- Tab Turner’s Pearsonesque $2 billion lawsuit over Ford Explorer SUVs proceeds in California state court in Sacramento. [Sacramento Bee; earlier, June 18]
- West Va. judge holds hearing over YouTube videos disclosing plaintiff depositions. [AP/Insurance Journal; earlier, August 4]
- On Point has the complaint from Leroy Greer’s suit against 1-800-Flowers for failing to do enough to keep his wife ignorant of his flower purchases for his mistress.
- Movable Type appears to have swallowed several comments from earlier this month (including at least one comment from me). Apologies to everyone affected.
Posts Tagged ‘harmless lawsuits’
More twisted justifications for Pearson’s pants-suit
As I have repeatedly noted, the only reason the Chungs can be said to have been vindicated is that Judge Roy Pearson is more delusional and less sinister than the typical trial-lawyer extortionist. Had Judge Pearson accepted the $12,000 settlement the Chungs felt forced to offer between the expense of litigation and the small risk of Pearson mounting a case that successfully resulted in the giant fines imposed by DC consumer-fraud law, Pearson would have had a five-digit profit, and the Chungs would be out tens of thousands of dollars in litigation and settlement expense without any hope of recoupment. As Michael Greve demonstrates in “Harm-Less Lawsuits”, this is more than hypothetical: in consumer-fraud lawsuits alone, billions of dollars have been extracted from innocent defendants.
DMI’s Kia Franklin’s defense of her claim that the travesty of justice we have seen in Pearson shows that the system works? “Now, had Pearson collected the $12,000 settlement, we would have a whole new hypothetical and a whole new set of questions about the terms of the settlement (Would we have known the settlement amount? Would they have been able to publicize this? What were the lawyers’ strategies?) and the consequences thereof. So we can’t prematurely say that it would pay off for him.” Franklin goes on to deny that trial lawyer abuse even exists—a perhaps necessary position for her to take, given that the top of any list of abusers would include the indicted law firm Milberg Weiss, which funds her fellowship, in part from the successful extortion of billions of dollars using the same in terrorem tactics as Pearson.
As Peter Nordberg notes in the Overlawyered comments, “If [Pearson] is indeed representative, there should be thousands of cases just like it, and we may as well get to discussing those.” And indeed we should.
Pearsonesque $2 billion consumer-fraud lawsuit against Ford
The Ford Explorer is a sport utility vehicle. Judge Roy Pearson, excited by the $67 million he anticipates receiving for his pants, is bringing a lawsuit in California claiming that every California Explorer owner is entitled a total of $2 billion from Ford because the Explorer is allegedly prone to rolling over, using the California version of the law that Pearson is bringing his pants-suit over. Note that the damages are not for an actual rollover, just damages because of the “fraud” that the vehicle might roll over, though at least some models of the Explorer are in fact less dangerous than an average SUV in rollovers, and safer than the average vehicle in other types of accidents. (IIHS reports that the average fatality rate for mid-sized 2-door SUVs is 63 per million vehicles, and the average fatality rate for the 2-door Ford Explorer is 49 per million vehicles—and that latter number includes crashes caused by defective Firestone tires. Note that this is publicly available information: where is the fraud?)
Oh, sorry, it’s not Roy Pearson, it’s Arkansas attorney Tab Turner who is bringing the lawsuit. [Hudson Sangree, “SUV rollovers put Ford’s future in judge’s hands”, Sacramento Bee, May 24; official class notice from Sacramento County Court]
But because ATLA and Kia Franklin have condemned Roy Pearson’s lawsuit as a frivolous abuse of justice, I am sure that they will have no compunction against issuing the same criticism against millionaire trial lawyer Tab Turner for bringing a much larger and socially harmful lawsuit that might bankrupt Ford on the same bogus “consumer fraud” legal theory that Pearson used. Of course, there’s a difference between Pearson and Turner: Turner is asking for more money, and his claim has less factual basis.
More on the Grand Theft Auto lawsuit
A reader asks about yesterday’s post:
- Shouldn’t the 85-year-old grandmother &/or the 14-year-old’s parents (where are the 14-year-old’s parents, please?) be hauled into court and charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor? If this was a grandfather, he likely would be in court on charges ….
- Has anyone asked the 14-year-old how, where, or from whom he got the extra scenes for the game??
- Said grandmother is now lead plaintiff in class-action lawsuit against game’s maker and others, claiming . . . what?
- How soon will this lawsuit be thrown out; how soon will it be declared “frivolous,” and how soon will the lawyers and the legal firm who filed this suit be either disbarred or sanctioned (or should they be punished at all)?
- There’s no reason to charge anyone with delinquency of a minor. One can question the grandmother’s or parents’ wisdom, but they’re allowed to expose their kids to R-rated material. The distributors of the modification to the game might have trouble if they aren’t screening for age, but no one seems to seek to go after the shallow pocket.
- The complaint makes no effort to claim that the kid ever had or accessed the extra scenes. I suspect the lawyers will claim that they don’t need to prove that to collect damages. They’re alleging the grandmother was deceived, that the defendants engaged in false advertising, that she wouldn’t have purchased a game if she had known about the hidden sex scenes, and that disgorgement of profits is appropriate—and not that the grandmother or the grandson was actually harmed in any way. I’ve made the nine-page complaint available on the Documents in the News page on the AEI Liability Project web site.
- One hopes the lawsuit will be thrown out eventually, but the Pelman decision (Jan. 27) means that the lawsuit almost certainly won’t be held frivolous or result in sanctions or in anyone being disbarred. But that says more about Pelman and the sorry state of the law than the value of this lawsuit. See Michael Greve’s discussion of the issue in “‘Harm-Less’ Lawsuits?”
And now the lawsuits…
As we predicted on July 16, the ridiculous lawsuits over the Grand Theft Auto video game “scandal” have begun. The lead plaintiff in the putative class action is an 85-year-old grandmother, Florence Cohen, who bought the game for her 14-year-old grandson, who may have his own claims for emotional distress when his ninth-grade classmates beat him up. I suspect the eventual lead-plaintiff deposition I imagined is likely to be more entertaining than the game itself.
“Laurence D. Paskowitz, the lawyer who filed the lawsuit on behalf of Cohen, said no parent would knowingly buy an adult-only video game for their children.” Because a “M-for-Mature” 17-or-over game featuring graphic violence, profanity, and “strong sexual content” is so much more appropriate. The sex scenes that are the subject of the lawsuit are only available by taking affirmative steps to download a modification from the Internet and install it: if her 14-year-old grandson has that much freedom with a computer to be able to experience the pixeled sex (an allegation that is missing from press accounts), what else is he downloading?
The Class Action Fairness Act is already paying dividends; the case was filed in federal court, which increases the likelihood that federal judges will correctly decide that class certification is inappropriate. (AP, “Grandmother sues maker of ‘Grand Theft Auto'”, Jul. 27; hat-tip to W.F. and A.B.). Update: Jul. 28.
Grand Theft Auto “Hot Coffee Mod”
Bill Clinton made a name for himself as a moderate by criticizing violent rap in 1992, and Hillary is following in his footsteps with what ALOTT5MA’s “Phil Throckmorton” calls “an executive-quality display of deep moral concern” over an alleged modification possible in the popular “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas” video game that makes the simulated sex in the game somewhat more explicit, and thus worthy of an “AO” Adults Only rating instead of a “M” Mature rating. (Under the voluntary system, AO is 18+, while M is 17+.)
Me, I’m just amused by the thought of class action attorneys trolling for a named plaintiff parent who will testify that, while she was okay for her little Johnny to buy a game involving drug dealing, gambling, carjacking, cop-shooting, prostitution, throat-slashing, baseball-bat beatings, drive-by shootings, street-racing, gang wars, profanity-laced rap music, homosexual lovers’ quarrels, blood and gore, and “Strong Sexual Content,” she is shocked, shocked to learn that the game also includes an animation at about the level of a Ken doll rubbing up against an unclothed Barbie doll with X-rated sound effects, and is thus a victim of both consumer fraud and intense emotional distress, entitled to actual and punitive damages totalling $74,999 per identically-situated class member in the state. The Grand Theft Auto series has already been the target of some pretty silly suits (Feb. 19 and links therein), and we can pretty much expect the trend to continue. (And I beg the eventual defense attorney to pass along a public version of the deposition of the stooge named plaintiff, which will have tremendous entertainment value.) One is hopeful that the Class Action Fairness Act will give Take-Two Interactive Software the backbone to resist the extortion attempt. But if not, expect to see $5 coupons for the next edition of Grand Theft Auto in the offing.
Update: Reason’s Daniel Koffler notes “[T]oday, kids might only be able to download explicit content into their video games, but given a few years and a couple of leaps in technology, they might even be able to find hardcore pornography on the Internet.”
PETA wields s. 17200
One of the most justly unpopular of animal-rights groups is hoping to exploit the speech-suppressing potential of the California law invoked in Nike v. Kasky: “People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals Inc. accused the California Milk Advisory Board of violating the state’s unfair competition law by portraying an idyllic lifestyle for California dairy cows while knowing they endure a “harsh, uncomfortable and often painful existence.” The group is appealing a San Francisco judge’s ruling that the law’s false-advertising provisions cannot be invoked against a governmental entity such as the milk board. (Mike McKee, “PETA Cries Over Cow-Filled Milk Board Ads”, The Recorder, Nov. 18). For more on Nike v. Kasky, see Jul. 1, Jul. 9, Sept. 14, 2003. (Update Jan. 16, 2005: appeals court rules against PETA.)