Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘chasing clients’

Mobile lawyer van on “ER”

Readers may remember our item last May 18 about the mobile law office van spotted parked outside the emergency room at Brooklyn’s Maimonides Medical Center. Now Dr. Steven Davidson, whose EMedConcepts blog ran the original photos of the van, reports as follows (Jan. 19):

ER: Season 11, Episode 177861, 1/20/2005

[ . . . ]

A personal injury lawyer sets up a mobile office outside the ER, infuriating Lewis as he tries to turn dissatisfied patients into clients.

[ . . . ]

It turns out that the post on the Mobile Lawyer who showed up at our hospital and ER last spring caught some notice in the blogosphere. Overlawyered picked up the post and I had thousands of hits in a few days. A colleague referred another contact and somehow the story reached the writing staff at the ER production company to appear in the fictionalized version on tomorrow’s show [i.e. yesterday’s — W.O.]. Imagine that.

(via SymTym).

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Vioxx-suit spam

The first three instances I’ve seen of spam promoting Vioxx litigation crossed my desk Dec. 28. The three emails used different names as the supposed sender, different “word salad” strings (“celandine bolshoi mandamus buckley tetragonal malleable”) aimed at baffling spam filters, and different subject lines (“Been hurt by Vii0xx? – Claim #565014”, “Make your claim against Vii0xx and Merck – Claim #206614”, and “Get what you deserve from Vii0xx and Merck – Claim #4978”). However, all three were evidently from the same sender, since they all contained the same core message: “Merck & Co., Inc. announced a voluntary withdrawal of Vii0xx from the U.S. and worldwide market due to safety concerns of an increased risk of cardiovascular events (including heart attack and stroke) in patients on Vii0xx. If you or a family member has experienced an adverse cardiovascular event after taking Vii0xx, please file your claim at:…” followed by links to one of two (apparently identical) websites at http://www.worldwideteamwork.com/notice and http://www.whereitallhappens.com/notice .

And what of this website to which spam-responders are steered? It contains no ads; it does contain some standard-looking information about the drug recall; but its main purpose appears to be to get persons interested in pursuing Vioxx claims to submit their names and contact information. A subpage (http://www.worldwideteamwork.com/notice/how_to_file.htm) announces, “Simply fill out the form below and a lawyer will immediately contact you to determine whether your claim will meet the necessary requirements.” Perhaps the creators of the site believe they can find lawyers willing to pay for leads generated that way, or are already in touch with such lawyers. According to Forbes (David Whelan, “Ambulance Chasing, Web-Style”, Dec. 27, at KeepMedia), lawyers are paying up to $15.03 for each clicked-on ad with a Vioxx keyword at Yahoo’s search engine, and $30.17 for a “Vioxx heart attack” click.

For the recent controversy over the “Get your million dollars” Vioxx website, which was much more lurid in content but whose proprietor was not alleged to have dabbled in spam, see Nov. 15, Nov. 18 and Dec. 22.

P.S. Reader Keith Williams writes to say that according to a WHOIS search, the web sites www.worldwideteamwork.com and www.whereitallhappens.com, mentioned above, are owned by the same registrant, Riverside News of Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.

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“Get your million dollars” Vioxx site, cont’d

Law.com’s The Recorder reports that some in the plaintiff’s bar are understandably upset that Google’s ad program placed their firms’ ads on the lurid site discussed in this space Nov. 15 and Nov. 18. “The ‘million dollars’ site ‘is patently sleazy, but the question is whether it violates the ethics rules,’ said Richard Zitrin, an ethics specialist and partner with Zitrin & Mastromonaco who advises plaintiff firms. ‘I think it’s unethical. And I’m a free-speechist on this.'” Lawyers with Lieff Cabraser and Schneider & Wallace also deemed the site unethical. Others, as in earlier rounds of the brouhaha, complained that too much attention was being paid to the page, including a mention by Sen. Orrin Hatch at a Senate hearing. (Justin Scheck, “Vioxx Web Site Has Law Firms Outraged”, The Recorder, Nov. 30). And in a dispatch a week later, the same reporter found that law-firm ads had been removed from the site and replaced with public service ads (“Controversial Web Site Drops Lawyer Ads”, Dec. 6).

More: David Giacalone, guestblogging at RiskProf, has news of more developments, including a substantial rewrite of the site (Dec. 26).

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America’s worst export?

One of the reasons that The Monk supported the revolutionary and quite extensive tort reform that the Texas Legislature passed last year (commonly still known as “House Bill 4”) is that trial lawyers have a tremendous capacity to find ways to, er, protect their clients’ interests no matter how many pathways to victory, loopholes in previous laws or damage caps are put in place.

And this ingenuity is being exported from US courts to international tribunals. As James Pinkerton’s column notes, “the trial lawyers, entrepreneurial as always, have found new courts – world courts – to play in. And they have found allies among activists and fortune-hunters who dismiss traditional democracy and diplomacy in pursuit of their goals.”

Yipes.

UPDATE: for more on the Inuit lawsuit noted in Pinkerton’s column, check out Point of Law’s item noted by this site’s editor here. For those of you just tuning in, Point of Law is Overlawyered’s companion site that (as its own description states) “is a web magazine sponsored by the Manhattan Institute that brings together information and opinion on the U.S. litigation system.”

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Tasteful lawyer-ad Hall of Fame

In 2001 Brookman, a law firm in London, ran ads in the men’s bathrooms of pubs soliciting divorce business with a picture of a packed suitcase and the slogan “Ditch the bitch”. The Advertising Standards Agency later ruled against a complaint that the ad was offensive and encouraged divorce. Defenders of the law firm pointed out that it was evenhanded and also solicited women’s business with ads saying bad things about men. (“Dump the chump…”, Lawyers Weekly Australia, Aug. 19, 2004; account of controversy at ad agency site; Scott Norvell, “Tongue Tied”, FoxNews.com, May 21, 2001).

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Willie Gary marketing tactics

There is, perhaps, a niche of personal injury clients for whom an ostentatious display of personal wealth and a video with the theme from “Rocky” and a Michael Buffer impersonator narrator will be especially persuasive. If so, attorney Willie Gary (Jan. 7, Dec. 23) has that market sewn up (streaming Windows Media). Do not stare directly at the light coming out of Willie Gary’s right hand in the photo next to that of the private jet. (via Schaeffer)

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Coors shareholder? Operators are standing by

“A New York-based class-action law firm is trolling the Internet for Coors shareholders concerned that they will be financially hurt by the company’s proposed marriage to Molson.” Manhattan attorneys Ronen Sarraf and Joseph Gentile posted a message on a Yahoo financial urging “upset Coors shareholders to send their grievance to an e-mail address. The message goes on to say: ‘An attorney will get in touch with you.'” The message boards “can be a good place to win business, [Sarraf] said. … ‘As for intensifying any dislike the public has against lawyers, there is very little one can do about that'”. (Tom McGhee, “Lawyers on Net seek investors worried by deal”, Denver Post, Jul. 27)(via Colorado Civil Justice League).

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“1-800-I-GOT-HIT”

Pittsburgh:

That Rolls Royce Phantom in the Grant Street Lawyers Building parking lot never fails to stop passers-by in their tracks.

The first 2004 Rolls to roll out in North America belongs to local personal injury attorney Martin Lazzaro. Its retail value is about $325,000.

The license on the front spells his name, and the one on the back says I-800-I GOT HIT.

— Celeste Whiteford, “Personal injury lawyer Rolls along”, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Jul. 18; “Clever, aggressive lawyers joining the rush for customers”, Aug. 22.

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Lawyer ads: clip, post, help someone sue

Evan Schaeffer, who’s poked fun before at the way plaintiff’s lawyers from elsewhere in the country endeavor to solicit business in his own Madison County, has some thoughts (Aug. 23) prompted by a Minnesota lawyer’s advertisement which includes a LOT OF CAPITAL LETTERING and which lays out a “Chinese menu” of potential complaints which might entitle the prospective client to money damages. Touchingly, the ad in the Alton, Ill. Telegraph addresses the danger that some local residents might be so unfortunate as not to be exposed to its message: “CLIP AND SAVE. Please take this notice and post it in your nursing home, church, community center or anywhere that it may reach people who are suffering and need help.”

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