Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

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Riding on lawyer money into Congress?

Yes, it’s fairly common for trial lawyers to be a candidate’s major backers, but sometimes it gets ridiculous. In the race among seven candidates to succeed retiring Republican U.S. Rep. Jim Nussle in Iowa’s 1st Congressional District, the contender who leads by a healthy margin in fundraising is 48-year-old Waterloo lawyer Bruce Braley, a Democrat who is a former president of the Iowa Trial Lawyers Association and currently sits on the board of ATLA. He’s raised $305,629 through September:

Braley’s fundraising prowess has turned heads already. And so has the source of his money. Of the $253,000 in individual donations itemized on campaign finance reports, $227,000, or 90 percent, comes from lawyers. It’s a wide base, too. Donors from more than three dozen states have given money.

Of the $23,250 in political action committee money he’s received, half came from attorney-related committees, including $10,000 from the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, or ATLA….

“People who know me think I would make a very good representative,” he says….

One law firm that has been a prime target for conservatives also is a generous donor to Braley. Fifteen lawyers associated with the Baron & Budd firm in Dallas, one of the leaders in litigating asbestos and other toxic substance claims, gave $15,000 to the campaign.

In all, 85 percent of Braley’s donations have come from outside the district. (Ed Tibbetts, “In a seven-horse race, it’s all about the purse”, Quad City Times, Nov. 14).

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Lawyers preparing soft-drink suit

“Richard Daynard, a Massachusetts law professor who made his name working as a consultant on class actions against tobacco companies, is part of a broad effort by both private attorneys and nonprofit groups to sue Atlanta-based Coca-Cola and other soft drink companies for selling high-calorie drinks in schools.” (Caroline Wilbert, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Nov. 29; Caroline E. Mayer, “Lawyer coalition targets soft drink manufacturers”, Washington Post/Detroit News, Dec. 4; Todd Zywicki and vast comment section; Colossus of Rhodey). In the Boston Globe magazine, contributor Michael Blanding writes supportively of “a national legal movement to make soft drinks the next tobacco” (Oct. 30).

For more on the search for ways to blame business for our collective struggle with the waistline, see many entries in our Eat, Drink and Be Merry section. More on caffeine “addiction” theories: Aug. 18-20, 2000, Jun. 1, 2004. More on vending machine suits: Jul. 3, 2003. And as regular readers know, we’ve been covering Prof. Daynard’s activities for a long time; see Apr. 21-23, 2000 and many others.

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“Peru eyes lawsuit against Yale over relics”

“Peru is preparing a lawsuit against Yale University to retrieve artifacts taken nearly a century ago from the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu, a Peruvian cultural official said Wednesday.” Explorer Hiram Bingham dug up the artifacts during three expeditions to the site in in 1911, 1912 and 1914. (AP/CNN, Nov. 30)(via Dave Zincavage). For a critique of the movement to prescribe “repatriation” of cultural treasures to the countries on whose territory they were originally found, see the article linked here Apr. 28.

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Boston mayor vows to seize t-shirts from stores

…because he doesn’t like the message printed on them, as Reason “Hit and Run” reports:

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino has ordered the city to seize T-shirts that say “Stop Snitchin.” “‘It’s wrong,’ Menino said. ‘We are going into every retail store that sells the shirts and remove them.'”

(Boston Herald; Boston Globe; KipEsquire; Eugene Volokh; ACLU of Mass. press release, PDF). More: Gunner at No Quarters Blog has an update.

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Oz: “PC rules blamed for Santa shortage”

Another one from Australia:

Disillusioned by a growing list of rules imposed by recruiting agencies and shopping centres to guard against litigation, men who have brought smiles to the faces of thousands of young West Australians for decades are reluctantly deciding to call it quits.

They can’t hand out lollies, they can’t pat children on the head because of religious beliefs, they can’t put children on their laps unless they get permission from parents and they can’t have photographs taken with youngsters unless their hands are in full view.

So frightened have some Santas become of being sued that they are demanding extra helpers to act as witnesses just in case a complaint is made.

(Joe Spagnolo, Daily Telegraph (Aus.), Dec. 4). For discouragement of Christmas parties Down Under, see our Friday item. More Santa-related items from around the English-speaking world: Dec. 24, 2004; Dec. 30, 2003; Oct. 9-10, 2002; Oct. 12 and Dec. 13-14, 2000.

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Update: Audubon String Quartet breakup

“If this were a stage tragedy, we’d be watching the final scene, where members of the famed string quartet are forced to surrender their instruments to the violinist they once spurned.

“But if this were a play, it would have been over long ago. Instead, the ugly drama of the Audubon Quartet and its former first violinist, David Ehrlich, is the drama that never ends.” Ehrlich has prevailed in the litigation and now is expected to take his former colleagues’ house, as well as other personal assets. He denies that just walking away from the dispute is an option at this point: “I have no choice. I owe a fortune to my attorneys.” (Kevin Kittredge, “Last act? Violinist Ehrlich seeks ex-colleagues’ assets”, Roanoke Times, Nov. 20). Earlier coverage on this site: Jun. 5, 2000 and links from there, May 10-12, 2002, and letter to the editor, Jun. 2002 (via Arts & Letters Daily). Update: the New York Times ran a substantial feature on the breakup Dec. 11.

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Update: East German athletes’ steroid suit

A court in Hamburg will hear the case (see Mar. 14) in which some 190 athletes from the former East Germany are seeking compensation for the damage done to their bodies by steroids administered by authorities under the pre-1989 Communist regime. The drugs were made by Jenapharm, at that time a state-owned concern, later bought by the Schering corporation, which is the target of the compensation demands. (Luke Harding, “Forgotten victims of East German doping take their battle to court”, The Guardian (U.K.), Nov. 1; “The Quest for Gold Left Lives in Ruins “, Deutsche Welle, Jun. 29).

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Update: Feds raid Fieger’s office in campaign laundering probe

Getting wilder by the week: “Federal agents raided the law office of Geoffrey Fieger late Wednesday looking for evidence that he laundered $35,000 in campaign contributions to the John Edwards 2004 presidential campaign through his employees.” (David Ashenfelter and Joe Swickard, “Federal agents raid Fieger’s office”, Detroit Free Press, Dec. 1). “A former associate in trial attorney Geoffrey Fieger’s firm said Friday that he and his wife each gave $2,000 to Democrat John Edwards’ 2004 presidential campaign on the promise that they would be reimbursed by the firm.” Joseph Bird, an attorney later fired by Fieger’s firm, “said he had ‘no clue’ at the time that it was illegal for employers to instruct people to give to a campaign and then reimburse them.” (Sarah Karush, “Lawyer says firm demanded political contributions to Edwards”, AP/Winston-Salem Journal, Dec. 2; same story with more details at Detroit News site, Dec. 4). For earlier evidence suggesting the likelihood of laundering in trial lawyers’ donations to Edwards, see Apr. 28-29 and May 8, 2003. For more on Fieger, see Nov. 17, Nov. 10 and links from there.

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