Live by the swindle…

Call it karma? Among Bernard Madoff’s victims, Eric Turkewitz has discovered*, is none other than the infamous Morris Eisen, who made a ton of money in personal injury practice by faking evidence for his cases (highlights: taking a pickax to a pothole before photographing it, using a shrunken replica of a ruler so as to magnify the seeming size of defects in photographs, and calling the same “witness” for two different accidents, who happened to be serving time upstate for forgery at the time of both). Eisen was disbarred, served time, and paid some money, but “clearly” was left with “substantial assets”, notes Turkewitz, including a residence in Fisher Island, Florida. (Wikipedia: “According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Fisher Island had the highest per capita income of any place in the United States in 2000.”) I wrote about the Eisen scandal in my first book, The Litigation Explosion, the relevant PDF chapter of which is available at Point of Law; also see this City Journal piece.

*OK, “learned from one of his readers”; see comments.

CPSIA: coming attractions

Preoccupied with unrelated deadlines, I’ve skipped over a number of interesting stories and developments on CPSIA that deserve in-depth discussion. Each of the following really deserves its own full-length post, and if my schedule permits in the coming days and weeks, I’ll try to do each one justice.

Slowly getting there

  • In response to Michigan Democratic Rep. John Dingell’s request for information about problems in implementing the law, CPSC Acting Chairwoman Nancy Nord had a smart response: she let the commission’s top career staff draft the letter answering the Congressman. The result is a 21-page memo (PDF; w/three-page cover letter) that provides a devastating and thoroughly documented account of why the law was destined from its day of passage to have catastrophic consequences for producers and retailers. In Washington, the career staff of an agency is often listened to in a way that an appointee of an outgoing administration is not. With much detail not formerly available and careful documentation of the way the law’s drafters tied the agency’s hands to prevent the very same reasonable exemption-making that many proponents of the law now claim to favor, the document deserves much more extended analysis than I can give it here and now; it should be read by anyone interested in the case for CPSIA reform.
  • CPSIA’s threat to vintage books is the subject of a story in yesterday’s Washington Post, and was covered by Publisher’s Weekly last week (as well as at many blogs). Both pieces can usefully be read in conjunction with the detailed discussion of the vintage book issue toward the end of the CPSC staff/Nord/Dingell letter, above, which sheds light on questions raised in both articles.
  • Deputy Headmistress has been looking into the question of how it was that European countries had earlier adopted regulations on the same subject and yet experienced far less trauma to small producers, sellers and consumers. She takes up the topic in posts here, here, and here. Not to spoil the suspense, but it has a lot to do with Europe’s willingness to 1) phase in regulations over a period of years; 2) prescribe testing and certification protocols as if they actually cared about sparing producers pointless cost and hassle; 3) target regulations at the particular market segments (e.g., items used by the youngest kids) most likely to present an actual risk of ingestion. In each instance, the U.S. Congress chose differently.

My to-be-blogged file also contains whole stacks of stuff on who on Capitol Hill appears to have a clue on this issue and who doesn’t, on the often wrongly guesstimated costs of testing, and yet more on vintage books, among many other topics. And don’t forget the rally coming up next Wednesday in D.C.

Legal blogs: keeping lawyers more honest?

Venkat Balasubramani of the blog Spam Notes has a highly interesting guest column at AvvoBlog arguing that blog coverage has emerged as a new check on lawyers’ tendency to pursue their cases in an overzealous or hardball fashion. In the BlockShopper, Nordstrom/Beckons, and Kentucky domain-name seizure affairs, as well as numerous gripe-site and reputational-claim actions where the Streisand effect came into play, blogs have helped call national attention to the weakness of a litigant’s position, the danger that a disputant without major resources will be bulldozed by the cost of litigation, or both.

Balasubramani is kind enough to single out three bloggers in particular and to include me among their number:

…Walter Olson: who blogs at Overlawyered is another blogger who frequently flags unreasonable positions taken by lawyers. While he monitors litigation excess generally, absurd tort lawsuits are his specialty, and many a plaintiff’s lawyer has graced the pages of his blog in shame.

And he concludes:

Increased scrutiny of legal decisions and lawsuits by blogs and internet commentators will have undoubtedly have an overall beneficial effect. … Lawyers these days live in fear that one of their lawsuits will be highlighted on the pages of sites such as Overlawyered, the Legal Satyricon, or the Volokh Conspiracy. I know I sometimes do.

Whole thing here.

March 25 roundup

  • Driver on narcotic painkillers crashes car, lawyer says pharmacists liable [Las Vegas Review-Journal]
  • Who’s that cyber-chasing the Buffalo Continental Air crash? Could it be noted San Francisco-based plaintiff’s firm Lieff Cabraser? [Turkewitz]
  • Axl Rose no fan of former Guns N’ Roses bandmate or his royalty-seeking attorneys [Reuters]
  • Cheese shop owner speaks out against punitive tariff on Roquefort, now due to take effect April 23 [video at Reason “Hit and Run”, earlier]
  • Too many cops and too many lawsuits in city schools, says Errol Louis [NY Daily News]
  • Law professor and prominent blogger Ann Althouse is getting married — to one of her commenters. Congratulations! [her blog, Greenfield] Kalim Kassam wonders when we can look forward to the Meg Ryan film “You’ve Got Blog Comments”.
  • “Louisiana panel recommends paying fees of wrongfully accused Dr. Anna Pou” (charged in deaths of patients during Hurricane Katrina) [NMissCommentor]
  • U.K.: “Privacy Group Wants To Shut Down Google Street View” [Mashable]

“The Last Best Place”: not a trademark yet

For years controversy has raged over a Las Vegas businessman and resort owner’s efforts to trademark the phrase, widely used as a description of Montana. (Missoula writer William Kittredge says he remembers coming up with the phrase himself.) Now, per TTA Blog, Montana Sen. Max Baucus has again included language in an appropriation bill to direct that (for the time being) no funds be expended by the PTO to register such a trademark.

Chicago: Parks worker overhears woman spanking her nephew in bathroom

Before you click the link, guess: who wins the $200,000? Was your guess right? Were other guesses just as plausible? And where does race fit in?

More: Coyote (“Here is a real journalistic triumph — the story of a multi-party conflict in which I immediately dislike absolutely everyone in the story on all sides of the conflict, up to and including the jury and the third parties quoted.”) And Scott Greenfield.

March 24 roundup

Update: Waukeen McCoy fees denied, sanctioned $25K

The Recorder: “A federal judge turned down a request for more than $2 million in fees and sanctioned a San Francisco plaintiffs lawyer $25,000 for submitting false fee applications in civil rights litigation against FedEx.” Judge Susan Illston wrote that Waukeen McCoy’s “acts of misconduct with regard to the fee petitions are among the most egregious that this court has seen in almost 14 years on the bench.” More: California Civil Justice. Earlier: Nov. 14, 2007 (McCoy’s firm “billed [opponent] Federal Express for 23.5 hours of one of its attorneys’ time over a single day”), and, on the same lawyer, July 10, 2000.