Mraz v. Chrysler: an exchange with the plaintiffs’ attorneys

You might recall the $55 million verdict in Los Angeles, where Chrysler was held 75% liable for an accident where a defective automatic transmission in a 1992 Dodge Dakota, a failure of the truck owner to respond to multiple product recalls, and a truck driver’s failure to (1) turn off the ignition before exiting a vehicle; (2) engage a parking brake; and (3) not attempt to jump into a moving vehicle resulted in the tragic death of a young longshoreman with a wife and children. Plaintiffs’ attorneys Stephen Cassidy and Scott Nealey took issue with our post. The lengthy exchange begins in the comments section and update to our post and continues over email. Let’s just say I wasn’t persuaded, but judge for yourself.

Read On…

Bong hits 4 shakedown?

Dana Milbank (WaPo) on yesterday’s Bong Hits 4 Jesus Supreme Court oral argument (h/t LL):

“…Mertz, arguing for the student, fared even worse than Starr and Kneedler. He got out only one sentence — “This is a case about free speech; it is not a case about drugs” — before Roberts interrupted.

“It’s a case about money,” the chief justice said.

“Would you waive damages against this principal, who has devoted her life to this school?” asked Kennedy. “You’re seeking damages from her for this sophomoric sign that was held up.”

Palfrey and Sibley update

Today’s WaPo has more on the temporary restraining order against Deborah Jeane Palfrey’s sale of her phone records, which we discussed Mar. 17. Available for your viewing pleasure is the redacted government’s TRO application, which was just unsealed, and has some entertaining anecdotes of attorney Montgomery Blair Sibley’s litigation history. Palfrey now has her own (easily googlable, we won’t link to it) website, which includes her civil complaint against one of her alleged escorts (which the government alleges is an attempt to harass a witness in the criminal case), and a page of phone records, which Josh Marshall’s commenters have already begun tracking down.

YouTube users at legal risk?

Needless alarmism, or logical extrapolation from RIAA’s willingness to sue small-fry individual music-sharers along with the grandparents whose computers they had borrowed?

According to some legal experts, YouTube’s uploading community could find itself in the line of fire. … Centralized source or no, Christopher Norgaard, intellectual property attorney and partner in the Los Angeles office of Ropers Majeski Kohn & Bentley, said he believes YouTube and its users face a significant risk of exposure to secondary liability for copyright infringement. Secondary liability can be either contributory, meaning inducement of infringement, or vicarious, meaning profiting from infringement while failing to exercise a right to stop it.

(Jennifer LeClaire, “Are YouTube Users at Risk in Viacom Suit?”, NewsFactor, Mar. 16).

UK: Thousands face pay slashes under comparable worth

“Hundreds of thousands of men working in the public sector are facing salary cuts of up to £15,000 a year as equal pay agreements take effect, The Times has learnt. Compensation claims for up to 1.5 million workers could cost the taxpayer more than £10 billion and mean that male staff lose up to 40 per cent of their salary.” According to commenters on the article, the agreements are based on the principle known in the U.S. as comparable worth — that is to say, not equal pay for doing the same job, but equal pay for doing jobs that some evaluator decides are equally difficult or meritorious or socially productive, such as (hypothetically) librarian and garbage collector. (Jill Sherman, “Thousands face pay cut under new equality law”, Times Online, Mar. 12)

Interestingly, while unions have apparently sought in many cases to minimize disruptions by phasing in the new principles, entrepreneurial lawyering is destabilizing the situation: “aggressive no-win, no-fee lawyers are now unpicking the agreements by winning higher compensation payments for thousands of individual claimaints.” This appears to be leading to tension between the unions and the private employment lawyers. Some highly paid women, as well as many men, are expected to be hit with pay cuts.

March 19 roundup

  • More ADA filing mills: “Fuller, Fuller and Associates was once sanctioned when their client, who was alleged to be quadriplegic, walked into his own deposition.” [Childs @ MassTort]
  • Professional expert witnesses as a publicly traded multimillion dollar industry. [WSJ]
  • No accommodation needed for LSAT taker claiming ADHD. [Legal Intelligencer]
  • Homeowner’s gripe on web draws lawsuit from contractor. [WaPo]
  • Lawsuits of the future: Muslim cashier refuses to ring up bacon (if only I had thought of that when I was in high school) [Minn. Star-Tribune]
  • Neighbors feud over driveway: “three civil lawsuits, a physical altercation, a criminal indictment, [and] a court hearing over a videotape” [St. Pete. Times]
  • “Warning: Lawsuits Hazardous To Financial Health” [Forbes.com]
  • Y’know, if a man wrote a ludicrous essay to the effect that every professional women has a Lisa Nowak inside of them on the verge of erupting, that’d be the last thing he ever wrote. [Legal Times]

Conrad Black trial

One of the best white-collar-crime bloggers around, Tom Kirkendall, has a roundup of links on the Black trial, including to this Mark Steyn column. I’m staying out of this one: I have colleagues who know Black personally, my old law firm represents clients adverse to Black in civil litigation, and my law-school roommate is the lead prosecutor on the case. I will note, however, that if I were Conrad Black, I’d be awfully concerned about the number of potential jurors who assume someone is guilty just because they made a lot of money, especially given the prosecution’s inclination to introduce prejudicial evidence of expenditures. [New York Times; Globe and Mail]

Separately, this Economist commentary piece not only mentions the Black trial, but Larry Ribstein’s “Apple rule.” (cross-posted at Point of Law)