Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘politics’

Were Gasoline Prices Too Low in 2002?

I’m delighted, and honored, that Wally Olson has invited me to guest blog at Overlawyered.
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I’ll write a few posts on the recent rise in gasoline prices. I begin, though, with a remembrance.

In early 2002 I testified twice before two committees of the Virginia legislature. The solons of this Great State were considering legislation aimed at keeping the price of gasoline from being too low.

The specific concern was that two regional convenience-store chains (Sheetz, and Wawa) charged prices at their pumps that were unfairly low – so low that mom and pop gasoline retailers of brands such as Exxon, Texaco, and Shell were on the verge of being put out of business.

Of course, the argument included the prediction that once the helpless likes of ExxonMobil, Texaco, and Shell were run from the State, Sheetz and Wawa would share monopoly power over gasoline retailing in Virginia. The only way to avoid this awful outcome, said the mom’n’pops, was for the legislature to prohibit unfair price cutting by gasoline retailers.

Fortunately, sanity prevailed. Virginia’s legislature refused to outlaw gasoline price-cutting. But they did seriously consider doing so.

I relate this story to put the current gasoline-price hysteria in perspective. For most of the past 20 years, whenever Uncle Sam wasn’t at war in the Persian Gulf, the price of gasoline hasn’t been terribly high. A mere four years ago Virginia and several other east-coast states actually took seriously the argument that these prices might be too low.

Things have changed…. and in ways that provide abundant fuel for future blog-posts!

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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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Dept. of ill-timed announcements

The Drum Major Institute for Public Policy (“DMI”) is proud to announce the selection of Cyrus Dugger as the first Milberg Weiss Legal Fellow at DMI. The newly created Milberg Weiss Legal Fellowship will focus on developing a new generation of lawyers who are committed to working in a legal and public policy capacity to preserve access to the courts and our civil justice system….As a Milberg Weiss Senior Fellow, Mr. Dugger will focus his efforts on preserving access to the courts at a time in which persons with limited financial means are finding it difficult to pursue remedy through the legal system.

— from the Milberg Weiss website, May 9.

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From the lawyers-as-legislators file

There’s nothing tremendously surprising about, say, a criminal defense lawyer winning election as a state legislator and then using his or her influence to strengthen due process protections for persons accused of crimes or to lower excessive penalties for those convicted. But what are we to make of the much rarer, opposite phenomenon — the criminal defense lawyer who gets elected and then pushes for the application of more stringent penalties against people like his own clients? Jerry Stratton, Charles Homiller, Radley Balko, and Lines in the Sand all discuss the case of Virginia Del. David Albo, a Fairfax Republican whose day job is as a lawyer defending motorists from DUI and other traffic charges. Del. Albo is also a sponsor of a bill in Richmond that would stiffen traffic fines as a way of providing money to fund transportation projects, and he has been the sponsor over the years of numerous other bills that make life more difficult for traffic defendants. Radley Balko is perhaps uncharitable when he suggests that the motive of lawyer/legislators like Albo is to “[steer] customers toward their criminal defense practices” — it’s possible, after all, for a lawyer to hold honest convictions that happen to be adverse to their clients’ interests. But it’s hard not to join in Balko’s parting observation: “I wonder if Albo tells his clients that he wrote many of the laws they’ve hired him to defend them from.” Update: Point of Law, Jun. 25, 2007.

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One reason your gas prices are so high

…is that Congress decided not to take action to protect MTBE producers from junk-science lawsuits. So “MTBE makers are leaving the market in a rush,” and now the East Coast is facing shortages. Alas, the Republicans, rather than point out this economic reality, and take steps to solve the problem, have decided to jump on the bogus “price-gouging” populist bandwagon. (Wall Street Journal op-ed, Apr. 25). We noted the problem of plaintiffs’ lawyers suing oil companies for complying with a Congressional environmental mandate back in 2003.

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“Please don’t feed the trial lawyers” II

Once again, attorneys upset that their profession is held up to ridicule would have much less of a problem if attorneys were more concerned about the behavior that led to the ridicule than about the ridicule itself. Evan Schaeffer reraises the issue of the ILR billboard, and posts the first photo of the campaign. Here’s the full text:

Please Don’t Feed
The Trial Lawyers

Lawsuit Abuse Hurts Illinois. Support Legal Reform.

www.instituteforlegalreform.org

Entertainingly enough, the billboard (previously described as insulting) doesn’t call lawyers names—it is simply based on the premise that the reader will already have a negative opinion of trial lawyers, which is hardly the fault of the ILR. The text of the billboard shows that Evan is mistaken when he accuses it of being aimed at juries: it is, rather, aimed at voters, as legal reform is an important election topic in 2006 judicial and legislative and gubernatorial elections, and the trial lawyers have their own campaign designed to get supporters of the litigation lobby in office and on the bench. (Evan may be correct that the billboard is “ugly and obnoxious,” though I can’t recall ever seeing a billboard that wasn’t.) Evan also has some snide remarks about the quality and intelligence of comments supposedly left by Overlawyered readers, so if you do visit Evan’s site, please be polite, even though the plaintiffs’ lawyers who comment there may be rude to you personally.

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