After the investment firm was found to have deleted some emails regarding the disputed merger, an incensed trial judge directed the jury to assume that the emails would have backed up Perelman’s charges of fraud; a $1.5 billion verdict followed, including $850 million in punitive damages (May 18 and Dec. 17, 2005). Now a Florida appeals court, by a 2-1 vote, has thrown out the award on the grounds that “no legally cognizable damage was shown as a result of the alleged fraud.” It did not reach the discovery-sanctions issue. (Joe Bel Bruno, AP/ABCNews.com, Mar. 21; Jordana Mishory, “Fla. Appeals Court Tosses $1.58 Billion Verdict Against Morgan Stanley”, Miami Daily Business Review, Mar. 22; Carolyn Elefant, LegalBlogWatch, Mar. 21; opinion text, PDF).
UK: Teen-B-Gone noise device a human rights violation?
“A black box emitting a high pitched pulsing sound designed to deter loitering teenagers is being used in thousands of sites around Britain just a year after its launch, prompting warnings from civil liberties campaigners that it is a ‘sonic weapon’ that could be illegal.” The so-called Mosquito device emits a disagreeable though harmless noise at frequencies that can be heard by most persons younger than 25 but not by most of those older. “Liberty [a legal-rights campaign] suggests the device may fall foul of article eight of the European convention on human rights, conferring the right to a private life, or article 14 on the grounds that it is discriminatory on grounds of age. The organisation also believes it may contravene environmental health legislation – a suggestion dismissed by inventor Howard Stapleton on the ground that many devices, including cars, are louder.” (Lucy Ward, “3,300 sales and rising – ultrasonic answer to teenage gangs sets alarm bells ringing”, Guardian, Mar. 17).
“FBI Probing Edwards Senate Campaign Donor”
We told you the continuing Paul Minor imbroglio in Mississippi (Mar. 16 and many other posts) was going to be worth watching:
[In recent weeks] four former fundraising aides to [former Sen. John] Edwards have spoken voluntarily to FBI agents.
Democrats familiar with the investigation said that neither the current or past Edwards campaigns nor any of his staffers appear to be targets of the investigation, which is trying to determine whether Minor reimbursed his children for $8,000 in contributions to Edwards, an illegal practice known as “conduiting.” …
Trial lawyers are a fixture of Democratic politics and fundraising, particularly in the South, but some also have a reputation in Democratic political circles for a freewheeling approach to campaign finance law. Within Edwards’ 2004 campaign, staffers referred to those flamboyant personalities by an acronym: They called them “DFTLs,” which according to former staffers was short for “dirty (expletive) trial lawyers.”
“No current staffer for John Edwards for President uses that kind of language to talk about our donors,” said Kate Bedingfield, campaign spokeswoman.
(Ben Smith, The Politico, Mar. 21). I mentioned Minor’s prominence among Edwards’ presidential donors in this 2004 W$J piece. And as Ted noted on Jun. 24 of last year the Federal Election Commission has fined the law firm of prominent Arkansas plaintiff’s attorney Tab Turner, as well as the Edwards 2004 presidential campaign itself, over Turner’s having unlawfully funneled money to the campaign in the guise of contributions by employees at his firm (see Apr. 28-29, 2003).
Flying-imams case: sued passengers may get help
Following up on Mar. 15 and before that Dec. 6: “Lawyers and a Muslim group say they will defend at no cost airline passengers caught up in a lawsuit between a group of imams and U.S. Airways if the passengers are named as ‘John Does’ and sued for reporting suspicious behavior that got the Muslim clerics booted from a November flight. … Gerry Nolting, whose Minnesota law firm Faegre & Benson LLP is offering to represent passengers for free, says the judicial system is being ‘used for intimidation purposes’ and that it is ‘just flat wrong and needs to be strongly, strongly discouraged.'” Also offering help is “Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, a Phoenix-area physician and director of American Islamic Forum for Democracy — a group founded in 2003 to promote moderate Muslim ideas through its Web site — [who] told The Washington Times his group will raise money for legal fees for passengers if they are sued by the imams.” (Audrey Hudson, “Muslims offer to help ‘John Does’ sued by imams”, Washington Times, Mar. 21).
Devil is in the details
For years, an urban legend has floated around which claimed that Procter & Gamble has links to Satanism. P&G’s aggressive campaign to stamp out these rumors included filing numerous lawsuits against those who spread the story. On Friday, at least one of those efforts paid off. A jury in Salt Lake City awarded Procter & Gamble $19.25 million against four Amway distributors who had briefly passed the rumors throughout an Amway voice mail system, and then passed around a retraction soon afterwards. P&G had sued Amway and the distributors, but Amway was ultimately dismissed from the case after many years of litigation.
Observations:
- For a payment of only $18 million, anybody should feel free to call me a Satan-worshipper.
- While I have not yet seen all the pleadings, it seems hard to believe that a rumor such as this could possibly have damaged P&G to the tune of $19.25 million.
- This lawsuit was filed in 1995. For those of you scoring at home, that means it took twelve years to resolve a lawsuit which was, essentially, about gossip. The case featured several trips to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, an unsuccessful petition for Supreme Court review, and related litigation filed in Texas and Michigan as well. Not to defend the conduct of the defendants, but the litigation seems drastically out of proportion to the offense, no?
No such thing as bad publicity?
Apparently Carol Burnett doesn’t hold to that maxim; she’s suing the producers of the Fox cartoon Family Guy for $2 million for copyright infringement and violations of her right of publicity over an 18-second cartoon clip parodying her. Ron Coleman of Likelihood of Confusion has details.
Fox could have some trouble, particularly with the second claim; California’s right of publicity law, as interpreted by the Ninth Circuit, is extremely broad. Judge Alex Kozinski’s famous dissenting opinion explained the problem in a case filed by Vanna White against Samsung about an advertisement featuring a robot wearing a blond wig. Although this case doesn’t present the exact same issues as the Vanna White case — the Family Guy cartoon actually used Burnett’s name — it does point out the flaws in the Ninth Circuit’s approach, and illustrates how their interpretation is an invitation to celebrities to litigate.
Cathy Seipp
The end is very near for Cathy Seipp, and I’m frustrated with my inarticulateness in conveying my sorrow and anger over the injustice and absurdity of her untimely death. I was an early fan of hers, noticing that her idiosyncratic tastes in books and television corresponded nicely with mine. I first started corresponding with the feisty reporter when, in the course of self-Googling, she discovered a link to her Mediaweek columns on my old homepage in 2000; she generously quoted me when a tidbit I told her about the old Burns & Allen show ended up as an anecdote in one of her columns. We were on opposite coasts by 2001, but managed to say hello regularly on the occasions when one of us made the journey in one direction or the other. Every time I saw her, she was surrounded by lively and intelligent and bright friends drawn by her sharp wit and no-nonsense style, and I was always sorry that I wasn’t able to spend more time around that latterday Algonquin Round Table. I admire how resolute she was in the face of death; I regret that we missed each other last time she was in DC, and that the last time we broke bread together wasn’t in a better restaurant than the Sheraton breakfast buffet as we had agreed.
To perhaps inappropriately steer the conversation to the subject of this site, as noneconomic losses go, it’s hard to think of a larger one than the premature loss of Cathy Seipp; her family and friends will miss her love, her laughter, and her pointed observations; we’ll all miss her writing. Despite that, there would be no justice if one were to randomly select a deep pocket and demand it pay us all millions to compensate us for that loss. Losses are suffered without compensation all of the time; people are untimely struck down by aneurysms, mental illness, skiing accidents—and cancer.
The fact that, in some cases, there is the possibility of constructing a plausible scenario to blame a deep pocket and force it to compensate those who have suffered a loss does not ineluctably mean that that wealth-transfer must occur for justice to be done. Often it’s quite the opposite. That we at Overlawyered often argue against such compensation as contrary to the long-term interests of the public good does not mean that we do not value life or understand the hurt or unquantifiable costs of a life taken too soon. The case of Cathy Seipp, who will die of a cancer that just happened to happen to her without anyone to blame or sue, and the sorrow we feel for her loss, is refutation enough of that strawman.
I’m proud to have been able to call Cathy Seipp a friend, and ashamed that I cannot do justice to her memory through my own words. Let’s use hers: Cathy encountering a liability-fearing school bureaucracy over an asthma inhaler, on the miracle of public-school teacher tenure, and on the Guardian‘s counterproductive 2004 election letter-writing campaign. Go to her web page and leave good wishes.
“It’s out of a John Grisham novel”
American.com’s David Robinson interviews me for a podcast on the Vioxx litigation. The irony of this happening less than 48 hours after the great Virginia Postrel extensively quotes me ragging on video-blogging does not escape me. (cross-posted at Point of Law)
Protest a group home, get investigated for housing bias
They’re doing it again in California: “State and federal authorities have opened an investigation into a Norco housewife, alleging that her vitriolic protests against a high-risk group home in her neighborhood may constitute housing discrimination.” Federal officials asked state fair housing regulators to investigate Julie Waltz, 61, who had protested plans to open a group house next to her home for developmentally disabled residents; among those eligible to reside there under state law would be persons deemed not competent to stand trial on sex crime charges. In 2000, the Ninth Circuit ruled that three Berkeley, Calif. neighbors’ rights had been violated by an “extraordinarily intrusive and chilling” investigation of whether their protests had been contrary to housing discrimination law. In that episode, as in the latest one, housing advocates had set the investigation in motion by filing complaints against the neighbors.
A spokesman for the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development acknowledged that in order to recommend the inquiry, it had to push aside internal guidelines that prohibit such an investigation because it infringes on the 1st Amendment.
The rules require that complaints of housing discrimination be investigated only in cases in which the alleged victim’s safety has been threatened.
No such allegation has been made against Waltz, but HUD opened an investigation into her and state investigators ordered her to respond to the complaint in detail because a preliminary review showed that someone else in the neighborhood may have made a violent threat, said HUD spokesman Larry Bush.
(Garrett Therolf, “Protester of group home is targeted”, Los Angeles Times, Mar. 20).
Annals of incivility
It may not quite reach Jamail-esque depths — almost nothing can survive that far down other than those curious tube worms that live on volcanic sulfide fumes — but the lawyerly unpleasantness in the case of Redwood v. Dobson (PDF) was plenty bad enough, as recounted in Judge Easterbrook’s entertaining opinion. Discussion: Evan Schaeffer’s Illinois Trial Practice, Prof. Bainbridge, Legal Ethics Forum.