The Supreme Court of Canada has unanimously upheld a law enacted by the province of British Columbia which announces a retroactive right to recoup from tobacco companies money spent on illnesses due to smoking. (commentary: Edmonton Sun, Ezra Levant). Canada thus becomes the first country to emulate the principle announced by state attorneys general in the U.S., which culminated in the notorious $246 billion state-tobacco settlement. As parents used to say: if you saw your friend jump off a cliff, would you do that too? (cross-posted from Point of Law)
Posts Tagged ‘attorneys general’
Busybody Tennessee AG vs. Gretchen Wilson
Tennessee attorney general Paul Summers sent a warning letter (PDF) to country music star Gretchen Wilson (“Redneck Woman”) demanding that she stop pulling a can of Skoal smokeless tobacco out of her pocket on the concert stage; she’d been waving the can to illustrate a song about the “Skoal ring” outline in the back pocket of a pair of jeans. Summers’s letter invoked the 1998 multistate tobacco settlement, although neither Wilson nor her concert venues ever signed that agreement or could be in any way bound by it; it went on to insinuate that Skoal’s manufacturer had procured her “promotion” of the product, an insinuation that turned out to be quite false, the singer’s representative explaining that she had had no dealings with the company. Nonetheless, perhaps fearful of suffering the fate of the much-boycotted Dixie Chicks, Wilson capitulated instantly and promised not to display the tin on stage any more, whereupon Summers expressed satisfaction (PDF) and called her a “good citizen”. Had the object of suppression been something other than tobacco, do you think by now we might have heard any outcry about artistic freedom or musicians’ rights of expression? (“Country singer Gretchen Wilson asked to keep smokeless tobacco in back pocket”, AP/CourtTV, Aug. 29; Gail Kerr, “Wilson put quick stop to spat over Skoal”, Aug. 31; CommonsBlog, Aug. 27; Nick Gillespie and Jacob Sullum, Reason “Hit and Run”, Aug. 29.) More: Will Wilson comments at the AEI Federalism Project’s AG Watch (Aug. 29).
Flood damage excluded? Pay anyway
Standard homeowners’ policies exclude coverage of flood damage unless it is purchased at a substantial additional premium, a fact well known to most property owners in high-risk areas. Mississippi lawyer Dickie Scruggs, a familiar figure to readers of this space, had the foresight to purchase flood insurance for his Pascagoula home, now partly destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Now he wants the world’s insurers to pay billions for the properties they didn’t collect a premium for insuring, as well — perhaps scores of billions, if the principle is to extend to Louisiana. “Mr. Scruggs said he plans to urge Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood to try to override flood-exclusion clauses in homeowners’ policies in that state in the interest of public policy, a move that could force insurers to pay many billions more toward rebuilding costs.” (Theo Francis, John D. McKinnon and Peter Sanders, “Paying for Flood Damage Looms as Big Challenge”, WSJ, Sept. 8)(sub). An operative with the Mississippi Trial Lawyers Association says he hopes that “people on the Coast and their friends statewide ratchet up the political pressure” to make the insurers pay. (Anita Lee, “Claims Dispute”, Biloxi Sun-Herald, Sept. 9). Megan McArdle thinks it’s all a brilliant way to scare insurers away from offering even conventional coverage in the future (Sept. 8). See also Point of Law, Sept. 9. More: Martin Grace Sept. 8, Sept. 8 again, Sept. 13.
Gasoline prices spike
You’d think one advantage of electing a Texas oil guy as president would be that, when prices at the pump react to a genuinely massive supply disruption as supply and demand predict they will, he’d know better than to direct public anger toward the ill-defined offense of “price gouging”. Apparently you’d be wrong, though:
“I think there ought to be zero tolerance of people breaking the law during an emergency such as this -– whether it be looting, or price gouging at the gasoline pump, or taking advantage of charitable giving or insurance fraud,” Bush said. “And I’ve made that clear to our attorney general. The citizens ought to be working together.”
(Adam Nossiter, “More National Guardsmen are sent in”, AP/San Diego Union-Tribune, Sept. 1). More: Mark Kleiman got there first (Sept. 1)(via Julian Sanchez). See also Dan Mitchell of Heritage at C-Log (Aug. 31). And Don Boudreaux, after thanking Hawaiian pols, wonders (Aug. 29):
Would it make sense to haul before Congress a group of real-estate agents, or a few homeowners, or some home-builders to accuse them publicly of causing the recent surge in real-estate prices?
Yet more, this time from Jane Galt (Sept. 1): “Prices of everything rise after a disaster, and a good thing too, since that encourages people and material to flood into the damaged area, where they’re needed most.”
“Doctor in trouble for calling patient obese”
By popular demand: the New Hampshire Board of Medicine is asking the attorney general’s office to investigate a complaint by a woman that Dr. Terry Bennett told her she was obese. Because the complaint is confidential, and news coverage has only told Bennett’s version of the story, there may be more to this tale than the seemingly absurd situation of possible government sanction for providing truthfully blunt and important health information to a patient suffering from a potentially life-threatening condition. But if the reporting is accurate, it would seem to be another piece of evidence that contradicts the frequent excuse of tort-reform opponents that aggressive medical malpractice lawsuits are needed to compensate for under-vigilant medical boards. (AP/MSNBC, Aug. 24).
Multistate tobacco settlement
The Competitive Enterprise Institute is launching a legal action challenging it as unconstitutional, and also has put up a website on attorney general activism which assails the “Government-Tobacco Cartel” established by the settlement. (Alan Sayre, “Lawsuit: Deal has created tobacco cartel”, AP/Biloxi Sun-Herald, Aug. 3; press release/complaint in PDF format). We’ve been covering the story for years (see Feb. 15 and Jun. 3, 2005; Feb. 28 and May 11, 2004, etc., as well as Chapter 1 (“The Joy of Tobacco Fees”) of The Rule of Lawyers). More: and here’s a column by Jonathan Rauch (“Can A Little Lawsuit Shut Down A Big Tobacco Racket?”, National Journal, Aug. 5, will rotate off soon), on which Eugene Volokh’s readers comment.
Update: Larry Klayman and respectability
Litigious gadfly Larry Klayman (Apr. 16-17, 2002), having cut a rare publicity swath filing mostly long-shot legal actions against both the Clinton and Bush administrations, is now setting up a Florida office on behalf of a more conventional-seeming law firm, Cleveland, Ohio-based Walter & Haverfield. (Jessica M. Walker, “Ohio Firm Taps Judicial Watch’s Klayman for Miami Launch”, Daily Business Review, Jul. 15). For more on Klayman, see Jacob Weisberg, “Nut Watch”, Slate, Jun. 6, 1998 (sues own mother), Curmudgeonly Clerk, Sept. 23, 2003 (similar). But at least Alan Keyes admires him (Timothy Noah, “Larry Klayman for Attorney General”, Slate, Jan. 24, 2000).
Also at Point of Law
Along with a great deal of other discussion of the John Roberts nomination (for which see the site’s special Supreme Court nominations page), Point of Law has kicked off a featured discussion of the confirmation saga by two distinguished contributors, U. of Chicago lawprof Richard Epstein and Northwestern lawprof Stephen Presser (more).
Some other recent highlights at the site: Jim Copland and Jonathan Wilson on the Texas Merck trial, Wilson on Georgia’s new rule regarding “offers of judgment”, and posts from me on an expansion of ADA coverage, school finance suits, the retention by Oklahoma’s attorney general of private tort lawyers to sue chicken farmers in nearby Arkansas, an appeals court approves RICO suits against employers of illegal aliens, health care qui tam actions, the “cab-rank” principle in legal ethics (observed more in Britain than here), and Astroturf in the liability wars.
Utah tax refund class action
Echoes of California’s celebrated smog-fee affair:
A class-action lawsuit seeking refunds for 120,000 Utahns wrongly charged millions of dollars in sales taxes for floor coverings and installation has been criticized as a full-retirement plan for lawyers rather than a boon to consumers.
That is because the erroneously taxed consumers could have gotten a full refund — simply by calling the Utah State Tax Commission and making a claim.
“There was no need for a class-action lawsuit,” said Assistant Attorney General Clark Snelson, who represented the Utah State Tax Commission in litigation against challenging the tax collections. “Individuals had the ability to come to the Tax Commission to get their refund, which made the lawsuit unnecessary.”
Under the terms of the settlement, “half of the $5.7 million settlement goes to plaintiffs’ attorneys and investigators”. (Dawn House, “Was tax refund lawsuit needed?”, Salt Lake Tribune, Jun. 30).
Update: duPont, R.I. settle paint case
Although the giant chemical company refuses to characterize it as a settlement, duPont has agreed to donate $10 million or more toward education, research, and the cost of lead remediation for 600 homes in exchange for being dropped from Rhode Island’s action. Other defendants that remain in the case are Sherwin Williams Co., NL Industries Inc., Atlantic Richfield Co., Millennium Holdings LLC, American Cyanamid Co. and ConAgra Inc. A lawsuit filed by the state’s former attorney general against the manufacturers ended in a hung jury in Providence in 2002; a new trial is set for September. The product has not been sold for interior use in this country in approximately a half century. (“DuPont settles for millions in Rhode Island suit on lead paint”, AP/USA Today, Jun. 30). For our coverage of the case and the controversy generally, see this set of links. Courts have dismissed a number of other lawsuits seeking to impose financial responsibility for lead-paint-related woes on paint and pigment makers, including suits filed by the cities of Chicago (see Oct. 13, 2003) and Milwaukee (see Aug. 3, 2003). Update: Point of Law, Sept. 13, 2006 (controversy over donations).