A woman’s lawsuit charges that the death of her 77-year-old husband was the “direct and proximate result” of his slip and fall 21 months earlier on an “unnatural accumulation of ice” in front of a Trader Joe’s supermarket. A newspaper article last year describes the man as having fought a “courageous battle with cancer” before his death. [Josh Stockinger, Batavia (Ill.) Daily Herald]
Author Archive
Attorney’s fee spin cycle
Judge Posner caustically dispatches a fee request following the failure of a putative class action over alleged defects in Sears’ Kenmore clothes dryers [AmLaw]
IIPA vs. open-source software
A reminder from Ken at Popehat: “Every time you hum to yourself, you’re taking bread from the mouths of musicians.”
Dept. of Irony
A judge finds that Wisconsin’s anti-bias agency, the Equal Rights Division, discriminated against a longtime employee [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]
“Delaware judge dumps frequent filer plaintiff attorneys”
“When forced to defend their conduct and leadership role, original plaintiffs’ counsel approached the concept of candor to the tribunal as if attempting to sell me a used car,” wrote Vice Chancellor Travis Laster, ordering the replacement of shareholder lawyers in a case against Revlon Inc. “The lawsuit was consolidated from several complaints brought by law firms that Laster describes as ‘frequent filers’ — firms which often file cases on behalf of shareholders, sometimes within in minutes of a deal being announced.” [Reuters] More: Dave Hoffman, Concurring Opinions.
The unsustainable economics of legal education
Maimon Schwarzschild at Right Coast has some thoughts.
Pattis on “The Rule of Lawyers”
Premier criminal defense blogger Norm Pattis takes a look at my 2003 book on mass litigation and agrees with much of what I have to say, while still winding up with a feeling of “ambivalence.” A sample:
I end where I started. Lawyers have too much power. We play with the lives of others with impunity. I think Olson’s on to something.
I await his next book, and encourage him to take a look at the lives or ordinary lawyers. Not all of us own jets. I’m thrilled with first class on the few times I’ve tried it. Most often I fly coach.
Whole thing here.
Afraid of baby slings
The Consumer Product Safety Commission considers them a hazardous product [Lenore Skenazy, Free-Range Kids]
Toyotathon roundup
- In much-publicized recent Harrison, N.Y. crash, computer shows no indication that housekeeper driving car was using the brake [NY Times, Detroit News]
- My National Review Online piece (which spent a couple of days in the #1 and #2 most-read positions at that site) is discussed by Damon Root at Reason “Hit and Run” among elsewhere;
- 69 year old plows her car into a clinic waiting room in Peabody, Mass., but she was driving an Infiniti so everyone can turn the page [Boston Herald]
- About that “declining quality at Toyota” meme [Truth About Cars, Fumento and more]
- As I pointed out in the NRO piece, complaints of unintended acceleration ebb and flow for reasons that often seem to have more to do with cultural and media trends than with what might actually be going on with the cars. Apropos of which, blogger Auto Prophet says complaints actually dropped drastically during the years that electronic throttle controls became common;
- NHTSA administrator Strickland, who counts as a bit of a hostile witness around these parts, testified last week that “the rate of complaints against Toyota, when compared with other makers, was ‘unremarkable.'” [WaPo]
- Toyota demanding retraction of ABC News story [Gawker]
- Here’s a seminar on how to sue, with CLE credit and speakers from firms like Kline & Specter;
- Highway deaths fall to historic low [David Henderson/EconLog, Payne/NRO “Planet Gore”]
- Simply priceless: the L.A. Times, which of all the big papers perhaps most reliably transmits a Litigation Lobby view of the world, prints a grossly tendentious paean to the glories of auto-design litigation that relies extensively on the views of Ben Kelley — yes, the Ben Kelley. One place to begin for a corrective is Charles Babcock’s paper, “Approaches to Product Liability Risk in the U.S. Automotive Industry“, published in the 1994 National Academy of Engineering volume Product Liability and Innovation: Managing Risk in an Uncertain Environment.
- Sam Smith at Jalopnik is taking a hard line: “America, You Brought The Toyota Hoax On Yourself”
Claim: Goldman Sachs should have insisted he give them his money
Business Insider and the NYLJ have details.