“Dan Morales, the former attorney general jailed for scheming to steal millions of dollars from Texas’ tobacco settlement, says sealed court documents could show wrongdoing on the part of private lawyers who represented the state.” (see Nov. 2 and links from there). Morales said a year ago that he believed the Big Five tobacco lawyers he hired may have breached their loyalty to the state in the course of taking home $3.3 billion in fees, and now says documents sealed as part of his criminal case would show such misconduct if made public. The documents were sealed by U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks at the request of attorney Mike Tigar, representing the Five. “Also Friday, Marc Murr, a former Houston lawyer charged as a co-defendant to Morales, was sentenced to six months in federal prison. In October, Murr pleaded guilty to mail fraud.” (Janet Elliott, “Morales urges probe of tobacco attorneys”, Houston Chronicle, Dec. 20).
Author Archive
Dallas police fake-drug scandal
Hair-raising and, as Mark A.R. Kleiman (Dec. 16) points out, strangely underpublicized: “Dallas police paid their drug informants based on the quantity of drugs seized. So some informants decided to manufacture cases by planting fake ‘cocaine’ — variously described as the powder used to chalk billiard cues and as ground-up gypsum wallboard — on about 80 Mexican immigrants.” The bounty had been set at $1,000 per kilogram.
Canada: nine-year-old’s hockey suit
“Parents may stop helping out on their kid’s teams if a Springbank lawyer successfully sues volunteers within his own son’s league, says the head of minor hockey in Calgary. … Michael Kraik is suing the Springbank Minor Hockey Association because he says his nine-year-old son Alexander was deliberately placed on a weaker team due to favouritism from league officials for their own children.” The suit seeks C$50,000 and names two officials individually. (“Hockey crisis looms”, Calgary Sun, Dec. 19). Update Jan. 11: suit dropped.
Canada: curling accommodation demanded
A Winnipeg man with a bad knee has filed a human rights complaint challenging the refusal of curling authorities to permit him to use a “delivery stick” in competitions that would permit him to throw rocks without bending his knees. The devices have become popular among elderly and disabled curlers, but the Canadian and World curling associations (yes, there turns out to be curling outside Canada) have banned it as giving an unfair advantage, much as golf authorities in the U.S. tried to ban the use of golf carts as a substitute for walking until Casey Martin’s victorious Supreme Court challenge. (“New rule discriminates, says curler”, CBC, Dec. 10)(more on disabled-rights demands in sports competition)
Sic ’em, says Cruise
Number of Senators who are lawyers
It currently stands at 59 of the 100, according to today’s editorial in Investor’s Business Daily on legal reform (“Any tort in a storm”, Dec. 18).
Oklahoma AG: I wasn’t familiar with short-selling
“I have recently been made aware of a market practice known as ‘short selling’ and am amazed that it is legal,” Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson wrote the Securities and Exchange Commission last year. That’s one of many tidbits to be found in a column by the L.A. Times’s Mike Hiltzik about politicians’ ties to Oklahoma-based Pre-Paid Legal Services, a multilevel marketing (MLM) enterprise that has been the subject of a fair bit of controversy and litigation over the years (Mike Hiltzik, “Lockyer Not Above a Little Legal Aid”, Los Angeles Times, Dec. 18). Oklahoma AG Edmondson’s bio lists him as having been born on “October 12, 1946” rather than, as one might assume, “yesterday”.
Killer nurse: hospitals didn’t share records
“‘What I’m coming to understand is that, short of an actual conviction or revocation of a license, none of that information gets shared,’ said Dr. William Cors, chief medical officer at Somerset Medical Center in Somerville, N.J., where Mr. [Charles] Cullen last worked and where, prosecutors say, he may have killed 12 to 15 patients. ‘If anything good comes from this, it would be to reform the system where we’re prevented from telling one another what we know out of fear, quite frankly, of being sued.’ … Ms. Schantz, at St. Luke’s, said, ‘There is no record that anyone called here, ever, for any recommendation on him.’ And if someone had called? She said she was not sure what the hospital would have said. Hospitals are loath to say anything negative, she acknowledged, adding, ‘We’re a litigious society.'” (Richard P?rez-Pe?a, “Hospitals Didn’t Share Records of a Nurse Accused in Killings”, New York Times, Dec. 17). For more on reference liability, see Aug. 7; discussion of pilot and teacher cases from The Excuse Factory (link now dead). See also Mar. 23, 2000. More: Jan. 29, Mar. 3, Mar. 30.
Daschle does the trial-lawyer hop
A Senate Minority Leader’s gotta drum up money, after all: he popped down to Jacksonville last Thursday for a fund-raiser hosted by plaintiff’s lawyer Wayne Hogan, part of the $3.4-billion-in-fees Florida tobacco team (see Apr. 12, 2000), and then yesterday attended an event at the Providence, R.I., home of Ness Motley’s Jack McConnell (see Jun. 7, 2001) (David DeCamp, “Party not big on bid from Weinstein”, Jacksonville Times-Union, Dec. 15; Liz Anderson, Scott MacKay and Katherine Gregg, “State House’s quick Thanksgiving food drive is no turkey”, Providence Journal, Dec. 1) (hat tip: South Dakota Politics blog)
Florida AARP supports liability cap
“In a reversal that has stunned the plaintiff bar, the Florida chapter of AARP, the powerful senior lobbying group, has declared its support of caps on pain and suffering damages in abuse and neglect lawsuits against Florida nursing homes.” In years past the retirees’ group has been an influential foe of limits on nursing home liability, but the state chapter reversed course and decided to strike a compromise with nursing home operators that would trade limits on pain-and-suffering liability in exchange for the industry’s agreement to accept new state rules, among them a requirement that facilities maintain assets so that successful litigants can recover liability verdicts. A lobbyist for the Florida chapter “said AARP changed its view after learning that many nursing homes were hiding their assets to avoid liability claims. In addition, many nursing homes have been carrying little or no liability coverage, despite the 2001 law’s requirement that all facilities carry coverage.” The group’s change in course is likely to draw fire from other elements within AARP that remain closely allied with the litigation lobby; it also was criticized by an official of the “Coalition to Protect Florida Elders, a nonprofit organization that is funded by trial lawyer Jim Wilkes.” More on Fla. nursing home suits: Mar. 13-14, 2001; Mar. 19, 2003; etc. (Julie Kay, “Unexpected Ally”, Miami Daily Business Review, Dec. 17).