Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

L.A.: “Lawyer held in car crash fraud ring”

It’s not as if these fraud rings were anything new (more), but a few of the details this time are particularly piquant:

A lawyer recruited 29 people, including some from a Bible study class, to stage more than 60 automobile crashes on Los Angeles freeways and collected millions of dollars in bogus insurance claims, authorities said Wednesday.

Typically members of the ring would head out in two cars onto a freeway and box in an unsuspecting SUV or commercial truck, then slam on the brakes so as to cause an accident for which passengers in the lead car could file a legal claim.

Although no one was seriously injured in the accidents, one victim was forced to close his business after his truck was totaled, officials said….

Among those involved were members of a Bible study group from the Inland Empire, said Marty Gonzales, chief investigator for the California Department of Insurance….

Many of the suspects were illegal immigrants who were promised they would earn hundreds if not thousands of dollars, Gonzales said.

In reality, some were paid nothing….

According to the insurance commissioner’s office, [22-year-old Humberto] Carlon set up the accidents and Laufer [personal injury lawyer Bernard Laufer, 52, of Huntington Park] paid him a fee to represent the phony victims in claims against insurance companies….

Such crash rings are not new to Southern California.

A family of three burned to death on the Long Beach Freeway in 1996 in an accident linked to a crash ring.

(Amanda Covarrubias, Los Angeles Times, Nov. 24).

Balloon victim won’t sue

She’s from Albany, not New York City, which may possibly be one reason Sarah Chamberlain and her family have no plans to file suit over the accident at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. One of the giant balloons hit a lamppost and brought debris raining down on Sarah, who needed nine stitches to her head, as well as her disabled sister Mary, who wasn’t seriously hurt:

Sarah and Mary’s father, Stephen Chamberlain, staff director for the Public Employees Federation, said the family has no intention of taking Macy’s or the city to court.

“To me, the lawsuit-lottery stuff is almost dishonest,” he said. “This was an accident. We’re just very thankful no one was seriously injured.”

(Joe Mahoney, Celeste Katz and Tracy Connor, “Her spirits are sky high”, New York Daily News, Nov. 26). “Miracle on 34th St.”, one columnist calls the family’s lack of litigiousness (Arnold Ahlert, New York Post, Nov. 28).

More: “The father’s words should be inscribed on a plaque and affixed to the base of the pole, memorializing a place in the city where a mishap occurred and nobody went to court,” writes Daily News columnist Michael Daly, who quotes a subway ad and website which dangle enticing dollar sums in front of potential litigants. “‘Between the two of them [Sarah and her sister] you could hit a million dollars,’ one noted attorney said yesterday.” (“Greed didn’t suit him”, Nov. 27). And CBS Early Show commentator Harry Smith calls Mr. Chamberlain’s attitude “heroic and refreshing” (“Accidents Happen”, Nov. 28).

Taxpayers on hook for $60.9M cerebral palsy case

Lawyers blame Jacksonville Navy hospital doctors for Kevin Bravo Rodriguez’s severe cerebral palsy (Nov. 12; Nov. 4, 2004; Feb. 2, 2004; Aug. 13, 2003; etc.). He cannot see, speak, swallow, or move his arms and legs, and will not live past age 21. Modern technology saved Bravo Rodriguez’s life after he was born without a heart-rate or respiration, and keeps him alive with 24-hour care that was adjudged to cost $10 million over the course of short life. The verdict included $50 million in pain and suffering. Because this was a Federal Tort Claims Act case, a judge was the finder of fact, and Carter-appointee Senior District Judge Jose A. Gonzalez can be credited with the largest FTCA verdict in history, which (including the millions in jackpot attorneys’ fees) will come out of taxpayers’ pockets unless it is reversed on the government’s promised appeal. (Nikki Waller and Noaki Schwartz, “A bittersweet $60.9 million”, Miami Herald, Nov. 25). This is attorney Ervin Gonzalez’s second appearance in Overlawyered this year for a $60 million+ verdict—see July 10.

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Leading NC Democrat loses cerebral palsy case

Wade Byrd gave $100,000 in soft-money to John Edwards, and a personal-injury attorney at his firm was named chairman of the North Carolina Democratic Party, but Byrd failed to follow in Edwards’s footsteps in a recent cerebral palsy case when a jury that had sat through the five-week trial found for all of the defendants after an hour of deliberation. Byrd had sought $30 million from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, two doctors, and a nurse who had the bad fortune to be present when Joseph O’Hara was born with severe brain damage. Though O’Hara had lesions on his placenta, and though there’s no relationship between C-sections and cerebral palsy rates, Byrd tried to claim that the fetal heart rate monitor showed wrongdoing. (James Romoser, “Doctors found not liable in baby’s brain damage”, Winston-Salem Journal, Nov. 23).

In other cerebral palsy litigation news, a clever group has reserved the web-domain AskTheDoc.org, and must be paying a fortune to advertise on Google for “cerebral palsy” search terms. While masquerading as medical advice (and the website does have some rudimentary resources), the website encourages parents of children born with cerebral palsy to believe that most cerebral palsy is caused by malpractice. It’s not clear if trial lawyers are behind the website (as they are with this similar site that fails to distinguish between “it’s” and “its” and is registered in the same state with a similar IP address), or if it’s just a spam source. The latter website gives some “indicators” that “a medical mistake may have caused your child’s cerebral palsy,” including “a specialist was called to care for your newborn.”

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$3.36M for blind woman replaced by blind woman

Christine L. Boone was fired as director of the Pennsylvania Bureau of Blindness and Visual Services (allegedly for “insubordination” when she refused to carry out a superior’s directive regarding making a college aid program more available to students who weren’t receiving merit scholarships) and was replaced by another blind woman, Pamela Shaw. Nevertheless, Boone sued through her lawyer Arch Stokes, alleging that she was discriminated against because of her blindness, though the AP’s quote of Stokes’ opening statement of the federal trial before U.S. District Judge Sylvia H. Rambo makes it sound like a civil-service dispute. Boone only received $180,000 of the $1 million in the “future lost wages” she sought, but the $1.5 million for emotional distress should provide solace. Boone will ask the judge to reinstate her to her job; the AP did not get comment from Shaw, who currently holds the position. (Mark Scolforo, AP, Nov. 28; Mark Scolforo, AP/Boston Herald, Nov. 8). The National Federation of the Blind of Pennsylvania opposed Boone’s firing; that may or may not make it a bad decision, but a bad decision isn’t federally actionable, only a discriminatory one is.

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George Will on campaign regulation

“Under Vermont’s limits, a candidate for state representative in a single-member district can spend no more than $2,000 in a two-year cycle. Every mile driven by a candidate—or a volunteer—must be computed as a 48.5-cent campaign expenditure. Just driving—and not much of it—can exhaust permissible spending.” (“Free Speech Under Siege”, Newsweek, Dec. 5). More: Aug. 23, etc.

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Blogosphere on sleeping driver lawsuits – Melahn Parker, Lance Hall, and Joan Hall-Edwards v. Ford

John Hawkins, Craig Newmark, Haje Jan, David Svendsen, GM InsideNews, RightNation and their commenters aren’t impressed with the jury’s decision. Neither is the Henderson Daily Dispatch editorial board.

We covered the case Nov. 17.

Amazingly, a jury awarding $61 million in a ludicrous case like this is so “dog-bites-man” these days that there’s been no next-to-no follow-up press coverage, other than a Miami Herald profile of the plaintiff, Joan Hall-Edwards, that might as well have been a press release from the attorney; the story makes no effort to question whether the driver is to blame for falling asleep or losing control when he swerved after waking up from hitting the rumble strips or Hall for not wearing his seatbelt properly. (Susannah A. Nesmith, “Jury: Ford must pay for teen’s death”, Miami Herald, Nov. 18).

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