Posts Tagged ‘Switzerland’

“Zurich hospital turns away US health tourists”

“Zurich University Hospital has stopped treating North American ‘medical tourists’, fearing million-dollar claims from litigious patients if operations go wrong. Hospitals in canton Valais have also adopted measures to protect themselves against visitors from the United States, Canada and Britain.” [Swissinfo.ch via Mark Perry and Coyote]

April 29 roundup

  • “Dog owners in Switzerland will have to pass a test to prove they can control and care for their animal, or risk losing it, the Swiss government said yesterday.” [Daily Telegraph]
  • 72-year-old mom visits daughter’s Southport, Ct. home, falls down stairs searching for bathroom at night, sues daughter for lack of night light, law firm boasts of her $2.475 million win on its website [Casper & deToledo, scroll to “Jeremy C. Virgil”]
  • Can’t possibly be right: “Every American enjoys a constitutional right to sue any other American in a West Virginia court” [W.V. Record]
  • Video contest for best spoof personal injury attorney ads [Sick of Lawsuits; YouTube]
  • Good profile of Kathleen Seidel, courageous blogger nemesis of autism/vaccine litigation [Concord Monitor*, Orac]. Plus: all three White House hopefuls now pander to anti-vaxers, Dems having matched McCain [Orac]
  • One dollar for every defamed Chinese person amounts to a mighty big lawsuit demand against CNN anchor Jack Cafferty [NYDN link now dead; Independent (U.K.)]
  • Hapless Ben Stein whipped up one side of the street [Salmon on financial regulation] and down the other [Derbyshire on creationism]
  • If only Weimar Germany had Canada-style hate-speech laws to prevent the rise of — wait, you mean they did? [Steyn/Maclean’s] Plus: unlawful in Alberta to expose a person to contempt based on his “source of income” [Levant quoting sec. 3 (1)(b) of Human Rights Law]
  • Hey, these coupon settlements are giving all of us class action lawyers a bad name [Leviant/The Complex Litigator]
  • Because patent law is bad enough all by itself? D.C. Circuit tosses out FTC’s antitrust ruling against Rambus [GrokLaw; earlier]
  • “The fell attorney prowls for prey” — who wrote that line, and about which city? [four years ago on Overlawyered]

*Okay, one flaw in the profile: If Prof. Irving Gottesman compares Seidel to Erin Brockovich he probably doesn’t know much about Brockovich.

“Doomsday fears spark lawsuit”

“The builders of the world’s biggest particle collider are being sued in federal court over fears that the experiment might create globe-gobbling black holes or never-before-seen strains of matter that would destroy the planet. … The Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, is due for startup later this year at CERN’s headquarters on the French-Swiss border.” Among the concerns of critics who are suing in federal court in Hawaii: “Could quarks recombine into ‘strangelets’ that would turn the whole Earth into one big lump of exotic matter?” (Alan Boyle, CosmicLog, MSNBC, Mar. 27; Dennis Overbye, “Asking a Judge to Save the World, and Maybe a Whole Lot More”, New York Times, Mar. 29).

More: Sundries Shack (“For goodness sake, one of the plaintiffs calls himself an ‘author and researcher on time travel'”); Adler @ Volokh. The liberal site Lawyers, Guns & Money, perhaps serving in this instance as a Strange Attractor, attracts a commenter who seems to agree with the lawsuit-filers that it’s better to be safe than sorry — the Precautionary Principle lives! And from our comments, links to the complaint, Ted on jurisdiction, and thoughts on the effectiveness of litigation in obtaining free publicity.

Quoted in today’s Times

I’m quoted on the Melvyn Weiss guilty plea, and on the way certain crooks have successfully been passing themselves off as white knights in press coverage of shareholder and consumer litigation. (Jonathan D. Glater, “High-Profile Trial Lawyer Agrees to Guilty Plea”, New York Times, Mar. 21). For more on Weiss’s plea, see yesterday’s post.

More Weiss reactions include a NY Sun editorial:

Mr. Weiss and his partners made their careers, and their fortunes, casting those they were suing — insurance and tobacco executives, Swiss bankers — as crooks. Some of them may have been, though many were not. Now these lawyers are admitting to the court that they are crooks, too. … Congress has already acted to reform the class-action system from the “first-to-file” system that engendered the Milberg Weiss abuses. But until Congress and the state legislatures act further to reform the civil litigation system, the costs of Weiss’s career will be borne by all of us.

Interviewed by the L.A. Times, Columbia lawprof Jack Coffee (who’s done a lot of work for Milberg, right?) thinks Mel Weiss got a “uniquely good deal” in the plea. Similarly: Greenfield.

February 1 roundup

  • Following public outrage, Spanish businessman drops plans to sue parents of boy he killed in road crash [UK Independent; earlier]
  • Scruggs to take Fifth in State Farm case against Hood [Clarion-Ledger] And how much “home cooking” was the Mississippi titan dished out in the Medicaid-tobacco case that made his fortune? [Folo]
  • More critics assail ABC “Eli Stone” vaccine-autism fiction, with American Academy of Pediatrics calling for episode’s cancellation [AAP press release; Stier, NY Post; earlier]
  • Special ethics counsel recommends disbarment of Edward Fagan, lawyer of Swiss-bank-suit fame whose ethical missteps have been chronicled on this site over the years [Star-Ledger]. As recently as fourteen months ago the L.A. Times was still according Fagan good publicity;
  • In past bail-bond scandals, private bond agencies have been caught colluding “with lawyers, the police, jail officials and even judges to make sure that bail is high and that attractive clients are funneled to them.” [Liptak, NYT]
  • Archbishop of Canterbury calls for new laws to punish “thoughtless or cruel” comments on religion [Times Online, Volokh]
  • Another disturbing case from Massachusetts of a citizen getting charged with privacy violation for recording police activity [also Volokh]
  • Abuse of open-records law? Convicted arsonist files numerous requests for pictures and personal information of public employees who sent him to prison; they charge intimidation [AP/Seattle Post-Intelligencer]
  • It resembles a news program on Connecticut public-access cable, but look more closely: it’s law firm marketing [Ambrogi]
  • Judge says Alfred Rava’s suit can proceed charging sex bias over Oakland A’s stadium distribution of Mother’s Day hats [Metropolitan News-Enterprise; earlier on Angels in Anaheim]
  • Crack down on docs with multiple med-mal payouts? Well, there go lots of your neurosurgeons [three years ago on Overlawyered]

Neuborne dispute not over after all

Professor Burt Neuborne finally received the $3.1 million he requested for achieving a $1.25 billion tax-free settlement of claims brought by Holocaust survivors against Swiss banks. The controversy isn’t over, however; Neuborne has made a standard request for interest (another $300,000), and there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth. [Law Blog; NY Sun; earlier on Overlawyered]

Professor Neuborne’s fee request is based on the hours actually spent on seven years of complex international litigation (29 formal proceedings and 16 successful Second Circuit appeals), and amounts to less than 1% of the amount recovered. There is no evidence that Professor Neuborne inflated his hours. If all contingent-fee requests were as reasonable as Professor Neuborne’s, reformers would have a lot less to complain about.

Postcard from Interlaken

Ted is on vacation in Europe, and sends the following:

So Slim and I went paragliding in Interlaken, Switzerland, today. As the van takes a group of five customers up to the top of the hill, the leader explains that we’ll each get to pick our tandem pilot.

I consulted my inner economist. “I want the one with the gray hair,” I said.

The pilot, Robi, gave me a form. “Regulations. Just like any air flight, we need to have the name and destination recorded. The liability is just like Continental Airlines,” handing me a ticket to sign. I read the back, expressly disclaiming that Air Transport laws applied, and stating maximum liability would be 72,500 francs. And since it’s Switzerland, the law of contract is probably respected, so that’s a real waiver. Fair enough — if I do not fly, so much as plummet, my ability to recover in civil court is perhaps the last thing on my mind. My pilot has plenty of economic incentive to land safely such that civil liability does not add much at the margin. And Coase teaches us that the limited liability permits the price to be as low as it is. I accept the benefit of the bargain, and assume good faith that the professional paraglider is just unfamiliar with the nature of the forms rather than trying to snow me.

The fact that I’m writing suggested that I survived. But I’m pretty confident that one is not supposed to bounce on the side of the hill during takeoff. (Slim, whose launch was after mine, reports that one of the other pilots crossed himself at the time.) And, hey, fun.

U.K. roundup

Because you were clamoring for one:

  • Police warn householders of three convicted burglars but say they cannot describe them for fear of violating their human rights [Telegraph]

  • Eight year old Connor McCreaddie is very fat indeed, so North Tyneside officials are considering taking him from his mum into protective custody [Gillespie, Reason “Hit and Run”]

  • Sounds promising but haven’t seen: author Simon Carr has published compendium of legal horror stories entitled “Sour Gripes” [Telegraph]

  • As in the U.S., prospect of discrimination suits has deterred efforts to keep unhealthily thin fashion models off the catwalk [Guardian]

  • Ban on fox hunting not only is widely evaded but in fact has led to renaissance of the sport [Telegraph]

  • “An incompetent expert [witness] can cause more misery than a psychotic gang member.” [Slapper/Times]

  • Vacationing cop busted for Swiss Army knife [Daily Mail]

  • In hospitals, perhaps a surfeit of privacy [Huddersfield Daily Examiner via KevinMD] and sensitivity [Daily Mail via ditto]

  • Man obsessed by sex after motorcycling injury expected to get multi-million-pound award [Telegraph]

  • Children’s sack race scrapped for lack of liability insurance [Telegraph]; industrialist says inordinate playground risk-aversion is bad omen for economy [ditto]

  • Convicted armed robber “given legal aid to sue over a telephone message that reveals that his phone calls come from prison” [Telegraph]

  • Familiar ring? Controversy mounting over “ambulance chasing”, allegations of sharp practices as no-fee-no-win injury work makes fortunes for some well placed solicitors [Times here, here, here, here]