Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Rep. Dennis Kucinich sues House cafeteria over olive pit in sandwich

He bit into a sandwich wrap in 2008 and encountered an olive pit, and now he wants $150,000. [Cleveland Plain Dealer, Wonkette, Memeorandum]

P.S. Gawker finds video taken five days later on the House floor in which the Ohio representative “looks fine and talks normal” notwithstanding the “serious and permanent dental and oral injuries requiring multiple oral and dental surgeries.” And Daniel Fisher at Forbes:

No indication why Kucinich mulled this lawsuit for three years before filing it…..* The lawsuit alleges negligence and breach of implied warranty.

*Commenter “Mattie” says the SOL in DC for this type of suit is indeed three years, though it would be one year for some other torts.

Who besides the People’s Congressman would be willing to name America’s olive pit safety crisis and call out the Big Pit interests responsible?

P.P.S.: As someone was asking, wasn’t generous government-furnished health insurance — like the kind available to Members of Congress — supposed to cut down on the need for personal injury suits? And Matthew Heller at OnPoint News finds some precedent for the suit.

And further: That was fast, Kucinich says he’s settled the suit (Jan. 28).

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January 26 roundup

  • Cato Institute scholars liveblog reaction to State of the Union speech and GOP response, plus video on Facebook with Gene Healy and Julian Sanchez, more video;
  • Private store owners get beaten up for lack of ADA ramps. On the other hand, when the federal government is building courthouses… [Sun-Sentinel; earlier here and here]
  • “Securities suits filed in 2010 again a record” [Business Insurance]
  • Do mass tort “claims facilities” enable participants to bypass the strictures of legal ethics? [Monroe Freedman, Legal Ethics Forum]
  • Latest workplace-retaliation ruling once more undermines “pro-business Supreme Court” narrative [Bader, Examiner, more]
  • Jacob Sullum reviews Daniel Okrent book on Prohibition [Reason]
  • Another “lawyers excited about coming wave of bet-the-company climate change suits” article [AFP]
  • Dickie Scruggs: “It was never about the money for me, this litigation” [four years ago on Overlawyered]

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Litigation Lobby: president’s med-mal SOTU remarks “disgusting”

David Ingram, National Law Journal:

The New York-based Center for Justice and Democracy, which describes its mission as “protecting our civil justice system,” released a statement calling Obama’s remarks “disgusting” because many proposed changes would affect cases with merit. “The Republican proposals would weaken the legal rights of sick and injured patients and lessen the accountability of incompetent doctors and unsafe hospitals,” the statement said.

I haven’t seen a direct link to the “disgusting” statement yet, only the NLJ/Legal Times coverage, so I’ll try not to jump to conclusions. (Update: link here, h/t gitarcarver). But I’ve wondered before whether the tone taken by the misnamed Center for Justice and Democracy is so harshly abrasive and shrill that it actually alienates the sorts of centrists and moderate liberals that its trial-lawyer constituency should be trying to win over. Earlier on CJD here, here, here, here, etc.

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Court tosses Alan Grayson calling-card suit

Washington, D.C.: “The D.C. Court of Appeals ruled Friday that two plaintiffs who hoped to bring claims under the Consumer Protection Procedures Act did not have reason to do so. One of those plaintiffs was former U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, who called himself a ‘whistleblower’ when he sued AT&T over unused balances on calling cards.” [John O’Brien, Legal NewsLine via David Freddoso, Examiner]

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Taiwan: man sues over trained-bird insults

Law school hypotheticals come to life: “Wang Han-chin, an electrician in central Taiwan, accused five neighbours of teaching their mynah, a parrot-like bird, to curse at him” with the epithet “clueless big-mouthed idiot” after he called the police on their noise. He claimed that the insults caused him emotional distress and distraction at work with resulting injury, but prosecutors found that he had not shown an adequate link between the bird and his injuries. [NineMSN via Lowering the Bar]

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