Ted Frank, who’s challenging the Cobell (Indian trust) class action fees as part of his work with the Center for Class Action Fairness, catches out a lawyer who claims to have worked for more than nine hours a day on the case for 14 years, including a 7-year stretch in which he purportedly worked “an average of eleven hours a day, every day seven days a week without a single day off.” [Above the Law, earlier]
Posts Tagged ‘Ted Frank’
March 15 roundup
- “A conversation with class action objector Ted Frank” [American Lawyer]
- Reviews of new Lester Brickman book Lawyer Barons [Dan Fisher/Forbes, Russell Jackson] Plus: interview at TortsProf; comments from Columbia legal ethicist William Simon [Legal Ethics Forum]
- “Collective Bargaining for States But Not for Uncle Sam” [Adler] Examples of how Wisconsin public-sector unionism has worked in practice [Perry] Wisconsin cop union: nice business you got there, shame if anything were to happen to it [Sykes, WTMJ] “Union ‘rights’ that aren’t” [Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe]
- “Minnesota House Considering Significant Consumer Class Action Reform Measures” [Karlsgodt]
- 10,000 lawyers at DoD? Rumsfeld complains military overlawyered [Althouse via Instapundit]
- “Are Meritless Claims More Prevalent in Copyright?” [Boyden, Prawfs]
- Claim: availability of punitive damages reduces rate of truck accidents. Really? [Curt Cutting]
- Now with improved federalism: “The Return of the Lawsuit Abuse Reduction Act” [Carter Wood, more, earlier here].
Ted Frank on the Dukes v. Wal-Mart class action
The problem, Ted writes in the Examiner, isn’t that the class action is “too large” — even very large classes can sometimes fit the law’s requirements that each claim be identical in nature and capable of standing or falling together.
But the theory of the Dukes lawsuit is exactly the opposite: the plaintiffs claimed that Wal-Mart’s central office did not exercise enough authority over each of its 3,400 stores; each of the individual managers’ discretionary employment or promotion decisions–whether made by male or female managers–was, on average, discriminatory; and thus Wal-Mart was responsible for a policy that “fosters or facilitates” discrimination. …
The discrimination laws permit Wal-Mart to defend itself by demonstrating that the challenged job decision was made for a reason other than gender. For example, looking at Betty Dukes, the named plaintiff, alone, we learn that she had a female manager and that she was repeatedly disciplined for returning late from lunch breaks. …Wal-Mart is stripped of its defense because the individualized defense would be inconvenient to trying the case as a class action. …
If the Supreme Court rules in Wal-Mart’s favor later this year, it will not be to protect business, but to protect due process.
New York chief judge rallies “Civil Gideon” campaign
But Ted Frank explains why creating a new entitlement to taxpayer-paid civil lawyers is a bad idea [New York Daily News, PoL]:
As any economist would tell you, if you lower the price of something, you get more demand for it. If it becomes completely costless to bring suit, we will see many more meritless suits.
That’s no small problem in New York, where courts are already overloaded.
If a dispute over shelter entitles a cantankerous tenant to a free attorney on the government’s dime, it will be much easier for people to fight evictions when they violate a lease in ways that threaten other tenants or intentionally refuse to pay rent. Landlords, in turn, will have to hire their own attorneys and raise rents and costs for their honest tenants.
Not unrelated: U.S. is granting asylum requests far more often than formerly. Why might that be? [Ted’s answer]
October 12 roundup
- Representing Prof. Michael Krauss, Ted Frank will file objection to Classmates.com class action settlement [CCAF]
- Not without condescension, Harvard historian/New Yorker writer Jill Lepore asks why Woodrow Wilson’s so disliked these days; Radley Balko offers some help [The Agitator, NYT “Room for Debate”]
- China needs true private property rights, according to Charter 08 document, which helped Liu Xiaobo win Nobel Peace Prize [Tyler Cowen]
- Axelrod “foreign funders under every rug” demagogy might be turned against his own allies [Stoll; New York Times refutes earlier Obama talking point; Atlantic Wire; Sullum]
- R.I.P. influential class actions and mass torts scholar Richard Nagareda [Vanderbilt Law School]
- “Web Seminar Makes Case for Patent Troll Lawsuit Targets to Fight Back” [Washington Legal Foundation Legal Pulse]
- Contrary to WSJ report, if Congressional staffers are profiting in stock trades by way of insider knowledge, they probably do face some risk of legal liability [Bainbridge; a not entirely unrelated inside-trading controversy]
- Underpublicized: “California’s Proposed ‘Green Chemistry’ Regulations Move Forward” [Wajert]
October 5 roundup
- “Mark Lanier, Marie Gryphon and Ted Frank debate if a free market can protect consumers as well as lawyers.” [John Stossel’s Fox Business show last week; Point of Law (Lanier has kind words for loser pays); Bob Dorigo Jones]
- Corner-cutting document prep proves costly to mortgage lenders at foreclosure time [NYTimes; related, Felix Salmon and more] Connecticut AG Blumenthal orders 60-day halt to all foreclosures, whether or not paperwork-impaired, conveniently carrying him through Election Day [WaPo]
- High court grants cert on a bunch of business cases [Beck, WLF, WSJ Law Blog, Fisher, PoL on Scalia stay in tobacco class action]
- The myth of the sabotaged streetcar system [Market Urbanism]
- Another big Title IX casualty: Cal Berkeley kills varsity rugby [Saving Sports and various followups; gymnastics; related on Boston Globe coverage]
- “N.J. Bill Proposes Use of Screening Panels to Thwart Frivolous Suits Against Public Entities” [NJLJ]
- Cop informs on cop’s misbehavior, what happens next isn’t pretty [Greenfield; Kansas City, Kansas]
- There’s money in glass-eating, son [three years ago on Overlawyered]
“The Law of McDonald’s”
Ted Frank has a speech on the perennially popular subject of lawsuits, hot-coffee-related and otherwise, against the giant burger chain. [Point of Law]
John Stossel’s show…
…will be taking on class action lawyers tonight, with guests that include Ted Frank, Texas lawyer Mark Lanier, and Marie Gryphon of the Manhattan Institute. (9 p.m. EST)
Speaking at several law schools in 2010
It’s the 2010 Ted Frank law-school-speaking tour!
September 9: Louisiana State
September 15: New York University
September 16: Columbia
October 6: Texas Wesleyan
October 7: St. Mary’s (San Antonio)
November 9: Ohio State
November 10: Toledo
It’s not too late to get on the calendar if your school’s Federalist Society is interested.
A reminder: anti-arbitration is anti-consumer
The Center for Class Action Fairness filed an amicus brief yesterday on behalf of consumers in the Supreme Court case of AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion; Public Citizen brought a suit successfully striking an arbitration provision in a cell-phone contract as “unconscionable” because it did not provide for bringing class actions—even though consumers as a whole would be better off with the generous arbitration provision than with opportunity for the class action. Of course, then trial lawyers lose out. More at Point of Law; and Public Citizen’s page on the case has other briefs and links to (generally pro-trial-lawyer) blog commentary.