Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘chasing clients’

“Trailblazing Anti-Tobacco Litigator Agrees to Disbarment”

No need for a public accounting dept.:

In a rare case of thievery at a large New Jersey firm, tobacco litigation pioneer Alan Darnell admitted that he misappropriated money from his partners and clients at Woodbridge’s Wilentz, Goldman & Spitzer and has volunteered for disbarment.

The reporter’s description of thievery in Garden State legal circles as “rare”, in case you were wondering, turns out to mean it’s not often the lawyers are caught misappropriating their own partners’ or clients’ funds in prohibited ways.

By bowing out of the profession before the investigation was complete, Darnell saved himself and 140-lawyer Wilentz Goldman from a public airing of the details of what money he took, whom he took it from and what he did with it.

Oh, well then that’s okay. Mustn’t risk giving the general public a peek at such matters, after all.

Darnell, who was known for filing asbestos and pharmaceutical claims, “was a leading member of the Wilentz Goldman team that represented plaintiffs in mass tort and product liability cases. …Big tobacco was his biggest target.” Wilentz, Goldman & Spitzer is perhaps the state’s best-known plaintiff’s firm (one of its ads) and is also renowned for its political connections, which have brought it much lucrative state business.

The state’s Office of Attorney Ethics will also be sealing the records of its investigation of Darnell, and it doesn’t appear that there are further legal proceedings against him in the offing. Remember this story next time lawyers denounce the alleged conspiracy of silence regarding doctors’ misconduct (Henry Gottlieb, New Jersey Law Journal, Oct. 6).

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Australia: High Court upholds injury-ad ban

By a 5-2 margin, Australia’s High Court has rejected a constitutional challenge to a ban imposed by the country’s most populous state, New South Wales, on advertisements intended to solicit personal-injury law work. Plaintiff’s lawyers had unsuccessfully argued that such ads amounted to political speech deserving of protection, but the court ruled that they were more plausibly understood as commercial solicitations. The two dissenters were Justice Michael McHugh, who apparently embraced a reading of the national constitution under which states could not constitutionally enact legislation “which has the effect or object of reducing litigation” — surprised our ATLA hasn’t come up with that one — and Justice Michael Kirby. (Michael Pelly, “Injury ad ban to stay, judges rule”, Sydney Morning Herald, Sept. 2).

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Vioxx lawsuit advertising

Someone had been buying just about all of the advertising space on Google for most of the search terms relating to the recent Ernst v. Merck case with the headline “$250,000,000 Vioxx award,” (or, even more inaccurately, “$250,000,000 Vioxx settlement”) so I decided to see what new schemes the Internet had cooked up for chasing clients. The result is this page, which offers to “refer your Vioxx case” to “Mark Lanier law firm” to review.

The most entertaining part of the site is that there are eight check-boxes to describe the plaintiff’s symptoms, presumably so that lawyers can easily evaluate the submitted case:

Patient had Heart Attack
Patient had a Stroke
Patient had other Heart Problems
Patient Passed Away/Deceased
Patient had Unstable Angina
Patient had a Pulmonary Embolism
Patient had Arterial Thrombosis
Patient had Transient Ischemic Attack

Note the utter absence of an “arrhythmia” checkbox that would describe Robert Ernst’s symptoms, though hundreds of thousands of people suffer fatal arrthymias every year. On the other hand, given the fourth check-box, perhaps Vioxx plaintiffs’ attorneys plan to sue on behalf of everyone who took Vioxx, and then died. If they wait long enough, that will eventually be all of them. Earlier Vioxx ads/spam: Jan. 5; Dec. 22.

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Behind a pageant, busy lawyers

Representatives of the Hollywood, Fla.-based law firm of Schwartz Zweben & Associates have played a substantial role behind the scenes in helping organize, promote and support the Ms. Wheelchair America pageant and some of its state affiliates. And lawyers with the firm have filed more than 200 lawsuits in at least seven states and the District of Columbia on behalf of at least 13 pageant participants, “including state and national titleholders, state coordinators and pageant judges”. Among them: more than two dozen filed in Wisconsin’s Fox Valley since December on behalf of local coordinator Gina Hackel. In March, Janeal Lee of Appleton was stripped by pageant authorities of her title as Ms. Wheelchair Wisconsin; she believes it is because she was critical of the pageant’s role in lawsuit-promotion, although pageant coordinators deny that and say she broke a rule against being photographed out of her wheelchair.

Schwartz Zweben “also conducts seminars instructing contestants on pursuing their legal rights under the disabilities act. Lee remembered a lawyer flying in to give the Wisconsin contestants such a talk at the January pageant in Green Bay.” “The people that are the lawyers, I really like them. We got along,” said Lisa Wartchow, Lee’s 2003 predecessor as Ms. Wheelchair Wisconsin. “But I got the feeling they were there specifically to see if any of us … could bring them to our town and find cases for them.”

To verify Hackel’s claims of ADA violations in the Fox Valley, the law firm retained Ms. Wheelchair Florida 2002 Colleen Macort as a consultant, and she visited the businesses last fall, Zweben said.

Macort, who was named as a plaintiff in 63 ADA accessibility lawsuits filed in Florida by the firm over the past three years, also helped prepare the Wisconsin pageant won by Lee.

The Appleton paper (which is kind enough to quote me as part of its coverage) promises a four-part investigation, of which this is Part 1. (Ed Lowe and J.E. Espino, “Pageant, law firm closely linked”, Appleton Post-Crescent, Jul. 17). For more on mass filings of suits under the Americans with Disabilities Act and parallel state and local statutes, see Mar. 18, May 31 and many other entries on our disabled-rights page.

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Champerty and maintenance watch

The law firm of Cellino & Barnes bills itself as the largest personal injury firm in western New York, and the “faces of [name partners Ross M.] Cellino and [Stephen E.] Barnes grace a reported 150 billboards across upstate New York. The attorneys’ names and likenesses frame their phone number and the one-word question ‘Injured?'” However, the firm has now gotten itself into hot water: an appellate panel has suspended Cellino and censured Barnes for, among other infractions, “advancing financial assistance to clients that was unrelated to the expenses of litigation”.

The unanimous five-judge panel found that Cellino and Barnes advanced financial assistance to clients beyond the expenses of litigation and, when they subsequently became aware that such actions violated the disciplinary rules, “arranged for the establishment of, funded and controlled [a] company owned by respondent Cellino’s cousin and that they did so in order to continue loaning money to clients.”

At common law, champerty (supplying clients with money in exchange for a share in the action) and maintenance (supplying them with money in order to keep their lawsuits going) were both offenses, but the prohibitions have tended to fall into disuse or to be repealed outright in recent times. On champerty, see Jun. 19, 2005, Jun. 27, 2004, Oct. 25, 2003, and this excerpt from The Litigation Explosion. (Mark Fass, “Bad Lawyer, No Billboard”, New York Law Journal, Jun. 14; Michael Ziegler, “Cellino & Barnes leaders punished”, Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, Jun. 11; Rick Pfeiffer, “Lawyers Cellino and Barnes found guilty of violating conduct code”, Tonawanda News, Jun. 11). More on the Barnes law firm: Jan. 31, 2006.

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Mississippi fen-phen: “second wave of arrests”

In what an assistant U.S. Attorney said signals the start of a second wave of arrests in the Mississippi fen-phen fraud affair, Gregory P. Warren of Lafayette, La., is cooperating with authorities and is expected to plead guilty to charges arising from his role in recruiting fen-phen clients for the law firm of Schwartz & Associates in Jackson, which has not been charged. According to the AUSA’s office, Warren recruited claimants who had never in fact taken the drug; he “also is accused of failing to report on his tax return nearly $200,000 he was paid by attorneys in 2000 for recruiting Fen-Phen plaintiffs.” (Jimmie E. Gates, “More guilty pleas in Fen-Phen case”, Jackson Clarion-Ledger, May 4). For more on the scandal, see Feb. 12, Jan. 9, etc. (& letter to the editor, May 10).

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Ambulance chasing in St. Cloud, MN

In St. Cloud, Minnesota, a drunk started a fight with an employee of the Red Carpet Nightclub, and was on the losing end when a bouncer got involved; Justin Smiley eventually died from injuries sustained when his head hit the concrete. A tort suit in the making, but state ethical rules prohibit soliciting the decedent’s family directly. What to do if you’re an enterprising plaintiff’s lawyer hoping to comply with the letter of the rules? Post an ad in the paper! To wit, one asking “Have you or anyone you know been injured in a local bar?”

“To say that this ad was in poor taste would be akin to describing wearing a halter top to a funeral as being a a bit underdressed,” says a St. Cloud blogger, who reprints the offending ad. King Banian agrees, as do local newspaper readers.

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Today’s unbelievable attorney advertising

Evan Schaeffer points us to the site of a Seattle attorney, J. Michael Gallagher, who uses prom-dressed legal assistants called “Gallagher’s Gals” to attract clients. One would imagine that the family lawyer isn’t worried about alienating half of his potential clientele since he’s also the author of “She’s Not Your Friend – A Man’s Guide To Understanding Women.” Two Seattle law school bloggers comment here and here.

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