Businesspeople in rural Alpine, Calif., are trying to organize for self-protection against San Diego County attorney Theodore Pinnock, who’s filed at least thirty disabled-rights complaints against enterprises in the town. “Last year, he sent 67 letters to businesses in the historic town of Julian, alleging violations of ADA accessibility requirements. At that time, he demanded between $2,500 and $4,000 in attorneys fees from each of the businesses.” (Jennifer Morse Roback, “Standing up to the disability police”, syndicated/TownHall.com, Apr. 10). More on California ADA filing mills: Mar. 18, May 31, and Jul. 12, 2005, among many others.
Thanks and Adieu
My humble thanks to Walter and Ted for giving me the opportunity to contribute to Overlawyered. It was a pleasure and an honor. I shall now return to my role as regular reader and commenter under the blogonym Wavemaker.
“Caution: that vehicle collision may not be an accident”
The L.A. Times tackles a subject often treated in this space (Nov. 29, etc.): organized auto-crash fraud, which is largely premised on the chance of bringing bogus liability claims. According to the National Insurance Crime Bureau, Los Angeles is second only to Miami in the volume of such fraud. “Some organized auto fraud rings are so complex they involve hundreds of willing participants, including unscrupulous lawyers, doctors, chiropractors, auto shops, tow truck operators, ambulance drivers, police officers and insurance company employees, according to NICB investigations.” (Jeanne Wright, L.A. Times, Mar. 29).
Math test improper for police applicants
Republicans and Democrats come and go in the U.S. Department of Justice, but “disparate-impact” theory remains alive and well, as in the case of a new consent decree summarized by a correspondent of NRO’s John Derbyshire (Apr. 4):
“In February, the Justice Department sent a letter to Virginia Beach, concluding that the Beach Police Department has ‘engaged in a pattern or practice of discrimination’ against black and Hispanics applicants.
“The only evidence cited were results of a math exam given to all police recruits. It showed a wide gap between the passing rates for white applicants and the passing rates for black and Hispanics.
“About 85 percent of white applicants passed the math test from 2002 to mid-2005, compared with 59 percent of blacks and 66 percent of Hispanics.”
More details from the article in question (Duane Bourne, “Virginia Beach agrees to change the way it scores police math exams”, The Virginian-Pilot, Apr. 3):
The Justice Department questioned whether math is relevant to the daily duties of a police officer. The city agreed to eliminate the 70 percent cutoff score for the math part of the test….
At least one city official, Councilwoman Reba McClanan, said she does not agree with the settlement.
“One of the things that’s insulting about it is they’re telling us we don’t have a right to insist on certain standards,” McClanan said. “My feeling was we should hang in there. We want fairness and we want as many minorities working for our departments as possible, but we also want them to meet certain standards.”
…
The city will also pay up to $160,000 to applicants who flunked the old standards.
P.S. At Workplace ProfBlog, Paul Secunda spells out something left implicit in the above summary: the Justice Department’s actions are a fairly straightforward application of the current state of “disparate-impact” law; if you see nothing amiss with the present state of that branch of the law, you may see nothing amiss with the outcome (Apr. 10).
“Wrongful birth” roundup
Stacy Dow, of Perth, Scotland, is suing a hospital over the birth of her healthy daughter Jayde. Dow had been given an abortion at her request but unbeknownst to both her and the doctors she had been pregnant with twins, one of whom remained unharmed after the procedure. Dow told a court she suffered physical pain, distress and anxiety from the resulting pregnancy and Caesarean delivery; she also wants money for the cost of raising the girl to adulthood. (Sarah Womack, “Mother sues for birth of ‘aborted’ twin”, Telegraph, Mar. 21)(via KevinMD). The New York Times Magazine caused a stir last month with an article about a family that sued doctors over failure to recommend amniocentesis whose results would have led them to decide to abort their handicapped child (Elizabeth Weil, “A Wrongful Birth?”, Mar. 12). Ann Althouse notes an AP story reporting that there are waiting lists of parents interested in adopting Down’s Syndrome children (Mar. 10). And in the Dec. 2004 Journal of Legal Education, Gonzaga lawprof David K. DeWolf relates an extraordinary story about what happened one year when he assigned his students the wrongful-birth/wrongful-life case of Harbeson v. Parke-Davis, decided by the Washington Supreme Court in 1983 (via Childs). More on wrongful-birth suits: Mar. 4, etc.
How Joe Jamail conducts a deposition
Dignity of the profession dept.: this YouTube video of the famed Texas lawyer and UT benefactor in action is making the rounds (warning: offensive everything). It’s discussed by BrainWidth, Froomkin, Childs, Hurt, Kirkendall, Caron, Metafilter, etc. One of those present The man in the chair is named Edward Carstarphen. [note: a commenter says we erred in initially reporting that Carstarphen was the witness being deposed; see also David Stone, Apr. 11]. For more on Mr. Jamail’s record as a paladin of civility, see Apr. 19, 2000 (“gag a maggot off a meat wagon”). Update: link changed to working YouTube location, see Jan. 9, 2007.
“Product placement” — on The Sopranos?
On last Sunday’s episode of the popular HBO show, a commercial for Boston-based James Sokolove, known for his ubiquitous sue-’em-now ad campaigns, could be heard playing on James Gandolfini’s television set. Was it a deliberate product placement? (Carol Beggy & Mark Shanahan, “Fenway plans fail to materialize”, Boston Globe, Apr. 4) (via Schaeffer).
“Please don’t feed the trial lawyers”
I’ve long said that attorneys upset that their profession is held up to ridicule would have much less of a problem if attorneys were more concerned about the behavior that led to the ridicule than about the ridicule itself. A young attorney guest-anony-blogging on Evan Schaeffer’s blog provides a sterling example of such misdirected outrage, in this case, at a recent Institute for Legal Reform advertising campaign. Bonus sophistry: the author defines “frivolous lawsuit” to exclude the vast majority of problematic lawsuits that reformers are complaining about, and then happily concludes that there isn’t a problem with lawsuit abuse because there are already mechanisms for dealing with the narrowly circumscribed category of suits.
Bonus made-up medical-malpractice statistic unburdened by real data: “In states where the [medical] profession self-polices to a stricter degree, malpractice claims are far less frequent.” There’s no evidence that this is true; as Martin Grace noted a year ago, malpractice litigation is sufficiently random that previous claim history does little to predict future claim history. See also POL Jan. 6, 2005.
(Of course, if lawyers really believed that the problem with malpractice insurance rates was that the doctors weren’t self-policing, there is an easy solution that would end high insurance rates, make lawyers a huge profit, and end any pressure for liability reform. The only reason we don’t see the solution is because the lawyers know better than to put their money where their mouth is.)
It’s In the Tiny Print
Law prof Kris W. Kobach, former advisor to the Attorney General on immigration issues, finds some of the more hideous provisions of the current immigration bill.
Like that surprise hidden on page 302 – which would replace the country’s entire bench of experienced immigration judges with pro-immigration advocates.
With a few exceptions, today’s immigration judges (who serve for life) are dedicated to enforcing the law, and they do a difficult job well. This bill forces all immigration judges to step down after serving seven years – and restricts replacements to attorneys with at least five years’ experience practicing immigration law.
Lawyers meeting that description, he notes, are not particularly inclined to enforce the law.
Eeek.
(Via Lucianne.com).
Legal Snafu Halts N.O. Bus Auction
In the “Can’t Do Anything Right” category, the New Orleans public school system was instructed to halt an internet auction of one of the infamous flooded school busses when it was discovered that the state School Board’s authorization for the auction did not include the internet variety.The State board’s lawyer discovered that although the board authorized an “auctioneer” to handle the sale, the system is bound by the state’s definition of that term, which does not include Internet auction sites.
Bids had reached $6,700 for the soggy scrap metal, but were thrown out as re-authorization is sought.
Via Lucianne.com.( Times Picayune, Apr. 7)