Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

The always-reliable New York Times on tobacco

If you were ever so worried about the report by plaintiffs’ for-hire expert Robert Proctor’s NYT criticism of cigarettes for containing that trendy isotope, Polonium-210, Australian blogger C. Magee notes that a single banana is 9000 times more radioactive than a cigarette (via Hutchinson), concluding “There are plenty of sound reasons to discourage smoking; we don’t need to discard them for sensationalized scare tactics.”

Update: Walter beat me to this on POL last week, finding two other blogger refutations.

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Jesse Branham v. Ford: bad mom hurts kid, Ford blamed to tune of $31M

In May 2001, Cheryl Jane Hale was driving four children to a sleepover in her 1987 Ford Bronco. She didn’t bother to have the children wear their seat belts, so, when she took her eyes off the road to argue with the backseat passengers, and thus drove off the road and flipped the car, 12-year-old Jesse Branham was thrown from the car and suffered brain damage. A jury in Hampton County, South Carolina (the second jury to be impaneled—the first one was dismissed in a mistrial when it was discovered after two weeks of trial that five of the jurors were former clients of Branham’s lawyers) decided that this was only 45% Hale’s fault, held Ford 55% responsible, which puts Ford entirely on the hook for $31 million in damages. (It’s unclear how injured Branham is: the story mentions that he’s given up athletic dreams and has memory problems, and his father said he worries Branham can’t hold a job, but Branham also has “average grades” in his high school. So either Branham’s injuries aren’t that severe and have been exaggerated for trial, or the average high school student in Hampton County exhibits signs of brain damage, or “average” is a euphemism for “below average,” a la Lake Wobegon.) Ford will appeal. Cases brought against Ford by Hale and the other three passengers are still pending, so Ford’s bill for Hale’s carelessness is only going to go up. (Warren Wise, “Ford, injured youth’s family fight on”, Charleston Post & Courier, Dec. 8).

Hampton County was named a judicial hellhole in 2004 when South Carolina law permitted plaintiffs in the state to pick any county they wanted to bring suit, and taken off the list in 2005 when South Carolina fixed its venue rules, but, of course, Hampton County residents still get the friendly juries there. (Schuyler Kropf, “Hampton County juries have reputation”, Charleston Post & Courier, Dec. 8).

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“Criminal law comes home”

Something unusual in the Yale Law Journal: an article that takes a not entirely enthusiastic view of the continued spread of domestic restraining orders. Under such orders (some earlier posts) allegations of spousal abuse, whether or not eventually proven at trial and whether or not withdrawn by the accuser, can trigger highly burdensome sanctions against the accused spouse, including a prohibition on entering his or her own home. Harvard Law assistant professor Jeannie Suk says the process can amount to “de facto state-imposed divorce” and greatly increases the power of the state to reach into and reorder family life, sometimes against the will of both parties. (“Criminal Law Comes Home”, Oct., abstract leads to PDF of full version)(via Pattis). In response, a second law professor argues that current legal trends appropriately treat alleged domestic violence as a crime against the state and not just against the nominal victim, and that it is wrong to place too much emphasis on accusers’ supposed right to forgive abusive conduct (Cheryl Hanna, “Because Breaking Up Is Hard To Do”, The Pocket Part, Oct. 12)(& welcome Ron Coleman/Dean Esmay readers).

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“Odometer Settlement May Earn Class Lawyers $9.5 Million in Fees”

It seems Honda odometers, until recently at least, were what you might call conservative — they registered a slightly higher mileage than actually driven, by perhaps 2 or 4 percent. Given that the best known consumer-protection hazard in the odometer world has long been the danger of unscrupulous tampering with the devices so as to underestimate mileage with an eye to resale, one way to interpret the Honda settings is that they effectively leaned over to protect buyers of used vehicles. However, class action lawyers did not interpret the phenomenon that way, instead hinting at a plot to 1) get owners to come in for scheduled service slightly more often than otherwise and 2) run out mileage-triggered warranties slightly faster than otherwise. Reader James Ingram, referring to the handsome fee haul, writes: “I’m sure I am happy to pay $9 1/2 million to know that my Honda odometer which reads 10,200 to 10,400 really should read 10,000. If I drive it, say, 150,000 miles it might cost me an additional $30 oil change.” (Mary Alice Robbins, Texas Lawyer, Nov. 13).

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“The ugliest suits…”

“…are those where lawyers sue lawyers.” Profile of Georgia attorney Frank Beltran, who specializes in filing lawsuits against lawyers: “‘When lawyers split up it’s worse than a marriage,’ Beltran said, observing that some get vindictive as ‘ego and testosterone’ kick in.” And then there are the wrangles over how to split fees (Meredith Hobbs, “Legal Malpractice Brings Unique View of Brethren’s Vices”, Fulton County Daily Report, Dec. 4).

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Crazed samurai killer wins only $1 in police brutality case

Perhaps this Pennsylvania jury considered that it was steering things down the middle with its result:

Five Bethlehem police officers used excessive force to restrain a man high on crack cocaine who killed a drug dealer with a samurai sword and set him on fire, a federal jury ruled Tuesday night.

… [Sonny] Thomas, 50, who testified he suffered bruises and recurring migraine headaches as a result of the violent scuffle, sought $35 million in damages but was awarded $1….

Thomas testified he had smoked 12 rocks of crack cocaine during the four hours before stabbing [19-year-old Carlos] Garcia more than 80 times with a 4-foot-long samurai sword.

Police, who arrived at the grisly scene to find Garcia’s body set ablaze with the sword sticking out of it, said Thomas ignored an order to surrender, while Thomas countered that he put up no resistance but was beaten anyway. While finding five of the police officers at the scene responsible for excessive force, the jury exonerated five others. The federal judge who presided over the trial, John Fullam, called the jury’s verdict “remarkable”. (Matt Birkbeck, “Samurai killer wins police brutality case, $1 award”, Allentown Morning Call, Nov. 29). For more on “one-dollar” verdicts by juries in excessive-force cases filed by criminals, see my 1994 City Journal article on New York’s “mugger millionaire” case.

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Daniel Edelman vs. subprime lenders

The Chicago class action lawyer, vividly remembered for his role in the notorious BancBoston Mortgage case, among others (Nov. 15, 1999, Feb. 7, 2000; see also Dec. 15, 2004 for his involvement in junk-fax litigation) is now filing suits against lenders who solicit persons with poor credit histories for more loans. The Northwest Indiana Times kindly quotes me on the subject (Joe Carlson, “Lawsuits targeting credit scams”, Nov. 27).

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Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, New York landlord-tenant edition

Is the 78-year-old George Pavia a bully resident-landlord who is trying to intimidate his tenants? Or is 67-year-old James Couri, convicted on federal fraud charges in the 1980s, a litigious pro se tenant whose addition of Pavia to his list of legal adversaries is a scheme to get out from paying rent? Six years of legal battles (helped by Couri’s ability to find Pavia’s technical violations of the regulatory morass facing NYC landlords) will culminate in a jury trial in 2007, though the personal enmities involved suggest that there will be years of appeals afterwards. Couri tried to enlist other tenants against Pavia in a suit claiming that Pavia overcharges tenants, but, inspirationally, the other tenants refused, feeling that their rents were reasonable regardless of what New York’s arcane rent control laws say. Pavia has not been able to evict Couri though the former feels harassed by his involuntary neighbor and the latter hounded a gay designer out of the building; one of Pavia’s lawyers explains, “Apparently, there are certain judges in New York who would rather take arsenic than evict a tenant.” For the Coasian effects of such judges, see POL Nov. 28; but see Giacalone for an opposing view that isn’t quite responsive. Moral: tenant background checks are your friend. (Ron Stodghill, “A House Divided: Uncivil War on E. 73rd”, New York Times, Dec. 10).

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