Ernie the Attorney notices some new slabs of it in his inbox (Jul. 27) and learns more about its origins (Jul. 28). See May 9 and May 17.
Whistleblower fees
They’re such a great deal for the public, you know:
An Oakland, Calif., attorney who blasted the University of California Regents for wasting taxpayer money during a seven-year lawsuit is asking for $5.4 million in fees and costs — 2 1/2 times what his client got.
Patricia Gillette of Heller Ehrman, representing the UC Regents, described attorney Gary Gwilliam’s request as “outrageous”: “Gary likes to talk about how much taxpayers’ dollars are being wasted by the lab, and then he has the audacity to ask for $5.4 million in his plaintiff’s case”. (Warren Lutz, The Recorder, Jul. 21).
“Richard Branson claims to own all uses of ‘Virgin'”
Boing Boing (Jul. 27) and Chilling Effects (Jul. 10) have details. See Amanda Cantrell, “Branson trademark suit sparks debate”, CNN/Money, Jun. 29. Update: Jan. 3, 2006.
“Doc: $2 mil. verdict proves my point”
As one might expect, spinal surgery does have a risk of spinal injury, including paralysis. Joliet neurosurgeon Thomas R. Hurley, president-elect of the shrinking Illinois State Neurosurgical Society, has an impressive safety record, performing well over 1000 spinal surgeries, with only one resulting in paralysis. Nevertheless, a Cook County jury decided that anything less than perfection was negligence, and awarded $2.3 million in damages to the family of the late factory worker Richard McCorry. McCorry was already wheelchair-bound from back pain when he had the surgery that paralyzed him. “As a result of the Tuesday verdict, Hurley’s annual medical malpractice insurance rates could jump from $245,000 a year to $300,000 or more, he said. … ‘Maybe I’ll go to another state where insurance will be $75,000.'” (Abdon M. Pallasch, Chicago Sun-Times, Jul. 28) (via ICJL). The press accounts mention the plaintiff’s attorney’s complaint that the case took ten years to try, but don’t mention that that was because the plaintiff changed his theory in 1999 and then chose to spend two and a half years trying to retroactively amend his complaint to add a new theory of liability against the deep-pocket non-profit hospital. McCorry v. Gooneratne (Ill. App. 2002); McCorry v. Evangelical Hospitals Corp. (Ill. App. 2002).
More on the Grand Theft Auto lawsuit
A reader asks about yesterday’s post:
- Shouldn’t the 85-year-old grandmother &/or the 14-year-old’s parents (where are the 14-year-old’s parents, please?) be hauled into court and charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor? If this was a grandfather, he likely would be in court on charges ….
- Has anyone asked the 14-year-old how, where, or from whom he got the extra scenes for the game??
- Said grandmother is now lead plaintiff in class-action lawsuit against game’s maker and others, claiming . . . what?
- How soon will this lawsuit be thrown out; how soon will it be declared “frivolous,” and how soon will the lawyers and the legal firm who filed this suit be either disbarred or sanctioned (or should they be punished at all)?
- There’s no reason to charge anyone with delinquency of a minor. One can question the grandmother’s or parents’ wisdom, but they’re allowed to expose their kids to R-rated material. The distributors of the modification to the game might have trouble if they aren’t screening for age, but no one seems to seek to go after the shallow pocket.
- The complaint makes no effort to claim that the kid ever had or accessed the extra scenes. I suspect the lawyers will claim that they don’t need to prove that to collect damages. They’re alleging the grandmother was deceived, that the defendants engaged in false advertising, that she wouldn’t have purchased a game if she had known about the hidden sex scenes, and that disgorgement of profits is appropriate—and not that the grandmother or the grandson was actually harmed in any way. I’ve made the nine-page complaint available on the Documents in the News page on the AEI Liability Project web site.
- One hopes the lawsuit will be thrown out eventually, but the Pelman decision (Jan. 27) means that the lawsuit almost certainly won’t be held frivolous or result in sanctions or in anyone being disbarred. But that says more about Pelman and the sorry state of the law than the value of this lawsuit. See Michael Greve’s discussion of the issue in “‘Harm-Less’ Lawsuits?”
Class action fees slashed — or not
Last month Vice Chancellor Leo E. Strine Jr. of Delaware’s Chancery Court slashed by three-quarters a $4.95 million fee request by class action lawyers who intervened on behalf of shareholders in a dispute involving Cox Enterprises, the media company; he blasted some of the lawyers’ filings as “dashed off complaints” and “hastily drafted throwaways” and questioned whether they had done much to influence the final disposition of the transaction. In Atlanta, on the other hand, “Fulton Superior Court Judge Constance C. Russell awarded all of the requested $1.25 million in fees to Atlanta lawyers Corey D. Holzer and Michael I. Fistel Jr. of Holzer & Holzer; Steven J. Estep of Cohen, Cooper, Estep & Mudder; and other lawyers” in parallel class action litigation arising from the same dispute. “A key difference between the two cases was that a group of shareholders in the Delaware case filed official objections to the fee requests, while in Atlanta, the lawyer for those shareholders informally submitted information from the Delaware case to argue that the lawyers in the Fulton case provided little, if any, benefit to the shareholders they represented.” The objecting lawyer in both the Delaware and the Georgia proceedings was Elliott J. Weiss, a professor at the University of Arizona’s James E. Rogers College of Law. Apparently feeling that Weiss’s less-than-official submission could be brushed aside, Judge Russell issued an order approving the fees without elaboration. (Steven H. Pollak, “Ga. Lawyers in Cox Case Escape Fee-Slashing Endured by Delaware Counterparts”, Fulton County Daily Report, Jul. 18). More: Francis Pileggi (Jun. 24) has posted a copy of the Delaware decision (PDF) and Larry Ribstein has commented Jul. 20 (referring to “Chancellor Strine’s classic-to-be opinion”) and again Jul. 29 (“The vice chancellor paints a picture of truly parasitic lawyers inserting themselves into a corporate transaction and demanding to be paid big bucks to go away.”)
Willy Wonka as defendant
Batman and The Incredibles aren’t the only ones who might want to worry about being taken to court over their astounding feats. (Christine Hurt, The Conglomerate, Jul. 24; scroll down for a comment from Ted).
And now the lawsuits…
As we predicted on July 16, the ridiculous lawsuits over the Grand Theft Auto video game “scandal” have begun. The lead plaintiff in the putative class action is an 85-year-old grandmother, Florence Cohen, who bought the game for her 14-year-old grandson, who may have his own claims for emotional distress when his ninth-grade classmates beat him up. I suspect the eventual lead-plaintiff deposition I imagined is likely to be more entertaining than the game itself.
“Laurence D. Paskowitz, the lawyer who filed the lawsuit on behalf of Cohen, said no parent would knowingly buy an adult-only video game for their children.” Because a “M-for-Mature” 17-or-over game featuring graphic violence, profanity, and “strong sexual content” is so much more appropriate. The sex scenes that are the subject of the lawsuit are only available by taking affirmative steps to download a modification from the Internet and install it: if her 14-year-old grandson has that much freedom with a computer to be able to experience the pixeled sex (an allegation that is missing from press accounts), what else is he downloading?
The Class Action Fairness Act is already paying dividends; the case was filed in federal court, which increases the likelihood that federal judges will correctly decide that class certification is inappropriate. (AP, “Grandmother sues maker of ‘Grand Theft Auto'”, Jul. 27; hat-tip to W.F. and A.B.). Update: Jul. 28.
TrackBack mostly suspended
Until early this year, TrackBack spam was not a problem for this site. Now it’s risen in volume to hundreds per day, outrunning the willingness of our hosting service, Verio, to support the resulting burdens on its servers. As part of the steps needed to resolve yesterday’s technical crisis, we’ve unfortunately had to disable TrackBack for older posts site-wide. We hope to make an exception for some new posts, but even on those it will probably stay open for no more than a few days.
It may be hoped that eventual improvements to Movable Type will admit the legitimate TrackBacks while screening out the rest, bringing us closer to that day when the drug sites cease from spamming and the hold’ems ping no more. In the mean time, Technorati (when operational) remains a reasonably current way of seeing who’s been discussing our posts, and site owners that link to our posts should consider dropping us a contemporaneous email to let us know (editor at [this-domain-name] or tedfrank at [this-domain-name]), which affords us the clearest shot at installing a manual linkback should we decide to go that route.
“Gun Liability Control”
The Wall Street Journal editorial page celebrates the likelihood that the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act will pass, which would end the gun-control-through-litigation movement.
State legislatures have been rolling back firearm laws because the restrictions were both ineffectual and unpopular. Gun-controllers have responded by avoiding legislatures and going to court, teaming with trial lawyers and big city mayors to file lawsuits blaming gun makers for murder. Companies have been hit with at least 25 major lawsuits, from the likes of Boston, Atlanta, St. Louis, Chicago and Cleveland. A couple of the larger suits (New York and Washington, D.C.) are sitting in front of highly creative judges and could drag on for years.
Which seems to be part of the point. The plaintiffs have asked judges to impose the sort of “remedies” that Congress has refused to impose, such as trigger locks or tougher restrictions on gun sales. Some mayors no doubt also hope for a big payday. But short of that, the gun-control lobby’s goal seems to be keep the suits going long enough to drain profit from the low-margin gun industry.
(Wall Street Journal, Jul. 27 ($)). Democratic Senator John D. Rockefeller IV yesterday became the sixtieth co-sponsor. Still, the Journal may be celebrating prematurely. Last term, the legislation was scuttled by the attachment of clever poison-pill amendments that caused the most fervent guns-rights advocates to withdraw support for the bill, so the fact that the current bill has supermajority support surprisingly doesn’t mean that it’s out of the woods yet. For more, see our ongoing coverage.