Airline mechanic Arnim Ramdass, 52, allegedly “disconnected the phone line at home and forbade his stay-at-home wife, Donna Campbell, 48, to watch television, Campbell claims in a lawsuit. Eventually, however, she learned the truth: Ramdass, along with 16 other mechanics at Miami International Airport, had won a $19 million lottery jackpot.” (Martha Neil, “Wife Sues Husband for Share of Secret $600K Lottery Win”, ABA Journal, May 13). See Nov. 20-21, 1999 (similar case from California).
Rebuilding your pool fence
We’re requiring you to do it, but we’re also forbidding you to do it, explain the nice folks at Town Hall (Maggie’s Farm, May 4, via Never Yet Melted).
Site housekeeping
* Comments on the main site are still broken, sorry. Update: Comments now working since WordPress changeover.
* Yesterday was one of our biggest Instalanches ever, with about 7,000 Glenn Reynolds readers coming over to visit this post.
* You can see our rapidly evolving WordPress “sandbox” here. One vexing problem we’ll need to fix: most of the posts from guestbloggers are being attributed to the wrong contributors. That problem is evident in this recent post, which was really authored by Jim Copland; the case names don’t render properly either. The posts in the sandbox may accept comments (which may or may not survive in a reconstructed site) but any permalinks are not really permanent and are apt to break soon. Comments about the reconstruction itself are best added to this post. Update: Sandbox removed since WordPress version has gone live.
Asbestos litigation: the Manville Trust
Asbestos litigation continued to grow during the 1980s: by 1992, fully 100,000 claims had been resolved, but another 100,000, yet unresolved, had been filed.
A novel means of processing asbestos claims was initiated in 1988, when the Johns-Manville corporation emerged from bankruptcy and established the Manville Personal Injury Settlement Trust, the first “bankruptcy trust” set up to pay out money to asbestos claimants. Unfortunately, plaintiffs’ attorneys controlled the trust’s claimants committee and set up procedures for the trust that were advantageous to themselves, rather than potential claimants. The trust rules minimized requirements of proof of actual injury or causation (exposure to Johns-Manville products). The trust thus paid out a lot of money quickly to the attorneys, all the while exhausting its funds for potential future claimants.
In just its first nine months of operation, the trust paid out some $500 million to 12,600 claimants — and by the end of 1989, 89,000 more claimants were outstanding. Eventually, the trust had to sharply curtail payments to claimants — to 10 percent in 1995, and 5 percent in 2001. Injured claimants were literally getting a nickel on the dollar. “As of June 30, 2006, the trust had received more than 773,000 claims and paid out about $3.4 billion–just $4,400 per claimant.”
ADA litigation closes another Calif. restaurant
Even rural Northern California affords no refuge from the filing mills:
Eureka’s Arctic Circle franchise has closed its doors after the restaurant was sued for noncompliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Jack Williams, who has owned the franchise with his wife, Peggy, since 1989, said the couple decided to close the business last Tuesday because they cannot afford the renovations required by the lawsuit.
The suit was filed by local attorney Jason K. Singleton, who in recent years has filed ADA-related suits against a number of local establishments, including Village Pantry, Broadway Cinema, Fortuna Theatre, Cafe Waterfront and College of the Redwoods, among others. …
“Here we had a business that was serving all kinds of customers and now is serving no one,” Hockaday [J Warren Hockaday, executive director of the Greater Eureka Chamber of Commerce] said.
(Ryan Burns, “Arctic Circle closes due to ADA lawsuit”, The Times-Standard, May 6; earlier).
“We also invented the color of ink”
“An invaluable blog”
A grateful hat tip to Johnathan Pearce of the U.K. site Samizdata.net for those kind sentiments: “As ever, those interested in silly lawsuits should keep an eye on Overlawyered, an invaluable blog.” (May 2).
WordPress here we come?
Given the vulnerabilities of Movable Type to attack — comments are down once again and I don’t know at this point when we can get them back up — it looks as if we’ll have to join the crowd in migrating over to WordPress. (And I had really wanted to spend the week on other projects.)
Those who might want to share relevant MT-to-WP conversion experience are welcome to check in through email (since comments are busted).
May 21 at AEI: Off-Label Uses of Approved Drugs: Medicine, Law, and Policy
An important all-day conference at AEI next week:
In the last several years, nearly every major pharmaceutical company has paid hundreds of millions of dollars to settle allegations of illegal “off-label” marketing of drugs. There has been a growing trend of actions by federal prosecutors, state attorneys general, and cooperating trial lawyers to litigate against pharmaceutical manufacturers for allegedly doing too much to promote off-label use of prescription products. Citing recent legal changes mandating exclusion from federal programs after a conviction, many manufacturers say they are forced to settle rather than risk defending themselves–even as prosecutions against individual executives have foundered in front of juries.
At this AEI Legal Center event, experts on both law and health care will present papers on the law, economics, medicine, and public policy of off-label marketing, discussing everything from the abuse of class action mechanisms to implications for the First Amendment and medical malpractice. Speakers include former Food and Drug Administration chief counsel Daniel Troy; former Cephalon general counsel John Osborn; former deputy attorney general George Terwilliger; principal deputy assistant attorney general and acting assistant attorney general for the Civil Division Jeffrey Bucholtz; attorneys Brian Anderson, James Beck, Mark Herrmann, Richard Samp, and Kyle Sampson; law professor Margaret Johns; and AEI scholars John E. Calfee, Theodore H. Frank, and Scott Gottlieb.
Panel I: Off-Label Marketing, R&D, and Medical Practice
Panel II: The Legal Environment from Federal Regulation and Enforcement
Panel III: Distortions from State and Private Enforcement
Panel IV: Legal Implications for Commercial Speech and Medical Practice
Register here. Earlier discussion on POL: Feb. 1; Feb. 19; Mar. 24; Dec. 17; Aug. 31; Aug. 22 (Richard Epstein); Aug. 1, 2006 (state AGs); Mar. 19 (InterMune indictment).
Comments and search down for now
The site crashed under spammer attack this morning — I’m told the link from Instapundit with its resulting heavy traffic was just a coincidence — and we’ve had to shut down comments and search temporarily while we try to get back on our feet. Update 1:15 p.m. Eastern: search back up (although all old saved searches are broken, you’ll have to re-search on individual terms), comments still down.