Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

A dose of reality

September 1 UPI interview with William Plested III, president of the American Medical Association (via Kevin MD):

Q: Ken Suggs, head of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, recently told UPI that doctors and lawyers should stop fighting each other and unite against the medical malpractice insurance companies who keep hiking insurance premiums to push their profits higher. How would you respond?

A: Do you have any idea what happened with medical malpractice insurance? It’s almost totally in the hands of doctor-owned companies; doctors who put together their finances to get a company to give them insurance, because the for-profit insurers all ran. There is no profit in this; (the insurers) left it. And people who are not out to make a profit, they’re just out to protect doctors (via) their own insurance companies, they’re the one who are left.

Related.

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Violence toward Barney, cont’d

For years lawyers representing the owners of the children’s-show character Barney have been firing off cease-and-desist letters to parodists who’ve portrayed various forms of violence being visited on the purple dinosaur (see, for example, Jun. 25, 2001). Now one such exchange has escalated, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation has sued Lyons Partnership, owner of Barney rights, seeking a court’s declaration that Stuart Frankel is not committing infringement by publishing a Barney parody site. (Robert Ambrogi, Legal Blog Watch, Aug. 24). Update Nov. 30: Lyons backs off.

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Bloomberg’s gun lawsuits

They’re “beginning to look like a fiasco”, opines David Hardy (Aug. 31):

A second dealer has filed a counter-suit in his home state, a NY dealer they charged with criminal offenses had to be let off with disorderly conduct (in most states, about a minor a misdemeanor as they have), they seized guns from that dealer but had to return them, the city has settled with two on terms that have them audited by a special master (whom the city has to pay)… oh, and a third dealer now says he’s going to sue.

More details: Bradley Hope, “Gun Dealer Hits Bloomberg on Sting Operation”, New York Sun, Aug. 31.

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Great moments in diversity training

“In a strange twist to Britain’s newest terrorism scare, a regional police force admitted Monday that it had sent officers for ‘diversity training’ to an Islamic school that the police searched Sunday as part of a crackdown on jihadist recruiters and trainers. In a statement, the Sussex police said the Jameah Islameah school south of London ‘has been used by officers and staff undergoing advanced training for their role as diversity trainers to the rest of the work force.'” (Alan Cowell, “British School, Searched in Inquiry, Was Used to Train Police”, New York Times, Sept. 5).

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U.K.: “Inmate sues for falling from bunk”

A prisoner at Bullingdon near Bicester, Oxfordshire, “is suing the Prison Service after he cut himself falling from the top bunk in his cell”. The inmate told a prisoners’ magazine that bunk beds were “an accident waiting to happen”. (BBC, Aug. 27). As Ted noted Aug. 16, a New Jersey appeals court recently overturned a jury verdict awarded to a student who fell from a loft bed, ruling the dangers obvious.

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Eating their own: Fred Baron v. Baron & Budd

Apparently there is no honor among thievesplaintiffs’ attorneys. The Texas Shark Watch Blog tells us that John Edwards’ money-man, Fred Baron, has sued his former law firm:

Never one to overlook any conceivable cause of action, Baron alleges in his petition filed in Dallas state district court breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, conspiracy to breach fiduciary duty, tortious interference, conspiracy to tortious interference, fraud or alternatively negligent misrepresentation, conspiracy to fraud, fraudulent transfer, conversion, legal malpractice, negligence, unjust enrichment, and alternatively promissory estoppel or quantum meruit.

The blog has much more about plaintiffs’ bar involvement in Texas politics, including the use of over a million dollars of trial-lawyer money to support the independent-Republican candidacy of Carole Strayhorn, presumably to split the Republican vote and unseat a governor who has done much for reform. Efforts by trial lawyers to supplant reform-friendly Republican legislators with their own stalking-horse candidates in Republican primaries were unsuccessful, however.

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