Welcome visitors from GruntDoc, “Ramblings of an Emergency Physician in Texas”, which has a pleasing graphically rendered blogroll as well as the expected reflections on medical and military matters. And Southern Appeal, “The random musings of a Southern Federalist and his co-conspirators”, notably including Prof. Michael DeBow of Samford U.’s Cumberland School of Law, who’s written some great stuff on the tobacco-Medicaid litigation. The site is also your one-stop resource for commentary supportive of the appeals court nomination of Alabama AG Bill Pryor. Speaking of such nominations, Prof. Bainbridge offers cogent thoughts about a much-criticized speech by appeals court nominee Janice Rogers Brown (Nov. 4; see Nov. 1) but did startle us several paragraphs before the end with a sudden rhetorical question about whether we personally at this site are “just wasting [our] time.” Alex Wellen, author of the much-talked-about new memoir Barman (relating his experiences as a graduate of a second-tier law school turned intellectual property litigator) has launched a new legal weblog in which he generously lists us among his “blog mentors”; when Wellen’s book tour took him to Manhattan we had a chance to meet and compare notes in person. And we got a great many visitors last week when Todd Dominey of Atlanta (WhatDoIKnow.org) called us “nice” and put us on his “Enjoying” list.
Author Archive
Sorry, wrong (class-action) number
Maryland state judge Steven I. Platt “has knocked down a class-action settlement involving late fees on telephone bills, saying the attorneys’ request for $13 million in legal fees was excessive”. Under the terms of settlement of the four-year-old lawsuit, Verizon Maryland had agreed to set aside an impressive-sounding $51.9 million for refunds, but in fact only 18,000 of the 2-million-plus eligible customers submitted claims for their refund of (in most cases) $6, “making the settlement worth less than $200,000.” “Virtually all of the money on the table would have gone to the lawyers, and only a very small share would have gone to the class members themselves,” said Michael J. Quirk, a staff attorney for Trial Lawyers for Public Justice, which opposed the settlement. (Caroline E. Mayer, “Md. Judge Cites Legal Fees In Rejecting Phone Accord”, Washington Post, Nov. 18).
Richmond & Oklahoma City radio
Yesterday at 3:15 p.m. EST I was a guest on Michael Graham’s talk show on WRVA, Richmond, Va., to discuss money laundering regulations and the latest controversy to assail radio host Rush Limbaugh (I wrote about the general subject of money laundering law in 1999 for Reason). And tomorrow morning at 8:35 a.m. CST I’ll be a guest on Oklahoma City’s WKY radio morning program.
Back from travel & award
I’m finally on web duty again following my trip to give a talk before the American Tort Reform Association gathering in Las Vegas. ATRA has two current projects that especially merit readers’ attention. One is its recent update of its “Judicial Hellholes” reports on local jurisdictions famed for unfairness to outsider defendants, such as Madison County, Ill., Jefferson County, Miss., St. Louis, Philadelphia, Miami and Los Angeles. Recent news coverage can be found here.
The other project is ATRA’s recent launch of what it calls the Legal Reform Champions List. The list is intended to address a widespread (and sometimes infuriating) phenomenon: many lawyers who make a career specialty of litigation defense quietly undermine their clients’ interests by working covertly or openly to block reforms that would curb the volume or cost of litigation, often mindful of their own self-interest in ensuring there are plenty of future lawsuits requiring their services to defend. ATRA’s new list takes a relatively positive approach to this problem: rather than denounce by name defense lawyers who operate as effective allies of the litigation lobby, it singles out for praise those who (often at a real cost to their strict monetary interest) work in the public policy process to combat excessive litigation. We wrote about this problem in The Rule of Lawyers (in a passage not online through conventional means, but available with registration through Amazon’s book-peek feature).
I am happy to report something I wasn’t expecting when I set off for the trip: at my Monday appearance ATRA was kind enough to give me its “Civil Justice Achievement Award” 2003. This seems to be the year for me to receive handsomely engraved awards (see Sept. 24). Thanks! (& welcome Ernie the Attorney readers)
Off for a few days
I’ll be away through Tuesday speaking at the American Tort Reform Association‘s 2003 Annual Conference for State Coalition Leaders in Las Vegas. Co-blogger Ted Frank, however, will still be watching the news for postworthy items. See you on Wednesday.
NYC cops nabbed on claims fraud rap
The urban accident racket, as we’ve had occasion to observe, has over the years corrupted any number of doctors (more), clinics, insurance adjusters and even parents, as well as (of course) lawyers. We are reminded to add “policemen” to the list by the latest report that more than a dozen persons, including several New York City police officers, have been indicted in a claims fraud scheme in which cops’ role was to write up fake accident reports for crashes that never occurred which were then used as the basis for filing personal-injury claims. (Michael Wilson, “City Officers Are Arrested in Bogus Claims of Accidents”, New York Times, Nov. 13; “Fraud Didn’t Enrich Officers, Authorities Say”, Nov. 14) (more, from 1996)
Job opening
The Manhattan Institute Center for Legal Policy (with which I’m associated) tells me that it has an opening for a staff position to work on compiling articles, reports and other material related to the Trial Lawyers Inc. project. Candidates need not be located in New York City but should have a strong interest in litigation reform issues combined with writing ability and familiarity with Web-based publishing (you might be a blogger, for example). If you fit the bill, email me at editor -at – thisdomainname and I’ll forward your response to the Institute.
Update: College Board resists test-accommodation tide
The College Board finally appears to be halting its years-long slide toward offering extra time and other accommodations to an ever-growing number of test-taking students claiming learning disability (see our earlier coverage going back to Feb. 1999). The last straw came when litigation pressure forced testers to abandon the practice of “flagging” scores on tests taken with accommodations (see Jul. 22-23, 2002 and links from there). Searching for a way to prevent a new flood tide of requests, the Board instituted “a new requirement that students seeking extra time must generally have a diagnosis and a plan for accommodations in school at least four months before taking the SAT.” In addition, it compiled a list of 142 schools which had accounted for a greatly disproportionate share of accommodations requests — a list including many highly affluent public and private schools — and asked those schools to supply greater documentation for the requests. “Faced with such scrutiny, many of the schools that had asked for the most accommodations have pulled back substantially on their requests.” The number of parental appeals has also tripled, suggesting that the Board may need to hire more lawyers than ever (and nervously hope for favorable treatment in the courts) if it wants to make the new harder line stick. (Tamar Lewin, “Change in SAT Procedure Echoes in Disability Realm”, New York Times, Nov. 8).
Church bulletin smackdown
Milwaukee paper reports on the unpleasant two-year litigation that resulted after two employees of Liturgical Publications Inc., the country’s largest publisher of church bulletins and newsletters, departed to form a start-up competitor. The case ended with a jury’s rejection of allegations that the former employees stole trade secrets; a judge had earlier ruled a noncompete agreement unenforceable (David Doege, “Bulletin publisher leaves fold, beats lawsuit”, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Nov. 11; Lisa Sink, “Most bulletin publisher’s claims against ex-workers dismissed”, Dec. 30, 2002) (via Employer’s Lawyer (Nov. 11), which says the story provides “a good picture of what I call the soft dollar cost of litigation”)
Privileged, confidential…and in the dumpster
What’s that in the dumpster at the University Park Plaza in Fort Myers, Fla., available for curious strangers to pick through? Why, it’s thousands of personal, confidential client files, abandoned after the Florida law firm of Annis, Mitchell, Cockey, Edwards, and Roehn went bankrupt and closed its local office. (“Attorneys abandon old client files”, MSNBC, Oct. 30)(via Carolyn Elefant)