Newark Star-Ledger’s Kate Coscarelli has a well-reported profile of the braggart impresario who, despite mounting ethical woes and a slew of client complaints, has been much lionized by a gullible press (especially overseas) through a series of international lawsuits from WWII reparations down through the tsunami-warning case. “Interviews and court documents paint a portrait of a colorful, erratic Essex County lawyer who cut his teeth on considerably less-ambitious personal-injury cases and whose troubles mounted over the years, even as he continued to file his ambitious string of international lawsuits.” The Star-Ledger tends to pull down its stories from free access fairly quickly, so don’t postpone reading this one (“How a world-renowned attorney wound up in handcuffs”, Mar. 13). We’ve been following Fagan for years: see Feb. 5, Feb. 16, and so on.
Posts Tagged ‘ethics’
Browbeating the other side’s lawyer?
It’s really important to make sure things have gone off the record and that the deposition transcript isn’t still running, especially if you’re going to threaten bodily harm (Kelly-Moore Paint Co. motion for sanctions against Eric Birge of Brent Coon & Associates in a Texas asbestos case (PDF))(courtesy Evan Schaeffer, who comments).
Belated Geoffrey Fieger Report: Wills v. Dillard’s
Jameel Talley had been fired from the local police department, but the mayor of North Randall (pop. 893 and dropping) “sent what he called a ‘second chance’ letter to Maple Heights, saying Talley should not have been fired. The mayor said he ‘erred in judgment’ and ‘recommends 100 percent (that) Talley continue his career in law enforcement.'” So Maple Heights hired him for their police department, where Talley had a spotless record, and the local Dillard’s hired him for off-duty work as a security guard.
Unfortunately, Talley had been fired from North Randall for shooting at a shoplifting suspect.
And, unfortunately again, 41-year-old Guy Wills, under the influence of drugs, decided to shoplift a leather jacket at Dillard’s, and then resist arrest from the much larger Talley. So Talley smashed him upside down into the concrete floor. Unfortunately again, Wills checked himself out of the hospital, got sick at the police station, refused treatment or a trip to the emergency room–and then fell into a coma, and when he woke up, he was dead. Shortly after the incident, Dillard’s shut down the store. Talley was convicted of voluntary manslaughter for excessive force, and sentenced to three years. And Dillard’s, as the deep pocket, was sued. (NewsNet5: Jan. 18 (featuring the great line “Dillard’s attorney, who’s [sic] name is unknown at this time”), June 23, 2003; Nov. 14, 2002; “Dillard’s to close Raleigh Springs store”, Memphis Business Journal, Jan. 27, 2003).
The attorney was none other than Geoffrey Fieger (Oct. 11 and Aug. 31 and lots of links therein), but the trial wasn’t going so well, so he adopted what seems to be a standard tactic: deliberately try to alienate the judge, and then loudly complain about prejudice.
[Judge Nancy Margaret] Russo leveled a litany of legal wrongs against Fieger, including: insulting and berating lawyers and calling them liars; making faces after she ruled against him; repeatedly interrupting testimony; entering objections loudly; and threatening an insurance adjuster with the loss of his job.
“He has been nothing but bullying, loud, obnoxious and unprofessional,” Russo said. “I have tried for three weeks to rein him in. I have done my best.”
The final straw came Thursday after attorney Larry Zukerman accused Fieger of accosting him and threatening to have his client — former Dillard’s store manager Frank Monaco — arrested for obstruction of justice.
Russo threatened Fieger with contempt, and Fieger responded by pulling himself off the case and asking for a mistrial. For some reason, Russo rewarded the antics with exactly what Fieger wanted, and now Fieger gets to start all over with another judge, and a second bite at correcting whatever problems he saw with the first trial. (James F. McCarty, “Lawyer quits case on judge’s threat”, Cleveland Plain-Dealer, Jan. 29; James F. McCarty, “Mistrial in wrongful-death case of shoplifter”, Cleveland Plain-Dealer, Feb. 1). And shame on our Cleveland readers for not letting us know about this one sooner.
Attorney accidentally sues himself
By reader acclaim, from the Illinois county that furnishes so much material for this site: “Alton attorney Emert Wyss thought he could make money in a Madison County class action lawsuit, but he accidentally sued himself instead.” Representing a client who’d bought and then refinanced a house, Wyss advised her that she might be entitled to file a lawsuit against the company that wrote the original mortgage over the $60 fee it charged for faxing two payoff statements, and soon signed her up for a class-action suit to be handled by himself and several other law firms, including the prominent Lakin firm. However, it developed that a company called Centerre Title, owned by Wyss himself, had been the party that collected the allegedly improper fees at closing, and when the mortgage-company defendant learned of this it moved to add both Centerre and Wyss as third-party defendants, much as Jerry, in the old cartoons, sometimes succeeds in bringing Tom’s tail around in circular fashion and presenting it for him to bite. The judge granted the motion, and rather than persist in a suit against himself Wyss resigned the client’s representation. The Madison County Record’s coverage includes deposition-transcript excerpts that serve as a reminder of how essentially passive clients often get steered into class actions in which the lawyers are the real parties in interest (Steve Corris, “Alton attorney accidentally sues himself”, Madison County Record, Mar. 8).
Michael O’Keefe, Sr. / ATLA on Med-Mal Reform
Reader Stan Sipple writes me that “a Louisiana attorney several years ago took you up on your proposal that plaintiffs’ attorneys should run insurance companies. Was this what the trial lawyers had in mind?”
Me, I’m sad; it’s been two weeks since I wrote that column. While ATLA issued a press release March 3 claiming and complaining that congressional legislation on caps won’t make medical malpractice insurance cheaper, they’re not taking advantage of my modest proposal how to simultaneously prove their point about tort reform, improve medical care, reduce malpractice insurance rates, and make more money. I can’t imagine why they’re passing up this opportunity if they believe what they say in their press release.
“SEC Chair Scolds Hedge Fund Lawyers”
“‘Think how much anguish we could have avoided if a few more lawyers had pointed out to their hedge fund clients that late trading of mutual fund shares is illegal, as are duplicitous market-timing arrangements,’ [Securities and Exchange Commission chair William] Donaldson told securities lawyers at the Practising Law Institute’s annual SEC Speaks conference.” (Ron Orol and Donna Block, The Deal, Mar. 8).
E-shaming errant lawyers
David Giacalone (following up on earlier comments by Denise Howell and others) expects careless and ethically lax attorneys to face a Google nemesis (Mar. 7).
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.
“N.C. Judge Throws Out All Malpractice Charges in Attorney Free-for-All”
“A federal judge in North Carolina has thrown out all attorney malpractice charges exchanged in a free-for-all battle in which a woman hired a new lawyer to sue her previous two sets of attorneys and those law firms accused the new attorney — and each other — of negligence.” (Frank Reynolds, Professional Liability Litigation Reporter, Feb. 24).
Judge orders entire law firm to ethics class
Things might start getting lively if judges used this sanction more often: “A federal judge in Fresno, Calif., has ordered the entire 80-lawyer firm of Lozano Smith back to school for a refresher course in ethics as a sanction for repeated misrepresentation of facts and the law in a dispute over aid for a learning-disabled student.” U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger said the law firm, which represents many California school districts in special-ed matters, “its lead attorney in the case, Elaine Yama, and the district [the Bret Harte Union School District in central California] engaged in repeated misstatements of the record, frivolous objections to plaintiff’s statement of facts, and repeated mischaracterizations of the law.'” (Pamela A. MacLean, “Judge Orders Law Firm Back to School”, National Law Journal, Feb. 14).