Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

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Yet more from the publicity file

Your editor was recently quoted in Reason (Brandon Turner, “Citings: Snow Job”, Jan., not online), where he predicted (in an interview conducted this fall) that the U.S. Supreme Court would overturn the Ninth Circuit’s decision in Hernandez v. Hughes Missile Systems, the ADA right-to-return-after-drug-misconduct case. (How accurate was this prediction? See Dec. 13). I also contributed a quote this fall when the New York Times took a look at New Jersey’s office charged with cracking down on unethical attorneys, which it’s fair to say has its hands full (John Sullivan, “In New Jersey, Rogue Lawyers Are on the Rise”, New York Times, New Jersey edition, Oct. 19, not online). And the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, covering local attorney Elliot Rothenberg’s challenge to a rule requiring all Minnesota attorneys to enroll in “elimination of bias” classes, mentions this website and our description of the program as “compulsory chapel” (see Nov. 21) (“Attorney challenging state requirement of anti-bias classes for lawyers” Jan. 2).

Back in October, we were quoted by Legal Times’s Jonathan Groner in an interesting piece on a little-publicized crusade by “public interest” lawyers to extend the constitutional right to taxpayer-provided counsel, ushered in with Gideon v. Wainwright for persons facing criminal prosecution, to civil matters such as child custody fights (“On a Crusade for a ‘Civil Gideon'”, Legal Times, Oct. 20). The idea, quietly promoted by the Soros-backed Public Justice Center and by NYU Law’s Brennan Center, is far-reaching and actually quite scary in its implications. See George Liebmann, “‘Civil Gideon’: An idea whose time has passed”, Daily Record, Jul. 18, reprinted at Calvert Institute site. Advocates were hoping to convince the Maryland high court to embrace civil Gideon, in what would have been the first such ruling in the nation, but this month the court dodged the issue in ruling on the case, Frase v. Barnhart. (Ann W. Parks, “Top court sidesteps ‘Civil Gideon’ issue, strikes down custody conditions”, Daily Record, Dec. 12; Jonathan Groner, “Inadmissible — No ‘Civil Gideon’ — for Now”, Legal Times, Dec. 15).

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Also from the publicity file

National Journal, the ultimate Washington insider’s magazine, gave this site a nice write-up earlier this month. It says we provide “juicy morsels” as well as “ammunition” in legal reform battles (Peter H. Stone, Dec. 6, not online to nonsubscribers at least). In Claims magazine, for insurance professionals, columnist Kevin Quinley names The Rule of Lawyers (St. Martin’s) as #3 in his list of 2003’s “Top Ten Risk Management Books” (Dec.), calling it “a devastating critique of the current wave of class action and mass tort litigation” and “good catharsis” for risk managers. And talk radio WGOW-FM in Chattanooga picks this site’s much-visited personal responsibility page as its “Website du Jour” for yesterday.

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U.S. lawyer count now exceeds 1 million

Welcome USA Today readers: the national newspaper reports that the number of lawyers in the U.S. now exceeds one million, and that the number of students taking the Law School Admission Test is nearing the previous record, set in 1990-1991. The article quotes yours truly at some length and mentions this website. “Lawyers say they are busy. Fifty-three percent say their greatest challenge is managing increased workloads, according to a November poll by the Affiliates, a lawyer and paralegal staffing service.” (Del Jones, “Lawyers, wannabes on the rise”, USA Today, Dec. 26) (also reprinted, via Gannett News Service, in Indianapolis Star, Arizona Republic, Salt Lake Tribune, and others)

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Latest newsletter

Our latest free newsletter, summing up the past 3-4 weeks’ worth of items on the site, went out this afternoon to its 2100+ subscribers. If you didn’t receive it, you can sign up here for future mailings and to read older newsletters. It’s a great way to keep up with items on the site you may have missed.

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Detroit News on gun design

Two weeks ago the once-great Detroit News (oh, how we miss its pre-Gannett days) published a “Special Report” entitled “Flawed guns: America unprotected” (Dec. 14-16) which recycles the plaintiffs’ allegations in seemingly every extant “design defect” case against the firearms industry. Matthew Hunter (“Trigger Finger”) has now posted a ten-part rebuttal (first entry). One of Hunter’s themes: many of the design features portrayed as “defects” in the News series are in fact sought out knowingly by many sophisticated gun buyers, as with Glock’s deliberate omission of a manual safety on its extremely popular police gun.

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Chinese court orders virtual goods returned to gamer

A court in Beijing has ordered an online gaming company to return a player’s virtual goods that had been hacked and stolen. Li Hongchen had been playing the online game “Hongyue” (Red Moon) for two years when he discovered that an unknown miscreant had invaded his account and taken virtual money and weapons. The court told the game’s operator, Beijing Artic Ice Technology Development, to return the virtual goods to Hongchen; it has not yet ruled on his request for real-world US $1,200 in compensation. Gamers cannot recall another case in which a court has ordered the transfer of game-defined imaginary goods, but the Xinhua news agency reports that disputes over virtual property are burgeoning in China’s booming online-gaming industry. (“Real verdict in China for virtual loss”, CNET Asia, Dec. 29; “Online gamer in China wins virtual theft suit”, Reuters/CNN, Dec. 20; Jay Lyman, “Gamer Wins Lawsuit in Chinese Court Over Stolen Virtual Winnings”, TechNewsWorld, Dec. 19). A conference last month on “Games and the Law” at New York Law School (papers) included a paper by Dan Hunter and F. Gregory Lastowka on “Virtual Property” (PDF).

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Guestblogger Leah Lorber returns

Attorney/author Leah Lorber, a product liability and tort reform expert who practices with the law firm of Shook, Hardy and Bacon in Washington, joined us last summer as one of our guest bloggers (see various entries between Jul. 29 and Aug. 6). We’re happy to announce that she’ll be back for another week-long stint, starting tomorrow. I’ll be continuing to post too, but probably at a reduced pace.

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Slip on grape = $41,000

The Iowa Court of Appeals last week upheld a jury’s award of $41,267 to shopper Judy Krenk, who said she slipped on a grape at the checkout aisle at the No Frills Supermarket. The store owners “claimed the managers hadn’t been notified about a hazardous condition and therefore were not negligent. … The ruling noted that it wasn’t clear how the grape got on the floor.” The jury awarded Krenk $82,535, but ruled that the accident was 50 percent her fault, so it was cut in half. (Frank Santiago, “Court upholds award to shopper who slipped on grape”, Des Moines Register, Dec. 25).

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Vaccines, cont’d

Britain’s legal-aid commission invested ?15 million in assisting claimants who wanted to sue makers over the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine, but finally decided to call a halt: “After taking expert advice, the LSC acknowledged that, given the failure of research to establish a link between MMR and autism, the litigation was ‘very likely to fail'”. Michael Fitzpatrick, writing for the UK’s Spiked Online, explores what he calls the “enormous waste of public funds” on the litigation. (“Medicine on trial”, Dec. 15). Efforts to pin the blame on the preservative thimerosal have come up short, according to an editorial in today’s WSJ: “Researchers recently examined the health records of all children born in Denmark from 1971 to 2000 for autism diagnoses. Though Denmark eliminated thimerosal from its vaccines in 1992, the researchers found that the incidence of autism continued to increase. A second research team reviewed the records of nearly 500,000 Danes vaccinated for pertussis. They also found that the risk of autism and related disorders didn’t differ between those vaccinated with thimerosal and those without.” (“The Politics of Autism” (editorial), Wall Street Journal, Dec. 29). More on vaccines and liability: Jim Copland (Manhattan Institute), “Liable to Infection”, Dallas Morning News, Dec. 14; Robert Goldberg (also Manhattan Institute), “Vaccinating against disaster”, Washington Times, Dec. 17; and see Dec. 24 and earlier posts. Update Feb. 25: Lancet regrets publication of anti-MMR study; Mar. 4, 2005: another study finds no link.

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Haiti to France: pay us $21,685,135,571.48

Reparations madness, cont’d: almost 200 years after a slave revolt won Haiti’s independence, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide “has launched a controversial campaign to get France to repay its former colony billions of dollars in restitution. And he has already sent Paris a bill, down to the very last cent: $21,685,135,571.48.” A legal adviser to the Aristide administration is considering taking the case to international court (Jacqueline Charles, “Aristide pushes for restitution from France”, Miami Herald, Dec. 18; Henry Samuel, “You owe us $21,685,135,571.48”, Daily Telegraph (UK), Oct. 8; “The sad bicentennial of a once fabulous sugar colony”, The Economist, Dec. 18). No word yet on whether any reparations will be offered in the opposite direction for the 1804 massacres during which newly emergent strongman Jean-Jacques Dessalines ordered the slaughter of almost the entire French population resident in Haiti, an estimated 20,000 persons. (Update: another side of the story from Tunku Varadarajan, who argues that the government of France really was “first a brutal colonizer, and then a usurious bully”.)

In other news, the highly popular videogame “Vice City”, part of the Grand Theft Auto series, has drawn fire from New York and Florida officials “and from the government of Haiti, which has threatened to sue the game’s manufacturer, New York-based Rockstar Games, its parent company, Take 2 Interactive Software Inc., and the game’s distributors. A Miami lawyer representing the Haitian government said the game violates the hate crime laws of Florida and other states. ‘It’s the kind of thing that has no business being sold because it’s not just a game,’ attorney Ira Kurzban told the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel. ‘It’s a teaching device for young kids and high school students. What is it teaching them? Violence, hatred and racism.'” (“Haitian, Cuban Leaders Denounce ‘Grand Theft Auto'”, WTVJ South Florida, Dec. 16). More on videogame lawsuits: Sept. 26 and links from there.

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