The votes weren’t there in the Senate for med-mal reform before, and they’re still not there. (James Rowley, ” Demos kill caps on malpractice awards”, Bloomberg/Arizona Star, May 9; Dana Milbank, “Washington Sketch: Take Two of These and Call Us Next Year”, Washington Post, May 9). See our category pages on medical malpractice and on politics.
Posts Tagged ‘Arizona’
Vioxx coverage (and more) at Point of Law
For comprehensive coverage of this week’s verdicts in lawsuits against Merck, see Point of Law. In particular, Ted corrects reporters who keep passing on ill-informed assertions that the Cona/McDarby results are going to preclude Merck from raising its earlier defenses in the thousands of Vioxx cases yet to come, and that that New Jersey cases are being heard in “Merck’s home court“.
Other things you’ve been missing if you don’t check our sister site regularly:
* New regular contributors include Larry Ribstein (Ideoblog), Tom Kirkendall (Houston’s Clear Thinkers), and Sam Munson (Manhattan Institute);
* Theodore Dalrymple on a new history of vaccine litigation;
* Jim Copland on Rep. Cynthia McKinney and a class action on behalf of Capitol police;
* Ted on the Supreme Court’s recent Dabit decision on state-court securities suits (here and here); and on a new med-mal study;
* Michael Krauss on a tort suit in the U.S. against ExxonMobil over abuses by the Indonesian military;
* Jonathan B. Wilson on offer-of-judgment reform in Georgia (and more); and joint-and-several-liability reform in Pennsylvania, just vetoed by that state’s Gov. Ed Rendell;
* Posts by me nominating an Arizona lawprof for “the worst and most tendentious analogy in the history of the liability debate”; on doctors’ Good Samaritan liability; a ruling in the New York school finance case, an AG who dissents from his brethren on the tobacco deal; the Rhode Island lead paint verdict (here, here, etc.); Seventh Circuit judge Diane Sykes criticizes the Wisconsin Supreme Court; and lost-overtime suits on behalf of $400,000-a-year stockbrokers. And, of course, much much more — bookmark the site today.
Driving while not impaired
More zero tolerance madness: “Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik is calling for a new law that would make any drinking and driving illegal — even if the driver is not impaired.” (Becky Pallack, “Dupnik wants to outlaw any drinking at all by drivers”, Arizona Daily Star (Tucson), Nov. 24)(via Radley Balko). More: DUIBlog, Dec. 1.
“TV’s pitchmen in pinstripe suits”
Arizona Republic takes a look at lawyers’ advertising (Hal Mattern, Nov. 27).
Next week’s balloting
Looking forward to next Tuesday’s election:
* The American Justice Partnership is blasting Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tim Kaine, noting that while a practicing trial lawyer he was sanctioned by a court for filing a suit deemed meritless and that while mayor of Richmond he asked staffers to look into the possibility of having the city sue gun manufacturers. For an account of the 1989 suit, see AP coverage, Jan. 10, and this Commonwealth Conservative post, the comments section of which indicates the Kaine campaign’s response. The Kaine campaign’s response on the gun-suit issue is here.
* * In California, campaigning continues on Proposition 79 (see Oct. 26), which would among other provisions empower anyone to sue pharmaceutical companies for the vaguely defined offense of “profiteering”. (William Finn Bennett, “Libertarians blast both prescription drug initiatives”, North County Times, Oct. 29). The Civil Justice Association of California strongly opposes the measure, as should we all.
* Washington state doctors and lawyers continue to battle down to the wire on legal-fee limits (see Ted Frank, PoL, Sept. 12) and now the lawyers appear to have thrown in the towel on their counter-initiative so as to devote all resources to defeating the doctor-backed I-330. (Ralph Thomas, “Doctors, lawyers toss mud to tout message”, Seattle Times, Oct. 10; Seattle Times, “Lawyers’ new goal: Defeat I-330”, Oct. 31) (via KevinMD). Pro-I-330 forces have put up a website whose contents, like its name, are rather rude: TheirLipsAreMoving.com (if you need the reference to the old lawyer joke explained, visit the site). And Arizona doctors are studying the Washington initiative with an eye to possibly launching one of their own, despite trial lawyers’ threats of a revenge-initiative if they do (Phil Riske, “Doctors, lawyers still might square off on the ballot”, Arizona Capitol Times, Oct. 31).
The bear’s death warrant? Public liability
We’ve reported before (Mar. 18, 2004) on how, after court decisions in Arizona eroded the state’s longstanding immunity from being sued over the actions of wild animals, lawyers began obtaining large verdicts from public managers over humans’ harmful encounters with wildlife — with the result that managers began moving to a “when in doubt, take it doubt” policy of slaughtering wild creatures that might pose even a remote threat to people. The continuing results of the policy came in for some public discussion last month after a bear wandered into a residential area near Rumsey Park in Payson, Ariz. and was euthanized by Arizona Game and Fish personnel:
[Ranger Cathe] Descheemaker said that the two Game and Fish officials were no doubt following procedure, and that bears are routinely destroyed ever since the agency was sued when a bear mauled a 16-year-old girl in 1996 on Mt. Lemmon near Tucson.
“Since Game and Fish lost that lawsuit, they do not relocate any bears,” she said. “The fact that bear was in town was its death warrant.”
(Jim Keyworth, “Bear found near Rumsey Park destroyed”, Payson Roundup, Sept. 6). For another set of complications that can arise from public liability for wildlife — namely, pressure to close off the general public’s access to wilderness — see Mar. 29.
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.”)
Streamlined Procedures Act of 2005
With excited editorials in the New York Times and Washington Post announcing that a bill before the Senate Judiciary Committee will “gut the legal means by which prisoners prove their innocence,” it’s worth asking the following trivia question:
Q. Under the Streamlined Procedures Act of 2005, what is the minimum number of levels of judicial review a criminal defendant sentenced to death will have?
Events: N.Y. doctors, Ariz. lawyers
Last Monday I addressed Manhattan physicians at the annual meeting of the New York County Medical Society (more on its views). And this coming Friday I’ll be on a panel discussion at the annual meeting of the Arizona Bar Association in Tucson. If you’re interested in booking either Ted or me for appearances, just email.
“Which merger deals draw lawsuits?”
…asks Forbes. Its answer: “The ones that are sure to generate big fees, of course.” University of Arizona law professor Elliott Weiss and New York University economist Lawrence White studied lawsuits filed in Delaware Chancery Court over mergers of Delaware companies between 1999 and 2001. Of 564 mergers, 104 attracted lawsuits, and there was a pattern: the deals sued over “were among the largest, often involved all-cash offers and in more than half the cases the acquiring company owned stock in the firm it was buying.” As it happens, “Delaware law subjects cash takeovers and buyouts by controlling shareholders to much tougher scrutiny than most stock-swap mergers” and in such deals acquirers frequently anticipate negotiations with independent directors, and thus enter a somewhat lower initial bid to leave scope for concessions. It is common, however, for the lawyers who sue to wait for the deal price to rise and then claim credit for having made that happen, thus entitling them to compensation: “according to the study, they sought and got fees averaging $1,800 an hour in the cases where the price rose.” The authors “conclude that in many cases lawyers are ‘exploiting their “license to litigate” primarily to enrich themselves.'” (Daniel Fisher, “Free Riders”, Feb. 14).