There are more than 1,000 documented nationwide, including 113 in Vermont alone. The “1970s were hard times for operators of ski areas. There was an energy crisis, which not only cut down leisure driving by potential customers but saddled areas with higher energy prices. At the same time, liability insurance costs spiked. The histories of dozens of small ski areas end with the conclusion that it could not reopen one winter because the owners could not afford their insurance premiums.” (Bill Pennington, “Vermont’s Forgotten Trails and Frozen Lifts of Winters Past”, New York Times, Jan. 25).
Archive for January, 2008
Update: Bring me the identity of Patent Troll Tracker
Nanny state, Virginia 1934 edition
An Alexandria tapas bar was cited for serving sangria—which violates a 1934 Virginia law against mixing wine with spirits, with penalties of up to a year in jail. Virginia Spanish restaurants, so warned, now only serve a bowdlerized version of the drink, to the dismay of customers who can get the real thing a few miles away in DC or Maryland. The legislature is contemplating a change, though a pending bill would fail to exempt the similarly illegal kir royals or boilermakers. (Anita Kumar, “Virginia’s Sangria Ban At Issue in 2 Hearings”, Washington Post, Jan. 24). (According to Instruction 33 on this bulletin, Virginia also appears to ban the pitcher of margaritas the local Mexican restaurant serves.) Left unspoken: when is someone going to bring a consumer class action against the Spanish restaurants serving faux sangrias without warning customers?
(ObJingoism: At least Virginia still has better Thai, Indian, and Vietnamese food than DC or Maryland.)
For more on the more modern food police, see Overlawyered’s Eat, Drink, and Be Merry section or my article, A Taxonomy of Obesity Litigation.
Case workers and perverse incentives
A reader writes regarding our post on the perverse incentives given social workers:
Frankly, I’m surprised this story is news. The belief of every case worker I know (I’ve only been at this since July) is that if a kid on your caseload dies, the odds are that you’ll be fired no matter what you did right or wrong. Besides the perverse incentives you mentioned, that cause over-removal of children at lower levels, there are perverse incentives for the people at the top of the chain–if they make the requirements so unattainable they can never be done perfectly, and keep caseloads high enough that no one can complete all his tasks, there will always be something they can find that caseworkers didn’t do, and the caseworkers (and sometimes their immediate supervisors) can be fired.
One of the greatest needs I’ve seen for a loser-pays system has been this year in my work with county dependency courts. The Child Protective Investigators, who remove children and work with the state AG’s office to get them adjudicated dependent on the state, prosecute the most absurd cases because it hardly costs them anything if they lose.
Right now I’m working with a CPI who is trying to take custody of a 17-year-old girl from her mother–even though by the time the trial comes around and the girl is adjudicated (probably won’t be, because the CPI has a crappy case against her) she’ll be one month away from aging out of the system. Since the CPIs don’t pay if they lose, and don’t even usually show up at trial to get chewed out by the judge, they have no reason not to waste my time, the judges’ time, the attorneys’ time, and (worst of all, since these poor folks aren’t paid to be there) a phenomenal amount of innocent parents’ time and money.
The single biggest problem with the dependency system, at least here in Florida, is that we don’t have loser-pays.
Sorry for the rant. That post hit close to home!
On a similar point: see Illinois Alliance for Parents & Children, whose website isn’t quite finished.
Update: Peter “P’Ta Mon” John
David Lat reports (Jan. 22) that the criminal defense attorney covered in this space a few months back has a new ad in the Baton Rouge phone book that omits his former slogan, “The Thugs’ Lawyer”. It does, however, offer a new “Expungement Special Only $500 * Plus Filing Fees”.
Yogurt marketing class action
Plaintiff Trish Wiener “believes Dannon misled her, and she wants to milk it for all it’s worth”, reports the Los Angeles Times. The paper’s reporter seems almost disrespectful of this very serious legal action, which claims the bacterial cultures in Activia and DanActive yogurt aren’t really as salubrious as the ad puffery would have you believe. Most dramatic-irony-freighted quote, from a lawyer with the California firm of Coughlin Stoia, which is representing Wiener: “Companies are getting more and more aggressive in their advertising claims. They end up playing off people’s general fears and concerns.” Just to clarify, that’s a quote by a lawyer from Coughlin Stoia, and not a quote about that law firm, which is best known for until recently (in its Lerach Coughlin incarnation) being the home base of disgraced felon William Lerach. (Alana Semuels, “Yogurt maker sued for claims”, Jan. 24).
Meanwhile, Michael Krauss at Point of Law (Jan. 24) discusses the recent settlement of a class action against Bed Bath and Beyond over disputed bedding thread counts.
January 24 roundup
- Longtime Overlawyered favorite Judy Cates, of columnist-suing fame, is using large sums of her own money to outspend incumbent James Wexstten in hard-fought race for Illinois state judgeship; Democratic primary is Feb. 5 [Belleville News-Democrat, Southern Illinoisan]
- City council told: we’ll cancel your liability coverage if you throw all meetings and city records open to public [Seattle Times]
- Attorney member of Canadian Senate in spot of bother after revelation that she billed client for 30 hours in one day [Vancouver Province, edit]
- A public wiki just for Scruggsiana? After Keker’s minions swoop in to do their edits, the Mississippi attorney may wind up portrayed as the next Mother Teresa, and not the Hitchens version either [WikiScruggs]
- Same general category of point, my Wikipedia entry now suddenly describes me as “controversial”, when but a month ago I wasn’t;
- $28 to $52 million in 18 months for serving as a DoJ “corporate monitor” sounds like nice work if you can get it, and former AG Ashcroft got it without competitive bidding [Lattman, St. Pete Times edit, PolitickerNJ, NJLJ]
- The Amiable Nancy (1818), admiralty case that could prove crucial precedent in Exxon Valdez punitive appeal, has nothing to do with The Charming Betsey (1804), key precedent on international law [Anchorage Daily News; Tom Goldstein/Legal Times]
- “First do no harm… to your attorney’s case” [Cole/Dallas Morning News via KevinMD]
- Probers haven’t come up with evidence of more than middling tiger-taunting, and attorney Geragos says he’ll sue zoo’s p.r. firm for defaming his clients [KCBS; SF Chronicle; AP/USA Today]
- UK’s latest “metric martyr” is Janet Devens, facing charges for selling vegetables in pounds and ounces at London’s Ridley Road market [WSJ; earlier]
- Lawyer can maintain defamation suit over being called “ambulance chaser” interested only in “slam dunk” cases, rules Second Circuit panel [eight years ago on Overlawyered]
ABC series “Eli Stone”
The New York Times arts page (Edward Wyatt, “ABC Drama Takes on Science and Parents”, Jan. 23) gives the producers of the forthcoming ABC television series “Eli Stone” a surprisingly sound thwacking for lending credibility to theories that seek to blame autism on the vaccine preservative thimerosal. The script of the show, notes the Times, “takes several liberties that could leave viewers believing that the debate over thimerosal — which in the program’s script is given the fictional name mercuritol — is far from scientifically settled.” But, the review notes, “reams of scientific studies by the leading American health authorities have failed to establish a causal link between the preservative and autism. Since the preservative was largely removed from childhood vaccines in 2001, autism rates have not declined.”
Greg Berlanti, a creator of the series, tells the Times that the show presents both sides. If so, there is little doubt which side is presented as the “right” one. The title character of the TV show is supposed to have been a “bad” lawyer (he represented big businesses, you see) who after being struck by a spiritual crisis crossed over to redeem himself by representing the “little guy” in lawsuits. (Per the Times, “In each episode Eli Stone takes on a different cause; in other episodes sent to television reviewers for preview, he wages court battles against a pesticide maker and a priest.”) The ABC preview site, and trailer running in theaters, end with a logo in which the “o” in the character’s surname is presented as a halo. Nothing heavy-handed about that!
Maybe next season Stone can sue on behalf of a client claiming that overhead power line emissions triggered recovered memories of autoimmune damage from her breast implants.
P.S. Orac at Respectful Insolence, no surprise, is on the warpath: “It’s times like these that I wish the Hollywood writers’ strike had really and truly shut down production of new dramas completely.” Other reactions: Autism Vox, Richard’s Asperger’s Blog, and various others rounded up by Liz Ditz.
Enron cert denial
My op-ed on the Supreme Court’s denial of cert in the Enron class action is in today’s New York Sun.
Freakonomics on unintended consequences
Dubner and Levitt’s three examples of unintended consequences (Jan. 20) include two that will be familiar to longtime readers of this site: the way the Americans with Disabilities Act can harm disabled persons by convincing service providers and employers that it could prove legally onerous to take them on as customers or employees; and the way environmental law can backfire to encourage landowners to take a chainsaw to habitats suitable for endangered species. More: Bruce MacEwen.