When tiny amounts of hazardous materials get spilled, major disruptions can result: “Suppose Marshall University had responded to a dropped vial of phenol by asking a janitor to clean it up, cautiously. The school would have feared, and perhaps rightly so, junk-science lawsuits over mysterious symptoms that someone near the spill might claim mysteriously to have developed. Evacuating the med school and bringing in the moon-suit patrol might have been unnecessary, but it reduced the school’s tort exposure.” (Gregg Easterbrook, “Hazardous Waste”, The New Republic, Mar. 21).
Quotable: absence of grace
From a column by Rob Asghar in the Ashland (Ore.) Daily Tidings on lawsuits over offensive remarks in the workplace (“Without a doubt, PC has gone too far”, Nov. 22):
The correlation between litigiousness and gracelessness is no accident. Within religious communities, the term “legalist” denotes a person who gives little grace to others if they transgress even the slightest religious commandment. (This is especially ironic when the religion is supposed to be about grace.)
For our hypersensitive secular society, we too have become legalists who feel that to sue is human and to forgive is a crime. And we are all poorer for this trend.
Freedom of Information Act
Using it to request sensitive information about companies that do business with the government, and then selling that information to competitors, has become a “cottage industry” in Washington over the past twenty years, reports Legal Times (Tom Schoenberg, “Spy Game: Corporate Rivals Use FOIA as Weapon”, Mar. 16).
Ford and the Crystal City sweethearts, cont’d
Auto Connection (Mar. 14, scroll to “Ford Appeals Frontier Justice”) has some new material on the astounding $31 million verdict against Ford from Zavala County, Texas, last discussed in this space Mar. 7. A few snippets:
In the testimony that followed [a Feb. 22 mistrial motion by Ford], it was revealed that not only had [juror Diana] Palacios failed to acknowledge her romantic entanglement [with plaintiff’s attorney Jesse Gamez] during jury selection, but had previously been a client of Gamez in other litigation, had been an aunt by marriage of one of the plaintiffs and indeed had solicited the plaintiffs to sue Ford and Guerrero and hire Gamez as their lawyer….
Incredibly, Ford’s motions were denied, but Juror Palacios was removed.
The next day’s Express-News carried a story about the motions and denials.
But a mysterious man went around to all the distribution points in Crystal City, buying up all the papers before anyone could read them. The San Antonio newspaper management 130 miles away quickly got wind of this, replenished the newspapers and ran an editorial the following day denouncing the act as an attempt to keep Crystal Citians from learning of their local conflicts of interest. The miscreant was never identified.
The trial went on, plaintiffs maintaining that Ford was negligent, because if the Explorer had only been equipped with a type of laminated side glass used by less than one percent of the world’s vehicles, the ejections and injuries would not have occurred.
UK: “£500,000 for youth injured in fall while trespassing”
Carl Murphy, 18, of Merseyside, England, has received £567,000 for injuries sustained while criminally trespassing on the roof of a private warehouse in 1996, from which he fell 40 feet, sustaining multiple injuries. Murphy, who has convictions for robbery, burglary and assault, “received his compensation after suing the company that owned the warehouse. He claimed that if the perimeter fence had not been in disrepair he would not have been able to gain entry and suffer his injuries.” Although groups representing victims of crime expressed anger at his getting a sum 50 times higher than a murder victim’s family could expect to receive from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority, Murphy was unapologetic about his windfall, saying he planned to buy “a few houses and a flash car”: “This money is mine now and I’ll do what I want.” Murphy “was expelled from two schools in just over two years after his recovery and his family blamed the fall for his bad behaviour.” And more: “His mother, Diane, and her partner, Kevin Parsons, both 36, are currently serving three years in prison for setting up a heroin and crack cocaine business from their council house.” (Daily Telegraph, Mar. 14; Peter Zimonjic, “I’ll buy houses and a flash car, says yob awarded £567,000”, Daily Telegraph, Mar. 20; Joanna Bale, “Trespasser who fell through roof wins payout of £567,000”, The Times, Mar. 14).
Among other lessons to be drawn from the case, it kind of casts doubt on the idea, often heard from trial lawyers on this side of the Atlantic, that people wouldn’t feel such a need to sue if they had UK-style socialized medicine to take care of their injuries for them. More: Ralph Reiland comments in the American Spectator (Nov. 30).
Agence France-Presse sues Google
Because aggregating headlines, first sentences of stories, and (sometimes) tiny little thumbnails of pictures constitutes an outrageous trampling on the French news service’s intellectual property, it wants at least $17.5 million in damages. (“AFP sues Google for news aggregation”, PhysOrg.com, Mar. 20). We covered the issue Nov. 9.
Ohio: let’s not license eBay sellers
Ohio lawmakers are scrambling to change a recently enacted law which starting in May would forbid state residents from selling items on eBay unless they possess an auctioneer’s license. “Under the original bill, anyone selling an item on eBay was required to use a licensed auctioneer or become an auctioneer. Becoming an auctioneer requires serving a one-year apprenticeship to an auctioneer, attending classes and other requirements.” Last Wednesday the Ohio Senate passed a bill exempting online-auction sellers from the requirements; the bill “now moves to the Ohio House, where swift approval is expected after the Easter recess.” The Ohio Auctioneers Association, however, is still pressing to get the state to regulate drop-off consignment shops which sell items on eBay for a fee. (Michael Sangiacomo, “Senate votes to exempt eBay sellers from auctioneer’s license rule”, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Mar. 17; “Ohio law would regulate eBay sellers”, CNN/Money, Mar. 7).
No way to spend your old age
Quotable: “Being involved in a lawsuit is a lousy way to spend your old age” — author Dominick Dunne, 79, commenting on his agreement to settle, on terms which include an apology and an undisclosed sum of money, a defamation suit filed by former Rep. Gary Condit. (Michael Doyle, “Condit, Dunne sidestep big battle”, Modesto (Calif.) Bee, Mar. 17).
Mikolajczyk v. Ford and Mazda: $27 million in Escort seat litigation
Drunk driver William Timberlake, speeding at 60 mph, rear-ended the Ford Escort in which 46-year-old James Mikolajczyk was stopped at an intersection. Only 3% of fatalities occur in rear-end collisions, so Ford, like most car companies, designs its seat-backs to meet federal safety standards and provide additional protection in other types of collisions–with the unfortunate and unavoidable trade-off that the seat will not perform as well in a rear-end collision. Mikolajczyk’s ten-year-old daughter survived, but Mikolajczyk’s seat collapsed, his head hit the rear of the passenger compartment, and he never regained consciousness before dying three days later. A Cook County jury deliberated all of three hours before finding Ford 40% responsible. And because Ford was found more than 25% responsible, it is on the hook for the entire $27 million award, including $25 million in non-economic damages. Timberlake is in prison. Only the specialty legal press raised the issue of joint and several liability; the mainstream press didn’t even mention the 40/60 split in comparative fault. (Bill Myers, “$27 million verdict in fatal accident”, Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, Mar. 16 (via ICJL); Steve Patterson, “Ford, Mazda ordered to pay $27 million in death”, Chicago Sun-Times, Mar. 17; Chris Hack, “Carmakers to pay in SE Side crash”, Daily Southtown News, Mar. 17; Rafael Romo, “Jury Awards Millions In Fatal Crash Caused By Deffective [sic] Seat”, WBBM-2, Mar. 17; Mikolajczyk v. Ford Motor Co., No. 00 L 3342 (Cook County, Ill.)). More seat-back litigation coverage on this site: Dec. 21; Nov. 24.
Bruce Pfaff, Mikolajczyk’s attorney, previously won a similar seat-back case from an Indiana accident where a cocaine-and-PCP-impaired driver, Kevin Gaczkowski, rear-ended and paralyzed the plaintiff, Lydia Carillo. Ford was found 30% liable (in part because the jury wasn’t told of Gaczkowski’s condition), and paid 100% of the $14.5 million verdict. Carillo v. Ford (Ill. App. 2001). In Carillo, a jury was told to decide whether a vehicle was unreasonably dangerous, but Ford wasn’t allowed to show the jury statistics on how the seatbacks performed in rear-impact collisions (even as the plaintff introduced anecdotal testimony from other paraplegics), or introduce testimony showing that the plaintiffs’ preferred seat-design would have also caused injury. It’s ludicrous enough to have a jury second-guess design decisions as part of a particular case without being forced to be consistent with other juries second-guessing how those same design decisions are operating in other circumstances. But it’s truly absurd to have a jury do this without access to the data of the costs and benefits, thus making the trial purely a game-show over the persuasiveness of hired experts.
Update: Schenectady BBS defamation
Following up on our entry of last Aug. 31: Acting Supreme Court Judge Felix Catena has dismissed attorney Romolo Versaci’s defamation suit against Diane Richie, who called Versaci a “so-called lawyer” on a local online message board, saying the expression was by its nature rhetorical opinion and not actionable. Versaci has said he plans appeal. David Giacalone (Mar. 15) has the details.