Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Archive for October, 2008

Aw, nuts!

Or so the defendant might say about the $185K verdict in this case (reduced by 50% due to the plaintiff’s comparative fault).  She slipped and fell at Texas Roadhouse allegedly due to peanut shells and whatnot on the hardwood floor.  Allegedly, restaurant patrons were encouraged to discard shells on the floor, which, according to my experience with a similar establishment in a different state, highlights the casual western theme.

From a claims and loss control perspective encouraging patrons to throw debris onto hardwood floors just seems like a bad idea because I doubt whatever “atmosphere” is created thereby increases revenue enough to offset the costs of defending this or similar claims, and sometimes paying the verdict.  (“Jury’s $185K Award More Than Peanuts for Restaurant”, On Point News, Oct. 27).

Filed under: ,

October 29 roundup

Filed under: , , , , , , ,

“Common-sense justice in Alaska”

Manhattan Institute fellow Marie Gryphon, in National Review, on the state’s loser-pays rule:

Alaska’s unique rule is a product of its history. When the United States purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867, the icy wilderness had so few inhabitants that the U.S. neglected to establish immediately any civil law there at all. Congress instituted a civil legal system for Alaska in 1884 through an Act that borrowed from Oregon’s civil code and applied it to the new territory virtually wholesale. At that time, an Oregon statute allowed the prevailing party in a civil suit to recover attorney’s fees from the loser. While Oregon unwisely dumped its loser-pays rule eventually, Alaska embraced loser pays and stuck with it. …

The Alaska Judicial Council conducted a review of Alaska’s loser-pays rule in 1989 and found that, while the law could not deter filings by irrational plaintiffs, it did reduce the number of low-merit lawsuits in Alaskan courts. The Council also found that a majority of Alaskan attorneys liked the system and believed that it functioned well.

(cross-posted from Point of Law).

Filed under: , ,

Microblog 2008-10-28

  • ’98 master tobacco settlement: not just bootleggers and Baptists, but also “televangelists.” [Morriss, Regulation, h/t Ted] #
  • Slants and biases in Associated Press reporting aren’t new, but they’ve become impossible to ignore [WaPo] #
  • Unplanned result of bailout: lenders back off from deals to sell distressed real estate at cut price [Coyote] #
  • GM needs to tear up contracts with its unions, retirees, and dealers, which means it needs bankruptcy [Bainbridge] #
  • No kidding: gorgeous photography of slime molds [English Russia] #
  • Blog primer on credit default swaps and other financial derivatives [Derivative Dribble] #
  • Wouldn’t it be more helpful to save the epithet “socialist” for times when it’s really, you know, accurate? [Ron Coleman] #
  • State of New York staring into fiscal chasm, years of $10 billion+ deficits [NYPost] #

Filed under: , , , ,

Why stores have surveillance cameras, Vol. 2

Hello, and thanks again to Walter Olson for welcoming me back to help fill in this week. His prior post reminded me of this surveillance tape I’ve kept after all these years simply for comic relief.

The tape shows one customer casually stroll through the door without incident all the while another intending customer in quite the hurry tries to run in–he thought–through an open door. Instead, it was the plate glass adjacent to the door. He smacks into it bowing the glass and then storms into the store while the other customers gawk at him. The original clip was without sound but I couldn’t resist jazzing it up with Gonna Fly Now from Rocky.

Here’s the Overlawyered part: he made a claim against the store owner; and, the claim was paid as a compromise. Part of the reason why is visible on the video—can you see it?

Filed under: ,

Even palimony has limits

“If any practical legal principle can be extracted from the gnarled facts of Bayne v. Johnson v. Johnson, it is probably this: You can’t get palimony if you cohabit with a married man and his wealthy, elderly wife and then leave him because he won’t leave her.” (Michael Booth, “When Palimony’s at Stake, Three’s a Crowd”, New Jersey Law Journal, Oct. 28).

Filed under: ,

“Scandal in Louisiana’s criminal courts”

“[Jerrold] Peterson said he was instructed to write up and file the denials [of pro se appeals by indigent convicts] without ever showing the appeals to the judges. Peterson handled about 2,400 such cases in the 13 years he was in charge of them.” (Radley Balko, Reason “Hit and Run”, Oct. 28). Under the court’s rules, “every criminal writ application is supposed to be reviewed by three judges”. Peterson committed suicide and his farewell note called attention to the scheme. (James Gill, New Orleans Times-Picayune, Oct. 10).

Filed under: , , ,

Evicted — by his own class action lawyers

The Center for Public Representation, a Massachusetts “public interest law” group that specializes in disability-related lawsuits, filed a civil-rights class action in the name of 640 profoundly mentally disabled residents of nursing facilities demanding that the state Department of Mental Retardation move them into group homes, the better to be part of the “community”, as the catch-phrase has it. A judge agreed and ordered the transfer. Among the 640 patients was Eric Voss, who is severely disabled and has been living for seven years at a Groton pediatric nursing facility called Seven Hills. Now Eric’s parents, Frank and Barbara Voss, are fighting the order, saying that their son never had any choice about joining the action and that forcing him out would endanger the quality of his care and deprive him of surroundings and staff that have become like home. “U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, has filed legislation that requires parents and guardians to be notified about class-action suits, and to allow them to opt out.”

“Our children can’t speak for themselves, so we will fight for them,” Voss said. “If individuals like Eric are moved, they won’t live long. They shouldn’t have to give their lives for a lawsuit that has nothing to do with them.”

(Rita Savard, “‘We’re prepared to fight'”, Lowell Sun, Oct. 12; alternate version; Rolland v. Patrick settlement agreement, PDF; AvertRollandTragedy.org, advocacy site).

Filed under: , , ,

MP3 takedowns, the pre-emptive way

Takedowns without DMCA takedown notices: a hosting company pulls down a user’s posted MP3 song files because the user, an indie record label, can’t produce a copyright registration certificate for them — and never mind that they’re the label’s own material posted with the okay of its artists. (Tamera Bennett, Oct. 20, Gordon Firemark, Oct. 21; via Coleman, Likelihood of Confusion).

Filed under: ,