Baseball players who sued Major League Baseball to have their pension rights retroactively expanded (Nov. 8) lost on summary judgment. (AP, Mar. 15). Doug Pappas has details on his weblog, including a link to an inside-baseball letter from the MLB Players’ Association’s attorney that perhaps explains why plainitffs did not dare sue them.
Archive for March, 2004
Compromise satisfies New York Times
New York Times lawyers upset at a parody web page (dated “February 30” and satirizing the Times’ correction policy) backed off once a bold-faced disclaimer was added. (Daniel Okrent, nytimes.com, Mar. 15 (via Wonkette); “NY Times backs off”, New York Daily News, Mar. 16 (last item)). The disclaimer reads, in part:
The Times now recognizes that this Times Columnist Correction page was, and is, a parody intended to express through satire a dissatisfaction with a policy of The New York Times and was in no way intended to confuse people that it was a legitimate New York Times on the Web page. TND also recognizes The Times lawyers are not known for having a well-developed sense of humor and can be susceptible to “not getting the joke”. Therefore we hereby restate that this is not a legitimate New York Times web page. The Times would never issue corrections of a Times Op-Ed Columnist and any attempt to so construe from this parody of a Times web page will be considered punishable under some such law or another as we see fit.
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.
Cornette v. Caltrans
In May 1992, the Stacy and Rodney Cornette were driving on the Antelope Valley Freeway when they were struck by a car that had blown a tire, and pushed into oncoming traffic, where they were struck by a pick-up truck. A Lancaster jury has decided that California taxpayers should be responsible for $5.6 million in damages, because the agency, Caltrans, designed the highway with a 45-foot median instead of a 45-foot median and a concrete barrier. (Caitlin Liu, “Couple in Fiery Crash Win $6-Million Verdict”, Los Angeles Times, Mar. 13; Heather Lake, “Couple win $5.6 million award in crash”, Antelope Valley Press, Mar. 14). However, it’s the story of the interplay between the California courts and legislature which is the interesting part of this.
Update: Class action reform
Recent news in class action reform (see Dec. 5 and links therein): Fox News on ATLA attempts to defeat the Class Action Fairness Act (Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, “Class-Action Lawsuit Reform Near but No Cigar Yet”, Feb. 18); the failings of coupon settlements, including of a coupon-trading service, to protect consumers (Ameet Sachdev, “Class-Action Coupon Settlements Draw Ire in Congress, Courts”, Knight-Ridder/Tribune, Feb. 29); the Kansas House of Representatives decide whether to join the federal courts in permitting interlocutory appeals of class certification decisions (Dan Margolies, “Proposed change in class-action law moves ahead”, Kansas City Star, Mar. 2).
The un-Brockovich
Little-known Beverly Hills reporter Norma Zager may be making herself the number one nemesis of glamourpuss toxic-tort-chaser Erin Brockovich-Ellis. Zager, who is with the Beverly Hills Courier, has tenaciously dug into the facts surrounding Brockovich’s and employer Edward Masry’s wild charges about supposed contamination at Beverly Hills High School (see Jan. 3 and links from there, and our Oct. 2000 treatment). (Eric Umansky, “Muckraker 90210: A Most Unlikely Reporter Nails Erin Brockovich”, Columbia Journalism Review — now there’s a magazine we haven’t often had a chance to quote favorably–, Mar./Apr.).
On Pa. court sleaze, a kind of hush
Profile of a maverick attorney who after decades of fighting machine corruption and courthouse politics in Pennsylvania is now working for malpractice reform in the state: “[Bob] Surrick is upset about the silencing of the print media because of the fear of libel suits. He said that during the 18 years that Gene Roberts was the Philadelphia Inquirer’s executive editor, the newspaper won 17 Pulitzers, which was unheard of for a newspaper. But during the 1980s (while Roberts was still editor) Surrick said that the judges and justices started the business of suing their critics, particularly the print media critics, for libel, effectively silencing the Inquirer; after Roberts left, the newspaper no longer did investigative reporting on the judiciary. ‘If the media — the guardian of the truth about what is going on in government — does not tell you, who is going to tell you?’ Surrick asks.” (Eileen Laskas, “Whatever Happened to Bob Surrick?”, CountyPressOnline (Phila. suburbs), Jan. 28) (via Donna Rovito’s Liability Update Information Network). For more on the kinds of legal trouble you can get into by criticizing Pennsylvania judges, see Oct. 24-25, 2001.
Menace of dihydrogen monoxide
We warned them again and again, and now the California town of Aliso Viejo has moved to take action against this environmental horror. (“SoCal city falls victim to Internet hoax, considers banning items made with water”, AP/San Jose Mercury News, Mar. 14).
Welcome New Statesman (UK) readers
The well-known British magazine mentions us in the course of an article taking a more favorable view than our own of the spread of “compensation culture” across the pond (Stephen Grey, “Turn to the lawyers for justice”, Mar. 8). Also in the U.K., the Risk of Freedom Briefing, edited by Roger Scruton, runs a condensation of one of our writings from last year (Walter Olson, “Litigation Un-Limited”, Issue 18). The Chicago Daily Law Bulletin quotes us on the record number of applicants to law schools, in an article alas not online (Jerry Crimmins, “Record crowd knocks at law school doors”, Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, Jan. 13).
Also not online is a Feb. 16 symposium on litigation reform at Business Insurance magazine, which asked the question: “At which level of government are tort reforms best aimed?” Our response: “Trial lawyers lose because they can’t be everywhere at once. If they have to worry only about fighting running skirmishes at the state level, they’ll usually do pretty well at blocking reform. But when a big campaign goes on for federal-level tort reform, even if it fails — which it usually seems to — a bunch of states will often manage to pass serious reforms, as happened last year in Texas and elsewhere. Washington also has an indispensable role to play in setting ground rules for state-court lawsuits against out-of-state defendants, not to mention the large class of cases that arise under federal law.”