Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Gibbon on lawyer-statesmen

Irritation at a nameless magazine’s author contract puts Terry Teachout (Jun. 30) in mind of the following passage from Patrick O’Brian’s The Reverse of the Medal:

“As for Gibbon, now,” said Stephen when they were settled by the fire again, “I do remember the first lines. They ran ‘It is dangerous to entrust the conduct of nations to men who have learned from their profession to consider reason as the instrument of dispute, and to interpret the laws according to the dictates of private interest; and the mischief has been felt, even in countries where the practice of the bar may deserve to be considered as a liberal occupation.’”

A search on Google Book Search does produce the quote, and indicates that it appeared in the original text of Decline and Fall, but says Gibbon cut the sentence while the book was in press so as “to soften a passage comparing Roman lawyers with their modern counterparts”. It’s also unclear from context whether the passage constituted the “first lines” of anything in particular, as O’Brian suggests.

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“Casual pot use a disability, Alberta judge finds”

“An Alberta judge has ruled that a construction company discriminated against a man when it fired him from an oilsands project after his pre-employment drug screening tested positive for marijuana. Instead, Justice Sheilah Martin said the man — a recreational user — should have been treated the same way as someone with a drug addiction, which is considered a disability in a growing body of human rights case law across Canada.” (CanWest/reprinted at CharlesAdler.com, Jun. 29; “Drug testing can be discriminatory, judge rules”, CBC, Jun. 30).

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Collection agency class settlement

A class action settlement resulting from litigation against the firm of H.A. Berkheimer of Bangor, Pennsylvania, was sufficiently tilted in favor of legal fees as opposed to class relief that Bucks County Judge Robert Mellon gave it thumbs down. Allentown Morning Call columnist Paul Carpenter, who’s had an outstanding series of columns on the litigation business lately, has the story (“Lawyers can get sweet deals only in some states”, Jun. 20).

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Suit: Your niece is ugly

A Massachusetts family is suing a Maryland family over what they call an arranged marriage for their 37-year-old son, Pranjul K. Pandey. The Pandeys called off the marriage after travelling to New Delhi when they decided the bride was too homely. (The former lawyer for the bride’s family denies that there was an arranged marriage, and that the meeting was informal.) The suit seeks $200,000 for fraud, violation of civil rights, and emotional distress. Among the defendants is Emergent BioSolutions Inc., a Gaithersburg company that employs the uncle of the woman in question. One can’t blame the lawyers for this one: the plaintiff, Vijai B. Pandey, previously convicted of bank fraud, is a frequent litigant, and has filed this case pro se. (Marla A. Goldberg, “Family sues over ‘ugly’ bride”, MassLive.com/The Republican, Jul. 5 (via Romenesko)).

Update: The Smoking Gun has the complaint.

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Fla. high court nixes Engle

The Florida Supreme Court has backed an appeals court’s dismissal of the absurd $145 billion verdict against cigarette makers in the Engle case. The court’s opinion is split in complicated ways, but the defeat for attorney Stanley Rosenblatt is unmistakable. (Daniel Pimlott, “$145bn award against tobacco giants goes up in smoke”, Financial Times/MSNBC, Jul. 6). The opinion is here (PDF)(via Bashman). I’ve written extensively about the Engle case at earlier stages, including op-eds for the Wall Street Journal Jul. 12, 1999, Jul. 18, 2000 and May 23, 2003. Much more background here.

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Suit silences sub-stopping sonar

Now that litigators from the National Resources Defense Council have won a temporary restraining order from a federal judge under the terms of the National Environmental Policy Act, the U.S. Navy says it will employ less effective passive sonar, rather than active sonar, in exercises off Hawaii intended to simulate anti-submarine warfare. The NRDC complained that when the Department of Defense granted the Navy a temporary exemption from the Marine Mammals Protection Act for purposes of the exercises, it was trying to evade being sued. (” Whale lawsuit forces Navy to change sonar plan”, AP/CNN, Jul. 5). “The Navy, in a statement after the ruling, said sonar was ‘the only effective means we have to detect and quickly target hostile submarines and keep sea lanes open,’ and that sonar operators needed training at sea ‘to protect our nation’s ships, shores and allies.’…. The sonar use is meant to test whether quiet, diesel-powered submarines like those used by Iran, North Korea and China can be detected.” (Tony Perry, “Judge Temporarily Bars Navy From Using Sonar Said to Harm Whales”, Los Angeles Times, Jul. 4) “The Navy says it must practice hunting submarines near the Hawaiian islands because that’s the type of environment where it most likely will face an emerging threat of submarine warfare.” (AP/Houston Chronicle, Jul. 4)(& welcome readers from Michelle Malkin, who provides more background on the controversy).

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Employers win two in court

Each year Gerald Skoning, a prominent employment lawyer at Chicago’s Seyfarth Shaw, assembles his pick of the ten most bizarre employment cases of the previous year, and each year the National Law Journal publishes the roundup but omits to put it online. So I’ll just quote my two personal favorites from the latest list (“Last year’s bizarre cases”, Mar. 20):

…A federal district court in Oklahoma has dismissed a 70-year-old office worker’s claim that her employer discriminated against her because she was not fired. Mary Wyatt, who had worked for Occidental Petroleum for more than 24 years, argued that she should have been fired and awarded a severance package. The court disagreed, reasoning that, “Plaintiff has not suffered an adverse employment action by the continuation of her employment.” I commend the court for its eminently sensible recognition that the continued opportunity to earn a living isn’t discrimination.

…A federal court in Pennsylvania has ruled that a weight loss center did not violate the Americans with Disabilities Act by refusing to hire a salesman who weighed 350 pounds because it was concerned his appearance was inconsistent with the sale of its products. The court dismissed Bob Goodman’s claim, stating: “The mere fact that Defendant was aware of Plaintiff’s weight and rejected [him] for fear that his appearance did not accord with the company image was not improper.” I salute this weighty contribution to commonsense jurisprudence.

For another you-should-have-fired-me case, see May 11, 2004. For coverage of previous Skoning roundups, see May 12, 2005 and links from there.

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