When Paula’s Wig Boutique in Orange, Conn., filed a small claims action against Paul Lewis for $1,200, the cost of a hairpiece he hadn’t paid for, he countersued seeking more than $15,000 in damages saying that the boutique’s collection efforts had caused him a heart attack. (Dirk Perrefort, “Milford man counter-sues in hairpiece lawsuit”, Connecticut Post, Sept. 15; “Man: Toupee almost killed me”, AP/Danbury (Ct.) News-Times, Sept. 15).
Posts Tagged ‘Connecticut’
“The Lieberman Purge”
Off-topic, I add to the punditocracy’s surfeit of blather on the Connecticut Senate election at National Review Online.
One thing I didn’t mention in the article that is on topic for this site is that Lieberman is one of the few prominent federal Democrats still in office that is generally willing to stand up to the trial bar. If Lamont does supplant Lieberman, the trial-lawyer takeover of the Democratic party (commented on a year ago by Walter) will be all but complete.
Update: Walter reminds me of his 2000 Wall Street Journal op-ed on Lieberman’s record on liability reform.
Town Shuts Down “Nightcrawler Kid”
Sometimes the problem isn’t that we are “overlawyered” but rather that we are “overregulated” —
Cromwell [Connecticut] can be a hostile environment for those looking to break into night crawler vending — particularly if they advertise with a yard sign.
A worm business that Joe [Cadieux] has operated since he was 10 was shut down two weeks ago when Cromwell’s planning and zoning commission issued a cease-and-desist order because the teenager’s sign violated local zoning regulations.
“It’s ridiculous,” said the middle school student, who made $5 to $10 a month selling worms collected from his front yard, where they are plentiful after spring rainstorms.
So on the one hand we have a disgraceful new federal law guaranteeing a homeowner’s “right” to display an American flag on his property, despite any pre-existing homeowner association rules to the contrary (i.e., abridging the ability of private parties to enter into private contracts — which is what homeowner associations are), yet we cannot seem to find a right for a kid to do what kids do in their front yards.
Lovely.
Would the quality of life of Cromwell plunge precipitously if a “de minimis” exception were crafted for small signs by minors on their own property? Are the local politicians of Cromwell so busy with the rest of their packed agenda that they can’t revise the guidelines of their planning and zoning commission so that its members stop being worms petty jerks?
And can someone explain to me why judges are supposed to “defer” to politicians and bureaucrats like these?
“A Tree Falls in Connecticut”
Officials in Milford, Ct. agreed to take down three healthy hickory trees along an avenue after resident Una Glennon “demanded that the trees be removed because one of her grandchildren is allergic to nuts and can’t play in the pool with the other children when the nuts are falling.” Author and Common Good president Philip K. Howard detects the distortive influence of what he calls “legal fear”. (New York Times, Jul. 30). Also: Emily Bazelon, “Trees vs. children: Are nut allergies taking over the planet?”, Slate, Jul. 27.
A Lawsuit Everyone Can Bring
Can you sue over something that you claim will affect everyone in the planet in the distant future, even if that means that everyone on Earth can file a similar lawsuit now? The Supreme Court may address a similar question soon. The Supreme Court agreed today to consider whether the Bush administration must regulate carbon dioxide to combat potential global warming, in Massachusetts v. EPA.
Twelve states had sued the EPA to force it to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles. Although carbon dioxide is an integral component of the atmosphere, and does not contaminate or cause cancer, the states argued it constitutes air pollution covered by the Clean Air Act, because it may cause global warming over the long run.
A splintered three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-to-1 to reject the lawsuit, but the judges in the majority didn’t agree on why. Judge Sentelle would have rejected the suit for not complying with the Constitution’s requirement of standing, under which a plaintiff must allege particularized injuries, not a “generalized grievance” shared by much of the public at large (much less the entire planet). Judge Randolph, by contrast, was unsure of whether the plaintiffs had standing, but concluded that even if they did, and the EPA had jurisdiction to regulate carbon dioxide, the lawsuit should still be dismissed. He pointed out that regulating carbon dioxide on a state-by-state basis, as the Clean Air Act would do, made no sense, since global warming is a planet-wide concern. Thus, the EPA’s decision not to regulate carbon dioxide was sensible. By contrast, Judge Tatel’s dissent argued that the plaintiffs did have standing, since although everyone might be affected by global warming, they might be affected by it in different ways, with a coastal state being flooded while an arid state might become more arid.
In another lawsuit, attorney generals from seven states have sued out-of-state utilities under state nuisance laws, alleging that power plants, by generating carbon dioxide, are causing global warming. New York federal judge Loretta Preska dismissed their lawsuit in Connecticut v. American Electric Power Co. She, too, held that the plaintiffs lacked standing, since they complained of a generalized injury that would be better handled by the political process than by the courts.
If state attorney generals can sue power plants in distant states, that may lead to an explosion of interregional litigation, regional conflict, and judicial micromanagement of out-of-state utilities.
Watch what you tell your hairdresser, cont’d
The official recruitment of cosmetologists as informants (and as intermediaries steering customers to approved “domestic-violence” programs) continues, with programs reported in Florida, Idaho, Oklahoma, Virginia, Ohio and Maine, as well as Nevada and Connecticut (see Mar. 16 and Mar. 29, 2000). It’s not just black eyes or lacerations that the salon employees are supposed to be on the lookout for, either. A customer’s protestation that “he would not like that”, as a reason to turn down a new hairstyle, might be a sign of “controlling behavior” that needs watching. (“Salons join effort to stop violence”, Bangor Daily News, Jun. 15) (via van Bakel).
“Eye-popping” class action fees
Norm Pattis, who says he has litigated scores of unreasonable search claims on behalf of individual plaintiffs, has some thoughts (Apr. 18) on excessive class action fees, occasioned by the news that in Connecticut, “a simple case against the Department of Corrections involving strip searches of inmates is about to yield a $2.5 million settlement. Of that [sum], about $834,000 will go to attorney’s fees.”
Don’t
More things not to do if you’re a practicing lawyer, all from recent Law.com reports: Don’t abscond with the down payments that your real estate clients have laid down on houses, as 19 New York attorneys apparently could not resist doing last year (John Caher, “Light-Fingered Lawyers Cause Spike in Client Fund Payouts”, New York Law Journal, Apr. 17). Don’t “[hum] ‘The Twilight Zone’ theme song to imply a client’s ex-wife — seated at the same table during a post-judgment divorce proceeding — is mentally unstable,” which drew a reprimand for Torrington, Ct. attorney Steven H. Levy (Douglas S. Malan, “Attorney Gets Static for ‘Twilight Zone’ Rendition During Divorce Proceeding”, Connecticut Law Tribune, Apr. 13). And if you’ve gotten caught in a colorful episode of legal malpractice in which you falsely claimed (among other things) to have founded an L.L.M. program at New York University School of Law, don’t engage in “elaborate and sometimes fraudulent efforts” to avoid paying the judgment to your former client, for which offense federal judge Denise Cote requested that the U.S. attorney’s office prosecute New York lawyer David A. Dorfman (Tom Perrotta, “Federal Judge Requests Prosecution of Attorney for Criminal Contempt”, New York Law Journal, Apr. 19). More in our “Don’t” series: Aug. 3 and Sept. 13, 2005; Jan. 20 and Apr. 12, 2006.
Forbes: “My Kingdom for a Casino”
As regular readers of this space know (Apr. 14, etc.), I’ve long taken an interest in the injustices that have been visited on innocent landowners in New York, Connecticut and many other states by lawsuits seeking to revive long-defunct Indian land claims. I’ve got a guest column in the latest Forbes (“On My Mind”, May 8, reg) briefly summing up a few of the things wrong with this litigation. A sample:
Until lately Anglo-American law sought a careful balance between the goal of restoring wrongfully taken property to its rightful owners, on the one hand, and the equally valid goal of securing everyone’s property against the danger that a claimant will show up some day to assert a speculative defect in title. Hence doctrines aimed at preventing old disputes from staying alive indefinitely: statutes of limitation, adverse possession, “acquiescence” in unchallenged political boundaries.
In a series of rulings over the past 30 years, however, the U.S. Supreme Court has decided that Indians are wholly different from other land claimants. Law professors have cheered: What cause is more romantic than that of dispossessed Indians? (Somehow owners of small farms in upstate New York never seem to merit the underdog label.) The rulings also constitute a stunning victory for a scrappy cadre of Legal Services lawyers; a few of these antiestablishment types have found themselves, over the arc of a career, gradually transmuted through their tribal connections into highly paid casino promoters, in a transformation worthy of a Balzac or Stendhal novel.
(cross-posted at Point of Law)
Lawyer discipline systems
“Not getting any better,” in the opinion of HALT, the consumer-protection group that looks out for the interests of legal clients. The group has issued a report card rating each of the 50 state lawyer grievance systems, updating a similar effort four years ago. Worst state: Utah. Worst big state: California, ranked #46. Best state: Connecticut. Best big state: Pennsylvania (yes, really). (David Giacalone, Mar. 8).