Marcel Mager is unhappy that the church he donated $126,000 to in 1999 doesn’t want to give him his money back. (Delma J. Francis, “Cloquet man wants his $126,000 back”, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Jan. 14)
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Spitzer vs. the SEC
Mike O’Sullivan at Corp Law Blog says he’s not so sure it’s a bad thing for the SEC to have a reputation as “legalistic” rather than creative in its approach to fighting market misconduct: “The SEC has a great deal of authority over the U.S. capital markets. If the SEC does not act within the four corners of the law, the SEC would inject a great deal of uncertainty into the capital markets. …
“This is one of the reasons why I think it’s inappropriate to compare the SEC to Eliot Spitzer’s operation. Spitzer feels free to use New York’s Martin Act to attack anything that strikes him as abusive, regardless of whether it’s clearly illegal. The SEC has in its arsenal nothing as open-ended as the Martin Act, and that’s a good thing for US markets. The Martin Act is, as one commentator called it (PDF), a ‘fierce sword’ of uncertainty, permitting prosecutors to stretch the definition of crimes and then engage in extensive discovery to compel their targets to capitulate. This makes the Martin Act a very useful tool for a prosecutor looking to make his mark, and a nearly useless guide to a person looking to avoid becoming the target of a prosecutor looking to make his mark.
“Beyond creating uncertainty, another interesting consequence of open-ended criminal statutes like the Martin Act is the freedom they give prosecutors to legislate on the fly.” (Dec. 29). Plus: welcome National Law Journal readers (Andrew Harris, “Waging war against Wall St. corruption”, NLJ, Dec. 22, not online, quotes me suggesting that Spitzer is “imposing a different regulatory scheme nationwide than the one imposed by the federal government,” not necessarily a good idea given that he isn’t answerable to a nationwide electorate).
Tampered food?
A comedy cliche is the diner who tries to get out of his or her check by claiming to find a cockroach in the food. (E.g., “Victor/Victoria.”) Nowadays, such scams go beyond seeking a free meal, but include hopes for a lawsuit — the Pepsi syringe hoax being a well-publicized instance, the trampled shopper (Dec. 4) a more recent case.
We’re not saying Leila Sultan, the woman who settled a lawsuit against an Irvine seafood restaurant over an allegation of finding a condom in her chowder (AP, Jan. 12) is such a scamster. But, as the Smoking Gun points out, it “was the second time she was forced to sue over an injurious incident at a chain restaurant” — she recovered $2000 from Taco Bell in a settled 1996 lawsuit over spilled coffee. (via Obscure Store)
How to drive away mortgage capital
Lawmakers in various states and cities are aiming legislation at so-called predatory lending, and in a handful of jurisdictions, including Oakland and Los Angeles, the laws have “targeted not just mortgage lenders and brokers who engage in dubious practices but also investors who buy securities backed by even a single mortgage later deemed predatory.” The laws make provision for something called “unlimited assignee liability,” which “puts investors in mortgage-backed bonds on the legal hook for misdeeds by lenders and mortgage brokers”. The idea is “to force investors and their agents to act as policemen against predatory lenders and to provide plaintiff lawyers with deep-pocketed targets for predatory-lending suits.” To make matters worse, “many advocates of the new laws use an expansive definition of predatory lending that classifies as evil a mortgage with high interest rates or fees, a prepayment penalty or even a provision requiring arbitration.” One likely result is to drive capital away from the housing markets of the cities involved: “Standard & Poor’s and Fitch, which rate mortgage-backed securities before they’re sold to investors, say they won’t rate mortgages covered under Oakland’s ordinance (and some under Los Angeles’) because the risk to investors is impossible to quantify.” How long do you think before investors fleeing the new legal risk will get accused of “redlining”? (Ira Carnahan, “Predatory Lawmaking”, Forbes, Jan. 12).
“OK, so I won’t sue cable firm”
Updating Wisconsin’s tempest in a cable box (see Jan. 7): “A man who blamed a cable TV company for his television addiction and his wife’s 50-pound weight gain said Thursday he won’t follow through with a threat to sue the cable operator. In an unusual news conference held in the basement of his West Bend home,” Timothy Dumouchel insisted that cable TV provider Charter was to blame for his family’s addiction to its televised fare, because it had failed to cut off service as requested, but said most of his dealings with the company had been pleasant and that he would not pursue legal action. Dumouchel also “said he never claimed his three children — ages 30, 23 and 16 — were lazy. He also said he knows people are snickering about him, and that his wife was angry about his statements on her weight gain.” (Lauria Lynch-German, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Jan. 9; “Man won?t sue over TV addiction”, AP/Appleton Post-Crescent, Jan. 9).
“Lotto loser’s lawyer defends his actions”
Lawyer of the week? Once-obscure Ohio attorney Sheldon Starke seemed to revel in the sudden worldwide publicity as he represented Elecia Battle in her claim to be the true winner of a $162 million lottery jackpot — until her story fell apart and she turned out to have a rap sheet. “A Cuyahoga County judge has threatened to find Starke in contempt of court after seeing Starke’s animated defense of Battle this week on television — after Starke had said he couldn’t come to court because of an injured back. And Starke can’t seem to avoid questions about how he handled Battle’s incredible claim on the Mega Millions lottery — about how he maintained his belief in Battle’s story when just about nobody else did. ‘I felt like a fool,’ said Starke, who insists he handled the case properly. ‘If there was one person that was damaged this week, it was me.'” (Scott Hiaasen and Jesse Tinsley, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Jan. 10)
Newsweek vs. ATLA: Stuart Taylor, Jr. responds (II)
Newsweek vs. ATLA: Stuart Taylor, Jr. responds (I)
Newsweek, as is typical for a newsweekly, published only a terse editorial response (see previous post) to the litigation lobby’s concerted attack on its reporting. However, Stuart Taylor, Jr., the distinguished veteran journalist who (with Evan Thomas) was principal author of the feature, has kindly consented to let us reprint his more detailed point-by-point rebuttal to ATLA’s official gripe catalogue, published under the title “Spin or Facts? A Look Behind Newsweek’s Series ‘Lawsuit Hell’“. Because of the length of Taylor’s response, we’ve split it into two posts, the first responding to the first six points of ATLA’s critique and the second responding to the rest. Check out in particular, under heading #6, ATLA’s false (and remarkably brazen) assertion that the Tillinghast study’s $233 billion estimate of the cost of the liability insurance sector includes “the cost of the entire property/casualty insurance industry” and in particular the cost of hurricanes and similar damage. (It doesn’t.)
Web accessibility: still waiting for a case
In October 2002 a federal judge ruled against a claim that Southwest Airlines had violated federal law by failing to make its web site fully accessible to disabled internet users; the judge said a Web site isn’t a “place of public accommodation” covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act because it isn’t a “place” at all. In large part because of that ruling, there hasn’t been the rush that many of us expected to file ADA complaints against online publications and e-commerce providers. But the National Council on Disability, a federal agency, put out a position paper last summer (Jul. 10) aimed at renewing the push to get ADA applied to the Web. And disability rights activists, who are conceding nothing, hope to re-litigate the issue. “‘The Southwest Airlines ruling has set back the process of trying to get Internet sites covered by the ADA,’ said Curtis Chong, who heads the computer science division of the National Federation of the Blind. ‘But one of these days we’ll find a better place to file a better suit and maybe try and get it taken care of.'” If that ever happens, all hell is likely to break out in the online world. (Mark Thompson, “Courts Yet to Make Definitive Ruling on Online Access for the Disabled”, Online Journalism Review, Dec. 10). In its update the magazine quotes at considerable length what I told a Congressional panel in Feb. 2000 (and even runs my picture). Update Feb. 8, 2006: NFB sues retailer Target under California state law.
Welcome Walter Williams readers
The “Winnebago cruise control” litigation urban legend (see here and here) has claimed its latest victim in the person of syndicated columnist and George Mason U. economist Walter Williams (“Some things I wonder about”, TownHall, Dec. 31, see final item). Now, in a follow-up column (“An urban legend”, Jan. 7), Williams generously points readers to this site as a source of many real-life stories little less outrageous than the fictitious Winnebago story. To find details on each story, follow the links: Minn. hockey fan served too much alcohol; Ohio carpet installers ignore warning label; Indiana robber sues convenience store clerk who shot him as he fled holdup scene; boozy Galveston ramp roll-off; and the Stella Liebeck hot coffee spill case (we think, however, that it may have been our colleague Ted Frank, rather than Prof. David (not Richard!) Bernstein, who contributed the point about clothing). For more such cases, see our personal responsibility archives, older and newer series. We wonder how many readers directed Williams’s attention to the falsity of the other, unrelated urban legend that was showcased in his Dec. 31 column, namely his use of bogus (and long-since-refuted) numbers on life expectancy for gays. We could have helped him out on that one, too.