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Update: “Quebec passengers sue TB-infected U.S. lawyer”

“The American personal-injury lawyer who caused a health scare after flying despite being infected with a potent form of tuberculosis is facing a lawsuit by three of his fellow passengers.” Montreal lawyer Anlac Nguyen is demanding $C100,000 apiece on behalf of two Czech sisters who say they sat next to Andrew Speaker, and $C60,000 on behalf of a Laval, Que. man who sat farther away. Speaker recently learned that while he’s carrying a serious, drug-resistant and contagious form of tuberculosis, it isn’t the extremely-drug-resistant form originally suspected. (Jonathan Montpetit, Canadian Press/Toronto Star, Jul. 5). Earlier: Jun. 2.

P.S.: For those who are wondering, no, there’s not the slightest indication from the story that any of the three plaintiffs caught anything from Speaker. Update Dec. 2: tests confirm that no one flying with him caught TB.

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By reader acclaim: “Man Sues Over Gay Marriage Question On Bar Exam”

Stephen Dunne, 30, flunked the Massachusetts bar exam and now says it was because he refused on principle to answer an exam question concerning the rights of two married lesbians, their children and property. He claims the hypothetical, which concludes with the question “What are the rights of Mary and Jane?”, violated his First Amendment rights and served as a “screening device” to exclude persons like himself who disapprove on religious grounds of the state’s gay marriage law. “But Boston attorney Tom Dacey doesn’t believe the case will go very far. … ‘Lawyers have to answer questions about legal principles they disagree with all the time, and that doesn’t mean we’re endorsing them,’ said Dacey, a director of Goulston & Storrs’ litigation group. ‘You might be somebody who is morally opposed to divorce, but have to interpret the divorce laws of the commonwealth to answer a question about who property is passed to.'” (Donna Goodison, “Bar-exam flunker sues: Wannabe rejects gay-wed question, law”, Boston Herald, Jul. 6 and sidebar; AP/TheBostonChannel.com, Jul. 6).

P.S. He wants $9.75 million. And On Point News has a copy of the complaint (PDF). Update: Now he wants less, reports Above the Law (Jul. 13).

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Sues blogger for “business interference”, wins $7500

Lee Kaplan, a journalist who writes on Middle East controversies for (among other outlets) David Horowitz’s conservative Front Page, attracted the critical interest of a Berkeley student named Yaman Salahi, who set up a blog entitled Lee Kaplan Watch that assails Kaplan and his work. Kaplan proceeded to sue Salahi on charges of “business interference” in small claims court, a venue lacking in the extensive fact-finding and procedural protections that would attach to a conventional suit for, say, defamation. Last month the court awarded Kaplan $7500. The blogosphere has begun to notice the story with some alarm: Seeing the Forest for the Trees, Dean’s World, Ann Althouse, Slashdot. More links: Media Law Resource Center. Kaplan’s side of the story is here.

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Another Detroit co-worker’s-perfume suit

Susan McBride, who works in the planning department for the city of Detroit, is suing the city “alleging her co-worker’s strong perfume has made it impossible for her to do her job. …McBride alleges the city should accommodate her disability by prohibiting people from wearing perfume in the workplace.” As the Detroit News reports, and as we noted at the time, this isn’t the first time Detroit has been the scene of perfume-in-the-workplace litigation:

In 2005, Detroit country music deejay Erin Weber won a $10.6 million jury verdict against her employer, WYCD (99.5 FM) after she alleged she was sickened by a fellow radio host’s perfume.

But U.S. District Judge George Caram Steeh reduced the award to $814,000, saying it was not clear from the evidence that Weber had a perfume allergy.

(Paul Egan, “Worker sues over co-worker’s perfume”, Detroit News, Jul. 4; “Employee Sues City Over Co-Worker’s Perfume, Seeks Ban on Scents”, AP/FoxNews.com, Jul. 5).

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July 6 roundup

  • How to handle illegal alien’s slip-fall suit against supermarket? With some delicacy: jury told only that plaintiff “couldn’t legally work in this country” [Oroville, Calif., Mercury-Register]

  • Sorry, docs: “I hate doctors” beats out “I hate lawyers” as a Google search result [Bioethics Discussion Blog via KevinMD]

  • Virginia adopts harrowingly punitive schedule of traffic fines. Its sponsor: lawmaker whose day job is defending motorists [Washington Post; NRO “The Corner”; Ribstein; our earlier report]

  • A businessman in London is suing Google for “publishing” (by indexing) allegedly defamatory material, and, boy, will the Internet ever be a different place if he wins [Independent (U.K.), Volokh]

  • Federal indictment charges Houston injury lawyer secretly paid $3 million to two Hartford Insurance claims adjusters in connection with $34 million in silicosis settlements [PoL]

  • Mississippi high court rules invalid former AG Mike Moore’s slush-fund diversion of $20 million/year in tobacco settlement money to evade legislative oversight [Sun-Herald, Bader; also this PoL roundup]

  • More RIAA-suit horrors, this time from Washington state [Seattle P-I] Prospects for a counterattack? [Pasquale, Concurring Opinions]

  • California Assembly votes to require pet owners to sterilize mixed-breed dogs and cats, while UK animal rights authority mulls rights for invertebrates [Mangu-Ward and Bailey, Reason]

  • Here come the tainted-Chinese-export suits, with many American defendants on the hook [Parloff, Fortune] Plus: car with the “E COLI” license plate may be driving lawyer to work [WSJ Law Blog]

  • Gimme those antiquities: Peru vs. Yale on Machu Picchu relics [Zincavage]

  • Dick Schaap med-mal case evokes shifting theories from celebrated lawyer Tom Moore [two years ago at Overlawyered]

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In Detroit, protected road menaces

The city of Detroit’s Department of Transportation, which runs 500 buses, budgeted a whopping $16.1 million this year to cover lawsuits and injury claims arising from its operations (yes, that amounts to $32,000 per bus per year). The city is finding it unusually difficult to reduce those numbers:

Matt Allen, spokesman for Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, explained that Detroit is self-insured, which means money is set aside annually in an account earmarked for settlements, damages and other mishaps involving city-owned vehicles and drivers.

Meanwhile, the city, particularly the Detroit Department of Transportation, is struggling with union rules and arbitration cases that make it difficult to terminate even the most accident-prone drivers.

In one case, a bus driver was involved in 30 mishaps, hit a bicyclist resulting in a $1.4 million lawsuit settlement and, in a separate incident, had her driver’s license suspended. The city tried to fire her, according to records, but an arbitrator ruled she had to be rehired.

(David Josar, “Workers’ crashes cost Detroit”, Detroit News, Jun. 11).

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School blamed for lightning fatality

According to witnesses, faculty had stopped a junior varsity football game at Monarch High School in Fort Lauderdale because of thunder and the players were coming off the field when 15-year-old Schaffner Noel was struck and killed by a bolt of lightning. Now his father Julio Noel is suing the Broward County School Board. “The school did not use a lightning detection device and failed to provide sufficient warning and evacuation measures, attorney Holly Krulik said in a statement Tuesday.” (“Fla. Dad Sues Schools In Lightning Death”, AP/Local6.com, Jun. 27). An amusement-park lightning case can be found here, and our readers have been having a lively discussion over the meaning of the word “accident” here.

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Stop using the word “accident”?

Revising terminology with the goal of revising attitudes?

The word ‘accident’ is to be banned from the new edition of Britain’s Highway Code, which is published by the UK Department of Transport. Instead the words ‘collision’, ‘crash’ or ‘incident’ will be used to describe events that once were known as accidents.

This adoption of new terms for everyday events does not only have linguistic significance. The banning of the A-word is a consequence of a broader cultural outlook which insists that nothing happens accidentally these days and that there is always someone to blame. …

In June 2001, the prestigious British Medical Journal signed up to the crusade, explaining in an editorial why it had decided to ban the word accident from its pages. ‘[S]ince most injuries and precipitating events are predictable and preventable’, the word accident should not be used to refer to ‘injuries or the events that produce them’.

(Frank Furedi, “The crusade against the A-word”, Spiked-Online (U.K.), May 15)

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