Fifteen members of a group called Fathers 4 Justice stormed the offices of solicitors Parker Bird in Huddersfield, England, citing the firm’s “major contribution in the pouring petrol on the flames in divorce and childcare cases”. Locking the door behind them, chanting and waving flags until police arrived, the men said they had bestowed a “Golden Petrol Can” award on the law firm and a spokesman said “We feel that many solicitors manipulate family law against fathers.” (“Angry fathers in law firm protest”, Huddersfield Daily Examiner, Feb. 26)(via Law.com). David Giacalone comments (Feb. 26): “I’m surprised this sort of protest hasn’t happened more often in the USA.”
Author Archive
Stuart Taylor, Jr. on Sen. Edwards
He reviews Edwards’s autobiography, Four Trials, which “provides a window into the faux-populist pretenses and other flaws of the system that made this millworker’s son into a multimillionaire.” Aside from Edwards’s cerebral palsy wins, much discussed in this space, there was the punitive damages award he obtained after a truck crash, against the trucking company for having paid its drivers by the mile: the justice of this $4 million award is open to much question as a matter of blame-fixing, aside from which it “ultimately came out of the pockets of the same ordinary, hardworking Americans whose champion he purports to be — and a big chunk of it went into the pockets of John Edwards. … Edwards’s business-bashing, anti-free-trade, us-against-them campaign rhetoric, unlike John Kerry’s, seems sincere. Edwards sounds as if he believes in his bones that behind every misfortune there must be a wealthy villain.” (Stuart Taylor, Jr., “John Edwards: The Lawsuit Industry Puts Its Best Face Forward”, National Journal/The Atlantic, Feb. 25).
Steve Bainbridge, noting Edwards’s jobs-jobs-jobs economic rhetoric, wonders whether the Senator pauses to worry about certain jobs destroyed by some of his main backers (Feb. 25). Edwards’s latest fund-raiser in Houston was hosted by John O’Quinn, who as the impresario of the breast implant litigation that bankrupted Dow Corning knows a thing or two about destroying jobs (Rachel Graves, “Fund-raisers bring Edwards to town”, Houston Chronicle, Feb. 24; Ken Herman, “The 2004 Election”, Cox/Palm Beach Post, Feb. 25). And on the Edwards-and-cerebral-palsy controversy that we and several other webloggers were pursuing earlier this month, Franco Castalone (The LitiGator) has added a pair of posts clarifying and extending his earlier comments, the first of which (Feb. 15) relays a wealth of information about no-fault birth injury compensation programs and the litigation they would replace, and the second of which (Feb. 16) makes some valuable points about civility in disagreement, and also says generous things about this site.
Senate nixes OB relief
State medical societies have expressed considerable ambivalence about proposals to proceed specialty by specialty on malpractice reform, starting with the hardest-hit areas such as obstetrics and emergency medicine, fearing that such measures might serve to divide the profession and allow politicians to say that they had “done something” after addressing only the most obvious crisis areas (“AMA vows united voice in battle for tort reform”, American Medical News, Jan. 5). At any rate, it seems the choice of such a compromise won’t be available at the federal level, since opponents have no seeming interest in it. This week the Senate’s Republican leadership brought back malpractice reform in a pared-down version intended just to address obstetric litigation, but no go: the 48-45 vote was pretty much the same as that by which omnibus reform had failed, falling far short of the 60 needed to overcome an expected filibuster by Democrats.
The Associated Press report on the vote (Jesse Holland, AP/DailyNews.com, Feb. 25) reported that “some conservatives” opposed the bill, but the conservative it quoted turned out to be Ken Connor, former head of the religious-right Family Research Council. What AP didn’t add is that Connor is not exactly your typical conservative, having made his fortune in Florida as a plaintiff’s lawyer suing nursing homes and having served as a tenacious legislative advocate for the interests of the trial bar before his stint at FRC (see Mar. 2-4, 2001).
NYC bar association event tonight
This evening at 6 p.m. I’ll be speaking at a panel discussion sponsored by the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, on the impact of possible federal tort reform on New York. (more)
Mom sues daughter over driveway mishap
The Michigan Court of Appeals has ruled that Carla Allen of Warren is not entitled to collect damages from her daughter for failing to maintain her property in a safe condition. Mrs. Allen tripped and fell “on a raised slab of concrete on her daughter?s driveway”. The “court ruled that when an average person with ordinary intelligence can discover a danger on casual inspection, as the mother could in this case, he or she cannot blame someone else for injuries.” The editorialists at the Detroit News say the case “speaks volumes about the absurd state of the U.S. judicial system” and suggests the need for more frequent sanctions. (“Fine Filers of Frivolous Lawsuits” (editorial), Detroit News, Feb. 24)
Bush’s FMA mistake
“And if down the road the voters of some state opt for a legal regime [on marriage law] different than that favored by Mr. Bush, why should the Constitution impede their democratic choice? The federal Defense of Marriage Act already guarantees that no state has to recognize a same-sex union performed in another state.” (“Debasing the Constitution” (editorial), Feb. 25). Josh Marshall (Feb. 24) writes: “It’s his dad and the flag burning amendment all over again. Is there really anything that tells you more about a man’s character than this?” For more on this very bad amendment, see Feb. 20.
“Journal repents over vaccine-autism link”
“One of the world’s pre-eminent medical journals, the British magazine The Lancet, has said that it should never have published a 1998 study into controversial research linking a triple vaccine for infants to autism due to the researcher’s ‘fatal conflict of interest’.” British physician/researcher Andrew Wakefield, who conducted a study raising fears about the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine, did not disclose that he had been hired by lawyers seeking to press damage claims over the vaccine. The Wakefield study was later assailed as badly flawed. (Reuters/Washington Post/Sydney Morning Herald, Feb. 23). As a result of scaremongering over the vaccine, “The incidence of measles in parts of Britain is rising ominously as the number of children formerly inoculated against the disease falls to the level which risks an epidemic. In short, we could be on the verge of a major public-health disaster. … Colossal damage has been done and hundreds of thousands of children may be at risk of serious disease.” (“Misled over MMR” (editorial), The Observer, Feb. 22). See Jane Fineman, “Maverick view that sparked panic over the triple vaccine”, The Observer, Feb. 22. For more on MMR and other vaccine litigation, see Dec. 29; earlier posts. And: Michael Fitzpatrick, “MMR: Investigating the interests”, Spiked Online, Feb. 22; Black Triangle (UK blog, posting currently suspended; numerous posts; via GruntDoc). Yet more: Michael Fumento weighs in (“Anti-vaccine Activists Get Jabbed”, Scripps-Howard, Mar. 11), as does Charles Murtaugh (Dec. 22 and Feb. 22). Update Mar. 4, 2005 (another study finds no link).
Fairness for gun makers, now
“Reasonable people do not believe that Ford or General Motors should be sued when a drunken driver speeds into and kills a pedestrian. They understand that the manufacturer should not be faulted merely because its product is used improperly and illegally. It is obviously the driver who needs to be punished.” The Senate is about to take up a bill, supported by a majority in both Houses, which would protect gun manufacturers from being sued over criminal misuse of their products. Lawmakers who sympathize with the gun-control-through-litigation campaign will try to attach spoiler amendments in hopes of derailing the bill; they shouldn’t be allowed to succeed. (“Gun legislation” (editorial), Hill News, Feb. 25). For our past commentaries on the topic, see Oct. 9 and Apr. 4-6, 2003 and our gun litigation page generally.
False accusations? Just a phase they’re going through
Three Garden Grove, Calif. schoolgirls, worried about having to explain getting home late after school, concoct a tale about being assaulted by a man in a park. 36-year-old drifter Eric Nordmark is arrested and thrown in jail where, after the girls tell various colorful lies, he spends more than half a year, planning to commit suicide if he is convicted. Then the girls’ story falls apart, and the principal accuser admits the attack never occurred. (L.A. Times coverage: H.G. Reza and Joel Rubin, “Young Accusers Arrested, Led From School in Cuffs”, Feb. 10; Christine Hanley and Joel Rubin, “No Jail Time Expected for 3 O.C. Girls”, Feb. 11; “2 Preteen Accusers to Stay in Custody”, Feb. 12; H.G. Reza, Christine Hanley and James Ricci, “Drifter Jailed on Girls’ Lies Set Course of Desperation”, Feb. 23). Curmudgeonly Clerk (Feb. 12) writes that “some of the reactions reported in the aftermath of this event simply take my breath away”. Such as? Quoting the Los Angeles Times: “Attorneys Lee [Patti Lee, the managing attorney in the juvenile division of the public defender’s office in San Francisco] and Earley [Jack Earley, an Orange County defense attorney and president of the California Attorneys for Criminal Justice] said the girls may not be guilty of anything more than being immature, and simply doing what a lot of kids their age do when they get in trouble: lie to get out of it. ‘It sounds like an adolescent tale gone awry,’ Lee said.” Historical echoes: Tawana Brawley (whose best-known advocate, lest we need reminding, is still running for president); and the English folk song “Fanny Blair” (text and tune with MIDI; background at Musical Traditions site)
Plot premise…
…of the forthcoming movie The Incredibles, from the fabulous animators at Pixar: “Mr. Incredible is a superhero; or he used to be, until a surge of lawsuits against superheroes submitted by the people they’ve saved forced the government to hide them in witness protection programs so they could lead normal, anonymous lives.” (plot summary at IMDB) (teasers and peeks) (via George M. Wallace’s “A Fool in the Forest” blog, Feb. 20; unrelatedly, Wallace also has a Feb. 23 post on bedbug litigation). More on “The Incredibles”: Oct. 25.