Assuming you are a litigator, tort reform has crippled plaintiff’s practice. Hanging out your own shingle is more difficult than ever before. Unless you have an established reputation, you’ll find very little business “coming in the door.” You’ll need to market yourself extensively. If you can survive and thrive, all the power to you.
(Infirmation.com )
Sounds like progress to me.
Elaine Joyce is a highly competitive female amateur golfer who wants to play with the guys. But she was barred from playing with her father in a Men’s Member-Member tournament. This has left her “ostracized, marginalized, humiliated, embarrassed and denounced,” according to her federal lawsuit.
But wait:
Joyce said she began to feel hostility after she filed the state discrimination complaint in July. One Saturday, after a match-play club championship, she walked into the clubhouse after the first round.
“There were 20 to 25 guys in there,” she said. “And as soon I walked in the door, everything stopped. Silence. ‘There she is. That’s the woman. That’s the problem.’ Stupid stuff like that.”
Joyce compared the experience to her fight to play with the Forty Thieves. After the town acted in that case, it took 18 months for her to be admitted as a member. Joyce said some members of the group were appalled and let her know it. One said he would play only if she played naked. Others walked off the course when paired with her. Some refused to speak to her during rounds.
(NYT, Feb. 19)
I’d prefer to play with a single digit lady than a 20+ old guy. But can I still tell my off-color jokes?
Ramon Gilsanz, a structural engineer with a small office in Manhattan, showed up at the World Trade Center site to pitch in after the disaster; like many others, he started as a volunteer and found his role evolving into a subcontractor at the city’s request. Now, like about 130 other structural engineers, he is named in many of 8,000 lawsuits filed by the Paul Napoli firm and others over dust exposure to various bystanders. He and another structural engineer said they worked alongside the other rescue and cleanup workers and were never assigned responsibility for air quality. (Jim Dwyer, “For Engineer, a Cloud of Litigation After 9/11”, New York Times, Feb. 23).
Another bunch of things not to do if you’re a member of the legal profession.
(Earlier: Nov. 5, etc.)
My latest Liability Outlook is on the Patent Reform Act of 2007:
Despite some in the media calling patent reform dead, on January 24, 2008, the Senate placed S. 1145, the Patent Reform Act of 2007, on the general calendar. The next few weeks will be critical to the legislation, which the House passed in September. Although much of the discussion has focused on the different perspectives and concerns that the high tech and the biotech/pharma industries have about the legislation, the fact remains that the patent litigation system is broken. Congress should make every effort to fix it by writing into this legislation reasonable formulas for damage awards and venue rules that discourage forum-shopping. …
Affiliates of Erich Spangenberg’s Plutus IP have sued 476 different defendants in 42 lawsuits. The vast majority of those lawsuits allege infringements of patents that Plutus IP purchased for $1,000. The use of invalid patents in litigation is more than theoretical. Philip Jackson sued his attorneys, Chicago plaintiffs firm Niro, Scavone, Haller & Niro, for malpractice after his $12.1 million jury verdict against Glenayre Electronics Inc. was reduced to under $3 million; Niro challenged the malpractice suit by claiming that th e patent Jackson had successfully enforced was invalid. In 2006, approximately 6,000 defendants were sued in 2,800 patent cases; in 2007, the six thousand mark was reached in early October, implying a 30 percent increase in patent litigation in a single year. Such litigation stifles substantial technological innovation. Patent trolls claim to block entire fields, and one cannot hope to innovate in these areas without the financial capital to handle the threat of patent litigation. IBM has 370 corporate patent attorneys, not just to avoid the pitfalls of infringement, but to create a patent portfolio that can provide counterclaims (or cross-licensing opportunities) if a commercial entity were to sue them for infringement. Since the late 1990s, patent litigation costs have outstripped patent profits.
Perennial Overlawyered favorite Jack Thompson may find that his doodles, or supplementary art, or whatever, on court filings are an expensive matter, as the Florida Supreme Court continues to consider disciplinary action against him. Aside from the extraneous picture matter, which includes images of “swastikas, kangaroos in court, a reproduced dollar bill, cartoon squirrels, Paul Simon, Paul Newman, Ray Charles, a handprint with the word ‘slap’ written under it, Bar Governor Benedict P. Kuehne, a baby, Ed Bradley, Jack Nicholson, Justice Clarence Thomas, Julius Caesar, monkeys, a house of cards,” and so forth, Thompson, known for his crusades against violence and sex in videogames, is accused of engaging in constant filings that are “repetitive, frivolous and insult the integrity of the court,” and faces a possible order that would bar him from filing actions unless signed by another Florida bar member. Thompson rejects the charges, saying, “I have a right to file anything I want with the court.” (Alana Roberts, “Anti-Porn Crusader May Face Sanctions for ‘Meritless Filings'”, Daily Business Review, Feb. 22).
Kevin Underhill at Lowering the Bar has put a lot of effort into it.
For all the complaints about tort reformers supposedly relying upon urban legends to promote their cause, one more frequently sees trial lawyers promoting fictional versions of their victories. As Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama kowtow to John Edwards for his endorsement, it’s worth exploring the case on his record he refers to most frequently. Remarkably, not a single mainstream media organization has questioned Edwards’s self-serving version of the Valerie Lakey case. I correct this problem in today’s American:
Sta-Rite had already been putting warnings on its pool drain covers, and the 1993 case did nothing to change their product design or the warnings conveyed to buyers. The drain cover in the Lakey case was sold in February 1987 with a warning label; soon thereafter Sta-Rite began embossing the warnings on the cover. This safety innovation was used against them at trial, the argument being that they should have acted earlier. But no one could reasonably think that an additional warning to screw in the drain cover would have made an iota of difference. The cover already had holes for screws, county regulations already required the pool drain cover to be screwed down, the pool managers testified that they had done so several times in the year before Lakey’s accident—and Edwards had already recovered millions from the municipality for its failure to keep the cover screwed down.
The entertainer and her father/manager are being sued by video maker Speedfit over her refusal to give approval for the release of a tape in which she starred in a multi-million contract. Speedfit owner Alex Astilean says that by blocking the video’s distribution, “They are hurting millions of fat people in America.” (“Page Six”, New York Post, Feb. 19).
ACSH’s Jeff Stier in today’s New York Post:
CONGRESS is poised to pass a massive giveaway to the ambulance-chasing trial attorneys – under the guise of protecting consumers.
The proposed law [the CPSC Reform Act] would give the 50 state attorneys general new powers to sue the makers of allegedly unsafe products – and even to demand help in their suits from the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Headline-hungry AGs will even be able to sue over products the CPSC has already found to be safe. In other words, national standards will effectively go out the window, as politically ambitious AGs compete to bash business so as to win popularity for future elections.
The legislation – which the House has already passed and the Senate’s likely to pass – would hamper CPSC’s mission by creating multiple unscientific “safety” standards. Each AG’s vision of what the latest scientific studies imply about purported dangers would prevail in a given state, rather than the CPSC’s own (far more expert) findings.
All this would mean a bonanza to trial lawyers – who’d stand to make hundreds of millions from relentless lawsuits within just a few years, since each state would become a new roulette-wheel of potential jury verdicts against manufacturers. …
Further encouraging bogus complaints, the bill would grant unprecedented “whistle-blower” protection to any employee who alleges a fear of product danger – an easy way to secure your job until your case is adjudicated.