My new column, on Tuesday’s vote, is up at the online Times (UK). “The result didn’t hang on a chad this time, but lawyers still played a starring role”. I make various comments about Eliot Spitzer and his brethren, the importance of winning by a vote “beyond the margin of litigation”, and the return of John Dingell and Henry Waxman (Nov. 9).
Posts Tagged ‘Eliot Spitzer’
Spitzer, Faso, and the New York high court
I’ve got an op-ed today in the New York Post about one of the less obvious issues in the high-profile race for Governor of New York: whoever wins will get to reshape the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, with implications long into the future for the state’s legal well-being. Would a Gov. Spitzer appoint anti-business crusaders to the court? (Walter Olson, “N.Y. Judge Wars: Hidden ’06 Issue”, New York Post, Jun. 30)(cross-posted at Point of Law) (& welcome readers of Prof. Bainbridge, who says kind things).
It’s only fair, the GOP had Enron
“The embattled securities class-action law firm Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman received some political backing last week with the release of a statement signed by four Democrats from the House of Representatives condemning last month’s indictment in Los Angeles of the firm on criminal charges. … The statement was signed by three representatives from New York — Charles Rangel, Carolyn McCarthy and Gary Ackerman — and Robert Wexler from Florida. One of the founders of the law firm, Melvyn Weiss, is a high-profile fund-raiser for the Democratic Party.” (Julie Creswell, New York Times/Wilmington (N.C.) Star-News, Jun. 12).
TheLawyer.com, based in the United Kingdom, fumbles the story badly by reporting that Milberg “has picked up a powerful ally in the shape of the US Congress”. (Joanne Harris, “US Congress slams Milberg Weiss indictment”, Jun. 13, note the equally erroneous headline). In fact, the four representatives who signed the letter are hardly typical members even of the Democratic caucus in the House, let alone of the Congress as a whole (which, someone should tell TheLawyer.com, is controlled by Republicans). See, for example, Jeremy Pelofsky, “Democrats returning money to two Milberg lawyers”, Reuters, Jun. 9 (Democratic National Committee, perhaps wiser than Reps. Rangel, McCarthy et al., seek to distance themselves from firm by returning some of its donations, a step already taken by New York’s Eliot Spitzer). More: Prof. Bainbridge, Jun. 12.
Retailers Settle Katrina Gas-Price Suits
Over at Coyote Blog today, I observe that while most of us have shifted our attention away from Katrina, gas price “gouging” lawsuits against gasoline retailers still continue. Sunoco became the latest retailer to settle, paying New Jersey over $300,000 to be left alone. Many other states have also gotten into the act, including Aspiring Governor Eliot Spitzer, who would never miss an opportunity to score some populist points.
So, having spent months trying to explain markets and supply & demand and refute the silliness of the “price-gouging” concept, what are gasoline retailers doing today? Why, they are hauling credit card companies in front of Congress to accuse them of … price gouging (Coyote Blog, Feb 17). Also see Sept 2, Sept 1.
NYC transit strike
Which New York elected official has the legal authority and responsibility to take action against the union’s lawbreaking, but almost certainly won’t? Ted has the answer. (Hint: initials are E.S.)
P.S. Thanks to our commenter for pointing out that our prediction above wasn’t accurate as worded, since reports are that Attorney General Spitzer is willing to go to court to enforce the injunction. Ted’s point, which I should have been more careful in conveying, is that it’s doubtful Spitzer will proceed to “seek the full measure of damages on behalf of New York citizenry, and criminal penalties for the criminal contempt of the union leadership”.
More (Dec. 21): The judge’s $1 million/day contempt fine against the union may sound high, but needs to be set against economic damage to the city and its residents amounting to hundreds of millions a day. As Ted points out in comments, it amounts to $30/day per union member; MTA bus drivers make $60,000 a year. In addition, unions frequently succeed in negotiating an amnesty for fines as part of an eventual strike settlement; Steve Malanga of the Manhattan Institute notes that in the TWU’s illegal eleven-day walkout in 1980, “when a judge imposed fines on workers, they simply upped their demands to cover the costs, winning 18% wage increases over two years.” (“What Would Reagan Do?”, WSJ (sub), Dec. 21; “Make the TWU Pay For the Harm It’s Done”, (editorial), New York Post, Dec. 21 (reg); “The transit strike” (editorial), New York Sun, Dec. 20; John P. Avlon, “Hostage for the Holidays”, New York Sun, Dec. 16).
Blawg Review #33
Welcome to Blawg Review #33, the latest installment of the weekly carnival assembling some of the best recent weblog posts about law.
If this is your first visit to Overlawyered, we’re among the oldest legal sites (launched in July 1999, practically the Eocene era), and over the years we’ve built a vast collection of information (with links/sources) on strange, excessive and costly legal cases, examples of the over-legalization of everyday life, pointers on litigation reform, policy stuff of generally libertarian leanings, and much more. We’re a fairly high-volume site; 6-8,000 unique visitors on a weekday is pretty typical. And although our work is regularly critical of trends in the legal profession — or maybe because of that fact — practicing lawyers around the world are among our most valued and loyal readers.
More specifically, there are two of us posting here. One of us (Walter Olson) has been writing about these topics for twenty years as the author of several books (The Litigation Explosion, The Excuse Factory, The Rule of Lawyers) and a great many shorter articles. He’s a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute who lives and works in Chappaqua, N.Y., north of New York City. More recently Ted Frank, who’s in Washington with the American Enterprise Institute, joined as a regular blogger. Unlike Walter, Ted is a lawyer, having practiced until lately with O’Melveny & Myers. Both of us also blog at the (somewhat more serious-toned) website Point Of Law, which unlike this one is sponsored by our respective institutes and boasts numerous other contributing writers.
Enough about us. Here’s Blawg Review #33, written by Walter with
indented sections by Ted.
* * *
The week in headlines
The talk of the blawg world last week? The New Yorker’s unmasking of the girlish “Article III Groupie” who’s blogged anonymously about federal judges at “Underneath Their Robes”, as, in fact, a (male) Assistant U.S. Attorney in Newark. Much more on that from Ted, below.
The pace of commentary on Samuel Alito Jr.’s Supreme Court nomination has slowed a good bit, despite the release of a 1985 memo detailing Alito’s views on abortion (which occasioned this post by Will Baude taking exception to a Dahlia Lithwick Slate column) and, more tantalizingly, on the Warren Court’s reapportionment cases (see posts by Nathan Newman and Steve Bainbridge). Alito is now heavily favored among bettors to win confirmation, notes San Diego lawprof Tom Smith.
Possibly the week’s strangest headline, discussed by J-Walk: “1,100 Lawyers Leave Saddam Defense Team”. 1,100?
And the Fifth Circuit is coming back to New Orleans (Tom Kirkendall).
* * *
Splendors and miseries of legal practice
Find out:
* What makes a talented 39 year old attorney burn out of a criminal defense practice? (Norm Pattis, Crime and Federalism)
* What sorts of squirm-inducing compliments do criminal defense lawyers hear from their clients after scoring legal points on their behalf? (Ken Lammers, CrimLaw)
* Is it smarter for big law firms to compensate their partners on an “eat what you kill” model, a “lockstep” model, or something between the two? (Bruce MacEwen, Adam Smith, Esq.)
* How do licensing professionals decide what’s a reasonable royalty rate? (Patent Baristas)
* What sorts of bad things can happen to a law firm when one of its individual lawyers behaves rudely to a stranger? (Jim Calloway)
* * *
Controversies galore
Read, ponder, and make up your own mind:
Did Texas execute an innocent man, Ruben Cantu? (Doug Berman)
Conservatives are still griping about the Ninth Circuit, but the new twist is that they think its judges aren’t activist enough. (Eugene Volokh)
Every so often, through luck or pluck, the “fair use” side manages to win one in copyright litigation (Ron Coleman, Likelihood of Confusion).
A group is “pushing for a ballot referendum that would strip South Dakota judges of their immunity from suit for actions taken in their capacity as judges.” Atlanta attorney Jonathan B. Wilson calls it “one of the worst reform ideas ever”.
Michael Newdow, of Pledge of Allegiance suit fame, has filed a new legal action demanding that the motto “In God We Trust” be removed from U.S. currency. Jon Rowe winces.
Our own Ted Frank takes a look at the much-talked of “Dodgeball” document and concludes that it by no means proves Merck’s guilt in the Vioxx matter. (Point of Law). Also at Point of Law, James Copland of the Manhattan Institute and Dr. Bill Sage of Columbia have been engaged in a spirited debate on med-mal litigation.
In a Providence courtroom, the state of Rhode Island is demanding that companies that once manufactured lead paint be held liable for the cost of lead abatement programs. Speechwriter/ghostwriter Jane Genova is liveblogging the case’s retrial, and suggests that the defense side has been making its points more effectively.
A court has ordered the Armour Star meatpacking concern to pay $3 million for using a strength test to screen applicants for a job requiring much lifting. George Lenard’s Employment Blawg originally covered the case last month, Overlawyered picked it up, and now George has returned to the subject, observing that those dissatisfied with the suit’s outcome should realize that sex discrimination law’s distrust of strength tests isn’t something the EEOC just came up with the other day and in fact dates back at least a couple of decades. (I quite concur, having written at length on the subject back in the 1990s.)
The British government recently published a white paper entitled “The Future of Legal Services: Putting the Consumer First”. Dennis Kennedy at Between Lawyers provides a link.
In other consumer news, State Farm conceded earlier this year that when it disposed of many wrecked-and-repaired vehicles it failed to ensure that they were given appropriate “salvage titles”. E.L. Eversman at AutoMuse has been following the issue.
The head of the NY state bar association is advising prospective clients not to be swayed by lawyers’ advertising. David Giacalone, who frequently discusses legal advertising on his blog f/k/a, isn’t impressed.
San Diego lawprof Gail Heriot discovers a convicted rapist is living a few doors down from her, which gets her to thinking about the interaction of “Megan’s Law” statutes and statutory rape.
New York AG Eliot Spitzer has gone after former NYSE head Richard Grasso but not the board that approved Grasso’s plans. Larry Ribstein suspects the worst, charging that Spitzer “gets securities industry political support if he handles this so only Grasso gets hurt.”
* * *
Student division
Scheherezade at Stay of Execution, who wrote a classic post last year giving advice on whether or not to go to law school, now fields a reader’s question: Should I transfer to a higher-ranked law school?
Called for jury duty, Jeremy Blachman gets shown a somewhat hokey video entitled “Your Turn: Jury Service in New York State.” “I wanted to really mock the video, but in all honesty it was a better explanation of the jury system than anything we got in law school”.
Michael Froomkin offers a surprising and counterintuitive quiz on the U.S. Constitution in the form of a “scavenger hunt”. He also suspects that a national ID card might abet price discrimination.
And this from Ted:
Congratulations to Amber, G, Marissa, Grigori, Eve, Jeremy, and others who passed the bar. Third Attempt failed for the second time, and is opening a blog on the subject of his third try, with links to other passers and failers. Only 13% of those who repeated the California bar passed.
On the lighter side, law student Kurt Hunt quotes his prof’s maxim that “Cahoots is not a crime” but wonders what would happen if “tomfoolery, cahoots, no-gooding, antics and shenanigans were redefined as ‘Crime-Lite'”. And Colin Samuels of Infamy or Praise is among the many human beings who don’t manage to eat as well as (UCLA lawprof) Steve Bainbridge’s dog.
* * *
Buzz about blogs
Now I’ll turn the floor over to Ted again to discuss the UTR affair:
The blawgosphere likes nothing more than navel-gazing, and the New Yorker’s outing of anony-blawger “Article III Groupie” as Newark AUSA David Lat and resulting implosion of “her”/his popular “Underneath Their Robes” blawg has generated lots of curiosity and posts with Austin Powers references; the story even made Drudge and the New York Times. Blawg Review has a retrospective look at the blawg. Howard Bashman has done the most original reporting, interviewing Jeffrey Toobin, who revealed Lat’s identity, and publishing the reminiscences of a former co-worker of Lat’s. Denise Howell provides an obituary for the blawg. The Kitchen Cabinet’s “Lily” comments from the perspective of another anonymous blawger, as does Jeremy Blachman, who got a book deal from his anony-blogging. Ann Althouse muses on the nature of humor; Professor Solove and Howard Bashman comment on blogger anonymity, as does Half Sigma, who pulled a similar hoax using the photo of a Russian mail-order bride earlier this year as the image of “Libertarian Girl.” Another blawgger claiming to be a libertarian female, this one with the implausible name of “Amber,” meta-comments on the various shattered blog-crushes exhibited in the garment-rending Volokh Conspiracy reader comments on the subject; JD expresses his own disappointment. (Judge Kozinski claims to have known all along, but Judge Posner has proof of his foresight.) And Ian has sound commentary on A3G’s “status anxiety.” (And speaking of status anxiety, a Harvard Law School admissions dean snarks on Yale and gets snarked back. One can understand the sniping: HLS and YLS are good schools, and there’s a lot of competition for who’s #2 behind Chicago Law.)
Some fallout: anony-blogger “Opinionistas” got an e-mail accusing her of really being a man, and Will Baude and Heidi Bond make a bet over the gender of anony-law-prof Juan Non-Volokh, who promises to come out of the closet soon.
Taking second place in interblog buzz is the IP sticky wicket that awaited the former Pajamas Media (discussed by Blawg Review here) when shortly before launching it decided to switch to the more dignified monicker of Open Source Media. Turned out there was already a well-known public radio show by the name of Open Source which hadn’t been consulted even though it occupied such URLs as opensourcemedia.net. Ann Althouse has been merciless (here, here and here) in needling the OSM organizers, while Prof. Bainbridge piles on with a law and economics analysis of OSM’s market.
Monica Bay passes along the views of legal-tech consultant and frequent CLE presenter Ross Kodner, who charges that law blogs are “narrow-minded” and display “elitist exclusionism”. “I am sick and tired of being repeatedly asked why I don’t have a blog,” he declares. Okay, Mr. Kodner, we promise never to ask you that.
* * *
In conclusion
Finally, intellectual property lawyer Doug Sorocco, of the ReThink(IP) and phosita blogs, arrives “fashionably late to the BlawgThink ball” (in Chicago last week). Sorocco’s Oklahoma City firm also figures prominently (as the acquiring party) in what Dennis Kennedy says may amount to a milestone: “the first move of one legal blogger to the law firm of another legal blogger.” Stephen Nipper has more details about this “move” at ReThink(IP).
By coincidence, and giving us a nice way to wrap things up, phosita is going to be the home of next week’s Blawg Review #34. Blawg Review has information about that and other upcoming matters, as well as instructions how to get your blawg posts considered for upcoming issues.
P.S. As Bob Ambrogi notes, you can now check out — and tag your own location in — Blawg Review’s reader map feature.
What’s new on Point of Law?
Are you reading Point of Law regularly? If not, you’re missing
- extensive analysis of the Alito nomination;
- the meaning of the New Jersey Vioxx verdict;
- the plaintiffs’ lawyer who asked for $60 million because he had successfully forum-shopped for a court with judges he helped elect;
- Eliot Spitzer bullying competitors of the Postal Service;
- multiple refutations of the plaintiffs’ bar’s attempt to lie about medical malpractice insurance;
- ongoing coverage of the silicosis litigation scandal;
- an extensive discussion of what it means to be an ethical litigator; and much, much more.
“Trailblazing Anti-Tobacco Litigator Agrees to Disbarment”
No need for a public accounting dept.:
In a rare case of thievery at a large New Jersey firm, tobacco litigation pioneer Alan Darnell admitted that he misappropriated money from his partners and clients at Woodbridge’s Wilentz, Goldman & Spitzer and has volunteered for disbarment.
The reporter’s description of thievery in Garden State legal circles as “rare”, in case you were wondering, turns out to mean it’s not often the lawyers are caught misappropriating their own partners’ or clients’ funds in prohibited ways.
By bowing out of the profession before the investigation was complete, Darnell saved himself and 140-lawyer Wilentz Goldman from a public airing of the details of what money he took, whom he took it from and what he did with it.
Oh, well then that’s okay. Mustn’t risk giving the general public a peek at such matters, after all.
Darnell, who was known for filing asbestos and pharmaceutical claims, “was a leading member of the Wilentz Goldman team that represented plaintiffs in mass tort and product liability cases. …Big tobacco was his biggest target.” Wilentz, Goldman & Spitzer is perhaps the state’s best-known plaintiff’s firm (one of its ads) and is also renowned for its political connections, which have brought it much lucrative state business.
The state’s Office of Attorney Ethics will also be sealing the records of its investigation of Darnell, and it doesn’t appear that there are further legal proceedings against him in the offing. Remember this story next time lawyers denounce the alleged conspiracy of silence regarding doctors’ misconduct (Henry Gottlieb, New Jersey Law Journal, Oct. 6).
Lawsuit cash advances
The mushrooming “legal finance” industry offers to advance injury claimants cash on the barrel, to be repaid only if their suits are successful. Some firms have charged effective interest rates exceeding 100 percent a year, but the business generally operates beyond the reach of moneylending laws and has mostly escaped the sort of hostile attention that has been directed at say, the payday loan industry and its alleged “predatory lending“. That may be changing, however. New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer (who says he gets only unflattering attention in this space?) has reached settlements calling for clearer disclosure of fees from at least ten litigation-cash-advance firms, including one based in New Jersey which billed a client $19,000 for a cash advance of $3,000 two and a half years earlier, later accepting a smaller sum. (Joseph P. Fried, “Waiting To Settle a Lawsuit? Beware of Cash Advances”, New York Times, Apr. 4). For a glimpse of how the business sometimes works, see Barbara Ross, “Costly trip for Zongo family”, New York Daily News, Feb. 14.
More: Financial Rounds (Apr. 5) points out that we shouldn’t assume the legal finance company is actually pocketing an extraordinarily high overall return on its cash advances since in cases where client/plaintiffs obtain neither a verdict nor a settlement it will lose the money. Fair enough; but once again suggestive of the near-parallel with subprime lenders, many of which also must write off a nontrivial share of debt holdings as uncollectable. Do legal finance companies (which of course can screen for case “collateral” based on quality) in fact suffer a rate of nonpayment that much exceeds that of so-called predatory lenders? It would be interesting to find out.
Tobacco-cartel challengers
…profiled by Forbes. Defending the cartel? New York AG Eliot Spitzer, fearless watchdog over antitrust infractions (except when he isn’t). (Scott Woolley, “Trustbuster”, Forbes, Feb. 28).