Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘New Orleans’

New Orleans: Five-fingered FOIA request?

If it’s too much trouble to go through the prescribed channels to request information, you can just ask the city’s sanitation director:

At the same time New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin’s administration was citing storage problems as its reason for erasing all but about a dozen of the mayor’s e-mail messages from 2008, another administration official was providing an activist lawyer with thousands of electronic messages written by or sent to at least four City Council members and their staffers during the past three years.

The council said sanitation director Veronica White, without any involvement by the city attorney or the council itself, handed over emails that may have included materials falling under attorney-client privilege, personal correspondence and communications from constituents, and details on pending lawsuits and criminal investigations, as well as council members’ private opinions on pending ordinances. Lawyer Tracie Washington, who obtained the messages, has clashed with the council on various issues including its attempt to demolish some public housing projects. [Times-Picayune/NOLA.com]

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New Orleans: brawl between class action lawyers

And not a figurative brawl either: “fisticuffs broke out between attorneys Madro Bandaries and J. Robert Ates, who were pushing rival class-action suits about the late handling of insurance claims …[lead attorney Wiley] Beevers and Bandaries have traded hostile rhetoric in recent weeks as they try to gain advantage for their rival class-action suits against Louisiana Citizens Property Insurance Corp., which could produce $5 million in spoils for the victorious legal team.” (Rebecca Mowbray, “Brawl erupts between two lawyers at civil court”, New Orleans Times-Picayune, Dec. 16).

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November 14 roundup

  • Pajamas TV interviews me on Obama cabinet prospects (RFK Jr., Caroline Kennedy, Schwarzenegger, Gorelick, etc.) (Nov. 13, subscription-only)
  • Federal court in New Orleans hits attorney with five-year practice suspension after “intentionally contemptuous” filing and other misconduct [Times-Picayune, Ashton O’Dwyer]
  • Lawyer sues his straying wife for giving him herpes, but her lawyer says a test proves she doesn’t have the malady in the first place [Above the Law]
  • Doctors (e.g.) being put through hostile depositions are often tempted to talk back sharply to the lawyer. Bad move, says Ronald Miller [Maryland Injury]
  • It’s a shame most of the press remains incurious about that episode a few days ago in which talk of compulsory national service appeared, then vanished from the Obama site [K. Ryan James]
  • Batting cage pitching machine without prompting hits customer in most sensitive part of male anatomy, he collects $1.2 million [The Big Lead]
  • ACLU will defend preacher sent to prison on parole violation charge after writing “God will smite this judge” newspaper article (having earlier been convicted of election misconduct)[AP/FoxNews, western Michigan]
  • On appeal, Long Island attorney beats charges of coaching clients to fake injury and using “steerers” to gain business [NYLJ]

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DRI charity-race “Assumption of Risk and Waiver of Rights”

It was only natural for the professional organization of the civil defense bar, the Defense Research Institute, to include bulletproof disclaimer language when sponsoring a charity race for its own lawyer-members at its annual meeting, which took place earlier this month in New Orleans. As Robert Ambrogi points out, the waiver/disclaimer warned of the risks of high altitude (in a famously low-altitude city) and asked the signer to affirm that various horrific-sounding risks, such as those of terrorism, “contribute to my enjoyment and excitement and are a reason for my voluntary participation”.

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The Ted Frank law-school tour (new dates added!)

(Updated from July 30 post with new dates.)  I’m going outside the Beltway, and may be in your neighborhood, to speak at a variety of Federalist Society chapters:

  • September 3, Loyola Law School, New Orleans (obesity litigation)
  • September 4, LSU Law School (obesity litigation)
  • October 13, Ave Maria Law School (Is Overlawyering Overtaking Democracy?)
  • October 14 (new date!), University of Michigan Law School (debate with Professor Steven Croley)
  • October 15, DePaul University Law School (class action settlements)
  • October 16, University of Chicago Law School (class action settlements and Grand Theft Auto)
  • October 16, Chicago-Kent College of Law (obesity litigation)
  • October 21, Florida State University College of Law (TBD)
  • October 22, University of Florida Levin College of Law (TBD)
  • October 23, Stetson University College of Law (TBD)

Please do suggest my name to your local Federalist Society chapter (or ACS chapter or what-have-you) if you wish me to speak at your law school. (And if your law school is in the Chicago or New Orleans metropolitan areas, now’s a good time to free-ride off of what your neighbors have already scheduled and help save the Federalist Society money. Otherwise I’ll just use the free time to visit local casinos.)

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Unclear on the concept

Bizarro-Overlawyered hasn’t quite gotten the hang of how to put forward their propaganda campaign to deprive consumers of the choice of arbitrating disputes.

A New Orleans woman, Patricia Dicorte, says she got ripped off by her contractor in May 2007, so she took him to an arbitrator, and in July 2007—a fraction of the time it would take in a civil suit of that magnitude—she had an arbitration ruling in her favor for $219 thousand. Unfortunately for her, she then took it to the cesspool of Orleans Parish Courts for enforcement, and Democratic Judge Yada Magee—a colleague of the cousin of the contractor—violated the Federal Arbitration Act and threw out the arbitrator’s ruling. (Dennis Woltering, “Despite arbitrator’s ruling woman still fighting contractor”, WWL-TV, Feb. 25). This will eventually be reinstated on appeal at some unnecessary expense, but somehow Kia Franklin is advertising this fiasco as an example of problems with arbitration (!), rather than as a problem with the judicial hellhole of New Orleans. (If the judge isn’t willing to give a fair ruling for the consumer in something as straightforward and administrative as arbitration judgment enforcement, what makes Franklin think that the consumer would have had a better chance with that judge in a civil trial?)

Judge Magee is best known for railroading negligence findings for 1800 plaintiffs against Dow Chemical in bogus silicone breast implant litigation in 1997, a decision thrown out by a Louisiana appellate court in 2002. Spitzfaden v. Dow Corning Corp., 833 So.2d 512 (La. App. 2002).

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