Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Archive for August, 2004

The Men Behind Edwards

Our editor, Walter Olson, has covered this territory before, but it’s worth revisiting as Kerry and Edwards make their way across key states in their bus caravan campaign. The report on the men behind John Edwards at EdwardsWatch makes for interesting reading.:

According to published reports, Edwards received $4.65 million from 3,220 lawyers, 29 paralegals, 17 legal assistants and 555 people with the same address as a personal injury attorney contributor (such as a spouse or close relative). The $4.65 million represents 63% of the total money raised by Edwards. Over one-third of those contributors gave the maximum $2,000..

His biggest contributors include patron, friend, campaign finance director, and asbestos-litigator extraordinaire Fred Baron, Silicon Valley litigator William Lerach (see also this), and the mysterious Stephen Bing.

He also has close ties to the law firms Girardi and Keese and Chitwood and Harley. And that’s just the tip of the special interest iceberg.

Other tidbits from the EdwardsWatch site include the discount air travel Edwards gets from his trial lawyer friends and the money he’s gotten from every state trial lawyers association in the country. Has there ever been a candidate so beholden to one special interest?

More: See also details at Rantburg and Edwards’ PAC donors from OpenSecrets.org.

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Market Influence

There may be good news on the horizon for physicians in John Edwards’ home state. No, the state didn’t pass sweeping tort reform. It’s market magic:

Unlike the last survey, business-related cases didn’t just lead the top of the list. In a dramatic change from past years, they made up more than a quarter of all the entries for 2003, with 14. That’s more than double the number of business recoveries reported to Lawyers Weekly in 2002 ? and matches the tallies in medical malpractice and auto negligence.

Another telling statistic: In 2003, six business-related cases resulted in recoveries of $7 million or more, according to the survey. There were only three reported in that range in 2002 ? and only one in 2001. In contrast, no contested personal injury recoveries reached $7 million in 2003.

Why is that good news for physicians and what does it have to do with the free market? It means that lawyers will be expending their energies on business cases instead of malpractice cases. This may not be good for the economy of North Carolina, but it would give doctor’s and hospitals a reprieve. As one lucky winner, I mean attorney, puts it:

“In my view, in terms of making a living, business misconduct cases in today’s environment are becoming almost as profitable as personal injury, where you traditionally have had more high-end verdicts and settlements,” said Hunt.

And I thought they were in this to champion the little guy.

Click here to see a list of the top 55 verdicts for 2003 in North Carolina, none of which were under one million dollars.

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Beware the Indian-artifacts police

A 1990 federal law restricts commercial trade in American Indian archaelogical remains and so-called sacred objects, and pressures public institutions to hand over (“repatriate”) such holdings to tribes. According to its critics, the law has begun to put a serious crimp in archaelogical investigation of the North American continent. It also menaces legitimate dealers of artifacts with prison terms over vaguely defined offenses, all while providing the adherents of certain religious tenets (those claimed to be traditional native beliefs) with powerful legal muscle not available to those of us who may hold other (or no) religious beliefs. (Steven Vincent, “Grave Injustice”, Reason, Jul.). For the “Kennewick Man” controversy, the most famous thus far to arise under the law, see Feb. 14 and links from there. For cases with sometimes-overlapping effect arising from a federal law which restricts trade in artifacts whose components include the feathers of eagles and other protected birds, see Sept. 11-12, 1999.

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Somewhere in America

The medmal crisis isn’t just affecting doctors, it’s having an impact on nurses, too:

Kimberly Ridpath was shocked to learn earlier this year that the malpractice insurance policy for her 150 health care workers had been canceled.

In three years of supplying nursing homes with nurses and assistants, no lawsuits had ever been filed against her Mechanicsville firm, Advantage Staffing.

…The tension over the future of her company and its 150 employees took its toll.

“I cried. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep,” said Ridpath, a registered nurse.

(Could this be the woman Senator Edwards was talking about?) She eventually found a policy, at roughly ten times the price of her original. It’s the nursing home work that makes her company such a high risk. But the problem isn’t confined to nurses who staff nursing homes. Midwives and nurse practitioners, who often serve the underserved, are finding their malpractice insurance premiums rising, too. As result, they can no longer afford to staff public health clinics on the cheap as they once did. Tort reform. It really should be a bipartisan issue.

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Update: Supreme Court ducks ADA stadium-seating issue

Despite a split between circuits on the issue, the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to resolve “whether disabled moviegoers must be given better seats than the front-row accommodations they’re provided in many new stadium-seating theaters. … Instead, at the urging of the Bush administration, they left undisturbed rulings against two theater companies while the government reviews its guidelines for movie theater owners.” (Gina Holland, “Court Dodges Fight Over Disabled Seating”, AP/WTOP, Jun. 28; “Supreme Court decision lets disabled sit away from the picture”, KATU, Jul. 1; “Beyond the letter of the ADA” (editorial), The Oregonian, Jul. 3; Christine M. Garton, “Disabled Moviegoers Fight Stadium Seating”, Legal Times, Jun. 24). For more on the controversy, see Nov. 11 and links from there.

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Speed Trap Shut Down

Residents of central Ohio fear and loathe the town of New Rome. Most people, including the state’s Attorney General, suspect it exists only to line the pockets of a few people who live in its three block radius. The tiny town (pop. 60) has a per capita income of $12,983, but takes in $300,000 a year in traffic tickets. (Take a virtual tour of the town here.) It’s almost impossible to pass through New Rome without getting stopped for a violation, be it speeding or a broken tail light.

Ohio residents can breathe easy now. New Rome was dissolved this week by court order. Sometimes, the system works.

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