Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘Wisconsin’

Guest Blogger Unveiled

It appears that I have won the Guestblogger Pageant (despite falling down and being booed by angry Mexicans), so here’s a little bit about me. My name is Christian Schneider, and I work for the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute here in lovely Madison, Wisconsin. I run the WPRI blog, a little personal project called Atomic Trousers, and as a former legislative staffer, I blogged pseudonymously as Dennis York (a blog that could generously be described as humorous). I am originally from Alexandria, VA, and I have a master’s degree in political science from the prestigious Marquette University in Milwaukee (which means I am qualified to read the newspaper). I also occasionally contribute commentaries to the show “Here and Now” on Wisconsin Public Television.

While I am not an attorney, I am a long time fan of Overlawyered.com. Plus, there’s a reasonable chance Jessica Alba will be filing a restraining order against me sometime soon, so I thought it might be a good idea to familiarize myself with the legal community.

Here are a couple past posts that people seemed to find moderately inoffensive:

Scientists to Harvest Seniors for their Coupons
Keep Your Laws Out of My Pants (and a Follow-Up)
When Religions Lobby

So there’s my resume. References available upon request.

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April 4 roundup

All Point of Law edition:

  • I discuss Professor Charles Silver’s latest foray on Bizarro-Overlawyered. Silver and his coauthors are doing legitimate empirical work, but I don’t understand why he keeps making public statements that the published versions of his papers can’t support, and I especially don’t understand why he does that at the same time he’s criticizing the entire reform movement for any given politician’s oversimplified sound-bite. [Point of Law]

  • New Jersey Supreme Court limits benefits of forum shopping, with potentially fatal implications for pending $27 billion class action against Merck. [Point of Law; Beck/Herrmann]

  • The PRI study’s $865B figure isn’t perfect, as I earlier noted in a post since interpreted to mean that I “loved it.” [Point of Law; Turkewitz]

  • Plaintiffs’ bar attempts to smear next Wisconsin Supreme Court justice Annette Ziegler fail. [WSAW; Point of Law]

  • Tax breaks for the plaintiffs’ bar. [Day on Torts; Point of Law]

  • Don’t tell David Behar about this paper; it mentions “privity.” [Point of Law]

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February 20 roundup

  • Trucker-friendly Arizona legislature declines to ban naked lady mudflaps [NBC4.com; Houstonist]
  • Crumb of approbation dept.: I’m “[not] as unreasonable as most of the tort-reform crowd” [Petit]
  • Sponsors of large banquets in D.C. must pay to have a paramedic on hand even when the banquet crowd consists of doctors [ShopFloor]
  • Homeowner’s insurance doesn’t cover homewrecking: umbrella policy doesn’t create duty to defend lawsuit claiming the insured broke up someone’s marriage (Pins v. State Farm (PDF), S. Dak., Mayerson via Elefant)
  • New York mag on RFK Jr.: Is there some law saying all press profiles of America’s Most Irresponsible Public Figure® must be weirdly softball in nature and glide over his embarrassing book and rants, his Osama-pig farm lunacy, his anti-vaccine humbug, his trial-lawyer entanglements and even the wind farm flap?
  • Australia court rules Muslim prison inmate suffered discrimination and deserves money for being served canned halal meat rather than fresh [The Australian]
  • High medical costs and their causes: am I listening? [Coyote]
  • Economists may puzzle their heads over the ultimate incidence of business taxes, but in Wisconsin it’s whatever Gov. Jim Doyle says it is [Krumm via Taranto]
  • Feds may punish Red Sox pitcher Matsuzaka for doing a beer ad in Japan, where it’s perfectly legal for athletes to appear in such [To The People]
  • Guns in company parking lots: still one of the rare issues where the ABA manages to be righter than the NRA [AP/CBSNews.com; see Apr. 6, 2006]
  • Thanks, NYC taxpayers: Brooklyn jury awards $16 million against city in case where drugged-up motorist jumped sidewalk and ran over pedestrians, later blaming the accident on a city sanitation truck [seven years ago on Overlawyered]

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February 9 roundup

Multi-billion dollar (and down) extortion edition:

  • Merrill Lynch and CSFB appeal extortionate Enron class-action certification. [Point of Law; AEI (Feb. 9); WLF brief]

  • More on the extortionate and lawless $500 billion Wal-Mart class certification. [Point of Law]

  • Mississippi Supreme Court rejects extortionate medical monitoring class actions. [Behrens @ WLF]

  • Lawyer Daniel Hynes tries to extort $2000 from New Hampshire bar holding Ladies’ Night. [Foster’s Daily Democrat (h/t B.C.)]

  • Colorado Civil Justice League stops legislative attempt at giveaway to local trial lawyers. [Point of Law]
  • Wisconsin court: family can be sued for babysitter’s car accident when returning home from dropping off child. [AP/Insurance Journal]
  • Fox seeks to dismiss Borat suit on anti-SLAPP grounds. [Hollywood Reporter Esq. via WSJ Law Blog]

  • Passaic County jury: $28M for “wrongful birth.” [NorthJersey.com]

  • Former AG (and Dem) Griffin Bell: “Judicial Leadership Emerging In Asbestos And Silica Mass Torts” [WLF]
  • Utah legislature considering med-mal reform for ERs. “Neurosurgeons in this town have to pay over $90,000 a year just for the privilege of getting out of bed on a Friday night to drain the blood from the brain of a victim of a drunk driver crash. And they say, I’m not gonna do it. Because the patients are sicker. The procedures are sometimes more invasive and more risky with more complications. Why take that risk if they don’t have to?” [KCPW via Kevin MD; Provo Herald]

  • A little-read blog promoting a soon-to-be-pulped fictional account of tort reform is really begging for a link from us, what with three out of the last five posts making amateurish (and often false) personal attacks on this site’s authors or soliciting others to also fling poo. No dice.

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What does Warren Buffett’s MedPro say about caps?

Trial lawyers have pointed to Warren Buffett’s purchase of medical-malpractice insurer GE Medical Protective as evidence that medical malpractice insurance is profitable (e.g., this comment thread). Of course, there are two factors to Berkshire Hathaway’s high profitability, both ability to improve the business through sound management and ability to obtain assets cheaply—and it’s possible Buffett bought the now-named MedPro from General Electric because the latter was selling the business on the cheap to get out of insurance.

Of course, if there are inefficiencies in medical malpractice insurance, Buffett is as likely to find them as anyone: the profit motive gives him every incentive to. So what does his MedPro say about the “we need caps” vs. “it’s insurers’ fault” debate over malpractice insurance prices? Here’s what they said in response to the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s appalling decision to strike down caps:

Read On…

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Update: anti-milk suit dismissed

A federal judge in the District of Columbia has dismissed a lawsuit against dairy manufacturers filed by the animal-rights group that calls itself the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM). The lawsuit claimed that it was legally wrongful for producers not to label dairy products to warn of the risk of lactose intolerance (“District Court Dismisses Anti-Dairy Lawsuit”, USAgNet/Wisconsin Ag Connection, Sept. 5). Ted covered the suit Jun. 21, 2005; see also May 28, 2004. Bill Childs comments on the dismissal (Aug. 23) and also has details of a ruling by the Michigan Supreme Court (over two dissents) that a hair oil manufacturer did not have to warn of the dangers of ingesting its product.

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Hey mom, got a surprise for you

A federal judge has declined to dismiss a lawsuit by an Illinois woman who “is suing her Wisconsin parents for maintaining an icy driveway that she blames for a fall that broke her ankle two winters ago…. Carriel Louah, 25, visited Darlington, Wis., to surprise her mother on her birthday in January 2005. But the next morning, she was injured when she slipped and fell on her parents’ driveway. …The daughter said that a letter from her mom apologizing months after the fall proves that her parents knew they had a defective gutter for years and did nothing about it.” (“Judge OKs Trial After Daughter’s Surprise Visit Home Ends In Lawsuit”, Channel3000.com, Jul. 13).

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Vioxx coverage (and more) at Point of Law

For comprehensive coverage of this week’s verdicts in lawsuits against Merck, see Point of Law. In particular, Ted corrects reporters who keep passing on ill-informed assertions that the Cona/McDarby results are going to preclude Merck from raising its earlier defenses in the thousands of Vioxx cases yet to come, and that that New Jersey cases are being heard in “Merck’s home court“.

Other things you’ve been missing if you don’t check our sister site regularly:

* New regular contributors include Larry Ribstein (Ideoblog), Tom Kirkendall (Houston’s Clear Thinkers), and Sam Munson (Manhattan Institute);

* Theodore Dalrymple on a new history of vaccine litigation;

* Jim Copland on Rep. Cynthia McKinney and a class action on behalf of Capitol police;

* Ted on the Supreme Court’s recent Dabit decision on state-court securities suits (here and here); and on a new med-mal study;

* Michael Krauss on a tort suit in the U.S. against ExxonMobil over abuses by the Indonesian military;

* Jonathan B. Wilson on offer-of-judgment reform in Georgia (and more); and joint-and-several-liability reform in Pennsylvania, just vetoed by that state’s Gov. Ed Rendell;

* Posts by me nominating an Arizona lawprof for “the worst and most tendentious analogy in the history of the liability debate”; on doctors’ Good Samaritan liability; a ruling in the New York school finance case, an AG who dissents from his brethren on the tobacco deal; the Rhode Island lead paint verdict (here, here, etc.); Seventh Circuit judge Diane Sykes criticizes the Wisconsin Supreme Court; and lost-overtime suits on behalf of $400,000-a-year stockbrokers. And, of course, much much more — bookmark the site today.

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Licensed Handgun Carry Wins in Kansas

Over-riding the Governor’s veto, the Kansas legislature has enacted a “Shall Issue” law for issuing licenses to carry a concealed handgun for lawful protection. Before, Kansas was one of only four states without any provision for issuing concealed handgun licenses. One of the remaining three states, Nebraska, appears poised to enact a similar law, which the Governor has said he will sign.
Kansas is now among the 39 states which have a fair procedure to allow citizens to carry handguns for protection. Along with the three states (Nebraska, Wisconsin, IIllinois) that currently do not issue permits, eight other states issue permits according to the whim of a local official (Hawaii, California, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Delaware). A Shall Issue bill is moving through the legislature in Delaware. Rhode Island already has a Shall Issue law, although the law is nullified by administrative practice.
In Wisconsin, a Shall Iissue bill has been vetoed twice, with the vetos sustained by only one or two votes. In every state where Shall Issue proponents have gotten as close as they have in Wisconsin, the state has always eventually enacted a Shall Issue law–although sometimes the process can take a while.
So of the eleven remaining states that are not Shall Issue, two of them (Nebraska and Wisconsin) are nearly certain to change at some point in the future, and there is reasonable possiblity of change in Delaware. All that Rhode Island needs to change is the election of Attorney General who will not interfere with the state law that local goverments must issue carry permits to qualified applicants.
So the number of Shall Issue states could be 43 in the not too distant future. In the seven hold-out states, Shall Issue has passed one body of the legislature at least once in the three largest states: California, New York, and Illinois.
Every year, more and more Shall Issue states create “reciprocity” with each other, so that a person with a permit from her home state can carry her firearm lawfully in a other state while visiting. Currently, a carry permit issued by one state is valid in over half of all states. (See Packing.org for details.)
As the combined total of “no issue” or “whimsical issue” states declines into the single digits, and reciprocity continues to spread, it seems hard to deny that America is concluding that Shall Issue is sensible gun control — one that regulates firearms carrying but does not infringe the right to self-defense.
For more on the Kansas law, see this excellent article in the Wichita Eagle.

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