A further stinging rebuff in court for the glamourpuss tort-chaser: “A judge on Friday dropped the Beverly Hills Unified School District from a lawsuit that claims an oil well on a high school campus caused cancer in former students. Superior Court Judge Wendell Mortimer Jr. said he was not persuaded that the well operating for decades at Beverly Hills High was a danger. He also found no evidence that the school district was aware of any danger.” (“Beverly Hills schools dropped from lawsuit over campus oil well”, AP/San Diego Union-Tribune, Mar. 23). For more on the Beverly Hills case, see Mar. 16, 2004, Nov. 3, 2005, and Dec. 1, 2006. For Brockovich’s rebuffs in Medicare-billing cases, see Mar. 15, etc.
Posts Tagged ‘San Diego’
“It’s ‘my policy to follow the ethical rules'”
Last week, Ted posted a court decision about a lawyer/client team who have turned the Americans with Disabilities Act — in theory, a law designed to protect actual consumers — into a full-time career, patronizing businesses for the specific purpose of being able to sue them. Not all such lawyer/client teams bother to even take the step of patronizing the businesses, however; some just skip the damages and go right to the extortion, hoping the defendants will pay rather than spend the money to defend themselves.
Many times, their business model works, but occasionally, it backfires, as it did last week on serial ADA litigant Theodore Pinnock. (Technically, Pinnock is the attorney, not the plaintiff. But why split hairs? The plaintiffs, Delores Jackson and the imaginary organization she “represents,” the Association of Women with Disabilities Advocating Access, are just fronts for Pinnock.) On Friday, a federal judge in San Diego sanctioned Pinnock, ordering him to take an ethics class and pay $15,000 in attorneys fees to Marcos Mout, a defendant he had sued last October. Mout owned a convenience store, and was sued because the store was allegedly inaccessible to the disabled. Well, not quite:
Jackson, who uses a walker, said she had “researched” the store and had photographic evidence of numerous violations. In the complaint, she said she had intended to patronize the store but would have been thwarted by problems with signage, the entrance door, interior paths, counter height, parking and the restroom, among many things.
The businessman’s attorney countered that the convenience store wasn’t even open to the public at the time Jackson was allegedly denied access, having been seriously damaged in December 2004 by a flood.
Mitch Wallis, attorney for convenience store owner Marcos Mouet, also told the court that the small store, which remains shuttered, didn’t even have a public restroom. Jackson’s lawsuit also alleged that interior pathways weren’t wide enough, but Mouet’s attorney noted that the shelves had been pushed against the wall to fix the flood damage.
Yes, but aside from those issues…
Incidentally, the Bizarro-Overlawyered crowd will tell you that frivolous suits are easily, quickly, and cheaply disposed of by the courts; this case illustrates yet again how badly they misunderstand the nature of the legal system. Because the suit against Mout’s convenience store made superficially legitimate allegations, it cost Mout at least $15,000 to defend the suit. (He actually claimed legal costs of $38,000 in making his motion for sanctions, but the court found that $15,000 was a more reasonable figure.) And that was for a suit that lasted “only” five months.
Previous coverage of Pinnock: Apr. 2006
Microsoft told to pay $1.5 billion over music patents
“A federal jury in San Diego [Thursday] ordered Microsoft to pay $1.52 billion to Alcatel-Lucent for violating two patents for a technology used by hundreds of companies that allows users to play digital music on computers, cellphones and other portable devices.” (Alan Sipress, “Microsoft Loses Big In MP3 Patent Suit”, Washington Post, Feb. 23). Washington Post tech blogger Rob Pegoraro (Feb. 23):
Alcatel-Lucent’s patent payday has all the things that patent-abuse critics hate:
* “Submarine” patents, invoked years after a contested invention has hit the market? Check
* Claiming ownership of a media format most people use all the time? Check
* A plaintiff that’s failed to commercialize its own alleged invention? Check
* Extortionate royalty demands? Check
(via Kevin Drum, Feb. 23).
Lerach Coughlin partner faces D.C. ethics charges
G. Paul Howes, who’s handled Lerach’s high-profile litigation over losses arising from the Enron collapse, faces serious ethics charges over actions he took during his earlier career as a federal prosecutor. “On Feb. 1, the D.C. Bar Counsel filed eight charges against Howes after a four-year investigation, accusing him of violating bar ethics rules by committing criminal acts, making false statements in court, offering prohibited payments to witnesses, and interfering with the administration of justice.” Ethics proceedings against federal prosecutors are rare; disbarment is among the possible sanctions that could be asked. It doesn’t appear Howes is going to win any popularity contests among his former law enforcement colleagues:
Amy Jeffress, deputy chief of the office’s Organized Crime and Narcotics Trafficking Section[,] referred to Howes — though not by name — during a Jan. 31 debate on the power of prosecutors at American University, Washington College of Law.
“He actually left the office and moved all the way across the country to San Diego to escape his shame and his bad reputation,” Jeffress said, according to a recording of the debate. “He basically became a pariah in our office. His name is a synonym around our office for no-no. You don’t want to do what he did.”
(Brendan Smith, “Former Prosecutor Charged With Misconduct in Gang Cases”, Legal Times, Feb. 15).
Extra time on exams, cont’d
The “secret world of the ADA”: professors grading exams aren’t supposed to know whether a given test-taker got extra time as an accommodation, but there are often ways you can tell, says San Diego lawprof Gail Heriot, especially when the essay comes in twice as long as other students’. Still, when she tries to find out what percentage of her class is getting extra time — not asking for names, just a rough figure on what share — she’s told it’s “none of your business”. (The Right Coast, Jan. 10). More: Jun. 2 and Dec. 8, 2006, among many others.
Update: “Brockovich’s Medicare-billing lawsuits tossed”
Glamor proved no substitute for legal merit as U.S. District Judge Thomas Whelan in San Diego dismissed two lawsuits by the highly publicized Brockovich against major hospital chains, alleging that the chains should refund to Medicare sums spent on treating injuries caused by earlier hospital negligence (see Jun. 22). The suits “made no specific claims of patient injury” but instead proffered studies estimating the nationwide incidence of negligent patient injury in hospitals. The judge termed the claims “speculative allegations” intended to allow Brockovich and the lawyers for whom she was fronting to “begin a fishing expedition”. “The judge also noted that Brockovich, 46, was not eligible to receive Medicare benefits, was never treated at any of the Scripps or Sharp hospitals, and was never injured by hospital staff misconduct.” (Keith Darcé, San Diego Union-Tribune, Nov. 16). For more on Brockovich’s activities generally, follow links from Nov. 3, 2005.
Guestblogger thanks, welcome, etc.
Our thanks to Peter Morin, who’s been pitching in as guestblogger over the last week to supplement Ted’s efforts. Peter’s writing can be found at his blog Wave Maker. And welcome to Chris Tozzo of KipEsquire, who joins today in the same role. I’ll be posting occasionally, but probably less often than usual.
Also, over at Point of Law, check out the contributions of guestbloggers Gail Heriot (San Diego lawprof associated with The Right Coast) and Al Adomite (Illinois Civil Justice League). In particular, Gail’s post on the contrasting liability treatment accorded to “doers” and “talkers” deserves a wide audience.
Update: San Diego poisoning
A judge has cut from $100 million to $10 million the punitive damages portion of an unusual verdict in a lawsuit arising from Kristin Rossum’s alleged murder by poison of her husband, Gregory de Villers. The distinctive feature of the verdict, on which we commented Mar. 27, was that the jury assigned 25 percent responsibility for the murder to Rossum’s employer, San Diego County, which employed her as a toxicologist and was said to be blameworthy for letting her steal drugs which she administered to him. (“Judge Cuts $90 Million in Damages in San Diego Murder Case”, AP/L.A. Times, Jun. 19)(via Childs).
“Erin Brockovich Takes Role as Plaintiff in Medicare Suits”
For those who never expected to see the words “glamourpuss” and “Medicare” in the same sentence: “The onetime legal assistant, whose environmental crusade against a utility company inspired a hit movie starring Julia Roberts, has lent her name as plaintiff in lawsuits against several California hospitals and convalescent homes.” Two law firms, including Wilkes & McHugh, have engaged Brockovich as the public face of bounty-hunting “whistleblower” suits pursuing the adventuresome theory that hospitals defraud the government by accepting Medicare reimbursement for further medical care occasioned by their own earlier errors, even when no legal process has yet determined the earlier medical decisions to have been erroneous. The “lawsuits do not involve specific allegations of wrongdoing “. Ms. Brockovich is managed by the William Morris talent agency. (Daniel Yi, Los Angeles Times, Jun. 7). For much more on her activities, follow links from Nov. 3, 2005. Update Nov. 18: federal judge in San Diego tosses two suits.
Where’s his Mother’s Day present?
More entrepreneurial lawyering in California:
A Los Angeles psychologist who was denied a tote bag during a Mother’s Day giveaway at an Angel game is suing the baseball team, alleging sex and age discrimination.
Michael Cohn’s class-action claim in Orange County Superior Court alleges that thousands of males and fans under 18 were “treated unequally” at a “Family Sunday” promotion last May and are entitled to $4,000 each in damages.
(Dave McKibben, “L.A. Psychologist Who Didn’t Get Tote Bag at Mother’s Day Angel Game Files Lawsuit”, Los Angeles Times, May 11). Cohn’s attorney is Alfred Rava, who (as the L.A. Times really should have found out by Googling Overlawyered, if not its own archives) was among the key figures in the 2003 spree by which owners of San Diego nightspots were hit up for handsome cash settlements for having held “Ladies’ Night” promotions. The Unruh Act, California’s distinctively liberal civil rights statute, allows complainants to demand $4,000 a pop for such misdeeds, and it’s no defense to suggest that the customer’s primary reason for getting involved in the underlying transaction may have been to set up the $4,000 entitlement. More: “Lex Icon” wishes to make clear that he’s not the kind of lawyer who files cases like this (May 13).