We’ve posted four more entries from our alarmingly backed-up pipeline of reader letters, on our letters page. Among topics this time: the oddly divergent views of Wisconsin’s governor on the protection of lawful activities, with special reference to cheeseburger-selling and helmetless cycling; the recently announced class action settlement in Lamb v. Wells Fargo; complaints that some Texas jury pools are now “tainted” against lawsuits; and U-Haul’s role as bystander in the Ford Explorer litigation frenzy.
Posts Tagged ‘Wisconsin’
Overlawyered on Madison radio
I’m scheduled to talk about tort reform on Madison, Wisconsin’s WIBA radio, 1310 AM, Wednesday at 3:35 p.m. Central.
Karma ran into her dogma
“Wisconsin’s state Attorney General [Peg Lautenschlager], who pushed hard for a .08 BAC limit in the state, was arrested for drunken driving Monday night. We don’t know what her BAC was, because she refused to take a breath test (by the nature of the accident, I’d guess it was far higher than .10). Wisconsin is one of 37 states to adopt a measure championed by MADD that’s truly one of the most hysterical drunk driving laws on the books — the state actually imposes a harsher sentence for refusing to take a roadside breath test than it does for taking one and failing it.” (Radley Balko, Feb. 25) See Phil Brinkman, “Lautenschlager gives emotional apology, takes no questions”, Wisconsin State Journal, Feb. 27; Steven Elbow, “AG cited in drunk driving”, Capitol Times (Madison), Feb. 24 (in 1981, state’s then-AG was picked up driving with BAC above legal limit; was easily re-elected the next year); Elbow, “AG’s alcohol level was 0.12”, Feb. 25.
John Edwards and the money power
“We are not going to lose the race for lack of funds”, said Dallas trial lawyer Fred Baron, finance co-chairman of the Edwards campaign (and poster boy for legal ethics) as the Wisconsin primary approached. (Rob Christensen and John Wagner, “Edwards sees no reason to surrender”, Raleigh News and Observer, Feb. 12). The challenge for Edwards’s fund-raising was spelled out by the Washington Post last month (Paul Farhi and Thomas B. Edsall, “Filling War Chests Key As Campaigns Progress”, Jan. 21): “The North Carolina senator has received a higher percentage of large donations than any other major candidate — 83 percent were between $1,000 and $2,000, the maximum allowed by law. Many of these donations came from plaintiffs’ attorneys, members of Edwards’s former profession. This means that many of Edwards’s donors have ‘maxed out’ and can give no more money. For Edwards to become fully competitive in the race for cash, he will have to find new contributors beyond his trial-lawyer base.” Why, even many of the paralegals, receptionists, bankrupt support staffers of law firms and their nonvoting husbands have maxed out (see Hill News, May 7, 2003). For more on Edwards’ fund-raising, see Feb. 3; Jan. 27; Jan. 23, 2004; Aug. 5 and Apr. 7-8, 2003; and Jul. 18 and May 1-2, 2002. More: Kerry press secretary Stephanie Cutter imprecisely describes Edwards campaign as “wholly funded by trial lawyers” (Adam Nagourney and David M. Halbfinger, “Kerry and Edwards Square Off as Dean Abandons Campaign”, New York Times, Feb. 19)
Edwards’s self-reinvention as the candidate of trade protectionism has provided another reason for sensible voters to steer clear of him. As Alex Tabarrok notes: “In his stump speech, John Edwards is fond of empathizing with the plight of a 10-year old girl ‘somewhere in America,’ who goes to bed ‘praying that tomorrow will not be as cold as today, because she doesn’t have the coat to keep her warm.’ Yet, as John Tierney points out, ‘clothing has become so cheap and plentiful (partly because of textile imports, which Mr. Edwards has proposed to limit) that there is a glut of second-hand clothing, and consequently most clothing donated to charity is shipped abroad. The second-hand children’s coats that remain in America typically sell for about $5 in thrift shops.’ (emphasis added)”. See “Nader Searches for His Roots”, New York Times, Feb. 15. To be sure, Edwards has some familiarity with the internationalization of markets: when the populist Senator and his wife left their Massachusetts Avenue mansion to trade up to a nicer mansion on P Street, they disposed of the old one “for $3 million to the Hungarian government for use as an embassy”. (Marc Fisher, “Regular Guys Who Live In Mansions”, Washington Post, Feb. 17). See also Byron York, “John Edwards Cares about YOU!”, Roll Call/National Review Online, Feb. 17. (& welcome WSJ “Best of the Web”, Andrew Sullivan, Mickey Kaus, and (thanks!) Steve Bainbridge readers)
“OK, so I won’t sue cable firm”
Updating Wisconsin’s tempest in a cable box (see Jan. 7): “A man who blamed a cable TV company for his television addiction and his wife’s 50-pound weight gain said Thursday he won’t follow through with a threat to sue the cable operator. In an unusual news conference held in the basement of his West Bend home,” Timothy Dumouchel insisted that cable TV provider Charter was to blame for his family’s addiction to its televised fare, because it had failed to cut off service as requested, but said most of his dealings with the company had been pleasant and that he would not pursue legal action. Dumouchel also “said he never claimed his three children — ages 30, 23 and 16 — were lazy. He also said he knows people are snickering about him, and that his wife was angry about his statements on her weight gain.” (Lauria Lynch-German, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Jan. 9; “Man won?t sue over TV addiction”, AP/Appleton Post-Crescent, Jan. 9).
By reader acclaim: Addicted by cable TV
Parody, or just the next logical step? Timothy Dumouchel of West Bend, Wis. says he plans to sue cable TV provider Charter “because his cable connection remained intact four years after he tried to get it canceled. The result was that he and his family got free cable from August of 1999 to Dec. 23, 2003. ‘I believe that the reason I smoke and drink every day and my wife is overweight is because we watched TV every day for the last four years,’ Dumouchel stated in a written complaint against the company, included in a Fond du Lac police report.” (Lee Reinsch, “Man says he’s addicted to cable; wants to sue Charter”, Fond du Lac Reporter, Jan. 7) Update Jan. 13: he says he won’t sue.
Dr. Phil Sued
A scheduled guest on the Dr. Phil show had a panic attack before she was set to appear. (The guest, former Playboy Club waitress “Bambi” Bembenek, was going to proclaim her innocence of murder charges to which she had previously pled no contest.) So she decided to tie bedsheets together to escape the second-floor apartment where she was staying. And she fell, and broke her leg. Which was amputated as a result. If you’ve been reading this website any length of time, you know what happened next. (“Ex-cop blames ‘Dr. Phil’ show for injuries that led to amputation”, AP, Nov. 11; press release; see also Jessica McBride, “Bembenek judge calls case a ‘circus'”, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Oct. 24; “Bembenek Hurts Foot Trying To Escape Hotel Room”, Channel4000.com, Nov. 17, 2002). (via SoCalLawBlog)
Medical privacy madness, cont’d
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has more about how HIPAA, the federal medical-privacy act, is undercutting care (see Oct. 23). For example, doctors who believe their elderly patients should not be driving anymore are less likely to pass on the word to family members. ‘We’re [also] seeing more medication errors in older patients because of this,’ says John Riesch, a vascular surgeon for the past 41 years and a former president of the Medical Society of Wisconsin. … The patients, who were used to having family members or companions help them figure out their medications, are now fending for themselves and sometimes taking the wrong dosage, Riesch says.” A federal regulator, meanwhile, expresses impatience at some doctors’ overcaution on these matters: despite “persistent” and “destructive” myths to the contrary, “spouses can pick up prescriptions for one another, doctors can send e-mails to their patients, and hospitals can release a patient’s room number and condition if the patient approves,” and so forth. Silly doctors, to be so spooked by the prospect of $10,000 fines for overstepping hundreds of pages of guidelines. (Meg Kissinger, “Fears over privacy law compromising care”, Nov. 8).
Class action roundup: tires, Western Union, jam
At the new multi-author blog Marginal Revolution, Alex Tabarrok writes that he’s angry: “The lawyers will get $19 million, the plaintiffs have no damages and I have been involved in an abuse of justice. I received notice yesterday that I was a plaintiff in a class action lawsuit against Bridgestone/Firestone that is about to be settled. I was never injured by Firestone but that’s ok because injured people have their own lawsuit the one I am involved in is for people who were not injured. The lawsuit reads ‘Plaintiff Does Not Seek To Represent And This Litigation Does Not Involve Any Person Who Alleges That He or She Suffered Any Personal Injury or Property Damage Because Of A Failure Of One Of The Tires’ (capitalization in original.) Bear in mind that Firestone has already replaced all four of my tires with a competitor’s brand for free and similarly for many of the other plaintiffs.” (Sept. 16) Co-blogger Tyler Cowen at the same site isn’t any happier to discover that he is a member of the class in a suit against Western Union over its wire-funds-abroad service charging that, according to the legalese, “…the Defendants [made] misrepresentations about or otherwise failing to disclose to customers the fact that they received a more favorable exchange rate for converting U.S. dollars to foreign currency and foreign currency to U.S. dollars than they provided to their customers.” “Imagine that” — writes Cowen — “a middleman buying and selling at different prices!” (Sept. 17). (More: see KrazyKiwi, Oct. 8).
Meanwhile, a Wisconsin man has filed an intended class action lawsuit against jam maker J.M. Smucker after the Washington-based anti-business group Center for Science in the Public Interest published a report claiming that Smucker’s “Simply 100 Percent Fruit” products were falsely labeled because only a minority of the actual contents of a jar of strawberry or blueberry “Spreadable Fruit” consisted of those berries, the remainder consisting (as Smucker’s labeling makes clear) of syrups, concentrates and extracts derived from other fruits such as apple, grape, lemon and pineapple. (“Smucker’s Spreads Not All Fruit, Lawsuit Says”, AP/FoxNews, Sept. 5 — if you’re looking for a deceptive claim, how about the one conveyed by that headline?). The food-industry-defense Center for Consumer Freedom levels an interesting accusation against CSPI, namely that bounty-hunting lawyers suing under California’s Proposition 65 law seemed to have mysterious psychic powers to divine in advance exactly what was going to be in a CSPI report on supposed killer french fries — either that, or CSPI shared the information with them before it went public with its allegations. See “We, the jury, find the defendant ‘starchy'”, CCF, Jul. 17 (third from last paragraph); “CSPI: 100 Percent Litigious”, CCF, Sept. 8; “Latest Acrylamide Panic Based on Fudged Numbers” (press release), CCF, Jul. 10. For more on the French fry suit, see Dec. 27-29, 2002.
Upcoming in Milwaukee, Oklahoma City
This Thursday, Aug. 14, our editor will be giving a luncheon speech to the Milwaukee chapter of the Lawyers Division, Federalist Society (details). And on Wed., Aug. 20, he’ll address the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs as the final speaker in its Summer Speaker series in Oklahoma City (flyer) (Tulsa Today). In conjunction with the OCPA event he’ll be heard on several broadcast shows in the Sooner State, including, on Tues. Aug. 12 at 1 p.m. CDT, station WKY with host Brandon Dutcher, and on Fri. Aug. 15 at 7:15 a.m. CDT, station KTOK with host Cam Edwards, as well as a discussion show (time TBA) on KFOR-TV (NBC, ch. 4).
