The Illinois State Bar Association has found that people in focus groups are upset about the miscarriages of justice that occur in Madison County and corruption in the system, and have been motivated to take action. So are they going to clean up the system and support reform? No! Rather, they hope to have a million-dollar advertising campaign to improve the image of attorneys and engage in more market research. (Gail Applebaum, “State Bar may advertise to help lawyers”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Nov. 23). In the press account, ISBA official David Anderson disingenuously argues that Madison County isn’t a judicial hellhole because of the number of medical malpractice verdicts—ignoring that the number of med-mal verdicts has nothing to do with Madison County’s deservedly poor reputation.
Posts Tagged ‘Madison County’
Poetic justice department: Rex Carr sued
Jason Shafer is seeking $50,000 for medical expenses and pain and suffering for neck and shoulder injuries allegedly sustained in a fender-bender with the late-model BMW of attorney Rex Carr (Dec. 23; May 4, 2004). (Steve Gonzalez, “Rex Carr sued for allegedly causing rear-end collision”, Madison County Record, Nov. 3).
AEI Vioxx lawsuit panel
On September 7, the AEI Liability Project will be hosting a panel on the recent Ernst v. Merck case (Aug. 22, Aug. 19 and links therein) and its implications for pharmaceutical regulation and the justice system. I’ll be speaking, along with Jack Calfee of AEI; Dan Troy, former chief counsel of the FDA and currently at Sidley & Austin; and Evan Schaeffer, who, along with co-counsel from other firms, has a plaintiffs-side docket of Vioxx cases from his Madison County base of Schaeffer & Lamere.
Jailed…for not breaking the law
Conflicting legal obligations in Illinois:
An Alton woman embroiled in a divorce case spent more than four hours in jail for contempt of court after she refused a Madison County’s judge’s order to return a handgun to her ex-husband, a convicted felon.
Elizabeth “Beth” Ritchie, 30, said that complying with Associate Judge Ellar Duff’s order, delivered at a hearing on Thursday, would have required Ritchie to commit a crime herself.
It is a felony in Illinois for a felon to possess a firearm, and for anyone to transfer a gun to a felon.
Duff said in an interview Friday that she did not learn until after the hearing that Ritchie’s ex-husband was a felon, and that she then ordered Beth Ritchie released from the Madison County Jail.
Ritchie said she tried to explain the situation to Duff in court but was ignored.
“I was being ordered by the law to break the law,” Ritchie said. “And when I wouldn’t, I got thrown in jail.”
(Paul Hampel, “Justice misfires over gun”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Jul. 22)(& welcome Crime & Federalism, Wave Maker readers).
More: reader Mickey Ferguson asks whether Ritchie could have avoided the predicament by volunteering to the gun over to the court itself, as in a case of escrow, with the court then free to turn it over or not to the felon. Good question, but I for one don’t know the answer.
Publicity roundup
Texas Lawyer has a well-reported and personality-filled article, unfortunately not online, detailing how the state’s plaintiffs lawyers became “in many ways…the victims of their own success”; it happened when “tort reformers, provoked by the plaintiffs bar’s hubris, particularly as it was asserted at the state Capitol in Austin, galvanized themselves over the past 15 years to topple the trial lawyers’ dominance over Texas politics.” Also a lot about asbestos-suit reform (Miriam Rozen, “Paradise Lost; Plaintiffs Bar Bemoans End of an Era as Tort Reformers Target Asbestos”, Texas Lawyer, Feb. 28, not online). A Medill News Service dispatch from last December quotes me on the subject of class action jurisdiction (Betsy Judelson, “On the Docket: Getting Out of Madison County”, Medill News Service, Dec.). And Automotive Industries, in an ambitious backgrounder on the liability explosion, mentions my Hillsdale College speech of last year (Gary Witzenburg, “Urgent Need for Tort Reform”, April).
Hit by bird at garden center
In far-famed Madison County, Ill., 40-year-old Rhonda Nichols is suing the Lowe’s Home Center in Alton, saying she was seriously injured when a bird flew into her head at the outside gardening area. She wants more than $50,000:
According to the suit, filed by the St. Louis firm of Anderson & Associates, the store “allowed wild birds to enter the Gardening area in which customers travel … (and) that said wild birds created a dangerous condition.”
Nichols claims the bird caused injuries to her head, brain, neck, muscles, bones, nerves, discs, ligaments, as well leading to the loss of neurological functions and cognitive skills.
…The suit said the incident occurred “on or about April 15, 2003.” Bobbi Rose, an assistant manager at Lowe’s, said the store had no record of any human-bird collisions on that date.
(Paul Hampel, “Woman sues store, claims she was attacked by bird”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Apr. 13). Update Feb. 12: federal judge throws out suit.
Gift card shenanigans and other Madison County follies
When one uses a Wal-Mart gift card for a purchase of less than the amount of the gift card, the remainder remains on the gift card for use in future purchases. This wasn’t enough for Ashley Peach, who used two $10 gift cards to buy $18.61 worth of stuff at Wal-Mart, and was upset that she wasn’t given $1.39 in cash as change. So she’s suing, demanding punitive damages, and seeking class action status in Madison County. Her lawyers: the Lakin Law Firm. Having found gift cards such a traumatic experience, you’d think Peach would avoid them, but she has two essentially identical suits pending against K-Mart and Fashion Bug for similar misunderstandings. (Steve Gonzalez, “$1.39? Wal-Mart next in line for Peach”, Madison County Record, Nov . 7).
The Peach family are frequent Madison County litigants, with at least five suits going in the system, including a very strange suit against Granite City, where Armettia Peach paid $68,900 (including $20,000 in cash) for a house she had never seen, sued Granite City and some bystanders for allegedly failing to inspect a leaky roof, sold the house for $40,000 to a LLC that then sold it to Granite City’s mayor’s sister-in-law for $57,000–and then received a $104,000 default judgment from Granite City (including $26,000 in legal fees to the Lakin Law Firm), when the town failed to respond to the complaint. Something fishy is going on here, but one doesn’t know what, and whether Granite City officials are victims or participants in something sinister. (Steve Korris, “Plaintiff Peach awarded windfall judgment against Granite City”, Madison County Record, Mar. 31; Steve Korris, “Anatomy of Peach v. Granite City”, Madison County Record, Mar. 31; Steve Korris, “Home repairman gets trapped in legal web”, Madison County Record, Mar. 31).
Attorney accidentally sues himself
By reader acclaim, from the Illinois county that furnishes so much material for this site: “Alton attorney Emert Wyss thought he could make money in a Madison County class action lawsuit, but he accidentally sued himself instead.” Representing a client who’d bought and then refinanced a house, Wyss advised her that she might be entitled to file a lawsuit against the company that wrote the original mortgage over the $60 fee it charged for faxing two payoff statements, and soon signed her up for a class-action suit to be handled by himself and several other law firms, including the prominent Lakin firm. However, it developed that a company called Centerre Title, owned by Wyss himself, had been the party that collected the allegedly improper fees at closing, and when the mortgage-company defendant learned of this it moved to add both Centerre and Wyss as third-party defendants, much as Jerry, in the old cartoons, sometimes succeeds in bringing Tom’s tail around in circular fashion and presenting it for him to bite. The judge granted the motion, and rather than persist in a suit against himself Wyss resigned the client’s representation. The Madison County Record’s coverage includes deposition-transcript excerpts that serve as a reminder of how essentially passive clients often get steered into class actions in which the lawyers are the real parties in interest (Steve Corris, “Alton attorney accidentally sues himself”, Madison County Record, Mar. 8).
Beating the clock in class-action-land
The scene in certain counties of Southern Illinois shortly before the signing of the Class Action Fairness Act: “Class-action business was busy last week in Madison and St. Clair counties in anticipation of the new law. Thirty-four class actions were filed in Madison County, and 51 in St. Clair County, with some lawyers making sure Friday morning to get their suits stamped before the Bush signing.” (Paul Hampel, “Where the suits are”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Feb. 20).
Finding an OB in Illinois
Dr. Benjamin Brewer, who writes the Wall Street Journal’s “The Doctor’s Office” column, discusses the OB shortage caused in Illinois by the medical malpractice problem. Trial lawyers like to blame the insurance industry’s investments and “business practices,” but the leading insurer in Illinois, ISMIE, has only 3% of its funds in the stock market. (Moreover, ISMIE is a mutual insurer–profits go back to its member doctors. The doctors aren’t conspiring to charge themselves too much; ISMIE’s rates reflect the payouts it makes in malpractice cases.) Large swaths of southern Illinois and nearly half the counties in the state have no obstetrical hospital services at all. Brewer concludes “it may take a federal law to stimulate the reform process in Illinois, where entrenched proponents of our broken system hold political and judicial sway.” (“When a Pregnant Patient Struggles to Find Care”, Jan. 4). Our sister site, Point of Law, comments on tomorrow’s Presidential visit to Madison County, where Bush will discuss his litigation reform agenda for the upcoming Congress. (Krysten Crawford, “Bush heads to ‘Judicial Hellhole'”, CNN/Money, Jan. 4; Ryan Keith, “Bush to Highlight Tort Reform in Ill.”, AP/Newsday, Jan. 4; Caleb Hale, “Doctors Are Eager To Hear What Bush Will Say About Crisis”, The Southern, Jan. 4; Mark Silva, “Bush’s tort reform efforts to start at ‘judicial hellhole'”, Chicago Tribune, Jan. 3).