Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

From the comments: a chill on safety discussions

While the comments action has been lively elsewhere on this site, I noticed a comment that Jim Collins made on Ted’s post “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t files: Putnam Hospital” which I thought deserved its own freestanding entry:

The medical profession isn’t the only place where this happens. I used to be an aircraft mechanic for one of the major airlines, several years ago. Twice a month, after finishing our shift, we would go to a breakfast meeting. This meeting was attended by all of the mechanics from all of the airlines at that airport who worked the same shift. Several people from the airport and the FAA also attended. The purpose of this meeting was to share information on maintenance and airport safety issues. The FAA rep always took notes, compiled them from all of the shifts and a couple days later a copy was in your mailbox. I know of several problems and possible accidents that were prevented because of the information shared at these meetings. These meetings were suddenly stopped after company management found out that trial lawyers could obtain the minutes of them, from the FAA, through the Freedom of Information Act and use them against the airline in court.

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New Times column — Katrina verdict

My new column at the Times (U.K.) Online is on last week’s Mississippi Katrina insurance verdict. (Walter Olson, “Insurers can breathe easier over Katrina lawsuits”, Aug. 30). Concluding paragraph:

Major coverage issues remain to be resolved (and appealed), but at least we can take note at this point that America is not Zimbabwe or Bolivia. As Dickie Scruggs said before the Leonard ruling, “If you win it, it’s a huge win. If you lose it, you spin it the best way you can.”

Also, I was a guest last evening (6:30 p.m. Eastern) on Marc Bernier’s high-rated radio show, “The Talk of Florida” to discuss the article.

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Fact-checking the mainstream media (lawsuit division)

News clips reporting on large verdicts and settlements cross my desk regularly, and most do not seem on their surface to be worth blogging about. Most are terse summaries of a case’s outcome, and others do not present any indication (again, on the surface at least) that a case might have problematic aspects. The other day, however, I ran across a story in the Charleston (W.V.) Gazette describing a case in which a plaintiff had been terribly injured after a retailer sold what the reporter bluntly stated was a “defective mower.” This particular newspaper story was so one-sided that I thought there almost had to be more to it than was being reported — and I had no idea how right I was in that suspicion. This is a long post, but I hope worth readers’ while. It certainly makes me wonder how much I’m missing when I don’t go into the dockets to fact-check other seemingly run-of-the-mill cases.

Read On…

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Duke rape claim: the Times’s sorry showing

Stuart Taylor Jr. arraigns the New York Times for the many weaknesses of the recent article by Duff Wilson and Jonathan Glater which sought to rehabilitate the prosecution’s crumbling case. “The Times still seems bent on advancing its race-sex-class ideological agenda, even at the cost of ruining the lives of three young men who it has reason to know are very probably innocent.” (Slate, “Witness for the Prosecution?”, Aug. 29). Earlier: Aug. 25, Jun. 24, etc.

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“Trial lawyers target Republicans”

The topics of ATLA’s ad campaign in five GOP districts — drug prices and oil prices — don’t exactly seem central to the organized plaintiff’s bar’s own mission in life, but perhaps the wider message is just that the national Republican party Must Be Punished for supporting liability reform, and any issues that come to hand will do. (Jim Kuhnhenn, AP/Washington Post, Aug. 29)

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And I think something else happened that day

Attorney celebrations in the news:

“Joseph P. Awad, the incoming president of the New York State Trial Lawyers Association and a partner in Garden City, N.Y.’s Silberstein, Awad & Miklos, was one of the lawyers who participated in TLC. He said the group was holding a dinner on the fifth anniversary of the [September 11] terrorist attacks to celebrate ‘the largest pro bono project in history.'”

(Anthony Lin, “Attorney’s $2 Million 9/11 Fee Called ‘Shocking, Unconscionable'”, New York Law Journal, Aug. 28).

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Damned if you do, damned if you don’t files: Putnam Hospital

Osteopath John King (who now calls himself “Christopher Wallace Martin” in his Alabama practice after surrendering his West Virginia and Texas medical licenses) had a poor record in numerous previous jobs in numerous states, but West Virginia’s Putnam County Hospital, the only acute-care center in the county, wasn’t able to find that out because the former employers were afraid of being sued. King lasted a few months at Putnam before he was dismissed for incompetence after an investigation, and King responded by suing Putnam and the independent expert who testified against him at a private peer review (as well as the newspaper that reported on his problems). Meanwhile, trial lawyers engaged in a feeding frenzy, filing dozens of lawsuits for tens of millions of dollars against the deep pocket (and some against each other), creating enough adverse publicity that Putnam lost nearly half of its business, and was on the verge of shutting down tomorrow before a last-minute deal to save the hospital was negotiated. Martha Montelongo has an overview in the August 17 Human Events Online. (Lawrence Messina, AP/Charleston Daily Mail, Aug. 28; Chris Dickerson, “Druckman sues former clients over work on King cases”, West Virginia Record, Aug. 8; Lawrence Messina, “W. Va. Hospital Says Lawsuits Drive Conversion to Urgent Care Center”, AP/insurance Journal, Aug. 7; Chris Dickerson, “Putnam General blames impending closure on trial lawyers”, West Virginia Record, Aug. 1).

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