Reader feedback

A reader from Australia writes, apropos of no post in particular:

Guys, I broadly agree with your website — personal injury litigation is out of control.

As a lawyer though, I think you’re missing the other side of the coin: that the system for necessary cases, ie suing someone who owes you money, is too long, and too complex. In my view the inefficiency of the legal system is a far bigger problem. Perhaps you could highlight this in some stories?

After all, having a quick efficient legal system to enforce the law is crucial in a modern economy.

Clients who care about the color of their attorneys II

Accounting firm Accenture sends its outside counsel a seven-page questionnaire asking them to compile “the number of ethnic minorities, gays and lesbians, and women at the entire firm, on management committees, among student and lateral recruits, and among those attorneys working on Accenture matters.” Firms that refuse to fill out the questionnaire or fail to reduce the percentage of white straight male attorneys working for them from year to year are fired, even if their work is satisfactory. Again, the press coverage is entirely laudatory, without questioning whether it should be at all appropriate to judge attorneys by skin color and quotas. It’s also poorly edited: a “Stern” is quoted several times without identification. (Aruna Viswanatha, “On Diversity, It’s Shape Up, or Ship Out”, Corporate Counsel, Jan. 9). Earlier: Dec. 27.

Skinny models with lawyers

The Council of Fashion Designers of America will issue guidelines discouraging anorexia-suggestive degrees of emaciation but won’t attempt to enforce any binding rules. “Those people could sue, in America they could sue everywhere for prejudice or discrimination,” said council president Stan Herman when the issue came up in the fall. “I wouldn’t touch it with a 10-foot pole.” (“New York fashion group to issue guidelines on skinny models”, AFP/Breitbart, Jan. 8; “Skinny model ban ‘discrimination'”, AFP/News.com.au, Sept. 16).

$5M asked after cop chase leads to fiery crash

“Gail McDoe admits her 16-year-old son never should have been driving that car in 2005. He was the one who set off the chase with police, ending in a fiery crash that killed him.” Nonetheless, her $5 million lawsuit against the city of Newburgh, N.Y. alleges that cops should not have been so aggressive in chasing Dionte Jones and should have acted more quickly to attempt a rescue after he flipped his car into a gas field full of fuels and hazardous chemicals. The city’s in-house lawyer says an investigation indicates Jones died instantly and would not have been helped by a rescue attempt. (John Doherty, “Mother wants Newburgh police to share burden of son’s death”, Middletown Times Herald-Record, Jan. 6).

January 9 roundup

  • Get in car with drunk driver, sue manufacturer and win $18.6M when you get hurt; lawyers fight over lottery-victory fees. [Andrews; Journal Star]
  • LA Times decides that maybe preventing prison race riots isn’t so bad after all. [Patterico]
  • Why LA jail cells are revolving doors. [LA Times]
  • Popular coffee stand shut down because of government-mandated preferences for blind. [NYT]
  • The special interests behind the call for additional hedge fund regulation. [Cafe Hayek]
  • The ethical practice of legal scholarship. [Prawfsblawg]
  • The Wag-Time/Stephanie Mencimer arrest scandal keeps getting weirder and weirder. [Murray Waas @ HuffPo; Circumlocutor]

Why wacky warnings matter

David Rossmiller blogs:

My experiences growing up in NoDak and later working as a crime reporter may not be typical, and perhaps the people I came to know were by some measures outside, shall we say, the social mainstream, but my first thought when I saw these purportedly wacky, useless warning labels was this: “I can see someone doing that!” Personally I’ve seen folks do much more ridiculous things many times.

The issue is whether people doing “ridiculous things” should have a cause of action for their own failure of common sense, or whether we require manufacturers to treat all of their adult customers like infants on pain of liability.

Such overwarnings have real social costs: as numerous studies have documented, if one’s personal watercraft manual says “Never use a lit match or open flame to check fuel level,” one’s going to be less likely to slog through the whole thing and find the warnings that aren’t so obvious. In many cases, the “failure-to-warn” is really just a Trojan horse to force the deep pocket to become a social insurer. In the Vioxx litigation, Mark Lanier has accused Merck of making too many warnings, and thus “hiding” its warning of VIGOR cardiovascular data. This effectively holds a manufacturer strictly liable for failing to anticipate with perfect foresight what risks will accompany which consumers, and tailoring its warnings on that micro-level—and if anyone regrets taking the risk later, they can always complain that the warning was legally insufficient for failing to be scary enough.

The wacky warning awards are often entertaining fluff, to be sure; the marginal harm from a “Do not iron” warning on a lottery ticket is infinitesimal, and is probably there as an anti-fraud device rather than as a product-safety mechanism. But ATLA, abetted by sympathetic law professors and credulous or disingenuous journalists, has engaged in a mass campaign to make equally silly warning cases—such as the McDonald’s coffee case, where Stella Liebeck complained that the warning on her cup of coffee wasn’t “big enough” to adequately warn her not to spill her coffee in her lap and sit in the puddle for ninety seconds—aspirational, rather than outliers. The wacky warnings are the canaries in that coal mine.

Fight over daughter’s surname lasts 2 1/2 years

Chad M. Doherty wasn’t married to Christy M. Wizner when their daughter was born in April 2004, but he nonetheless wanted the child to bear the surname Doherty and objected to the mother’s bestowing on her instead the surname Wizner. Both sides lawyered up and have been duking it out in court ever since. A trial judge ruled in the father’s favor, finding it of significance that Wizner was the name of the mother’s former spouse but not the mother’s birth surname. The Oregon Court of Appeals, invoking an 11-factor balancing test, reversed the ruling and allowed the mother’s choice to prevail. The mother says she wants the girl to bear the same surname as her older siblings. (Ashbel S. Green, “For a baby name with appeal, try appeals court”, The Oregonian, Jan. 1).

P.S. I see J. Craig Williams got this first (Jan. 3)(via Blawg Review #90 at Minor Wisdom).

Wants $1.5M for cops’ seizure of 114 frozen cats

Tennessee: “A Murfreesboro man charged with animal cruelty after more than 100 frozen bodies of cats were found in freezers in his home is suing authorities for $1.5 million. The lawsuit was filed exactly three years after authorities confiscated 114 frozen bodies of cats and kittens from William Terry Davis’ home in an upscale golf course community in Murfreesboro.” Davis is represented by attorney Harold H. Parker. (Clay Carey, “$1.5M suit filed over frozen cats”, Gannett/Murfreesboro Daily News Journal, Jan. 6; The Smoking Gun; “Man Sues Police For Seizing Frozen Cat Bodies From His Freezer”, AP/WTVF, Jan. 6; Nashville Scene, Jan. 5).