Don’t offer reductions in your legal fees to clients who agree to have sex with you (Florida lawyer James Harvey Tipler, disbarred over offenses that also included having “altered evidence and caused a witness to unknowingly give false testimony”, taken clients’ money and neglected their cases, and much more).
Quite a ruined vacation
A Queens, N.Y. man has sued Starwood Hotels and American Express, saying that at an Amex-recommended hotel in Sardinia he and his sons were held hostage by hotel staffers, sometimes at gunpoint, and forced to spend upwards of a hundred thousand dollars on hotel, jewelry, boutique and nightclub charges. [Adam Klasfeld/Courthouse News, New York Post] Cityfile expresses a marked degree of skepticism toward Alexander Maryasin’s story and links “13 different lawsuits that [he] has filed in Queens alone in recent years”.
Don’t let your 8 year old play in the yard?
Per child protective services in Arlington, Va., parents should not let their eight-year-olds out to play in the yard unattended “for any period of time”. David Bernstein and many of his commenters dissent.
More: Interesting, related website: Free-Range Kids, by Lenore Skenazy (via Alkon).
Grand jury probes John Edwards-Rielle Hunter payments
What with all the money in Edwards’ own name from his legal career, not to mention the late Texas trial lawyer Fred Baron’s generosity in solving the housing needs of Edwards’ girlfriend, it wouldn’t seem necessary to use campaign or charitable funds for her benefit, too, but a U.S. attorney is said to be pursuing allegations along those lines. Hunter was paid $100,000 to do documentary filmmaking about the Edwards campaign, which gave the couple many opportunities to be close to each other. [New York Daily News, CBS News, Raleigh News & Observer] More: Althouse, Kaus.
U.K.: Another miners’-health lawyer disbarred
From the Times Online:
A former television presenter who became one of Britain’s highest-earning solicitors has been struck off for “disgraceful” misconduct in his handling of sick miners’ compensation claims.
Andrew Nulty, who earned £13 million from the claims in one year, joins a growing list of solicitors punished for their role in the coal health scandal, exposed by The Times.
Earlier: Feb. 3, 2009; Feb. 19 and Dec. 12, 2008; May 8, 2007.
“New York court says golfers aren’t required to yell ‘fore!'”
At a Dix Hills, Long Island golf course, Dr. Azad Anand was injured when his golfing buddy hit the ball flying without yelling the traditional cry of “fore”. A New York appellate court, however, “said getting hit by an errant ball is an ‘inherent risk of the game of golf.'” [AP/Staten Island Advance] More: John Hochfelder discusses the concept of the “foreseeable danger zone“.
Beaumont justice and the silicosis mass torts
“The first time we ever lost a case in trial, it was 2001. We tried it in Beaumont, Texas, and lost $7.5 million. . . . The judge sat there through the trial reading a newspaper. At one point an objection was made, the bailiff taps him on the shoulder and says ‘judge, objection is being made.’ He looks at our lawyer and says ‘overruled.’ The plaintiffs’ lawyer raises his hand and says ‘no, judge, it was me.’ He says ‘sustained’ and goes back to reading the paper.” …
[U.S. Silica CEO John A.] Ulizio shares a memo that plaintiffs’ lawyer Joe Gibson sent to silica defendants in 2004 with a blunt offer: Settle our 9,000 cases for $900 million, or pay $1.5 billion in pretrial discovery alone, plus an even bigger verdict. “That’s the genius of the economics of litigation from the plaintiffs’ perspective. Sue a lot of people, sue on behalf of a lot of plaintiffs, get into an adverse jurisdiction, and then don’t make too big of a demand, so you can settle it for a relatively small percentage of the cost of defending the case,” Mr. Ulizio says.
Kim Strassel has a must-read account of how U.S. Silica beat a mass-tort fraud attempting to steal its solvency—and did so almost entirely by the luck of the MDL draw, as a different judge might have refused to conduct the hearings that exposed the wrongdoing. (See also Michael Krauss at Point of Law.)
Note that that $900 million proposal for 9000 bogus cases works out to $100,000/case—which is exactly what the Vioxx litigation settled for.
“David Kessler Goes Dumpster Diving (and Emerges With Garbage)”
The former FDA chief and inveterate nanny-state advocate, David Kessler, has a new book arguing that chain restaurant food is excessively palatable, to the point where it effectively addicts the chains’ customers. Jacob Sullum at Reason accords Kessler’s theories all the respect they deserve.
Swine flu and hotel liability
It can get tricky when 1) having swine flu may itself count as a protected disability under laws like California’s; 2) innkeepers are required to report communicable disease to authorities; 3) they must nonetheless avoid infringing customers’ privacy; and 4) they can face liability for not taking steps to protect fellow guests and their own workers. And don’t even think of noticing that a new guest is arriving from Mexico… (via Childs; more on hotels and the ADA)
Traffic secret? Chimp attacks
If I took advertising here at Overlawyered, I might worry more about how and whether to pursue higher traffic. In the mean time, columnist Alex Beam got me to come clean about what kind of subject matter seems to work best in getting droves of new visitors to notice the site. (It’s not class-action reform). [Boston Globe] (& welcome Virginia Postrel, Bob Trebilcock/Modern Materials Handling readers).