For all his newfound capitalist prowess, it seems Sen. John Edwards still isn’t familiar with some fairly basic geopolitical facts on the ground:
“I’m going to be honest with you — I don’t know a lot about Cuba’s healthcare system,” Edwards, D-N.C., said at an event in Oskaloosa, Iowa. “Is it a government-run system?”
(ABCNews.com “Political Radar”, Aug. 17)(via Weigel)(disclaimer).
That’s one description of why some law firms have been reluctant to cross the psychological threshold of $1,000/hour fees for top lawyers’ services. That doesn’t mean they’re not going ahead with the increase, though. (Debra Cassens Weiss, “Top Lawyers Bill $1,000 an Hour”, Aug. 22; Althouse, Aug. 22; WSJ Law Blog, Aug. 22; Barry Leonardini, Aug. 22). It’s still fairly paltry compared with some contingency fees, of course, as with the tobacco-Medicaid caper, where the Litigation Lobby successfully defeated as too chintzy a $20,000/hour cap and some estimates of fees obtained ran five times that high.
While they’ve agreed to let the fellow passenger off, they continue to sue US Airways and the Minneapolis airport commission. (Michelle Malkin, Aug. 22; Audrey Hudson, “Imams drop passenger from lawsuit”, Washington Times, Aug. 22; Joseph Goldstein, “Imams Drop Fellow Passenger From Discrimination Lawsuit”, New York Sun, Aug. 23; earlier).
My last post commented on Washington’s Insurance Fair Conduct Act. The Act is up for public vote as Referendum 67. Check out the web sites advocating approval or rejection of the measure.
The “Approve 67” web site struck me as a bit demagogic–the main page shows a young girl clutching a teddy bear being comforted by (apparently) her father. The next shot is a man in a wheelchair, face cast sullenly downward. (Ostensibly suffering from insurance company malfeasance.) The final shot is a generic image of an emergency clinic. Then, under the “Take Action” column on your left there’s a link to “Share Your Insurance Horror Story.” (As of this writing there is a grand total of three “horror” stories.)
Under the endorsements tab, trial lawyers are notably absent–at least from the list. There are, however, multiple labor organizations as well as the Washington State Democratic Party. Under the “About Referendum 67” tab [with my comment]:
If an insurance company unfairly denies a legitimate claim, your only recourse is to sue. But if you win, the only thing they have to pay is the amount of the original claim [not true, just ask millionaire prankster dentist Robert Woo.] Referendum 67 creates an incentive [there already are incentives: coverage by waiver or estoppel, Olympic Steamship attorney fees and the Washington Consumer Protection Act (CPA)] to treat legitimate claims fairly by allowing the court to assess penalties if an insurance company illegally denies or delays payment of a legitimate claim.
Referendum 67 would help to ensure that the insurance industry honor their commitments to treat all policyholders honestly by making it against the law [it’s already against the law, silly–see the existing RCW and WAC] to unreasonably delay or deny legitimate claims.
The News Tribune in its story Let’s not try to fix an insurance industry that’s not broken says:
That the system is working well is illustrated by a storm of a different sort: the windstorm that smashed into Western Washington earlier this year. Within less than four months of the event, according to a recent study, 90 percent of the 42,000 claims were settled, for $170 million in compensation. Most of the remaining claims remained unsettled due to lack of qualified contractors or the time needed to rebuild homes. Only three complaints were filed with the insurance commissioner’s office.
I don’t know if I would characterize this legislation as a jackpot for trial lawyers, but it’s probably unnecessary and will increase the frequency of litigated first party claims at the greater expense of the insurance paying public. It’s up to Washington voters to get it right.
Last year, New York City Mayor Bloomberg filed federal lawsuits against bunches of gun stores across the country; we’ve covered these suits extensively. (See, e.g. May 2006, Jun. 2006, Sep. 2006). NYC sent people to stores in places such as Georgia, Ohio, Virginia and South Carolina; these city agents then conducted “stings” in which they made supposedly illegal firearms purchases. Bloomberg then sued these stores, claiming that the guns were ending up in New York City and that the stores should for some reason be liable for this.
Somehow, despite the fact that whatever illegal sales took place did so in Georgia, Ohio, Virginia and South Carolina, the suit ended up in the Brooklyn courtroom of federal Judge Jack Weinstein, the man who has never seen a products liability case he couldn’t endorse. The gun stores moved to dismiss the suits on the grounds that New York courts have no jurisdiction.
Last week, Weinstein rejected the gun stores’ motion in a 99 page opinion (PDF) replete with anti-gun rhetoric (about criminals who “terrorize” the city and descriptions of guns as “Saturday Night Specials”) and citations to his own decisions in previous gun-litigation cases (Jul. 2003) So the suits will continue; a trial date has been set for January.
Republican presidential-non-candidate Fred Thompson doesn’t think much more of these suits than we do.
Michael Delikat in the Wall Street Journal:
Sarbox’s whistleblower provisions were intended “to prevent recurrences of the Enron debacle and similar threats to the nation’s financial markets” by protecting those who report fraudulent activity that could damage innocent investors. That was the intent, at least. The reality is something else.
About 1,000 whistleblowing claims have been filed under Sarbox. Only 17 were determined after federal investigation to have merit and only six of this group have kept their wins after full evidentiary hearings before administrative law judges.
Nevertheless, the plaintiffs bar and others have ready answers for this extremely poor batting average. Critics assert that the 90-day statute of limitation for filing whistleblower claims is too short, the burden of proof placed on complaining employees is too high, that judges are reading the law too narrowly, or even that, as one law professor testified, the whistleblower provisions have “has failed to protect the vast majority of employees who file a Sarbanes-Oxley claim” because they rarely win.
None of these criticisms measure up. Sarbox whistleblowers rarely win because most claimants are using, or some might say, misusing, the law as a club in garden-variety workplace disputes.
Update: as does Professor Bainbridge: “Clearly, the whistle blower provisions significantly raised costs and created opportunities for employees to game the system.”
“A 5-year-old girl bitten by a Rottweiler puppy in a Petco store cannot sue the pet supplies chain because it has a policy of allowing its customers to bring their pets into its stores, an acting New York Supreme Court justice has ruled, noting the policy reflects ‘an industry-wide standard’ designed for the benefit of pet store customers. The summary judgment ruling also exonerated the owner of the Rottweiler, finding he had no reason to suspect that the 8-month-old puppy had a ‘vicious propensity.'” Plaintiffs say they’re going to appeal, though. (Daniel Wise, “Bid Challenging Pet Supplies Retailer’s Pet-Friendly Policy Fails”, New York Law Journal, Aug. 8). Earlier: Dec. 14, 2003.
Among things you’ve missed if you haven’t been keeping up with our sister site: law firm tells silicosis clients that “unfortunately” they’ve checked out healthy and don’t have the disease after all; American Express pays $3 million, and class action objectors go away; Harvard’s Larry Tribe apologizes to the widow of the late Prof. Bernard Siegan; French consumerist vows not to replicate U.S. folly on class actions; Madison County, Ill. courts due for upgrade to heckhole status?; Hillary bashes Obama for supporting class action reform; Deborah La Fetra concludes her week of guestblogging on premises liability, negligent security and other matters; and much, much more.
I don’t think it would much matter if Democrats were to live in The World According to Edwards, who has never taken lobbyist money. Nice symbolism, perhaps, but how does it make candidates any purer to disdain checks from lobbyists while avidly vacuuming up contributions from the various industries they represent?
Edwards is no less tainted by the trial-lawyer money he scoops up by the bucketful than he would be by lobbyist contributions.