Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Author Archive

U.K.: Union defends eBay-addicted town workers

A Labour-run municipal authority in Wales has sacked nine workers after discovering that they were spending up to two hours of their workday on eBay, but “union officials said that the employer had ‘put temptation in their way’ by allowing computer access to external internet sites. They called on all large employers to install a firewall program to prevent staff from being distracted by sites such as eBay, BBC Online and those that provide gambling.” (Simon de Bruxelles, “Office staff lose their jobs after bosses catch them trading on eBay”, Times Online, Sept. 21)(via ABA Journal).

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“Disrespectful cockalorum…mordaciously sarcastic”

It would appear U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn has reached the end of his patience with attorney Mark E. Brennan, and then some. Throwing out a $1.2 million verdict obtained by Brennan against the city of Denver on a claim of age discrimination against a firefighter, Judge Blackburn condemned Brennan’s courtroom antics as “disgraceful” as well as “boorish and unprofessional”:

“In over 19 years on the bench, I have seen nothing comparable,” the judge wrote. “Such disrespectful cockalorum, grandstanding, bombast, bullying and hyperbole as Mr. Brennan exhibited throughout the trial are quite beyond my experience as a jurist, and, I fervently hope, will remain an aberration during the remainder of my time on the bench.”

(Daniel J. Chacon, “Judge points to lawyer’s antics in junking $1.2 million ruling”, Rocky Mountain News, Oct. 6). No response from Mr. Brennan is recorded yet in the news coverage assembled by Google. The dictionary, incidentally, defines “cockalorum” as “boastful talk; crowing”. P.S. Brennan’s response, as reported in the Rocky Mountain News (via ABA Journal); also more details at On Point News.

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$222,000 for sharing 24 songs

Good thing copyright infringement law isn’t punitive or anything (David Kravets, “RIAA Trial Produces Playlist of the Century”, Wired News, Oct. 4; more; Recording Industry vs. The People, Oct. 5; via Sullivan). Meanwhile, from the same state, same day, comes word that a school bus driver who pleaded guilty to drinking on the job has been fined $482. (“Bus driver pleads guilty to alcohol charge”, AP/Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Aug. 5; Lileks via Reynolds). More: Declan McCullagh, “Why the RIAA should have won (though the fine was too high)”, CNet, Oct. 5.

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Update: Object to a class action settlement, face a RICO suit

Updating our Jun. 22 item: Madison County, Ill. Circuit Judge Andy Matoesian has dismissed without prejudice a racketeering suit brought by class action lawyers against outside class members and lawyers who’d raised objections to the alleged inadequacy of a settlement. Attorneys Stephen Swedlow and Stephen Tillery, who’d reached a $63.8 million settlement with GlaxoSmithKline over its marketing of the drug Paxil, claimed the objections of lawyers N. Albert Bacharach, Jr. and Paul S. Rothstein and citizen Lillian Rogers were frivolous and extortionate. (Steve Gonzalez, “Matoesian dismisses suit against Paxil objectors”, Madison St. Clair Record, Sept. 7).

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U.K. roundup

Welcome BBC listeners; more on the blind shoppers’ suit against Target here. Most of our material on this site originates in the U.S. but we do have a page of British items, and here are some more:

  • Sheffield-based clown “Barney Baloney” finds it harder to amuse children now that liability insurers have vetoed his bubble machine and supermarkets bar him from using allergenic latex balloons [Daily Mail, Telegraph, AFP/Breibart, Lowering the Bar; video at Breitbart.tv]

  • Good opinion column prompted by above: “the fear of legal action is not a fantasy of liberal killjoys … what has really happened is that a small minority of the population have become accident-intolerant and are prepared to enforce their utopia through the courts.” [Mark Lawson, Guardian]

  • Furor over official ruling that man who killed London headmaster can’t be deported back to Italy without violating his human rights “as he no longer has strong family ties there” [Telegraph]

  • Scandals about groundless expert testimony in infant death prosecutions lead to calls for importation of Daubert rules, maybe even national institute of forensic science [Times Online]

  • Labour government will propose bill to halt prosecution of homeowners who defend themselves with “proportional” force against burglars, home invaders [Telegraph] while Tories pledge to end “compensation culture” in school governance [likewise]

  • State of UK law blogs, and link to a list of them [Nick Holmes via Kevin O’Keefe]

  • Please, please don’t: leading consumer group calls for adoption of U.S.-style class action system in which lawyers can represent everyone who doesn’t affirmatively opt out [Times Online]

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There’s money in glass-eating, son

“A man was sentenced Thursday to more than five years in jail for his role in a multistate insurance fraud scheme in which federal prosecutors said he and his wife intentionally ate glass fragments and collected more than $200,000 in compensation.” Ronald Evano, 49, and his wife defrauded restaurants, grocery stores, and insurers around the Northeast by claiming there was glass in the food they ate and obtaining liability settlements; they were treated more than a dozen times for glass ingestion, and proceeded to stiff the doctors and hospitals too, declining to turn over any of the settlement money to them. Cultural-sensitivity bonus: “Evano asked the judge for mercy, saying in court that he and his wife are members of the minority Roma community, and needed the money to pay for dowries and other costs associated with the marriages of his sons under cultural practices.” (“Man jailed for 63 months in glass-eating fraud scheme”, AP/Boston Globe, Oct. 4).

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