Businesspeople in rural Alpine, Calif., are trying to organize for self-protection against San Diego County attorney Theodore Pinnock, who’s filed at least thirty disabled-rights complaints against enterprises in the town. “Last year, he sent 67 letters to businesses in the historic town of Julian, alleging violations of ADA accessibility requirements. At that time, he demanded between $2,500 and $4,000 in attorneys fees from each of the businesses.” (Jennifer Morse Roback, “Standing up to the disability police”, syndicated/TownHall.com, Apr. 10). More on California ADA filing mills: Mar. 18, May 31, and Jul. 12, 2005, among many others.
Posts Tagged ‘San Diego’
Coaching police experts
Lawrence Taylor at DUIblog (Mar. 17, via Cernovich) has got the goods on a coaching memo given by the San Diego Police Department to the technical experts they put on the stand to testify as to drivers’ blood-alcohol levels (emphasis in original memo):
You will always mix any tube with an anticoagulent [sic] 10 times (you count the inversions). The important things to remember is that you always follow the same procedure, so even though you don’t remember this particular individual, you know that you drew the person following our standard procedure.
As Taylor observes, the witnesses are instructed to testify under oath to an account calculated to help the prosecution prevail, “not as to what they actually did and what they know to be true in a specific case”.
For more on witness-coaching, see Sept. 10, 1999, Sept. 22-24, 2000, and, of course, our many entries on the famous Baron & Budd witness memo scandal.
County 25% responsible for employee’s murder of husband
In a sensational 2002 murder trial with echoes of the film “American Beauty”, Kristin Rossum was found guilty of poisoning husband Gregory de Villers and trying to make his death look like a suicide. Now a lawyer for de Villers’ family has convinced a jury that Rossum’s employer, San Diego County, should be held 25 percent responsible for $6 million in resulting wrongful-death damages. Rossum had access to lethal drugs through her work as a toxicologist for the county, and had not been subject to background screening; she relapsed into methamphetamine use a week before the murder. “It is not the duty of the county of San Diego to prevent a wife from murdering her husband,” said Senior Deputy County Counsel Deborah A. McCarthy, who predicted that the county would succeed in overturning the verdict on appeal. “If this case stands, it will expand public liability in a way the state of California never envisioned.” (“Millions of Dollars Awarded to Family of Man Killed by Toxicologist Wife”, North County Times, Mar. 20)(via Childs). Update Jul. 2: judge cuts verdict.
California school exit exams
“If you’re passing all of your classes but you can’t pass the state’s high school exit exam–even after many tries and even though it’s based on 8th, 9th, and 10th grade skills–do you blame the school system that passed you despite your lack of knowledge or do you blame the test? A group of California parents and students have chosen the latter and are suing the state.” They’re represented by a lawyer from high-toned Morrison and Foerster, too. (A Constrained Vision, Feb. 20; Debra Saunders, “Passing the High School Test”, San Francisco Chronicle/RCP, Feb. 16; Ruben Navarrette Jr., “Lunacy in Our School Districts”, San Diego Union-Tribune/RCP, Feb. 19). Update May 15: judge rules in favor of plaintiffs.
Federal judge fines EEOC $1m for frivolous lawsuit
“The U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment Commission must pay more than $1 million to a Pasadena law firm that it sued unsuccessfully last year for sexual harassment and pregnancy discrimination, a federal judge has ruled. U.S. District Judge Dickran Tevrizian…. found that the EEOC filed a ‘frivolous’ lawsuit against Robert L. Reeves & Associates, which practices immigration law.” (AP/San Diego Union-Tribune, Jan. 25). There’s a discussion at WorkplaceProfBlog (Jan. 26).
Chili finger duo sentenced
Fickle finger of fate, cont’d: dissatisfied Wendy’s customer Anna Ayala drew a nine-year sentence while Jaime Plascencia, her boyfriend and the procurer of the severed digit, drew twelve years. “The two pleaded guilty in September to conspiracy to file a false insurance claim and attempted grand theft with damages exceeding $2.5 million.” (“Chili Finger Couple Get Stiff Sentences”, AP/NBC San Diego, Jan. 18). Our previous coverage: Apr. 8, Apr. 9, Apr. 13, Apr. 20, Apr. 22, Apr. 27, May 16, Sept. 10.
Blawg Review #33
Welcome to Blawg Review #33, the latest installment of the weekly carnival assembling some of the best recent weblog posts about law.
If this is your first visit to Overlawyered, we’re among the oldest legal sites (launched in July 1999, practically the Eocene era), and over the years we’ve built a vast collection of information (with links/sources) on strange, excessive and costly legal cases, examples of the over-legalization of everyday life, pointers on litigation reform, policy stuff of generally libertarian leanings, and much more. We’re a fairly high-volume site; 6-8,000 unique visitors on a weekday is pretty typical. And although our work is regularly critical of trends in the legal profession — or maybe because of that fact — practicing lawyers around the world are among our most valued and loyal readers.
More specifically, there are two of us posting here. One of us (Walter Olson) has been writing about these topics for twenty years as the author of several books (The Litigation Explosion, The Excuse Factory, The Rule of Lawyers) and a great many shorter articles. He’s a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute who lives and works in Chappaqua, N.Y., north of New York City. More recently Ted Frank, who’s in Washington with the American Enterprise Institute, joined as a regular blogger. Unlike Walter, Ted is a lawyer, having practiced until lately with O’Melveny & Myers. Both of us also blog at the (somewhat more serious-toned) website Point Of Law, which unlike this one is sponsored by our respective institutes and boasts numerous other contributing writers.
Enough about us. Here’s Blawg Review #33, written by Walter with
indented sections by Ted.
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The week in headlines
The talk of the blawg world last week? The New Yorker’s unmasking of the girlish “Article III Groupie” who’s blogged anonymously about federal judges at “Underneath Their Robes”, as, in fact, a (male) Assistant U.S. Attorney in Newark. Much more on that from Ted, below.
The pace of commentary on Samuel Alito Jr.’s Supreme Court nomination has slowed a good bit, despite the release of a 1985 memo detailing Alito’s views on abortion (which occasioned this post by Will Baude taking exception to a Dahlia Lithwick Slate column) and, more tantalizingly, on the Warren Court’s reapportionment cases (see posts by Nathan Newman and Steve Bainbridge). Alito is now heavily favored among bettors to win confirmation, notes San Diego lawprof Tom Smith.
Possibly the week’s strangest headline, discussed by J-Walk: “1,100 Lawyers Leave Saddam Defense Team”. 1,100?
And the Fifth Circuit is coming back to New Orleans (Tom Kirkendall).
* * *
Splendors and miseries of legal practice
Find out:
* What makes a talented 39 year old attorney burn out of a criminal defense practice? (Norm Pattis, Crime and Federalism)
* What sorts of squirm-inducing compliments do criminal defense lawyers hear from their clients after scoring legal points on their behalf? (Ken Lammers, CrimLaw)
* Is it smarter for big law firms to compensate their partners on an “eat what you kill” model, a “lockstep” model, or something between the two? (Bruce MacEwen, Adam Smith, Esq.)
* How do licensing professionals decide what’s a reasonable royalty rate? (Patent Baristas)
* What sorts of bad things can happen to a law firm when one of its individual lawyers behaves rudely to a stranger? (Jim Calloway)
* * *
Controversies galore
Read, ponder, and make up your own mind:
Did Texas execute an innocent man, Ruben Cantu? (Doug Berman)
Conservatives are still griping about the Ninth Circuit, but the new twist is that they think its judges aren’t activist enough. (Eugene Volokh)
Every so often, through luck or pluck, the “fair use” side manages to win one in copyright litigation (Ron Coleman, Likelihood of Confusion).
A group is “pushing for a ballot referendum that would strip South Dakota judges of their immunity from suit for actions taken in their capacity as judges.” Atlanta attorney Jonathan B. Wilson calls it “one of the worst reform ideas ever”.
Michael Newdow, of Pledge of Allegiance suit fame, has filed a new legal action demanding that the motto “In God We Trust” be removed from U.S. currency. Jon Rowe winces.
Our own Ted Frank takes a look at the much-talked of “Dodgeball” document and concludes that it by no means proves Merck’s guilt in the Vioxx matter. (Point of Law). Also at Point of Law, James Copland of the Manhattan Institute and Dr. Bill Sage of Columbia have been engaged in a spirited debate on med-mal litigation.
In a Providence courtroom, the state of Rhode Island is demanding that companies that once manufactured lead paint be held liable for the cost of lead abatement programs. Speechwriter/ghostwriter Jane Genova is liveblogging the case’s retrial, and suggests that the defense side has been making its points more effectively.
A court has ordered the Armour Star meatpacking concern to pay $3 million for using a strength test to screen applicants for a job requiring much lifting. George Lenard’s Employment Blawg originally covered the case last month, Overlawyered picked it up, and now George has returned to the subject, observing that those dissatisfied with the suit’s outcome should realize that sex discrimination law’s distrust of strength tests isn’t something the EEOC just came up with the other day and in fact dates back at least a couple of decades. (I quite concur, having written at length on the subject back in the 1990s.)
The British government recently published a white paper entitled “The Future of Legal Services: Putting the Consumer First”. Dennis Kennedy at Between Lawyers provides a link.
In other consumer news, State Farm conceded earlier this year that when it disposed of many wrecked-and-repaired vehicles it failed to ensure that they were given appropriate “salvage titles”. E.L. Eversman at AutoMuse has been following the issue.
The head of the NY state bar association is advising prospective clients not to be swayed by lawyers’ advertising. David Giacalone, who frequently discusses legal advertising on his blog f/k/a, isn’t impressed.
San Diego lawprof Gail Heriot discovers a convicted rapist is living a few doors down from her, which gets her to thinking about the interaction of “Megan’s Law” statutes and statutory rape.
New York AG Eliot Spitzer has gone after former NYSE head Richard Grasso but not the board that approved Grasso’s plans. Larry Ribstein suspects the worst, charging that Spitzer “gets securities industry political support if he handles this so only Grasso gets hurt.”
* * *
Student division
Scheherezade at Stay of Execution, who wrote a classic post last year giving advice on whether or not to go to law school, now fields a reader’s question: Should I transfer to a higher-ranked law school?
Called for jury duty, Jeremy Blachman gets shown a somewhat hokey video entitled “Your Turn: Jury Service in New York State.” “I wanted to really mock the video, but in all honesty it was a better explanation of the jury system than anything we got in law school”.
Michael Froomkin offers a surprising and counterintuitive quiz on the U.S. Constitution in the form of a “scavenger hunt”. He also suspects that a national ID card might abet price discrimination.
And this from Ted:
Congratulations to Amber, G, Marissa, Grigori, Eve, Jeremy, and others who passed the bar. Third Attempt failed for the second time, and is opening a blog on the subject of his third try, with links to other passers and failers. Only 13% of those who repeated the California bar passed.
On the lighter side, law student Kurt Hunt quotes his prof’s maxim that “Cahoots is not a crime” but wonders what would happen if “tomfoolery, cahoots, no-gooding, antics and shenanigans were redefined as ‘Crime-Lite'”. And Colin Samuels of Infamy or Praise is among the many human beings who don’t manage to eat as well as (UCLA lawprof) Steve Bainbridge’s dog.
* * *
Buzz about blogs
Now I’ll turn the floor over to Ted again to discuss the UTR affair:
The blawgosphere likes nothing more than navel-gazing, and the New Yorker’s outing of anony-blawger “Article III Groupie” as Newark AUSA David Lat and resulting implosion of “her”/his popular “Underneath Their Robes” blawg has generated lots of curiosity and posts with Austin Powers references; the story even made Drudge and the New York Times. Blawg Review has a retrospective look at the blawg. Howard Bashman has done the most original reporting, interviewing Jeffrey Toobin, who revealed Lat’s identity, and publishing the reminiscences of a former co-worker of Lat’s. Denise Howell provides an obituary for the blawg. The Kitchen Cabinet’s “Lily” comments from the perspective of another anonymous blawger, as does Jeremy Blachman, who got a book deal from his anony-blogging. Ann Althouse muses on the nature of humor; Professor Solove and Howard Bashman comment on blogger anonymity, as does Half Sigma, who pulled a similar hoax using the photo of a Russian mail-order bride earlier this year as the image of “Libertarian Girl.” Another blawgger claiming to be a libertarian female, this one with the implausible name of “Amber,” meta-comments on the various shattered blog-crushes exhibited in the garment-rending Volokh Conspiracy reader comments on the subject; JD expresses his own disappointment. (Judge Kozinski claims to have known all along, but Judge Posner has proof of his foresight.) And Ian has sound commentary on A3G’s “status anxiety.” (And speaking of status anxiety, a Harvard Law School admissions dean snarks on Yale and gets snarked back. One can understand the sniping: HLS and YLS are good schools, and there’s a lot of competition for who’s #2 behind Chicago Law.)
Some fallout: anony-blogger “Opinionistas” got an e-mail accusing her of really being a man, and Will Baude and Heidi Bond make a bet over the gender of anony-law-prof Juan Non-Volokh, who promises to come out of the closet soon.
Taking second place in interblog buzz is the IP sticky wicket that awaited the former Pajamas Media (discussed by Blawg Review here) when shortly before launching it decided to switch to the more dignified monicker of Open Source Media. Turned out there was already a well-known public radio show by the name of Open Source which hadn’t been consulted even though it occupied such URLs as opensourcemedia.net. Ann Althouse has been merciless (here, here and here) in needling the OSM organizers, while Prof. Bainbridge piles on with a law and economics analysis of OSM’s market.
Monica Bay passes along the views of legal-tech consultant and frequent CLE presenter Ross Kodner, who charges that law blogs are “narrow-minded” and display “elitist exclusionism”. “I am sick and tired of being repeatedly asked why I don’t have a blog,” he declares. Okay, Mr. Kodner, we promise never to ask you that.
* * *
In conclusion
Finally, intellectual property lawyer Doug Sorocco, of the ReThink(IP) and phosita blogs, arrives “fashionably late to the BlawgThink ball” (in Chicago last week). Sorocco’s Oklahoma City firm also figures prominently (as the acquiring party) in what Dennis Kennedy says may amount to a milestone: “the first move of one legal blogger to the law firm of another legal blogger.” Stephen Nipper has more details about this “move” at ReThink(IP).
By coincidence, and giving us a nice way to wrap things up, phosita is going to be the home of next week’s Blawg Review #34. Blawg Review has information about that and other upcoming matters, as well as instructions how to get your blawg posts considered for upcoming issues.
P.S. As Bob Ambrogi notes, you can now check out — and tag your own location in — Blawg Review’s reader map feature.
California’s Proposition 79
As CoyoteBlog (Oct. 18) notes, this ballot initiative on drug prices contains a sneaky, little-discussed provision that will empower trial lawyers to file bounty-hunting suits against pharmaceutical companies if the companies charge prices “that lead to any unjust and unreasonable profit”, with a minimum $100,000 plus fees guaranteed to plaintiffs if a jury agrees that they have proved this (very hazily defined) offense. California has already earned the title of “Shakedown State” because of its bounty-hunting provisions on chemicals, disabled rights, consumer, education and labor law. And the San Diego Union-Tribune editorially criticizes Consumers Union for backing the benighted measure.
Gasoline prices spike
You’d think one advantage of electing a Texas oil guy as president would be that, when prices at the pump react to a genuinely massive supply disruption as supply and demand predict they will, he’d know better than to direct public anger toward the ill-defined offense of “price gouging”. Apparently you’d be wrong, though:
“I think there ought to be zero tolerance of people breaking the law during an emergency such as this -– whether it be looting, or price gouging at the gasoline pump, or taking advantage of charitable giving or insurance fraud,” Bush said. “And I’ve made that clear to our attorney general. The citizens ought to be working together.”
(Adam Nossiter, “More National Guardsmen are sent in”, AP/San Diego Union-Tribune, Sept. 1). More: Mark Kleiman got there first (Sept. 1)(via Julian Sanchez). See also Dan Mitchell of Heritage at C-Log (Aug. 31). And Don Boudreaux, after thanking Hawaiian pols, wonders (Aug. 29):
Would it make sense to haul before Congress a group of real-estate agents, or a few homeowners, or some home-builders to accuse them publicly of causing the recent surge in real-estate prices?
Yet more, this time from Jane Galt (Sept. 1): “Prices of everything rise after a disaster, and a good thing too, since that encourages people and material to flood into the damaged area, where they’re needed most.”
“Law Firm Sanctioned for Forest Service Suit”
Criticize a developer, get sued for racketeering: “A Los Angeles federal judge on Monday ordered a large law firm and two of its attorneys to pay $267,000 in sanctions for filing a ‘frivolous lawsuit’ against a community activist and three Forest Service employees who opposed a luxury condominium development on Big Bear Lake.” Lawyers from the San Diego office of Foley & Lardner, acting on behalf of developer Irving Okovita, had filed a racketeering lawsuit against Sandy Steers, executive director of the Friends of Fawnskin, and two Forest Service employees who had fought the developer’s Marina Point project, which they said would disrupt bald eagle habitat. U.S. District Judge Manuel Real threw out the suit and issued the sanctions, which Foley & Lardner says it will appeal. (Henry Weinstein, Los Angeles Times, Aug. 16; “Judge rules law firm must pay $267,000 for ‘frivolous’ lawsuit”, AP/CourtTV, Aug. 16)(more background).