This “Ted Franklin” fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who spoke to the Birmingham News about the recent Judge Acker decision and FACTA amendments sounds like an interesting fellow who has thought about some of the same issues I have, even if he holds opinions diametrically opposed to mine about the need to cap damages in FACTA class actions.
Fieger jury deliberates
After three days of deliberations, it’s not clear any resolution is near in the trial of high-profile Michigan lawyer Geoffrey Fieger and a colleague on charges of massively evading campaign-finance laws (David Ashenfelter, “Fieger jury signals verdict could take a while”, Detroit Free Press, May 30). Norm Pattis, who has attended the trial (and who hopes Fieger gets off) writes as follows (May 30):
This jury was told that it is unlawful for a person to ask another to make a contribution to a political candidate and promise to reimburse them for the contribution. There is power[ful] evidence before the jury that this is precisely what Fieger did. When I see, as I did at trial, evidence that a person making $560 a week with no prior history of political contributions makes a $2,000 contribution to their boss’s candidate, I wonder. When I see the boss reimburse the employee days after the contribution, giving in a “bonus” even enough to cover payroll tax, I am more than a little suspicious. When this pattern is repeated scores of time[s], I am like Archimedes springing from his tub: “Eureka!”
A jury could easily convict Fieger.
But [celebrated defense lawyer] Gerry Spence asked them not to. In a mesmerizing performance he commanded the room as can few others. He asked for commitments from jurors, showing himself to be vulnerable so as to make jurors at ease with their own vulnerability. Spence is charisma personified.
But Spence made one mistake in his argument that could cost Fieger his freedom. “If this prosecution can happen to Fieger, it can happen to any of us,” he said. It is a powerful argument in the right case. But as jurors ponder this case, and Spence’s magic recedes, someone will, sooner or later, raise the following question: “Who was Spence talking about?” The fact is most Americans cannot conceive of giving more than $100,000 to a political candidate by using employees as strawmen. This is not a case of the Government versus Everyman. Much though it pains me to admit this, there was power in the Government’s assertion that “Fieger thinks he is smarter than you.” With wealth comes, alas, arrogance.
Perhaps forgoing a chance to reach out for libertarian allies — though no doubt wisely as a matter of criminal-defense strategy — the defendants are not taking the position that the campaign-finance restrictions are improper restrictions on political freedom that should have been struck down as unconstitutional and even now merit condemnation. Instead, to quote the Freep’s Ashenfelter, their “lawyers have said they would have never risked their legal careers or put their employees or family members in harm’s way had they known it was wrong.”
Vioxx: Mark Lanier’s smears of the Ernst v. Merck judges
Mark Lanier and other plaintiffs lawyers are giving a series of interviews where they complain that the Ernst v. Merck decision (discussed yesterday) is “judicial activism that reinterprets the evidence.” (E.g., in Texas Lawyer.) This is nonsense. Ernst follows well-stated precedent. Indeed, I predicted precisely this result and precisely the case the appellate court would use to strike down the decision the week of the jury’s verdict.
Canadian tobacconist: sued if you do…
The facade of the Old Morris tobacco shop in Victoria, British Columbia, which has operated at its location for 120 years, “has been preserved in it’s [sic] original design, including signs noting the tobacco, house blends and Havana cigars within.” New provincial legislation prohibits tobacco-promoting signage where visible to youths; “Businesses who violate the act face a $575 fine for a first offense, with penalties rising up to $5,000 for repeat offences.” At the same time:
In a letter sent to [store owner Rick] Arora, Steve Barber, senior heritage planner with the City of Victoria, called the store’s signs “an integral part of the history of this building and part of it’s heritage character,” meaning Arora cannot remove or cover the signs.
“They’ve made it clear I can’t touch them,” Arora said. “I could be fined $1 million and go to jail for two years.”
Neither government agency “is budging” on its demands. (Tom Mcmillan, “Tobacco store owner caught between policies”, Canwest/Vancouver Sun, May 27). Update: compromise struck (thanks to reader ras in comments).
What liberal media bias? Part DCCXV
ABC Good Morning America signs on to the litigation lobby war against freedom of contract by parroting a Public Citizen anecdote about the supposed horrors of arbitration–though the underlying problem (mistaken identity of Anastasiya Komarova) had nothing to do with the arbitration proceeding. Needless to say, none of the benefits of arbitration to consumers was mentioned, and only Public Citizen’s one-sided and misleading statistics were used. Nathan Burchfiel is on the case.
Client-chasing roundup
- Screening firm hired by Beaumont, Tex.’s Provost Umphrey to do mass silicosis x-rays at Pennsylvania hotels is fined $80,500 for breaking various state rules, like the one requiring that a medical professional be on hand [Childs]
- Milberg Weiss’s special way of obtaining perfectly pliant clients — that is to say by bribing them under the table — harmed other class members by increasing fees but not settlement sums, suggests a new study by St. John’s lawprof Michael Perino for Ted’s project at AEI [Carter Wood @ PoL]
- Time for Texas to join many other states in requiring lawyers to inform clients when practicing without professional liability insurance [SE Texas Record; earlier here, here and here]
- Lawyers, in concert with their public pension fund allies, jockey for control of securities case against Bear Stearns [Gerstein/NY Sun]
- Another court, this time in California, rules that a screw maker can’t sue a law firm on the claim that its solicitation of potential claimants wrongly portrayed the company’s products as defective; amicus brief from state trial lawyers group and Sen. Sheila Kuehl says relevant provisions of state’s “SLAPP” law were “meant to protect plaintiffs groups, not companies” [The Recorder via ABA Journal; earlier case from Tennessee]
- Most lucrative Google AdSense words still dominated by asbestos and other personal injury practice, the top terms being “mesothelioma treatment options” ($69.10 per click, and the point of obtaining the click is not to provide treatment options), “mesothelioma risk” ($66.46), and “personal injury lawyer michigan” ($65.85) [CyberWyre via NAM “Shop Floor”; more here, here, etc.]
“Mother Teresa, move aside”
Mel Weiss — yes, that Melvyn Weiss, of Milberg Weiss, the one who ran a corrupt but lucrative kickback scheme premised on systematic lies to judges over decades, then stonewalled its disclosure through years of investigation — “deserves recognition as ‘one of the greatest humanitarians of our time,’ according to a sentencing memo his lawyer filed Friday.” (Ben Hallman, “Urging Leniency, Big Names Go to Bat for Mel Weiss”, American Lawyer, May 28).
Included were more than 240 supportive letters filed by friends and well-wishers of the famously piratical class-actioneer. It’s hard to read the WSJ law blog’s excerpts from these letters without shedding a tear of admiration:
“Donald Kempf, the former chief legal officer at Morgan Stanley says that after an unexpected on-the-street encounter, Weiss offered to help Kempf find a certain kind of watch. “And he did.”
According to a letter submitted by a friend and art dealer in Sun Valley, Idaho, in a “spontaneous” gesture while in Vienna, Weiss bought the art dealer’s wife an expensive pair of boots.
(WSJ law blog, May 27). The roster (PDF) of character vouchers and pleaders for leniency includes many names familiar to readers of this site, including Stephen Susman, Benedict Morelli (president of the New York State Trial Lawyers Association), David Boies, Stan Chesley, Edward Labaton, and Christopher Seeger; the list is headed by lawprof and frequent Milberg Weiss expert witness Arthur Miller. We commented in February on the similar batch of letters on behalf of Weiss’s felonious collaborator Bill Lerach.
Breaking and exclusive: FACTA held unconstitutional
We’ve previously written about the problems of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA), which imposes astronomical statutory damages on vendors whose credit card receipts fail to comply with ambiguous technical requirements. Today’s Daily Business Review recounts the tale of a small-business owner whose restaurant was hit with one of these suits, and how Congress has unanimously passed legislation, over some trial-lawyer objections, to shut down previous suits, though the bill far from solves the litigation problem from popping up again, and trial lawyers vow to continue pressing the suits. “U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-New York, who sponsored the Senate bill, said, ‘Congress never intended for the law to be used to drive companies out of business with expensive legal cases that don’t involve any harm to consumers.'”
Meanwhile, Judge William M. Acker, Jr., of the Northern District of Alabama, had a series of summary judgment motions in four FACTA cases before him. He rejected the idea that class certification was inherently improper when the resulting statutory damages would bankrupt the defendant (an issue I discussed in my Liability Outlook on the subject), but held that the $100-$1000 statutory damages, without a showing of harm, were necessarily punitive in nature, and thus constitutionally impermissible under State Farm v. Campbell: Read On…
Breaking: Merck wins two more Vioxx cases on appeal
AP reports a Texas court has thrown out the infamous Ernst $26 million judgment; a New Jersey court has tossed $9 million of the judgment in McDarby. More details on Point of Law as available.
Ernst was the first Vioxx suit to go to trial. A jury awarded $253 million. Mark Lanier waited months before asking for a final judgment; at the time, I suggested that this was because he knew the case would be reversed on appeal, and did not want the bad publicity. Indeed, the appellate decision perhaps comes too late for Merck: the number of lawsuits increased from 6000 to 60000 in the months following publicity over the jury verdict, costing Merck billions of dollars in the later extortionate settlement.
With these two decisions, only three plaintiffs’ verdicts in favor of Merck remain.
Update: I still haven’t seen the McDarby decision, but an updated AP story indicates that it upheld the compensatory damages of $4.5 million, overturned the $9 million punitive damages verdict, and overturned the consumer-fraud judgment (which also saves Merck millions of dollars in plaintiffs’ attorneys’ fees).
Doesn’t Even Leave The Airport
“A New York lawyer is suing Delta Air Lines for $1 million, saying his family vacation turned into a nightmare after they were stranded in an airport for days and treated disdainfully by airline employees. Richard Roth, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of himself and his mother, said he planned the Christmas 2007 trip to Buenos Aires to celebrate his mother’s 80th birthday.” (Reuters/MSNBC, AP/Atlanta Journal Constitution). Best quote, arguably, from Roth: “I tried so hard not to sue them.” (New York Post). Scott Greenfield is not entirely admiring (or maybe he is, it’s hard to tell).
P.S. Okay, you win, then: Greenfield was being entirely admiring of the action, million-dollar-demand and all.