John Gregg of Shaker Heights, Ohio wasn’t satisfied with the $30,000 that an arbitrator awarded him for supposedly slipping on soap and water in the men’s room of a McDonald’s restaurant. He insisted on a jury trial instead, but as the trial date approached the restaurant chain investigated the case further and found that Gregg, “who had a 2002 arson conviction connected to burning a relative’s car for insurance money,” wasn’t telling the strict truth when he said he didn’t know the customer who was serving as his key witness in the claim. In fact, the man had worked with Gregg at a construction firm and the two had both collected payments from Geico two years earlier after claiming that their cars had collided with each other. Calling his actions “fraudulent”, Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Timothy J. McGinty found Gregg in contempt of court, “ordered him jailed for 30 days and fined him $250.” (Jim Nichols, “Pass up $30,000, go directly to jail”, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Dec. 17; “Outcome of McDonald’s suit should be modeled” (editorial), Richmond, Ind., Palladium-Item, Dec. 22).
Author Archive
Old-timers
That’s what we are, it seems.
Welcome newspaper readers
Catching up on some overdue thanks to newspaper reporters and contributors who’ve mentioned this site, quoted me, or done both in the past few months (several of them, alas, without currently active links):
* David Boaz, “New York’s Big Think”, New York Post, Dec. 5 (an excellent piece on the Manhattan Institute);
* Jon Robins, “A pair of lawyers who could change the world”, The Times (London), Nov. 2 (on John Edwards’s debate performance);
* Itai Maytal, “Too Early To Give Up on Edwards’s Star”, New York Sun, Nov. 4 (on Edwards’s prospects on departing the U.S. Senate);
* Heidi J. Shrager, “State’s law guardian system in need of overhaul”, Staten Island Advance, Sept. 28 (on the need for reform of New York’s law guardian system, under which lawyers are appointed to represent the interests of minors and others not able to look out for themselves);
* Kate Coscarelli, “Police protect, serve — and sue”, Newark Star-Ledger, Sept. 12, reprinted at Wilentz, Goldman & Spitzer site (on legal doctrines allowing police officers injured in the course of their duties to sue allegedly negligent private parties (see Aug. 31);
* David Isaac, “USG Corp.: Election And Elation For Wallboard Maker”, Investor’s Business Daily, Nov. 5 (on post-election prospects for asbestos legislation);
* Ed Wallace, “Wheels: You Can Fool Some of the People…”, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Oct. 3 (on network crash-test journalism).
For other press mentions, check our “About the site” page.
Forbidden Broadway
The latest installment in the beloved musical spoof series sending up Broadway shows opened this month at the Douglas Fairbanks Theater in New York. As founder Gerald Alessandrini makes clear in his liner notes to vol. II, the series is made possible by the good-natured forbearance of many in the theater community: “Also special thanks to the real composers and lyricists and writers (alive and past) who have let us make mince meat out of their beautiful and well-crafted work. Without their reluctance toward lawsuits there would certainly be no Forbidden Broadway.”
Update: emotional-distress claim against divorce lawyer
Bad news for the disgruntled divorce client in the case reported on here Nov. 17: a state appellate court has ordered San Francisco Superior Court Judge Ronald Quidachay to reconsider his ruling allowing the client to claim emotional distress damages over the attorney’s alleged mishandling of his divorce (which the attorney denies). Ryan Kent of San Rafael, Calif., representing defendant attorney Joseph Pisano, said a claim for emotional distress damages “just opens up a whole bag of worms”. And: “It’s too open-ended. It’s not predictable.” We know plenty of defendants in other professions that must wish they had the benefit of that logic. (Pam Smith, “Calif. Appeal Court Unmoved by Emotional Distress Claim in Malpractice Case”, The Recorder, Dec. 22). More: George Wallace and David Giacalone comment.
Thanks for the haiku
David Giacalone (Dec. 20) dedicates to us this one by Kobayashi Issa, translated by David G. Lanoue:
a new year begins–
nonsense
piled on nonsense
Thanks also to readers of this site for countless kind words and acts over the past year, and — if it’s not at this point too politicized a thing to say — happy holidays to you all.
Suing Santa Claus
“‘When I started doing this years ago, I never even thought about liability,’ Nevada [Victor Nevada, 61, a professional Santa Claus in Calgary, Canada] says. ‘But Santas have a pretty good chance of getting sued. You got the obvious things: You drop a child on its head. Then there’s Santa saying the wrong thing?. I had a Santa working for me a couple years ago; he had a girl on his knee, and he commented, “You have nice eyes and nice hair.” She claimed sexual harassment.'” (J.R. Moehringer, “Ho! Ho! Is More Like Uh-Oh”, Los Angeles Times, Dec. 23).
Watch what you say about lawyers, cont’d
Madison County: Gordon Maag, the trial-lawyer-backed candidate who last month was defeated in a race for the Illinois Supreme Court in what is said to have been the most expensive judicial race in American history, has filed a $100 million defamation suit against an arm of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce for saying bad things about him during the recent campaign. (St. Louis Post-Dispatch/Edwardsville Intelligencer/Southern Illinoisan/Illinois Leader). Jim Copland comments at Point Of Law. For two other widely noted efforts by Madison County lawyers to silence or intimidate their critics, see Nov. 4 and Nov. 30, 1999 and Feb. 29, 2000 (class action lawyers sue Post-Dispatch columnist Bill McClellan for making fun of them) and Jun. 9, Jul. 12, Jul. 26, 2003 (dragging national tort reform groups to court). For efforts to suppress the airing of ads affecting the Maag-Karmeier race, see Oct. 27. For other watch-what-you-say-about-lawyers cases, see Mar. 16 and Nov. 15, 2004, Nov. 30, 2003, and earlier posts; and Point of Law, Oct. 25 and Dec. 22, 2004.
Canadian court: co. to blame for unionist’s bomb
A Canadian employer has now been held partly to blame for a murderous onslaught by one of its adversaries in a labor dispute:
A court has awarded $10.7 million in damages to the widows of nine men killed by a bomb during a labour dispute at Yellowknife’s Giant Mine, blaming the mining company and the union almost as much as the man who laid the explosives….
Justice Arthur Lutz ruled that none of the involved parties did enough to control the relentless and escalating violence on the picket line that summer. He assigned almost equal blame to the union, Royal Oak Mines and Roger Warren, who was convicted of the murders. Lutz also assigned a share of the damages to Pinkerton’s security, two union activists and the N.W.T. government….
Royal Oak had argued that it couldn’t have predicted the deaths, but Lutz scorned the reasoning. … The judge said violence and threats were rampant during the 18-month strike, including physical injuries, property damage and sabotage. Strikers staked out the houses of replacement workers and stole explosives from the mine, setting off one blast that cut off power to a hospital.
(“Giant Mine widows awarded $10.7M”, CBC, Dec. 16).
“Get your million dollars” Vioxx site, cont’d
Law.com’s The Recorder reports that some in the plaintiff’s bar are understandably upset that Google’s ad program placed their firms’ ads on the lurid site discussed in this space Nov. 15 and Nov. 18. “The ‘million dollars’ site ‘is patently sleazy, but the question is whether it violates the ethics rules,’ said Richard Zitrin, an ethics specialist and partner with Zitrin & Mastromonaco who advises plaintiff firms. ‘I think it’s unethical. And I’m a free-speechist on this.'” Lawyers with Lieff Cabraser and Schneider & Wallace also deemed the site unethical. Others, as in earlier rounds of the brouhaha, complained that too much attention was being paid to the page, including a mention by Sen. Orrin Hatch at a Senate hearing. (Justin Scheck, “Vioxx Web Site Has Law Firms Outraged”, The Recorder, Nov. 30). And in a dispatch a week later, the same reporter found that law-firm ads had been removed from the site and replaced with public service ads (“Controversial Web Site Drops Lawyer Ads”, Dec. 6).
More: David Giacalone, guestblogging at RiskProf, has news of more developments, including a substantial rewrite of the site (Dec. 26).