Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘Madison County’

By reader acclaim: “Woman holds door open for man at Pizza Hut…”

“…then sues both.” According to her lawyer, Tom Maag, Amanda Verett was holding open the door for co-defendant Clarence Jackson when he “grabbed the door in such a fashion that it caused the door to suddenly and sharply move,” resulting in injuries for which Ms. Verett wants upwards of $150,000 from Jackson, the restaurant, or some combination of both. It happened in Edwardsville, Ill., in lawsuit-famed Madison County, where Thomas Maag is a member of a famous family of lawyers (Oct. 29, 2004). (Steve Gonzalez, Madison County Record, Mar. 8).

P.S. The website of the Dennis & Verett Law Office of Edwardsville indicates that Amanda Bradley Verett was admitted to the Illinois Bar in 2003 and is a member of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, now renamed the American Association for Justice. (hat tip: reader David Nowlan)

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February 27 roundup

  • Arguments Merck won’t be allowed to make in Madison County Vioxx trial. [Point of Law]

  • First Chicago foie gras fines. [Bainbridge]

  • Sometimes med-mal plaintiffs deserve to win. [Times-Herald via Kevin MD]

  • Curious about the Leonard Peltier pardon-seeking underlying the Geffen-Clinton-Obama split? (And where does Obama stand on pardoning Peltier?) [NPPA; TPM Cafe]

  • The polite rejection letter [Parloff]

  • Judge Jack to speak at Cardozo March 27. [Point of Law]

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February 26 roundup

  • High-school basketball player gets TRO over enforcement of technical foul after pushing referee. [Huntington News; Chad @ WaPo]

  • Madison County court rejects Vioxx litigation tourism. [Point of Law]

  • Faking disability for accommodation disqualifies bar applicant [Frisch]

  • DOJ antitrust enforcement doesn’t seem to be consistent with U.S. trade policy position. [Cafe Hayek]

  • Professor falsely accused of sexual harassment wins defamation lawsuit against former plaintiff, but too late to save his job. [Kirkendall]

  • Watch what you say dept.: Disbarred attorney and ex-felon sues newspaper, letter-to-editor writer, Illinois Civil Justice League. (His brother won the judicial election anyway.) [Madison County Record; Belleville News Democrat; US v. Amiel Cueto]

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Rex Carr med-mal case fails

In 1999, Maria Storm had a mole on her right shoulder that was rubbing against her bra strap; Dr. Patrick Zimmerman removed it at her request. The mole did not have an irregular shape or color. Four years later, she was diagnosed with a fatal melanoma on a different part of her body (“Louis Dehner, M.D., a pathologist at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, testified that the mole Zimmermann removed was not the primary spot of the melanoma”), and her family sought to blame her death on Zimmerman, seeking $10.9 million. (Zimmerman biopsies 30% of the moles he sees, and less than 1% of the ones he orders for testing are malignant, suggesting he’s already practicing heavily defensively.) A Madison County jury rejected attorney Rex Carr’s pleas; Carr (Feb. 6; Dec. 6, 2005; Nov. 6, 2005; Dec. 23, 2004; May 4, 2004; POL Dec. 28, 2004) says he’ll appeal. (Steve Horrell, “No award in med-mal case”, Edwardsville Intelligencer, Jan. 31; Leah Thorsen, “Doctor sued over cancer death defends his prognosis of mole”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Jan. 30; Steve Gonzalez, “Collinsville physician cleared in Madison County med mal trial”, Madison County Record, Jan. 31).

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February 22 roundup

December 14 roundup

  • Ford wins an Explorer rollover lawsuit brought by family of unseatbelted accident victim, but press coverage is skimpy. [Detroit News]
  • Milberg Weiss’s claims for $12 million in fees viewed skeptically, cut in half. [Lattman; WSJ]
  • Dog food prank plaintiff Tennie Pierce is “the O.J. of the Fire Department.” Contrary to what one may think, this is apparently meant as a compliment, suggesting a racial divide that can’t be entirely attributable to whites. [LA Times]
  • SDNY Clinton appointee Judge Scheindlin thinks she’s smarter than Judge Easterbrook, throws pension law into mess again. See POL Nov. 12 and Aug. 8 for background. [Business Insurance; Cooper v. IBM]
  • Nifong gets around to releasing DNA results that appear to exonerate indicted Duke lacrosse players. Earlier: Oct. 12, etc. [AP/ABC News]
  • Judge won’t censor Borat DVD, but frat-boy lawsuit goes forward. [Reuters]
  • Criminal speeds away from DC police, hits innocent motorist, DC taxpayers liable for $1M. [WaPo]
  • Similarly: negligent driver veers across three lanes of highway traffic into oncoming vehicle, killing 18-year old; taxpayers liable for $2M because SUV was able to smash through the median. [AP/King County Journal]
  • Today’s Ninth Circuit Follies edition: lawless reopening of final sentences. [Kerr @ Volokh; Bashman; Carrington v. US; Lat]
  • Robert Ramsey files two more lawsuits claiming simultaneous asbestosis and silicosis in Madison County against several dozen defendants. [Madison County Record]
  • UK: 100-pound fine for misfiling trash. [Market Center Blog via Overcriminalized]
  • Inhofe’s take on global warming. [Senate]
  • Trial lawyer puts money where his mouth is. Check back in ten years to see whether it’s lawyers or insurers who are really at fault for medmal insurance crisis. [Point of Law]
  • I blame the fact I joined Friendster for this. [PrawfsBlawg]

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November 29 roundup

When a judge sues for defamation, cont’d

Reacting to the recent case in which a jury awarded Illinois chief justice Robert Thomas $7 million against a suburban newspaper, the Kane County Chronicle (Jun. 22, Jul. 19, Nov. 3, Nov. 7, Nov. 14, Nov. 19). the New York Times recalls a 1983 case in which “a Supreme Court justice in Pennsylvania sued The Philadelphia Inquirer for defamation. The case was finally dismissed this summer — a full 23 years after it began. … [Reporter Daniel R.] Biddle, who is now an editor at The Inquirer, said he had learned through lawyers that some of the biggest law firms in Philadelphia declined to represent the paper, in part ‘because they were afraid’ that fighting a Supreme Court justice might jeopardize their other clients.” (Katharine Q. Seelye, “Clash of a Judge and a Small Paper Underlines the Tangled History of Defamation”, New York Times, Nov. 20). More: Mar. 16, 2004. The Times piece also discusses a lawsuit’s silencing of the Alton Telegraph, which once was an outspoken voice in Madison County, Illinois; Ted covered that episode on Point of Law Dec. 28, 2004.

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“Trial Lawyers Inc. — Illinois”

At Point of Law (Oct. 18), Jim Copland announces a new report from the Manhattan Institute’s Trial Lawyers Inc. project:

This afternoon, the Manhattan Institute released Trial Lawyers, Inc.: Illinois, A Report on the Lawsuit Industry in Illinois 2006. The first comprehensive look at litigation in the Prairie State, the report synthesizes work done by the Illinois Civil Justice League, American Tort Reform Association, and U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform, among others. The report also includes new information, such as the percentage of 2004 contributions to the Illinois State Democratic Party that came from plaintiffs’ lawyers and their firms (78 percent) and Illinois’ quantitative rank in terms of its medical-malpractice liability as a percentage of gross state product (49th of the 50 states) and its corporations’ self-insured liability as a percentage of GSP (48th).

The Madison County Record has already reported on the new study here.

More coverage: Adam Jadhav, “Metro East courts have improved somewhat, think tank concludes”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Oct. 19.

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October 17 round-up

  • Interview with ICJL’s Ed Murnane on Madison County judiciary elections. [Madison County Record; see also Illinois Justice Blog]
  • London pension fund: oops, we just sued BP [Point of Law]
  • New York court throws out mold suit with systematic rebuttal of the junk science involved. [Point of Law]
  • Next mass tort: anti-psychotic drugs. [Mass Tort Litigation Blog]

  • “Vibrant, dynamic, gravitas, ambitious, hungry and 17 other words or phrases have been banned by one of Britain’s top recruitment agencies for fear of falling foul of new anti-ageism laws.” [Telegraph (h/t F.R.)]
  • Israel Supreme Court: compensatory damages don’t include cost of prostitute visits. This actually reversed a lower-court decision to the contrary. [Avi Bell/PrawfsBlawg via Above the Law]

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