By reader acclaim: “Woman holds door open for man at Pizza Hut…”

“…then sues both.” According to her lawyer, Tom Maag, Amanda Verett was holding open the door for co-defendant Clarence Jackson when he “grabbed the door in such a fashion that it caused the door to suddenly and sharply move,” resulting in injuries for which Ms. Verett wants upwards of $150,000 from Jackson, the restaurant, or some combination of both. It happened in Edwardsville, Ill., in lawsuit-famed Madison County, where Thomas Maag is a member of a famous family of lawyers (Oct. 29, 2004). (Steve Gonzalez, Madison County Record, Mar. 8).

P.S. The website of the Dennis & Verett Law Office of Edwardsville indicates that Amanda Bradley Verett was admitted to the Illinois Bar in 2003 and is a member of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, now renamed the American Association for Justice. (hat tip: reader David Nowlan)

Filed under: AAJ, Illinois, Madison County, restaurants

Depends on what the meaning of justice is

It takes a hard person to pick on the family of a dead child — but that’s why I’m here. In 2001, Tegan Rees, a 2-year old boy living in Idaho, was beaten to death by his mother’s fiance. The boy’s father had previously reported to Idado child welfare authorities that he saw bruises when he picked up his son from his ex-wife, but when they investigated, they decided it wasn’t abuse. That was just a few weeks before the boy was murdered. So, naturally, he sued the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare for $1 million.

Last week, the jury ruled 10-2 in favor of the state agency (AP, Mar. 11). The grandmother’s reaction?

“I’m just sickened,” Christie Rees told the Post Register. “I’m embarrassed that I live in Idaho. I thought finally Tegan would get justice.”

Justice? Keep in mind that the person who actually killed the boy was convicted of first degree murder, and sentenced to 22 years to life in prison.

I guess sometimes it really is about the money.

Filed under: Idaho, Seattle

Ken Sah, spelling bee father

A number of newspapers have picked up the tale of Kunal Sah, who will be competing in his second consecutive national spelling bee this year. His parents were recently deported after sixteen years of living in the States, and some bloggers have noted the irony: here’s a successful immigrant who owned a business and raised a successful son, and they’re being deported because of “tough U.S. immigration regulations in the post-9/11 atmosphere.”

Except the deported parents are not anywhere near as sympathetic as the press coverage makes them out to be. Kanhai Lal “Ken” Sah came to the United States in 1990, and, as his visa expired in 1991, applied for political asylum, and managed to keep his case alive for fifteen years. His son Kunal was born during that time, and got American citizenship as a result, and remains in the country. But the parents’ asylum application was denied, and they were deported

Sah’s asylum claim? He feared Muslim persecution in his home country. That might engender sympathy—until one realizes that his home country is India, which has 800 million fellow Hindus for Sah to live amongst. And that Sah’s basis for fearing persecution was because, as a member of the radical Hindu nationalist organization Vishwa Hindu Parishad, he “took a very active part in organizing and conducting [anti-mosque] meeting[s]” and that he “actively participated in the riots to [attempt to] demolish the Babri Mosque.” (Vishwa eventually succeeded in destroying the mosque in 1992, causing religious riots that killed 900 people.)

The Sahs are now engaging in a public relations campaign for citizenship on the basis of the hardship created by the fifteen years they spent in the country churning the bogus asylum application. None of the press coverage mentions Ken Sah’s role in his asylum denial as a radical Hindu. Don’t believe the hype. (Sah v. Gonzales (10th Cir. 2005)). (And welcome Malkin readers.)

Filed under: asylum law, India, personal responsibility

Lawsuits against restaurant critics

New York Times legal correspondent Adam Liptak has a good article summing up the state of play on legal actions arising from unkind reviews of eateries, including several cases familiar to our readers (Feb. 27, Philadelphia; Feb. 10, Belfast; Jan. 3, 2006, Dallas)(“Serving You Tonight Will Be Our Lawyer”, Mar. 7). More: PhilaFoodie.

Filed under: Dallas, Ireland, libel slander and defamation, newspapers, Philadelphia, restaurant critics

It’s not about the money

No, really. This time, it might not be.

In January 2006, retired New York Times reporter David Rosenbaum was mugged in Washington, D.C.; the muggers hit him over the head with a pipe. When his body was discovered and emergency workers responded, they somehow missed the fact that he had been bashed over the head (Oops!), and decided he was merely drunk. Because of that mistake, every aspect of the response was botched; police failed to investigate the crime right away, and emergency workers and the hospital where they eventually took him failed to immediately treat him for his serious head injury. Two days later, he died.

Last November, his family sued the city and the hospital for $20 million. On Thursday, they settled their lawsuit with the city, for no money (Washington Post):

The family of a slain New York Times journalist yesterday agreed to forgo the potential of millions of dollars in damages in exchange for something that might be harder for the D.C. government to deliver: an overhaul of the emergency medical response system that bungled his care at nearly every step.

David E. Rosenbaum’s family said it will give up a $20 million lawsuit against the city — but only if changes are made within one year.

Under a novel legal settlement, the city agreed to set up a task force to improve the troubled emergency response system and look at issues such as training, communication and supervision. A member of the family will be on the panel.

Although legal experts said the family could have won millions had it pursued the case, Rosenbaum’s brother Marcus said he and other relatives were more interested in making sure that the city enacted measurable changes.

The family hasn’t abandoned the path of litigation entirely; their suit against Howard University Hospital continues. And the family can reinstate the lawsuit against the city if it fails to implement the reforms it has promised within a year.

Interestingly, a search of news coverage about this lawsuit did not reveal even one instance of any of the plaintiffs or their lawyers uttering the immortal mantra, “It’s not about the money.”

Filed under: hospitals, not about the money

For intended use only?

Sarbanes-Oxley doesn’t just over-regulate corporate governance and harm U.S. capital markets; it can be used by zealous prosecutors in many contexts. Such as prosecuting a lawyer who destroyed a church computer that had child pornography on it, because he didn’t guess that the government would be investigating the incident.

I can’t believe it’s not (legal) butter

“In a twist of science, the law and what some call trans-fat hysteria, [New York City] wholesale bakers are being forced to substitute processed fats like palm oil and margarine for good old-fashioned butter because of the small amounts of natural trans fat butter contains.” (Kim Severson, “Trans Fat Fight Claims Butter as a Victim”, New York Times, Mar. 7). More: Feb. 15, 2005; Jun. 14, Jul. 30, Sept. 27, Oct. 16, Dec. 5, Dec. 10, 2006; Mar. 3, 2007.

Filed under: Thomas Frieden, trans-fats

Warning: “Contains nuts”

Apropos of Walter’s post about silly warning labels, such as “contains nuts” on a can of nuts, I figure we ought to slap the same warning label on the state legislature here in New Jersey.

For instance, the New Jersey Law Journal reports that a state Senate committee unanimously approved a bill this week that would require warning labels on… internet dating sites. The bill first requires that the site inform members “in bold, capital letters in at least 12-point type” whether or not it has conducted a criminal background check on its members. And if it does conduct criminal background checks, it then has to disclose that there’s no real point to conducting criminal background checks:

[The service] shall state that criminal background screenings are not foolproof; that they may give members a false sense of security; that they are not a perfect safety solution; that criminals may circumvent even the most sophisticated search technology; that not all criminal records are public in all states and not all databases are up to date; that only publicly available convictions are included in the screening; and that screenings do not cover other types of convictions or arrests or any convictions from foreign countries.

(How many people do you think are going to read through that verbal thicket of disclaimers?) But wait, that’s not all. The Senate had some extra free time, so it piled on the list of warning labels required:

Read On…

Filed under: New Jersey, personal responsibility

“Wrongful birth” in Boston

We’ve covered a number of cases over the years in which parents sue physicians and others over the “wrongful birth” of perfectly healthy children, demanding, as part of the claimed damages, the cost of raising the youngsters to adulthood: May 9, 2000 (Phoenix), Jun. 8, 2000 (Revere, Mass., outside Boston), Apr. 9, 2006 (Scotland), and Nov. 1, 2006 (Germany). Many such cases arise from failed sterilizations or other efforts at birth control, but a new suit by Jennifer Raper of Boston against Planned Parenthood and two doctors claims that an abortion went awry. “The [Massachusetts] high court ruled in 1990 that parents can sue physicians for child-rearing expenses, but limited those claims to cases in which children require extraordinary expenses because of medical problems, medical malpractice lawyer Andrew C. Meyer Jr. said. Raper’s suit has no mentions of medical problems involving her now 2-year-old daughter.” (“Boston woman sues for child-rearing costs after failed abortion”, AP/Boston Globe, Mar. 7; Jonathan Saltzman, “Suit seeks compensation for botched abortion”, Boston Globe, Mar. 7). More: “One day Jennifer Raper’s daughter will punch her mother’s name into Google and discover that she was the result of ‘a failed abortion.'” (Taranto)

Filed under: Massachusetts, wrongful birth and wrongful life

Cocktail napkin not to be used for navigation

I’ve got a short piece in The American, the recently launched American Enterprise Institute magazine, about the problem of overzealous warning labels, taking as my point of departure Bob Dorigo Jones’s new book Remove Child Before Folding. Alert readers will notice that the piece is based on my Times Online column of a few weeks ago, adapted with about three paragraphs’ worth of new and added material, mostly on how liability law helps worsen the problem. (Walter Olson, “Warning: This Column Might Give You Something to Think About”, The American, Mar. 6).

For more coverage of Remove Child Before Folding, see Jan. 6, Jan. 26, etc. Reason magazine editor Nick Gillespie, incidentally, reviewed the book in the New York Post here.

Filed under: wacky warnings, WO writings