Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘Pennsylvania’

“…And there’s a thousand more in this state that do it”

One crooked Pennsylvania lawyer disbarred and, by his own account at least, 1,000 more to go:

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has ordered the disbarment of a Philadelphia attorney who served time in prison after pleading guilty to charges he defrauded a slew of insurers on behalf of personal injury plaintiffs who in reality had not needed medical attention.

During a disciplinary hearing Michael Radbill suggested that the practice of representing clients who are “not really injured” is endemic across the state, according to the report from the Supreme Court’s Disciplinary Board.

He also indicated that over the course of a 30-year career, 80 percent of his practice had been centered on the representation of uninjured personal injury clients. …

The federal investigation also produced evidence that Radbill had employed people to recruit personal injury clients, help stage slip-and-falls for his clients and oversee his clients’ treatment by medical providers willing to falsify records and insurance claims, according to the report….

According to the report, Radbill said at a disciplinary hearing that “I got into personal injury cases and … when I was a young lawyer, [people told me], ‘You’re going to get accident cases of people that aren’t really hurt, you say they’re hurt and you send them to the doctor.’

“That’s not right, OK?” Radbill continued, according to the report. “And I did it for 30 years and there’s a thousand more here in this state that do it, and I told [the investigators] that, and they said, ‘Yeah, but you got caught,’ [for] which I served my time, I didn’t make excuses, so that’s true.”

(Asher Hawkins, “Representation of Uninjured Clients Brings Disbarment for Pa. Lawyer”, The Legal Intelligencer, Jun. 23).

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Update: trial lawyers in GOP primaries

In the Pennsylvania contest discussed in this space Apr. 4, their efforts fizzled, with candidate Jim Haggerty placing third in the field. (Michael P. Buffer, “Baker cuts a wide swath”, Wilkes Barre Times-Leader, May 18). And Texas Shark Watch, devoted to this subject (see Jan. 17), reports that trial lawyers were largely unsuccessful this year in Lone Star State GOP primary contests despite pumping in a good bit of money: four plaintiff’s lawyers slated as candidates went down to defeat. Two lawyer-backed incumbents held on, but would probably have won in any case (Apr. 5, Apr. 12).

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NYC sues out-of-state gun dealers

Bloomberg’s crew says the city carried out “sting” operations that proved dealers in Pennsylvania, South Carolina and elsewhere were selling to “straw purchasers” in violation of federal law. (Diane Cardwell, “New York City Sues 15 Gun Dealers in 5 States, Charging Illegal Sales”, New York Times, May 16). David Hardy at Arms and the Law (May 15) says that even if the city can prove such allegations, “I still see major barriers in terms of (a) duty (b) causation and (c) damages. Not to mention (d), standing. I mean — if you can prove a dealer on a certain day was willing to make a strawman sale, does that prove he ever did so in the past? How many times? What crimes were caused or not caused?”

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“Eastern Law Firms Roll the Dice on Indian Law”

Tribal land claims are getting to be big business (see Jan. 12, etc.), and prominent law firms including Philadelphia’s Cozen O’Connor and Roseland, N.J.’s Lowenstein Sandler are among those lining up to assist Indian tribes (and their wealthy non-Indian backers) in filing lawsuits against hapless landowners as leverage for casino schemes. And here’s a choice quote from Robert Odawi Porter, director of the Syracuse University Center for Indigenous Law, Governance and Citizenship:

In cases where land-claim suits are funded by outsiders, the tribe is usually a passive participant in the litigation, says Porter. Such arrangements are permitted under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988, which gives states authority to negotiate revenue-sharing agreements with tribal casinos.

“Everything is dictated by the developer — I call it the ‘sit back and take a check approach,'” Porter says.

(Charles Toutant, New Jersey Law Journal/Law.com, Mar. 20).

Also, updates: in late 2004 a federal court granted defendants’ motion to dismiss the Delaware Indians’ claim to land in the Allentown, Pa. area (Northampton County) including Binney & Smith’s Crayola factory (PDF, at Indianz.com)(see Feb. 9, 2004). And, alas, none other than the Bush Justice Department has weighed in with a petition for certiorari urging the Supreme Court to overturn a Second Circuit panel’s landmark ruling (see Jul. 29, 2005) which threw out the Cayugas’ lawsuit as not pressed in a timely enough way, a ruling which (if it stands) would cast doubt on the validity of of most of the new wave of Indian land litigation.

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17-year-old boys climb railroad cars

…and get in serious trouble with the 12,000-volt catenary wires atop them. Now a Pennsylvania federal judge has ruled that the resulting suit against Amtrak can go forward, including a claim for punitive damages — the doctrine of “attractive nuisance” applies, it seems, because the kids were after all legal infants. (Shannon P. Duffy, “17-Year-Old Trespassers May Use Attractive Nuisance Argument”, Legal Intelligencer, Apr. 11)(via Childs who got it from WSJ law blog).

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Pigs at the Slaughterhouse?

The team of lawyers who recently won the largest-ever bad faith insurance verdict in Pennsylvania — more than $7.9 million — are asking U.S. District Judge Cynthia M. Rufe to make new law by awarding them $2.3 million in fees, the largest award of attorney fees that would ever have been granted in such a case.

The lawyers argue that the lodestar approach,under which their fee would be about $323,000, is flawed for two reasons: because the lawyers who bring such cases almost never bill for their work at an hourly rate, and their clients have most often agreed to a contingent fee in which the lawyers will be paid a set percentage of any verdict or settlement they win, usually one-third.

As a result, Tanner and Newman argue, the lodestar approach “unduly focuses the court’s scrutiny on a fictional contrivance as opposed to an approach which accurately reflects the manner in which such cases are handled.”

Of the $7.9m jury verdict, $6.25m is punitive damages, which, the defense argue, is a sufficient pot of money out of which the lawyers can extract their fees. (Law.com, Apr. 7)

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Vioxx coverage (and more) at Point of Law

For comprehensive coverage of this week’s verdicts in lawsuits against Merck, see Point of Law. In particular, Ted corrects reporters who keep passing on ill-informed assertions that the Cona/McDarby results are going to preclude Merck from raising its earlier defenses in the thousands of Vioxx cases yet to come, and that that New Jersey cases are being heard in “Merck’s home court“.

Other things you’ve been missing if you don’t check our sister site regularly:

* New regular contributors include Larry Ribstein (Ideoblog), Tom Kirkendall (Houston’s Clear Thinkers), and Sam Munson (Manhattan Institute);

* Theodore Dalrymple on a new history of vaccine litigation;

* Jim Copland on Rep. Cynthia McKinney and a class action on behalf of Capitol police;

* Ted on the Supreme Court’s recent Dabit decision on state-court securities suits (here and here); and on a new med-mal study;

* Michael Krauss on a tort suit in the U.S. against ExxonMobil over abuses by the Indonesian military;

* Jonathan B. Wilson on offer-of-judgment reform in Georgia (and more); and joint-and-several-liability reform in Pennsylvania, just vetoed by that state’s Gov. Ed Rendell;

* Posts by me nominating an Arizona lawprof for “the worst and most tendentious analogy in the history of the liability debate”; on doctors’ Good Samaritan liability; a ruling in the New York school finance case, an AG who dissents from his brethren on the tobacco deal; the Rhode Island lead paint verdict (here, here, etc.); Seventh Circuit judge Diane Sykes criticizes the Wisconsin Supreme Court; and lost-overtime suits on behalf of $400,000-a-year stockbrokers. And, of course, much much more — bookmark the site today.

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Trial lawyers in GOP politics

Now it’s Pennsylvania: Donna Rovito has got the goods on the trial bar’s efforts to influence the forthcoming (May 16) Republican primary for a state senate seat in the Wilkes-Barre area. They’re backing Kingston mayor Jim Haggerty, who’s facing off against former gubernatorial aide Lisa Baker and three other candidates (Mar. 23, scroll to item 5). Update May 21: Haggerty loses.

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No abuse of process here, move along

Dr. Hazel I. Holst contends that attorney Harry J. Oxman named her as a defendant in a lawsuit brought by Roderick T. Powell arising from a nasal surgery performed in 1970 even though — kind of a big gap in the case — “there was absolutely no record of Dr. Holst ever treating Mr. Powell”. So she sued Oxman for various counts including abuse of process, extortion and racketeering. Now U.S. District Judge R. Barclay Surrick of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania has dismissed her complaint, ruling that 1) Holst could not prove that the case eventuated in a verdict or dismissal in her favor — a prerequisite for an abuse of process claim — because the case had apparently been diverted to alternative dispute resolution and resolved there without a “verdict”; 2) she could not prove racketeering because she made no showing that the lawyer followed a pattern or practice of filing cases of this sort, and — this is my favorite — 3)

that Holst had also failed to allege a valid claim of abuse of process because her extortion claim was limited to an allegation that Oxman had initiated the suit in the hopes of inducing settlement discussions [he had in fact demanded $200,000, per her account].

“This tort requires a ‘perversion of legal process after it has begun in order to achieve a result for which the process was not intended….” [the judge wrote]

(emphasis added). Should we infer that enabling $200,000 demands against doctors under these circumstances is the sort of purpose for which the process was intended? (Shannon P. Duffy, “RICO Suit Against Lawyer Dismissed due to Lack of ‘Enterprise'”, Legal Intelligencer, Mar. 23).

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Nurse Cullen’s references, VI

The notorious killer nurse is back in the news, and Philip K. Howard recalls the background of his crimes:

During his 16-year nursing career, Cullen was able to move from one hospital to another – to 10 medical facilities in all – because fear of litigation prevented those hospitals from giving him a bad reference. …

Even the Pennsylvania Department of State, which oversees the state nursing board and had been warned about Cullen’s penchant for diverting medications, could not comment on his reputation. “Legally, we can’t speak about any information we receive that doesn’t result in disciplinary action,” a spokesman said….

America’s lawsuit culture has bred all kinds of bizarre changes to our society – warning labels on coffee cups, and doctors squandering billions in defensive medicine, to name just two. But the inability to be honest about how you feel about other people is one of the most destructive. Making judgments about people is the currency of a social interaction in a free society. Who tries hard? Who has good judgment? Who is a pleasure to deal with? And who acts in a way that makes your skin crawl?

(“When fear is deadly”, New York Sun, Mar. 14, reprinted at Common Good site). Earlier on Cullen: Aug. 10, 2005, Mar. 30, 2004, etc.

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