Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Prop 65 and Bounty Hunters

George Wallace at Declarations and Exclusions points us to a judge who is not afraid to call them as he sees them — “them” in this case being the lawyers who mine California’s over-reaching environmental law purely for profit. In rejecting plaintiffs’ lawyer’s application for $540,000 in legal fees for their effort, here is the judge’s conclusion:

“Given the ease with which it was brought, and the absolute lack of any real public benefit from telling people that things like dried paint may be slowly emitting lead molecules or that parking lots are places where there might be auto exhaust, instead of $540,000, this legal work merited an award closer to a dollar ninety-eight.”

Much much more for your reading pleasure there.

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Intellectual Property Run Amok

Mother Jones provides an amusing roster of facts pertaining to the crazy world of intellectual property protection. Among my favorites:

AMONG THE 16,000 people thus far sued for sharing music files was a 65-year-old woman who, though she didn’t own downloading software, was accused of sharing 2,000 songs, including Trick Daddy’s “I’m a Thug.” She was sued for up to $150,000 per song.

NINETY-ONE pending trademarks bear Donald Trump’s name, including “Donald J. Trump the Fragrance” and “Trump’s Golden Lager.” He failed to trademark the phrase “You’re fired.”

FOR INCLUDING a 60-second piece of silence on their album, the Planets were threatened with a lawsuit by the estate of composer John Cage, which said they’d ripped off his silent work 4’33”. The Planets countered that the estate failed to specify which 60 of the 273 seconds in Cage’s piece had been pilfered.

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Netflix claims a patent on renting movies on-line

And sues Blockbuster for allegedly infringing the patent, issued Tuesday, which purports to teach “a method for subscription-based online rental that allows subscribers to keep the DVDs they rent for as long as they wish without incurring any late fees, to obtain new DVDs without incurring additional charges and to prioritize and reprioritize their own personal dynamic queue of DVDs to be rented.” Blockbuster Online has 1 million subscribers to Netflix’s 4.2 million. (Reuters, Apr. 4). I’m suddenly a lot less sympathetic about Netflix’s class-action troubles. (Full disclosure: I own stock in Blockbuster.)

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The Felonious Stomping of a Pet Fish

Courtesy of Dean’s World, a New York Appellate Court decision which all too easily brings to mind Monty Python’s immortal routine, “Eric the Pet Fish:”

The defendant argues that his “stomping of young Juan’s pet goldfish” is a misdemeanor pursuant to Agriculture and Markets Law §353 (unjustifiable killing of any animal, whether wild or tame), and not a felony because a fish is not a “companion animal” and his “stomping” did not constitute “aggravated cruelty” within the meaning of the statute.

The Appellate Court rejected the defendant’s fanciful interpretation of New York criminal statutes, ruling:

The defendant’s contention that all household pets are equal but some are more equal than others is manifestly not derived from the statute.

But can you get a license for that fish?

Dad Loses Suit Alleging Abusive Coach

Chalk another one up to the judicial ref.

A judge has made it safe again for high school coaches to lose their tempers, tossing out a lawsuit that accused a coach of inflicting “emotional distress” on a softball player by calling her “a 2-year-old.” (Arcadia, CA, Apr.4)

Attorney Michael Oddenino filed the lawsuit in October, alleging that Riggio yelled at his daughter when she played on the JV team last spring. He named Riggio, varsity Coach Ed Andersen and the Arcadia Unified School District in the lawsuit. He sought $3 million for intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress, negligence, a civil rights violation, and sex discrimination.The suit alleged that Riggio “took advantage of his position of authority to engage in an abusive pattern of excessive intimidation and humiliation of the female players, frequently calling them `idiots,’ and belittling them for minor errors.”

Oddenino is a family law lawyer who specializes in child custody issues. Go figure.

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Trial lawyers in GOP politics

Now it’s Pennsylvania: Donna Rovito has got the goods on the trial bar’s efforts to influence the forthcoming (May 16) Republican primary for a state senate seat in the Wilkes-Barre area. They’re backing Kingston mayor Jim Haggerty, who’s facing off against former gubernatorial aide Lisa Baker and three other candidates (Mar. 23, scroll to item 5). Update May 21: Haggerty loses.

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Constitutional Right to be a Jackass

One of our profession’s enfants terribles, Geoffrey Fieger, is back in court, this time defending his right to call Michigan appellate judges who ruled against him “jackasses” and “nazis.”

Fieger faces a reprimand from the Michigan Attorney Grievance Commission for insulting three state appellate judges on a radio talk show in 1999 after the judges overturned a $15 million verdict he won in a medical malpractice case.

Fieger’s lawyer, Michael Alan Schwartz, maintaining that Fieger’s comments outside the courtroom are protected by the First Amendment.

Summing up Fieger’s modus operandi nicely, Schwartz offers this:

“There’s no law that says you’ve got to be dignified.”

He also offers Standing Committee on Discipline v. Yagman, 55 F.3d 1430 and Craig v. Harney, 331 U. S. 367 (1947) to support his client’s right to criticize the judges.

UPDATE: Sorry folks, I neglected to include a link to the story. It is the Michigan Attorney Grievance Commission seeking to reprimand him. The Commission is “the investigative and prosecutorial arm of the Michigan Supreme Court for allegations of attorney misconduct.”

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Filial Overreaching Run Amok

Manhattan trusts and estates lawyer Edward F. Campbell Jr., counsel in the New York office of Chicago’s Vedder, Price, Kaufman & Kammholz, acted as “mediator, attorney and financial advisor” to his elderly parents in the 1996 sale of their home to….him.

Campbell “purchased” the 7 bedroom, 2 acre home in Lloyd Harbor, Long Island from his failing parents for no down payment and $1,000 a month, reserving to the parents a life estate, which isn’t turning out to be much of a consolation to the elder couple. A Suffolk County Supreme Court judge is skeptical.

No word on how Campbell’s eight siblings are taking the news.

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