- Souter’s middle-of-the-road views on litigation didn’t fit conventional patterns [Copland, PoL]
- Champerty and maintenance watch: new fund invests in commercial litigation for a share of the payouts [Fortune mag via Zywicki]
- Report: distributor of “Religulous” film “has served a written settlement proposal” to preacher depicted onscreen [OnPoint News, earlier]
- U.K.: “Homeowner Suit May Stop Village Cricket” [Telegraph via Never Yet Melted]
- Overlawyered sparks a discussion across usual lines on EMTALA, the federal law on emergency medicine [Kennerly]
- Federal Circuit: think twice before proceeding with frivolous appeals [David Bennett, Law.com]
- Father-son duo who have served as key expert witnesses in litigation alleging autism-vaccine link push risky and questionable therapy for the condition [Chicago Tribune and second article and PDF graphic via Orac; Kathleen Seidel]. Waste and harm that go on in the name of treating autism should give pause to many sides in health care debate [Tyler Cowen]
- One “deadbeat dad’s” story [Amy Alkon]. Forthcoming Lifetime reality show sounds like it will showcase harassment of fathers in child support arrears [Fathers and Families via Instapundit]
Posts Tagged ‘champerty’
Champerty watch: “Patent Pirates”
“Hedge funds and institutional investors are financing the latest wave of IP lawsuits. … Says Daniel McCurdy, a patent consultant in Warren, N.J., ‘They are the arms merchants in the new patent wars.'” (Nathan Vardi, Forbes, May 7). For more on champerty, a former offense at common law which consisted of financing the prosecution of a lawsuit in exchange for a share of the proceeds, follow this link.
January 26 roundup
- DOJ subpoenas of online-gambling firms spark UK outrage (Times Online)
- “Don’ts” for lawyers: don’t supplement your criminal-defense practice by running escort service on the side [NY Law Journal]
- Maternity-clothing retailer tripped up on pregnancy discrimination claim [Lenard]
- Filling out a Quicken-software will for an elderly client deemed “unauthorized practice of law” in South Carolina [McCullagh, Giacalone]
- Champerty ‘n’ maintenance update: New York courts allow suspended lawyer Ross Cellino [Jul. 15, 2005] to resume practice [Business First of Buffalo]
- Worried about long-dormant restitution or repatriation claims that might arise to put a cloud on your art holdings? Buy art-title insurance [Forbes pay archive]
- Snatching whole milk from schoolkids not such a great idea, maybe [Musil]
- Yes, let’s stop slamming lawyers for representing unpopular clients — and let’s start being consistent about it [Ted “no relation” Olson, Katyal via Adler]
- Pfizer sued on theory its frisky Viagra ads encourage spread of sexually transmitted diseases [AP/WaPo](complaint courtesy Slate)
- After his experiment in splitting up his blogs, Steve Bainbridge has reunited them again [ProfessorBainbridge.com]
- Remove Child Before Folding author Bob Dorigo Jones interviewed about wacky warnings (see Jan. 6, Jan. 12, etc.) [Illinois Review].
- Note: one item originally posted here [on air-show crash] removed as duplicative of one of Ted’s earlier.
He’s a doctor, a lawyer, and so much more
The Barnes Firm, formerly Cellino & Barnes, is a powerhouse in the personal-injury business in upstate New York, where it is a ubiquitous advertiser. According to the Buffalo News, it’s built one of the largest caseloads of Vioxx lawsuits in the nation by hawking its star attorney, Brian A. Goldstein, who in television ads
described how he was uniquely qualified to represent Vioxx users. Not only was he a personal injury lawyer, he told viewers, he was a former physician and board-certified surgeon….
The lawsuits accuse the drug’s maker, Merck & Co., with failing to tell patients the whole truth about Vioxx.
Goldstein, though, appears guilty of the same charge about his medical background. Georgia’s Composite State Board of Medical Examiners revoked Goldstein’s license to practice medicine on Jan. 10, 1991.
Goldstein was found guilty of providing Georgia licensing authorities with misleading and incomplete information about his education, according to records obtained by The Buffalo News. The licensing board found that Goldstein:
• Attended college and medical school at the same time in the Dominican Republic.
• Graduated from medical school less than three years after he graduated from high school.
• Received credit for courses he had not taken, had not completed or failed.
• Said he attended Tulane University when he had not, falsified his earlier training and submitted a false letter of recommendation for a residency at the Manhattan Psychiatric Center.
The hearing officer in Georgia not only recommended revocation but also said the decision should be published “as a public reprimand for [Goldstein] for his conduct.”
But none of that information was mentioned in the Vioxx ads, or in Goldstein’s biography on The Barnes Firm Web site.
The Buffalo News investigation includes various defenses of his conduct offered by Goldstein, including the following:
He also said Georgia authorities failed to consider the fact he had received an undergraduate degree from Empire State College.
The News confirmed that degree from the college, which grants degrees based on life experience as well as academic studies. But the degree was granted in 1988, three years after Georgia filed charges against him.
The newspaper asks medical ethicist Arthur Caplan about Goldstein’s “selective use of parts of his medical background to recruit legal clients”. Caplan’s response: “I think it’s sleazy”. (Michael Beebe, “Did Barnes Firm lawyer tell the whole truth?”, Buffalo News, Jan. 22). Carolyn Elefant comments at My Shingle (Jan. 22), and the incident also stirs memories for blogger Gina at Together Again (Jan. 23). The law firm of Cellino & Barnes has figured in these pages before: see Jul. 15, 2005.
“Lawyer sanctioned in Holocaust suit”
Yes, it’s Ed Fagan again. This time the much-publicized reparations impresario “has been hit with sanctions that will run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars for his handling of a lawsuit seeking recovery from an Austrian bank of the value of artwork looted by the Nazis. Employing unusually harsh language, Southern District of New York Judge Shirley Wohl Kram assessed attorney fees against [Fagan], and also fined him $5,000, finding he had committed champerty and misled her.” (Daniel Wise, New York Law Journal, Aug. 23). For Fagan’s earlier misadventures, see Jun. 4 and many links from there.
Champerty and maintenance watch
The law firm of Cellino & Barnes bills itself as the largest personal injury firm in western New York, and the “faces of [name partners Ross M.] Cellino and [Stephen E.] Barnes grace a reported 150 billboards across upstate New York. The attorneys’ names and likenesses frame their phone number and the one-word question ‘Injured?'” However, the firm has now gotten itself into hot water: an appellate panel has suspended Cellino and censured Barnes for, among other infractions, “advancing financial assistance to clients that was unrelated to the expenses of litigation”.
The unanimous five-judge panel found that Cellino and Barnes advanced financial assistance to clients beyond the expenses of litigation and, when they subsequently became aware that such actions violated the disciplinary rules, “arranged for the establishment of, funded and controlled [a] company owned by respondent Cellino’s cousin and that they did so in order to continue loaning money to clients.”
At common law, champerty (supplying clients with money in exchange for a share in the action) and maintenance (supplying them with money in order to keep their lawsuits going) were both offenses, but the prohibitions have tended to fall into disuse or to be repealed outright in recent times. On champerty, see Jun. 19, 2005, Jun. 27, 2004, Oct. 25, 2003, and this excerpt from The Litigation Explosion. (Mark Fass, “Bad Lawyer, No Billboard”, New York Law Journal, Jun. 14; Michael Ziegler, “Cellino & Barnes leaders punished”, Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, Jun. 11; Rick Pfeiffer, “Lawyers Cellino and Barnes found guilty of violating conduct code”, Tonawanda News, Jun. 11). More on the Barnes law firm: Jan. 31, 2006.
Update: staking the Shinnecocks
On the day the Shinnecock Indian tribe filed the first of an expected series of lawsuits laying claim to wide swaths of the Hamptons (see Jun. 13), the tribe disclosed that its courtroom offensive was being underwritten by wealthy Detroit casino investors Marian Ilitch, who with her husband Michael founded Little Caesars Pizza and since then has gone on to purchase baseball’s Detroit Tigers as well as the city’s Red Wings hockey team, and real estate developer Michael Malik. “Gateway Funding Associates, a company backed by [Ilitch and Malik], signed an agreement with the tribe more than a year ago to pay for the lawsuit and other ‘economic development’ initiatives in exchange for a part of any future proceeds, said Tom Shields, a spokesman for Gateway.” Champerty has been defined as the practice of aiding in a lawsuit in return for a share in the benefits being sued over; it was illegal at common law but “the prohibitions have been greatly relaxed in modern times” and in some cases abolished. (Katie Thomas, “Shinnecocks launch legal claim to Hamptons land”, Newsday, Jun. 16; “Lawsuit backers invest in casinos” (sidebar), Jun. 16; James Langton, “Native American tribe lays claim to the Hamptons”, Sunday Telegraph (U.K.), Jun. 19).
Update: Forbes on Lodi mess
Champerty in the suites: “Lehman Brothers’ hopes of underwriting some juicy tort litigation crashed badly, leaving behind the toxic residue of avarice and gullibility.” Forbes examines one California town’s “man-made legal disaster”, a saga previously covered in our posts of Jan. 12, Jan. 17 and May 8 (Scott Woolley, “Municipal bombs”, Forbes, Jun. 21).
Update: lawsuit-funding cos. shun Ohio
Lawsuit-funding companies, which advance litigants cash in exchange for a share of the eventual booty, have apparently departed the state of Ohio since a decision this summer by the Ohio Supreme Court (see Aug. 4) finding that such activities violate a 180-year-old state law against champerty and permit intermeddlers to “gorge upon the fruits of litigation”. “Several states, including Massachusetts, New Hampshire and South Carolina, have lifted their prohibitions against the practice. At least 100 lawsuit-funding companies have emerged nationwide since 1998 when Perry Walton, a litigation-finance pioneer from Nevada, started holding seminars to teach other entrepreneurs how to make money by doing what some critics say is akin to betting on lawsuits.” (“Lawsuit-funding companies avoid Ohio after court ruling”, AP/Miami Herald, Oct. 1)(more on champerty, from The Litigation Explosion).
Litigation finance runs afoul of champerty doctrine
Opining that “a lawsuit is not an investment vehicle,” the Ohio Supreme Court has ruled that a personal injury plaintiff who settled her case for $100,000 “need not honor a contract that required her to pay nearly $20,000” to a Nevada-based litigation finance company and an Ohio broker. What’s more, plaintiff Roberta Rancman is not required to return the $8,800 advanced to her by the two companies. A National Law Journal article takes a look at the litigation finance industry, in which “financiers typically offer cash advances to plaintiffs who might be out of work because of an injury or otherwise unable to meet their daily living expenses. The financiers get back their advance, not to mention a usually quite substantial premium, only if the suit leads to a settlement or an award.” (See Gary Young, “Two setbacks for lawsuit financing,” The Nat’l Law Journal, July 28). Update Oct. 25: litigation-finance firms pull out of Ohio after ruling.