Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘crime and punishment’

UK: Holed-up perp had right to fried chicken

Gloucester, England:

A suspected car thief who bombarded police with bricks and tiles during a rooftop siege was given a Kentucky Fried Chicken takeaway meal by officers to ensure his “well-being and human rights”….

A spokesman for Gloucester police said: “He has been demanding various things and one was a KFC bargain bucket. Although he’s a nuisance, we still have to look after his well-being and human rights. He’s also been given cigarettes.”

(Richard Savill, “KFC meal ‘ensures siege man’s rights'”, Daily Telegraph, Jun. 7).

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UK: What, no specific performance?

Too bizarre to let pass: in Kent, England, 53-year-old Christine Ryder filed a breach of contract complaint against Kevin Reeves, 40, for accepting £20,000 from her in exchange for his promise to engage a hitman to murder her, or do it himself. Instead Reeves skipped out without doing the deed, and a judge ordered him to pay Ryder £2,000 in compensation. (Alan Hamilton, “A contract is still a contract – even if it is a contract to kill”, The Times (U.K.), Jan. 17; Longhorn Law, Jan. 17).

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“Inside Milberg’s Credenza”

I’ve got a lengthy op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal (sub-only) discussing the indictment of Milberg Weiss. A few excerpts:

Since such payoffs are baldly illegal, prosecutors claim the firm took elaborate steps to keep them concealed from judges and others. They say Milberg funneled much of the money through law-firm cut-outs and other channels, including casinos, and drew on a stash of money kept in a safe located in a credenza in partner David Bershad’s New York office, “to which access was strictly limited.” Again and again, prosecutors add, the firm submitted sworn statements on behalf of its clients denying any receipt of the sorts of payments they were in fact receiving. …

With other class members absent, named plaintiffs are one of the few watchdogs against self-dealing or misconduct by the lawyers — specifically, the pursuit of settlements that result in high legal fees, whether or not they serve the interest of the class. … if the Justice Department’s allegations are correct, Milberg was taking no chances on the watchdogs staying pacified: It threw regular chunks of raw liver into their cages. …

The two celebrity lawyers who made Milberg famous, Melvyn Weiss and the now-departed William Lerach, have thus far escaped indictment: Of course, if they were prosecuting such a case, they would miss no opportunity to insinuate that misconduct by part of a team of top executives must have been at least tolerated by the others, that the rot goes straight to the top, that senior partners turned a convenient blind eye to signs of misconduct because they profited handsomely from that misconduct, and so forth. Messrs. Weiss and Lerach must count themselves lucky that such reasoning did not lead to their inclusion as defendants.

The Journal also has an editorial today on the subject.

Our earlier coverage: May 20 and links from there, May 21, as well as many posts at Point of Law. When The Economist profiled Melvyn Weiss three years ago, I told them, “A distinguishing characteristic of the Milberg Weiss approach is that the clients became tokens to be moved around a game board” (Jan. 17, 2002).

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UK: Police “wanted” posters could infringe privacy

“Detectives across the country are refusing to issue ‘wanted’ posters for [foreign ex-criminals in flight from police] because they do not want to breach human rights laws. Forces said that the offenders had a right to privacy and might sue for defamation if their names and photographs were released.” (Ben Leapman, “Human rights fears mean police refuse to issue wanted posters of foreign criminals”, Daily Telegraph (UK), May 14) (fixed broken link).

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Update: Teflon class actions

Class action lawyers are seeking to roll together lawsuits against DuPont on behalf of persons in fifteen states who’ve bought the non-stick cookware, whether or not those persons feel aggrieved or have inadvertently left empty pans unattended on the heat with resulting fumes. The sum bandied about as a remedy, $5 billion, hasn’t changed since we covered the story last summer (Jul. 20), but the tone of the plaintiff’s lawyers has grown noticeably more alarmist, as in the case of Kim Baer of Des Moines, who claims that “the material could become toxic when heated ‘enough to fry an egg'”. (“Plaintiffs seek class action in DuPont Teflon lawsuit”, AP/Richmond Times-Dispatch, Apr. 21). And lead plaintiff’s counsel Alan J. Kluger contends: “This stuff shouldn’t be on the market, period.” (Peter Geier, “Teflon Litigators Hope Class Action Sticks”, National Law Journal, Apr. 26).

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Attempts suicide on Death Row, wants $35M from jailers

Ronnie Joe Neal, who got to Texas’s Death Row by committing a particularly heinous sex murder, says Bexar County jailers didn’t act speedily enough to save him after he attempted suicide by downing 50 prescription tablets. So he wants $35 million in his civil rights lawsuit, in which he’s represented by attorney James Myart. (Ken Rodriguez, “Alamo Heights teacher’s killer wants $35 million worth of ‘justice'”, San Antonio Express-News, Apr. 21). Similar: Apr. 17.

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