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June 8-10 -- Parted
from his money. Philadelphia-area businessman David Piscitelli
has settled his lawsuit against Sole Mio Balaam Nicola, 90, a resident
of Egg Harbor City, N.J. who worked for many years as an astrologer at
the Woolworth's on the Atlantic City Boardwalk. Piscitelli said "he
was the victim of a 'gypsy scam' from 1978 to 1991 that prompted him to
turn over about $200,000, leave his wife, sell his real-estate business,
and move to Brigantine to avoid snake attacks and other evil curses."
It all began, he told the court, when he found Nicola's ad in the Yellow
Pages and arrived at her establishment where she "instructed him to hand
her $400 under her desk for the purchase of candles that, when burned,
would remove his curse." However, Nicola averred that he had been
a willing financial supporter of her "pyramid-shaped Temple of Hope and
Knowledge, a house of worship she founded on the White Horse Pike in Galloway
Township." Moreover, she "denied ever demanding cash to remove curses from
Piscitelli's family members, forcing him to turn over his wedding ring,
depositing a beheaded bat at his home, or throwing his Christmas presents
into the bay, as he claims." (Amy S. Rosenberg, "Fortune teller or taker:
Boardwalk astrologer got $200,000 and lawsuit", Philadelphia Inquirer,
May
17).
June 8-10 -- Tobacco
plunder in Los Angeles. Its anger whipped up by a sharp
trial lawyer, an L.A. jury has voted $3 billion in punitive damages against
Philip Morris in a case brought by an individual smoker.
(CNNfn, June
6; Robert Jablon, "Los Angeles Jury Orders Philip Morris to Pay $3
Billion to Lifelong Smoker", AP/Law.com, June
7). Our take on the earlier Engle case appeared in the
Wall
Street Journal: July
18, 2000 and July
12, 1999. Update Oct.
2, 2004: appeals court orders punitive award cut to a sum not to exceed
$50 million.
June 8-10 -- Lockyer
should go. We weren't the only ones who concluded (June
1-3) that California attorney general Bill Lockyer was unfit for public
office after hearing him express a hope that an energy-company adversary
would be jailed and suffer prison rape: Tom G. Palmer (Cato Institute),
"'Hi, My Name Isn't Justice, Honey', and Shame on Bill Lockyer", Los Angeles
Times,
June
6; see also Steve Chapman, "Since when does rape equal justice?", Chicago
Tribune,
June
7; Larry Elder, "Blame-shifting in California", FrontPage, June
1. (See update, June 22-24).
June 8-10 -- Forbes
on lead paint suits, cont'd. There seems to be no dispute
that some, if not many, cases of classic lead poisoning continue to occur
among children who literally eat chips of old paint in dilapidated housing
in inner-city areas like South Providence (see yesterday's
post). A key factual premise of the mass
suits, however, is that the paint is causing learning deficits and
behavioral problems among a wider class of children whose blood-lead levels
might not have been considered particularly high by medical science through
most of the twentieth century (when ambient lead levels in the human environment
were far higher) but which are now viewed as triggers for concern or even
as "poisoning" following a drastic downward revision of definitional thresholds
some years back.
As Forbes's cover story points out, this leaves a question of
how to account for why the symptoms now causing concern were not observed
more widely during the long period when lead-based interior paints were
commonly found in American homes. "If traces of lead near such levels
have something to do with learning disabilities, the sweeping decline in
blood-lead levels in the U.S. in the past half-century should have given
us a generation of geniuses in our elementary schools. But test scores
have scarcely been going up .... Even as blood-levels in children dropped
drastically, IQ scores have increased a consistent 3% a decade for 100
years -- possibly because of media exposure and better nutrition."
Nor, one might add, does one observe a big "absence of lead effect" if
one compares the learning and behavioral problems of kids growing up in
modern housing projects, most of which were built after the discontinuance
of lead pigments in paint, with those of similarly disadvantaged kids growing
up in older housing stock. (Michael Freedman, "Turning Lead
Into Gold", Forbes, May
14 (reg)).
MORE: For a contrary view, accepting the premise that
lead paint in older housing is causing widespread as opposed to exceptional
harm to children, see the recent series in the Providence Journal:
Peter Lord, "Poisoned", May
13-18. For more on the course of the litigation, see Bob Van
Voris, "Paint suit's a lead balloon (so far)", National Law Journal,
May
8; "San Jose: Judge gives counties OK to sue paint firms", San Francisco
Chronicle,
June
4; Tom Kertscher, "Suing Just 2 Paint Firms Helps Case, Lawyers Say",
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, April
9. (DURABLE LINK)
June 7 -- "'Pseudologia
Fantastica' Won't Fly". Contrary to what he claimed
during the screening process that led up to his appointment to the
bench, "Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Patrick Couwenberg never earned
a Purple Heart. He didn't fight in Vietnam or work for the CIA.
Nor did he attend Loyola Law School or earn a master's degree in psychology
or any other subject." Now a disciplinary panel has rejected the
judge's plea in mitigation
of his fibs that he suffers from "a recently diagnosed condition called
'pseudologia fantastica,' which doctors say causes people to tell tall
tales and mix fantasy with facts." (Sonia Giordani, The Recorder,
May
18). Update: state panel orders him removed from bench (see
Aug.
20-21).
June 7 -- Ness
monster sighted in Narragansett Bay. Bad enough
that Rhode Island, with its insider-dominated political system, has failed
to shake its reputation as the "Louisiana of the North". (See, e.g.,
Mark Sappenfield, "Legacy of scandal mars Rhode Island", Christian Science
Monitor, April
11). But will Little Rhody become the first state to auction
itself off to out-of-state trial lawyers? You start wondering after
reading Forbes's recent cover story on the nation's richest tort
law firm, Charleston, S.C.-based powerhouse Ness Motley (tobacco, asbestos,
etc.), and its branch office in Providence, opened some years ago by partner
John J. McConnell Jr. Ness Motley has quickly made itself "Rhode
Island's largest political contributor,
at $540,950 for the 2000 national elections", and its local partner McConnell
has become treasurer of the Democratic party in the tiny state. By
one of these coincidences that are so rare in novels but so common in real
life, Rhode Island Democratic attorney general Sheldon Whitehouse, considered
ambitious for a gubernatorial run, in 1999 awarded the Ness firm a contingency
fee contract to sue on behalf of the state seeking money from former makers
of lead paint -- the only one of the fifty state AGs thus far to take
such a step. If the firm and its superlawyer Ron Motley succeed in
convincing cities, school districts and other governmental units to follow
suit, they might extract billions from such companies as Arco, ICI Glidden,
and American Cyanamid. "In April, in a major victory for Motley,
a Rhode Island Superior Court judge rejected the defendants' motion to
dismiss, and Sherwin-Williams' stock dropped 21%." (Michael Freedman,
"Turning Lead Into Gold", Forbes, May
14 (reg)). Dueling websites: leadlawsuits.com
(defendants) and aboutlead.com (Ness
Motley)[more on lead paint litigation tomorrow] (DURABLE
LINK)
June 7 -- "Sorry,
Slimbo, you're in my seats". Columnist Peter Simpson
isn't impressed with the opinion of the Canadian
government that, as a matter of handicapped
rights, severely overweight airline
passengers should be given an extra seat free of charge (Ottawa Citizen/National
Post, May 11; Glen McGregor, Treat the obese as disabled, airlines
told", Ottawa
Citizen, Dec. 10; see Dec.
20, 2000). (Update Dec. 15-16:
Canadian transportation agency backs off policy)
June 7 -- Welcome
WSJ OpinionJournal.com readers. We've figured
in their "Best of the Web" feature quite a few times recently, including
yesterday.
Also: KRLD Dallas, "Eye
on the Internet" with Katie Pruett (interviewed our editor last night);
Good Clean Fun June
2; LynnLynn's Links June
4; links lists Ennazus,
Brian
Tebeau's, Breaching
the Web, Stop
Lawsuit Abuse -- Mississippi, Amy
Welborn's, ChinaLawInfo.com,
YouDontSay.org
("too many lawyers?"), Washington
State University at Spokane, Eruditum.org,
Joseph
DeMartino's (see "something we have no shortage of"), Weaverlane
LogB2K, Univ.
of Georgia Sagan Society, Baltimore
Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse, Snakebite's,
and Mr. Linck's
social studies class in Morrisville, N.Y. (gun debate).
June 6 -- Intellectual-property
dispute Hall of Fame. San Francisco Bay area artists Emily
Duffy and Ron Nicolino have each retained lawyers and have exchanged threatening
letters in a dispute over who owns
the concept underlying their art, which consists of giant bundles of
brassieres: hers weighs 650 pounds, his twice as much. Both bra assemblages
"keep growing -- huge spheres of lace, silk, padding and underwire bras
of all colors, shapes and sizes." Nicolino "has used 14,000 bras from an
abandoned project to hook them across the Grand Canyon. Now he's pulling
his ball to Los Angeles behind his 1963 flamingo pink Cadillac, looking
for someone to sponsor a worldwide tour and eventually, a showcase where
people can continue hooking on their own bras." "I think it's a major
important part of American art," he said. Duffy says he swiped the
idea from her. (Margie Mason, "Bay Area artists battle over giant
bra balls", Modesto Bee, May 29). They both have websites:
braball.com
and nicolinosbraball.com.
June 6 -- "Risks
of the crime". A Florida appeals court has dealt a setback
to two men who sued a hotel for damages after they were shot in its parking
lot during a suspected drug deal. The appeals court said the hotel
chain should not be held responsible for injuries incurred by visitors
engaged
in criminal acts. A jury had ruled for the men to the tune of
$1.7 million (see Dec. 15, 1999) after
Judge Celeste Muir "excluded all evidence of the suspected drug deal --
including the previous drug conviction of one of the men suing, an electronic
scale and $38,000 in cash found at the scene. All the jury
heard was that two hotel guests who were shot in a dimly lit Ramada Inn
parking lot in Hialeah wanted damages from the hotel." The case is
still pending. ("Risks of the crime" (editorial), Miami
Herald,
June 5).
June 6 -- To destroy
a doctor. Laparoscopic (small-incision) surgery counts
as one of the major medical advances of recent years, and among its internationally
famed practitioners have been the three Iranian-born Nezhat brothers, all
of whom are on the faculty at Stanford Medical School. For more than
seven years Cleveland lawyer James Neal has been pursuing medical
malpractice complaints against the Nezhats, accusing them "of, among
other things: lying about their credentials; systematically overbilling
their patients; threatening witnesses; conducting unauthorized experimental
surgeries; sexually assaulting patients; kidnapping at gunpoint; and faking
their research in order to promote devices [used in surgery] in exchange
for consulting fees and royalties from manufacturers. " Although he hasn't
made much progress in getting courts to accept his charges, Neal's pursuit
of the numerous lawsuits has taken over his life and, say the Nezhats,
has ruined theirs. (Alison Frankel, "Obsession" (cover story), The American
Lawyer, June
4).
June 5 -- Prisoners
stay acoustic. The First Amendment does not confer on
federal prisoners a right to practice on electric guitars, ruled U.S. District
Judge Emmet Sullivan May 22. "[C]onvicted bomber and frequent litigant
Brett Kimberlin ... who's in federal prison in Petersburg, Va., on parole
violations", had sued the federal Bureau of Prisons over a rule restricting
inmates to acoustic instruments, saying it inhibited his rights of expression.
(Jonathan Groner, "Inadmissible: Unplugged", Legal Times, May
28) (second item).
June 5 -- NFL satellite
ticket class action. The National Football League has
agreed to settle a class action lawsuit
filed four years ago over its practice of selling only season packages
to its satellite-TV televised games. Under the settlement, subscribers
will get cash payments of between $8.33 and $20.83, and will be able to
buy individual weeks at $29.99 each instead of the whole season at $169.99
for the last two years of existing contracts; two named plaintiffs will
get $1,000 each, and the lawyers will enjoy an appetizing $3.7 million
in fees. Counting administrative costs as well as the legal payouts,
the settlement is expected to cost the league more than $13 million, and
if you think fans may wind up footing much of the bill for such legally
inflicted outlays over the long run as ticket prices go up to cover them,
why, shame on you for being such a cynic ("Lawsuit settlement with DSS
allows fans to buy single weekend games", AP/Detroit News, June
1; ValkyrieRiders.net discussion, May
31) Update Aug. 20-21: judge disallows
settlement.
June 5 -- Missouri's
tagalong tobacco fees. When it came to the role
it played in the multistate tobacco litigation, Missouri "didn't need red-hot
lawyers. Our lawsuit was what's called a tagalong suit. We were the
27th state to sue the tobacco companies. A national settlement was already
in the works. ... Five months after Team Missouri was assembled, [it] was
reached." But that didn't stop the lawyers who represented the state
-- some of whom "were distinguished more for their political connections
than their legal track records"-- from asking for a cool $480 million in
fees, though they later declared themselves willing to settle for $100
million (see Sept. 21, 2000).
Readers will recall that not long ago popular St. Louis Post-Dispatch
columnist Bill McClellan had the temerity to criticize the high fees trial
lawyers were getting in another case, and they promptly slapped him with
an intimidating $1 million lawsuit (Nov.
4, 1999; Nov. 30, 1999; Feb.
29, 2000). But he still goes right on writing these sorts of
columns, even though he must know it's bound to get more lawyers mad at
him. Hasn't he learned his lesson yet? (Bill McClellan, "Just
what did our tobacco legal team do for $100 million?", St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
May 16). Update Oct.
5, 2003: Missouri Supreme Court refuses to entertain challenge to tobacco
fees.
June 4 -- "Dad
Sues After Girl Fails to Make Cheerleading Squad".
In Vestavia Hills, Ala., the father of Laura Brooke Smith "has sued [the]
school district, saying his daughter's rejection from the high school cheerleading
squad despite professional coaching has caused her humiliation and mental
anguish." (Fox News, May 31). And in North Haven, Ct., the
"families of two high school sophomores have filed a federal lawsuit over
the school's decision to drop them from the drum majorette squad."
Stephanie Tata and Rebecca Mickolyczk and their mothers filed the suit
in U.S. District Court April 30. Town attorney Robert K. Ciulla says
the schools get "many" disputes
over after-school activities, but this is the first involving baton twirling.
(Ann DiMatteo, "Families Sue Over Unfair Twirl Tryouts", New Haven Register,
May 18).
June 4 -- Maori
tribes v. Lego. "Three New Zealand Maori tribes are considering
a legal challenge to Danish toy company Lego over the use of Maori words
and Polynesian culture in a new computer game. New Zealand-based
barrister Solomon Maui has written to Lego asking for sales of the game
to be suspended, saying it infringed the Polynesian people's intellectual
property rights to their language and culture." ("Maori challenge
Lego over use of culture", CNN, June
1; Slashdot
thread).
June 4 -- EEOC:
unfiltered computers "harass" librarians. In a "blockbuster"
ruling, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission declared on May 23
that the Minneapolis Public Library may have subjected its librarians to
unlawful "hostile work environment" sexual
harassment by exposing them to sexually explicit images called up by
patrons on unfiltered computers. The pro-censorship religious-right
Family Research Council hailed the ruling, which is likely to intensify
legal pressure on institutions of all sorts (including libraries at private
universities and research institutions, and indeed all enterprises with
employees) to install "filtering" software which excludes a wide variety
of websites deemed obscene, hateful or otherwise improper.
Public libraries like the one in Minneapolis are likely to be sued
if they do, sued if they don't, given the precedent of a 1998 federal
district court decision finding that the filtering policy of a public library
in Loudoun County, Va., was unconstitutional. However, UCLA's Eugene
Volokh predicts that the balance of legal pressure will tilt toward website
blocking, because losing a First Amendment lawsuit filed by patrons will
subject a library to only "nominal damages", while losing a Title VII discrimination
suit can result in a damage figure "with lots of zeros in it". In
the Minneapolis case, "[Librarian Wendy] Adamson said the E.E.O.C. had
privately suggested to the library that it pay each of the 12 employees
$75,000 in damages," which would add up to $900,000. (Carl S. Kaplan,
"Cyber Law Journal: Controversial Ruling on Library Filters", New York
Times,
June
1)(reg).
June 1-3 -- Sweetness
and light from Bill Lockyer. As the state's power
crisis continues, California attorney general Bill Lockyer provokes
a few gasps with his recent comments about Enron Corp. chairman Kenneth
Lay: "I would love to personally escort Lay to an 8-by-10 cell that he
could share with a tattooed dude who says, 'Hi my name is Spike, honey,'"
Lockyer told the Wall Street Journal. While the state's top
law enforcement officer thus quips about subjecting a prominent adversary
to prison rape, the Los Angeles Times notes that "neither Lockyer's
office nor any investigative panel has filed charges against Enron or other
companies". (Jenifer Warren, "Lockyer Fires Earthy Attack at Energy
Exec", L.A. Times, May 23, fee-based
archive; "Lockyer lockdown", L.A. Daily News, May 29).
Lockyer, who's promised a bounty of millions of dollars to any informant
who can nail the generating firms, was elected AG in a well-funded campaign
after serving for many years as head of the Judiciary Committee and chief
guardian of litigation-lobby interests in the state Senate; The Recorder
(S.F.), Dec. 11, 1992, described him as “the darling of trial lawyers…a
part time plaintiff’s attorney”.
Other California politicos have also stepped up the business-bashing
to an intensity not heard since the 1970s, to judge from an account by
Chris Weinkopf in the Los Angeles Daily News. At a press conference,
state senate president pro tem John Burton "announced the solution is for
Sacramento to 'terrorize the bastards' [electricity generators] by seizing
their power plants. If he were governor, he said, he 'would have
taken them yesterday.' The actual governor, Gray Davis, is more subtle
in his attacks. He's only called the generators 'marauders,' 'pirates'
and 'the biggest snakes on the planet Earth.' ... Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante
has called for empowering the state to put energy executives in jail. ...Treasurer
Phil Angelides has suggested that if generators 'don't take their foot
off our throat,' the state should 'seize a plant or two to sober them up.'"
(Chris Weinkopf, "California’s Assault on Energy Producers", Los Angeles
Daily
News, April
24, reprinted at FrontPage magazine).
MORE: In San Francisco Weekly, Jeremy Mullman makes
the case that the key error in California's electricity restructuring was
to proceed with government-supervised "Reliability Must-Run" (RMR) contracts
(he explains what these are) which perversely rewarded generators for unreliability
and supply shortfalls ("Contract Killings", May
30). See also William Tucker, "California Unplugged", The
American Spectator, April; Rob Wherry, "Crossed Wires," Forbes,
March
5 (reg); "Power Scramble", Forbes, April
23. (DURABLE LINK)(&
welcome visitors from AndrewSullivan.com;
Sullivan nominates Lockyer for his "Paul Begala Award" for intemperate
rhetoric, linking to our item)
June 1-3 -- Old-hairstyle
photo prompts lawsuit. Speaking of the unlamented
1970s:
Skip Johnson, a production manager who once toured with Jefferson Airplane
and the Eagles and was married to singer Grace Slick, has sued a dotcom,
its advertising firm, and photo firm
Corbis over an ad prominently displaying an old photo of him and implicitly
poking fun at the unruly 1970s-vintage hairstyle he then wore. He
now sports a more conservative 'do; suits over commercial use of people's
pictures without their permission go back at least as far as 1902, according
to his lawyers. (Peter Hartlaub, "S.F. dot-com is sued over big hair
ad", San Francisco Chronicle, May
29). And the latest tattoo-misspelling lawsuit comes from Tucson
where a parlor left out one of the "n"s in the motto 22-year-old West Hill
had asked to have inscribed on his arm, thus rendering it as "New Beginings".
(Maureen O'Connell, "A major tattoo miscue", Arizona Daily Star,
May 29).
June 1-3 -- "A
disabling verdict for organized sports". Steve Chapman's
take on the high court's ruling in the Casey
Martin case; quotes our editor (Chicago Tribune, May 31).
Also: Lance Morrow, "PGA, not SCOTUS, Should Have Decided the Casey Martin
Case", Time.com, May
31; Paul Campos, "Martin ruling only further handicaps us", Rocky
Mountain News, June 2; "The court's errant shot" (editorial), Chicago
Tribune, May 31.
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