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California Good Samaritan out of luck

Alexandra Van Horn was a passenger in a car that ran into a light pole at 45 mph. Lisa Torti, a passenger in a car following behind, stopped at the crash scene and tried to render assistance by lifting Van Horn out of the car. Van Horn emerged from the accident a paraplegic, although court testimony differed on whether the accident itself or Torti’s attempt to pull her out of the vehicle was responsible for this. Now a California appeals court has ruled that the state’s Good Samaritan liability shield does not protect Ms. Torti from Ms. Van Horn’s negligence suit because it “only protects people from liability if they are administering emergency medical care. The perceived danger of remaining in the wrecked car was not ‘medical,’ the court ruled.” (“Court: Law may not protect Good Samaritan from suit”, AP/CourtTV, Mar. 23).

Update Dec. 19, 2008: Calif. high court rules for plaintiff.

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Welcome Dallas Morning News readers

The newspaper reprinted my warning labels column yesterday (Walter Olson, “Product labels have come unglued from reality”, Mar. 25). Reader Gary Neyens of Round Rock, Tex. wrote in to say he enjoyed the piece and added one of his own favorite stories:

I recently replaced the serpentine (fan) belt on my Ford pickup. The Ford Motorcraft packaging warned “Shut off engine before checking or replacing belt”. I know the reason for this warning – – Somebody, somewhere…

While on the subject of publicity, Legal NewsLine did a whole article (with file photo!) based on my recent column about not counting the trial lawyers out (Rob Luke, Anti-business suits still surging, warns tort-reform expert”, Mar. 21). Last month New York Post reporter Janon Fisher quoted me in an article on the “firefighter’s rule” which historically has barred injured public rescue personnel from suing the people they were rescuing, or others whose negligence allegedly led to disaster (“Firemen file arson lawsuits”, Feb. 2). And a couple of publicity clips from last year that I didn’t round up at the time: at the North County Times’ The Californian, Bridgit Jordan quotes me on Mayor Bloomberg’s anti-tobacco philanthropy (“Donation may go up in smoke”, Aug. 22); and Joseph Goldstein of the New York Sun quotes me in an illuminating article about the “creeping oversight” of New York City government operations obtained by the feds through consent decrees and the like (“Bush Administration, in Series of Federal Lawsuits Against New York Agencies, Gains Creeping Oversight of Local Government”, Aug. 15).

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NY Times on Ky. fen-phen scandal

We’ve been beating the drums on this one for a while (Mar. 6 and Aug. 25, 2006, Jan. 24, Feb. 14, Feb. 21, Mar. 19, 2007; Point of Law May 10, 2005) and it’s nice to see the Times’s Adam Liptak with a front-pager this weekend on the affair. The story begins by telling the story of what happened when W.L. Carter, one of the clients in the 440-member batch, went to pick up his check from the fen-phen settlement:

The check was, for starters, much smaller than he had expected. And his own lawyers threatened to retaliate against him if he ever told anyone, including his family, how much he had been paid. “You will be fined $100,000, you will go to jail and you will be sued,” Mr. Carter recalled them saying.

Liptak writes: “Legal experts said the fraud might be one of the biggest and most brazen in legal history.” Or at least one of the biggest and most brazen that’s come to light: batch settlements in mass tort cases are frequently so secretive in their details, and so carefully drawn up to repel inquiries from outsiders or from clients themselves about who got what, that we can at best speculate about whether the Kentucky scandal is an outlier. (“Fraud Inquiry Looks at Lawyers in Diet-Drug Case”, Mar. 22).

P.S. As Ted notes above, today’s Louisville Courier-Journal adds some new information about the alleged role played by Stanley Chesley’s Cincinnati law firm (Andrew Wolfson, “Court filing ties lawyer into diet- drug pay scheme”, Mar. 26; Lattman, Mar. 26).

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“Lawyer in $315 million lottery lawsuits ordered to pay fine”

A price tag on not screening for merit: “A lawyer representing three people who sued their co-workers seeking a share of their $315 million lottery win was ordered Tuesday to pay a nearly $382,000 fine. Orange County [California] Judge Michael Brenner ordered attorney Mark H. Williams to pay the seven lottery winners after determining he pursued the lawsuits knowing the allegations lacked merit. The amount was the equivalent to legal fees incurred by the ‘Lucky Seven,’ who pooled money to buy the winning Mega Millions multistate lottery ticket, said defense attorney Larry S. Zeman.” Williams, of Long Beach, Calif., represented “three co-workers who claimed they deserved a share of the jackpot because of an oral agreement that everyone would be included whenever they pooled their money to buy tickets”. (AP/Contra Costa Times, Mar. 20).

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Navy sued again over whale-riling sonar

“The [California] Coastal Commission and a national environmental group sued the Navy on Thursday over its refusal to take certain precautions to protect marine mammals during military training exercises off the coast of San Diego. While the commission’s legal action is a rarity, the Natural Resources Defense Council already had sued the Navy four times over its use of high-intensity sonar.” We last covered the controversy, and discussed the implications for national defense, Jul. 6, 2006. (Terry Rodgers, “Coastal Commission sues Navy over use of sonar”, San Diego Union-Tribune, Mar. 22; Alicia Chang, “Calif. Coast Panel Files Navy Sonar Suit”, AP/Washington Post, Mar. 23).

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Bitten by sister’s cat

Flushing, Mich.: The $122,000 jury award should help balm Michael Sabo’s memory of the injury inflicted by the wanton Siamese, but for some reason the whole affair “has created tension between Sabo and his sister,” Jean Toney. (Mary K. Brunskill, “Court Awards Man $122,400 For Cat Bite”, All Headline News/NCBuy, Mar. 19; AP/CBC, Mar. 18).

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March 23 roundup

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Update: “Morgan Stanley-Perelman Judgment Flipped”

After the investment firm was found to have deleted some emails regarding the disputed merger, an incensed trial judge directed the jury to assume that the emails would have backed up Perelman’s charges of fraud; a $1.5 billion verdict followed, including $850 million in punitive damages (May 18 and Dec. 17, 2005). Now a Florida appeals court, by a 2-1 vote, has thrown out the award on the grounds that “no legally cognizable damage was shown as a result of the alleged fraud.” It did not reach the discovery-sanctions issue. (Joe Bel Bruno, AP/ABCNews.com, Mar. 21; Jordana Mishory, “Fla. Appeals Court Tosses $1.58 Billion Verdict Against Morgan Stanley”, Miami Daily Business Review, Mar. 22; Carolyn Elefant, LegalBlogWatch, Mar. 21; opinion text, PDF).

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