“The latest settlement in litigation over California’s energy crisis includes tens of millions of dollars in attorney fees to be shared by a handful of politically savvy plaintiffs’ firms. … Besides Lieff Cabraser, private firms that will collect a share of the fees include Kiesel, Boucher & Larson of Beverly Hills, Calif., and Girardi & Keese; Engstrom, Lipscomb & Lack; and O’Donnell & Shaeffer, all of Los Angeles. ” (Jeff Chorney, “Powerful Payday”, The Recorder, Jul. 8).
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Samuelson on Nike v. Kasky
Washington Post columnist Bob Samuelson chastises the U.S. Supreme Court majority for ducking the recent free-speech-for-business case (see Ted Frank’s post of Jul. 1, as well as Feb. 13 and May 3-5, 2002). Sample: “Just about the last people you’d want to put in charge of the First Amendment are trial lawyers, whose business is suing large companies on any available pretext. … What’s occurring here is that trial lawyers are road-testing a new form of corporate shakedown. First, advocacy groups would attack a company or industry. Next, companies would face a dilemma: be silent and let the attacks stand, or respond and face an expensive and embarrassing suit. Finally, companies that ended up in court might face a daunting standard of proof — not whether what they said was true, but whether it might be misleading.” (Robert Samuelson, “A Tax on Free Speech”, Jul. 9). Before the Court issued its ruling, interesting columns about the case also appeared from Jonathan Rauch (“Corporate Lying is Bad”, National Journal/Reason.com, Jun. 9) and Dan Kennedy (“The Silent Swoosh”, Boston Phoenix, May 2-8). Update Sept. 14: Nike settles case.
Back from vacation
Kudos and thanks to Ted Frank for the excellent job he did as guest blogger over the last week. Regular posting should resume shortly, and watch for more experiments in guest blogging soon.
Daubert debate
Peter Nordberg and David Bernstein debate the study on Daubert discussed in this post. If I can take up Mr. Nordberg’s challenge to identify problems with the SKAPP report, I’ll just identify a handful that immediately came to mind as I read it. (This is long, so I’ve moved it off the main page. Click the link below.)
Fast food second update
You can never have too much information about fast food lawsuits department: The Center for Consumer Freedom is running humorous ads on news channels showing a lawyer cross-examining a Girl Scout for selling Girl Scout cookies. (Marguerite Higgins, “Food companies use humor as defense in ads,” Washington Times, June 26). Thing is, plaintiffs’ lawyers are immune to parody: John Banzhaf threatens to sue the Seattle school district if it agrees to renew a $400,000 contract with Coca-Cola for vending machines. (Deborah Bach, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 2).
Nike v. Kasky
Professor Volokh, of the Volokh Conspiracy, on the Nike v. Kasky case. Under a 4-3 California Supreme Court decision, Nike is potentially liable to any California citizen if its response to political speech criticizing Nike is deemed “misleading.”
(Full disclosure: Walter Dellinger of my law firm filed a U.S. Supreme Court brief on behalf of Nike.)
Big Food Next?
The first lawsuits against fatty-food sellers were justifiably the subject of parody, but a few months later, without plaintiffs having won a single case, a USA Today front-page article treats the idea of big damages awards as a near-inevitable outcome, quoting two plaintiffs’ lawyers, and without a single quote from anyone suggesting that such lawsuits may not be good public policy. Such coverage has a tendency, of course, to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Ted Frank, guest blogger
Greetings. My name is Ted Frank, and I’m honored to be your guest blogger for the week. I’m a former clerk for Judge Easterbrook and am currently practicing law as counsel in a Washington, D.C., firm, often on behalf of clients who are dealing with the types of lawsuits that Walter Olson has catalogued here for years.
Speaking of Judge Easterbrook, here is his opinion in McMahon v. Bunn-O-Matic, a classic variant of the plaintiff-who-spills-hot-coffee case.
Guest blogger through July 8
I’ll be on vacation for the next week. If all goes as planned, a guest blogger should be stepping in momentarily to fill the gap. An outstanding group of volunteers offered their services, and you should be seeing some of their names as guest bloggers over the coming months. See you next Wednesday.
Guest blogger opening(s)
Among the advantages of our new Movable Type system is to make it relatively easy to bring in co-conspirators and guest bloggers to add signed content of their own on a temporary or continuing basis. For examples of how this can work as an ongoing matter, see The Volokh Conspiracy (currently 13 members), Asymmetrical Information (a Movable Type two-member blog) and Max Power (four contributors).
Of more immediate interest, this feature allows for short-term guest blogging perfect for times when, for example, our regular editor heads off on vacation (as is about to happen momentarily). Would you make a good guest host(s) during his absence? Realistically, we’re most likely to experiment along these lines with volunteers who 1) are already personally known to our editor; 2) have already written about or worked on the kinds of issues we cover; and 3) have some rudimentary familiarity with blogging. (Maybe two of the three…) If this sounds fun to you, email editor – [at] – [our domain name].