Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Welcome to West Virginia: Joe Meadows v. Go-Mart

Joe Meadows was drunk. Very drunk. 0.296 percent blood-alcohol content drunk, 12 or 13 beers worth. Fortunately, he didn’t drive in that state. Unfortunately, he chose to sleep it off by resting under a parked 18-wheel truck. More unfortunately, the driver, Doug Rader, who didn’t check to see whether there might be drunks lying under his truck at 1:40 a.m., ran over Meadows. Rader had EMT training, and was able to save Meadows’s life, but Meadows lost a leg, and sued both the truck company and the store that owned the parking lot. A Kanawha County jury decided that Meadows was only a third responsible for his injury, which means he “only” gets two thirds of the three million dollars they awarded. (Since Meadows had only asked for $2.3 million, one detects nullification to get around the fact that he was found partially responsible.) Plaintiffs’ attorneys Jesse Forbes, Bill Forbes and Roger Decanio state they are “pleased” with the verdict. (Vic Sprouse, “West Virginia isn’t a judicial hellhole? Tell that to Go-Mart”, West Virginia Record, Oct. 10; Andrew Clevenger, “Hernshaw man awarded $2 million in loss-of-leg case”, Charleston Gazette, Oct. 4; Cheryl Caswell, “Jury awards $3 million to man who had leg torn off by tractor-trailer”, Charleston Daily Mail, Oct. 4).

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By reader acclaim: “Cop sues family after saving baby”

“A police officer has sued the family of a 1-year-old boy who nearly drowned because she slipped and injured a knee responding to their 9-1-1 rescue call.” Andrea Eichhorn, a police sergeant in Casselberry, Florida, responded to the pool accident, and now “claims the boy’s family left a puddle of water on the floor, causing her fall during the rescue efforts. She broke her knee and missed two months of work.” So she’s suing the Cosmillo family. “It’s a situation where the Cosmillos have caused these problems, brought them on themselves, then tried to play the victim,” says her attorney, David Heil. Joey Cosmillo, the infant in question, suffered severe brain damage and lives in a nursing home now. (Rene Stutzman, “Cop who fell on the job sues family of baby who almost drowned”, Orlando Sentinel, Oct. 10; AP/Florida Today, Oct. 10)(slightly reworded to clarify sequence of events).

Plus: commentary on the above (Mike Thomas, “Hello, 911? Send a cop — who won’t sue”, Orlando Sentinel, Oct. 11). And update: cop decides to withdraw suit after public outcry.

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“Deadly toys of yesteryear”

Robert Berry at RetroCrush reminisces:

See, when I was a kid, our toys were dangerous because of misuse. …Now that China’s trying to implement a worldwide population control by dunking everything in some sort of evil death juice, it appears that these old school “deadly” delights are probably the safer option after all.

Actually, I well remember lead toy soldiers, whose composition was exactly what the name implies; because lead is a soft metal, one way you could play with them was by applying pressure with your fingers to alter their shape a bit this way or that. Pratie Place, a while back, mourned the demise of such amusements as early-design Fisher-Price “little people” and Parker Brothers’ spring-load token game, “Booby Trap” — though a redesigned version of the latter is back, per Tom McMahon.

Heads I win, tails don’t count files

Here’s precisely why the Class Action Fairness Act was passed: in 2000, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that Texas law did not apply to out-of-state members of a putative nationwide class in a lawsuit filed against Texas business Compaq. So what do plaintiffs do? They just filed the same lawsuit in Oklahoma, and the Oklahoma Supreme Court disregarded the Texas Supreme Court opinion (as well as the constitutional requirements of the Full Faith and Credit Clause) to certify the exact same class that the Texas court rejected, holding that Texas law did apply to the nationwide class. Yesterday, the United States Supreme Court refused to intercede, and Hewlett-Packard will now face a class of 1.7 million customers: most risk-averse corporate defendants settle rather than attempt to vindicate their rights in such a circumstance. (AP/Law.com, Oct. 10). Such multiple bites at the apple would not be allowed if the suit were brought today.

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Mississippi governors’ race: John Eaves

Does the Democratic Party realize the extent to which party leaders are selling out its principles to the trial lawyers? It’s gotten to the point that they’re running John Arthur Eaves, Jr., for governor in Mississippi. Eaves is pro-school-prayer, anti-abortion, and more sanctimonious in his Christianity and gay-bashing than any Republican regularly criticized by the Kossacks of the Left. But at least he supports (and is a member of) the trial bar! Democrats’ other constituencies should take a long hard look at the extent to which their issues are going to take a back seat to the litigation lobby’s takeover of the party. (Adam Nossiter, “In Mississippi, Democrat Runs in G.O.P. Lane”, New York Times, Oct. 10).

Update: Howard Erichson notes Eaves’s slogan “”If it wasn’t your fault or an act of God then someone must be held responsible” and Peter Lattman also covers the page-1 Times story.

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October 10 roundup

  • She wore a wire: defense attorney says administrative assistant to one of the three lawyers in Kentucky fen-phen scandal worked as FBI mole, circumventing attorney-client privilege [AP, Courier-Journal, Lexington Herald-Leader, ABA Journal]
  • Suing a lawyer because his deposition questions inflicted emotional distress? No way we’re going to open those floodgates, says court [NJLJ]
  • Counsel Financial Services LLC, which stakes injury lawyers pending their paydays, says it’s “the largest provider of attorney loans in the United States and the only Law Firm Financing company endorsed by the AAJ (formerly ATLA)”; its friendly public face is a retired N.Y. judge while its founder is attorney Joseph DiNardo, suspended from practice in 2000 “after pleading guilty to filing a false federal tax return” and whose own lend-to-litigants operation, Plaintiff Support Services, shares an office suite with Counsel [Buffalo News] The firm’s current listing of executives includes no mention of DiNardo, though a Jul. 19 GoogleCached version has him listed as President;
  • Patent litigation over cardiac stents criticized as “a horrendous waste of money” [N.Y. Times]
  • More on the “pro bono road to riches”, this time from a California tenant case [Greg May, Cal Blog of Appeal]
  • Not a new problem, but still one worth worrying about: what lawyers can do with charitable trusts when no one’s looking over their shoulder [N.Y. Times via ABA Journal]
  • Has it suddenly turned legal to stage massive disruptions of rush-hour traffic, or are serial-lawbreaking cyclists “Critical Mass” just considered above the law? [Kersten @ Star-Tribune]
  • “Look whose head is on a plate now”: no tears shed for fallen Lerach by attorney who fought him in the celebrated Fischel case [ChicTrib, San Diego U-T]
  • “Jena Six” mythos obscures graver injustice to black defendants, namely criminal system’s imposition of long sentences for nonviolent offenses [Stuart Taylor, Jr. @ National Journal — will rotate off site]
  • Economist David Henderson on restaurant smoking bans [Econ Journal Watch, PDF, via Sullum, Reason “Hit and Run”]
  • Technical note: we learned from reader Christian Southwick that our roundups were displaying poorly on Internet Explorer (Ted and I use other browsers) and we found a way to fix. So, IE users, please drop us a line when you encounter problems — we may not hear about them otherwise.

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