The Tennessee Supreme Court confirms that lawyers in that state may publish potentially defamatory material outside the courtroom provided they are acting in quest of an “identifiable prospective client”. The case was filed by a screw maker against a law firm whose client-trolling website had asserted that the company’s deck screws were “defectively manufactured”. Without determining whether the phrase was defamatory, the court ruled that even if it was, the manufacturer would be afforded no legal remedy. (Day on Torts, Aug. 21; Simpson Strong-Tie Company v. Stewart, Estes, & Donnell, Aug. 20 (PDF)).
Posts Tagged ‘chasing clients’
Great moments in attorney advertising
David Lat, er, profiles the marketing efforts of attorney and reggae musician Peter “P’Ta Mon” John, who calls himself “The Thugs [sic] Lawyer,” and has a toll-free number with the five-letter combo “NOT ME.”
Chasing I-35W bridge clients
While “the divers are still in the river looking”:
Omar Jamal of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center in Minneapolis said he has received at least a dozen telephone calls from law firms, most of them local, since it became public knowledge that a pregnant Somali woman, Sadiya Sahal, and her 2-year-old daughter, Hanah Mohamed, were among those missing after the collapse.
The calls started coming about 4 p.m. Thursday, less than 24 hours after the collapse, and haven’t stopped, Jamal said. Some of the attorneys have asked for telephone numbers and other personal information about Sahal’s family, Jamal said.
“This is the worst form of ambulance-chasing,” Jamal said. “The divers are still in the river looking, and the attorneys keep calling us.”
(Chris Serres and Matt McKinney, “Question of liability rises”, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Aug. 8)(via Ambrogi who got it from Minnesota Lawyer Blog).
“Unique opportunity” for restaurant ex-employees
The Craigslist ad doesn’t mention that the opportunity would involve suing L.A.’s Patina Group over break-time violations. (Eater L.A., Aug. 2).
A bridge too far
In case you were wondering, the first trial lawyer Google ad soliciting clients relating to the Minneapolis bridge collapse is already up — indeed, was up as of last night. Makes me proud to be a lawyer.
William Shatner lawyer ads
Could Star Trek’s Captain Kirk, more recently a success in “Boston Legal”, actually be in enough need of work to do low-budget ads like this? Apparently so.
Chasing mosh pit victims?
Avandia-suit spam
Unsolicited email is beginning to arrive in people’s inboxes soliciting clients to sue over the Glaxo SmithKline diabetes drug, Avandia. Bill Childs has more, as does Eric Turkewitz, who observes that no law firm is named in the ad, and proposes a course of action:
Figuring out which law firms have hired the spammer should be easy for an enterprising citizen-journalist, simply by filling out the form at the website that TortsProf linked to and waiting to see who calls or emails in response. Then publish the names online for the world to see.
Things might not be that simple, however. As earlier cases of spam of this sort indicate, such emails are typically sent by a middleman who assembles “leads” and then offers them for sale to actual law firms. The middleman, not being a lawyer, will claim not to be bound by bar rules against solicitation, while the law firms that buy the leads (if confronted on the matter) may or may not disclaim any knowledge of how the leads were generated. They’ll probably deny having hired an agent with instructions to send spam; but if someone happened to run a spam campaign just before selling them names, well, that’s not their doing, is it? So the New York bar-ethics rules are circumvented in perfect safety by all concerned, or so it would seem. Earlier: Jan. 8, 2006, Jan. 5, 2005, Mar. 29-31, 2002.
Scrap over “bandaged-client” graphic
Not just promotional and eye-catching, but creative and artistic too: “A New York lawyer who used a cartoon image of a heavily bandaged patient to advertise his personal injury practice may be entitled to copyright protection for the drawing, a federal judge has ruled.” Richard P. Neimark of Rockland County (toll-free number: 1-888-PAL-RICH) had been using the picture of a bandaged patient lying in a hospital bed in Yellow Pages ads and on his website and had even gone so far as to register it with the U.S. Copyright Office in 1990, so you can imagine his annoyance when a personal injury firm with an office in nearby White Plains, Ronai and Ronai, adapted the drawing for its own ad, later saying it thought the drawing was in the public domain. A federal judge has urged the parties to settle, noting that the Ronai firm had pulled down the graphic immediately and that no evidence had been presented of any actual injury. (Anthony Lin, “Copyright Infringement Suit Over Lawyer’s Advertising Cartoon Continues”, New York Law Journal, Jun. 11).
Spoof of “The Hammer” TV ads
It seems those Jim (“The Hammer”) Shapiro TV ads (Feb. 6, Mar. 7, Apr. 9), in which the ethically-challenged former Rochester attorney rants in manic style as explosions and other violent footage roll in the background, have inspired parodies on YouTube. The one above, featuring “Jack (The Hammer) Shapiro”, is from Canada-based DevoImprov; a second parody of a more homemade texture can be found here.