I’ll be a guest Monday morning at 8:30 a.m. PDT on Napa, Calif.’s KVON radio 1440 AM. And then on Tuesday morning at 8 a.m. PDT I’ll be joining host Lee Rodgers on his popular show on KSFO 560 AM. In both cases I’ll be discussing my book The Rule of Lawyers, which came out in paperback earlier this month (more). To book a broadcast interview on the book, email me directly or contact Jamie Stockton at the St. Martin’s/Griffin publicity department: 212-674-5151, ext. 502. (bumped 6/28)
Author Archive
That must have really hurt
…and it was the Massachusetts Lottery Commission’s fault, you have to understand. For our part, we intend in future to avoid drunken brawlers in Dedham, Mass. (Jonathan Saltzman, “Lottery sued after toes crushed”, Boston Globe, Jun. 26). On the dangers of tippable vending machines, see also Jul. 20-22, 2001.
Update: Forbes on Lodi mess
Champerty in the suites: “Lehman Brothers’ hopes of underwriting some juicy tort litigation crashed badly, leaving behind the toxic residue of avarice and gullibility.” Forbes examines one California town’s “man-made legal disaster”, a saga previously covered in our posts of Jan. 12, Jan. 17 and May 8 (Scott Woolley, “Municipal bombs”, Forbes, Jun. 21).
Update: Hotel settles “Murder by Mercedes” case
An attorney for the Hilton hotel in Clear Lake, Texas, in whose parking lot wronged wife Clara Harris ran down her cheating husband, confirms that the hotel has reached a settlement of the lawsuit filed on behalf of David Harris’s children for failing to prevent the 2002 incident. (see Feb. 24, 2003). The hotel’s management was “accused in the lawsuit of failing to provide effective security, notify police in time to prevent Harris’ death or train employees to deal with domestic disputes.” After a widely publicized trial, Clara Harris was sentenced to 20 years in prison. The Blue Moon detective agency, which had been engaged by Mrs. Harris to investigate her husband, has also settled a lawsuit in the case. (“Lawsuit by slain orthodontist’s children tentatively settled”, AP/KRTK Houston, Jun. 24).
“Diary of a Bashed Attorney”
“July 2 — Thank God I’m not a litigator. Jerry just got a 137 page motion to dismiss his 85 page complaint. By fax yet, right before a holiday weekend. Jerry says he’ll see the defendant’s motion and raise it a hundred. I think Jerry should consider therapy.” — humorist Madeleine Begun Kane, on her former career as a lawyer, first published Pacific Magazine & Funny Times, March 5, 1993.
“Can these settlements be redeemed?”
A 2002 class-action settlement against cable purveyor MediaOne (now Comcast) over alleged overcharges resulted in a payout to consumers ballyhooed at $17 million, with $3 million going to fees for class counsel. Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam tries to find out how much of that $17 million was actually paid to consumers, and — imagine! — gets blown off by both the company and the lawyers. He also tries to check out how much consumers actually received from a settlement against the Poland Spring water company (see Feb. 2, Sept. 10) that was billed as being worth $8 million, with $1.35 million to the lawyers. The lawyer he reaches tells Beam he has no idea, and the company never gets back to him. All’s well with the system (Jun. 17).
Worker’s comp: trauma over visitor’s remark
New Jersey: “County freeholders Tuesday paid nearly $26,000 to a Crest Haven Nursing Home employee who claimed she suffered a psychiatric disorder in 2001 after a nursing home visitor made an inappropriate remark to her.” Nursing assistant Cynthia Allen, a longtime employee whose lawyer said she had a good work record, “alleged that she was feeding another patient in late December 2000 when a nursing home visitor said ‘I bet you have some fresh stuff.'” Although the visitor later denied saying anything and no one else heard the comment, Allen said it had been made in a sexually offensive way and that she had felt intimidated when seeing the visitor on two subsequent occasions. Medical experts agreed that she had suffered psychological trauma over the incident. A freeholder who voted for the payment nonetheless termed it “bizarre” and said “This is what’s wrong with our legal system.” (W. F. Keough, “Visitor?s remark to worker at Crest Haven costs county $26,000 in compensation claim”, Press of Atlantic City, Jun. 23 (reg)).
Latest newsletter
The latest installment of our free periodic newsletter went out this afternoon to its c. 2300 subscribers, covering the last few weeks’ worth of postings in telegraphic, even punchy style. It’s a great way to keep up with items you may have missed; you can even forward the email to friends to let them know about the site. Sign up today, right here.
PointOfLaw.com now open
Point Of Law, the new site that the Manhattan Institute is launching with my assistance, has now opened its doors. There’s a lot to explore including a series of top-drawer reprints of great law review articles of the past. The center attraction, however, is a new weblog on which both Ted Frank and I will be posting, along with Jim Copland of the Manhattan Institute and some players to be named later. We’ve been putting up experimental posts for a couple of weeks now so there are dozens of them there now which have never appeared on this site; recent topics of discussion include the controversy over Judge Calabresi’s remarks at the American Constitution Society (posts by Jim Copland one, two); a report on the introduction of trial by jury into Japan; and tag-team coverage of New York Timesman Bob Herbert’s ineffably lame recent diatribes on medical malpractice (Frank, Copland, Olson).
Beyond that, we’ve enriched the site with selected highlights from the Overlawyered archives, including Ted’s must-save discussion of the Stella Liebeck versus McDonald’s hot coffee case. Many more features to come, and Prof. Bainbridge has already given the site a nice welcome, as have Prof. Grace, Prof. DeBow and “How Appealing”‘s Howard Bashman. Why don’t you give it a look/link now too?
P.S. In response to reader inquiries: no, I have no plans to scale back (let alone discontinue!) Overlawyered. PointOfLaw is separate and additional. (expanded and bumped 6/24).
Muslim trucker: you can’t make me haul beer
In Nashville, Tenn., Ibrahim Barzinji has sued his former employer, Arkansas-based J.B. Hunt Transport Inc., on the grounds that asking him to transport alcoholic beverages violated his religious beliefs. Barzinji, who is representing himself in the case, “said he had just trucked a load of auto parts from Clarksville to St. Louis on June 26 last year when he was asked to pick up a return load at the Anheuser-Busch plant.” He informed his supervisor that he was refusing to handle the cargo, and was dismissed. “A local labor and employment attorney said that, to prove his case, Barzinji would have to convince a judge or jury that asking to be assigned a different load was reasonable and would not cause undue hardship on the company.” The issue has come up before in a somewhat different context: “Muslim cab drivers at the Minneapolis airport several years ago began refusing to pick up passengers who carried duty-free alcohol, said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group.” (Anita Wadhwani, “Fired Muslim truck driver sues employer”, The Tennessean, Jun. 23).