Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘train’

Remembering the anti-flirting campaign

There’s nothing new about the impulse to call in the cops against wolves, mashers, and fresh guys on street corners and public conveyances [Alexis Coe, The Atlantic]:

As early as 1897, Missouri representative Prichard B. Hoot introduced a bill that sought to regulate flirting on trains, but the endeavor ultimately proved unsuccessful. That same year, Senator James G. McCune recommended Virginia make flirting a misdemeanor; like his earlier proposal to outlaw football, this bill did not come to fruition.

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May 12 roundup

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NYC: court tosses track totterer’s $2.3 million award

A New York appeals court has tossed a jury’s $2.3 million award to a man who fell onto the Union Square subway tracks and lost his leg. The court focused on the jury’s acceptance of what it said was speculative testimony from experts arguing that the train’s motorman should have stopped faster. The victim “said he was too drunk to remember how he ended up on the tracks or anything about the accident.” [AP/WINS, New York Post, Dibble v. NYCTA, earlier, and compare $6 million track totterer award last year] More: John Hochfelder.

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July 23 roundup

  • San Jose man says PlayStation online game network is public forum and sues Sony pro se for kicking him off it [Popehat] More: Ambrogi, Legal Blog Watch.
  • “Teacher lets kids climb hill, cops come calling” [Santa Barbara, Calif.; Free Range Kids]
  • Tip for journalists covering trials: stalk the rest rooms [Genova]
  • Lake Erie villages turn off street lights in summer to avoid attracting mayflies, town now sued over driver-jogger collision [Columbus Dispatch]
  • Some lawyers anticipate “astronomical” municipal liability from West Portal train collision in San Francisco [SF Weekly]
  • Radical notion: before filing lawsuit charging consumer fraud, maybe plaintiff should notify merchant and ask to have problem fixed [New Jersey Lawsuit Reform Watch]
  • No jurisdiction: Eleventh Circuit overturns contempt finding against Scruggs in Rigsby case [Freeland]
  • Successful trial lawyer campaign against arbitration is throwing credit card business into turmoil [ABA Journal, Wood @ Point of Law, Ambrogi/Legal Blog Watch (conflict of interests at one large arbitration supplier)]

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D.C. Metro crash client-chasing

Yes, the online ads are already up. Washington’s City Paper tracks down one California-based law firm marketer: “This is the only marketing I do — it’s the highest cost per click online. What else can you do, a young guy like me? I don’t want to do porn [sites].” According to one report via Twitter, “the Google ads are running on the WMATA Web site.” More: Maryland Daily Record (first suit filed); Eric Turkewitz. And Ron Miller, on the dilemma of the young man quoted above: “Dare I suggest this is a false choice? There has to be a third option after porn and train wreck chasing, right?”

Also: Overlawyered favorite Willie Gary is in the case.

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June 12 roundup

  • Judge in Van Buren County, Michigan won’t approve adoptions unless one parent promises to stay home [Ken at Popehat]
  • Critical view of proposed Performance Rights Act, under which radio would pay new fees to artists and copyright owners [Jesse Walker, Reason]
  • Student threatens to sue school district: “You can say she was an exotic dancer and she was 18, but it was not an equal relationship.” [Boston Herald, columnist Margery Eagan, Worcester Telegram]
  • More attention for U.S. Chamber’s movie trailers promoting awareness of lawsuit abuse [NY Times]
  • Train didn’t actually strike her car at dicey RR crossing after gate closed behind her, but New York woman’s suing Metro-North anyway for the bad scare [Westchester, N.Y. Journal-News]
  • Uh-oh: Defamation-and-privacy section of American Association of Law Schools keeps electing as leaders feminist lawprofs known for speech-restrictionist views [Greenfield, earlier]
  • Cows and vows don’t mix: Oregon county says weddings may not be held on farm-zoned land [KTVZ]
  • Paul Offit, author of noteworthy book Autism’s False Prophets, sued by anti-vaccine blogger [Confutata (scroll), Alyric, link to complaint (PDF) at Courthouse News]

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NYC subway track totterer awarded $5.95 million

You can hardly blame the lawyers for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority if they thought the case looked defensible. John Hochfelder:

the jury heard evidence that on December 12, 2002, James Sanders fell onto the tracks as a subway car in Brooklyn was coming into the station at about 15 mph. The jury was also apprised of the facts that Sanders had been returning from methadone treatment and had drunk pure rum before entering the station (a fact he initially denied).

Then, there were these additional facts:

  • Sanders could not recall why he fell
  • the motorman’s speed was no more than 15 mph
  • witnesses testified that the train was no more than 20 feet away when Sanders fell onto the track

The “last clear chance” doctrine, as Hochfelder explains, provided enough of a basis for Sanders’ lawyer to persuade a jury that the subway motorman was 70 percent responsible for the accident.

More on tipsy track totterers: Feb. 19, etc.

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Drunken totter into subway train’s path: $2.3 million

Dustin Dibble, 25, of Brooklyn “got so drunk that he fell into the path of a subway train – costing him his right leg – but a Manhattan jury still awarded him $2.3 million after finding that NYC Transit was to blame.” [New York Post (“Drunk Rides Gravy Train”) and more (Mayor Michael Bloomberg calls award “incomprehensible”), N.Y. Daily News] John Hochfelder has more on the tendency of the New York subway system to be sued by tipsy totterers, and see also this City Journal compilation of mine from back in 1993.

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“Zapped Amtrak trespasser sues”

Brian Hopkins, 25, of Astoria, Queens, New York City, “who survived an electric shock and fire two years ago when he climbed atop an empty, stopped Amtrak train after a night of bar hopping in Boston is suing the railroad – because Amtrak didn’t do enough to protect trespassers like him.” (Kathianne Boniello, New York Post, Aug. 31).

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