Virginia Walker drove her Ford Taurus into the side of an 18-wheeler that had pulled in front of them on Highway 59, killing herself and severely injuring her front-seat passenger, Kelleigh Falcon. It’s not clear which driver was at fault, but the resulting trial brought by Walker’s relatives and Falcon focused on the deep pocket, Lufkin Industries, who dared to manufacture a truck trailer that complied with federal safety regulations. No matter: Lufkin should have anticipated that this particular truck would need sideguards that would protect the occupants of a Ford Taurus that hit it, though such sideguards would potentially make the truck geometrically mismatch and be more dangerous to still other vehicles on the road. (Press coverage does not indicate how fast the Taurus was travelling, and whether improved underride standards would actually have protected it.) Among the evidence introduced against Lufkin: they were a member of the Truck-Trailers Manufacturers Association, which, among other things, dared to speak with legislators about the financial impacts of proposed regulations; Lufkin waited until federal regulations specified underride protection standards before installing such protection, rather than taking its own initiative and discovering that the regulations asked for something else. A Texas state jury found them about 40% liable for $38.5 million in damages; press coverage doesn’t indicate who the other 60% applies to. (Jessica Savage, “Lufkin Industries plans to appeal jury’s decision in tractor-trailer accident case”, Lufkin Daily News, Nov. 21; Ramonica Jones, “Lufkin Industries Plans to Appeal $36 Million Verdict”, KTRE-TV, Nov. 22).
Posts Tagged ‘deep pocket’
November 7 roundup
- My informal debate with Professor Silver over the effect of reform on physician supply continues. [Point of Law; Silver]
- If you’ve been intrigued by Professor E. Volokh’s idea of medical self-defense (and thus payment for organs) as a constitutional right, he’ll be discussing it with Richard Epstein and Jeffrey Rosen at AEI. [Volokh; Harvard Law Review @ SSRN; AEI]
- Peter Wallison on how over-regulation and over-litigation is killing American competitiveness in the capital markets. [Wall Street Journal @ AEI]
- Press coverage is finally starting to break through in the Milberg Weiss scandal with a lengthy Fortune profile. [Point of Law]
- Economists and scholars file Supreme Court amicus brief calling for federal preemption of state “anti-predatory lending laws” in important Watters v. Wachovia case. [Zywicki @ Volokh; CEI]
- One-sided coverage by the New York Times on the issue of web accessibility for the blind. Earlier: Oct. 27; Feb. 8. [New York Times]
- Deep Pocket Files update: MADD tries to intervene in stadium vendor case where appellate court tossed $105 million verdict because of unfair trial. See Aug. 4 and links therein. [New Jersey Law Journal]
- Lawsuit: my dead father’s baseball card mischaracterizes his nickname. [Lattman]
- Lawsuit: I have legal right to the letter W. [Times Record News via Bashman]
- Samuel Abady and Harvey Silverglate on libel tourism. [Boston Globe via Bashman]
- Another roundup of Justice Robert Thomas libel lawsuit stories. [Bashman]
- $15M Minnesota verdict blaming a delayed delivery for cerebral palsy, despite evidence it was caused by an unrelated infection. [Pioneer Press]
Deep pocket files: Plaintiff: McDonald’s should’ve warned me and my boss not to be gullible
McDonald’s week continues on Overlawyered (Sep. 22; Sep. 20). McDonald’s is being sued over a trend of strip search hoaxes we discussed two years ago.
Here, a caller from a payphone in Florida tricked a Hinesville, Georgia, McDonald’s male manager and 55-year-old male employee into strip searching and molesting a 19-year-old female employee, who put up with the telephone-instructed molestation for thirty minutes before putting an end to matters. The franchise immediately fired the two men three days after the February 2003 incident, and offered the female victim counseling and a new job, but she instead quit and sued the franchise and McDonald’s. McDonald’s did warn the franchise (and other franchises) about the hoax in 1999 and 2001, (and the McDonald’s training manual now explicitly rules out strip searches of employees rather than relying on common sense) but such warnings are, of course, evidence that they should have warned more, according to the plaintiffs. The district court threw out the suit against McDonald’s, and many of the claims against the franchisee.
The defendants’ attorneys apparently have little faith that the law will have the common sense the employees lacked and blame the appropriately responsible parties rather than the deep pockets: to avoid liability they are buying into the plaintiff’s theories and seeking to blame each other in September 15 arguments before the Eleventh Circuit on interlocutory appeal. Some more aggressive defense might have had an effect: “The whole thing is really stupid,” said Senior Judge Peter Fay. (Alyson M. Palmer, “Bizarre ‘Strip-Search Hoax’ Case Before 11th Circuit”, Fulton County Daily Report, Sep. 25).
Fact-checking the mainstream media (lawsuit division)
News clips reporting on large verdicts and settlements cross my desk regularly, and most do not seem on their surface to be worth blogging about. Most are terse summaries of a case’s outcome, and others do not present any indication (again, on the surface at least) that a case might have problematic aspects. The other day, however, I ran across a story in the Charleston (W.V.) Gazette describing a case in which a plaintiff had been terribly injured after a retailer sold what the reporter bluntly stated was a “defective mower.” This particular newspaper story was so one-sided that I thought there almost had to be more to it than was being reported — and I had no idea how right I was in that suspicion. This is a long post, but I hope worth readers’ while. It certainly makes me wonder how much I’m missing when I don’t go into the dockets to fact-check other seemingly run-of-the-mill cases.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t files: Putnam Hospital
Osteopath John King (who now calls himself “Christopher Wallace Martin” in his Alabama practice after surrendering his West Virginia and Texas medical licenses) had a poor record in numerous previous jobs in numerous states, but West Virginia’s Putnam County Hospital, the only acute-care center in the county, wasn’t able to find that out because the former employers were afraid of being sued. King lasted a few months at Putnam before he was dismissed for incompetence after an investigation, and King responded by suing Putnam and the independent expert who testified against him at a private peer review (as well as the newspaper that reported on his problems). Meanwhile, trial lawyers engaged in a feeding frenzy, filing dozens of lawsuits for tens of millions of dollars against the deep pocket (and some against each other), creating enough adverse publicity that Putnam lost nearly half of its business, and was on the verge of shutting down tomorrow before a last-minute deal to save the hospital was negotiated. Martha Montelongo has an overview in the August 17 Human Events Online. (Lawrence Messina, AP/Charleston Daily Mail, Aug. 28; Chris Dickerson, “Druckman sues former clients over work on King cases”, West Virginia Record, Aug. 8; Lawrence Messina, “W. Va. Hospital Says Lawsuits Drive Conversion to Urgent Care Center”, AP/insurance Journal, Aug. 7; Chris Dickerson, “Putnam General blames impending closure on trial lawyers”, West Virginia Record, Aug. 1).
“Lawn mower maker’s attorney attacks $2 million verdict”
Deep pocket files: Wal-Mart on $4.2 million hook for carjacking
Katoria Lee refused a carjacker’s command to surrender her car-keys in 2001, so he shot her in the back. This, a Georgia state court jury decided, was the fault of Wal-Mart, who owned the parking lot where the shooting occurred. Eric Deown Riggins, 22, was caught within minutes, and is serving a 15-year sentence in state prison for the crime.
Lee’s attorney, Lance Cooper, mentioned the 398 visits by police to the Riverdale Wal-Mart in the twenty months before the accident as evidence that there should have been “more” security that made Wal-Mart at fault for a third-party’s malicious crime, but that figure is highly misleading, because, until very recently, Wal-Mart had a zero-tolerance shoplifting policy to press charges for even the most minor of shoplifting crimes. (Kathy Jefcoats, “Woman shot in Wal-Mart lot awarded $4.2 million by jury”, Atlanta Journal-Constitution Aug. 10).
Breaking: $105 million Aramark verdict reversed
The New Jersey court’s opinion yesterday in Verni v. Harry M. Stevens ordered a new trial because of the unfairly prejudicial evidence introduced at trial. (Laura Mansnerus, “Court Overturns Jury Award Against Stadium Concessionaire”, NY Times, Aug. 4; Kibret Markos, “Paralyzed Cliffside girl may have to go through new trial”, NorthJersey.com, Aug. 4).
Plaintiffs sought to blame a drunk-driving accident several hours after a Giants game on stadium beer vendors, a feat eased when the drunk driver, Daniel Lanzano, settled with plaintiffs and changed his testimony to be consistent with their theory of the case. Lanzano drank at two go-go bars after the game. The court also noted the failure of the jury to be instructed to consider the relative liability of other settling parties that the plaintiffs had sued in a shotgun complaint, including the NFL, the Giants, Toyota, and Michael Holder, who committed the sin of drinking with Lanzano that day. We had provided extensive coverage from the beginnings of the suit: Oct. 10, 2003; Jan. 21, 2005; a must-read Feb. 2, 2005 post; Jun. 6.
Update: another aspect of the appellate court opinion is that it recognized corporate boundaries. The trial court sought to hold Aramark liable for alleged negligence of its subsidiaries.
“We’re going to sue everyone from A to Z”
It was easy to sympathize with Richard Jewell, victim a decade ago of FBI bungling which led to his being falsely suspected in the Atlanta Olympics bombing. It’s not so easy to sympathize with his legal posture since then, which would be easily mistaken for an effort to vacuum the pockets of every media organization within reach. (Mark Fitzgerald, “Sob On Someone Else’s Shoulder, Richard Jewell”, Editor and Publisher, Jul. 25).
New London Times column: MySpace suit
I’ve got a new online column up at the British paper, my second. I discuss the recent lawsuit seeking to blame the social-networking site for not providing a virtual chaperone for a 14-year-old Texas user who went out on an inadvisable date. (Walter Olson, “Teens, sex, and MySpace”, Times (U.K.), Jul. 18). For earlier coverage of the MySpace suit, see Jun. 21, Jun. 23, and Jun. 26.