Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

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“No one will be hurt if we get our diploma”

Updating our Feb. 22 report: “A judge Friday suspended California’s high school exit exam, finding it discriminatory in a ruling that could allow thousands of students who failed the test to get their diplomas anyway.” Alameda County Superior Court Judge Robert Freedman “agreed with the plaintiffs that the exam discriminates against poor students and those who are learning English. ‘There is evidence in the record that shows that students in economically challenged communities have not had an equal opportunity to learn the materials tested,’ Freedman wrote.” It would appear that from now on a high school diploma is meant to signify not a student’s actual mastery of a certain body of material, but rather the mastery he or she would have attained had the breaks of life been fairer. Employers, and all others who rely on California high school diplomas in evaluating talent, would be well advised to adjust their expectations accordingly.

“Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell said the state would immediately appeal the ruling, which he said creates ‘chaos’ for more than 1,100 high schools that are completing graduation preparations.” However, plaintiff Mayra Ibanez was gratified:

“It is hard to be poor. It is hard to grow up in a place where there is a lot of crime,” said the 18-year-old, a Mexican immigrant who attends school in the working-class San Francisco Bay area city of Richmond. “No one will be hurt if we get our diploma.”

(Juliet Williams, “Ruling Blocks Calif. High School Exit Exam”, AP/Forbes, May 12).

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Blogosphere libel standards

As pointed out by commenter Scott McDonald in our earlier thread, an editor/commentator at NetworkWorld thinks Eric Goldman’s animadversions on lawyers suing Yahoo might strike those lawyers as itself cause for legal action (Paul McNamara, “More blogging off the cliff … lawyer-style”, May 12). Glenn Reynolds takes note of the controversy (May 12) and points to an SSRN paper of his own entitled, “Libel in the Blogosphere: Some Preliminary Thoughts“. Comments on the Goldman/Yahoo case: Denise Howell, Evan Schaeffer.

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Emotional service dogs

The New York Times “Styles” section leads off today with a trend explored in our posts of May 5 and Jul. 12, 2005:

The increasing appearance of pets whose owners say they are needed for emotional support in restaurants — as well as on airplanes, in offices and even in health spas — goes back, according to those who train such animals, to a 2003 ruling by the Department of Transportation. It clarified policies regarding disabled passengers on airplanes, stating for the first time that animals used to aid people with emotional ailments like depression or anxiety should be given the same access and privileges as animals helping people with physical disabilities like blindness or deafness.

The following year appellate courts in New York State for the first time accepted tenants’ arguments in two cases that emotional support was a viable reason to keep a pet despite a building’s no-pets policy. Word of the cases and of the Transportation Department’s ruling spread, aided by television and the Internet. Now airlines are grappling with how to accommodate 200-pound dogs in the passenger cabin and even emotional-support goats. And businesses like restaurants not directly addressed in the airline or housing decisions face a newly empowered group of customers seeking admittance with their animals.

(Beth Landman, “Wagging the Dog, and a Finger”, May 14).

Plus: Cutting Edge of Ecstasy, dot_gimp_snark, Petulant Times, Cernovich, and Giacalone (we’re “ahead of the pundit pack” — thanks!). Orichalcum: “If I pay $200+ for a plane seat, I kinda feel I have the right not to have a goat in the seat next to me, no matter how comforting its presence is to the third person in the row.” Mark Baratelli proposes “service bottles”.

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“Paraplegic Activist Leaps From Wheelchair, Runs From Police”

Laura Lee Medley was making a regular career of filing claims against various Southern California entities complaining of violations of her rights as a wheelchair user under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Placed under arrest after police sniffed fraud, Medley leaped from her chair and led authorities on a brief chase which ended with her capture:

Medley’s claims in California against San Bernardino County, South Pasadena and Long Beach included one allegation that a bus dropped her off near what she called a non-ADA compliant roadway, causing her wheelchair to topple over.

Last year, South Pasadena settled Medley’s claim for almost $7,000.

Medley is also a fugitive with arrest warrants in Arizona for forgery and California for fraud.

(AP/KCRA, May 12; Sploid). For more on dubious handicapped activism, including the California scene where serial complainants abound, see our disabled-rights page.

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Bedbug fame, and Hamptons flipping

Attorney Alan Schnurman of Zalman & Schnurman was recently in the news for filing a sensational $20 million claim of bedbug infestation against a Catskills hotel on behalf of a patron who, curiously, is said to have gone back voluntarily to stay at the same section of the hotel two weeks later (see Mar. 9). Now Peter Lattman at the WSJ law blog (May 5) brings word that Schnurman

from the looks of it, is trying to supplement the millions he earns from a lucrative personal-injury practice by flipping Hamptons real estate.

Last week the 60-year-old Schnurman reportedly listed a 41-acre parcel in the town of Sagaponack for $49.5 million. He paid $25 million for the non-oceanfront property last July. He’s also listed another parcel in Bridgehampton for $37.5 million, having purchased that 25-acre property nine months ago for $15 million.

Now back to your previously scheduled news story about excessive CEO compensation.

Where’s his Mother’s Day present?

More entrepreneurial lawyering in California:

A Los Angeles psychologist who was denied a tote bag during a Mother’s Day giveaway at an Angel game is suing the baseball team, alleging sex and age discrimination.

Michael Cohn’s class-action claim in Orange County Superior Court alleges that thousands of males and fans under 18 were “treated unequally” at a “Family Sunday” promotion last May and are entitled to $4,000 each in damages.

(Dave McKibben, “L.A. Psychologist Who Didn’t Get Tote Bag at Mother’s Day Angel Game Files Lawsuit”, Los Angeles Times, May 11). Cohn’s attorney is Alfred Rava, who (as the L.A. Times really should have found out by Googling Overlawyered, if not its own archives) was among the key figures in the 2003 spree by which owners of San Diego nightspots were hit up for handsome cash settlements for having held “Ladies’ Night” promotions. The Unruh Act, California’s distinctively liberal civil rights statute, allows complainants to demand $4,000 a pop for such misdeeds, and it’s no defense to suggest that the customer’s primary reason for getting involved in the underlying transaction may have been to set up the $4,000 entitlement. More: “Lex Icon” wishes to make clear that he’s not the kind of lawyer who files cases like this (May 13).

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UK: menace of ice-cream vans

Campaigners for compulsory health in Great Britain are pressing for new laws that could largely spell an end to old-fashioned roving ice-cream vans (which in that country, rather charmingly, are said to play “Greensleeves” or “O Sole Mio” as their jingles). (Rajeev Syal and David Sanderson, “Why ice-cream vans face total meltdown”, The Times (UK), May 8)(via A&LDaily).

Nor are grown-ups to be trusted with their own dietary choices any more than kids, at least not in Scotland:

Bar owners have warned they could be forced to stop serving chips and traditional pub meals under proposals by the Scottish Executive.

Under regulations being considered by the Executive, landlords – many of whom are still unhappy at the smoking ban – would be required to have policies to promote “sensible eating” as a condition of their licenses.

(Russell Jackson, “Publicans fear Executive wants ‘unhealthy’ bar meals banned”, The Scotsman, May 5)(via Stuttaford)(& welcome Andrew Sullivan, Stephen Bainbridge readers). Our UK page is here, and our page on food and beverage nannyism, regulation and litigation is here.

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