Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Update: disabled-access impresario Ted Omholt

Readers who follow the phenomenon of ADA filing mills (Dec. 7, etc.) may recall the case of West Coast attorney Theodore Omholt, who has filed hundreds of legal complaints against businesses for violations (trivial or otherwise) of disabled-access laws, which he then settles for cash. In Honolulu, according to one news report, Omholt filed 574 lawsuits. (Carolyn Said, “Controversial disability rights lawyer”, San Francisco Chronicle, Apr. 21, 2002.) Omholt then refocused his practice on California where he sent out the following letter, quoted in my article three years ago in City Journal:

I am the attorney (age 48) who for the past three years has had the privilege to represent a small action group of six wonderful individuals who use wheelchairs age 37 to 66. . . . Their shopping at inaccessible stores in San Francisco and then filing lawsuits as clients of mine against those inaccessible stores nets them each an income which makes them financially independent. For each of them, the lack of funds which used to limit them to life’s bare necessities and which plagues so many disabled individuals today has become only an unpleasant memory from the past. As a reward for implementing the law and making stores more accessible for other disabled shoppers, group members now use their stream of income to eat out at good restaurants when they want to, buy new clothes and computers and televisions and gifts for family members, travel and take vacations wherever and whenever they want to go, and live a lifestyle they could only imagine prior to joining the group. . . . The group has room for a small number of additional members. Once that small number of additional members has been selected, the group will again close to new members.

Alas, even the most thoughtfully devised business plans sometimes meet with a hitch. Reader W.R. alerts us to this copy of Supreme Court minutes (PDF) from San Francisco, dated May 10 of last year, which at page 51 reports the following:

S143253 OMHOLT ON RESIGNATION — The voluntary resignation of TED OMHOLT, State Bar No. 92979, as a member of the State Bar of California is accepted without prejudice to further proceedings in any disciplinary proceeding pending against respondent should he hereafter seek reinstatement. It is ordered that he comply with rule 955 of the California Rules of Court and that he perform the acts specified in subdivisions (a) and (c) of that rule within 30 and 40 days, respectively, after the date this order is filed.* Costs are awarded to the State Bar. *(See Bus. and Prof. Code, §6126, subd. (c).)

It’s too bad the minutes aren’t more informative about the circumstances surrounding Mr. Omholt’s voluntary resignation from the California bar. Readers familiar with the details are welcome to illuminate matters.

UPDATE: Omholt writes to dispute the accuracy of certain details in the Honolulu account; seeing no reason to doubt his word, we have revised the post to omit those details.

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Wikiality and the media

Glenn Reynolds posts on problems with Wikipedia. The problem is worse than he imagines, because lazy mainstream media are now relying on the site. I won’t embarrass the reporter by name, but he did a story on the ATLA name change; in the course of the story, he quoted fictional statistics invented by the Center for Justice & Democracy as “evidence” of the failure of medical malpractice reform. I dropped him an email pointing out the error, and the response included the following:

“I have found that non-obscure entries in Wikipedia are usually policed carefully to prevent unfounded, unanswered spin.”

At which point, he quoted back to me a Wikipedia entry on the subject that consisted entirely of ATLA talking points and spin that had been refuted numerous times on this site and Point of Law. That Wikipedia is inaccurate on this topic is no surprise: as I’ve noted earlier, a handful of trial lawyer advocates have systematically made thousands of edits to sanitize Wikipedia of just about anything that opposes the official ATLA line or criticizes trial lawyers, even on such minor entries as Jim Shapiro (see OL June 2002) and contingent fee (not to mention more major ones like asbestos, asbestos and the law, and medical malpractice). (And welcome Instapundit readers.)

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Northern Ireland: jury awards £25K for bad restaurant review

“The Irish News must pay £25,000 plus court costs to a west Belfast Italian restaurant owner after a jury found a food critic’s review to be defamatory.” (“£25K for food critic’s poison pen”, BBC, Feb. 8). Journalist Caroline Workman, in a review of Ciaran Convery’s restaurant Goodfellas, had “described his staff as unhelpful, his cola as flat, and his chicken marsala ‘so sweet as to be inedible'”. Guardian restaurant critic Matthew Norman described the jury verdict as “very worrying news”: “You really cannot overstate the imbecility of a libel jury: what we really need now is a sustained campaign against our ludicrous libel laws.” (Maev Kennedy, “Critics bite back after restaurant reviewer sued for calling chicken too sweet”, Guardian, Feb. 10).

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“Lawyers Look Beyond Edwards”

In the last presidential election, John Edwards had the powerful support and deep pockets of the nation’s trial lawyers behind him. But when the lawyers gather for their winter conference today in Miami Beach, it will be Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) delivering the meeting’s keynote speech.

The Washington Post notes that trial lawyers are willing to shell out for Biden because of his efforts blocking tort reform. But Edwards is fighting back:

Four years ago, [Fred] Baron shuttled Edwards around the country on his private jet to introduce him to other lawyers. Now, Baron is working to reinforce Edwards’s standing with some of his backers from the last campaign.

(Matthew Mosk, WaPo, Feb. 10).

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February 9 roundup

Multi-billion dollar (and down) extortion edition:

  • Merrill Lynch and CSFB appeal extortionate Enron class-action certification. [Point of Law; AEI (Feb. 9); WLF brief]

  • More on the extortionate and lawless $500 billion Wal-Mart class certification. [Point of Law]

  • Mississippi Supreme Court rejects extortionate medical monitoring class actions. [Behrens @ WLF]

  • Lawyer Daniel Hynes tries to extort $2000 from New Hampshire bar holding Ladies’ Night. [Foster’s Daily Democrat (h/t B.C.)]

  • Colorado Civil Justice League stops legislative attempt at giveaway to local trial lawyers. [Point of Law]
  • Wisconsin court: family can be sued for babysitter’s car accident when returning home from dropping off child. [AP/Insurance Journal]
  • Fox seeks to dismiss Borat suit on anti-SLAPP grounds. [Hollywood Reporter Esq. via WSJ Law Blog]

  • Passaic County jury: $28M for “wrongful birth.” [NorthJersey.com]

  • Former AG (and Dem) Griffin Bell: “Judicial Leadership Emerging In Asbestos And Silica Mass Torts” [WLF]
  • Utah legislature considering med-mal reform for ERs. “Neurosurgeons in this town have to pay over $90,000 a year just for the privilege of getting out of bed on a Friday night to drain the blood from the brain of a victim of a drunk driver crash. And they say, I’m not gonna do it. Because the patients are sicker. The procedures are sometimes more invasive and more risky with more complications. Why take that risk if they don’t have to?” [KCPW via Kevin MD; Provo Herald]

  • A little-read blog promoting a soon-to-be-pulped fictional account of tort reform is really begging for a link from us, what with three out of the last five posts making amateurish (and often false) personal attacks on this site’s authors or soliciting others to also fling poo. No dice.

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McDonald’s parking lot shooting

One day in November 2005 after classes had ended for the day at King High School in Tampa, Otis Lorenzo Neal got out of a van and fired into a group of fellow teenagers in the parking lot at a nearby McDonald’s, killing one and wounding three others. Now a lawyer for Alexander McKinnie, one of the wounded students, is suing the restaurant, saying it should have foreseen and prevented the shooting “‘because of regular fighting amongst teenagers, gang activity, thefts, robberies, assaults and other crimes’ that took place at the restaurant and in the vicinity”. (Rebecca Catalanello, “Man sues McDonald’s for negligence in a 2005 shooting near King High”, St. Petersburg Times, Feb. 6; Justin George, “Plea deal in student killing”, St. Petersburg Times, Jan. 31).

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Twins, 10, contest expulsion from university

Canada: ” Accusations of age discrimination are being lobbed at the University of Ottawa by 10-year-old twins who were registered in a course before being expelled in the fall. Sebastien and Douglas Foster filed complaints with the Ontario Human Rights Commission on the basis of age discrimination after the school deregistered them from the Science in Society course they had been attending.” The university said it had mistakenly allowed the youngsters to enroll in contravention of a policy requiring students to possess a high school degree or equivalent, and that it had offered to refund their tuition. The students had enrolled in an already controversial course informally known as the “Activism Course”, with the approval of its instructor, Prof. Denis Rancourt; asked by a reporter why he sought to study at the university, young Sebastien said he’s learned about ‘the Afghanistan war that’s going on and about how many animals are being killed for food and a lot of things.'” (Laura Czejak and Dave Pizer, “Twins, 10, cry foul over U of O expulsion”, Ottawa Sun, Jan. 30).

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Blue-ribbon excuses: crematory abuse blamed on mercury

“The lawyer for a former crematory operator said he believes mercury exposure led his client to leave 334 bodies to rot in piles across his property. A prosecutor disputed the theory, saying the lawyer was trying to win parole for Ray Brent Marsh, who admitted dumping the bodies and passing off cement dust as their ashes.” (“Georgia crematory crimes blamed on mercury”, AP/CNN, Feb. 7) (via Lat)(more blue-ribbon excuses).

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Edwards to keep bloggers

That’s how it goes: no regrets as of Feb. 4, “I am sorry” as of Feb. 8. Associated Press has more. Edwards’ statement is here. Earlier, in what a Shakespeare’s Sister commenter dubs a “Dewey Defeats Truman moment”, Salon had erroneously reported that the two had been ousted. (P.S.: Salon stands by its story, saying the two were in fact sacked but that the decision was then reversed.) Earlier coverage on this site here, here and here.

More: Ted, in comments:

“I am sorry that you were offended” is a rather non-apologetic apology by Marcotte, so she isn’t being quite inconsistent with her earlier “Je ne regrette rien” position, other than that her statement doesn’t refer to “tone-deaf wingnuts.”

What’s amusing is that even this tepid politic gesture by Edwards is causing the Angry Blog Left to howl for his head. It’s an entertaining deal with the devil Edwards has made by courting this crowd, and shows his general unfitness for governing.

And from reader Hans Bader:

Apparently, Edwards is ethically clueless after all.

The only remarks that offended him were Marcotte’s religious insults, not Marcotte’s defamatory, malicious, and ignorant remarks about the Duke student defendants….

And: “Asked whether the campaign had sufficiently screened the two women before they were hired, [Edwards spokeswoman Jennifer] Palmieri said it was difficult to find and read every word a prolific blogger had written over a period of years.” (John M. Broder, “Edwards Learns Blogs Can Cut 2 Ways”, New York Times, Feb. 9). That’s an exceptionally lame excuse as regards Marcotte, whose abusiveness of tone seems to have been a standing, definitional aspect of her online presence: it’s hard to sample any random week’s worth of her posts at Pandagon without being hit over the head by it. As mentioned earlier, her post on the Duke case appeared while she was actually under consideration for the Edwards team, which would hardly have required anyone to dig through “years” of her work.

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February 8 Roundup

  • New Jersey Supreme Court won’t touch appellate court reversal of $105M dram-shop verdict against Aramark Corp. Not noted in our earlier coverage: Aramark was held liable as a deep pocket through illegitimate piercing of the corporate veil, adding yet another problem to an appalling series of problems with the trial. [New Jersey Law Journal; earlier on Overlawyered; Point of Law]
  • Half-trillion-dollar class certified against Wal-Mart in lawless Ninth Circuit decision. [Point of Law]
  • Court papers show direct link to Lerach in Milberg probe. Most entertaining: a letter by Lerach saying “Dr. Cooperman’s reputation and character are impeccable.” Cooperman has since pled guilty to taking kickbacks, and Milberg Weiss now says he has no credibility. [National Law Journal; WSJ Law Blog]
  • Slip and fall worth $5.7M [Atlantic City Press]
  • Cardiologists doing Brazilians: “Graduating med students aren’t blind; they see established physicians with busy practices dropping out. Looking ahead they see more headaches–more controls and regulations, more scrutiny, more liability, less money.” [TIME via Kevin MD]
  • Florida law may allow men to get out of paying fraudulent paternity when DNA shows they’re not the father. [Miami Herald; see also Parker v. Parker; earlier on Overlawyered]
  • Editorial: Alabama Supreme Court ruling on illegal multi-billion-dollar punitive damages award in Exxon contract dispute can prove state is no longer tort hell. [Press-Register]
  • Update to earlier Overlawyered post: Danny Cuesta pleads guilty, sentenced to fifteen months; Melissa Cuesta, whose claim we covered, arrested for perjury, pleads not guilty. [EmpireStateNews.net via Teacher trash blog]
  • Incomes and inequality: what the numbers don’t tell us. [Marginal Revolution]
  • India and the drug patent wars. [AEI]
  • I (along with John Beisner, Michael Hausfeld, and John Stoia) am speaking on a panel on the Class Action Fairness Act at the National Press Club February 14. [Federalist Society]

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