Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Excessive entanglement of press and state

One reason of many it’s a bad idea:

[Illinois Gov. Rod] Blagojevich, Harris and others are also alleged [in the federal indictment] to have withheld state assistance to the Tribune Company in connection with the sale of Wrigley Field. The statement says this was done to induce the firing of Chicago Tribune editorial board members who were critical of Blagojevich.

More: Eugene Volokh. Similarly: Patterico.

P.S.: “When the Tribune-owned Chicago Cubs wanted permission to install lights at Wrigley Field, Ald. Ed Vrdolyak let it be known it would require an end to editorial criticism of him. An editorial responded that the Cubs would ‘be playing morning games on a sandlot in Gary first.’ Vrdolyak — this will surprise you — is now headed for prison, another victim of Fitzgerald.” (Steve Chapman, Reason, Dec. 11).

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“Thank goodness for especially greedy lawyers in high-profile lawsuits”

David Giacalone figures that at least the jaw-dropper fee cases serve one useful purpose: they remind judges, the public and the legal profession itself “that we really do have a ban on unreasonable fees and expense charges — we [lawyers] can’t agree on them, charge them, or collect them”. With discussion of the Coughlin Stoia/Coke, Lawrence v. Miller, and certain lawyers’ willingness to bill two clients full freight for the same hour on the clock. (f/k/a, Nov. 21).

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Judge issues Rule 11 sanctions on camera infringement claim

“Frequent patent defendants say they’re hit by frivolous lawsuits all the time. But it’s very rare for a judge to find a patent lawsuit to be frivolous enough to grant sanctions and attorney’s fees.” Last week, however, a judge in Peoria issued Rule 11 sanctions against a company called Triune Star which held a patent on a certain type of GPS-using camera. The patent examiner had taken care to limit the patent to infrared cameras to overcome an obviousness objection, but the plaintiff’s lawyers — Keith Rockey and Kathleen Lyons of Chicago-based Rockey, Depke & Lyons — then proceeded to sue three big companies that had sold conventional cameras. A judge awarded the defendants reasonable costs and attorney’s fees, something defense lawyer Brian Rupp says has happened only a few times in the last decade. (Joe Mullin, Prior Art, Dec. 4 via TechDirt; Techdirt, Feb. 26 (Medtronic)).

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December 9 roundup

  • Go vote for Overlawyered now, please, in the ABA Journal best-blogs contest; some details on contestants in other categories;
  • Update on “Got Breastmilk?” trademark dispute [Giacalone; earlier]
  • Trauma patient is bleeding while you fumble to get the IV equipment out of its blister pack. Soon it’ll be even more complicated. Thanks OSHA! [Throckmorton] And where are the stand-up medical comedy routines?
  • Arkansas Supreme Court’s handling of school finance litigation suggests it’s making it up as it goes along [Jay Greene]
  • “Linux Defenders” is tech-firm consortium’s new effort to create “no-fly zone” protecting open-source system from patent trolls [Parloff, Fortune]
  • Zero tolerance roundup: 10 year old who took $5.96 Wal-Mart cap gun to school arrested, fingerprinted, faces expulsion [11alive.com, Newton County, Ga.] Harford County, Md. mom, acting as chaperone on school field trip, “reached out to tap” third grader to shush him, now faces ten years if convicted of assault [ABC2News.com, Baltimore] Related: we’re too afraid of touch [Times Online] Teasing is bad for children and other living things. Really? Are you sure? [Althouse, NYT]
  • Columnist has opposed bailouts and favored free market liquidation of uneconomic firms. Now that his newspaper faces bankruptcy, has he changed his mind? [Steve Chapman]
  • Good way to suffer reputational damage: file a lawsuit claiming characters in movie “Dazed and Confused” were based on your own teenage selves [four years ago on Overlawyered]

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Judge Kozinski’s email joke list

The L.A. Times invites readers’ dudgeon about the judge’s private emailing of tasteless jokes to friends. Patterico and Althouse take somewhat different views of the supposed offense. The West Coast newspaper, writes James Taranto, “has been drawn into a vexatious litigant’s smear campaign against Kozinski“, and Ted has called the paper’s coverage “appalling“. More: Obbie, Patrick @ Popehat.

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Arrest of NYC litigator Marc Dreier (bumped and updated)

[Originally published in the early hours of Dec. 7. Bumped Monday afternoon to reflect new developments and reader interest; updated Tuesday morning.]

News accounts are still piecing together the strange story of high-powered New York litigator Marc Dreier and his arrest by Canadian officials on charges of “impersonation”. Allegedly, Dreier posed as an official of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan to support his pretense that he had a guarantee for a $50 million investment he was seeking from a hedge fund. (Sinclair Stewart, Paul Waldie and Timothy Appleby, “From $50-million deal to $100,000 bail – in a N.Y. minute”, Toronto Globe and Mail, Dec. 6). The blog Above the Law broke the story and has been on top of later developments (Dec. 4, more posts). Dreier LLP, a 250-person law firm that is said to have been owned outright by Dreier rather than run as a partnership, was “one of several firms that hired refugees from Milberg Weiss after that firm was indicted”. (Nate Raymond, “Arrest of Dreier Founder Clouds Firm’s Future”, American Lawyer, Dec. 5; NYLJ, Dec. 8; NYT, Dec. 5).

More: Huge developments on Monday:

Marc Dreier, the owner of a prominent New York law firm who was arrested last week, was hit Monday with criminal charges and civil complaints alleging he defrauded investors of about $100 million by selling them phony financial instruments.

Federal prosecutors on Monday unsealed charges of one count each of securities and wire fraud, describing a bizarre scheme to bilk hedge funds. [U.S. Complaint at ClusterStock] The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil suit making largely the same allegations against the 58-year-old Mr. Dreier….

The criminal and civil complaints released Monday offer the following account of events: Mr. Dreier fabricated promissory notes by an unnamed New York real-estate developer — identified as Solow Realty by a person with knowledge of the situation — and sold them to hedge funds, when in fact such notes were never issued. He fabricated supporting financial statements, and letters from an accounting firm using the firm’s logo, that purported to audit the statements. The SEC complaint says $113 million in phony notes was deposited to an account in the name of the law firm.

Scott Greenfield has more on reports circulating of missing escrow accounts and is stunned at the magnitude of the allegations: if true, “the firm is now at the epicenter of perhaps the greatest instance of lawyer dishonesty ever.” [Updated Tuesday morning to replace breaking-news WSJ account with paper’s most recent version; see comments section regarding an apparent inaccuracy in earlier version.]

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“Change They Can Litigate”

Occasionally a reader will ask why I’m averse to linking to the conservative publication WorldNetDaily. Reason #17,945: the birth certificate/citizenship trutherism by which WND promotes litigation aimed at keeping Barack Obama from being inaugurated President. (David Weigel, Slate, Dec. 4).

Update: Supreme Court turns down first of such cases (Doug Mataconis, Below the Beltway, Dec. 8).

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Wii class action claim: controller keeps flying out of our hands

“Nintendo’s Wii game remote controller has a defective wrist strap that lets the thing fly out of the users’ hands while they simulate tennis, nunchucks or similar actions, and then it crashes into TVs, walls and children,” according to an intended class action filed by attorney Robert Kleinman of Austin, Texas on behalf of a Colorado woman. (Courthouse News, Dec. 4 via Above the Law).

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“How many hernias…?”

How many elective inguinal hernia repairs do you think a surgeon might have to perform to raise the money to pay his annual malpractice insurance bill? We’re not told which state he practices in or what kind of practice or community, only that he’s getting a relatively good deal on insurance because he has no outstanding suits.

Guess for yourself, and then go see whether ER Stories’ answer is higher or lower than you guessed (Dec. 7).

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