Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Author Archive

“There’s just no there there”

Mark Kleiman, on the alleged link between autism and thimerosal in vaccines (Mar. 6), commenting on the latest from Respectful Insolence (Mar. 6). Orac of Respectful Insolence also takes another whack (Mar. 2) at the emissions of the egregious Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on the same controversy, as published (Mar. 1) in the Huffington Post. More: Feb. 21, etc.

P.S. And here’s Kathleen Seidel, who’s been covering the issue in depth at Neurodiversity Weblog (Mar. 1): “It’s time for RFK Jr. to come clean about the fact that he represents the interests of private litigants seeking compensation for supposed vaccine injury when in fact many of those litigants have no evidence that such injury occurred.. …Widespread suspicions are fueled by an aggressive public relations campaign engineered by wealthy PR maven and pioneering ‘mercury mom’ Sally Bernard, early litigant Lyn Redwood, their close associates, faux-journalists David Kirby and Dan Olmsted, and a core of personal injury lawyers who have cultivated this market for years. A lot of money has gone into convincing parents of autistic children that their kids were poisoned.”

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Defensive medicine — no big deal?

That’s what some bloggers (like these two) seem to think. Emergency room physician “Shadowfax” (Feb. 10) finds this point of view a “little maddening”, given that it conflicts with the experience of “every day of my working life, every patient I see, every diagnostic/therapeutic decision I make”. (via KevinMD).

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“Court bars rapist from suing victim”

Connecticut:

A Superior Court judge in New London Friday permanently barred a convicted rapist who had harassed his victim with a series of legal actions from filing further lawsuits without the permission of a judge. Judge Clarance J. Jones issued a permanent injunction against Allen Adgers, who is serving a 13-year sentence for kidnapping and raping his former wife at knife-point, said Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, whose office sought the order….

[The wife] moved six times, but Adgers was able to learn her new address each time by filing a legal action that resulted in her being served with a subpoena. As part of the subpoena process, Adgers would get a receipt recording the address where service was made. He sent her harassing letters, which has added four years to his original 13-year sentence. But he still was allowed to force his former wife into court. Acting as his own attorney, the rapist was able to question and taunt his victim….

Blumenthal said that Adgers, in addition to harassing his victim, also filed 16 frivolous lawsuits against government officials since 2001. That will end with the order issued Friday.

(Mark Pazniokas, “Judge Halts Rape Victim’s Ordeal”, Hartford Courant, Feb. 25). Jonathan B. Wilson, who spotted the case, says one lesson — given that it took a situation this extreme to trigger an injunction — is that the system is likely to allow a great deal of litigation abuse in less facially outrageous cases: “So long as plaintiffs have the capacity of filng suit and engaging in discovery without satisfying any minimal standard of justification, unscrupulous plaintiffs will be able to use the compulsive power of the courts to impose frustration and costs on defendants.” (Feb. 26).

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No more anonymous commenting

…if a New Jersey legislator gets his way. (Reason “Hit and Run”, Mar. 7). The idea is to make sure legal remedies are available “to persons injured by false or defamatory messages posted on public forum websites”. More: Michael Krauss. Update May 9: the legislator is reportedly going to withdraw the bill, following a storm of online criticism (via Reynolds).

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“Man Charged In Prostitution Ring Sues Clients”

Partners in crime dept.: “A Dutch man who served time in jail and was deported for running one of the largest escort services in the Southeast has sued six former customers.” Arthur Vanmoor, 46, who used aliases such as “Big Pimpin’ Pappy” and whose South Florida enterprise “accounted for up to 90 percent of the escort service listings in Broward County’s 2002 Yellow Pages”, claims his customers got him in trouble by breaking the law and violating their contracts with him. “To pay the $245-per-hour escort fee, the men signed a credit card slip that said, ‘Cardholder states that this transaction is not for illegal activity,’ said Vanmoor’s attorney, Montgomery Sibley.” (AP/NBC6.net, Feb. 27).

Montgomery Sibley, attorney for Vanmoor, appeared on Tucker Carlson’s “The Situation” Mar. 1 to explain his client’s case; see this amusing account with video. A Google search reveals that a Florida attorney named Montgomery Blair Sibley, proceeding pro se, sued federal judicial officials including the nine members of the U.S. Supreme Court (including “Steven” Breyer) demanding a million dollars in damages from the Justices individually for various purported offenses which included not granting certiorari review to a domestic dispute Sibley was involved in. Sibley took his case up to the Eleventh Circuit (PDF), but did not prevail.

According to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, “Vanmoor is known for his litigious nature. In the past decade, he has been a plaintiff or defendant in 29 lawsuits in Broward County alone. He has sued businesses that challenged him, police departments that investigated him, an assistant state attorney who prosecuted him and journalists who reported on him.” (Sean Gardiner, “Man charged in Broward prostitution ring sues his clients”, Feb. 27). The alleged johns have not been named in the latest round of news coverage, so far as a cursory search of coverage reveals. One wonders whether the possibility of such publicity might be one factor influencing the prospective settlement value, if any, of the new round of suits.

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Paul Harris show on food nannyism

Yesterday I was a guest on Paul Harris’s radio program (KMOX St. Louis) to discuss the latest push for government regulation and courtroom action over tempting and calorie-laden items found in the refrigerator, in particular sodas. We talked about a new Associated Press article reporting favorably on some nutritionists’ plans to “make the case for higher taxes on soda, restrictions on how and where it is sold and maybe a surgeon general’s warning on labels”. (Marilynn Marchione, “A hard stance against soft drinks”, AP/Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Mar. 5). More on our Eat, Drink and Be Merry page.

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SeaSponge SpellCheck

Yes, everyone else has already posted on this, but it is funny (Mike McKee, “Solo’s Errant Spell-Check Causes ‘Sea Sponge’ Invasion”, The Recorder/Law.com, Mar. 2).

Suing Craigslist — with your money

The federal taxpayer, by way of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, funnels substantial sums to private “fair housing” advocacy groups for purposes of suing landlords, newspapers, and other likely suspects over alleged housing discrimination; raising consciousness among potential claimants and others; and generally promoting expansive readings of housing-bias law. For example, in this listing of $20 million worth of fiscal 2002 grants, HUD boasts of bestowing $242,339 on the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Inc. for something called its Private Enforcement Initiative (PEI), described as follows:

While addressing the needs of minorities in the metropolitan Chicago area, the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights will increase awareness of fair housing rights; empower victims to report incidents of discrimination; develop credible, legitimate evidence to support discrimination complaints; increase the number of complaints referred to HUD for enforcement; and provide relief to discrimination victims. Utilizing access to pro bono attorneys from Chicago’s most prominent law firms, as well as their resources, the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee will receive, document, and investigate individual complaints of discrimination.

If the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee sounds vaguely familiar, it’s probably because it’s the group that last month filed a widely criticized lawsuit against Craigslist (Feb. 9, Feb. 20) seeking to force the online service to pre-censor users’ postings of roommate and other housing classifieds (rather than just pull them off after complaints, as now).

Even if the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee suit fails in court — as is widely expected — the controversy is likely to continue. In yesterday’s New York Times, Adam Liptak says the activists are likely to push for federal legislation stripping website operators of their current protection against being held liable for users’ postings. (“The Ads Discriminate, but Does the Web?”, Mar. 5). Don’t assume that “fair housing” advocates are powerless on Capitol Hill these days, either: at one set of hearings last week, all the witnesses called (including this one (PDF), quoted in the Times piece) were there to speak up for expansive enforcement of the law, with nary a dissenting word about any possible competing values at stake. More: Maggie’s Farm.

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