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Mold repercussions

A Massachusetts woman has won over $500,000 because of a mold infestation of her $75,000 condo. (Thomas Grillo, “After 8 years, a milestone in battle over mold”, Boston Globe, Nov. 25). After thousands of years of humanity coexisting relatively peacefully with mold, how unfortunate must we be to live in the twenty-first century, when plaintiffs’ lawyers have discovered the terrible health effects! The Globe, while paying lip service to a quote that there’s no scientific evidence of generalized health problems from mold, then proceeds to identify stachybotrys as “toxic mold,” and uncritically repeats a claim (rejected by a court that otherwise awarded millions in the same case) that such mold has caused brain damage. The UPI does better, even noting that the wide array of health claims made with respect to mold suggest that there isn’t one cause for all of these problems. (K. L. Capozza, “Mold: Unsightly but not deadly”, Sep. 2).

But who has an economic incentive to point out that bleach is the solution to mold when compared to the money that can be made by positing the opposite hypothesis? (Highlight of this site: claiming that a brochure asking if “toxic black mold” is the “Millennium’s Silent Killer” is “NOT intended to scare you“.)

According to an economist quoted in the Boston Globe story, fear of mold litigation has caused insurance companies, when confronted with a potential claim, to immediately move a family into a hotel and perform testing. Unsurprisingly, the resulting payouts and expenses are causing costs to rise for construction and homeowners’ insurance. (Mark Hornbeck et al., “Sting of high insurance spurs probe”, Detroit News, Dec. 3; Scott Wyland, “Insurance premiums hammer construction”, The Olympian, Nov. 23). More: May 26, 2004.

Streisand loses lawsuit

On grounds that it was an abuse of the judicial process, a California judge has tossed the lawsuit Barbra Streisand brought against an environmental group who took an aerial photograph of her home off of a Malibu beach as part of a larger project documenting coastal erosion. The Smoking Gun has both the decision and the photo, as well as the May complaint. According to a press release of the defendants, the photo of Streisand’s home had only been downloaded six times before the lawsuit–twice by her own attorneys. The lawsuit just guaranteed thousands of additional people would see the photos. (Kenneth R. Weiss, “Judge Rejects Streisand Privacy Suit”, LA Times, Dec. 4).

Disassembling Glock

Dan McLaughlin has some thoughts (Dec. 2) on the possible constitutional infirmities of the recent Ninth Circuit decision in Ileto v. Glock (Nov. 20, Nov. 26), in which a three-judge panel okayed a suit against gunmakers for supposedly “oversupplying” the West Coast market in such a way that a crazed neo-Nazi was able to obtain and use several firearms. Among its other problems, the opinion presumes that California can appropriately second-guess and override the more permissive gun-selling laws of the state of Washington, where the guns in question were originally sold. Our take on the same general issue appeared in Reason in 1999.

Madison County: “We’re number one!”

When word arrived that the American Tort Reform Association had named Madison County, Ill. (Oct. 7, Jul. 12, etc.) the worst of its “judicial hellholes” nationwide (Nov. 20) and the least fair in according due process to accused defendants, “Randy Bono, a plaintiffs’ attorney with The Simmons Firm in East Alton, led a group of lawyers in his office in a mock cheer of the announcement Wednesday afternoon. ‘We’re number one! We’re number one!’ chanted the lawyers, who were preparing for asbestos lawsuit trials next week.” (Paul Hampel, “Report rips Madison County as top ‘judicial hellhole'”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Nov. 6). More on Madison County: David Bailey, “Illinois county court a corporate ‘hellhole'”, Reuters/Forbes, Oct. 5; Jon Sawyer and Eric Morath, “Senate debate on class actions spotlights Madison County”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Oct. 21 (county is a place “near and dear to me”, says Sen. Dick Durbin — we’ll bet).

“Trend Is To Mediate, Not Litigate, Bias Cases”

Key factors: the disputants often wish to repair their relationship, and “many people who feel aggrieved want recognition from their employers rather than just money, officials said, noting that about 13 to 20 percent of all mediated cases involve nonfinancial settlements.” The EEOC is encouraging the trend. (Kirsten Downey, Washington Post, Dec. 3).

California’s antispam law

I’ve got an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this morning on the remarkably bad legislation that California passed this year ostensibly banning spam, which in fact creates a right to sue unwary businesses for $1000 per email over all sorts of communications that aren’t regarded as spam by most recipients. Fortunately, the pending federal SPAM-CON bill, whatever its other merits or demerits, would override the California law, which otherwise is due to go into effect Jan. 1. (Walter Olson, “Spamifornia”, Wall Street Journal, Dec. 3) (sub). I’ll probably be returning to this subject in print again, since the space available in the WSJ didn’t permit me to explore some of the pertinent litigation precedents that make the California bill so scary, notably the antispam law passed by Utah last year and the record of class action suits under the federal “junk fax” law (Jul. 19 and links from there).

NYC: tickets for ashtrays

Since Nurse Bloomberg’s crackdown on smoking (see our article of Oct. 22, 2002), New York City has issued more than 200 tickets to businesses found with ashtrays on their premises, including some found in areas not accessible to the public and even individual employees’ offices. “It doesn’t matter if it is used as a decoration, or to hold paper clips or M & M’s. No ashtrays are allowed, period.” (Clyde Haberman, “No Smoking, and Don’t Try Putting It Out”, New York Times, Dec. 2).

In Inuit country, fear of U.S. lawyers

Arctic outfitters and small tourism operators in Nunavut, the far northern territory of Canada that is home to the Inuit people, are suffering the effects of a liability insurance crisis which is also affecting major landowners in the area such as Parks Canada and the Government of Nunavut. “These organizations are especially fearful of multi-million-dollar lawsuits launched in U.S. courts by aggressive trial lawyers on behalf of hurt or angry clients. ‘The landowner is always named in any lawsuit against a tourism outfitter, and as these organizations generally have the deep pockets, they will be targeted by the lawyers,’ Nunavut Tourism’s discussion paper says.” (Jim Bell, “Skyrocketing insurance batters tourism operators”, Nunatsiaq News, Nov. 28).

Med-mal roundup

Massachusetts: “The Romney administration and the Harvard School of Public Health, seeking to address soaring health care costs driven by medical malpractice lawsuits, are working on a sweeping proposal to move malpractice claims out of state courts and into a new administrative framework much like the state’s workers’ compensation system.” (Ralph Ranalli, “Malpractice plan would limit trials”, Boston Globe, Nov. 13). “Defense and plaintiffs’ lawyers agree that, in recent memory, no medical malpractice verdict in excess of policy limits has resulted in the seizure of a Connecticut doctor’s house, savings or other personal assets”, reports Thomas B. Scheffey of the Connecticut Law Tribune. But now following a series of high awards “more aggressive collection strategies may come into play” as trial lawyers at Bridgeport’s kingpin tort firm of Koskoff, Koskoff and Bieder are “exploring other options” with regard to collecting a $10 million judgment against a Stamford physician insured for only $1 million (“Med-Mal Awards Put Doctors on Alert”, Nov. 18). And a judge in McDowell County, W.V., has dismissed Dr. Julie McCammon’s lawsuit against the West Virginia Trial Lawyers Association and its former president for causing her malpractice insurance rates to rise, ruling that the defendants owed her no duty of care. (Nora Edinger, “Doctor’s suit dismissed”, Clarksburg Exponent Telegram, undated, appx. Nov. 26).