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ARCHIVE -- JANUARY 2003
(III)
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January 31-February 2
-- "Cities Pay Big in Faulty Lawsuits". Fox News
picks up on the theme explored by columnist Deroy Murdock a
few days ago of how persons hurt while committing crimes or trying
to commit suicide now often show up in court demanding compensation for
others' negligence in letting them be injured. This site's editor
went on camera to take a less-than-enthusiastic view of such suits. (Jan.
30) (DURABLE LINK)
January 31-February 2
-- FBI probes Philadelphia's hiring of class-action firm.
"An FBI investigation is focusing on why current and former city officials
gave potentially lucrative legal work to a top Democratic donor and resisted
a judge's efforts to seek competitive bids for the work." The administration
of Ed Rendell, since elected Pennsylvania governor, hired prominent class-action
firm Barrack, Rodos & Bacine to represent the city as lead plaintiff
in a large class action in California representing investors in Network
Associates, a software firm. Through its senior partner, the law
firm says it plans to cooperate with the investigation. (Cynthia Burton,
Mark Fazlollah and Joseph Tanfani, "FBI investigates Philadelphia's Pension
Board", Philadelphia Inquirer, Jan.
30). Update and more coverage: Mar.
21-23. (DURABLE LINK)
January 31-February 2
-- "Valentine's Card Burglar Sues Police". From
the U.K.: "A convicted burglar has been given legal aid to sue the police
for sending him a Valentine's card last year. Gary Williams, who has a
12-year criminal record, was one of 10 known burglars and car criminals
who received cards from Brighton police. But when he opened the card,
his girlfriend thought it must be from another woman. She was so cross
that, before he could explain, she hurled an ashtray at him, and it went
whistling past his head." (David Sapsted, Daily Telegraph,
Jan.
29) (DURABLE LINK)
January 31-February 2
-- Fair housing law vs. free speech. On more than
one occasion, when local residents have spoken out against the siting of
low-income housing projects or group homes in their neighborhoods, they've
faced (unsuccessful) lawsuits and attempted fines on the grounds that their
speech
constituted a civil rights violation. Now the Sixth Circuit has approved
a more subtle way of discouraging residents from speaking their minds:
impute their prejudiced views to the government that has allowed them to
speak at a public hearing. It's a good way of getting government
bodies to stop holding public hearings for fear of liability, according
to columnist Robyn Blumner ("Fair Housing Act cannot be used to gag residents'
displeasure", St. Petersburg Times,
Jan.
19). (DURABLE LINK)
January 31-February 2
-- Manhattan Institute turns 25. The New York-based
policy institute, with which our editor is associated, celebrates its quarter-century
anniversary. Read more about it (Tom Wolfe, "Revolutionaries", New
York Post, Jan.
30; "Ideas Matter" (editorial), Jan.
30). Then visit the Institute's website
and sign up for its invaluable mailing
list. (DURABLE LINK)
January 30 -- "ADA
Goes to the Movies". The AMC chain pioneered stadium-style
seating in movie theaters, which much improves sight lines for audiences
and quickly became the industry standard. Then civil-rights
activists swooped down, saying the new layouts (the earlier versions,
at least) were unlawful because they provided too narrow a set of seating
choices for patrons in wheelchairs. Jonathan Last of the Weekly
Standard takes up the story (Jan.
24). (DURABLE LINK)
January 30 -- Targeting
Wall Street. More than 200 mass tort lawyers recently
met at Las Vegas's Bellagio Hotel to discuss suing investment firms, at
an event put on by the Mass
Torts Made Perfect organization. Veterans of the breast-implant
and fen-phen campaigns "are hoping to profit from the fallout of the $1.4
billion global regulatory settlement over stock-research conflicts, seeking
to file claims on behalf of investors." Law partners James Hooper
and Robert Weiss "concede they don't really know their way around Wall
Street" but have already spent more than $1 million in television
advertising in search of retired Florida clients who lost money in
the market. "The pair is teaming up with Levin Papantonio Thomas
Mitchell Echsner & Proctor PA, a large mass-tort firm based in Pensacola,
Fla., known for its filings against the tobacco industry, among others."
Messrs. Hooper and Weiss "recently filed 71 cases against Citigroup Inc.'s
Salomon Smith Barney on behalf of investors who lost less than $25,000
apiece." The newcomers have not met with a friendly reception from
the existing plaintiff's securities bar, however, who tend to sniff at
their lack of a track record in the area. (Susanne Craig, "Lawyers
Target Wall Street Following Regulatory Payoff", Wall Street Journal,
Jan.
29) (online subscribers only). (DURABLE
LINK)
January 29 -- State
of the Union. "To improve our health care system, we must
address one of the prime causes of higher costs — the constant threat that
physicians and hospitals will be unfairly sued. Because of excessive litigation,
everybody pays more for health care and many parts of America are losing
fine doctors. No one has ever been healed by a frivolous lawsuit. I urge
the Congress to pass medical liability reform." (President Bush,
State of the Union speech Jan. 28, reprinted, Quad
City Times). Charles Krauthammer's take: "Sick, Tired
and Not Taking It Anymore", Time, Jan.
13 (MedRants
comments). And see James M. Taylor, "States Take Lead on Medical
Malpractice Reform", Heartland Institute Health Care News, Jan.(DURABLE
LINK)
January 27-28 --
Latest Rule of Lawyers publicity. Following appearances
in New York and Washington, our editor is speaking on the book to a lunchtime
audience Tuesday in Chicago; details here.
Trips to Texas, California and elsewhere are in the works, as well as many
radio programs. Famed InstaPundit Glenn Reynolds gave us a nice lift
Friday in his MSNBC column (Jan.
24). Fox News Channel has now put online a partial transcript
of our editor's appearance last Thursday on "The Big Story" (posted Jan.
24). A CNN appearance is still pending. Eric Schippers
of the Center for Individual Freedom gave the book a favorable review in
the Federalist Society publication Engage, reprinted
here. And Reason's recent cover story/excerpt included a mini-author
profile which we neglected to link earlier. (Jan.)
There's more: Barnes & Noble Online gave the book one of its rotating
"We Recommend" designations (Law category); both the Conservative
Book Club/National
Review Book Service and Laissez-Faire
Books have picked the book as a selection and given it good write-ups;
and e-versions are available for download from Franklin.com
(requires proprietary software) and Palm
Digital Media.
(DURABLE LINK)
January 27-28 --
"No suits by lawbreakers, please". Syndicated columnist
Deroy Murdock says a good place to start with tort reform would be to cut
off lawsuits where the complainant's own crime
or suicide attempt was
the preponderant cause of his injury. Among eyebrow-raising cases:
"Disturbed, Angelo Delgrande shot and wounded his parents and himself in
a June 1995 dispute. He then received surgery at a Westchester County,
N.Y. hospital. That night, he yanked the tubes and monitoring devices
from his body, then leapt off the second story of an adjacent parking garage
in a suicide bid. He is now paraplegic. Delgrande sued the hospital for
failing to treat his depression and keep him indoors. Last October, he
won $9 million." Also quotes our editor (Scripps Howard News Service/Sacramento
Bee,
Jan.
23) (& see Jan. 31) (DURABLE
LINK)
January 27-28 --
"Woman Attacked By Goose Sues County". "A woman who says
she was attacked by a 3-foot-tall goose is suing Palm Beach County, claiming
the county should not have allowed the bird to roam in a public park."
Darlene Griffin, 30, says she was attacked on Feb. 5 in Okeeheelee Park.
The county contends that it has no duty to protect parkgoers from "obvious"
dangers. (Local6/WKMG, Jan.
24; CNN, Jan.
24). (DURABLE
LINK)
January 27-28 --
Don't break out the shakes yet. Judge Sweet's ruling last
week in favor of McDonald's
has been widely hailed as a blow for common sense and individual
responsibility, but the judge "generously gave the plaintiffs a chance
to try their luck again" and "take a second bite from the burger".
Lawyers are likely to refile both the case at issue and new ones, after
due study of Sweet's opinion which may even provide a "jurisprudential
roadmap" to liability. "Make no mistake: This case is not about fat
kids. It's about fat paydays. For lawyers." ("Mickey D's Hollow Victory"
(editorial), New York Post, Jan.
23; see also "Lawyers Run Marathons, Not Sprints", Center for Consumer
Freedom, Jan.
23). More: some well-known plaintiff's lawyers pooh-pooh
the fat suits (James V. Grimaldi, "Legal Kibitzers See Little Merit in
Lawsuit Over Fatty Food at McDonald's", Washington Post, Jan.
27). On the other hand, a Fortune cover story argues for
taking them seriously (Roger Parloff, "Is Fat the Next Tobacco?", Jan.
21). (DURABLE LINK)
January 24-26 --
Malpractice-cost trends. Many mainstream journalists,
accepting arguments pressed on them by defenders of the litigation business,
have uncritically repeated the notion that the crisis in medical
malpractice insurance owes more to insurers' unwise Wall Street investments
than to galloping litigation costs. But in fact, according to an
expert on insurer portfolio management, "asset allocation and investment
returns have had little, if any, correlation to the development of the
current malpractice problem. The crisis is rather the result of a generally
unconstrained increase in losses and, over several years, inadequate premium
income to cover those losses." (Raghu Ramachandran, "Did Investments
Affect Medical Malpractice Premiums?", Brown Brothers Harriman Insurance
Asset Management Group, Jan.
21; see also post and comments at Megan
McArdle's site and earlier Jan.
1 post and comments). Doctors' increasing willingness to walk
off the job to protest the law's expropriation -- and politicians' heavy-handed
hints that they will face punishment if they do so -- recall the producers'
strike in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, according to Edward Hudgins
of the Objectivist Center ("Doctors Shrug", Washington Times, Jan.
12). Ramesh Ponnuru argues that the Bush administration has not
come up with an adequate grounding in federalism for a Congressional override
of state malpractice law, given that it is a state's own citizens who are
the main losers from irrational verdicts ("Federal Malpractice", National
Review Online, Jan.
24). See also President Bush's speech in Scranton, Jan.
16; White House "Policy
in Focus: Medical Liability"; Michael Arnold Glueck and Robert J. Cihak,
"It's Not Just 'Sue the Docs' Anymore", MedJournal.com blog, Jan.
14; RangelMD, Jan.
18; MedRants, Jan.
20; MedPundit, Jan.
19; Sydney Smith (MedPundit), "Dangerous Lies", TechCentralStation,
Jan.
21. (DURABLE
LINK)
January 24-26 --
Race-bias cases gone wrong. "The Florida Supreme Court
has disbarred a Fort Lauderdale attorney accused of filing a string of
racial discrimination lawsuits against employers
such as Ocean Spray and BellSouth, which a federal judge labeled as extortion.
Norman Ganz was disbarred for allowing his paralegal, a convicted felon,
to engage in the unlicensed practice of law, charge an excessive fee and
represent clients with adverse interests. ... They were accused of filing
a string of lawsuits against employers such as Ocean Spray, BellSouth,
Broward County, Fla., and the Broward County School Board, then threatening
to bring in the NAACP as a plaintiff. In return, the lawyers gave NAACP
chapters some of the settlement money. ... The cases also led to the ouster
of Roosevelt Walters, former head of the Fort Lauderdale NAACP."
(Julie Kay, "Florida Lawyer Who Filed Controversial Racial Bias Suits Disbarred",
Miami Daily Business Review, Dec.
6). (DURABLE
LINK)
January 23 -- Judge
tosses McDonald's obesity case. "A federal judge in Manhattan
today threw out a lawsuit brought against the McDonald's Corporation by
two obese teenagers, declaring as he did so that people
are responsible for what they
eat and that the teenagers' complaints could spawn thousands of 'McLawsuits'
if they were upheld. ... Samuel Hirsch, the Manhattan lawyer who represents
the plaintiffs ... noted that Judge Sweet said the two teenagers were not
barred from filing an amended complaint, and Mr. Hirsch promised to do
just that, asserting that he still had a 'credible and viable lawsuit.'"
New
York Times (reg); opinion
in PDF format; GoogNews
compilation; Reuters/FoxNews;
AP/Court
TV; Yahoo
Full Coverage). And -- rather undercutting the much-bruited notion
that the increase in portion sizes at restaurants constitutes some sort
of sneaky maneuver by restauranteurs having nothing to do with consumer
preferences -- "In a new study, researchers looked at such foods as hamburgers,
burritos, tacos, french fries, sodas, ice cream, pie, cookies and salty
snacks and found that the portions got bigger between the 1970s and the
1990s, regardless of whether people ate in or out." (Deanna Bellandi, "Study
Finds Meal Portion Sizes Growing", AP/Washington Post, Jan.
21). (DURABLE
LINK)
January 23 -- Justices
nix vicarious personal housing-bias liability. More good
news: vacating a Ninth Circuit ruling, the Supreme Court has unanimously
decided that under the Fair Housing Act of 1968 the owner of a real estate
agency cannot in most cases be made to pay personally for the discriminatory
acts of an underling without some further direct showing of fault.
The agency's liability was not in question; the question was instead whether
the owner's personal assets should be at risk if the agency lacked money
to pay a judgment. A sobering aspect of the case: the Bush Administration
entered it against the agency owner, arguing that he should be held
personally liable but on a different legal theory (that the agency was
legally an alter ego of his). The high court did not resolve that possible
theory of liability. (Linda Greenhouse, "Justices Limit Housing Bias Lawsuits",
New York Times, Jan.
22)(reg) (DURABLE
LINK)
January 23 -- Our
editor on TV. On Tuesday, kicking off a media swing
to promote The Rule of Lawyers, our editor was a guest of Court
TV's Catherine Crier, who said some extremely kind things about the
book (which rose to #265 on Amazon, helped by the WSJ's great review
the same day). Today (Thursday) afternoon, watch for him to be interviewed
by Judge Andrew Napolitano on Fox News Channel's The
Big Story with John Gibson. And although bookings are always
subject to last-minute change, don't be surprised if he turns up Friday
evening on CNN. (DURABLE
LINK)
January 21-22 --
Not my partner's keeper. No joint and several liability
for us, please: "In a sign of increased caution in the post-Enron world,
two of New York's most prominent law firms have elected to become limited
liability partnerships. Sullivan & Cromwell and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind,
Wharton & Garrison both acquired Limited Liability Partnership status
effective Jan. 1, thus ending a combined 250 years of operation as general
partnerships." The effect is to insulate partners from having to
pay for each others' negligence or other wrong, even if greater vigilance
by the firm as a whole might have reduced the likelihood of wrongdoing.
(Anthony Lin, "Prominent Law Firms Move to Limit Liability", New York Law
Journal, Jan.
10). (DURABLE
LINK)
January 21-22 --
ATLA's hidden influence. From the Capital Research Center,
which keeps tabs on activist groups: "The movement for tort reform has
been stalled by an unholy alliance of trial lawyers and consumer advocates
eager to preserve the power to sue. But few Americans understand the ties
linking Ralph Nader-inspired groups to the Association of Trial Lawyers
of America." Includes considerable information about ATLA's generosity
to various private groups which lobby against limits on medical
malpractice litigation. Also quotes this site (Neil Hrab, "Association
of Trial Lawyers of America: How It Works with Ralph Nader Against Tort
Reform", January (summary;
"Foundation Watch" report
in PDF format)). (DURABLE LINK)
January 21-22 --
"Tort turns toxic". Overview of how litigation is wreaking
havoc in diverse sectors of the society, from medicine to terrorism insurance,
includes particular attention to the problems it's creating for affordable
housing. Construction of condominiums and apartments in California
and other Western states has become much more expensive to insure because
of burgeoning litigation over allegedly defective construction, some of
the allegations well grounded but others drummed up by eager solicitation
of condo associations by lawyers. By the year 2000, insurers in California
were paying out nearly $3 for every premium dollar collected from builders,
and imposing big premium hikes. Multi-unit housing construction has
now plunged, and major builders have shifted efforts from affordable condos
to pricier freestanding homes, perceived as a lower litigation risk.
(Steven Malanga, "Tort Turns Toxic," City Journal, Autumn
2002). (DURABLE
LINK)
January 21-22 --
Welcome Wall Street Journal readers. Highly favorable
review of our editor's new book The
Rule of Lawyers: "an entertaining, but disturbing, chronicle of
class-action abuses ... Mr. Olson's engaging prose, for all its charm,
is propelled by a sense of outrage at the abuses he describes: He slams
his opponents onto the mat, lets them rise slightly in a daze and then
slams them down again, round after round." Also mentions this website
(David A. Price, "In a Class By Themselves", Wall Street Journal,
Jan.
21 (online subscribers only)). (DURABLE
LINK)
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