Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

And Now, Stepping Up to the Plate…

Greetings, Overlawyered readers. My name is Warren Meyer, and Walter, who generally strikes me as a sane and stable person, has had some odd lapse in judgement and asked that I come in and guest blog this week. After blogging on my own site for a little over a year now, I feel like a long-time minor leaguer finally stepping up to the plate in the majors for his first at-bat.

I am particularly pleased to be here, since Overlawyered has the distinction of being the first blog I ever regularly read, long before I even knew what a blog was. As a small business owner, I often found myself asking, “am I crazy?” Ted and Walter, via the stories they write about outrageous litigation in Overlawyered, help give me some comfort that no, maybe its the rest of the world that’s gone nuts.

My regular home is at Coyote Blog, where I stray off-topic far more than Ted and Walter, but I generally focus on issues related to business, government, and libertarian philosophy. I appreciate Walter’s lending me the keys to his blog for this week, and I will try to keep it between the lines better than I do at my own site.

Update: Calif. high court hears “Friends” harassment case

Back in the news:

The California Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday in a lawsuit brought by a writing assistant fired from the program, Amaani Lyle, who contends that the profanity-riddled and sex-laden diatribes of “Friends” writers constituted sexual harassment.

The company that produced the show, Warner Brothers, claims that programs about sex and relationships require frank and freewheeling discussion of the subject matter. The company has also warned that allowing Ms. Lyle to proceed with her case could put a strait-jacket on writers and dilute the quality of what Americans see on movies and TV.

(Josh Gerstein, “Sex Harassment Is Alleged By a Writer of ‘Friends'”, New York Sun, Feb. 15). According to the L.A. Times, yesterday’s session did not appear to go well for the plaintiff:

During a hearing in Sacramento, two of the state high court’s justices observed that Amaani Lyle, 32, was warned before she was hired for “Friends” that she would be subjected to sexually explicit talk in the writers’ room….

Justice Joyce L. Kennard appeared to find it significant that Warner Bros. had told Lyle to expect “a lot of sexual talk, very frank talk and at times vulgar” language. “She said, ‘No problem,’ ” Kennard related.

(Maura Dolan, “Justices Skeptical of ‘Friends’ Suit”, Los Angeles Times, Feb. 15). For our earlier coverage of the case, see Apr. 23, Jul. 19, Jul. 31, Oct. 19, and Nov. 17, 2004. Our coverage of harassment law generally is here.

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“Waco crash verdict stuns bus industry”

The verdict that Ted reported on Dec. 1 is stirring unease through the bus industry. Lawyers convinced a Texas jury that a tour bus was defectively designed because it did not come equipped with seat belts and laminated side window glass, even though neither are common in American tour bus design or mandated by the federal National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. (Steve McGonigle, Dallas Morning News, Feb. 12). For more on the laminated glass issue, see May 16, 2005 and links from there.

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Duller times in Australian outback

“The Outback’s Bachelor and Spinster Balls, one of Australia’s most cherished traditions and notorious for binge drinking, casual sex and dust, are at risk of dying out. …the growing culture of litigiousness ensures that insurance premiums are now so high that many balls have been forced to cancel. … ‘Insurance is killing a lot of events in the bush, including B and S balls and rodeos,’ said Barry McMahon, who runs a national Bachelor and Spinster website and has been to dozens of balls.” (Nick Squires, “Outback’s notorious B and S Balls bite the dust”, Daily Telegraph (U.K.), Feb. 11).

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Maquiladoras caused birth defects? $17M later, maybe not

In 1991 portions of Texas’s Rio Grande Valley saw an upsurge in babies born with neural-tube defects. Litigation resulted:

Residents and lawyers had blamed pollution, and General Motors and other U.S.-owned factories paid $17 million without admitting wrongdoing to settle a lawsuit accusing their border factories of poisoning the air.

The claimed linkage of cause and effect between the factory pollution and the birth defects was, to say the least, much controverted at the time, and is looking even less impressive in hindsight:

no chemical links to the disease were ever proven, and Texas health officials began suspecting fumonisin, a toxin in corn mold. Experts had noted a high concentration in the corn harvest just before the outbreak. Some Texas horses died from brain disease caused by the toxin.

Now, a study in the February issue of the journal Environmental Health Perspectives adds impetus to the corn-mold theory:

The study found that pregnant women who ate 300 to 400 tortillas a month during the first trimester had more than twice the risk of giving birth to babies with the defects than did women who ate fewer than 100 tortillas.

Blood samples indicated that the higher the level of fumonisin, the greater the risk of neural tube defects.

Tortillas are an inexpensive dietary staple along the Texas-Mexico border, and studies suggest that the average young Mexican-American woman along the border eats 110 a month.

(“Study: Bad corn caused birth defects”, AP/Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Feb. 8). See also Dallas Morning News, Mar. 4, 2001; AP, Jan. 2001; Nicole Foy, “Border birth defects are tied to poverty”, San Antonio Express-News, Apr. 9, 2004.

Among its other implications, the episode may suggest the safety gains to be had in the shift from a pre-modern food regime based on local farm and home production to the sort of industrially based food regime more familiar to most Americans. Even aside from the issue of folic acid fortification, a big-city tortilla factory run by a large company would probably have had a better likelihood of screening out moldy batches of corn.

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Deep pocket files: Ernst v. Chen’s Restaurant

66-year-old Daniel Ernst was paralyzed from the chest down when drunk-driving Timothy Beauregard hit him with his Oldsmobile while making a left turn. “Beauregard admitted to a criminal charge of drunken driving, seriously bodily injury resulting, the next year and received a 10-year suspended sentence with probation from Superior Court Judge Edwin J. Gale.” Beauregard wasn’t visibly drunk when Chen’s Restaurant served him a mai tai and a beer, but a jury found the restaurant 25% responsible for the accident, which puts Chen’s entirely on the $15.2 million damages hook under Rhode Island law, a detail the press account omits. (This assumes, of course, that one who drinks mai tais in Chen’s Restaurant in Westerly, Rhode Island, is not capable of paying a 75% share of a $15.2 million judgment.) (Katie Mulvaney, “Veteran hit by drunken driver nets $15.2 million”, Providence Journal, Feb. 14). Rhode Islanders Against Lawsuit Abuse will be seeking to reform the state’s joint and several liability laws this legislative session.

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“Save auto industry jobs by reforming legal system”

That’s the call of today’s Detroit News editorial. “If the goal is to protect consumers, as tort lawyers claim, wouldn’t it be better to seek tougher federal standards rather than sue the people who research, invent and bring to market the products that consumers want? The obvious answer is yes, but that would eliminate a source of continuing revenue for plaintiff’s lawyers.”

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Calgary Muslims may sue over cartoons

“The head of Calgary’s Muslim community is considering a civil lawsuit against two local publishers for reprinting controversial Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad — images that have sparked deadly riots overseas. “Syed Soharwardy, president of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada, said he would consult lawyers to see whether it was possible to sue the Jewish Free Press and conservative Western Standard, which have published the cartoons; the general-circulation Calgary Herald has not. More: Feb. 10, etc. (Emma Poole, Calgary Herald/National Post, Feb. 13).

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