlawyered about a real or potential lawsuit, it doesn’t necessarily mean we think the case is without merit. We regularly discuss meritorious cases.

* Not infrequently lawsuits we discuss are well founded on existing law, but that existing law is ill-conceived and deserves to be reconsidered. Or both law and lawsuit may make perfect sense, but the level of damages demanded may be excessive or implausible. Or the combatants on one side or both may pursue dubious tactics and theories. Or the media coverage of the case may have been credulous or one-sided. You get the idea.

* Sometimes it’s not clear what if anything either side did wrong in pursuing a dispute, but the case still stands as a monument to the high cost of resolving things through legal process. A recurring example: the family feud over a legacy that ends by consuming the estate in litigation costs.

* We also discuss a certain number of cases that are just plain interesting: they raise novel or non-obvious legal issues, or they shed light on human nature as it manifests itself in legal disputes. And, yes, it does happen on occasion that I take note of a case without being sure what I myself think of it.

* Finally, the multiple people who have posted content on the site are different people and don’t always agree with each other.

Sorry if this introduces complexity where people were expecting to find simplicity.

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NYT: “Federal Spigot Flows as Farmers Claim Discrimination”

This seemed like a big story to me at the time, and it’s gratifying that it also seems like a big story to the editors of the New York Times. Sharon LaFreniere’s above-the-fold story today breaks vital new details about how career government lawyers opposed Obama appointees’ insistence on reaching a gigantic settlement for claims of bias against female and Hispanic farmers in the operation of federal agriculture programs.

On the heels of the Supreme Court’s ruling [adverse to claimants and favorable toward USDA], interviews and records show, the Obama administration’s political appointees at the Justice and Agriculture Departments engineered a stunning turnabout: they committed $1.33 billion to compensate not just the 91 plaintiffs but thousands of Hispanic and female farmers who had never claimed bias in court.

The deal, several current and former government officials said, was fashioned in White House meetings despite the vehement objections — until now undisclosed — of career lawyers and agency officials who had argued that there was no credible evidence of widespread discrimination. What is more, some protested, the template for the deal — the $50,000 payouts to black farmers — had proved a magnet for fraud.

According to the Times report, the settlement drive became “a runaway train, driven by racial politics, pressure from influential members of Congress and law firms that stand to gain more than $130 million in fees.” On the earlier, “magnet for fraud” Pigford settlement, see our coverage here, here, here, here, here, here, etc.

P.S. Plenty of coverage of this story at other blogs, including tributes to Lee Stranahan and the late Andrew Breitbart, whose investigations helped crack the story open. Useful background from Daniel Foster:

As in the original Pigford settlements, the government has literally given plaintiffs and their lawyers more money than they know what to do with. In the case of a $760 million settlement with Native Americans, which career DOJ lawyers argued was more than the government would have to pay even if they lost in court, only $300 million worth of (ridiculously easy to fake) claims were actually filed, leaving the rest of the money to be distributed to “nonprofit organizations serving Native American farmers.” As the story points out, it is not even clear how many such organizations exist — though you can bet any enterprising NGOers reading this are at this very moment pulling a clean copy of the 501(c)(3) application from their files.

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