A venture capitalist complains that law firms hired to assist in start-up financings almost seem to want to make work for themselves. (Jason Mendelson, Jun. 1, reprinted at Private Equity Hub)(via The Recorder). (Title altered so as not to leave the impression that the originally invoked “Silicon Valley” was a geographic reference.)
Author Archive
A right to a jury consultant?
Unless defendant Neil Entwistle is provided with a jury consultant at Massachusetts taxpayer expense he won’t stand a chance of a fair trial in his much-publicized murder trial, or so runs his defense lawyer’s claim (Ambrogi; The Jury Box). More: Greenfield.
“The paid plaintiffs and their corrupt attorneys”
Judge Walter, pronouncing sentence, wasn’t buying any of the “victimless crime” spin from the Mel Weiss camp:
The wrongdoing, which included submitting false statements to courts overseeing the lawsuits, “strikes at the core — at the heart of the judicial system,” the judge said. …
Judge Walter said he was dubious of arguments that the conspiracy was a “victimless crime” because the firm, best-known simply as Milberg Weiss, vigorously represented investors in the cases that were brought. “In effect, the absent class members were at the mercy of the paid plaintiffs and their corrupt attorneys in this invidious scheme,” the judge said. The lead plaintiffs taking the secret payoffs may have been more interested in boosting Milberg’s fees than in getting the maximum recovery, the judge said.
Josh Gerstein at the Sun has more on the sentencing, including hints as to the curious role of a Denver, Colorado lawyer named Gary Lozow. (“Lawyer Weiss Gets 30-Month Sentence for Kickbacks”, Jun. 3).
McCain-Feingold and the Fieger acquittal
Terry Carter in the ABA Journal has more on the legal background:
The straw-donor law invoked against Fieger has been around since 1972, though Congress upped the ante and made it a felony as part of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, known as the McCain-Feingold Act. In all these years there has been but one jury verdict concerning the law, before it was a felony, and it was for acquittal. (There have been several plea agreements in recent years.)
Thus no court has crafted an opinion concerning the law itself, according to some of the few experts in this narrow slice of election law.
Spence told the jury that the government tried to use snippets of law to go after Fieger, a prominent plaintiffs lawyer and former Democratic candidate for governor in Michigan, for political purposes. The campaign finance law (2 U.S.C. § 441f) says:
“No person shall make a contribution in the name of another person or knowingly permit his name to be used to effect such a contribution, and no person shall knowingly accept a contribution made by one person in the name of another person.”
The defense argued that the law, as worded, does not prohibit reimbursing people who make contributions.
If in fact Fieger’s acquittal will be cited in favor of the notion that the use of straw donors reimbursed after the fact is lawful after all, that might seem to blow a rather large hole in the side of the McCain-Feingold law — which makes it all the odder that the Fieger trial drew so little attention from either backers or critics of that law on the national level.
“They served peanuts anyway…”
Tehmina Haque’s four-year-old son apparently did not suffer any allergic reaction, but mom got really stressed about the possibility he would so she’s suing American Airlines anyway. The airline says it never promises peanut-free flights, if only because it cannot keep other passengers from bringing their own peanut snacks on board. (Zachary R. Dowdy, “LI woman sues over in-flight peanuts”, Newsday, Jun. 2).
Update: Trespass atop rail car, win $24 million
Updating our item of Oct. 2006: a Pennsylvania federal judge has declined to set aside a $24 million jury verdict “against two railroad companies for injuries suffered by two teenagers climbing on a train car parked near Lancaster in 2002.” U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence F. Stengel lambasted attorneys for defendants Amtrak and Norfolk Southern for having at trial “‘demeaned’ the two young men ‘for their lack of intelligence, judgment and common sense in choosing to climb to the top of the boxcar.'” Stengel upheld the jury’s assignment of all the blame for the accident to the railroads and none to the youths, who were both 17 at the time. (Janet Kelley, “$24M verdict upheld in railroad burn case”, Lancaster New Era, Apr. 2).
Intentional infliction of emotional distress
Seems it’s not considered tortious when it’s done for a good cause by Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the local constabulary to a captive audience of public school students. (Balko, Reason “Hit and Run”; Pat Sherman, “El Camino teens face heavy emotions brought about by drunken-driving dramatization”, San Diego Union-Tribune, May 30). P.S. Scott Greenfield apparently has been thinking along similar lines.
“They can’t bring my dog back…”
“…so the only thing they can do is give me money”. The $206,000 that Shawn Snider and Beth Bayless-Snider are demanding from Denton, Tex. taxpayers for the mistaken euthanization of their three-year-old black Labrador mix includes damages for loss of “future breeding opportunities”. (“Couple Sues City for $206G After Dog Mistakenly Euthanized”, AP/FoxNews.com, Jun. 2).
Weiss sentenced to 30 months
The judge chose to go near the high end of the plea-negotiated range of 18 to 33 months. (Bloomberg; earlier guilty plea, letters asking leniency from Arthur Miller et al., background).
Fieger gets off
All those reimbursements of employees who donated to John Edwards? Just one vast coincidence, not a purposeful way of evading federal campaign finance laws. Now that the verdict’s in, could we please repeal the campaign finance laws in question ASAP, before some less lucky soul tries the same thing and gets sentenced to time in the slammer because his name isn’t Geoffrey Fieger and his lawyer isn’t Gerry Spence? (David Ashenfelter and Joe Swickard, “Fieger, law partner acquitted of illegal political donations”, Detroit Free Press, Jun. 2).