Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Archive for October, 2007

U.K. roundup

Welcome BBC listeners; more on the blind shoppers’ suit against Target here. Most of our material on this site originates in the U.S. but we do have a page of British items, and here are some more:

  • Sheffield-based clown “Barney Baloney” finds it harder to amuse children now that liability insurers have vetoed his bubble machine and supermarkets bar him from using allergenic latex balloons [Daily Mail, Telegraph, AFP/Breibart, Lowering the Bar; video at Breitbart.tv]

  • Good opinion column prompted by above: “the fear of legal action is not a fantasy of liberal killjoys … what has really happened is that a small minority of the population have become accident-intolerant and are prepared to enforce their utopia through the courts.” [Mark Lawson, Guardian]

  • Furor over official ruling that man who killed London headmaster can’t be deported back to Italy without violating his human rights “as he no longer has strong family ties there” [Telegraph]

  • Scandals about groundless expert testimony in infant death prosecutions lead to calls for importation of Daubert rules, maybe even national institute of forensic science [Times Online]

  • Labour government will propose bill to halt prosecution of homeowners who defend themselves with “proportional” force against burglars, home invaders [Telegraph] while Tories pledge to end “compensation culture” in school governance [likewise]

  • State of UK law blogs, and link to a list of them [Nick Holmes via Kevin O’Keefe]

  • Please, please don’t: leading consumer group calls for adoption of U.S.-style class action system in which lawyers can represent everyone who doesn’t affirmatively opt out [Times Online]

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There’s money in glass-eating, son

“A man was sentenced Thursday to more than five years in jail for his role in a multistate insurance fraud scheme in which federal prosecutors said he and his wife intentionally ate glass fragments and collected more than $200,000 in compensation.” Ronald Evano, 49, and his wife defrauded restaurants, grocery stores, and insurers around the Northeast by claiming there was glass in the food they ate and obtaining liability settlements; they were treated more than a dozen times for glass ingestion, and proceeded to stiff the doctors and hospitals too, declining to turn over any of the settlement money to them. Cultural-sensitivity bonus: “Evano asked the judge for mercy, saying in court that he and his wife are members of the minority Roma community, and needed the money to pay for dowries and other costs associated with the marriages of his sons under cultural practices.” (“Man jailed for 63 months in glass-eating fraud scheme”, AP/Boston Globe, Oct. 4).

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Get a C, File a Lawsuit.

In the Fall 2006 semester, Brian Marquis got a C in his “Problems in Social Thought” class at the University of Massachusetts. Apparently attempting to prove he learned more about the problems than about the solutions, he immediately proceeded to file a federal class action lawsuit alleging that the school, its trustees, his professor, and various deans violated his constitutional right to get an A.

In a rare case of speedy resolution, it took the court just four months from the time the lawsuit was served on the defendants for the court to dismiss the case; that might have had something to do with the fact that Marquis was proceeding pro se, and drafted a semi-grammatical complaint with no legitimate causes of action. (For instance, he listed a racial discrimination statute as one of his causes of action, despite being white and failing to allege that race played any role in the matter.)

Still, that hardly means the suit was cost-free; as one of the defendants put it, “It ended up just wasting a lot of people’s time and money.” Moreover, Marquis says that he’s thinking of appealing. But lest you think that Marquis just had sour grapes, he had a good reason for filing the suit:

Marquis – who salts his comments with “strike that” – acknowledged he was alarmed the C might lower his grade point average and make him less attractive to a law school.

The C has rendered his transcript a “dismal record of non-achievement,” his suit said. Marquis, who enrolled at UMass-Amherst in spring 2006, said he has roughly a B-plus average.

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that “Has a history of filing lawsuits against his school and his professors” on his résumé isn’t actually going to make him more attractive to a law school. (Although his 2004 lawsuit against his previous school didn’t keep him from being admitted to the University of Massachusetts.)

(h/t Kerr @ Volokh)

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Thanks to Robert Ambrogi

For identifying Overlawyered as one of the top ten legal blogs. We’re invited to name our ten favorite. I’d be remiss if I didn’t identify Point of Law, our sister blog, but that seems poor sport. Here’s my ten, though, of course, Walter’s may differ:

  • Drug and Device Law Blog: Beck and Herrmann do such a good job covering pharmaceutical litigation in detail that I’ve virtually stopped posting on the subject. It’s one of two blogs where I’d link to every single post they made if it didn’t quickly become redundant to do so.

  • Insurance Coverage Blog. David Rossmiller’s blog is the other one that has occupied the field: he covers insurance litigation so thoroughly that it feels redundant for me to post on the subject, and he affirmatively breaks stories in Katrina litigation and the Scruggs contempt hearing. We’re glad to have been able to add David to Point of Law.

  • The Volokh Conspiracy: An obvious choice. Intelligent discussion of the law by some of the nation’s top law professors, while fairly acknowledging opposing arguments. Is it wrong that I aspire to being a Conspirator?

  • How Appealing; WSJ Law Blog; and Above the Law. Three more obvious choices for breaking news, but I read them daily, and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention them in my top ten.

  • The 10b-5 Daily. Lyle Roberts provides excellent coverage of securities litigation issues.

  • Ideoblog. I don’t always agree with Larry Ribstein (who also blogs at Point of Law) but his discussion and thoughts on corporate legal issues are always interesting.

  • Legal Pad. That’s the Roger Parloff version; several blogs have similar names. One of my favorite legal journalists, and the original reporting done on this blog is top notch.

  • Prettier Than Napoleon. My top ten has to have one non-obvious choice if it’s going to be at all interesting. Only a small portion of attorney Amber Taylor’s blog is about legal issues, but her daily posts are provocative, intriguing, and well-written, and the comments section community is surprisingly productive for a blog.

Update: My, this meme is widespread, we’re honored to also be selected by The Common Scold, What about clients?, and May it Please the Court. Eric Turkewitz also names us to his top ten, but I have to disagree with his characterization: Overlawyered is a pro-consumer blog, as excessive litigation hurts consumers. We criticize socially wasteful litigation whether it comes from big business or the traditional plaintiffs’ bar.

Update: more encomiums from Lowering the Bar; f/k/a; Lawbeat; and QuizLaw.

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A conversation in the ER

Covering one’s legal posterior in emergency medicine: “This ER doc was about to turn an $800 ER visit into a $4,000 hospital admission. Now imagine this happening all over the country in multiple variations and degrees of absurdity tens of thousands of times EVERY DAY.” (Chris Rangel, Sept. 27). Plus: London ambulance driver visits San Francisco, is chagrined to see paramedics engage in elaborate immobilization of minor collision victim (Random Acts of Reality, Aug. 14 and Aug. 16; via KevinMD).

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So now everybody’s happy

Following breathless press exposes of the “payday lending” business near military bases (they charge high interest rates! It’s a bad deal if you’ve got access to conventional credit!) a new federal law sharply restricts the interest that can be charged to military borrowers. This report from Utah finds lenders responding by simply refusing to make loans to members of the military. A critic of the industry, Linda Hilton of the Coalition of Religious Communities, says she’s glad the option is disappearing and recommends that if service personnel find themselves in financial straits “then they ask their church, military relief groups, family or others for help”. More great moments in predatory lending law: Oct. 17, 2006 (cross-posted from Point of Law; & welcome Marginal Revolution readers).

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Hockey star: seat belt sank into cushions, car dealer should pay

Have you noticed the annoying tendency of seat belts in certain vehicles, such as airport limos, to sink so deep into the cushions that you can crack your fingernails trying to pull them out? Now a lawsuit against a Ford dealership seeks to blame that phenomenon for the 1997 injuries that ended the career of Detroit Red Wings hockey star Vladimir Konstantinov and team masseur Sergei Mnatsakanov. The two were seriously injured when their driver, who was driving on a suspended license following a long series of roadway infractions, veered off Woodward Avenue into a tree. Neither of the injured men was wearing a seat belt, which they blame on the “design defect” that prevented the belts from being “easily accessible”. The car dealership, Findlay Ford Lincoln Mercury, “argues it did not manufacture the limo or carry out modifications that were made to it and the dealership had no reason to know about or be liable for any alleged defects.” (Paul Egan, “Court to hear arguments in Konstantinov crash suit”, Detroit News, Aug. 22). Also see Nov. 25 (other litigation arising from crash).

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