The second claim of John Lott’s suit against Steven Levitt has been settled with a remarkable letter of apology by Levitt; Lott retains the right to appeal the larger claim, which had been thrown out, as we discussed in Part VIII.
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Criticizing Saudi financiers
Whether or not you reside in the U.K., the range of reading material available to you regarding the tangled banking relationships of the Middle East is being shaped and constrained by the London libel courts. (Gary Shapiro, “Libel Suit Leads to Destruction of Books”, New York Sun, Aug. 2; Mark Steyn, “The vanishing jihad exposés”, syndicated/Orange County Register, Aug. 5; earlier here and here).
In the olive oil aisle
In this case, the accident-prone shopper’s bad luck was that the store had just installed a surveillance camera. The report is from South Florida’s CBS4.com.
Serial spam litigation backfires on plaintiff
I think it’s fair to say that serial spam litigation is less lucrative than serial ADA litigation. Walter discussed the setback suffered by plaintiff James Gordon (June 2007), in which a federal court ruled that Gordon, who makes his entire living using anti-spam laws to sue emailers, had no legitimate claims because he had not suffered any damages (and indeed, could not, since his only “business” was filing lawsuits for receiving spam).
The court was clearly disgusted by Gordon and his attempt to manipulate the CAN-SPAM act to extort millions of dollars from an emailer, because not only did it rule against him, but this week it awarded attorneys’ fees to his victim. Now, regular readers of Overlawyered know that one of my pet peeves is that even when courts order sanctions, they often award mere token amounts which are inadequate to deter plaintiffs or reimburse defendants for their troubles. That wasn’t the case here; the court awarded $110,440 in fees and costs to the victorious defendants. (This was actually significantly less than the defendants had requested — half a million dollars — but the court found that this was grossly inflated and not substantiated by the defense counsel’s own billing records. Still, $110,000 is nothing to sneeze at.)
So this case provides lessons for both sides about being greedy:
- If you’re going to try to become a professional plaintiff, try to suffer actual damages — if possible, physical damages — rather than demanding millions of dollars for receiving emails. If you insist on suing without having been injured, at least try to be a sympathetic plaintiff in a wheelchair who can’t use public restrooms, rather than being a guy who sits around his living room in his pajamas looking at spam.
- If you’re up against an unsympathetic professional plaintiff, don’t squander the court’s goodwill by demanding far more in legal fees than you’re entitled to. And if you’re going to pad your fee request to the court, at least make sure that the bills you submit to substantiate your demands actually match the numbers you’ve told the court. Judges don’t like it when you claim that you spent 2,000 hours and your own records show that you’ve only spent 1,500 hours. The judge was so annoyed here that after he re-calculated the legitimate bills, he determined that they were grossly overinflated and slashed them by an additional 70%.
Illinois court: Taxpayers not responsible for porch collapse
In June 2003, there was a tragic porch collapse at an apartment building in Chicago; 13 people were killed and at least 50 more were injured. The quest for deep pockets began; as we discussed in August 2005, even though the porch was on private property, trial lawyers aimed their litigation guns at the city of Chicago, on the theory that Chicago taxpayers have more money than the building owner if city inspectors had done a better job, the accident wouldn’t have happened.
A trial judge bought that argument, but yesterday, in a victory for taxpayers, an appellate court reversed that ruling, holding that, contrary to the theory of the trial lawyers, the city is not a guarantor that nothing bad will ever happen within its city limits. The mere fact that the city inspectors failed to issue violation notices for the porch construction does not make the city financially liable for the collapse; if it did, then the potential to extend liability to taxpayers would be limited only by the imagination of the trial lawyer. Police fail to stop a driver who’s speeding, and he later hits you? Blame the city. Inspectors don’t make your neighbor cut down the dead tree on his property, and it falls on your house during a storm? Blame the city. The possibilities are endless.
The victims of the accident do have a legitimate case — but that legitimate case is against the building landlord, not taxpayers. But those deep pockets aren’t quite deep enough, so the trial lawyers aren’t satisfied with that answer:
But plaintiffs’ lawyers said that was not enough.
Pappas and his companies have about $17 million in insurance coverage, said Terry Ekl, who represents the family of Robert Koranda, who died in the collapse.
“Without the City of Chicago in the case, these families are not going to get anywhere near fair compensation,” Ekl said.
If the Appellate Court’s ruling stands, the plaintiffs would take up the issue with state lawmakers, Murphy said.
“We’re going to be having our clients go down to the legislature and say, ‘You can’t be letting this happen,’ ” Murphy said. “These children cannot have died or be injured in vain.’
Yep; they’re not doing it for their own bank accounts; rather, this is For the Children™.
Guestblogger thanks
Thanks to Skip Oliva for helping fill in here again over the past week. Skip’s posts drew notice from, among others, Prof. Bainbridge and Liberal Order. You can read more of his work at the Voluntary Trade Council blog and the Mises Economics blog.
“Felony sexual abuse”
In McMinnville, Ore., it may consist of fanny-patting in school hallways by seventh graders. Following a public outcry, Yamhill County D.A. Bradley Berry has now dropped the felony counts — the resulting status as registered sex offenders might have followed the youngsters through life — but he still wants to have Cory Mashburn and Ryan Cornelison at least given probation on misdemeanor counts. (Scott Michels, “Boys Face Sex Trial for Slapping Girls’ Posteriors”, ABCNews.com, Jul. 24; Mark Steyn, “Swat somebody’s butt, and yours belongs to the D.A.”, Orange County Register, Jul. 28; Jeanine Stice, “Gene’s right about The McMinnville Two”, Salem Statesman-Journal, Jul. 24). Update Aug. 22: charges dropped.
See You Some Other Time!
It’s time to end my week of guest-blogging here. Thanks again to Walter Olson and Ted Frank for indulging my ramblings. Since I’ve used most of my posts to dwell on the evils of antitrust regulation, I’d like to try and go out on a more positive note.
Equal Protection v. Anticompetitive Prices
It’s difficult to reconcile the American concept of “equal justice under law” with the Federal Trade Commission’s motto, “Protecting America’s Consumers.” The implication is that there is one set of laws for consumers and another set—affording lesser protection—for producers and sellers. This conflict presents itself in all “consumer protection” laws, and it stems from an awkward premise: That in any given economic exchange, the party trading cash holds the legal and moral high ground over the party trading a good or service.
Put another way, try to fashion a consumer protection or antitrust law in a purely barter economy. If A trades two pounds of flour to B in exchange for a bushel of apples, which party is the “consumer” entitled to government protection? It’s easy to apply common law principles regarding fraud to such a transaction, but virtually impossible to employ contemporary consumer protection standards, which require a presumption that one trader is good and the other is bad.
“Ladies’ Nights” lawsuits, cont’d
ABC News files a report on a sector of litigation we’ve covered extensively over the years:
Tim Gleason, general manager of the China Club in New York, calls [attorney Roy Den] Hollander’s complaint “pathetic” and echoes other club owners who argue that the discounts actually help both sexes by balancing out the ratio between men and women….
“Ladies’ Night benefits the men as much as it benefits the ladies, the clubs and society,” said John Juliano, owner of the recently closed Copacabana Nightclub. “And the only loser here is this grouch with a warped point of view.”
GWU lawprof and inveterate publicity hound John Banzhaf, whose “suing for credit” course has generated one such suit, gets a mention too. (Brittany Bacon, “‘Ladies’ Night’ Lawsuits on the Rocks?”, Jul. 25; 239 reader comments so far). More: Lat, Jul. 30.