Michael Fox of Jottings by an Employer’s Lawyer sees a resurfacing of this campaign, about whose merits he’s skeptical (Dec. 20). For the schools context, see Feb. 14-15, 2001. More: Point of Law, Apr. 18, 2005 (jury award in Indiana on the theory). More: Mar. 2, 2007.
Posts Tagged ‘Massachusetts’
Upholding democracy, frivolous election challenge thrown out
The Ohio Supreme Court’s Chief Justice threw out a lawsuit backed by Jesse Jackson and funded by a partisan Massachusetts election monitoring group. The lawsuit claimed that Pres. Bush unfairly won Ohio due to some indescribable fraud by his supporters as this excerpt from this article indicates:
The complaint questioned how the actual results could show Bush winning when exit-poll interview findings on election night indicated that Kerry would win 52 percent of Ohio’s presidential vote.
Without listing specific evidence, the complaint alleges that 130,656 votes for Kerry and John Edwards in 36 counties were somehow switched to count for the Bush-Cheney ticket.
The Ohio chief justice ruled that
Tobacco class action update
Plaintiffs defending the insane $10.1 billion class action judgment (Feb. 8; Mar. 24, 2003) have retained as co-counsel a law firm associated with a Republican Illinois Supreme Court justice in an effort to have him disqualified from the case. (Paul Hampel, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “Smaller court may hear tobacco case in Madison County”, Oct. 3; Ameet Sachdev, “Philip Morris seeks removal of law firm”, Chicago Tribune, Sep. 1 (no longer online)). The Edwardsville Intelligencer (in a strange story whose math seems to be wrong in other particulars) reports that Madison County has received a $1.7 million windfall in interest from Philip Morris from the bond (Apr. 4, 2003) it posted to appeal that judgment. (Steve Horrell, “County is cashing in”, Oct. 8).
The Seattle Times has a retrospective look back at the comprehensive tobacco settlement (Feb. 28 and links therein) negotiated in large part by Washington state Attorney General Christine Gregoire, and notes the irony that it forced the state to ally itself with Philip Morris to protest the amount of the bond (see also Apr. 30, 2003). (Andrew Garber, “Tobacco settlement Gregoire negotiated not popular with all”, Oct. 4). But the bad news for Altria shareholders, states hoping to continue receiving tobacco funds, and the ability of Americans to conduct business is that plaintiffs continue to pile on with similarly meritless class action lawsuits, waiting to find the combination of judges who dislike tobacco companies enough to expand class action law rather than rule in their favor. Plaintiffs’ lawyers will bring dozens of these lawsuits, and need win only one multi-billion dollar judgment to become the new owners of the enterprise. The Massachusetts Supreme Court recently signed off on a class action against Philip Morris, and lower courts in Missouri and Ohio have followed suit. (AP, Sep. 17; Theo Emery, AP, Aug. 16).
Kerry’s career as a lawyer
Blogger Beldar, fresh from a prominent role in exposing the CBS scandal, applies merciless scrutiny to the senator’s brief stint in Massachusetts legal practice (Sept. 28). Okay, so maybe Kerry didn’t accomplish much while he was a lawyer, but we’ll have to think some more about whether that’s necessarily a bad thing.
Kerry malpractice plan
According to one of his health care advisers, the Massachusetts Senator actually supports “meaningful but enactable” malpractice reform, according to a new report. (Mark A. Hofmann, “Adviser says Kerry supports malpractice reform”, Business Insurance Daily News, Aug. 4). The Kerry campaign website has more (scroll down). George Wallace at Decs & Exs (Aug. 4) doesn’t think there’s much here that’s new, but we’re not so sure, especially on the punitive damages language and in the failure to raise federalism objections which ordinarily are front and center in Democratic resistance to liability reform at a national level.
Outsourcing enforcement in Mass
Massachusetts consumer protection law includes “item pricing” regulations.” A shopper who picks up an item marked $3.19, but is charged $3.59 at the checkout, has been the victim of a violation of these rules. If a state wishes to address such incidents, a practical question arises: how to enforce legal rules when they involve such trifling amounts of money per incident? Enter class action lawyers, naturally. According to the Boston Globe, Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas Reilly has farmed out the enforcement of these rules to a group of private attorneys — who are doing quite well for themselves. Cases against Home Depot and Wal-Mart have been settled; a settlement with Walgreen is pending. If the Walgreen settlement is finalized, the outcome of all this acitivity will be the payment of $3.2 million to the private attorneys, $3.9 million to “an eclectic group of charitable, consumer, and nonprofit groups,” and $425,000 to the AG’s Office. The list of favored groups includes, among others, the Roscoe Pound Institute and Public Citizen. The Globe points out that “it would be impossible to identify consumers hurt by item-pricing failures”; one of the private attorneys claims in the story that the payments to the favored groups will benefit Massachusetts residents, with most being used to “spur greater awareness of consumer rights.” Cases against other retailers (in addition to Walgreen) are pending. (Bruce Mohl, “Reilly turns to private enforcement of item pricing,” Boston Globe, June 27)
That must have really hurt
…and it was the Massachusetts Lottery Commission’s fault, you have to understand. For our part, we intend in future to avoid drunken brawlers in Dedham, Mass. (Jonathan Saltzman, “Lottery sued after toes crushed”, Boston Globe, Jun. 26). On the dangers of tippable vending machines, see also Jul. 20-22, 2001.
Massachusetts tobacco fees: “Greed on Trial”
“The question before the jurors was not whether legal fees amounting to $7,700 an hour were ‘unreasonable.’ It was whether the lawyer-plaintiffs should get $1.3 billion more.” Detailed account of tobacco-fee buccaneering and the resulting courtroom antics (complete with “trained-seal” expert witnesses) in one state. When contemplating the tobacco crusade, the chief of litigation at Brown Rudnick said, “I had dollar signs in my eyes, even back at that early stage. And I know that they were large dollar signs.” (Alex Beam, The Atlantic, Jun.). For our coverage of Massachusetts tobacco fees, see Nov. 4 and links from there.
Mustn’t undermine their authority
Reversing a seven-year-old precedent, the Massachusetts high court has ruled that even though employees enjoy an absolute right to seek jury trials rather than have their claims of bias adjudicated by the state antibias agency, MCAD, employers do not have a right to bring their case to a jury following an adverse MCAD ruling. In its May 6 decision, the court said that recognizing employers’ right to a jury trial, as it had done in a 1997 decision called Lavelle v. Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, was undermining the agency’s authority. Mustn’t do that! (“SJC decision curbs employer access to jury trial in job-related discrimination cases”, Boston Business Journal, May 7; “Bias case rulings may have wide impact”, BostonWorks.com (Boston Globe), May 23; “Q&A: MCAD’s Dorca Gomez, on jury trial reversal”, Boston Globe, May 16). The law firm of Foley, Hoag & Eliot (May 12, PDF) said the ruling “further stacks the deck against employers in discrimination cases”. Remarkably, the Massachusetts chapter of the ACLU had pressed to abolish employers’ right to jury trial, and hails the new decision in a press release which seems calculated to lull the casual reader into imagining that the two sides are somehow still endowed with symmetrical rights (by de-emphasizing complainants’ privilege of choosing which forum will hear the dispute). No doubt our friends at ATLA, with their frequent rhetoric about the need to prevent erosion of the jury system, will rise to deplore the stripping away of defendants’ access to juries. Right?
New batch of reader letters
Still far from caught up, we’ve posted four more entries from our pipeline of reader letters on our letters page. Our favorite this time comes from a reader who was a class member in a class action suit filed against companies alleged to have sent out unsolicited (“junk”) faxes. How was the settlement notice sent out to the class? Why, via another unsolicited fax. Among topics of other letters: a $4.75 million settlement payable by a Massachusetts utility because its driver tried to be courteous and wave a pedestrian into traffic, where she was hit by another vehicle that failed to stop; the case of the fired Dallas police chief who, fragile of soul, wants $5 million for his emotional anguish at the episode; and finally, a letter from another trial lawyer who appears not to like us very much.