Maimon Schwarzschild at Right Coast has some thoughts.
Archive for March, 2010
Pattis on “The Rule of Lawyers”
Premier criminal defense blogger Norm Pattis takes a look at my 2003 book on mass litigation and agrees with much of what I have to say, while still winding up with a feeling of “ambivalence.” A sample:
I end where I started. Lawyers have too much power. We play with the lives of others with impunity. I think Olson’s on to something.
I await his next book, and encourage him to take a look at the lives or ordinary lawyers. Not all of us own jets. I’m thrilled with first class on the few times I’ve tried it. Most often I fly coach.
Whole thing here.
Afraid of baby slings
The Consumer Product Safety Commission considers them a hazardous product [Lenore Skenazy, Free-Range Kids]
$9M alienation of affection award in NC
The defendant wasn’t at trial and didn’t have a lawyer, and plans to appeal; the judgment might as well be for $73 gazillion, as the ex-husband is already in contempt of court for failure to pay spousal support. (Greensboro News-Record March 18 and March 17 via Volokh). We’ve been covering the issue for years, as a click on the tags will reveal.
Toyotathon roundup
- In much-publicized recent Harrison, N.Y. crash, computer shows no indication that housekeeper driving car was using the brake [NY Times, Detroit News]
- My National Review Online piece (which spent a couple of days in the #1 and #2 most-read positions at that site) is discussed by Damon Root at Reason “Hit and Run” among elsewhere;
- 69 year old plows her car into a clinic waiting room in Peabody, Mass., but she was driving an Infiniti so everyone can turn the page [Boston Herald]
- About that “declining quality at Toyota” meme [Truth About Cars, Fumento and more]
- As I pointed out in the NRO piece, complaints of unintended acceleration ebb and flow for reasons that often seem to have more to do with cultural and media trends than with what might actually be going on with the cars. Apropos of which, blogger Auto Prophet says complaints actually dropped drastically during the years that electronic throttle controls became common;
- NHTSA administrator Strickland, who counts as a bit of a hostile witness around these parts, testified last week that “the rate of complaints against Toyota, when compared with other makers, was ‘unremarkable.'” [WaPo]
- Toyota demanding retraction of ABC News story [Gawker]
- Here’s a seminar on how to sue, with CLE credit and speakers from firms like Kline & Specter;
- Highway deaths fall to historic low [David Henderson/EconLog, Payne/NRO “Planet Gore”]
- Simply priceless: the L.A. Times, which of all the big papers perhaps most reliably transmits a Litigation Lobby view of the world, prints a grossly tendentious paean to the glories of auto-design litigation that relies extensively on the views of Ben Kelley — yes, the Ben Kelley. One place to begin for a corrective is Charles Babcock’s paper, “Approaches to Product Liability Risk in the U.S. Automotive Industry“, published in the 1994 National Academy of Engineering volume Product Liability and Innovation: Managing Risk in an Uncertain Environment.
- Sam Smith at Jalopnik is taking a hard line: “America, You Brought The Toyota Hoax On Yourself”
Claim: Goldman Sachs should have insisted he give them his money
Business Insider and the NYLJ have details.
NYC councilwoman walks into trailer hitch of parked truck
And now Councilmember Letitia James [D-Fort Greene] wants money for “serious, severe and permanent” injuries from David Day, who is described as an itinerant laborer. “Please don’t go forward with it,” Day is reported to have written to James. “You are famous and powerful while I’m a nobody without means who’s done you no harm.” [Brooklyn Paper]
March 19 roundup
- Plaintiff in case alleging defective clown shoes “does not want any additional publicity” [N.Y. Post via Lowering the Bar]
- Santa Fe’s anti-wireless activists [The New Mexican, earlier]
- Law vs. vaccines, cont’d: “Judge Declines to Upset $22.5 Million Jury Award in Polio Case” [NYLJ]
- Arizona high court launches probe of Maricopa County prosecutor Andrew Thomas [Coyote, earlier]
- “Innumerable histronics” but no conspiracy: litigation over 1996 Filegate scandal fizzles out [Althouse]
- More boosts in regulators’ budgets [Roger Clegg, NRO, OFCCP employment regulation at federal contractors; Koehler, FCPA Professor] Obama’s putting in regulatory hardliners at many agencies; a clue to his politics? [Bainbridge, Judis/TNR]
- If only they’d confine themselves to suing the actual bad actors in FACTA (credit-card-slip) and junk-fax litigation [Bart T. Murphy, Chicago Business Ledger; my ’06 take]
- So may bullies ever fare: sanctions set against company that sued BoingBoing for libel [“MagicJack” case and more]
The Milberg Weiss Four after prison
All four have completed their sentences and don’t seem to have it so bad, judging by a March 19 Bloomberg story. William Lerach is going to teach at a law school and work for a “progressive think-tank.” And for the Milberg law firm itself? “Over the past couple of years, while everybody has been laying off lawyers and cutting pay, we’ve been giving lawyers raises and extra bonuses.”
Jury: maker should pay $1.5 million for selling standard tablesaw design
A Boston jury has awarded $1.5 million to a man whose fingers were injured by a tablesaw on the theory that it was defective for the saw to lack “flesh-detection” technology. According to the lawsuit, the inventor of the technology offered to sell it to tool companies a decade ago, but negotiations broke down and none made a deal; the inventor proceeded to launch his own line of saws, SawStop, incorporating the technology. “[Carlos] Osorio’s case is one of more than 50 lawsuits pending throughout the United States against the major table saw manufacturers for failure to adopt the technology.” [Boston Globe, Fine Woodworking] SawStop bills itself on one customer testimonial at its website as the “Rolls-Royce of table saws”, and appears to sell its saw at a premium of hundreds of dollars over ordinary table saws widely available at prices below $500. A commenter in the very active thread at Wood Magazine estimates the premium at $800-$1,000, and also lists some other reasons why many buyers might not welcome the jury’s edict.
More: commenter Dennis N. says the safety technology “stops the blade by driving an aluminum stop block up into the teeth, jamming it. The blade and the cartridge are ruined in the process, requiring about $175 to replace the pair, depending on the price of your blade. Not bad to save a finger, but the thing does have a significant false alarm rate. Wet wood or a wet pocket in dry wood can set off the brake, costing you some big bucks. … It’s not at the top of my list for tools. I’d rather get a higher quality saw.” Yet more: Rusty Shackleford, LegalMatch. More/update: Jul. 8.