Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘harassment law’

Broken Heart? Sue!

Thanks to Walter Olson for welcoming me back after a short hiatus from my last guest blogging stint. I often see stories worth sharing, this one in particular [excerpt below, full story here.]

A group of well-heeled women who paid up to $1,500 to snag a man through one of the nation’s priciest and fast-growing online dating services — It’s Just Lunch — has filed a civil lawsuit in Manhattan federal court, claiming the lunchtime setups were not what they bargained for.

This reminds me of this hilarious YouTube clip which is strikingly on point in this instance. Overlawyered indeed. And, $1,500 for a date? That’s about as out-of-touch as $27K for wedding flowers (with accompanying lawsuit.) Well, these “well-heeled” women expected George Clooney but (apparently) got Gilbert Gottfried instead. Maybe, simply, their hopes were just too high. Especially if they were prepared to fork over $1,500 for a date. Caveat emptor, I’m afraid.

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Jackpot justice: Anucha Browne Sanders

Granted: sexual harassment is wrong, and we at Overlawyered do not approve of it. I have no reason to side with one party or the other in the he-said/she-said dispute in the lawsuit against Isiah Thomas, James Dolan, and the owners of the New York Knicks, MSG, though one questions the relevance of Stephon Marbury’s sexual exploits with a third party and whether that salacious testimony perhaps prejudiced the jury. But even if one agrees that everything Anucha Browne Sanders alleged occurred? Well, that $11.6 million award—which does not even include a penny of economic damages—is outrageous. Hey, I’ll let Isiah Thomas call me a bitch for a hundredth that amount. Given the Supreme Court’s command that punitive damages have some reasonable relationship to compensatory damages, it is hard to understand why a jury was allowed to make an eight-digit award when there has yet to be any compensatory damages established.

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Excessive fines

Too bad the courts have decided to leave the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause on the shelf, it might otherwise be helpful to everyone from Virginia motorists to sexual harassment defendants (Ralph Reiland, “The ignored amendment”, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Aug. 27). More resources here, here, and here (noting Supreme Court’s ruling in Browning-Ferris that the clause restrains excessive fines only when payable to the government, not private parties).

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Nifong’s media and law-school enablers, cont’d

An article in the new American Journalism Review (Rachel Smolkin, “Justice Delayed”, Aug./Sept.) lays out at length the sins of the media in covering the allegations of prosecutor Mike Nifong in the Duke lacrosse case. Leading offenders such as the Durham Herald-Sun, New York Times and TV’s Nancy Grace all come in for their share of reproach, but of note also is this on Wendy Murphy, feminist lawprof and frequent broadcast commentator on the case:

One prominent guest on Grace’s show and others was Wendy Murphy, an adjunct professor at the New England School of Law and a former assistant district attorney in Middlesex County, Massachusetts. On April 10, 2006, after defense attorneys announced that DNA results found no links to the athletes, Murphy told Grace, “Look, I think the real key here is that these guys, like so many rapists–and I’m going to say it because, at this point, she’s entitled to the respect that she is a crime victim.”

Emerging questions about the investigation did not prompt Murphy to reassess. Appearing on “CNN Live Today” on May 3, 2006, she posited, “I’d even go so far as to say I bet one or more of the players was, you know, molested or something as a child.” On June 5, 2006, MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson asserted, relying on a Duke committee report, that the lacrosse team was generally well-behaved. Rejoined Murphy: “Hitler never beat his wife either. So what?” She later added: “I never, ever met a false rape claim, by the way. My own statistics speak to the truth.”

Asked to evaluate her commentary, Murphy said in an interview: “Lots of folks who voiced the prosecution position in the beginning gave up because they faced a lot of criticism, and that’s never my style.” She notes that she’s invited on cable shows to argue for a particular side. “You have to appreciate my role as a pundit is to draw inferences and make arguments on behalf of the side which I’m assigned,” she says. “So of course it’s going to sound like I’m arguing in favor of ‘guilty.’ That’s the opposite of what the defense pundit is doing, which is arguing that they’re innocent.”

The last passage prompts Mark Obbie at LawBeat (Jul. 18) to reflect: “Has there ever been a clearer argument for the utter show-biz meaninglessness of such ‘debate’ shows?”

On a different note, the much-anticipated book on the controversy by Stuart Taylor, Jr. and K.C. Johnson, “Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case”, is due out a month from now and is already selling well on Amazon. More: John Steele Gordon, “Racial Role Reversal”, WSJ/OpinionJournal.com, Jun. 20.

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“Felony sexual abuse”

In McMinnville, Ore., it may consist of fanny-patting in school hallways by seventh graders. Following a public outcry, Yamhill County D.A. Bradley Berry has now dropped the felony counts — the resulting status as registered sex offenders might have followed the youngsters through life — but he still wants to have Cory Mashburn and Ryan Cornelison at least given probation on misdemeanor counts. (Scott Michels, “Boys Face Sex Trial for Slapping Girls’ Posteriors”, ABCNews.com, Jul. 24; Mark Steyn, “Swat somebody’s butt, and yours belongs to the D.A.”, Orange County Register, Jul. 28; Jeanine Stice, “Gene’s right about The McMinnville Two”, Salem Statesman-Journal, Jul. 24). Update Aug. 22: charges dropped.

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19th-century legal doctrine meets 21st-century hedonism and 20th-century litigation tactics

Arthur Friedman announced to his wife, Natalie, after ten years of marriage, that he wanted the couple to engage in group sex and swinging, so he could gratify himself watching his wife have sex with other men. Natalie, however, fell for one of her partners, German Blinov. The two left their spouses and ran off with one another. Arthur sued Blinov under the Illinois alienation of affection laws, and, amazingly enough, won $4802 from a jury that thought the case was stupid. (Steve Patterson, “Putting a price on love”, Chicago Sun-Times, Jul. 1). The former Mrs. Friedman expresses dismay about the award, but it’s not clear whether it’s the fact of the award or the trivial amount that offends her. Chicagoist and Alex Tabarrok are appropriately appalled.

Most states have passed the tort reform of abolishing the alienation of affection cause of action. Earlier on Overlawyered: Nov. 2006 and May 2005 (North Carolina); Nov. 2004 (Illinois); May 2000 (Utah).

Update: Of course, one doesn’t necessarily need that 19th-century cause of action when entrepreneurial lawyers are in play. Recently fired WellPoint CFO David Colby allegedly rotated among several girlfriends he met on a dating website, several of whom he allegedly promised to marry, even as he was married to someone else (albeit separated). One of the ex-girlfriends is suing WellPoint for “facilitat[ing] Colby’s lifestyle”; it seems Colby pointed to his webpage on the WellPoint site to seduce some of his targets. (Lisa Girion, “WellPoint named a defendant in sexual-battery suit”, LA Times, Jun. 29; see also “Women claim lives with WellPoint exec”, LA Times, Jun. 13 (no longer on web)).

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Teenage McDonald’s employee

At age 15 she began a year-long sexual relationship with her 22-year-old manager, which ended in breakup. Now she wants money from the restaurant for letting it happen. The criminal defense lawyer representing Hector Figueroa, the boyfriend/manager, says the complainant’s family knew about the consensual affair while it was going on. “She saw a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and decided to pursue [a civil suit].” (Jordana Mishory, “Teen Sues McDonald’s Franchisee Over Sex With Boss”, Florida Daily Business Review, Jun. 21).

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AutoAdmit message board lawsuit

The controversy over bathroom-graffiti postings at the law student site Autoadmit/xoxohth.com (May 3, May 20) has now developed into litigation:

two [unnamed] female Yale Law School students have sued Anthony Ciolli, the Web site’s former “chief educational director,” and more than two dozen others who allegedly used pseudonyms and posted the students’ photos as well as defamatory and threatening remarks about them on the online law-school discussion forum.

(Amir Efrati, WSJ Law Blog, Jun. 12). Lawprofs David N. Rosen (Yale) and Mark A. Lemley (Stanford) are assisting the plaintiffs, and Rosen told the WSJ Law Blog in an interview that the case was about “bringing the right to protect yourself against offensive words and images into the 21st century,” calling the postings “the scummiest kind of sexually offensive tripe.” Discussion: Eugene Volokh, Ann Althouse , Glenn Reynolds, David Lat, Patterico.

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“Pregnancy brain”

That belitting phrase was uttered not by a supervisor, nor yet by a co-worker, but by a private citizen at a hearing where Amy Lee was being flayed by public commenters for her performance as assistant director of San Francisco’s Building Inspection Department. Even so, it has now resulted in a settlement in which the city has agreed to fork over $156,000 in damages and attorneys fees to resolve Lee’s charges of sexual harassment and pregnancy discrimination. Supervisor Tom Ammiano, not generally known as an enthusiast for employer’s rights, nonetheless

cast the lone vote on the board against the settlement [and] called the payout ludicrous.

The “pregnancy brain” remark was out of bounds, Ammiano said. But it was made at a public meeting, where officials take shots all the time, he said.

“You can’t control public comment,” Ammiano said.

Lee remains on the public payroll. (Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross, “Former chief of Building Inspection gets damages”, San Francisco Chronicle, Apr. 30).

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