| ARCHIVE -- FEB. 2000 (II) |
February 29 --
Update: Publishers Clearing House case. Turning aside
objections from state attorneys general who viewed the deal as offering
more prizes to lawyers than to magazine subscribers, federal judge G. Patrick
Murphy approved a settlement of a class-action suit against Publishers
Clearing House for allegedly misleading sweepstakes claims. He also
approved as fair and reasonable the payment of $3 million in legal fees
to the class lawyers, a sum criticized as excessive by objectors and by
commentators such as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Bill McClellan.
("Publishers Clearing House Deal OKd", AP/FindLaw, Feb.
22).
As readers of this space will recall (see Nov.
30, Nov. 4 commentaries) McClellan
in his column on the suit jocularly compared class-action lawyers to bank
robbers and then corrected himself, saying the comparison wasn't fair to
bank robbers, who don't pretend they're in business for our good.
Class-action lawyers Judy Cates and Stephen Katz then proceeded to sue
him for $1 million, charging that these sentiments had defamed them. Among
the discovery demands they proceeded to make was that McClellan turn over
everything he'd written in the past decade that was "in any way critical
or mocking to lawyers or lawsuits." In another of their discovery
forays, McClellan advises readers in a recent column, "Cates and Katz were
demanding all correspondence I have received relating to their lawsuit.
In other words, if you sent me a letter or an e-mail concerning this case,
they wanted it. They wanted to see who has written what about them."
Now an agreement has been reached to end the lawsuit -- on what terms is
not immediately apparent. (Bill McClellan, "This is a situation where
even when you win, you lose", St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Feb.
23).
February 29 --
Feds' mission: target Silicon Valley for race complaints.
The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has decided that Silicon
Valley employers would make a suitably high-profile target for a series
of race discrimination complaints, and now is "scouring" the Valley for
likely defendants. A likely charge is that despite the strong representation
in high-tech employment of ethnic groups
from around the world, local blacks and Hispanics are underrepresented
in professional and managerial slots. "We've been beefing up our
staffing in every place that we see significant economic growth related
to high technology," says EEOC vice chairman Paul Igasaki, a long-time
civil rights attorney: "this is an industry in which a message may need
to be sent." A source within the agency puts it more bluntly: "We're
busy looking under every rock we can, looking for a couple of high-profile
companies we can hit with a suit." (Gary Rivlin, "Busting the Myth of the
Meritocracy", The Industry Standard, Feb.
21).
February 29 --
Tobacco lawyers' lien leverage. While states are
salivating at the vast new revenue banquet promised by the tobacco
settlement -- with no need to do anything unpopular, like raise taxes!
-- some are finding that the trial lawyers who seemed so helpful at first
are now proving obstreperous, slapping the states with liens that may prevent
the distribution of some or all settlement booty until the lawyers' share
is resolved. In New Jersey, Bergen County plaintiff's attorneys Terry
Bottinelli and Marc Saperstein blocked access to upwards of $92 million
in funds, then relented when the state agreed to help document their case
for sharing in the fee payday, though in the end it merely made short mention
of their work in a press release. (Matt Ackermann, "New Jersey's
Tobacco-Suit Dividends Delayed by Hold-Out Attorneys", New Jersey Law
Journal, Jan.
11; "Holdout Tobacco Lawyers Will Relent If State Documents Their Case
for Fees", Jan.
18; "N.J. Tobacco Settlement Holdouts Drop Appeal", Feb.
17) (more N.J. tobacco-fee coverage: Oct.
1). In Illinois, Seattle attorney Steve Berman's Hagens &
Berman, San Francisco's Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann & Bernstein, and two
other firms slapped a lien on the state's $9.1 billion windfall; last fall
a national arbitration panel ruled that while the Berman firm had been
an important player in tobacco litigation on the national scene, "relatively
little was done to advance the case to trial in Illinois". Berman,
quoted in the Chicago Tribune, conceded that not everyone sympathized
with his position that he and the other lawyers are nonetheless entitled
to as much as $910 million for their Illinois work: "Some people say lawyers
have got a lot of money and are overpaid and are bad guys anyway".
(Rick Pearson, "Lawyers demand a bigger piece of tobacco cash pie", Chicago
Tribune, Nov.
23) (more Illinois tobacco-fee coverage: Oct.
16; more on Berman: Feb. 28, Aug.
21).
February 28 --
"Medical errors" study. Malpractice lawyers have already
seized on a recent federal study (see Feb. 22 commentary)
which extrapolated from a study of hospitals in three states to the conclusion
that between 44,000 and 98,000 patients die each year nationally because
of mistakes in medical care.
In a short paper for the Statistical Assessment Service, Iain Murray and
Howard Fienberg point out a few of the study's questionable premises.
For example, the study's definition of medication-related errors, a significant
share of the total, "is based on errors that resulted 'from acknowledged
errors by patients and medical personnel'" (emphasis added).
"In other words, if a patient takes an overdose or fails to inform their
medical advisers of other conflicting medications they are taking, that
is regarded as a medical error, rather than misadventure." (Iain
Murray and Howard Fienberg, "Doctoring the Data, Nursing the News?", "STATS
Spotlight", Feb. 24)
(via Junk Science). Plus:
a Chicago Tribune editorial urges caution: "Don't Compound Medical
Errors", Feb.
27.
February 28 --
Fifteen years locked away. If you think the day-care-abuse
mania of the 1980s has mostly run its course, consider the case of Bernard
Baran, convicted of mass molestation in 1985 in Pittsfield, Mass. under
the sorts of dubious circumstances that were later to become familiar in
such cases. Katha Pollitt's Nation account mentions in passing
that the mother who initiated the accusations, a drug addict living in
troubled circumstances, proceeded to file a suit against the center demanding
$3.2 million (the case "was settled out of court, reputedly for a small
sum"), and that one of the children, whose mother was a friend of the original
accuser, "told a therapist after the trial that her mother had told her
to say Baran had molested her so they could get toys and money".
Since Baran still insists on his innocence he's ineligible for parole.
(Katha Pollitt, "Subject to Debate: Justice for Bernard Baran", The
Nation, March
13) (via Arts &
Letters Daily) ("The Appalling Case of Bernard Baran", website
about the case).
February 28 --
Hiring talent from the opposing camp. Seattle plaintiff's
lawyer Steven Berman is among the most feared in the country; a class-action
securities specialist, he went on to assume a prominent role in the tobacco
litigation (see August 21; his
fee from that has been estimated at $2 billion). But now the
city's best known corporate citizen, Microsoft, has quietly hired Berman
to help it fend off the wave of
class-action lawsuits it's facing over its antitrust troubles.
According to Forbes's "The Informer", Berman and Microsoft chairman
Bill Gates have become personal friends -- notwithstanding a 1989 incident
in which, following a sudden drop in the company's stock price, Berman
filed a lawsuit against the company and won $1.5 million. (Elizabeth
Corcoran and Tomas Kellner, "The Informer", Forbes, Feb.
7) (fourth item).
February 28 --
Welcome Duke Law visitors. Overlawyered.com is
the featured "site
of the week" on the Duke Law School "Faculty and Staff Gateway" page.
February 26-27 --
Legal ethics meet medical ethics. Two weeks ago, in preparation
for his second murder trial on charges of pushing Kendra Webdale to her
death on the New York subway last January, Andrew Goldstein went off his
antipsychotic medication. Mr. Goldstein's court-appointed lawyers
"advised him to go off his drugs in an effort to demonstrate to the jury
the debilitating effects of his mental illness". Doctors
treating the 30-year-old schizophrenic at Bellevue were strongly opposed
to the tactic, and some outside observers were also skeptical, such as
Columbia law professor Richard Uviller, who said "a lawyer's first duty
is to preserve his client's health." However, schizophrenia expert
Dr. E. Fuller Torrey called the move legitimate and said he himself "had
intentionally given homeless mentally ill patients less medication than
they needed before court competency hearings to keep them from being released
back onto the street." Justice Carol Berkman of State Supreme Court
in Manhattan "has said she would allow Mr. Goldstein to stop taking his
medication for as long as he appeared competent to stand trial. If
he appeared not to understand his surroundings, she ruled, he would be
forcibly given his medication." The new trial is expected to last
at least a month; the first ended in a jury deadlock and mistrial.
(David Rohde, "For Retrial, Subway Defendant Goes Off Medication", New
York Times, Feb. 23 -- fee-based
archive).
February 26-27 --
"Judgment reversed in Seinfeld case". "An appeals court
on Tuesday reversed a $25 million judgment awarded to a man who was fired
after a female co-worker complained that he harassed
her by discussing a racy episode of 'Seinfeld.' ... The 'Seinfeld' element
of the case eventually became secondary and a Milwaukee County Circuit
court dismissed a wrongful-firing claim." Jerold Mackenzie had argued
that his bosses at Miller Brewing Co. were already plotting to fire
him from his $95,000-a-year management job at a time when they told
him his position was safe. (Jenny Price, AP/Washington Post,
Feb. 22, link now dead).
February 26-27 --
Deep pockets blameable for denial of service attacks?
PBS commentator Robert X. Cringely has posted a bunch of emails from his
readers concerning the coordinated "distributed denial of service" attacks
on major web sites earlier this month.
Among them was the following from Jay Kangel: "At some point one of these
hacking events is going to cost someone who can hire lots of lawyers with
real money. At that point the victim, or the victim's insurance company,
will want to sue for damages. The actual hacker will likely have little
or no money. Even if the victim wins such a suit the damages cannot be
recovered. The deep pockets are the owners of the zombie machines. Is it
negligence if a machine owner does not promptly install security patches
and, as a result, hackers take over the machine? I don't know...." ("The
Cat is Out of the Bag", I, Cringely: The Pulpit, Feb.
24).
February 26-27 --
Mayors: liability fears stalling "brownfields" development.
A report from the U.S. Conference of Mayors finds that liability fears
are among major factors stalling redevelopment of "brownfields" (abandoned
or underused industrial sites) in American cities. Environmentalists
and urbanists consider brownfields an attractive alternative for new industrial
development near the existing workforce, remedying eyesores and bolstering
urban tax bases while avoiding development of peripheral vacant land around
cities ("sprawl"). The open-ended liability inflicted by the Superfund
program, however, menaces new developers, lenders, realtors and users with
potential responsibility for the environmental
sins of long-departed actors. ("Traci Watson, "Report finds more
than 80,000 acres of polluted land in USA", USA Today, Feb. 25,
link now dead; report
and news release).
February 25 --
Music stores sue Sony. Candidate for the distinction of
lamest business-vs.-business suit of the year? You be the judge.
The National Association of Recording Merchandisers
has filed suit against Sony for the purported offense of including hyperlinks
and promotional inserts in or with its music products that enable/encourage
consumers to use its online store, thus "diverting" them away from their
destined role as future purchasers at the retail outlet. "Few retailers
are happy about having to stock Ricky Martin CD's with hyperlinks to Sonymusic.com
[where customers can buy more CDs], but Sony hasn't provided any alternative,"
complains Pamela Horovitz of NARM. This practice amounts, says Horovitz,
to "forcing retailers to steer their own customers to competitive sites".
"Forcing"? Well, it seems, the latest Ricky Martin album was just
too darn popular for record stores to consider not stocking it by way of
punishing Sony for its hyperlink policy.
The retailers insist that Sony has a legal obligation to make available
to them CDs stripped of the capability to hyperlink to an online store,
much as if newsstand distributors demanded that publishers supply magazines
that were free of subscription cards (which of course tend to "divert"
readers' business from further newsstand purchases of the magazine).
The complaint also charges Sony with "copyright misuse, illegal price discrimination
by favoring its own record club and on-line music retailer (CDNow/ Columbia
House) over other retailers, unfair competition, and false advertising."
("Retailers Sue Sony", Reuters/Wired News, Jan.
31; NARM press release, Jan.
31; Pamela Horovitz, commentary, Billboard, July
1999 (reprinted at NARM site, second item)).
February 25 --
Not to be dismissed. Item from a recent (Jan.
27) edition of Chuck Shepherd's News
of the Weird, under the heading "Fireproof Workers":
"An arbitration panel ruled in July that Toronto Transit Commission janitor
Winston Ruhle had been improperly fired and deserved about $115,000 (U.S.)
in damages; he was fired in 1995 for padding his recuperation time after
surgery, improperly missing 203 days during a 244-day period. And English
chauffeur John Forbes, 55, won an employment tribunal ruling in September
that it was unfair to fire him simply because he had twice dressed in women's
clothing on the job and flashed his underwear to passing motorists."
February 25 --
Secrets of class action defense. "Some companies facing
a multitude of class actions have been
accused of shopping for the cheapest settlements by choosing to deal with
lawyers willing to seek less for class members, sometimes in return for
a hefty legal fee," reports the Mobile Register in its investigative
series (see Feb. 7 commentary).
For example, Norwest Financial was accused of overcharging for credit life
insurance in a class action filed in Birmingham; it offered a settlement,
which was rejected. It then struck a similar deal with a Mobile lawyer
to settle the case on behalf of the same class. "'Defendants can
to some degree get different plaintiffs' lawyers to bid against each other,'
said John Coffee, a professor at Columbia University in New York and expert
on class action law. ... If one plaintiffs' lawyer drives a hard bargain
and seeks a truly beneficial settlement for a class, a company may seek
another lawyer and ask him to file a suit for the purpose of settling,
and on terms the company dictates.
"Coffee said it's 'a game' by which a defendant arranges for a plaintiffs'
attorney to agree to a 'modest settlement for the class but very lucrative
attorney's fees. The defendant might even write up the complaint
to make sure it's competent and covers everything,' Coffee said."
(Eddie Curran, "Judge: Mobile deal a 'cheap ticket out of trouble'", Dec.
27 (full
series).
February 24 --
Columnist-fest: liberal aims, illiberal means. Three variations
on a theme, namely how progressive social goals aren't always well served
by handing ever-greater authority to those who run the legal process:
* Wendy Kaminer understands why feminists would rally behind the
Violence Against Women Act, currently up before the Supreme Court in Brzonkala
v. Virginia Tech, but wonders whether liberals should really be
comfortable arguing for an expansive view of federal police power.
"We need to combat sexual violence without making a federal case of it."
("Sexual Congress", American Prospect, Feb.
14).
* Stuart Taylor welcomes the idea of extending legal recognition in
Vermont to same-sex relationships, but asks: should this advance really
be put over by way of a unilateral assertion of power by the state's Supreme
Court? ("A Vote For Gay Marriage -- But Not By Judicial Fiat", National
Journal, Feb. 21).
* William Raspberry agrees that loving relatives
should be a part of kids' lives, but still is mystified by the law under
review in the Supreme Court's pending Troxel v. Granville:
"If you stipulate the mother’s parental fitness (as both sides seemed to
do in last week’s questioning by the justices) then how can you insist
that she bow to the grandparents’ desires -- or even that she has to explain
why she chooses not to?" ("Grandparents’ visitation rights case misses
boat", Detroit News, Jan.
18).
February 24 --
House passes liability reforms. President Clinton is going
to huff and puff and use his veto to blow down anything that looks like
a shelter from the incursions of his good friends in the trial bar, which
hasn't deterred the House from passing two bills this month aimed at extending
modest degrees of such protection to small businesses and manufacturers
of long-lived capital goods. ("GOP makes little headway in reining
in lawsuits", AP/CNN, Feb. 22, link now dead). The small business bill
would restrict punitive damages levied against enterprises with fewer than
25 employees to $250,000 or three times actual damages, whichever is less,
and would require plaintiffs seeking punitive damages to show that a defendant
acted with "willful misconduct and was flagrantly indifferent to the rights
and safety of others." ("House Passes Bill Shielding Small Businesses
From Liability Suits", DowJones.com, Feb.
16.) The durable-goods bill would bar suits against makers of
factory equipment that were filed
more than 18 years after the delivery of the equipment to its original
user; it would not apply to workers who are ineligible for workers' compensation.
(Paul Barton, "House passes cap on makers' liability", Cincinnati Enquirer,
Feb.
3). The two bills passed by almost identical margins -- 221-193
for the small business bill, and 222-194 for the statute of repose bill
-- with about two dozen Democrats crossing over to join the GOP majority
in favor, and about one dozen Republicans crossing the other way.
February 24 --
Blaming good pilots. One of the first lawsuits arising
from the Jan. 31 Alaska Airlines crash over the Pacific claims that "the
pilots should have 'immediately … land(ed) the aircraft upon first notice
of difficulty in operation.' ... But the second-guessing, and the widow's
lawsuit, are wrong. The pilots did what
they were supposed to: Analyze the situation, take corrective action, land
as soon as practicable. Hurtling through the skies in a pressurized metal
tube has its risks. Slapping the airline with a lawsuit won’t make those
risks magically disappear. ... The pilots were heroes, keeping their crippled
plane over the ocean instead of slamming it into suburban Los Angeles."
(Phaedra Hise, "Aerial ambulance chasing", Salon, Feb.
18) (more on overlawyered skies: Oct.
8, July 19, Dec.
1, Dec. 9, "Kingdom
of the One-Eyed", "Life,
Liberty, and the Pursuit of a Good Beer")
February 23 --
Crime does pay, cont'd. A federal judge last week refused
to dismiss a civil rights lawsuit by family members of a bank
robber killed in a spectacular televised shootout with police in North
Hollywood, Calif. Emil Matasareanu and Larry Eugene Phillips Jr.
"fired more than 1,200 rounds from automatic weapons during a 44-minute
battle on Feb. 28, 1997. Both men died, and 11 officers and a half-dozen
civilians were wounded." Attorney Stephen Yagman, representing the
family, alleges that police violated Matasareanu's rights by deliberately
"keeping paramedics away from him for an hour as he died on the street....The
city has contended that paramedics were needed elsewhere and that authorities
initially feared Matasareanu might be booby-trapped." ("Judge allows lawsuit
to go forward in North Hollywood shootout case", AP/FindLaw, Feb.
16).
February 23 --
"How's the pool?" "It's okay, but what's amazing about
it is that its construction predates
massive lawsuits, so it actually has a deep end. Where most new Las
Vegas pools are only three feet deep, this one goes to twelve feet.
The diving board has been removed, however." -- from a review
of the Frontier Hotel on the website CheapoVegas.com.
Better hurry, though: the review advises that "The Frontier is scheduled
to be demolished in the summer of 2000".
February 23 --
That Hager case. The Washington Post's David Segal,
who covered the lawyer beat for three years and has now moved on to write
about music, last month penned a valedictory column which mentioned one
of his regrets: not having taken a harder look at the disciplinary process
for D.C. lawyers and in particular "the tale of Mark
Hager, the American University Law professor and sometime plaintiffs
lawyer.
"He represented a pair of Virginia mothers who wanted to sue Warner
Lambert, makers of a lice shampoo, for creating an environmental hazard
and for failing to rid critters from their children's heads. In an out-of-court
deal, Warner Lambert offered refunds to the moms and some 90 other buyers
of Nix shampoo, a sum that totaled less than $10,000. Hager and a partner,
meanwhile, ended up splitting the $225,000 that Warner Lambert paid on
condition that the lawyers not bring another, similar suit and -- here's
the kicker -- not tell their clients about the bargain. (Hager countered
that the deal was legit, in part because it doesn't prevent his clients
from suing Warner Lambert in the future. He also said the moms' demand
for a toxic tort-style suit was unreasonable.)
"The moms filed an ethics grievance
and a hearing before a committee of the D.C.
Board of Professional Responsibility -- which recommends disciplinary
action -- occurred in January. Not a peep has been heard from that committee
since, even though it's supposed to cough up a recommendation within 60
days."
Concludes Segal: "That's an outrage. If Washington lawyers want the
trust of their clients and abiding respect from the rest of us, devising
a more efficient policing mechanism might be a good start." (Update
May 3, 2001: disciplinary panel in Nov.
2000 called Hager's conduct "shockingly outrageous" and recommended three-year
suspension) (Update Jul.
19, 2003: Hager resigns AU post in April 2003).
SOURCES: David Segal, "Hearsay: Verdicts Rendered, a Beat
Surrendered", Washington Post, Jan.
17; David Segal, "Group Says Lawyer Made Secret Deal", Washington Post,
November 4, 1998, and Siobhan Roth, "American University Professor Faces
Ethics Charges, Legal Times, Jan. 18, 1999, both reprinted
at headlice.org site; "'Settlement' in lice shampoo case probed", AP,
Jan. 27, 1999, reprinted
at "Safe 2 Use" commercial page; Goldie H. Gider, "Law Professor Faces
Ethics Charges", The Legal Reformer (HALT), Spring
1999 (second item); Deborah Kelly, "Lice infestations on the rise",
Richmond Times-Dispatch, May
29, 1997. In addition to publishing in such outlets as Monthly
Review and Z Magazine,
Prof. Hager has also distinguished himself for the vehemence of his attacks
on liability reformers; see, for example, "Civil Compensation and Its Discontents:
A Response to [Peter] Huber," 42 Stanford Law Review 539 (1990)
(not online).
February 23 --
"Quadriplegic is given 7 years in prison for selling marijuana".
In another triumph for the drug war, a federal court has sentenced Louis
E. Covar Jr., 51, to prison for seven years. Covar, a wheelchair
user who cannot control his muscles beneath his shoulders, says he
uses marijuana for medicinal purposes but police testified that he was
selling it, in violation of probation terms for a conviction for marijuana
possession last March. "According to the Department of Corrections,
the special care Covar will need will cost $258.33 a day -- or more than
$660,000 if he serves his full seven years. A typical prisoner costs taxpayers
$47.63 per day." Federal judge J. Carlisle Overstreet said he was
aware of the cost-of-custody problem but said Covar had showed "blatant
disregard for the law". (AP/Deseret News, Feb.
19).
February 23 --Overlawyered.com
sets new visitor record. Yesterday was our busiest day ever,
thanks in large part to the Wall Street Journal's generous editorial
mention and the live link in its interactive edition.
February 22 --
Welcome Wall Street Journal readers. In an editorial
("Virtual Sanity")
hailing the anti-food-scare Guest
Choice Network, the Journal says that "overlawyered.com, a site
run by Walter Olson to track the excesses of the lawsuit industry" is one
of "a new breed of Websites... cropping up to keep tabs on the army of
lawyers and activists". ("Virtual Sanity", Wall Street Journal,
Feb.
22 (online subscription required)).
February 22 --
Against medical advice. Ignoring the advice of both his
own subordinates and the medical profession, President Clinton is expected
today to unveil a package of measures aimed at combating "medical errors"
among doctors, hospitals and other medical
providers. The most controversial measure would subject providers
to legal sanctions if they fail to report such errors. Since there's
often much doubt as to whether a particular incident constituted error
and whether it contributed to a patient's bad outcome, institutions could
stay out of legal danger only by reporting as "error" many incidents that
they might not be convinced are such. Despite supposed safeguards
for privacy, the New York Times reports, it will often be possible
for outsiders to identify the names of patients and doctors involved, and
"public reports could be used to strengthen the hand of plaintiffs' lawyers
in malpractice lawsuits."
The proposals follow a stampede set off by the release of a federally
sponsored study which found high rates of avoidable injury to patients
in the medical system. (For skeptical looks at the same Harvard-based
researchers' earlier allegations of an "epidemic" of medical malpractice,
see Richard
Anderson, 1996, and Peter
Huber, 1990 and 1997).
Both the American Medical Association and the American Hospital Association
have warned that, to quote the Times, "if doctors and hospital employees
fear being sued...they will be reluctant to discuss the lessons that could
be learned from their mistakes." Also conspicuous by its absence
is any evidence that federally managed health care facilities, such as
Veterans' Administration hospitals, are presently achieving more success
at avoiding errors than private hospitals, or any demonstration of why
Washington should be imposing untried changes on private hospital management
when it has as yet done nothing to demonstrate the workability of the proposed
changes in its own facilities.
Indeed, "[e]ven Mr. Clinton's own advisers had suggested that the administration
move cautiously." Instead, Clinton -- fresh from a $500,000 trial-lawyer-hosted
fund-raiser in Dallas two weeks ago -- overrode their advice. He
also insisted that an additional principle be part of the package: no matter
how many rights doctors and hospitals are made to give up, no jot or tittle
of the right to sue doctors or hospitals for malpractice may be
interfered with. (Robert Pear, "Clinton to Propose a System to Reduce
Medical Mistakes", New York Times, Feb.
22 (requires registration)).
P.S.: For the past year, having abruptly reversed its earlier
stance of resisting the expansion of litigation, organized American medicine
has been cheerleading the trial lawyers' assault on HMOs; the Connecticut
State Medical Society, for example, recently sponsored trial lawyer bigwig
Richard Scruggs to come to the state to talk up the subject. This
could be seen as a kind of experiment: with the trial lawyers receiving
such extraordinary and unexpected assistance from their old enemy, would
they ease off on their litigation war against the doctors themselves?
The Clinton initiative provides a definitive answer to that question: no,
they won't. (Edward J. Croder, "$300 million lawyer revs up to take
on HMOs" (Scruggs speech at Quinnipiac College School of Law), New Haven
Register, Feb. 11 -- not online)
February 19-21 --
"Deaf group files lawsuit against movie theaters." Invoking
the Americans with Disabilities Act,
eight hearing-impaired persons in Portland, Oregon have filed what aspires
to the status of a national class action seeking to force three large cinema
chains, Regal, Century, and Carmike, to install closed captioning devices
for films in their theaters. The technology, called MoPix, displays
captions in a patron's cupholder; the plaintiffs say it costs about $12,000
a screen to install. A spokesman for the suit, attorney Dennis Steinman,
said the country's biggest cinema chain, Cinemark, was likely to be added
soon to the case as a defendant. (Ashbel Green, "Suit seeks to aid
deaf moviegoers", The Oregonian, Feb.
4).
February 19-21 --
Bountiful NYC taxpayers come through again. It happened
in 1989: Driver Jack Goldberg, under the influence of heroin, cocaine and
methadone, lost control of his car and ran onto a Brooklyn sidewalk, gravely
injuring Linda Davis, who'd been waiting with her daughter and grandson
to catch a bus. Pleading guilty to assault, Goldberg was sent to
prison for two years. But the blame could hardly be allowed to stop
there, especially not when a far deeper pocket was on hand. Mr. Goldberg
proceeded to aver that he'd swerved to avoid a city sanitation truck that
was entering the intersection against the light. This theory outraged
city officials, who according to the New York Law Journal "contended
that Mr. Goldberg admitted at his deposition that he did not recall even
seeing the truck in the area and that he had swerved to avoid striking
a boy who had run into the street half a block away." Nonetheless,
on December 16 a Kings County jury proceeded to find the city 23 percent
culpable for the incident and hand down a $16 million verdict in the suit
brought by Ms. Davis and her relatives; joint and several liability should
do the rest. ("Verdicts and Settlements", New York Law Journal,
Jan. 28, not online).
February 19-21 --
Harassment-law roundup. A new product called Disappearing
Email is set to launch next month which automatically "shreds" and destroys
email after a certain length of time as determined by company policy; the
target market is companies worried that internal emails will be used against
them by lawyers in harassment or other types of litigation. ("Email's
Vanishing Act", Wired News, Feb.
7). Meanwhile, the Industry Standard takes a look at the
widely publicized sexual harassment
lawsuits filed by two employees against Juno, the Internet start-up.
(Susan Orenstein, "What happened at Juno", The Standard, Feb.
7). And at Intellectual Capital, reader discussion is
in progress about Joan Kennedy Taylor's book What to Do When You Don't
Want to Call the Cops: A Non-Adversarial Approach to Sexual Harassment,
excerpted briefly in this space in November. (Jaime Sneider, "Above
the Law?", Intellectual Capital, Feb.
17).
February 19-21 --
Welcome Lucianne.com, Crikey.com.au readers. Readers
of Lucianne.com, the popular
news forum presided over by Zippergate stalwart Lucianne Goldberg, recently
discussed our commentaries "Bill Clinton among friendly crowd" and "Thanks
for the memories" (links now dead). And an influx of visitors from
Australia over the last week or so owes much to our inclusion as
a link on Crikey.com.au,
an irreverent investigative site that covers media, government and business
down under.
February 19-21 --
"Motorists speed more, but fewer die". When Congress did
away with the national 55-mph highway
speed limit, opponents called it a "killer bill"; Advocates
for Highway and Auto Safety -- a be-safe-or-else coalition backed by
both insurance companies and the trial-lawyer-allied Ralph Nader
complex -- predicted that the move "will
be the death knell for thousands of American men, women and children".
But in fact "the national crash fatality rate, determined by the number
of fatalities for every 100 million vehicle miles driven, has fallen by
11 percent since the United States lifted the national 55 mph speed limit
in 1995". (Tom Greenwood, "Motorists speed more, but fewer die",
Detroit News, Jan.
4; Brock Yates, "Just when you thought bigger was better", Car and
Driver, Oct. 1999,
reprinted at Steve Hartford site).
February 19-21 --
Update: Cayuga land claim. A Syracuse, N.Y. jury has recommended
an amount of $36.9 million as appropriate compensation to the Cayuga Indian
tribe for its sale of 64,015 acres to the state of New York two centuries
ago. The sum was far below the $335 million sought by the Cayugas
and below even the $51 million recommended by appraisers for the state,
which was the defendant in the suit. Cayuga attorney Martin Gold
lashed out at the ruling as "ridiculous...Apparently nine people didn't
pay attention to the evidence." The 1795 and 1807 sales were recently
declared invalid because they were not approved by the federal government,
as required by law (see Feb. 1 commentary).
Jim Memmott, "Verdict saddens Cayugas", Rochester Democrat & Chronicle,
Feb. 18.)
February 18 --
Bush unveils legal reform plan. On the campaign trail
last week, Texas Gov. George W. Bush unveiled proposals for reforming the
civil justice system if he's elected President. (Disclosure: this
site's editor has served as an unpaid advisor to the Bush campaign on the
issue.) The proposals include: tougher sanctions for meritless lawsuits
and motions; a "Fair Settlement Rule" under which parties who reject a
bona fide settlement offer and then do worse at trial will be liable
for the reasonable legal fees their opponents expended after the offer;
curbs on lawyers' power to steer actions into courts they view as favorable
("forum-shopping"); a "Client's Bill of Rights" prescribing more disclosure
about fees to be charged and enhanced supervision by federal courts of
fees charged in the cases they oversee; and controls on unreasonable fees
charged by lawyers representing government bodies. ("Bush proposes higher
standards for lawyers", Reuters/FindLaw, Feb.
9; campaign news release, Feb.
9; fact sheets on tort
reform and on Texas
record (PDF format); Morton Kondracke, "Bush's Trial with the Trial
Lawyers", June 28, 1999
(reprinted at Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse Houston site)).
February 18 --
I see riches in your future. ABC has confirmed that it
has paid $933,992 to an employee of the Psychic Services Network who sued
the network over its 1993 airing of a secretly made videotape on its newsmagazine
"PrimeTime Live". Mark Sanders charged that ABC had ruined his reputation
by covertly videotaping him and his colleagues working the telephones in
a show aimed at depicting the call-a-psychic business as "a scam and illegitimate".
In 1994 a jury awarded Sanders $335,000 in compensatory and $300,000 in
punitive damages, and the total sum owing has mounted through the accumulation
of interest as ABC has pursued unsuccessful appeals. (Yahoo/AP, "ABC Pays
Damages to Psychic Network", Feb. 15, link now dead).
February 18 --
Lawsuit reform helps Michigan taxpayers. The state's payout
in judgments and settlements, which had been running around $25 to $35
million a year, declined to $12.7 million last year. Democratic state
attorney general Jennifer Granholm credited skillful legal work and good
economic times for the favorable trend but also, significantly, acknowledged
the helpful role of 1995 reforms which bolstered sovereign immunity and
curbed the application of joint and several liability, the deep-pocket
doctrine by which a defendant one percent responsible for an accident can
be made to pay all the damages. ("Tort reform pays off" (editorial),
Detroit News, Feb.
2).
February 18 --
The trouble with bounty-hunting. "Porcupines [in New England]
have never enjoyed the popular status of, say, the armadillo in Texas.
They were particularly unpopular earlier in this century, when they returned
to reforested areas ahead of their natural predators and consequently boomed.
John Barrows, a district forester with the state of Vermont, recalls that
Vermont used to offer a bounty of fifty cents for a set of porcupine ears,
and in 1952 paid out $90,000. Remarkably, it still had a porcupine
problem in 1953 and for several decades thereafter. Barrows explains:
'There was a time when we thought the state had a lot of money, and a trapper
who knew how to use his knife could get ten or twelve sets of ears out
of a single animal.'" -- from Richard Conniff, Every
Creeping Thing: True Tales of Faintly Repulsive Wildlife (Henry Holt
& Co., 1998).
February 17 --
And so now everybody's happy. "Last month, the Supreme
Court decided not to review an appeals court decision that temporary Microsoft
workers must receive the same retirement benefits, including discounted
stock, as regular employees.... Already,
some companies have reacted to the original Microsoft decision by getting
rid of temporary workers before they can be considered permanent, lawyers
said." (David Leonhardt, "Who's the Boss? Who's a Worker?",
New York Times, Feb.
16) (& see letters, Dec.
20).
February 17 --
Barrel pointing backward. "President Clinton enthusiastically
backs the current wave of municipal lawsuits against the gun
industry", yet he's also proposed giving $10 million in taxpayer money
to some of the same manufacturers for the sake of developing so-called
smart guns. Some litigation advocates are upset about the inconsistency,
including Kristen Rand of the Violence Policy Center, who says: "It makes
the lawsuits seem like a charade." Yes, now she's getting the idea.
The litigation onslaught may in fact have retarded progress toward smart-gun
technology. Colt's Manufacturing Co. had been at work on a smart-gun
venture but folded its effort late last year; the Wall Street Journal's
Paul Barrett quotes John Rigas, a partner in the company's controlling
owner, the New York investment group Zilkha & Co., as saying that "potential
punitive damages scared away needed outside investors". (Paul M.
Barrett, "'Smart' Guns Trigger a Debate", Wall Street Journal, Jan.
27 (requires online subscription).)
February 17 --
Welcome Kausfiles.com
readers. Mickey Kaus's commentaries on politics, journalism
and social policy, among the high points of Slate,
are also collected on this freestanding website. He's just added
new features including a desktop-style assortment of columnist and policy
links. Check out the ultrabrief descriptions (for this page: "Daily
horror stories".)
February 17 --
The fine print. The Boston Globe has backed off
at least temporarily from a short-lived effort to save money, trees and
ink by reducing the type size of its articles, thus squeezing more onto
a page. Readers had protested vociferously, and at least one threatened
to sue under the Americans with Disabilities
Act: "The Globe cannot simply refuse to serve readers with aging eyes
and poor eyesight." (Jack Thomas, "The incredible shrinking type
irks Globe readers", Boston Globe, Feb. 14, link now dead (via Romenesko,
Media News)).
February 17 --
Let your fingers do the suing. The Yellow Pages contain
many entries for businesses like the A-ABC Locksmith Service and AAA Affordable
Auto Glass, and now you can add to that list of eagerly
promotional trade monickers the AAAA
Legal Center, run by Detroit-area trial lawyer Robert D. Mouradian,
though its website has not been updated since April 1999 and could use
a spell-check.
February 16 --
Welcome Fox News Channel visitors. Our editor was interviewed
for a story on how the Americans with Disabilities Act may require the
redesign of websites so as to provide "reasonable accommodation" to blind,
deaf and other handicapped users. For more details, see his
prepared statement presented to a House Judiciary Committee hearing
last week; our Dec. 21 commentary,
and our subpages on disabled-rights law
and Internet law.
February 16 --
Update: Connecticut tobacco-fee bonanza. Not long after
Connecticut attorney general Richard Blumenthal said last winter he had
"no idea" whether law firms were going to rake in excessive fees representing
the state in the tobacco settlement
(see Feb. 3 commentary), a total
fee haul was announced: a handsome $65 million. As previously reported
in this space, the three lucky firms selected to handle the in-state work
included Blumenthal's own former law firm of Silver, Golub & Teitell
of Stamford. The other two firms? One was Carmody & Torrance
of Waterbury, whose managing partner James K. Robertson is personal counsel
and counselor to the state's governor, John Rowland. And the third
was Stamford's Emmett & Glander, whose name partner, Kathryn Emmett,
happens to be married to partner David S. Golub of Silver, Golub &
Teitell. "I know how it [looks]", concedes Golub.
A number of other firms that wanted to be considered for the work were
cut out; Robert Reardon of New London, a former president of the Connecticut
Trial Lawyers Association, couldn't get even get in the door for a meeting.
Though Attorney General Blumenthal was later to disclaim knowledge of the
firms' fee entitlements, the Connecticut Law Tribune reports that
he "was extraordinarily active in the litigation and settlement -- more
so than any other attorney general". (Thomas Scheffey, "Winning the $65
Million Gamble", Connecticut Law Tribune, Dec.
8; "After the Lion's Share", Feb.
5).
February 16 --
Disabled test-accommodation roundup. Salon is the
latest to notice this
issue. While the share of students getting extra time on the
SAT -- typically an extra hour and a half on a three-hour exam -- is still
only 1.9 percent nationwide, "the number jumps to nearly 10 percent in
some New England prep schools and
wealthy districts in California." Michael Scott Moore, "Buying Time",
Salon, Feb.
9). AP reports that the percentage of college freshmen describing
themselves as disabled more than tripled between 1978 and 1998, from less
than 3 percent to 9.4 percent. Forty-one percent of the disabled
freshmen in 1998 identified their impediment as a learning disability,
up from 15 percent ten years earlier. More chances to attend college
for kids who'd have been classified as disabled all along -- or just more
students being classified as disabled? ("Learning Disabled Advance
in School", AP/FindLaw, Feb.
10). In a case closely watched by college officials, a Boston
College senior with attention deficit disorder and a 3.35 grade point average
"has sued the Law School Admissions Council, charging the national testing
giant violated her rights by denying her extra time to take the all-important
exam." (Andrea Estes, "BC student sues test firm: Wants more time
for law school exam", Boston Herald, Jan.
12).
