Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Door-inserted newspaper delivery

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel explains that it’s discontinuing the practice because stepping onto porches and placing the paper behind the screen is just too dangerous, at least legally:

…A more critical reason for the new delivery policy is to insure distributor safety and to protect our subscribers from liability issues. Should an Independent News Distributor become injured while delivering on your property, you, as the homeowner are legally liable for damages. One of the major reasons Journal Sentinel is moving to doorstep delivery is to avoid this situation for both our customers and our distributors. …

Sincerely,

Sheila Davidson
[Vice President/Circulation]

(Romenesko, Apr. 23).

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U.K.: Maypole fetes and village greens

Maypole.JPGBy recognizing its own limitations, a judicial system can assist in welcoming in the Spring:

The traditional English village fete received the backing of senior judges [last month] after they threw out a £150,000 damages claim made by a woman who broke her leg in a hole left by a maypole.

The Court of Appeal heard that villagers must be allowed to uphold their centuries-old celebrations without worrying that they will be sued if accidents happen.

Lord Justice Scott Baker said: “If the courts were to set a higher standard of care than what is reasonable, the consequences would quickly be felt.

“There would be no fetes, no maypole dancing and no activities that have come to be a part of the English village green for fear of what might go wrong.”

(Martin Beckford, ” Legal victory for village fetes and maypoles”, Daily Telegraph, Mar. 2).

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Don’t

More things you really shouldn’t do if you’re a lawyer:

  • While having an affair with a married client, draft a will for him in which he leaves you nearly $5 million from his estate (Orange County, N.Y. estate lawyer Michele Okin, already disbarred over unrelated client fraud; a judge threw out the will)(New York Law Journal)

  • Hire a thug to rough up clients who owe you money (former Winnipeg immigration lawyer Ingrid Chen, sentenced to 18 months behind bars)(CBC)(more at Legal Juice)

  • Serve as straw man for a 3,000-client bogus accident ring (now-disbarred Solomon Kaplan, convicted in New York of witness tampering and making false statements to an FBI agent, though the Second Circuit vacated his insurance fraud convictions on account of judicial error)(New York Law Journal)

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“Rabid”, “animal” — in the good sense?

Curious passage in a Law.com profile of federal prosecutor Michael Wang:

“Mike is just different,” said an assistant U.S. Attorney who has known him for years. “If anything, he tends toward the rabid. I like him.”

An admiring defense lawyer concurred: “He’s an animal.”

(Justin Scheck, “Corporate Crime Prosecutor Plays Hard”, The Recorder, Apr. 13).

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April 21 roundup

  • Damned if you do, damned if you don’t: nice summary of suits involving schools and suicidal students, both for allegedly overreacting and allegedly underreacting [On Point; earlier: Apr. 20, Apr. 19, May 30]

  • “If, for example, the University of Southern California here in Los Angeles were shut down every time there was a shooting in the neighborhood, the place would be out of business in less than a month.” [Dunphy @ NRO]

  • Blaming video games for murder (Apr. 18) [Rangel MD; Kotaku]

  • “In such public cases, your opponents attempt to take a picture of you on your worst day and insist that this is who you are as a person. Outside the doors of divorce court, I have friends, I have respect from people I work with and I have a normal relationship with my daughter. All of that is threatened whenever one enters a court room.” [AP/LA Times]

  • ATLA’s nonsense on McCarran-Ferguson [ethicalesq]

  • A case where a witness really was an ass. [MSNBC]

  • “Far from all ‘lawsuit abuse’ is committed by personal injury lawyers.” (We agree.) [BeldarBlog via Schaeffer]

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New Times column — the costs of health privacy

My new column in the Times (U.K.) is on the many costs of HIPAA, the federal law which even now prevents institutions from releasing the Virginia Tech psychopath’s health records (privacy rights extend after death) and played a notable role (along with the Buckley Amendment/FERPA) in restricting the chances for relevant actors to compare notes on his symptoms of madness before it was too late (Walter Olson, “Could less rigid privacy laws have prevented the Virginia tragedy?”, Apr. 20).

More: Dr. Wes has some additional HIPAA thoughts, as does Jeff Drummond at HIPAA Blog.

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Discrimination against the mentally ill

David Bernstein is presiding over a thread at Volokh (Apr. 18).

More from the WSJ’s editors today:

A reasonable university administrator might conclude from all this [the suits against Harvard and MIT over the Sinedu Tadesse and Elizabeth Shin episodes, respectively] that mentally ill students–when there is even a remote possibility that they will be dangerous–need to be removed from campus, at least until their condition has improved. But not so fast. In 2004, George Washington University suspended Jordan Nott after he sought medical treatment for severe depression. Officials said later that they were trying to act in Mr. Nott’s best interests, by forcing him to take time off to get counseling. Mr. Nott sued the university, arguing that it had violated his rights under the Americans With Disabilities Act. The school and Mr. Nott settled out of court last fall.

In the same rights-based spirit, Virginia recently passed a law barring public colleges and universities from punishing or expelling students “solely for attempting to commit suicide, or seeking mental-health treatment for suicidal thoughts or behaviors.”

(“Caught in the (Legal) Crossfire”, Apr. 20).

And: “Privacy and anti-discrimination laws have meant paralysis in the face of the scarily insane.” (Kay Hymowitz (Manhattan Institute), “In loco parentis – not”, New York Sun, Apr. 20, original at City Journal). Speaking of privacy laws, Hymowitz writes:

Some years ago, when my daughter was starting out at Amherst, the college president explained the terms of the Buckley Amendment to the parents of incoming freshmen. One parent asked in disbelief, “You mean, if my kid were to disappear to California with a drugged-out nut, you wouldn’t even tell me she was missing?” The president smiled with just a hint of condescension. “That’s right,” he said.

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