Clinton and Obama campaigns continue their scramble to sign up trial lawyers who’d been the financial base of the John Edwards candidacy (see Jan. 28). Both sides claim victories, with Obama doing especially well in rounding up California lawyers (Cheryl Miller, “Calif. Trial Lawyers Look to Obama”, The Recorder, Feb. 4; Nathan Carlile, “For Edwards Backers, the Jury Is Out”, Legal Times, Feb. 4).
Author Archive
Transgender patient’s right to surgery
John Leo has some further thoughts on the lawsuit discussed in this space Jan. 20, in which m-to-f San Franciscan Charlene Hastings is suing the Catholic hospital that (unlike many other hospitals in the Bay Area) declines to perform a breast augmentation on a patient born male (“Orwell Lives”, City Journal, Feb. 4).
Scruggs scandal developments, February 5
* Pertinacious Scruggs effort to evade deposition by State Farm attorneys results in “testosterone fiesta” of swaggering counsel (Folo; sequel; YallPolitics; Rossmiller); (P.S. Yes, Ted and I independently noticed and posted on this just minutes apart.)
* Remember when Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood declared his political patron Scruggs a “confidential informant”, thus throwing a most useful cloak of protection over him in his battle against contempt charges? It happens that Scruggs was at almost exactly the same moment donating large sums to the Democratic Attorneys General Association which seem to have passed through like a dose of salts to emerge at the other end as donations to Hood (YallPolitics; earlier on DAGA)
* Attorney Ed Peters, tagged with a pivotal role in Langston-DeLaughter branch of scandal, was formerly high-profile local D.A.; his prosecutorial vendetta against an attorney named J. Keith Shelton comes in for scrutiny in a new series by Folo proprietor Lotus [#5 in series; posts tagged Peters; see also YallPolitics]
* Folo co-blogger NMC, looking into Luckey and Wilson fee disputes (earlier here, here, here), is rattled by the prevalence of hearings-without-notice, ex parte judicial contacts, and other Gothic proceduralisms [Folo];
* Implications or non-implications for civil proceedings of Scruggs’s taking the Fifth [White Collar Crime Prof Blog]
* Adam Cohen of the NYT and Scott Horton of Harper’s claim defendants in precursor Minor-Teel-Whitfield scandal were railroaded on vague charges over not-really-illegal stuff; read pp. 6-9 of the indictment and see whether you agree (YallPolitics);
* For Mississippi, it’s already the most far-reaching corruption scandal in a century, aside from the question of how much bigger it might get [Jackson Clarion-Ledger]
Earlier Scruggs coverage on our scandals page.
U.K.: A one-man bias-suit industry
“For a decade [Suresh Deman] sued universities – usually claiming racial bias over failed job applications – as he collected nearly £200,000 in payouts and cost the taxpayer an estimated £1million”. After he had brought 40 actions he was declared a vexatious litigant and banned from further proceedings, but the ban did not cover Northern Ireland and he was soon there pursuing an 11-year-old claim against the Association of University Teachers and Officers (AUT). (Chris Brooke, “Race-claims lecturer beats legal ban to carry on suing after 40 discrimination claims”, Daily Mail (U.K.), Nov. 19; A Tangled Web, Nov. 19; “In the news: Suresh Deman”, Times Higher Education Supplement, Mar. 21, 2003).
Update: received on Oct. 5, 2015, via comment form from a commenter giving the name of “C Kumar”:
In 2007 a leading national newspapers published defamatory material by putting me into negative light. Initial persuasion with the editor to retract and tender an apology did not work, so matter went to the High Court. After 8 years, persistence paid off and I was vindicated with an agreement to publish an apology as follows:
“In the editions of 21st and 28 January 2007 we published articles entitled, “De-Man for race pay outs” and “De-Man for race compensation is back in Ulster” concerning a Industrial Tribunal cases taken in Northern Ireland by Dr Suresh Deman, on the basis that he suffered discrimination in his employment.
The articles wrongly characterized him as “De-Man” and claimed that Dr Deman was barred from instituting the proceedings in Northern Ireland and did not provide Dr Deman the opportunity to comment on the their content. We are happy to clarify this and apologies to Dr Deman for our error….”
Online prescribing
Despite promising potential advantages for patient care as well as cost savings, the medical profession has not been quick to embrace technologies that enable online linkage of prescribing doctors with pharmacies. One reason, according to an article in Medical Economics: fear of liability. The feedback flow of information from online prescribing tends to bring to a doctor’s attention that some patients have been failing to pick up or renew their prescriptions and are thus presumptively noncompliant. Once doctors know that, however, they’re open to being sued later on the theory that they knew of a patient’s noncompliance but failed to pursue him aggressively enough to come in for more counseling, etc. Apparently it’s safer not to know in the first place (Ken Terry, “E-prescribing: The rewards and risks”, Medical Economics, Jan. 4)(via KevinMD).
Thread-count class action
The New Yorker’s “Talk of the Town” has a look at that class action against Bed Bath & Beyond over misleading bedding thread counts which resulted in “a series of refunds and discount certificates” to consumers — coupons from Bed Bath & Beyond, imagine that! — $2,500 for the named client, and up to $290,000 for the plaintiff’s counsel, led by Edith M. Kallas (formerly of Milberg Weiss), the whole contretemps summed up as a “dry goods Enron”. (Lauren Collins, “Splitting Threads”, Jan. 28). See also Michael Krauss at PoL; and Peter Lattman got to it first.
Prisoner litigation Hall of Fame
Inmate Jorey Lee Brewis, also known as Rebekah Katherine, is suing officials of the Oregon Department of Corrections who allegedly ignored Brewis’s gender identity disorder, leaving Brewis to resort to — details not for the squeamish — do-it-yourself sex change surgery by way of fingernails, hair ties, rubber bands and other implements available in the cell. A spokeswoman for the corrections department “says she can’t discuss Brewis’ case because of medical privacy concerns”. (James Pitkin, “Juicy Suits: Cutting Off Her Own Testicles in Prison”, Willamette Week, Dec. 13).
“Twelve Angry Men”
Our roundup link to a discussion of the classic jury-deliberation movie stirred up a considerable discussion among David Bernstein, Ilya Somin, Orin Kerr and commenters at the Volokh Conspiracy.
Licensing eBay resellers, cont’d
Mary Jo Pletz, who lives north of Allentown, Pa., made a very successful time of it accepting people’s consigned items and selling them on eBay. Now the state of Pennsylvania is proceeding against her for not taking out an auctioneer’s license, though it denies that it is seeking the $10 million in fines that her lawyer alleges. (Bob Fernandez, “Pennsylvania takes on online auctions”, Philadelphia Inquirer, Jan. 30). Earlier similarly: Feb. 26, 2006 (California); Oct. 13, 2005 (North Dakota); Mar. 21, 2005 (Ohio).
Banning restaurants from serving the obese
House Bill 282, filed in the Mississippi legislature, is an “act to prohibit certain food establishments from serving food to any person who is obese, based on criteria prescribed by the state department of health”. It sounds as if it almost has to be a parody, but when Sandy Szwarc calls its sponsor he says he’s perfectly serious (Jan. 31).