This time it was a false alarm (see Aug. 18), but he’s pretty clearly expecting to run for office in the future. (Lesley Conn, “Scarborough: Thanks, but no thanks”, Pensacola News Journal, Aug. 21).
Archive for August, 2005
Around the blogs
Philadelphia lawyer/blogger “Eh Nonymous”, who has been reading this site since law school without necessarily agreeing, now offers some more than generous comments about us (Aug. 17). Nobody’s Business has a picture of an overprotective warning sign which we can only assume is a parody and which in any case is funny (Aug. 15). Dozens of blogs, including Gypsy Speaks and Rev. Marge, are onto the sequel of the Kelo v. New London eminent-domain case: the city of New London, having won its case against the homeowners, now is charging them back rent for the five years it took to kick them out of their homes, not unlike the foreman in the old labor song who, after an on-the-job explosion, docked the worker for the time he spent up in the sky. And Jason Kuznicki at Positive Liberty (Aug. 15) explores the question of “Why the [New York] Times likes Kelo so much”. More: Gunner at No Quarters has identified (Aug. 17) a provision in Connecticut law that might prove unexpectedly helpful to the Kelo “tenants”.
A new civil right
Namely, the “civil right to get a high-school diploma no matter how little you know, and consequently to have a high-school diploma that certifies precisely nothing about your abilities and which therefore has roughly no value in the job market.” Something at Harvard called the Civil Rights Project, in alliance with a bunch of litigious pressure groups, is planning to secure this new right for America’s schoolkids, notes Mark Kleiman (Aug. 18)(via Kaus).
Ill. high court tosses aftermarket auto parts verdict
By a unanimous vote, the Illinois Supreme Court has decertified and thus nullified a $1.2 billion class action verdict, much criticized here (Oct. 8, 1999) and in other places, which held that State Farm’s practice of specifying generic aftermarket parts after auto crashes had defrauded consumers. Among the many problems with the verdict were that the court had lumped together consumers holding a wide range of insurance policies applying different language to the handling of the aftermarket parts issue, that it had ignored wide variations among consumers in what if any harm they had suffered from the practice, and that it had applied Illinois law to policies issued mostly to consumers in states other than Illinois, some of whose regulators had specifically contemplated and approved (or even required) the use of generic parts after crashes. Martin Grace and Ted Frank comment at PoL, and discussions elsewhere include those of (again) Martin Grace and Larry Ribstein. More: Amy Joyce, “State Farm Wins Reversal of $1 Billion Suit”, Washington Post, Aug. 19.
$253 million Texas Vioxx verdict
$229 million were punitives. (AP/Forbes, AP/BusWk, Reuters, W$J). Ted posted on the case Jul. 11 when the trial opened. Jim Copland and Jonathan Wilson comment at Point of Law, which has given the issue extensive coverage. Our previous posts on Vioxx are here. Evan Schaeffer, who is handling Vioxx claims on the plaintiff’s side, writes that “this was a case perceived to have causation problems that made it virtually unwinnable for the plaintiffs,” making it an especially bitter defeat for Merck. More: Derek Lowe, KevinMD, Bainbridge, Kirkendall.
Yet more: Ted now has a big post up at Point of Law.
Radio: “Small Business Advocate”
I was a guest on Jim Blasingame’s national radio program “The Small Business Advocate” this morning, discussing auto lease liability, indemnity clauses in contracts and other topics (listen/ his archive of law-related shows). For more on the $20 million verdict against Budget Rent-a-Car, see Feb. 2; for more on the recent enactment of a federal law overriding New York’s, see Aug. 4.
Canada: “truth and reconciliation” panel for lawyers’ image?
“Fed-up with jokes that unfairly typecast them as ambulance-chasers or worse, Canada’s lawyers are considering drastic means to rehabilitate their image, including striking a truth and reconciliation task force to find out why they ‘can’t get no respect’ from the public.” Truth and reconciliation commissions came to prominence as an innovation employed in countries such as South Africa seeking to overcome highly repressive or acrimonious national pasts. Halifax lawyer Robert Patzelt, who chairs a Canadian Bar Association committee looking into the idea, said “it may be necessary to accept that the profession is far from perfect and that it may, to some extent, have contributed to some of its own image problems.” All talk of “truth commissions” aside, that last bit sure sounds like progress to us — and a decided improvement over the circle-the-wagons reaction to criticism so often adopted by organized lawyerdom in the U.S. (Cristin Schmitz, “Objection! Lawyers lament poor public image”, CanWest/Montreal Gazette, Aug. 16).
MADD’s agenda shift
…from a former mission of fighting drunk driving to a new mission of just fighting drinking, even when no one is attempting to drive a car, is among topics that “deserve a closer look but won’t get it” in the media, according to Glenn Reynolds (Aug. 15). Lawrence Taylor’s DUI Blog has more (Aug. 10), as does Radley Balko, who charges (Aug. 15) that “not only has MADD’s mission changed from keeping the roads safe to preventing consumption of alcohol, they’ll support a position that cuts down on the latter even when it increases the likelihood of drunk driving fatalities.” See also Jun. 17.
Center for a Just Society
Walter’s entry on the Florida Senate race calls to mind that one of the ironies of the Democratic Party’s recent insistence on being the lapdog of the litigation lobby is that the latter has no special loyalty to the Democratic Party or anything that it stands for.
The most recent incarnation of this is the anti-abortion but pro-trial-lawyer Astroturf group “Center for a Just Society,” run by Ken Connor, that seeks to turn social conservatives into litigation lobby supporters by arguing that tort reform would threaten the ability of plaintiffs’ lawyers to sue RU-486 out of the market. (Connor comes from the same law firm as Jim Wilkes, who set up another Astroturf group that opposed nursing home liability reform in Florida, where liability had gotten so out of control that even the AARP supported efforts to limit ability of elders to sue nursing homes (Dec. 17, 2003).) Ramesh Ponnuru exposes the fallacies of this group’s reasoning in an article in this week’s National Review (sadly not available on line), which quotes me and mentions Walter. (Ramesh Ponnuru, “Social Injustice: Trial lawyers woo social conservatives”, National Review, Aug. 29).
“Law Firm Sanctioned for Forest Service Suit”
Criticize a developer, get sued for racketeering: “A Los Angeles federal judge on Monday ordered a large law firm and two of its attorneys to pay $267,000 in sanctions for filing a ‘frivolous lawsuit’ against a community activist and three Forest Service employees who opposed a luxury condominium development on Big Bear Lake.” Lawyers from the San Diego office of Foley & Lardner, acting on behalf of developer Irving Okovita, had filed a racketeering lawsuit against Sandy Steers, executive director of the Friends of Fawnskin, and two Forest Service employees who had fought the developer’s Marina Point project, which they said would disrupt bald eagle habitat. U.S. District Judge Manuel Real threw out the suit and issued the sanctions, which Foley & Lardner says it will appeal. (Henry Weinstein, Los Angeles Times, Aug. 16; “Judge rules law firm must pay $267,000 for ‘frivolous’ lawsuit”, AP/CourtTV, Aug. 16)(more background).