The Missouri Supreme Court has ruled that if plaintiffs claim to have repressed their memory of the bad things that happened to them, they may succeed in suspending for years and even decades the statute of limitations on the resulting tort actions. The court reinstated a suit by a man who said he had been sexually abused at Chaminade College Preparatory School 30 years ago, but had repressed the memory of the episode for 25-odd years. (Robert Patrick, “Repressed memory abuse suits supported”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Jun. 13). Reader Patrick R., who sent the item along, says: “This is an invitation to fleece churches and insurance companies through fraudulent claims and an invitation for claimants to sleep on their legal rights.”
Posts Tagged ‘Missouri’
“Big law firm picks up Little Guy in sweep for defendants”
In March 2004, the Kansas City law firm of Walters Bender Strohbehn & Vaughan filed a class action against 63 defendants for supposedly overcharging for mortgage fees. The firm, however, confused Wall Street banking behemoth Salomon Brothers with developer Berton Solomon’s “Solomon Brothers” St. Louis commercial real-estate company and sued the latter. (This was a double mistake since Salomon Brothers hasn’t existed since 1997, and is now part of Citibank after at least two name changes and two mergers.) Unfortunately, the plaintiffs refused to immediately drop Solomon from the suit, and he ran up (a remarkably cheap) $4000+ in legal expenses in the seventeen months of legal proceedings before he was finally dropped, $4000 that Walters Bender is refusing to pay. They’re not very happy about being sued in small claims court, and are fighting that suit, even though it will cost them more to do so than to pay Solomon’s bills. (Bill McClellan, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Jun. 18).
Without a settlement, Solomon is unlikely to recoup his costs in the absence of showing malice, a required element in Missouri law; lawyers are immune from the consequences of mere negligence, because, they’ll be happy to explain, such liability might deter productive activity like scattershot lawsuits. If only the same protections applied to, say, practicing medicine or providing jobs or producing goods.
Stupid Class Action Settlement Dept.: Enterprise Rent-A-Car and Jeffrey Lowe
Two St. Louis attorneys (including Jeffrey Lowe (cf. POL Oct. 15)) will collect “up to” $975,000 in a settlement of a class action against Enterprise Rent-A-Car; their putative clients, a class of Missouri plaintiffs, will receive a 25%-off coupon that results in higher rates than standard discounts, and is thus entirely worthless. Consumerist (h/t Slim) has the details. The final hearing on the settlement is June 14. (“Judge OKs settlement in Enterprise class-action suit”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 5).
The allegation against Enterprise? That a 5% surcharge (which the plaintiffs admit Enterprise can legally charge) didn’t clearly state what it was for. Enterprise isn’t lowering its rates, but will state that the 5% covers various local taxes that it pays—thus adding more bulk to a lengthy list of small-print disclosures that obscures potentially useful information, since customers care about the bottom line to themselves, rather than how their rental car company spends its money. How precisely has this lawsuit made consumers better off? More on class actions.
Burger King hot coffee lawsuit settles
ATLA and its surrogates would have you believe that the McDonald’s coffee case reflected the unique circumstances of one chain that sold coffee hotter than anyone else. We’ve been telling you for a while that that’s not true, and there’s now another datapoint in Oklahoma. Donna Aslanis purchased two cups of coffee from a Rolla, Missouri, Burger King drive-thru in 1998, but burned herself severely when she spilled the coffee while pouring it into a plastic container in her lap, and sued in 2002, complaining that the employee failed to tell her that the coffee was hot. The case went into mediation and settled; the amount (if any) of settlement was not disclosed. Her lawyer was Steven Paulus. (Ryan Slight, “Woman settles in hot coffee lawsuit”, News-Leader, Mar. 7). (More on Stella Liebeck.)
Paul Harris show on food nannyism
Yesterday I was a guest on Paul Harris’s radio program (KMOX St. Louis) to discuss the latest push for government regulation and courtroom action over tempting and calorie-laden items found in the refrigerator, in particular sodas. We talked about a new Associated Press article reporting favorably on some nutritionists’ plans to “make the case for higher taxes on soda, restrictions on how and where it is sold and maybe a surgeon general’s warning on labels”. (Marilynn Marchione, “A hard stance against soft drinks”, AP/Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Mar. 5). More on our Eat, Drink and Be Merry page.
Paul Harris show today; TVW
I’m scheduled to be a guest on Paul Harris’s talk show on KMOX St. Louis today at 2:10 Central Time. (More here with link to discussion.) Also, TVW, Washington state’s local answer to C-SPAN, recorded the speech I gave last month to the state’s Liability Reform Coalition, and has made it available in Windows Media or RealPlayer formats.
$80M Missouri “sudden acceleration” verdict reversed
Elderly driver Constance Peters sped in reverse out of her driveway in her Oldsmobile Cutlass and severely injured herself. Plaintiffs’ attorneys blamed General Motors, alleging sudden acceleration (Apr. 19, 2004, Jun. 6, 2000) through a defective cruise control (that magically ceased running the engine when the driver was knocked unconscious). More sophisticated plaintiffs’ attorneys have long since recognized that defective cruise control theories are so much nonsense (there is no reason for a “defect” to be six times more likely to affect elderly drivers) and try to sue for failure to warn of pedal misapplication or failure to recall and install shift-interlock safety protection in older cars, but some cases proceed on the older theory; this one resulted in an $80 million verdict. The plaintiffs went too far, however, and shoveled into evidence 139 cases of previous “sudden acceleration” that they attempted to use to show that the cruise control was defectively accelerating out of control—even though the cars in those incidents did not have cruise control! The Missouri Court of Appeals reversed and granted a new trial, though plaintiffs will get to present their bogus case again. (Randall Peters v. General Motors Corp. (Mo. App. W.D. Jan. 17, 2006); Tresa Baldas, “Acceleration Case Draws $80M Jury Verdict”, National law Journal, Jan. 7, 2003).
Search ad terms
Per Forbes, Sept. 5, p. 118, not online: “Costliest terms per click include ‘Lawyer in Missouri’ ($47) and ‘Auto Accident Lawyer Detroit’ ($46)”. See Apr. 8, 2004, Jan. 5, 2005.
Annals of overreaching legal fees
An appeals court in Missouri has ruled (Susan Mello v. Anita Davis and McDonnell-Douglas) that a lawyer who represented a client in an employment claim is not entitled to collect 35% of her client’s future salary and benefits by way of a claimed contingent fee. Best (if somewhat unsettling) quote from the court’s caustic opinion:
if it was Mello’s intent to have her client surrender 35 to 45% of all future earnings until the welcome hand of death freed her from this servitude, the contract needed to say as much.
(Via George Lenard, Dec. 9, who says the case “would be funny if it weren’t so sad”).
Army Corps sued over levee-building
Over the years the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has proposed numerous levee and other public works projects aimed at reducing hurricane dangers to New Orleans and elsewhere in the Mississippi/Missouri river system. Environmental groups have sued, and sued, and sued, and sued, and their lawsuits have often succeeded in stopping these flood-control measures. (John Berlau, “Greens Vs. Levees”, National Review Online, Sept. 8; Michael Tremoglie, “New Orleans: A Green Genocide”, FrontPage, Sept. 8). Plus: Prof. Bainbridge (Sept. 9) has more details and spots a Los Angeles Times article raising the issue (Ralph Vartabedian and Peter Pae, “A Barrier That Could Have Been”, Sept. 9). The article’s summary line: “Congress OKd a project to protect New Orleans 40 years ago, but an environmentalist suit halted it. Some say it could have worked.” More: Sept. 14 (environmentalists and project critics respond).