- Okla. AG says scam artists are sending out bogus “you’ve won a class action settlement” notices that could hook unwary recipients [Consumer Affairs]
- Rough on marriages, jobs, and tempers: life as a juror on a thirteen-month trial [Times Online]
- “In some ways, that story represented everything about America: sex, money, and litigation.” [Tina Brown on Anna Nicole saga]
- Baby steps toward consumer protection? When lawyers “go bare” without professional liability insurance, some in Calif. bar think clients should be told [The Recorder]
- Norwalk, Ct. cop who won reinstatement after snatching body part (Jan. 23) is back in the news, and not in a favorable way [Jeff Hall; Advocate, Citizen-News]
- Why RIAA probably needn’t worry that its scattershot suit-filing will expose it to RICO liability [Ars Technica]
- Come to think of it, maybe shooting your husband is worse than serving beer to 16-year-olds [Bader @ WashPost; earlier]
- Michigan woman “slain in the Spirit” at Pentecostal religious service wins suit alleging church was negligent and broke promise by not providing usher to catch her as she fell; defamation claims also figured in suit [Lansing State Journal, Lawyers’ Weekly; compare this case from Australia]
- “Backlash Forms Against ‘Zero Tolerance‘” — well, we can hope [Associated Press]
- New at Point of Law: State Farm moves to disqualify Scruggs in Katrina litigation; honest expert witness spotted?; proposed federal habitat regulation might dwarf current wetlands and species laws; and much more;
- Auctioning off the right to handle a civil case… on eBay? [Five years ago on Overlawyered]
Posts Tagged ‘Michigan’
Mom: I never authorized lawyer to sue school over football injury
Curious doings in Camden, N.J.:
Nita Lawrence, whose son Shykem was paralyzed in a scrimmage football game between Woodrow Wilson and Eastern Regional high schools on Aug. 25, said Monday she never gave a Michigan lawyer authorization to file paperwork naming both high schools in a potential $10 million lawsuit.
In fact, Lawrence said she fired [Ronald R.] Gilbert in early March after he tried to receive advance payment from Bollinger Insurance, the company that provides coverage for student athletes in the Camden School District.
“We didn’t say we were suing nobody,” Lawrence said. “All we wanted was the insurance company to pay for my son’s medical bills. That’s all we wanted.
“We don’t want no $10 million. We’re living fine. Whatever the insurance company doesn’t pay, Medicaid pays. We don’t need a lawsuit. Now, we’ve got all these people against us and it’s not fair because it’s not true.”
A $10 million notice of claim dated Mar. 20 names 18 people, including football coaches, principals and superintendents, as possible defendants. (Chuck Gormley, “Mom: No suit authorized over son’s injury”, Camden Courier-Post, May 1; “Michigan lawyer confirms he’s off Lawrence case”, May 2).
Further information on Fenton, Michigan attorney Ronald R. Gilbert can be found here. Gilbert appears to be the guiding spirit behind two seemingly philanthropic outfits, the Foundation for Spinal Cord Injury Prevention, Care & Cure and the Foundation for Aquatic Injury Prevention. Visitors to the two groups’ websites rather quickly run into discussions of liability and legal options which would seem helpful, no doubt unintentionally, to attorney Gilbert’s client intake efforts.
“Laws Limit Options When a Student is Mentally Ill”
WashingtonPost.com’s “Think Tank Town” feature has a symposium on the policy implications of the Virginia Tech massacre, including contributions from Ted on fear of litigation and from me on the legal constraints on universities faced with problem students, as well as from Jim Copland (Point of Law, Manhattan Institute) on gun control.
This morning’s New York Times (Apr. 19) includes a must-read article by Tamar Lewin spelling out in more detail the problems I refer to in my short commentary. Writes Lewin:
Federal privacy and antidiscrimination laws restrict how universities can deal with students who have mental health problems.
For the most part, universities cannot tell parents about their children’s problems without the student’s consent. They cannot release any information in a student’s medical record without consent. And they cannot put students on involuntary medical leave, just because they develop a serious mental illness….
Universities can find themselves in a double bind. On the one hand, they may be liable if they fail to prevent a suicide or murder. After the death in 2000 of Elizabeth H. Shin, a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who had written several suicide notes and used the university counseling service before setting herself on fire, the Massachusetts Superior Court allowed her parents, who had not been told of her deterioration, to sue administrators for $27.7 million. The case was settled for an undisclosed amount.
On the other hand, universities may be held liable if they do take action to remove a potentially suicidal student. In August, the City University of New York agreed to pay $65,000 to a student who sued after being barred from her dormitory room at Hunter College because she was hospitalized after a suicide attempt.
Also last year, George Washington University reached a confidential settlement in a case charging that it had violated antidiscrimination laws by suspending Jordan Nott, a student who had sought hospitalization for depression….
Last month, Virginia passed a law, the first in the nation, prohibiting public colleges and universities from expelling or punishing students solely for attempting suicide or seeking mental-health treatment for suicidal thoughts.
The article also refers to the role of the Buckley Amendment (FERPA), the HIPAA medical-privacy law, and disabled-rights law, which prohibits universities from inquiring of applicants whether they suffer serious mental illness or have been prescribed psychotropic drugs. Incidentally, the Allegheny College case, in which a Pennsylvania college came under fire for not notifying parents about their son’s suicidal thoughts, was discussed in a W$J article last month: Elizabeth Bernstein, “After a Suicide, Privacy on Trial”, Mar. 24. And Mary Johnson suspects that HIPAA will turn out to have played a role in the calamitous dropping of the ball regarding Cho’s behavior (Apr. 18). More: Raja Mishra and Marcella Bombardieri, “School says its options were few despite his troubling behavior”, Boston Globe, Apr. 19; Ribstein.
And: How well did privacy laws/policies work? Why, just perfectly:
Ms. Norris, who taught Mr. Cho in a 10-student creative writing workshop last fall, was disturbed enough by his writings that she contacted the associate dean of students, Mary Ann Lewis. Ms. Norris said the faculty was instructed to report problem students to Ms. Lewis.
“You go to her to find out if there are any other complaints about a student,” Ms. Norris said, adding that Ms. Lewis had said she had no record of any problem with Mr. Cho despite his long and troubled history at the university.
“I do not know why she would not have that information,” she said. “I just know that she did not have it.”
(Shaila Dewan and Marc Santora, “University Says It Wasn’t Involved in Gunman’s Treatment”, New York Times, Apr. 19). And Barbara Oakley, a professor at Oakland University in Michigan, has an op-ed in today’s Times, recounting her experience with a disturbing student: “It must have seemed far more likely that Rick could sue for being thrown out of school, than that I — or anyone else — could ever be hurt.” (“The Killer in the Lecture Hall”, Apr. 19). The tease-quote from the Times’s editors: “Do universities fear lawsuits more than violent students?”
Piercing the veil
In our legal system, appeals courts very rarely assess the credibility of witnesses; the theory is that, unlike the appellate court, the jury and trial judge had an opportunity to observe the witness firsthand, and were in the best position to determine whether the witness was telling the truth.
Last October, a Muslim woman sued a car rental company in Michigan small claims court; after the court would not agree to give her a female judge, she refused to take off her veil when testifying. (She was wearing a version of the veil which covered all but her eyes.) The judge explained to her that he needed to be able to see her face to evaluate her credibility, but she still refused; as a consequence, he dismissed her case.
Yesterday, she filed a federal lawsuit against the judge, arguing that he violated her First Amendment rights. (It appears that she asks only that she be allowed to wear a veil while testifying at her next hearing (the car rental company has now sued her); she currently is not seeking monetary damages.)
The issue was discussed extensively on the Volokh Conspiracy last December; Professor Volokh’s conclusion: the judge was probably legally in the right when he dismissed the case.
Devil is in the details
For years, an urban legend has floated around which claimed that Procter & Gamble has links to Satanism. P&G’s aggressive campaign to stamp out these rumors included filing numerous lawsuits against those who spread the story. On Friday, at least one of those efforts paid off. A jury in Salt Lake City awarded Procter & Gamble $19.25 million against four Amway distributors who had briefly passed the rumors throughout an Amway voice mail system, and then passed around a retraction soon afterwards. P&G had sued Amway and the distributors, but Amway was ultimately dismissed from the case after many years of litigation.
Observations:
- For a payment of only $18 million, anybody should feel free to call me a Satan-worshipper.
- While I have not yet seen all the pleadings, it seems hard to believe that a rumor such as this could possibly have damaged P&G to the tune of $19.25 million.
- This lawsuit was filed in 1995. For those of you scoring at home, that means it took twelve years to resolve a lawsuit which was, essentially, about gossip. The case featured several trips to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, an unsuccessful petition for Supreme Court review, and related litigation filed in Texas and Michigan as well. Not to defend the conduct of the defendants, but the litigation seems drastically out of proportion to the offense, no?
March 13 roundup
- $47.5 million verdict in Vioxx retrial. [Point of Law]
- D.C. Circuit has big Second Amendment opinion striking down DC gun ban; Brady Center inconsistent about its view of democracy versus the constitution. [Bader; NRO symposium; 18 posts at Volokh]
- Alien Tort Statute: legal imperialism? [Point of Law]
- Michigan Justice Elizabeth Weaver continues to lose it [ATL; People v. Parsons]
- Update in Navarro $217 million verdict: Defendant doctors in lawsuit now suing their own attorneys [St. Pete Times (h/t F.R.)]
- “What did you say about my kiwi?” bill in California [Legal Pad]
- Yeah, that will resolve the housing crisis: group intervenes to protest plan for new apartment complex under fair housing laws because “only” 16 units out of 299 have three bedrooms. [Boston Globe (h/t A.I.)]
- Norm-shifting in the post-MySpace age. [Barnett @ Volokh v. Taylor]
Prince Charles v. McDonald’s
You don’t want to know how many calories are in one of HRH’s Cornish pasties. The authentic Cornish style of pasty always did seem heavy to me, as one raised on the Upper Peninsula Finnish kind. (Rebecca English and Sean Poulter, “The Royal pasty that’s unhealthier than a Big Mac”, Daily Mail (UK), Feb. 28; “Prince Charles says ban McDonald’s food”, AP/Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Feb. 28).
February 22 roundup
- Update to Jan. 5 post: “Gifties” lose t-shirt battle. Amber Taylor is not impressed by Posner’s opinion, though. [Above the Law; Taylor]
- Update to our earlier odometer class action; turns out SAE gives odometers a 4% leeway, so Honda is paying millions for following industry standard. Nissan is still fighting the suit, and other manufacturers will likely be hit. [Gannett/Asbury Park Press]
- $12M for suicide despite hospital workers putting themselves in danger in unsuccessful attempt to prevent death [Birmingham News]
- Electric slide inventor sues YouTubers who perform dance wrong. [CNet (h/t LN)]
- Now the NFL wants to trademark “The Big Game.” [Schwimmer; earlier on Overlawyered]
- NAM blog on punitive damages, likes what I have to say. [NAM blog]
- “Kiss life sciences goodbye if lawsuit bills are passed.” [Detroit News via NAM blog; Manhattan Institute]
- “When Flirting at Work Is Flirting With Trouble” [New York Times]
- AG Lockyer’s office hid millions of dollars of giveaways to trial lawyer donors. [Point of Law roundup of links]
- Maybe it’s time to stop calling myself a fifth-string talking head and recognize that I’m a fourth-string talking head. [Financial Times; Forbes.com; Madison County Record]
Update: Mich. domestic partner benefits
As we noted back on Mar. 20, 2005, some Religious Right campaigners appear to have talked out of both sides of their mouths on the question of whether their proposed anti-gay-marriage amendments in states like Michigan would put an end to the availability of existing health insurance benefits for the domestic partners of employees at public entities such as cities and universities. When urging voters to approve Proposal 2, these campaigners suggested that the measure would leave existing benefits undisturbed; once it was on the books, they supported efforts to invoke it to nullify the benefits. Now a Michigan appeals court has agreed that Proposal 2 does ban public-employee DP benefits. Ed Brayton of Dispatches from the Culture Wars has details (Jul. 5, 2006; Feb. 4 and Feb. 5, 2007; see also Nov. 22, 2006) on the, um, fancy footwork engaged in by two Religious Right litigation groups, the Thomas More Law Center and the Alliance Defense Fund. For more, see John Corvino, “A tragic lie in Michigan”, Between the Lines/Independent Gay Forum, Feb. 8; Jonathan Cohn, “Spouse Abuse”, The New Republic, Feb. 15; Andrew Sullivan, Feb. 15.
“When the courts gag parents”
“[A] wide range of parental speech has been prohibited by family courts, all in the name of the child’s best interests. … Even more courts have based custody decisions partly on parent-child speech and religious upbringing. In Michigan, for example, courts routinely favor the parent who takes the children to church more often. Other courts have denied parents custody based partly on the parents’ teaching their children the propriety of racism, polygamy or homosexuality….
“[F]ew courts have grappled with the question whether judges are allowed under the First Amendment to make such decisions. … Many people would trade all their free-speech rights for the right to teach their own children. And government power to constrain how parents teach their own children is dangerous. Restricting the spread of ideas from parent to child can help today’s majority, or today’s elite, entrench its views. Also, the power to suppress parents’ speech might spread beyond divorces to intact families, too.” (Eugene Volokh (UCLA Law), L.A. Times/Newsday, Feb. 12)(discussion at Volokh Conspiracy).