Illinois, like some other states, allows parties to request a single change of judge as of right. That statute is questionable enough public policy as it is, but Madison County judges had interpreted the rule to permit class action plaintiffs to obtain automatic changes for each plaintiff in the case—thus effectively permitting a class action attorney to pick his judge. Madison County Chief Judge Ann Callis has changed the rule so that it limits substitution of judge to only one time as a right, and the Korein Tillery law firm is now challenging that rule’s constitutionality, which could delay its implementation for a couple of years if they get the right judges to hear the case. (Steve Gonzalez, “‘Judge shopping’ rule challenged by Tillery firm”, Madison County Record, Aug. 31; Brian Brueggeman, “Law firm set to challenge court ban on automatic judge change”, Belleville News-Democrat, Sep. 1). (Cross-posted at Point of Law.)
Posts Tagged ‘class actions’
Suit: plaintiff was too stupid to be admitted into law school
Thomas Joseph Bentey flunked out of St. Thomas University School of Law of Miami, and claims it was a conspiracy of the school to admit students it knew would flunk out, and wants his tuition and room and board back (as well as damages for lost wages and “embarrassment”). (The complaint also complains that Bentey’s mother called the law school, but that it refused to review his C grade in Contracts II, and seeks an injunction for a review of the grade.) The attorneys seek class action status, which is frivolous on its face, because the individualized issue of whether a St. Thomas student flunked out because of their own underachieving would clearly predominate any group inquiry even if the conspiracy theory had any basis in rationality. One might also make some adverse inferences about Bentey’s attorney, Michael Lombardi of Lombardi & Lombardi, for coming up with such a cockamamie theory of recovery that will only result in more embarrassment for his client, but he is a “Super Lawyer.” Other defendants in the shotgun complaint include the ABA and the Department of Education, suggesting hopes for a number of nuisance settlements. (Bentey v. St. Thomas University School of Law, No. 2:06-cv-03463-PGS-RJH (D.N.J.); Leigh Jones, “Law School Sued for Expelling Students”, National Law Journal, Sep. 1).
Update: Orin Kerr comments at the VC blog.
“A Taxonomy of Obesity Litigation”
A Little Rock friend of mine had an emergency gap in his law review, and solicited me to write about the fast-food litigation. I’m not a big fan of the eight-footnotes-a-page-style that law reviews like, but I think the piece is a good overview of what has happened to date. The article, 28 UALR L. Rev. 427 (2006), can be downloaded at SSRN (help me catch up with Bainbridge!) or at the AEI Liability Project website. (cross-posted at Point of Law)
I worry that events have outstripped me; one sentence in the article, “Why is selling soda [to 17-year-olds] an attractive nuisance, but selling … Internet connectivity is not?” predates the MySpace litigation.
More Lawyers Behaving Badly
These guys are nothing like Joe Jamail, but honestly, does this scene make you want to be a jurist?
“Rumpelstiltskin, LLP”
[Bumped to make it the top post Monday morning; originally posted Saturday. Also check out the comments section on this post, which includes comments from readers who’ve been on both sides of junk-fax lawsuits.] I’ve got a contribution in the “Rule of Law” section of Saturday’s Wall Street Journal (Jul. 29, sub-only) on the ongoing litigation (especially class action litigation) over junk faxes, a topic often addressed in this space. It concludes:
No doubt you can make a case that getting at the most heinous wrongdoers through bounty-hunting is preferable to never getting at them at all. But note that where crimes are indisputably serious, the rewards for informing are fixed and often modest. The typical reward for helping solve a bank robbery is $5,000. At rewardsforjustice.net, the U.S. government offers bounties for information leading to the capture of leading terrorists: Even notorious masterminds tend to be worth at most $5 million, while turning in Osama bin Laden will win you $25 million.
If Osama had sent 100,000 junk faxes, there’d be a bigger price on his head.
Click here for fees: Google ad settlement
A county judge in Texarkana, Ark., where the action happens to have been filed, has approved Google’s settlement of a nationwide lawsuit over advertisers’ losses allegedly attributable to “click fraud”, that is to say, non-bona fide clicks on their ads. “By settling claims made in the plaintiffs’ class-action lawsuit, Google will give advertising credits that are the equivalent of a $3.80 refund on every $1,000 spent in its advertising network during the past 4 1/2 years. No one will receive cash except the lawyers, who will split $30 million.” (“Judge approves $90 million settlement in Google click fraud case”, AP/San Francisco Chronicle, Jul. 28). Numerous class members had objected, calling the proposed settlement unfair and inadequate “because it includes poor calculations, excessive attorney fees and e-mailed class notices that look like spam.” Similar lawsuits “still are pending against other defendants, including Yahoo Inc.; Time Warner Inc.’s America Online; and Ask Jeeves”. (Amanda Bronstad, “Google ‘Click Fraud’ Settlement Criticized”, National Law Journal, Jul. 19).
Peacocks in the barnyard
Los Angeles Times reporter Molly Selvin wanted my opinion of class-actioneer Bill Lerach for this profile, so I gave it. Holding up the other end of the discussion are Lerach fans Jamie Court, of Harvey Rosenfield’s outfit, and actor/humorist/ expert-economic-witness-in-Milberg-cases Ben Stein (“Unsettling Days for King of Class Actions”, Jul. 23)(cross-posted at Point of Law).
DVD bonus material captioning
Lawyers filed a class action on behalf of deaf consumers against Hollywood studios that labeled DVDs as closed captioned but failed to note that “bonus material” on the disks lacked captioning. According to the terms of the proposed settlement:
The Settling Companies have denied liability, but have agreed to settle this action to avoid litigation by, in the future, providing captioning or closed captioning of bonus material on major categories of DVDs they distribute over the next five (5) years, paying $275,000 to certain non-profit organizations dedicated to advocacy for deaf and hard-of-hearing persons, and paying attorneys’ fees and costs (including any incentive award to named plaintiff) up to $1,300,000…
More here. Toronto accessibility advocate Joe Clark thinks the settlement doesn’t go far enough, while enriching the lawyers who pursued it.
Junk faxes? Make ’em your college fund
We’ve posted repeatedly about the federal junk-fax law, which authorizes lawsuits for $500 apiece for inadvertent participation in unsolicited sending of faxes (and $1500 apiece for knowing violations); lawyers have learned to roll together class actions so as to generate million-dollar class actions against unsophisticated local businesses who weren’t aware of the law’s application to them (Oct. 22, 1999; see also Dec. 15, 2004; Mar. 19, 2004, Jul. 19, 2003, etc.). Now the Internet and Class Action Law Blog, published by a Naperville, Ill. class-action attorney, takes note of the phenomenon — not merely as an annoyance, but as a business opportunity. “Damages in these cases can be very large. If a blast fax has 50,000 recipients, damages could total $25,000,000! Why not turn all those junk faxes into a college fund for your kids?” (Jun. 30).
Collection agency class settlement
A class action settlement resulting from litigation against the firm of H.A. Berkheimer of Bangor, Pennsylvania, was sufficiently tilted in favor of legal fees as opposed to class relief that Bucks County Judge Robert Mellon gave it thumbs down. Allentown Morning Call columnist Paul Carpenter, who’s had an outstanding series of columns on the litigation business lately, has the story (“Lawyers can get sweet deals only in some states”, Jun. 20).