Major news on the asbestos front: the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, one of the most powerful prosecutorial offices in the country, has convened a grand jury to probe allegations of fraud in the mass prosecution of silica and asbestos claims in Texas and elsewhere. In recent court proceedings in Corpus Christi, doctors admitted that they had never met or interviewed claimants for whom they had provided written diagnoses of silicosis, often after the same claimants had been accorded diagnoses of asbestosis. Federal judge Janis Graham Jack said one doctor’s testimony was raising “great red flags of fraud”. (Jonathan D. Glater, “Civil Suits Over Silica in Texas Become a Criminal Matter in New York”, New York Times, May 18). Ted Frank has been following the developing story in detail at Point of Law: Feb. 2, Feb. 17, Feb. 27, Mar. 2, Mar. 14, Mar. 16, Mar. 21, and other entries on that site’s asbestos page. This site’s product liability page has also extensively covered dubious litigation of this sort (examples: Jan. 21 and Aug. 5, 2004, Sept. 13 and Nov. 12, 2003 and earlier items).
Posts Tagged ‘asbestos’
Knight Center seminar
Yesterday, I had the honor and pleasure of debating Professor Jonathan Turley on litigation reform issues at a Knight Center seminar on “Law and the Courts” in front of a few dozen journalists. Some of the topics we and the audience questioners touched upon all too briefly there merit follow-up in a forum where citations are easier.
Overlawyered posted on the drunk driving car window case we discussed.
In “The Myth of the Ford Pinto Case”, 43 Rutgers L. Rev. 1013 (1991), Gary Schwartz demonstrates that the Pinto’s safety record was comparable to other cars of the era, and that the Mother Jones prediction of hundreds of deaths was wildly off. This site’s editor’s articles, “It Didn’t Start With Dateline NBC” and “Exposing the ‘Experts’ Behind the Sexy Exposés: How Networks Get Duped by Dubious Advocates” are both good reading for more on the Pinto legend and on the topic of lawyers’ attempts to manipulate the media.
There appears to be a tradition that no litigation reform debate can be held without reference to the McDonald’s coffee case. The fact that Professor Turley defends this verdict (and presumably teaches the same to his Torts students) shows that this ten-year-old case is still relevant. The much-better reasoned McMahon v. Bunn-O-Matic threw out a lawsuit with an identical theory of liability for third-degree coffee burns in one’s lap. Professor Turley attacked the decision on the ad hominem grounds that Judge Easterbrook is conservative, but if that were so, one could presumably point to the part of the opinion infected by political bias, and I have yet to see anyone do so.
Professor Turley claims the urban legend of the lawsuit involving the guy who used a lawn mower as a hedge-clipper has infected the tort debate, but a Google search shows that the vast majority of references on the web to this story come from reprints of Turley’s article on the subject. I’d like to see a source for Professor Turley’s claim that this anecdote is taught in law schools; when I was in law school in 1992, the tale wasn’t treated as anything other than an urban legend, as one Chicago 1L shared with the pre-blog Internet urban folklore group. One columnist who didn’t fact-check before passing on e-mail glurge doth not a trend make.
There were a lot of questions about asbestos litigation; Jim Copland’s short overview on the topic is a good starting place, with many links to more detailed analyses.
I disagree with Professor Turley’s claim that medical malpractice rates would go down if there was “experience rating”, mostly because it appears that the malpractice liability system in place today is sufficiently random that past claims are not a good predictor of future claims. (Raymond Lehmann, “Medical-Liability Debate Puts Rate-Setting Complexities Under Microscope”, BestWire, Feb. 22 ($)). I’ve elsewhere commented sardonically on the claims that insurance industry incompetence is the reason behind the malpractice crisis.
Batch of reader letters
We’ve just added four more entries to our stack of reader correspondence, which constitutes its own page with a blog-like format. Among topics this time are high-speed cop chases; a reader asks equal time to bash defense lawyers; step right up and grab your class action prizes, advises a garish GoogleAd; and a family’s pipe and valve distribution business gets caught in the asbestos-litigation snare.
Browbeating the other side’s lawyer?
It’s really important to make sure things have gone off the record and that the deposition transcript isn’t still running, especially if you’re going to threaten bodily harm (Kelly-Moore Paint Co. motion for sanctions against Eric Birge of Brent Coon & Associates in a Texas asbestos case (PDF))(courtesy Evan Schaeffer, who comments).
Welcome Baltimore Sun readers
On Thursday the Baltimore Sun quoted me saying unflattering things about Stephen L. Snyder, the successful local attorney who’s taken out very costly ads ostensibly aimed at attracting a $1 billion case (see Feb. 16). I said Snyder has probably has made it onto the Top Ten list of tasteless lawyer-advertisers, having particularly in mind the cheesy way his website flips off would-be clients whose cases, however meritorious, lack a big enough payoff (Jennifer McMenamin, “In search of a $1 billion case, fielding 100 calls”, Baltimore Sun, Feb. 16)(reg). A week earlier the same paper quoted me commenting on the likely impact on civil litigation of a federal grand jury’s indictment of the W.R. Grace Co. and seven of its current or former executives; the charges arise from the widely publicized exposure of townspeople and others to asbestos hazards from the company’s vermiculite mine at Libby, Montana. (William Patalon III, “Grace’s plight made worse”, Feb. 9).
And: Rob Asghar of the Ashland (Ore.) Daily Tidings devoted two recent columns to the problem of overlawyering and was kind enough to quote my opinions (“Law and disorder”, part 1 (Feb. 7) and part 2 (Feb. 14)). NYC councilman David Yassky, sponsor of the let’s-sue-over-guns ordinance that I criticized in the New York Times two weeks ago (see Feb. 6), responds today with a letter to the editor defending the legislation (Feb. 20). My Manhattan Institute colleague Jim Copland, writing in the Washington Times on the passage of the Class Action Fairness Act, quotes my Feb. 11 post on the subject (“Tort tax cut”, Feb. 15). Finally, the New York Sun covers a recent Institute luncheon at which I introduced ABC’s John Stossel (Robert E. Sullivan, “John Stossel Chides the ‘Liberal’ Press for Spinelessness”, Feb. 9)(sub-$).
“The ad FOX won’t run”
If you’ve spend much time browsing weblogs lately, you’ve probably noticed the near-ubiquitous blog ad, placed by a trial-lawyer-allied group, complaining that Rupert’s minions won’t air their broadcast commercial supportive of medical malpractice suits. But the blog ad conceals a rather significant fact about the controversy, as I point out at Point of Law this morning. Lots of other good new stuff there too, including Ted on revelations of silica/asbestos double-dipping; a new column by Stuart Taylor, Jr. critical of the tort reform ideas popular at the moment in Congress (Jim Copland summarizes); welcoming a new weblog on international law; Vioxx and the quest for “smoking guns”; a P.R. exec is chosen to head ATLA; and Ted on historic preservation.
In Texas
I’m off to Austin where I’ll take part in a panel discussion on asbestos reform tomorrow (Thurs.) at the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s third annual policy orientation for the state legislature, an event that I understand is sold out. Any posting before Friday will be from Ted.
Update: Miss. high court tosses $150M asbestos award
In a sign of changing times at the Mississippi Supreme Court, the court’s justices by a 5-2 verdict threw out a much-criticized $150 million award to six asbestos claimants whom defense attorneys said were hardly sick at all (Feb. 23, 2004). “The Holmes County jury awarded identical amounts of $25 million each to the six, despite ‘different work histories, different exposures and different diagnoses,’ Justice George C. Carlson Jr. wrote…. Justices Chuck Easley and James Graves dissented without writing separate opinions. Justices Mike Randolph and Oliver Diaz Jr. did not participate.” The court had been known for its willingness to approve unusual jury awards, but voters in the Magnolia State recently defeated the trial-lawyer-backed chief justice in his bid for re-election.
The ruling was also a huge victory for the 3M company, whose masks the plaintiff’s lawyers had assailed as insufficiently protective (see Sept. 25 for many details), and which had chosen to appeal the $150 million verdict (other defendants settled); the six plaintiffs “testified they hardly had worn the 3M masks”, and, wrote Carlson, “no plaintiff provided any evidence that he was exposed to asbestos while wearing a 3M product.” (Jerry Mitchell, “$150M injury ruling tossed”, Jackson Clarion-Ledger, Jan. 21).
Welcome newspaper readers
Catching up on some overdue thanks to newspaper reporters and contributors who’ve mentioned this site, quoted me, or done both in the past few months (several of them, alas, without currently active links):
* David Boaz, “New York’s Big Think”, New York Post, Dec. 5 (an excellent piece on the Manhattan Institute);
* Jon Robins, “A pair of lawyers who could change the world”, The Times (London), Nov. 2 (on John Edwards’s debate performance);
* Itai Maytal, “Too Early To Give Up on Edwards’s Star”, New York Sun, Nov. 4 (on Edwards’s prospects on departing the U.S. Senate);
* Heidi J. Shrager, “State’s law guardian system in need of overhaul”, Staten Island Advance, Sept. 28 (on the need for reform of New York’s law guardian system, under which lawyers are appointed to represent the interests of minors and others not able to look out for themselves);
* Kate Coscarelli, “Police protect, serve — and sue”, Newark Star-Ledger, Sept. 12, reprinted at Wilentz, Goldman & Spitzer site (on legal doctrines allowing police officers injured in the course of their duties to sue allegedly negligent private parties (see Aug. 31);
* David Isaac, “USG Corp.: Election And Elation For Wallboard Maker”, Investor’s Business Daily, Nov. 5 (on post-election prospects for asbestos legislation);
* Ed Wallace, “Wheels: You Can Fool Some of the People…”, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Oct. 3 (on network crash-test journalism).
For other press mentions, check our “About the site” page.
Judicial Hellholes III Report
The American Tort Reform Association today released its third annual Judicial Hellholes report — ATRA’s report on the worst court systems in the United States where “‘Equal Justice Under Law’ does not exist.”
Here is the press release from ATRA. The highlights, including the top nine worst areas (seven counties and two regions — all of West Virginia and all of South Florida) and a salute to Mississippi for its tremendous and far-reaching tort reforms are on this page. The full report is in PDF format here.
But there may yet be hope: