Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Author Archive

Red Sox fan: Yankee fans beat me up

And it’s the fault of Yankees management and a stadium security firm, as well as the two men who actually knocked him around, says Charles Hillios of Chicopee, Mass., of the Aug. 29, 2007 incident at Yankee Stadium. (“Red Sox fan from Chicopee takes legal swing at New York Yankees”, Springfield, Mass. Republican, Aug. 6 via TortsProf weekly roundup).

P.S. In comments, Curt Cutting calls our attention to a lawsuit arising from another fracas between fans of the two teams, this one in Carlsbad, Calif. In that one a jury awarded $25,000 to the Yankees fan “for injuring his hand when he punched” the Red Sox fan.

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Coordinating the Edwards story

Thursday’s New York Times investigates Fred Baron’s role (Serge F. Kovaleski and Mike McIntyre, “Lawyers’ Ties Hint at Extent of Hiding Edwards’s Affair”, Aug. 14; AP/L.A. Times; commentary at Deceiver, Jeralyn Merritt/TalkLeft, Greg Pollowitz/NRO Media Blog, DBKP; earlier). And more from DBKP here and here. P.S. And I didn’t realize until reading USA Today’s profile that scandal figure Andrew Young has served not only as a loyal Edwards foot soldier, but also as a lobbyist for the North Carolina trial lawyers’ association.

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“No matter how psychotic, that voice is still worthy of being heard.”

Thus Helen Bailey, an attorney with the government-funded Disability Rights Center in Augusta, Maine. But things didn’t work out so well in the case of violent schizophrenic William Bruce, who was released from Riverview Psychiatric Center in Augusta against the recommendations of his doctors but after urgings from patient advocates. Two months later he murdered his mother. The young Bruce, now penitent, is not really on board any more with the corps of public interest lawyers that had swung into action on his behalf:

“They helped me immensely with getting out of the hospital, so I was very happy,” he said. He later added, “The advocates didn’t protect me from myself, unfortunately.” …

While William believes patients deserve some protection, he said he understands his father’s fight to strengthen commitment and treatment laws. That fight took another turn last month, when Ms. Bailey and another attorney filed a lawsuit that could undermine portions of a law Joe [the father] supported. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Maine, is directed at the law which makes it easier for hospitals to compel patients to take medication.

“There are times when people should be committed,” William said. “Institutions can really help. Medicine can help.”

“None of this would have happened if I had been medicated.”

(Elizabeth Bernstein and Nathan Koppel, “A Death in the Family”, Wall Street Journal, Aug. 16). The Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, whose heated response to the article is presumably expected any day now, can be found here.

More: A group called Treatment Advocacy Center is gathering horror stories about “experiences with federally funded Protection & Advocacy attorneys”.

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“Richard Kreimer scores another payday”

New Jersey’s most famous homeless litigant has reached an “amicable settlement” with the Seattle Cafe and Grill at Hoboken Terminal, the Hoboken Now blog reported in April (via). “Kreimer said an employee falsely accused him of stealing an apple and had cops frisk him to keep him from coming to the shop. ‘I was dirty and disheveled. … It was homeless profiling,’ he said”. Kreimer’s many lawsuits have apparently been a mixed blessing for him: per the Hoboken blog, he’s made so much in settlements that he’s lost his Medicaid eligibility. Some of Kreimer’s earlier exploits are here.

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Baron money trail forced Edwards’ hand

Per Marisa Guthrie at the magazine Broadcasting & Cable, ABC News was able to force John Edwards’ hand in part because it had been tracing the Fred Baron money trail (which, it will be recalled, Edwards supposedly had nothing to do with). “According to multiple sources, Edwards was apoplectic that ABC News broke the story on its website and began promoting it early on Friday” because the former North Carolina senator — who, y’know, was beating up on himself so bad and wanted nothing more than to come clean with the American people — “had hoped to control the news cycle by making his admission late on a Friday night when the country was watching the Olympics and the long weekend yawned ahead.” Earlier here and here.

Many commentators have questioned whether Edwards was telling the truth about when the affair ended. (Despite her family’s publicly expressed wishes for a paternity test, Rielle Hunter says she won’t allow one; whether this refusal is or is not related to her presumably ongoing financial dependence on Fred Baron’s largesse is not for us to know.) A second question is whether Edwards was telling the truth on ABC when he said he hired Hunter first for her filmmaking skills and began the relationship later, thus dodging charges of having put his mistress on the payroll. Sam Stein at Huffington Post examines chronologies here. Relatedly, Advice Goddess Amy Alkon has this to say about the L.A. Times’s straightfaced description of Hunter as a filmmaker: “Katie, honey, in this town [L.A.], we know to look at imdb.com to see if somebody actually is a filmmaker. This is a good dating tip for you, too, dear, because half the guys you’ll meet at the bar in this town are ‘producers.'”

More: Welcome Michelle Malkin readers.

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Report: Fred Baron paid for Rielle Hunter’s hideaway

We described the Dallas attorney as poster boy for legal ethics for his astoundingly brazen conduct in the scandal over an asbestos testimony-coaching memo. Now his name is hitting front pages on the John Edwards-Rielle Hunter affair:

Dallas lawyer Fred Baron told The Dallas Morning News today that he paid relocation and housing expenses for the woman that former presidential candidate John Edwards has confessed to having an affair with.

Mr. Baron, who was chairman of Mr. Edwards’ presidential campaign finance committee, said he paid money for Rielle Hunter to move from North Carolina to another location. …

He said Mr. Edwards did not know about the arrangement.

(Gromer Jeffers Jr., “Dallas lawyer Fred Baron paid for Edwards’ mistress to relocate”, Dallas Morning News, Aug. 8).

More coverage of Edwards’s (partial or otherwise) confession: ABC News, AP, Memeorandum, Marc Ambinder, Ben Smith/Politico, News & Observer, Just One Minute, Shaun Mullen/Moderate Voice. Readers will remember that Ted had the story very, very early, before it was much noticed even on the blogs (more). As for Edwards’s own credibility, Mickey Kaus, whose news judgment in pursuing the matter now stands vindicated, has this to say: “There is now one player in this scandal with far less credibility than the National Enquirer, after all.”

More: Byron York at NRO “Corner” quotes the Raleigh News & Observer account with Baron’s statement:

“I decided independently to help two friends and former colleagues rebuild their lives when harassment by supermarket tabloids made it impossible for them to conduct a normal life,” Baron, a Dallas trial lawyer said in a statement, Rob Christensen reports.

“John Edwards was not aware that assistance was provided to anyone involved in this matter,” Baron said. “I did it of my own voilition and without the knowledge, instruction, or suggestion of John Edwards or anyone else. The assistance was offered and accepted without condition.”

York points out:

Hunter and Young, the recipients of Baron’s generosity, were not high-ranking officials in the Edwards campaign. How Baron got to know them and how he decided to fund their move to California, and why he decided to do so without Edwards’ knowledge, might be the subject of more questions as the Edwards matter goes forward.

Blogger Gina Cobb hopes the window of Baron’s generosity is still open:

I am touched and moved by your generosity. I especially like the part about “The assistance was offered and accepted without condition.” Accordingly, I would like to request the same generosity from you. Henceforward, I would like you to rent me an enormous house and pay my living expenses in perpetuity. I can assure you that the assistance you offer will be accepted without condition.

And see Ted’s follow-up post.

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The flight attendant and the televangelist’s wife

We express no opinion as to exactly how badly Victoria Osteen, wife of a celebrated evangelical minister, may have behaved on that Continental Airlines flight in 2005; “The Federal Aviation Administration fined [her] $3,000 for interfering with a crew member.” Readers keep writing in, however, to call our attention to the financial demands that flight attendant Sharon Brown is making in her lawsuit, which just went to trial. It seems Brown wants compensation not only for such things as hemorrhoids and damage to her religious faith but also, by way of punishment, “10 percent of Victoria Osteen’s net worth”. Wouldn’t we all! (“Joel Osteen’s Wife on Trial in Flight Attendant Assault”, AP/FoxNews.com, Aug. 7).

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