Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘Detroit’

Errin’ on the airwaves

Tom Bray of the Detroit News weighs in on the controversy over the Harvard School of Public Health’s decision to give an award to Erin Brockovich (earlier: Sept. 30) and points out that the glamourpuss toxic-tort-chaser is making a push into TV:

She is listed as the executive producer of an upcoming NBC series titled “Class Action,” which will lionize a team of fictional plaintiff’s attorneys who specialize in class-action lawsuits.

(“Radical parody threatens environmental movement”, Oct. 2)(via Toxic Tort News).

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Youth football league needn’t re-weigh 11-year-old

Suburban Detroit:

A Macomb County judge refused Thursday to order a Sterling Heights flag football league to reweigh or reinstate an 11-year-old boy who was too heavy at his official weigh-in to play for the league.

Circuit Judge Deborah A. Servitto said that Kyle St. Peter of Sterling Heights would not suffer irreparable harm if he is not allowed to play with the Sterling Football Club, which begins its season Sunday….

The league requires 11- and 12-year-olds to weigh 150 pounds or less on the day they pick up their equipment.

Kyle weighed 164 pounds Aug. 2, the day he received his helmet and flags, but the league’s commissioner gave him two more weigh-ins. On the last one, Aug. 14, he weighed 151 pounds on the league’s scale — 2 pounds more than he weighed at home that morning.

(Nate Trela, “Boy loses fight to play football”, Detroit Free Press, Sept. 9)(hat tip: Insider Online).

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Update: staking the Shinnecocks

On the day the Shinnecock Indian tribe filed the first of an expected series of lawsuits laying claim to wide swaths of the Hamptons (see Jun. 13), the tribe disclosed that its courtroom offensive was being underwritten by wealthy Detroit casino investors Marian Ilitch, who with her husband Michael founded Little Caesars Pizza and since then has gone on to purchase baseball’s Detroit Tigers as well as the city’s Red Wings hockey team, and real estate developer Michael Malik. “Gateway Funding Associates, a company backed by [Ilitch and Malik], signed an agreement with the tribe more than a year ago to pay for the lawsuit and other ‘economic development’ initiatives in exchange for a part of any future proceeds, said Tom Shields, a spokesman for Gateway.” Champerty has been defined as the practice of aiding in a lawsuit in return for a share in the benefits being sued over; it was illegal at common law but “the prohibitions have been greatly relaxed in modern times” and in some cases abolished. (Katie Thomas, “Shinnecocks launch legal claim to Hamptons land”, Newsday, Jun. 16; “Lawsuit backers invest in casinos” (sidebar), Jun. 16; James Langton, “Native American tribe lays claim to the Hamptons”, Sunday Telegraph (U.K.), Jun. 19).

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Feds’ tobacco-suit shift, cont’d

L.A. Times has some good coverage of the Justice Department’s much-criticized decision last week (see Jun. 10) to scale back the damages it’s asking in its wretched Clinton-legacy tobacco suit:

Law professor Turley [Jonathan Turley of George Washington University, not suspected of overmuch sympathy with the views of this page] said he believed “legal realism and political realism” were the main reasons for the 11th-hour retreat.

The Justice Department had “seemed to be in institutional denial,” Turley said of the consequences of the appeals court defeat [in February, before a D.C. Circuit panel]. “By reducing the (requested) damages it brings the case more in line with that ruling.”

Noting that the case has lasted six years at huge cost to the government, Turley said Justice officials are “very sensitive about the ‘resume factor’ in this case.” The change “lays the groundwork for the spin that they labeled the industry as racketeers and they got the damages they asked for,” he said.

Tobacco lawyers have ridiculed the new proposal. Ted Wells, a lawyer for Philip Morris USA, said it was a $280 billion case, then a $130 billion case, now a $10 billion case and “eventually it will be a zero-dollar case.”

(Myron Levin, “Civil case against tobacco is turning to ash”, Los Angeles Times/Detroit News, Jun. 11).

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Made ill by colleague’s perfume; jury votes $10.6 million

After eight days of deliberation, an all-female federal jury in Detroit has voted $10.6 million, including $7 million in punitive damages, $2 million for mental anguish and emotional distress and $1.6 million in compensatory damages, to former radio host Erin Weber, who said she was made ill by a co-worker’s perfume and later fired after WYCD-FM’s owner, Infinity Broadcasting, failed to resolve her complaints. Weber said that exposure to colleagues’ use of nail polish remover triggered sensitivity to the emanations of a co-worker wearing Tresor, a popular scent which Lancome describes as “romantic, sensual, emotional” and as based on such ingredients as rose and lilac. “Weber claimed exposure to Tresor caused her to lose her voice and take lengthy absences from work. She also said she once ‘felt an electric shock quell through my entire body’ and required heavy medication to combat the effects,” according to the Detroit News. In addition, Weber claimed, the co-worker, who is also a radio host, continued exposing her to the perfume despite her complaints and even walked by her on purpose. Infinity lawyer Daniel Tukel said the company had ordered the co-worker to stop wearing perfume and disputed Weber’s claim that it had “blacklisted” her from radio employment. The company says it will appeal, and a reduction in the award is likely, since federal law “generally caps punitive damages at $300,000 for the claims that Weber brought.” (David Shepardson, “Radio DJ wins $10.6 million in stink over perfume”, Detroit News, May 24; Kim North Shine, “DJ takes in sweet smell of victory”, Detroit Free Press, May 24). For some earlier posts involving claims of unusual sensitivity to widely encountered chemicals, see May 6, 2002, Apr. 25, 2001, and Jul. 3-4, 2000. For complaints about perfume, see May 17-19, 2002 and Apr. 24, 2000 (& welcome James Taranto readers). Update Jul. 6, 2007: federal judge after trial reduced Weber’s award to $814,000.

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Rogers v. Merck

Until today it looked as if the first Vioxx wrongful-death action to go to trial against Merck & Co. since the painkiller’s withdrawal from the market would be Cheryl Rogers’ lawsuit in an Alabama state court over the death of her late husband Howard. Now, at the request of a federal judge who is presiding over other Vioxx cases, the parties have agreed to postpone trial in the Rogers case, which had been set to start next month. (Theresa Agovino, “First Vioxx trial to be postponed”, AP/Business Week, Apr. 28). That’s a pity, since it would have been illuminating to get to the bottom of the allegations about the case aired in recent weeks. Per AP:

Read On…

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Fieger Update: Gilbert v. Ferry

You may recall the $21 million verdict thrown out by the Michigan Supreme Court last year (Jul. 24) because of misconduct by Geoffrey Fieger at trial. (Gilbert v. DaimlerChrysler (Mich. 2004); parties’ briefs; Brian Dickerson, “Judges use Fieger tactics to rebuke him”, Detroit Free Press, Jul. 26; yclipse blog). Fieger had had a buddy “expert” social worker testify that the alleged harassment caused Gilbert’s pancreatitis, and told the jury that Gilbert was like a “Holocaust victim.”

After losing, Fieger responded by filing ethics complaints against the four justices who ruled against him, and, when that didn’t work, filed a civil rights lawsuit in federal court against the justices. This tactic, far more often seen performed by unstable pro se litigants than by prominent trial attorneys, was, as could have been expected, rejected by the trial court and then by the federal court of appeals. (Gilbert v. Ferry (6th Cir. Mar. 10, 2005), affirming 298 F. Supp. 2d 606 (E.D. Mich. 2004)) (via yclipse).

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Update: Virginia not-so-primitive, and state mini-FMAs

The Virginia legislature has voted to repeal the state’s law, the only one of its kind in the nation, prohibiting insurance companies from offering coverage of domestic partners as part of employer-provided health plans (see May 31, 2004, next-to-last paragraph). Gov. Mark Warner (D) has announced his intent to sign the bill. The Virginia Chamber of Commerce backed the repeal, citing principles of economic liberty: “If you believe in a free market, then restrictions like this don’t make any sense,” said Chamber vice president for public policy Stephen D. Haner. The repeal was strenuously opposed, however, by Religious Right figures such as Del. Robert Marshall (R-Manassas), and passed the House of Delegates by only a 49-48 margin (Pamela Stallsmith, “House backs letting firms extend health benefits”, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Feb. 25; Lou Chibbaro, Jr., “Va. DP ban repealed by 1 vote”, Washington Blade, Mar. 4; Tim Hulsey, Feb. 25).

On a related topic, last November Michigan voters approved a constitutional amendment providing that “the union of one man and one woman in marriage shall be the only agreement recognized as a marriage or similar union for any purpose” (see Nov. 2). At the time, opponents argued that the measure might well be interpreted to forbid cities, state universities and other public entities from offering domestic partnership benefits to their employees, but proponents of the measure dismissed that notion: a spokeswoman for Citizens for the Protection of Marriage, a group heavily backed by Michigan’s seven Catholic dioceses, told the Detroit News “nothing that’s on the books is going to change. We continue to confuse this issue by bringing in speculation.” However, with the amendment now in effect, the state’s attorney general — to cheers from most of the amendment’s organized backers — has issued an advisory opinion stating that it does indeed prohibit the city of Kalamazoo from providing DP benefits to its employees after the expiration of their current union contract. (Ed Finnerty, “City under fire over same-sex benefits plan”, Kalamazoo Gazette, Mar. 17; Claire Cummings and Melissa Domsic, “Cox: No future same-sex employee benefits”, State News (Michigan State U.), Mar. 17). Don Herzog of Left2Right, who has assembled plenty of links on the story, aptly labels the sequence of events “Bait and Switch” (Feb. 11 and Mar. 18). Update: Feb. 17, 2007 (Mich. appeals court rules benefits illegal under amendment).

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Ford’s $31 million sweetheart verdict

The famously pro-plaintiff jurisdiction of Zavala County, Texas once again lived up to its reputation the other day when one of its juries returned a $31 million verdict against the Ford Motor Co. in the case of the rollover of a 2000 Explorer which killed two occupants and injured two others. Legal commentators around the web are abuzz about the most remarkable angle of the story, namely that until deep into the trial Ford did not learn that one of the jurors, Crystal City city manager Diana Palacios, was the girlfriend of Jesse Gamez, one of the lawyers on the team of plaintiff’s attorneys headed by Houston’s Mikal Watts. Ford also presented evidence that Palacios, incredibly, had actually solicited two of the crash victims for her boyfriend to represent. Nonetheless, Judge Amado Abascal refused to declare a mistrial, instead dismissing Palacios from the jury and issuing a supposedly curative instruction to the remaining jurors. David Bernstein, Tom Kirkendall and John Steele comment. (John MacCormack, “Juror’s relationship with lawyer stalls Ford trial”, San Antonio Express-News, Feb. 23). (Addendum: one of John Steele’s readers has drawn his attention to this 1997 Texas Supreme Court opinion which co-stars the very same Mr. Gamez and Ms. Palacios in a Norplant case — very curious stuff.)

The other issues raised by the verdict, however, deserve attention as well. The accident was caused by the speeding of the vehicle’s driver, and none of the four occupants was wearing a seat belt; all were ejected. Attorney Watts (Apr. 12-14, 2002) advanced the theory that the injuries were Ford’s fault because it should have used laminated instead of conventional glass in the side windows as a sort of substitute restraint system. (John MacCormack, “Zavala jurors hit Ford for $28 million”, San Antonio Express-News, Mar. 2). Notes the Detroit News:

Ford said laminated glass wouldn’t have kept the women from being ejected and was hardly ever used in side windows when the vehicle was made.

“At that time, 99.9 percent of all vehicles made by all manufacturers, through the 2000 model year, had the kind of tempered glass used in this vehicle,” Vokes said. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration doesn’t require laminated glass in side windows, she said.

(“Explorer suit costs Ford $31 million”, Detroit News, Mar. 3) AutoBlog has a short write-up with a good comments section; note in particular comment #22, on one possible safety advantage of not using laminated glass on cars’ sides. More: Mar. 22, May 13, May 16, May 29.

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