His friend Ronald Coleman wants to know (Feb. 28).
Author Archive
They asked for it, they got it
Despite its calamitous and demagogic handling of Katrina flood insurance claims, it’s worth recalling that Mississippi has taken great strides toward cleaning up its formerly sorry reputation in other legal areas, personal injury litigation in particular. One business that seems to have noticed, per Pat Cleary at NAM (Feb. 28) is Toyota, the same company that passed over the Magnolia State in a plant-siting decision three years ago (see Apr. 30, 2004). The new Highlander assembly plant, be it noted, is to be located near Tupelo in the northeastern part of the state, far away from the storm-surge-peril zone. (“Toyota To Build Highlanders in Mississippi”, Car and Driver Daily Auto Insider, Feb. 28).
Update: $875K award to ejected slots player
We reported Jul. 25 and Aug. 4, 2003 on the case of Stella (or Estella; accounts vary) Romanski, who was banished from the Motor City Casino in Detroit after taking and playing a nickel from an unattended slot machine. The casino said it was enforcing a policy against “slot walking”, the practice of roaming unused machines in search of overlooked coins, but a jury awarded Romanski $875,000 in punitive damages. Reader F.L. now calls our attention to the record (PDF) of U.S. Supreme Court actions taken Oct. 2, 2006, which shows that the high court denied the writ of certiorari sought by the casino.
Blogs not liable for their commenters
But if anyone was wondering, that still doesn’t mean we’re going to let anything and everything pass in the comments section here. (American Constitution Society Blog, Feb. 26 (via GruntDoc); Reynolds, Feb. 26) (Universal Communication Systems v. Lycos).
Experian class action settlement
Attorney Donald Caster writes from Cincinnati:
OK, I’ll admit it: I’m a “trial lawyer,” and I usually disagree with Overlawyered’s point of view. (In fact, usually when I read the blog, I’m thinking about what a great job a particular lawyer did to get the result that you’re now protesting.) But I get nearly as agitated as you folks do over the abusiveness of coupon settlements in class action cases, and I just got notice of such a settlement myself.
Below I’ve cut and pasted the exact text of the email message I received notifying me of the settlement. The class action has its own website at www.browningsettlement.com. As you can see, the defendant is Experian, and the plaintiffs claim that they made some sort of representations on a website that violated the “Credit Repair Organizations Act.”
Class counsel is set to take over $2.5 million in fees. The “benefit” to the class? A settlement in which class members get either (a) a free credit score, or (b) free credit monitoring for two months. And oh, by the way, if you take the latter option, you have to remember to cancel the monitoring, or you’ll automatically start getting billed $9.95/month for credit monitoring after sixty days. That reeks of a lack of arms-length negotiation between class counsel and the defendant (what a great deal for the defendant–they get new customers in exchange for settling a class action lawsuit!).
Federalist Society “Law and Morality” conference
“You know, doc. It’s just business”
A lawyer comes to the emergency room complaining that he can’t see out of his left eye. The one who examines him is the physician who blogs at Fingers and Tubes in Every Orifice:
“What do you do for a living?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“I’m an attorney,” he proudly responded. “You’ve probably seen my ads on the highways.”
“Yes, yes. A fair settlement is no accident.” (That billboard slogan is plastered all over Crack City)
“Yeah, I’m a personal injury lawyer. I have no problems telling doctors that. I get better care that way, actually. Makes you guys more careful around me.”
“Yes, I know you very well, Mr. Cochran. You were the plaintiff attorney accusing me of being a baby killer, remember?!”
Pausing briefly to let him absorb the full irony of the situation, I continued, “As to being more careful around you, all that means is that you’ll have a bigger medical bill because of all the unnecessary tests and consultations, but I personally treat everyone the same regardless of the circumstances.”
You’ll want to see what happens in the rest of the story (Fingers and Tubes In Every Orifice, Jan. 2).
“Philly Inquirer sued over three-sentence restaurant review”
That’s Romenesko’s summary of this news item about a lawsuit by Chops Restaurant against food critic Craig LaBan over a review published in the city’s best-known newspaper, which the item rudely refers to as the InqWaster (Dan Gross, “Chops sues LaBan”, Philadelphia Daily News, Feb. 21). More on lawsuits over restaurant reviews: Jan. 3, 2006 (Dallas); Feb. 10, 2007 (Belfast).
Home sweet Astroturf
Jim Copland, at Point of Law, does a little digging (Feb. 26) to see whether something called the Colorado Home Alliance emerged as the spontaneous outgrowth of local residents’ dissatisfaction with the state of construction-defect law.
Mississippi judicial bribery retrial
Retrial is getting under way in the high-profile case against prominent Gulf Coast plaintiff’s lawyer Paul Minor and two former judges. Earlier proceedings resulted in the acquittal of Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz, Jr. of all charges and a mixture of not guilty findings and inability to reach a verdict in the case of other defendants. Our extensive coverage is here.