Overlawyered letters

Find the common theme in these three paragraphs:

From a biographical page:

John Paul Stevens was born on April 20, 1920, in Chicago, Illinois, as the youngest of Ernest and Elizabeth Stevens' four sons. Stevens grew up in a wealthy family. His father made a fortune in the insurance and hotel business and owned the Stevens Hotel, which has since become the Chicago Hilton.

From an AP story on the case of Kelo v. New London:

"The specter of condemnation hangs over all property," O'Connor wrote. "Nothing is to prevent the state from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory." ...

City officials envision a commercial development including a riverfront hotel, health club and offices that would attract tourists to the Thames riverfront, complementing an adjoining Pfizer Corp. research center and a proposed Coast Guard museum.

-- Bob Emery, Metairie, La.

Posted by Walter Olson at 10:17 PM | Permalink

I was notified by email recently that I am a member of a class whose members include those who had ordered free business cards from Vista Print. Apparently the lead plaintiff thought that the shipping and handling fees ($4.95 for 250 cards) were excessive. I believe the counsel is Edwin Schreiber, whose name I could not find on your site.

According to the email, it seems that my only options are to opt out of the lawsuit, presumably for the purpose of pursuing my own damages, or be included by default. I am not looking for free legal advice, but having no beef with Vista Print, do I do the productive business community a better service by exempting myself from the class or by sticking around to bear witness to this kind of nonsense?

-- David Witkin, Irvine, CA

This may possibly be the single question we most often get asked by readers in letters to the editor. I have a few ideas as to possible answers, but in the mean time I'll open the comments section for (polite, to-the-point) reader discussion of the question. -- W.O.

Posted by Walter Olson at 10:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

The Washington Post reported Apr. 27: "Sodexho Inc., the Gaithersburg-based food and facilities-management company, agreed Wednesday to pay $80 million to settle a lawsuit that claimed it systematically denied promotions to 3,400 black mid-level managers."

On Steve Sailer's website, he published a very interesting reader observation on this lawsuit (scroll to end of article): "Well, I think I know of the next company lead attorney [and white man] Kerry Alan Scanlon can target: his own law firm, Kaye Scholer, whose numbers are similar to Sodexho's! I just clicked on all their attorneys, about half of whom had pictures on their law fim web pages and half of whom did not. Of the 102 Kaye Scholer attorneys who have photos, guess how many are black? Answer: same as the number of 188 top jobs held at Sodexho, whom Kaye Scholer just successfully sued for their lack of African-Americans in top jobs. Zero." -- John H. Smith III, armed services, Wiesbaden, Germany

This is also a good example (scroll) of a case that has no business being a class action.

Kaye Scholer, like virtually every major large firm, participates in NALP (www.nalp.org) which surveys precise racial breakdowns. Some details can be found here and here. -- Ted Frank

Posted by Walter Olson at 9:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Regarding your article of May 10, I can confirm that the case was indeed handled by the Norwegian Supreme Court and that Conoco lost. The court found that porno surfing during work hours was an unlawful act, but that firing the workers was an unreasonably hard sanction. It should be added that Norway has very protective employment law in favour of the employee compared to the US.

Further the Norwegian Supreme Court can take on all cases, including speeding offenses. The right to appeal depends on whether the Supreme Court after a summary review of the judgement from the lower court, finds the judgment to be wrong or of principal interest. In most cases appeal is denied. Such a system is practicable in a country with 4.5 million citizens.

Norwegians are however probably less litigious than Americans. The reason for this is probably that the main rule is that a party has to pay the legal costs of his opponent should he lose. Attorneys are further not allowed to charge their fee as a percentage of what the client receives. The damages in tort cases are generally far lower than in the US. The main rule is that the injured party only can claim coverage of the economical loss. My impression is also that we to a much more limited extent are able to bend the law compared to US lawyers; this is very noticeable in cases where we are acting for US clients represented by an American lawyer.

-- Eirik Vinje, Attorney-at-law, Oslo, Norway

Posted by Walter Olson at 9:31 PM | Permalink