Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Dr. White Coat on the pink-panties case

The Emergency Physicians Monthly columnist, often linked in this space, on a case noted in our open thread last week:

From comments at Overlawyered.com …

Employee of a surgicenter goes to facility for a colonoscopy. When he wakes up, he was wearing pink underwear. As a result, he suffered extreme emotional distress, humiliation, loss of wages and loss of earning capacity. He is now suing.

While I probably would have laughed off a prank like this, I can understand why some people would have been upset. But suffering a loss of earning capacity from being dressed in pink panties as a prank? I’d like to see how that happened.

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Liability roundup

  • How legal doctrine changes in a state-based system: “The Diffusion of Innovations in Tort Law” [Kyle Graham]
  • Are courts growing (appropriately) disillusioned with cy pres? [James Beck and Rachel Weil, WLF; Beck, D&DL, on Redman v. RadioShack]
  • “Asbestos lawyers want $2.5 million for losing fight to keep Garlock records sealed” [@DanielDFisher on Legal NewsLine report] “Third Circuit rules against plaintiff who ‘just knew’ asbestos was used in Navy vessels” [Heather Isringhausen Gvillo, LNL]
  • Eric Alexander on the runaway $9 billion Actos verdict [Drug and Device Law, citing Dr. David Kessler, former FDA chief, as “plaintiff’s mouthpiece”; earlier on Actos/Takeda case]
  • “Third-Party Bad Faith Claims Add $800M to Florida Auto Insurance Costs: IRC” [Insurance Journal]
  • Discussion of proposals to change contributory negligence for bicyclists in D.C., mucho comments [Greater Greater Washington]
  • “Missouri Supreme Court Invalidates State’s Legislative Cap on Punitive Damages” [Mark Behrens]

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It’s an emotional-support alpaca, so let us in

Author Patricia Marx decided to brazen her way through New York restaurants, museums, high-end fashion shops, and other institutions with five “un-cuddly, non-nurturing animals” such as a turtle, snake, and turkey, and some therapist paperwork that was easy enough to procure. [New Yorker] Aside from writing hilariously, she’s well informed about the Americans with Disabilities Act interplay:

Why didn’t anybody do the sensible thing, and tell me and my turtle to get lost? The Americans with Disabilities Act allows you to ask someone with a service animal only two questions: Is the animal required because of a disability? What work or task has the animal been trained to perform? Specific questions about a person’s disability are off limits, and, as I mentioned, people are baffled by the distinction between service animals and emotional-support animals.

Len Kain, the editor-in-chief of dogfriendly.com, a Web site that features pet-travel tips, said, “The law is fuzzy. If you ask one too many questions, you’re in legal trouble for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act and could face fines of up to a hundred thousand dollars. But, if you ask one too few questions, you’re probably not in trouble, and at worst will be given a slap on the wrist.”

We’ve been tracking the issue of real and imagined service animals for a long time.

P.S. As I should have noted, changes in federal rules a few years back attempted to lay out a bright-line rule that animals other than individually trained dogs and some miniature horses do not enjoy service animal status under the ADA. Unless merchants have reason to fear separate liability under differing state or municipal versions of discrimination law, they should therefore be on firm ground in rejecting alpacas, reptiles, or turkeys — which of course assumes they are up on the status of the federal regs. More: Scott Greenfield.

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Politics roundup

  • Texas trial lawyer lobby has attacked Greg Abbott on theme of his accident for years without success, Wendy Davis would have been smarter to tell ’em no [Politico]
  • Wondering about ObamaCare rate hikes? You’ll get to find out right after the election [Washington Times]
  • “Four more years of ‘pay-to-play’ if DeWine returns as Ohio AG, says Dem challenger” [LNL]
  • Blades concealed? Environmental group’s Iowa, Colorado attack ads play bad cop to wind lobbyists’ good cop [Tim Carney]
  • “W.Va. trial lawyers’ campaign donations near $600K” [W.V. Record]
  • With all the serious issues in the Maryland governor’s race, what’s this guy doing writing a parody song about Anthony Brown’s “Frederickstown” gaffe? [Free State Notes]
  • “Dear Trial Lawyer Colleague, One of our own, Bruce Braley, is in the fight of his life” [Joel Gehrke, earlier]

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Cop fired after falling asleep on job wins nearly $1M

Kansas: “A federal jury Tuesday awarded a former McPherson police officer who was found sleeping on duty almost $1 million in wages and damages. Matthew B. Michaels alleged the city violated his civil rights, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Family Medical Leave Act and the Kansas Wage Payment Act. He was fired from the McPherson Police Department in July 2012. Michaels said he was discriminated against because of a sleep apnea disability.” [McPherson Sentinel]

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Pa. jury: inadequate curve signage partly at fault

Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania: “A jury in a Luzerne County civil case ruled that PennDOT was partially responsible for a deadly crash in 2011 that killed a 15-year-old girl, even though the driver of the SUV was driving at roughly twice the speed limit and did not have a driver’s license.” While the driver admitted he was going nearly 90 miles an hour when he lost control, the family’s lawyer “told jurors in closing arguments that PennDOT’s own manuals showed Suscon Road needed more so-called chevron signs that reflect light and warn of an upcoming sharp curve.” [WNEP]

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Schools roundup

  • Oklahoma school district agrees to pay survivors of teen who drove drunk [Tulsa World]
  • “The Evidence on Universal Preschool” [David Armor, Cato]
  • Things you can hit with a Title IX complaint for doing: fighting academic boycott of Israel [Ben-Atar, Tablet]
  • “It may take the fun and spontaneity out of sex, but I don’t care. That’s for the kids to worry about.” [Ron Kuby quoted in WSJ via Hans Bader; earlier on affirmative consent]
  • Jason Bedrick on lawsuits against school choice [Cato]
  • “The Left/Right Alliance That Legalized Homeschooling” [Jesse Walker, Reason]
  • Kid safety mania: “I suggest just keeping children in large jars until they’re 40.” [Amy Alkon]

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Pennsylvania bill would enable victims to sue offender for reopening anguish

Both houses of the Pennsylvania legislature have passed and sent to Gov. Tom Corbett a bill “allowing judges to issue injunctions, or grant any other ‘appropriate relief’ if there is ‘conduct’ by a criminal ‘offender’ that ‘perpetuates the continuing effect of the crime on the victim.” Such an effect is specified to include, though it is not limited to, a “temporary or permanent state of mental anguish.” The “revictimization remedy” bill, S. 508, is apparently aimed at providing a way to go after a much-cooed-over convicted cop-killer for delivering recorded speeches at college campuses, to the distress of the family of the policeman he shot; Paul Alan Levy describes the bill’s use of the word “conduct” as a “fig leaf” for its intent to restrict speech. What Levy calls the “exceptional breadth” of the bill’s language could imperil or chill a wide range of other activity that might tread on victims’ feelings, such as campaigns to rally public opinion against a conviction or in favor of clemency. The bill, Levy says, “threatens to make Pennsylvania a national laughing stock.” [Consumer Law & Policy; Fox News; NBC Philadelphia; more, Joel Mathis, Philadelphia mag] More on the ever-popular “victims’ rights” cause from Steve Chapman and Roger Pilon.

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