Turn those credit slips into gold

The Chicago law firm of Edelman, Combs, Latturner & Goodwin, LLC has some wonderful news for you:

We are looking for electronically generated credit / debit card receipts which show either (a) the card expiration date or (b) any digits of the credit/ debit card number other than the last five.

In order to protect consumers against identity theft, an amendment to the Fair Credit Reporting Act with a final effective date of December 4, 2006 requires merchants who accept credit/ debit cards and issue electronic receipts to program their machines to not show either the expiration date or more than the last 5 digits of the credit/ debit card number. The expiration date is important because a thief can use it together with the last four or five digits of the number to reconstruct the entire card number.

It is a violation to show either the expiration date or more than the last 5 digits of the card number. (We have seen some receipts where 4 or 5 other digits are shown, and that is a violation.) It is not necessary that any identity theft have actually occurred. Damages for a willful violation are $100 to $1,000 per receipt. The class representative may be able to obtain some additional compensation.

We have a number of pending cases alleging this violation and are interested in other merchants who are violating the law.

The burgeoning volume of entrepreneurial litigation over insufficiently blinded credit slips is the subject of a recent Wall Street Journal article: see Robin Sidel, “Retailers Whose Slips Show Too Much Attract Lawsuits”, Apr. 28, reprinted Cattle Network, Apr. 28. For more about name partner Daniel Edelman, see Nov. 15, 1999 (infamous BancBoston settlement), Feb. 7, 2000, and Dec. 11, 2006. The Edelman firm’s website has a long listing of notable case involvements which boasts of its role in mortgage escrow class actions, but does not mention BancBoston.

Filed under: class actions, Daniel Edelman, FACTA

Sellers of used CDs

New burdens are being heaped on them by state legislators who appear intent on protecting the interests of the original music providers:

In Florida, the new legislation requires all stores buying second-hand merchandise for resale to apply for a permit and file security in the form of a $10,000 bond with the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. In addition, stores would be required to thumb-print customers selling used CDs, and acquire a copy of state-issued identity documents such as a driver’s license. Furthermore, stores could issue only store credit — not cash — in exchange for traded CDs, and would be required to hold discs for 30 days before reselling them.

(Ed Christman, “New laws create second-hand woes for CD retailers”, Reuters/Billboard, May 4; Ars Technica, May 7). According to HardOCP, used game CDs are affected by the rules as well. (May 8).

Filed under: competition through litigation, copyright, Florida, music and musicians

Where are they now? Larry Klayman watch

How the mighty have fallen. Once able to harass the president of the United States, professional gadfly Larry Klayman — former head of Judicial Watch — is now reduced to filing lawsuits over zoning issues. The town of Pompano Beach approved plans by the Islamic Center of South Florida to build a mosque; at least one resident of the neighborhood disapproved, and hired Klayman:

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday, claims the leader of the mosque, Imam Hassan Sabri, has repeatedly been associated with others who are tied to terrorist groups including Hamas, al-Qaida and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

The connections outlined in the filing appear loose and there is no accusation of direct wrongdoing.

Having reviewed the complaint (PDF), it appears to range from meritless to frivolous; this about sums up Klayman’s argument:

Larry Klayman, the lawyer for Wright, said the filing does not amount to an anti-Muslim action but maintained that the mosque sacrificed public safety.

“The mosque is radical, the imam is radical,” Klayman said. “We believe they will go out and recruit people in the African-American community to do their bidding.”

I may not be a fan of “radical” Muslims, but as you can imagine, a church being “radical” and “recruiting people” are protected activities under the First Amendment. And while Klayman failed to name the town that approved the allegedly-suspect rezoning as a party in the case, he sued the completely unrelated Council on American-Islamic Relations for some inexplicable reason. (I suspect the phrase “cheap publicity stunt” may be the answer.)

By the way, one of these things is not like the others:

Klayman also has brought cases against Dick Cheney, Osama bin Laden, Fidel Castro and the Teamsters, as well as his own mother.

(Previous coverage of Klayman: Apr. 2002, Jul. 2005, Apr. 2006)

Filed under: Larry Klayman

Glendora v. Savarino: Bob Hope photos prove unavailing

Rather than even try to summarize the case, we’ll let Law.com do it for us: “A New York judge has limited a public-access TV personality’s use of small claims courts following her repeated abuse of the system. In dismissing her claim that a Cablevision employee ‘poisoned’ her sponsors’ minds, the judge noted that the woman, who goes by the name Glendora, submitted 360 handwritten pages of documentation, including ‘multiple copies of a 60-year-old photo of the plaintiff with Bob Hope … [and] commentary about the impressive geographic expanse of the City of Yonkers.'” (Mark Fass, “Old Photos of Bob Hope Fail to Carry the Day for Litigious TV Personality”, New York Law Journal, May 3).

P.S. Glendora’s website is here (plays video)(hat tip Gunner of No Quarters Blog, who suggests checking out show # 4260 for more on the hostess’s style in suit-filing).

Filed under: pro se

“A paradigm for ‘frivolous'”

This week, Roy Pearson, the Judge With the Missing Pants, has replaced Duke Lacrosse prosecutor Mike Nifong as the symbol of lawyers run amok in the United States. And after hearing the story of Pearson’s lawsuit, approximately 65 million people — one for every dollar Pearson is demanding — have asked me in exasperation what it takes for a lawyer to get disciplined in this country. Well, perhaps one reason it’s so difficult to discipline an attorney can be illustrated by a case handed down on Thursday in the Ninth Circuit, involving an attorney named Richard Canatella. Mr. Canatella has a rather… spotty disciplinary history. As described by the California State Bar:

Canatella stipulated to filing numerous frivolous actions in courts in San Mateo, San Francisco, and Santa Clara county courts, as well as in the California Court of Appeal and federal district and appeals courts.

[…]

Canatella’s involvement in nine other matters also was the subject of discipline.

Sanctions were ordered against him or his clients 37 times. Courts repeatedly found him responsible for frivolous, meritless and vexatious actions. Sanctions totalled more than $18,000 in one matter, and the opposing parties were granted all fees and costs in another.

In one case, a federal judge said, “This complaint is a paradigm for ‘frivolous.’” Wrote another federal jurist: “Plaintiff’s repeated attempt to challenge the sanctions and judgments . . . in the face of clear authority that his claim is frivolous evidences his bad faith and wrongful purpose.”

So what did Canatella do? You guessed it: he sued the California Bar and various Bar officials for publishing this disciplinary record online, claiming that it violated his civil rights. The California Appellate Report elaborates:

You’d probably freak out too if that’s what they said about you. Mind you, Cantanella offers the following defense (?) of his conduct in his second amended complaint, and alleges that he was not actually sanctioned 37 times, but was instead “investigated” for 47 “purported sanction orders” over a nine year period and was sanctioned on at least 26 “separate” occasions by federal and state courts between 1989 and 1998. Once you hear that, by the way, do you think the judges have a pretty good sense regarding whether Cantanella’s a particularly sympathetic figure? Or, perhaps, think — shockingly — that a person sanctioned this pervasively is precisely the type of person who would file the present action?

Not surprisingly, Canatella lost his suit. So, showing the same level of sense that got him sanctioned all those times, he appealed. He lost again, in the decision handed down yesterday.

This wasn’t the first suit he filed against the Bar, by the way.

So, it’s not hard to see why state bar officials may be a little cautious in disciplining attorneys.

Filed under: ethics, legal discipline, watch what you say about lawyers

Forward an email, get sued?

Just what we need: more causes of action. If you’ve ever wondered why this country is overlawyered — besides greed and lack of personal responsibility, I mean — you might want to look to our law schools, where law professors with too much time on their hands spend some of it thinking of new ideas for increasing litigation. The latest example, from Fortune.com’s The Browser:

The mere act of forwarding an email or posting an exchange to a website is grounds for legal action, according to University of Arkansas law professor Ned Snow. In a paper to be published in the Kansas Law Review this summer, Snow contends that one of the most common acts of the digital age is a violation of privacy and warns that our courts are running headlong into this issue.

But don’t worry; Snow’s only trying to help:

His paper is a result of that curiosity, and he’s hoping it will serve as a roadmap for the courts in an issue that is bound to come into the spotlight. “Most of the time, when you forward emails, there’s no harm. But when you can show the harm, there’s reason to go to court,” he says. “I’m trying to offer insight to the courts, who will be grappling with this issue.”

And if there’s big money to be made somewhere along the way, well, I guess that’s just the price we all have to pay.

Filed under: Arkansas

Pant-demonium breaks loose, cont’d

Outrage continues to spread over Roy Pearson, Jr.’s $65 million suit against a Washington, D.C. Korean dry cleaner over a lost pair of suit pants (Apr. 26, May 1). The Washington Post editorially wonders whether Pearson should continue in his position as an administrative law judge given the “serious questions” raised by the case “about his judgment and temperament”. (“Kick in the Pants”, May 3). Associated Press coverage is circulating worldwide: Lubna Takruri, “Judge sues cleaner for $65M over pants”, AP/Kansas City Star, May 3. And Alex Spillius in London’s Daily Telegraph (“Judge sues dry cleaners over lost trousers, May 3) notes that Pearson

reached the figure of $67,292,000 as follows: Washington’s consumer protection law provides for damages of $1,500 per violation per day. Mr Pearson started multiplying: 12 violations over 1,200 days, times three defendants (the Chungs and their son)….

Mr Pearson has set the Chungs and their lawyers a long list of questions, which includes: “Please identify by name, full address and telephone number, all cleaners known to you on May 1, 2005 in the District of Columbia, the United States and the world that advertise ‘SATISFACTION GUARANTEED’,” according to the Washington Post.

Filed under: damage theories, Roy Pearson, Washington D.C.

KFC doesn’t owe millions for selling fast food

In June 2006 (Overlawyered), a Maryland resident named Arthur Hoyte, in conjunction with the Center for Science in the Public Interest, sued Kentucky Fried Chicken for selling food made with trans fats; he claimed that he didn’t realize (despite being a medical doctor!) that fast food might not be the healthiest option for his diet. And this, of course, was KFC’s fault.

Yesterday, a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit, pointing out that it didn’t even identify any injury suffered by Hoyte, and mocking him for pretending not to realize that fast food might contain trans fats. (“The suggestion is that, by its silence, KFC misled plaintiffs into believing that its products did not contain harmful trans fat. This is a questionable premise at best […] Especially since, as plaintiff submits, consumers have a ‘growing awareness of trans fat and the need to avoid it.’ If consumers are increasingly aware of trans fat, where do they expect to find it if not in fast food restaurants?”)

This is a big victory for restaurateurs — as KFC pointed out in its motion, under the logic espoused by Hoyte (who was seeking class action status), effectively everyone who ever ate a meal at a restaurant would have a cause of action against the restaurant, and could claim a minimum of $1500 in damages. (Although Hoyte’s claim was about trans fats, the same reasoning would apply to virtually every other ingredient in existence, since any one of them might represent a potential health risk if eaten to excess.)

But it certainly won’t end the CSPI’s attempt to achieve via litigation what it can’t through regulation; Hoyte’s claim failed only because D.C. courts have narrowly interpreted the badly-drafted D.C. Consumer Protection Act to require that plaintiffs demonstrate an injury before suing, and because he wasn’t creative enough in drafting his complaint to allege the right kind of injuries. This suit was no more frivolous than the similar suits filed against McDonalds, some of which courts have been extremely tolerant of. (See, e.g. Sep. 2006)

Update: Hans Bader comments over at CEI’s Openmarket blog, noting the irony that at one time, CSPI actually used to teach that trans fats were safer than saturated fats.

Filed under: Maryland, restaurants

Imus in the courtroom?

Fortune is reporting that Don Imus has hired a lawyer and is planning to sue CBS for the 40 million left on his contract. The argument would apparently be that Imus was only doing what CBS hired him to do, and therefore it was a breach of contract to fire him for his statements. He may well have a plausible case.

But Imus has hired one of the nation’s premiere First Amendment attorneys, and the two sides are gearing up for a legal showdown that could turn on how language in his contract that encouraged the radio host to be irreverent and engage in character attacks is interpreted, according to one person who has read the contract.

The language, according to this source, was part of a five-year contract that went into effect in 2006 and that paid Imus close to $10 million a year. It stipulates that Imus be given a warning before being fired for doing what he made a career out of – making off-color jokes. The source described it as a “dog has one- bite clause.” A lawsuit could be filed within a month, this person predicted.

If he does proceed, it won’t be the first Imus-related suit filed since his firing; that honor goes to CBS itself, which sued a Southern California radio station for copyright infringement for rebroadcasting Imus shows after it was pulled from the air. The case settled a week later, with the station agreeing to stop and CBS agreeing not to seek damages.

Filed under: broadcasters, workplace

What happens in Gaza, stays in Gaza

In July 2002, Israeli Air Force planes bombed a building in Gaza to kill a Hamas leader; fifteen people died. Whatever one thinks about the wisdom of that decision, it’s hard to figure out what this fighting between Hamas and Israel has to do with the island of Manhattan. But that didn’t stop the misnamed Center for Constitutional Rights from suing, in 2005, Israeli government official Avi Dichter in federal court in New York City,

Sensibly, the judge hearing the case, William Pauley dismissed the suit yesterday, determining that the Arab-Israeli conflict would probably not be solved by trial lawyers. But although this case was decided sensibly, it represents yet another attempt by citizens of foreign countries to conduct foreign policy in American courtrooms.

Pauley noted the U.S. government had argued in court papers that the suit, brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights, threatened to involve the courts in policing armed conflicts across the globe, exceeding the role of the courts and intruding on the executive branch’s control over foreign affairs.

If this suit were sustained, it’s hard to see what foreign war couldn’t be fought by trial lawyers in U.S. courts, given that neither the plaintiffs nor the defendant in this case had any connection to the United States.