“A JetBlue Airways Corp. pilot whose erratic behavior forced the diversion of a flight from New York to Las Vegas in 2012 sued the airline for $14.9 million, claiming it shouldn’t have allowed him to fly. … [Clayton] Osbon claims in his complaint that a ‘complex partial brain seizure’caused him to run down the plane’s aisle, screaming about religion and terrorist attacks before he was restrained by passengers. He said JetBlue’s failure to ground him before the flight caused him public embarrassment and the loss of his career and reputation.” [Bloomberg]
Archive for March, 2015
Counting the costs of the New Mexico wi-fi suit
We posted earlier about a court’s dismissal after five years of the suit by Santa Fe, N.M. resident Arthur Firstenberg against neighbor Raphaela Monribot, over his claims that her electronic devices were exacerbating his condition of “electromagnetic hypersensitivity.” Don’t miss George Johnson’s excellent New York Times write-up, which fills in many more details:
…I assumed the case would be quickly dismissed. Instead, in 2010, it entered the maze of hamster tubes that make up the judicial system.
…About a week ago, after the Court of Appeals upheld the decision, I stopped by the office of Ms. Monribot’s lawyer, Christopher Graeser, with a tape measure. The files for the case sat in boxes on a table. Piled together, the pages would reach more than six feet high.
Court costs, not counting lawyers’ fees, had come to almost $85,000, or more than $1,000 an inch. Because of what the court described as Mr. Firstenberg’s “inability to pay,” the bill went instead to Ms. Monribot’s landlord’s insurance company — as if someone had slipped on an icy sidewalk, or pretended to.
Mr. Graeser and another lawyer, Joseph Romero, represented her pro bono, writing off an estimated $200,000 in legal fees.
Labor roundup
- “Hard hat dispute pits Amish miners against Labor Dept.” [The Hill]
- What, ProPublica do a tendentious, one-sided report with NPR on workers’ compensation? Can’t be the ProPublica we know [Joe Paduda, Workers Comp Insider and more, Insurance Information Institute and ProPublica response]
- “One government lawyer’s war on the franchising business” [Home Depot founder Bernie Marcus, The Hill, on NLRB’s Richard Griffin] Not even pretending any more: NLRB holds public seminar in SEIU offices [Labor Relations Institute]
- What unions stand to gain from minimum wage campaigns [Labor Pains]
- Speakers predict major damage to Los Angeles small theater scene from Actors Equity plan to end unpaid rehearsals [L.A. Times]
- Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) introduces bill to reverse NLRB’s “micro-unions” initiative [Sean Higgins, earlier] House holds critical hearing on ambush election rule [Diana Furchtgott-Roth, related Senate resolution] Adding a member to the NLRB might cut down on partisan swings, but why not check out more radical reform, along the lines of New Zealand’s Employment Contracts Act? [Trey Kovacs]
- Public college labor education center uses taxpayer funding to organize against proposed right to work law. You got a problem with that? [Freedom Foundation, Washington]
Jury rules against Ellen Pao; fees fail to shift
A San Francisco jury has found no improper gender discrimination or retaliation by Kleiner Perkins and returned a defense verdict in Ellen Pao’s high-profile lawsuit [Mashable, Roger Parloff/Fortune (noting judge’s evidentiary rulings favorable to Pao)] Pao’s “lawyers also missed out on a payday that could have reached into the millions of dollars.” In particular, “had Pao won on any of her claims, under California law her legal team, led by longtime San Francisco employment lawyers Alan Exelrod and Therese Lawless, could have sought all its fees from Kleiner.” [Reuters] One-way fee-shifting rules like those in discrimination law, especially with the further “win on any claim, collect all legal fees including those spent pursuing losing claims” refinement, diverge sharply from the principles of two-way loser pays followed in other advanced nations, but have the result (and the intent) of strongly incentivizing speculative litigation. The only real way to go further would be to order defendants to pay both sides’ fees even when the defendants win outright, as Kleiner did; but as of yet even California law does not go that far.
P.S. Apparently even a lost case counts as valuable promotion for the California plaintiff’s employment bar [Margaret Cronin Fisk, Bloomberg, auto-plays]
“Federal judge scolds BigLaw lawyers for ‘behemoth pleadings’ and ‘prolixity'”
“A federal judge in Manhattan is ordering lawyers in a United Parcel Service lawsuit to file new pleadings that are short and plain, in keeping with Rule 8 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. … UPS ‘launched its relatively straightforward claims with a sprawling 175-paragraph complaint, larded with more than 1,400 pages of exhibits,’ [U.S. District Judge William Pauley III] wrote. Lawyers for former franchisees responded with a 210-page answer with counterclaims and ‘voluminous exhibits,’ later expanded in an amended answer to a ‘breathtaking’ 303 pages that ‘brims with irrelevant and redundant allegations,’ Pauley said.” [ABA Journal]
Crime and punishment roundup
- “Felony murder: why a teenager who didn’t kill anyone faces 55 years in jail” [Ed Pilkington, Guardian]
- Crime largely missing from urbanist discussion but might actually be more important than streetcars [Urbanophile]
- “So when you read ‘she pioneered the use of John Doe indictments to stop clock on statutes of limitation’, think about your alibi for 1983.” [@ClarkHat on Twitter]
- “Kern County, a jurisdiction with a long unfortunate history of putting the wrong people in prison” [Radley Balko, Glenn Reynolds/USA Today on People v. Efrain Velasco-Palacios]
- What did prisoners do to get locked up? [Robert VerBruggen/Real Clear Policy] Role of sentencing policy in growth of prison population [Dara Lind, Vox]
- In the United Kingdom, claims of mass ritual child abuse are back [Matthew Scott, Barrister Blog; Barbara Hewson, The Justice Gap]
- New York City bus drivers have a point: not every traffic injury implies a legal wrong [Scott Greenfield]
Serial complainants at the Department of Education
“Complaints of discrimination to the [Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights] have soared from 6,364 in fiscal 2009 to a record of 9,989 in the most recent fiscal year.” [Lyndsey Layton, Washington Post] Most notable sentence concerning that surging caseload: “Two individuals were responsible for filing more than 1,700 of those allegations of [education] sex discrimination.”
Related: how OCR acquires and uses financial leverage over academia [Hans Bader, CEI via Amy Alkon (“a bigger threat to innocent students is the massive financial risk colleges face if they do not swiftly expel accused students … Moreover, even when no court would award damages, OCR will. It has recently given itself the power to award monetary damages against colleges, even in situations where the Supreme Court’s Davis decision says damages would be inappropriate under the Constitution’s spending clause.”)]
“Slain basketball player’s family files suit against Dallas ISD”
“The mother of slain Wilmer Hutchins basketball star Troy Causey Jr. has filed a federal lawsuit alleging that illegal recruiting practices at Dallas ISD schools led to her son’s death a year ago. … [She] alleges that coaches visited her 18-year-old son while he was in custody at Dallas County Youth Village during an eight-month stint there following an assault arrest and convinced him to play basketball.” Subsequently, Causey died after a beating at his residence, and a roommate who also played basketball for another Dallas school was charged with manslaughter in the case. Lawyers for the mother, Tammy Simpson, said school sports officials had helped place many players in such private living arrangements and should have known they were dangerous. [WFAA]
Obstruction of justice, the collectively bargained way
Investigators tried to look into the beating of an inmate by guards at New York’s famously tough Attica prison, still remembered for a lethal 1971 uprising, but ran into trouble: “Under their union contract, corrections officers are obligated to answer questions only from their employers and have the right to refuse to talk to outside police agencies. State Police investigators attempted to interview 15 guards; 11 declined to cooperate.” The subsequent sending of a “Notice of Discipline” to five officers on charges of excessive force “prompted an immediate rebellion among Attica’s corrections officers, who began a by-the-book work slowdown. Such job actions are not uncommon, officials acknowledge, with the only victims being the inmates whose meals, programs and visitors are all delayed.” [Theodore Ross, New York Times, in major article on aftermath of Attica, N.Y. prison beating](& welcome Instapundit readers)
Owner sues customer over negative reviews of dog obedience business
Jennifer Ujimori posted negative reviews on Yelp and Angie’s List after being dissatisfied with her experience with a Burke, Va. dog obedience class. Now the owner is suing her for damages. [Washington Post] Unlike D.C., Maryland and more than half the states, Virginia has not enacted a law (sometimes labeled “anti-SLAPP” statutes) that “allow for the quick dismissal of cases a judge deems to be targeting First Amendment rights.” I’m scheduled to be a guest on Washington, D.C.’s Fox 5 (WTTG) to discuss the case around 8:30 this morning (Friday).
Update: here’s the clip: