“[H]is stump speech often sounds less like a political platform and more like a laundry list of class-action suits he’d like to get a piece of ?- we need to act against credit card companies that charge excessive interest etc.” (“Knowns, unknowns and the Ketchup Kid”, Daily Telegraph (UK), Jan. 27). The cash register continues to ring for Edwards with his friends in the Texas bar: “At the end of the fall filing period for campaign contributions, Texans had given more to John Edwards than to all of the other Democratic candidates combined, almost $2 million.” (Shelley Kofler, “Texas money a major part of Edwards’ NH campaign”, WFAA-TV (Dallas-Fort Worth), Jan. 27). On the other hand, Dave Barry thinks the photogenic Senator may be losing the bowlers’ vote (“Senator who? We’re trying to bowl here!!”, Miami Herald, Jan. 26; Julian Borger, “Edwards bowls along, with Dean still at a loss”, The Guardian (UK), Jan. 26)(via Command Post). See also Rich Lowry, “The Trial Lawyer?s Shtick”, syndicated/National Review Online, Jan. 27.
Posts Tagged ‘Dallas’
“Attack dog attorney”
Curmudgeonly Clerk, traveling along on a South Texas highway, sees a billboard for a law firm emblazoned with the words “Abogado Perro” –“Dog Lawyer” in Spanish — along with a picture of a snarling Doberman Pinscher. Doesn’t sound as if it was meant to solicit dog-bite cases, either. One of his commenters says a Dallas lawyer has a shark on the top of his building. (Jan. 5)
Vaccines, cont’d
Britain’s legal-aid commission invested ?15 million in assisting claimants who wanted to sue makers over the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine, but finally decided to call a halt: “After taking expert advice, the LSC acknowledged that, given the failure of research to establish a link between MMR and autism, the litigation was ‘very likely to fail'”. Michael Fitzpatrick, writing for the UK’s Spiked Online, explores what he calls the “enormous waste of public funds” on the litigation. (“Medicine on trial”, Dec. 15). Efforts to pin the blame on the preservative thimerosal have come up short, according to an editorial in today’s WSJ: “Researchers recently examined the health records of all children born in Denmark from 1971 to 2000 for autism diagnoses. Though Denmark eliminated thimerosal from its vaccines in 1992, the researchers found that the incidence of autism continued to increase. A second research team reviewed the records of nearly 500,000 Danes vaccinated for pertussis. They also found that the risk of autism and related disorders didn’t differ between those vaccinated with thimerosal and those without.” (“The Politics of Autism” (editorial), Wall Street Journal, Dec. 29). More on vaccines and liability: Jim Copland (Manhattan Institute), “Liable to Infection”, Dallas Morning News, Dec. 14; Robert Goldberg (also Manhattan Institute), “Vaccinating against disaster”, Washington Times, Dec. 17; and see Dec. 24 and earlier posts. Update Feb. 25: Lancet regrets publication of anti-MMR study; Mar. 4, 2005: another study finds no link.
Dallas police fake-drug scandal
Hair-raising and, as Mark A.R. Kleiman (Dec. 16) points out, strangely underpublicized: “Dallas police paid their drug informants based on the quantity of drugs seized. So some informants decided to manufacture cases by planting fake ‘cocaine’ — variously described as the powder used to chalk billiard cues and as ground-up gypsum wallboard — on about 80 Mexican immigrants.” The bounty had been set at $1,000 per kilogram.
Back at the old test-rigging game
Ten years after litigation consultants helped NBC News stage fake “tests” which supposedly proved a GM truck vulnerable to fuel-tank puncture (see “It Didn’t Start With Dateline NBC“, our 1993 effort), you have to wonder whether much has changed. “Ford Motor Co. says Dallas rigged a crash test that purported to show that the Crown Victoria is vulnerable to deadly fuel tank explosions even when equipped with safety gear. Ford said its inspection of the car used in the test showed that items in the trunk had been welded together, including a crowbar that was aimed at the back wall of the fuel tank.” The test was paid for by personal injury lawyers representing the city of Dallas in a lawsuit over the death last year of police officer Patrick Metzler, who died when his Crown Victoria was rear-ended by a drunk driver at high speed. (“Dallas rigged Crown Victoria crash test, automaker alleges”, AP/Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Sept. 18.) In the 75-mph test, the vehicle’s trunk was filled with “items that the city said were commonly found in a police officer’s trunk”, which turned out to include a crowbar welded to a vehicle jack — just the sort of contraption an officer might lug around to traffic stops, no? Ford, which discovered such details only later on when it was allowed to inspect the test vehicle during litigation, “criticized the city for not disclosing the artificial conditions when reporting its testing results.” Reinforcing the sense of deja vu, Center for Auto Safety head and trial lawyer chum Clarence Ditlow publicly defended the use of the peculiar trunk contents as legitimate, the same way he defended NBC’s use of hidden rockets back then. (“Ford Questions Dallas Crash Tests”, AP/Primedia, Sept. 18; “City calls Crown Victoria tests ‘valid'”, Dallas Business Journal, Sept. 18). “Mark Arndt, the president of the company that oversaw the testing, is himself an expert witness for the City of Dallas in its lawsuit against Ford. Arndt makes his living as a hired gun testifying against carmakers.” (Mike Scott, “City’s crash test spawns controversy”, reprinted at Houston Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse site). For trial lawyers’ side on the Crown Victoria controversy, see Ditlow’s Center for Auto Safety; Dallas City Hall; and Crown Victoria Safety Alert. For Ford’s side, see CVPI.com.
Where eagles fear to litigate
Eagle Pass, Texas, in Maverick County along the Rio Grande, isn’t likely to shake its reputation for plaintiff-friendly jurisprudence any time soon, as a San Antonio Express-News profile makes clear. “L. Wayne Scott, a professor at St. Mary’s University Law School…. who has mediated civil cases in Eagle Pass, estimates defendants there are roughly 10 times more likely to lose than in conservative Dallas and two or three times more likely to fall than in San Antonio. … Indeed, the prospect of facing a jury in Eagle Pass — where Mayor Joaquin L. Rodriguez also is one of the city’s top plaintiff’s attorneys — frequently makes companies more willing to settle and in higher amounts than they would agree to in other venues.” Although a 1995 round of state tort reforms has somewhat curbed the rampant forum-shopping by which plaintiff’s lawyers used to bring suits from around the state to Eagle Pass, there is still a steady diet of cases to be had against major national defendants, including suits against automakers over road crashes and a case against Connecticut-based shotgun-maker O.F. Mossberg & Sons Inc. over a hunting accident that took place in another Texas county. Local plaintiff’s attorney Earl Herring says that a case worth $10,000 in Eagle Pass would be “worth $500 in Uvalde.” (Greg Jefferson, “Eagle Pass remains known as plaintiff’s attorney paradise”, Nov. 2).
Bill Shoemaker, 72
Legendary record-setting jockey Bill Shoemaker died today at the age of 72. The New York Times obituary (Joseph Durso, “Bill Shoemaker, Jockey With Winning Touch, Dies at 72”, Oct. 12) only lightly touches on one of the less admirable incidents of Shoemaker’s life. Shoemaker was driving after a couple of beers–enough to make the 98-pounder legally drunk according to a blood test. When he reached for his car phone, he lost control of his vehicle, and crashed down a steep embankment, paralyzing him beneath the armpits. Shoemaker sued the auto manufacturer, the state of California (for failing to install guardrails on a straight road), and the seven doctors who saved his life–a decision he said he regretted in a 1999 interview: “Shoemaker says he always has felt solely responsible for the accident. ‘I’ve never asked, “Why me?” because it was my own fault. I did it. I can’t blame anybody else. I was at that point at the beginning.’ He now expresses regret over the suits, saying he only followed his attorney’s advice.” (Nancy Kruh, “Legendary Shoemaker has made peace with his new ride”, Dallas Morning News, June 25, 1999).
Class actions and the cost of cars
Steve Blow of the Dallas Morning News, like Alex Tabarrok before him (see Sept. 19), is far from pleased with the results of the class action on behalf of otherwise uninjured owners of recalled Firestone tires; he follows up with a second column which gives details of another class action, this time against Nissan over a printed error on car leases (“Firestone, lawsuits and cost of inflation”, Oct. 4; “Isn’t it time to raise the bar for lawyers?”, Oct. 7). And across town at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, J.R. Labbe discusses the recent case (see Oct. 4) in which Philip Morris agreed to pay $2 million to a mother who by her own account left a child and a lit cigarette unattended in a car contrary to Texas law. “The public may never know why the company chose to settle this case, but you can be sure it will open the door for additional claimants looking to blame someone for their own irresponsible actions.” (“Somebody has to pay”, Oct. 5). (Corrected May 1, 2004 to remove erroneous implication that tire owners were receiving financial compensation in the class action).
ATLA’s politics
One subtheme at the Association of Trial Lawyers of America’s annual meeting, held this summer in San Francisco, was ATLA’s big plans to develop influence within the Republican Party to go with its strong clout among the Democrats. A trial lawyer/GOP caucus expects soon to have chairpersons in all fifty states. “Asked by the lawyers how to talk to representatives who see them as the enemy,” a pollster and former Newt Gingrich aide offered several pieces of advice including, as a National Law Journal reporter paraphrases it, “tell them you want to give them money”. (David Hechler, “The Elephant and the Trial Lawyer”, National Law Journal, Aug. 5). Scheduled speakers at the meeting included Sens. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), John Edwards (D-N.C.), John Kerry (D-Mass.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and Reps. Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.) and Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
More on comics clerk’s conviction
Reader William Dyer (BeldarBlog) writes that he “was disappointed to see your brief entry today on Overlawyered regarding the Jesus Castillo obscenity case. The stories you linked today are filled with factual errors and generally overblow the story.”