Lee Kaplan, a journalist who writes on Middle East controversies for (among other outlets) David Horowitz’s conservative Front Page, attracted the critical interest of a Berkeley student named Yaman Salahi, who set up a blog entitled Lee Kaplan Watch that assails Kaplan and his work. Kaplan proceeded to sue Salahi on charges of “business interference” in small claims court, a venue lacking in the extensive fact-finding and procedural protections that would attach to a conventional suit for, say, defamation. Last month the court awarded Kaplan $7500. The blogosphere has begun to notice the story with some alarm: Seeing the Forest for the Trees, Dean’s World, Ann Althouse, Slashdot. More links: Media Law Resource Center. Kaplan’s side of the story is here.
Another Detroit co-worker’s-perfume suit
Susan McBride, who works in the planning department for the city of Detroit, is suing the city “alleging her co-worker’s strong perfume has made it impossible for her to do her job. …McBride alleges the city should accommodate her disability by prohibiting people from wearing perfume in the workplace.” As the Detroit News reports, and as we noted at the time, this isn’t the first time Detroit has been the scene of perfume-in-the-workplace litigation:
In 2005, Detroit country music deejay Erin Weber won a $10.6 million jury verdict against her employer, WYCD (99.5 FM) after she alleged she was sickened by a fellow radio host’s perfume.
But U.S. District Judge George Caram Steeh reduced the award to $814,000, saying it was not clear from the evidence that Weber had a perfume allergy.
(Paul Egan, “Worker sues over co-worker’s perfume”, Detroit News, Jul. 4; “Employee Sues City Over Co-Worker’s Perfume, Seeks Ban on Scents”, AP/FoxNews.com, Jul. 5).
July 6 roundup
- How to handle illegal alien’s slip-fall suit against supermarket? With some delicacy: jury told only that plaintiff “couldn’t legally work in this country” [Oroville, Calif., Mercury-Register]
- Sorry, docs: “I hate doctors” beats out “I hate lawyers” as a Google search result [Bioethics Discussion Blog via KevinMD]
- Virginia adopts harrowingly punitive schedule of traffic fines. Its sponsor: lawmaker whose day job is defending motorists [Washington Post; NRO “The Corner”; Ribstein; our earlier report]
- A businessman in London is suing Google for “publishing” (by indexing) allegedly defamatory material, and, boy, will the Internet ever be a different place if he wins [Independent (U.K.), Volokh]
- Federal indictment charges Houston injury lawyer secretly paid $3 million to two Hartford Insurance claims adjusters in connection with $34 million in silicosis settlements [PoL]
- Mississippi high court rules invalid former AG Mike Moore’s slush-fund diversion of $20 million/year in tobacco settlement money to evade legislative oversight [Sun-Herald, Bader; also this PoL roundup]
- More RIAA-suit horrors, this time from Washington state [Seattle P-I] Prospects for a counterattack? [Pasquale, Concurring Opinions]
- California Assembly votes to require pet owners to sterilize mixed-breed dogs and cats, while UK animal rights authority mulls rights for invertebrates [Mangu-Ward and Bailey, Reason]
- Here come the tainted-Chinese-export suits, with many American defendants on the hook [Parloff, Fortune] Plus: car with the “E COLI” license plate may be driving lawyer to work [WSJ Law Blog]
- Gimme those antiquities: Peru vs. Yale on Machu Picchu relics [Zincavage]
- Dick Schaap med-mal case evokes shifting theories from celebrated lawyer Tom Moore [two years ago at Overlawyered]
Judge to lawyers: “I want this plaintiff to get money.”
“I’m not going to look at the evidence submitted to me. I want this plaintiff to get money. Tell each of your clients to pay up and make a contribution if they want to get out of this lawsuit.”—unnamed Buffalo Supreme Court judge, according to Brendan P. Cunningham op-ed in the June 22 Buffalo News.
Sebok on the Pearson pants suit
Anthony Sebok’s Findlaw column on the Pearson pants suit cites Overlawyered and repeats two points regular readers of Overlawyered and Point of Law have seen before:
- Meritless cases often settle for nuisance value, thus making them profitable to bring;
- Rule 11, as currently constituted, “has proven to be a very toothless weapon against abusive plaintiffs” and “does not effectively protect defendants from frivolous, or even, in some cases, fraudulent suits.”
Yet Sebok concludes that there is no epidemic of fraudulent litigation. I suppose it depends on one’s definition of “epidemic” and “fraudulent”; as we’ve noted before, Bill Lerach successfully swiped several billion dollars in nuisance settlements bringing meritless Enron litigation, helped by an erroneous district-court class certification. (Such erroneous class certifications helped make Madison County a judicial hellhole.) Sebok acknowledges that “lawyer-driven” cases where plaintiffs act as their own attorneys might merit loser-pays rules to deter meritless lawsuits that would be cheaper to settle than fight, but what makes most class-action litigation any less “lawyer-driven” such that they should be subject to different rules? (Cross-posted from Point of Law.)
By the way, Pearson has announced that he will appeal the trial court’s decision against him.
19th-century legal doctrine meets 21st-century hedonism and 20th-century litigation tactics
Arthur Friedman announced to his wife, Natalie, after ten years of marriage, that he wanted the couple to engage in group sex and swinging, so he could gratify himself watching his wife have sex with other men. Natalie, however, fell for one of her partners, German Blinov. The two left their spouses and ran off with one another. Arthur sued Blinov under the Illinois alienation of affection laws, and, amazingly enough, won $4802 from a jury that thought the case was stupid. (Steve Patterson, “Putting a price on love”, Chicago Sun-Times, Jul. 1). The former Mrs. Friedman expresses dismay about the award, but it’s not clear whether it’s the fact of the award or the trivial amount that offends her. Chicagoist and Alex Tabarrok are appropriately appalled.
Most states have passed the tort reform of abolishing the alienation of affection cause of action. Earlier on Overlawyered: Nov. 2006 and May 2005 (North Carolina); Nov. 2004 (Illinois); May 2000 (Utah).
Update: Of course, one doesn’t necessarily need that 19th-century cause of action when entrepreneurial lawyers are in play. Recently fired WellPoint CFO David Colby allegedly rotated among several girlfriends he met on a dating website, several of whom he allegedly promised to marry, even as he was married to someone else (albeit separated). One of the ex-girlfriends is suing WellPoint for “facilitat[ing] Colby’s lifestyle”; it seems Colby pointed to his webpage on the WellPoint site to seduce some of his targets. (Lisa Girion, “WellPoint named a defendant in sexual-battery suit”, LA Times, Jun. 29; see also “Women claim lives with WellPoint exec”, LA Times, Jun. 13 (no longer on web)).
In Detroit, protected road menaces
The city of Detroit’s Department of Transportation, which runs 500 buses, budgeted a whopping $16.1 million this year to cover lawsuits and injury claims arising from its operations (yes, that amounts to $32,000 per bus per year). The city is finding it unusually difficult to reduce those numbers:
Matt Allen, spokesman for Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, explained that Detroit is self-insured, which means money is set aside annually in an account earmarked for settlements, damages and other mishaps involving city-owned vehicles and drivers.
Meanwhile, the city, particularly the Detroit Department of Transportation, is struggling with union rules and arbitration cases that make it difficult to terminate even the most accident-prone drivers.
In one case, a bus driver was involved in 30 mishaps, hit a bicyclist resulting in a $1.4 million lawsuit settlement and, in a separate incident, had her driver’s license suspended. The city tried to fire her, according to records, but an arbitrator ruled she had to be rehired.
(David Josar, “Workers’ crashes cost Detroit”, Detroit News, Jun. 11).
School blamed for lightning fatality
According to witnesses, faculty had stopped a junior varsity football game at Monarch High School in Fort Lauderdale because of thunder and the players were coming off the field when 15-year-old Schaffner Noel was struck and killed by a bolt of lightning. Now his father Julio Noel is suing the Broward County School Board. “The school did not use a lightning detection device and failed to provide sufficient warning and evacuation measures, attorney Holly Krulik said in a statement Tuesday.” (“Fla. Dad Sues Schools In Lightning Death”, AP/Local6.com, Jun. 27). An amusement-park lightning case can be found here, and our readers have been having a lively discussion over the meaning of the word “accident” here.
Scottish smoking violation
It’s a bit of humor (via Stuttaford).
P.S. And a bit of medical humor too. Enjoy the July 4 holiday and see you on Thursday.
Stop using the word “accident”?
Revising terminology with the goal of revising attitudes?
The word ‘accident’ is to be banned from the new edition of Britain’s Highway Code, which is published by the UK Department of Transport. Instead the words ‘collision’, ‘crash’ or ‘incident’ will be used to describe events that once were known as accidents.
This adoption of new terms for everyday events does not only have linguistic significance. The banning of the A-word is a consequence of a broader cultural outlook which insists that nothing happens accidentally these days and that there is always someone to blame. …
In June 2001, the prestigious British Medical Journal signed up to the crusade, explaining in an editorial why it had decided to ban the word accident from its pages. ‘[S]ince most injuries and precipitating events are predictable and preventable’, the word accident should not be used to refer to ‘injuries or the events that produce them’.
(Frank Furedi, “The crusade against the A-word”, Spiked-Online (U.K.), May 15)