Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘taxpayers’

Carelessness for millions in New York City

Dustin Dibble was intoxicated when a Manhattan subway train ran over him in 2006, but a jury found the transit authority 65% responsible in February: $2.3 million for the lost right leg.

James Sanders stumbled onto the tracks and was hit by a train in 2002, but a New York City jury again found him only 30% responsible: $7 million for a lost right leg and eye.

Gloria Aguilar did not look both ways when she crossed the street; there was a dispute whether she was in the crosswalk. A Manhattan jury–after a seven-week trial–found the transit authority 100% responsible, and awarded $27.5 million for her lost left leg; a judge refused to reduce that figure.

Clearly a left leg is more valuable than a right leg. Or, as I’ve noted several times in the past, noneconomic damages are essentially random jackpots.

New York City is appealing all three verdicts. (Liz Robbins, “Woman Run Over by Bus Is Awarded $27.5 Million”, New York Times, Apr. 16).

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Motorcyclist crashes into wild pigs on road

And many happy returns to California taxpayers for the $8.6 million, courtesy of a Monterey County jury. Lowering the Bar: “I can’t remember how many times I have tried to warn people that bad things were going to happen if we didn’t tame our state’s boars and train them to be alert for drunk drivers when crossing the street. Why don’t people listen?”

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Class actions, courtesy U.S. taxpayers

Now that they’re in the saddle Senate Democrats are planning to strip away various long-fought restrictions on federally funded legal services programs. For the moment, at least, the class actions are supposed to be based at least ostensibly on existing law (litigation aimed at “law reform” was a specialty of the early legal services programs) and the programs will need to keep their books in such a way that federal taxpayer funds do not appear to be going toward their lobbying of legislators.

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Chicago: Parks worker overhears woman spanking her nephew in bathroom

Before you click the link, guess: who wins the $200,000? Was your guess right? Were other guesses just as plausible? And where does race fit in?

More: Coyote (“Here is a real journalistic triumph — the story of a multi-party conflict in which I immediately dislike absolutely everyone in the story on all sides of the conflict, up to and including the jury and the third parties quoted.”) And Scott Greenfield.

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March 24 roundup

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Water-bill refunds for Seattle residents

Aren’t class actions great? The only problem is that the money for the residents will have to come from, well, themselves:

“We are having an accounting game. It’s basically saying, ‘we’re sorry you paid it from this pocket, instead it should have come from this pocket,” said Seattle City Council member Richard Conlin. …

“The only party benefiting from this are the law firms,” said Conlin.

The attorneys who fought the city on the hydrants will get $4.2 million plus interest charges.

City water customers will get refunds averaging $45 but will be obliged to pay surcharges averaging $59 to cover the cost of the settlement [KOMO].

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California towns ban speedboarding

No doubt there are also other reasons why councilors might vote to keep daredevil and extreme skateboarders off public streets, as the L.A. Times is reporting, but the liability climate can’t help:

In 2004, a 17-year-old boy skating down a Mission Viejo street hit “an alleged defect in the street and took a tumble. In a bicycle he would have rolled right over it,” [self-insurance pool executive Jonathan] Shull said.

The boy suffered a brain injury and his family filed suit, alleging municipal negligence and asking for money to help care for him for the rest of his life.

Under state liability law, a city might have to pay the full settlement if a jury finds it was even 1% liable for the injury, according to Shull.

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“He’s not a klutz”: $4.5 million for NYC cop shot in tippy chair

A Brooklyn jury has awarded $4,548,000 to Anderson Alexander, a former New York City police detective injured when the office chair he was sitting on tipped over and he shot himself in the knee with a 9 mm Smith & Wesson he was holding.

“This case is not about him shooting himself,” Alexander’s lawyer Matthew Maiorana told the Daily News. “This case is about a broken chair and an unsafe workplace.”…

Alexander, 49, who retired on a three-quarters-pay disability pension, moved to South Carolina, where he works as a sheriff’s deputy.

(Scott Shifrel, “Ex-city cop wins huge award after chair he sat in broke, sending bullet into his knee”, New York Daily News, Nov. 26).

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