“Two predominantly black school districts are suing over the breakup of a suburban Chicago athletic league, saying racism led more than two dozen high schools to pull out and create their own, predominantly white leagues.” But an “attorney for several of the school districts leaving [the South Inter-Conference Association] said any charge that the breakup was racially motivated is ‘utter nonsense.’ He said the move was based on geography and school rivalries and had been discussed for several years. … ‘We are being deprived the opportunity to compete against other children and other different ethnicities,’ said Thornwood High School student Constance Stanley, who said her suburban Chicago speech team won’t have the same breadth of competition now.” (Mike Colias, AP/Washington Post, Apr. 21).
Author Archive
Contingency fee-o-rama
Anyone interested in the ethical, practical and philosophical case for and against the lawyers’ contingency fee (or contingent fee; usage varies) should be sure to check out two new resources:
* At Point of Law, the new Featured Discussion just underway pits George Mason lawprof Alex Tabarrok, who’s generally supportive of contingency fees, against Jim Copland of the Manhattan Institute, who’s critical;
* David Giacalone, who has written extensively on the problems inherent in protecting clients from overreaching by their lawyers, has now posted a four-part series (one, two, three, four) laying out his views on the pluses and minuses of the contingency fee more systematically than his blog posts have done up to now.
For my own views, see Chapter Two of my 1991 book The Litigation Explosion, which Point of Law has posted in PDF format.
The Do-Not-Shop List
According to the Washington Post, “The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control maintains its ‘Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List’ to be easily accessible on its public Web site.” It is a list of foreign persons and entities suspected of certain terrorist or criminal activities and associations. Per federal law, American businesses are forbidden to engage in transactions with those listed, on pain of “harsh penalties that include 30 years in jail and fines up to $10 million against corporations, and $5 million against individuals, and civil penalties of up to $1 million per incident”.
Although the main regulatory impact of the law appears to have fallen on financial institutions and on big-ticket retailers such as auto dealers, per Maryland attorney Thomas B. Hudson of Hudson Cook LLP, the law’s regulatory reach is wider than one might think, because it “prohibits anyone, not just car dealers, from doing business with” those on the list, so that selling a newspaper, or a bottle of soda pop, or a shoeshine, to one of the malefactors, is equally unlawful. Purveyors of all these goods and services are apparently expected to get their customers’ names, and check them against the list, before doing business if they really want to feel secure they’re not breaking the law (Don Oldenburg, “Hit-and-Miss List: If You’re in This Directory, Forget Shopping”, Washington Post, Apr. 9). For more on the weird implications of the concept I once dubbed “merchandise laundering”, see my Reason piece of March 1999.
TV anchor claims right to host evangelical show on side
Frank Turner, a 5 p.m. anchor for WXYZ-TV in Detroit, has filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint against his employer “for refusing him permission to host an evangelical radio program in his spare time,” thus violating his right to religious accommodation. The station disagrees:
Station officials, while not wanting to comment on Turner’s case directly, say they have exclusive contracts with their on-air talent and never allow anchors or others to work on competing broadcast outlets.
“We spend millions of dollars a year promoting our on-air talent and we want to have them working exclusively for Channel 7,” said Grace Gilchrist, the station’s vice president and general manager.
(Paul Egan, “TV anchor’s choice: God or Ch. 7 job”, Detroit News, Mar. 31)(via Romenesko).
Resisting a mass ADA filer
Businesspeople in rural Alpine, Calif., are trying to organize for self-protection against San Diego County attorney Theodore Pinnock, who’s filed at least thirty disabled-rights complaints against enterprises in the town. “Last year, he sent 67 letters to businesses in the historic town of Julian, alleging violations of ADA accessibility requirements. At that time, he demanded between $2,500 and $4,000 in attorneys fees from each of the businesses.” (Jennifer Morse Roback, “Standing up to the disability police”, syndicated/TownHall.com, Apr. 10). More on California ADA filing mills: Mar. 18, May 31, and Jul. 12, 2005, among many others.
“Caution: that vehicle collision may not be an accident”
The L.A. Times tackles a subject often treated in this space (Nov. 29, etc.): organized auto-crash fraud, which is largely premised on the chance of bringing bogus liability claims. According to the National Insurance Crime Bureau, Los Angeles is second only to Miami in the volume of such fraud. “Some organized auto fraud rings are so complex they involve hundreds of willing participants, including unscrupulous lawyers, doctors, chiropractors, auto shops, tow truck operators, ambulance drivers, police officers and insurance company employees, according to NICB investigations.” (Jeanne Wright, L.A. Times, Mar. 29).
Math test improper for police applicants
Republicans and Democrats come and go in the U.S. Department of Justice, but “disparate-impact” theory remains alive and well, as in the case of a new consent decree summarized by a correspondent of NRO’s John Derbyshire (Apr. 4):
“In February, the Justice Department sent a letter to Virginia Beach, concluding that the Beach Police Department has ‘engaged in a pattern or practice of discrimination’ against black and Hispanics applicants.
“The only evidence cited were results of a math exam given to all police recruits. It showed a wide gap between the passing rates for white applicants and the passing rates for black and Hispanics.
“About 85 percent of white applicants passed the math test from 2002 to mid-2005, compared with 59 percent of blacks and 66 percent of Hispanics.”
More details from the article in question (Duane Bourne, “Virginia Beach agrees to change the way it scores police math exams”, The Virginian-Pilot, Apr. 3):
The Justice Department questioned whether math is relevant to the daily duties of a police officer. The city agreed to eliminate the 70 percent cutoff score for the math part of the test….
At least one city official, Councilwoman Reba McClanan, said she does not agree with the settlement.
“One of the things that’s insulting about it is they’re telling us we don’t have a right to insist on certain standards,” McClanan said. “My feeling was we should hang in there. We want fairness and we want as many minorities working for our departments as possible, but we also want them to meet certain standards.”
…
The city will also pay up to $160,000 to applicants who flunked the old standards.
P.S. At Workplace ProfBlog, Paul Secunda spells out something left implicit in the above summary: the Justice Department’s actions are a fairly straightforward application of the current state of “disparate-impact” law; if you see nothing amiss with the present state of that branch of the law, you may see nothing amiss with the outcome (Apr. 10).
“Wrongful birth” roundup
Stacy Dow, of Perth, Scotland, is suing a hospital over the birth of her healthy daughter Jayde. Dow had been given an abortion at her request but unbeknownst to both her and the doctors she had been pregnant with twins, one of whom remained unharmed after the procedure. Dow told a court she suffered physical pain, distress and anxiety from the resulting pregnancy and Caesarean delivery; she also wants money for the cost of raising the girl to adulthood. (Sarah Womack, “Mother sues for birth of ‘aborted’ twin”, Telegraph, Mar. 21)(via KevinMD). The New York Times Magazine caused a stir last month with an article about a family that sued doctors over failure to recommend amniocentesis whose results would have led them to decide to abort their handicapped child (Elizabeth Weil, “A Wrongful Birth?”, Mar. 12). Ann Althouse notes an AP story reporting that there are waiting lists of parents interested in adopting Down’s Syndrome children (Mar. 10). And in the Dec. 2004 Journal of Legal Education, Gonzaga lawprof David K. DeWolf relates an extraordinary story about what happened one year when he assigned his students the wrongful-birth/wrongful-life case of Harbeson v. Parke-Davis, decided by the Washington Supreme Court in 1983 (via Childs). More on wrongful-birth suits: Mar. 4, etc.
How Joe Jamail conducts a deposition
Dignity of the profession dept.: this YouTube video of the famed Texas lawyer and UT benefactor in action is making the rounds (warning: offensive everything). It’s discussed by BrainWidth, Froomkin, Childs, Hurt, Kirkendall, Caron, Metafilter, etc. One of those present The man in the chair is named Edward Carstarphen. [note: a commenter says we erred in initially reporting that Carstarphen was the witness being deposed; see also David Stone, Apr. 11]. For more on Mr. Jamail’s record as a paladin of civility, see Apr. 19, 2000 (“gag a maggot off a meat wagon”). Update: link changed to working YouTube location, see Jan. 9, 2007.
“Product placement” — on The Sopranos?
On last Sunday’s episode of the popular HBO show, a commercial for Boston-based James Sokolove, known for his ubiquitous sue-’em-now ad campaigns, could be heard playing on James Gandolfini’s television set. Was it a deliberate product placement? (Carol Beggy & Mark Shanahan, “Fenway plans fail to materialize”, Boston Globe, Apr. 4) (via Schaeffer).