All four have completed their sentences and don’t seem to have it so bad, judging by a March 19 Bloomberg story. William Lerach is going to teach at a law school and work for a “progressive think-tank.” And for the Milberg law firm itself? “Over the past couple of years, while everybody has been laying off lawyers and cutting pay, we’ve been giving lawyers raises and extra bonuses.”
{ 0 comments }
A Boston jury has awarded $1.5 million to a man whose fingers were injured by a tablesaw on the theory that it was defective for the saw to lack “flesh-detection” technology. According to the lawsuit, the inventor of the technology offered to sell it to tool companies a decade ago, but negotiations broke down and none made a deal; the inventor proceeded to launch his own line of saws, SawStop, incorporating the technology. “[Carlos] Osorio’s case is one of more than 50 lawsuits pending throughout the United States against the major table saw manufacturers for failure to adopt the technology.” [Boston Globe, Fine Woodworking] SawStop bills itself on one customer testimonial at its website as the “Rolls-Royce of table saws”, and appears to sell its saw at a premium of hundreds of dollars over ordinary table saws widely available at prices below $500. A commenter in the very active thread at Wood Magazine estimates the premium at $800-$1,000, and also lists some other reasons why many buyers might not welcome the jury’s edict.
{ 0 comments }
Michael Fumento has a noteworthy statistical update on the case that made Erin Brockovich famous.
{ 0 comments }
I’ll be speaking at Duke Law Monday about the Grand Theft Auto and other class action settlements. Come say hi.
{ 0 comments }
Reason TV interviews advice columnist-author (I See Rude People), blogger and frequent Overlawyered commenter Amy Alkon.
{ 0 comments }
“Nicholas Brilleaux, publisher of Hammond Action News, got a big victory yesterday when a Louisiana judge dissolved an order prohibiting him from posting a satirical news story about a fictional giraffe attack on his blog.” [Citizen Media Law, OnPoint News, earlier]
{ 0 comments }
The Italian government passes a law against “molecular cuisine”, barring use of liquid nitrogen and chemical additives in restaurant kitchens. It expires in less than a year, though. [Caput Mundi Cibus via Tyler Cowen]
{ 1 comment }
Bruce Nye has a photo of a pointless new warning McDonald’s has posted in California stores to avoid litigation. The warning seems to have a side safety benefit: by the time you finish reading it, your coffee won’t be hot any more.
{ 4 comments }
Adam Goldberg and Joshua Galper note the commendable spectacle of a prosecutor — District Attorney Fred Bright of the Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit in Georgia, leading the probe into charges against Pittsburgh Steeler Ben Roethlisberger — actually waiting until the results of his investigation are in before blaring them to the press. [HuffPo via Legal Ethics Forum]
{ 1 comment }
Overlawyered readers are well aware of the sorry history of the fen-phen litigation; those that aren’t are advised to check out Professor Lester Brickman’s summary.
In April 2008, the Diet Drugs MDL district court awarded $567 million the class counsel in that case, basing the award in part on representations by class counsel about future class recovery. A year later, a plaintiff’s attorney requested the court reopen the question of the fee award because the class counsel had exaggerated those estimates. The district court refused, holding that the one-year delay in bringing the Rule 60(b) motion was not a “reasonable time.” There has been an appeal to the Third Circuit, and, today, the Center for Class Action Fairness filed an amicus brief in support of the appeal that itself provides a short overview of the history of the fen-phen MDL. Many thanks to Chris Arfaa for his generous help in filing the brief.
{ 0 comments }
The city moves to yank the licenses of nightclubs that it considers too tolerant of covert cigarette use. [NYT via Sullum, Reason "Hit and Run"]
{ 4 comments }
It’s seen as too risky [Daily Mail, UK] Local authorities will try to bring the event back next year; we covered an earlier suspension in 2003.
P.S. Commenter Peter Eipers: “They can’t handle crowd control for a cheese race, and they are about to host the Olympics?” More: Zincavage.
{ 3 comments }
Citizens United menaces “Citizens United against Citizens United” [David Post, Volokh]
{ 0 comments }
A parody, right? Must be a parody. (& welcome Legal Blog Watch readers).
{ 1 comment }
In 1992, Diana Maychick drove her mother’s Oldsmobile back to Washington Place in Greenwich Village, and got out. Her mother, the 74-year-old Stella Maychick, slid over from the passenger seat to the driver’s seat, readying herself to return to Yonkers. Maycheck, a shorter-than-average woman, suddenly took off in the car, which sped up, ran two stop signs, and tore through Washington Square Park, killing five and maiming several others.
Diana Maychick is now Diana Foote, a restaurant reviewer for a Palm Beach newspaper, and recently recounted the accident, claiming the recent Toyota troubles exonerated her mother.
Which I found fascinating, because I worked on that litigation—and the evidence that Maychick hit the gas instead of the brake was so strong that the plaintiffs’ lawyers abandoned the standard specious “mysterious gremlins caused the car to accelerate” theory and replaced it with a “General Motors knew that drivers were hitting the wrong pedal but didn’t do enough to warn them” theory. I took issue with Foote’s column in a letter to the newspaper.
As for the lawsuit itself, the judge excused everyone in the voir dire who expressed the remotest skepticism about plaintiffs’ theory, and GM settled shortly after the start of trial. One certainly marvels at the chutzpah of the theory of the case, given trial lawyers’ role in trying to persuade the public that driver error couldn’t possibly be to blame.
{ 3 comments }
Some 60,000 cell-phone users who had signed up to receive “promotional messages” from Nextones.com in order to get a free ringtone got just such a text message on January 18, 2006 advertising a cell-phone-related Stephen King book. This resulted in a class action that was thrown out on the grounds that plaintiffs had agreed to “terms and conditions” permitting such cell-phone advertising; moreover, the federal law prohibiting the use of an automatic telephone dialing system applied only to systems that dialed numbers randomly or sequentially, and the defendants were operating off of a list of opt-in telephone numbers.
The Ninth Circuit reversed. The issue, it said, was not whether phone numbers were sequentially dialed, but whether the equipment used could hypothetically sequentially dial telephone numbers. It also held that there was a disputed issue of fact whether King’s publisher, Simon & Schuster, counted as an “affiliate.”
Faced with the prospect of going to trial and the risk of $500 to $1500 damages assessed for each call (i.e., $30 to $90 million in damages) defendants have settled. There is a settlement fund of $10 million established, plaintiffs can submit claims that will pay $175 (or a pro rata amount if the fund is exhausted) and plaintiffs’ attorneys will ask for $2.725 million from that fund.
This is superficially all well and good, but if the claim response is the all-too-typical 1%, the attorneys may well collect 27 times as much as the class will get. Indeed, assuming that $1 million for notice and administration disappears from the fund, the full $10 million won’t be paid out unless over half the class signs up. There is also a mysterious $250,000 “cy pres” award whose destination is not specified in the notice or in the settlement.
If you’re a class member who received the text message in 2006, congratulations, you can get free money: fill out a claim form before September 20 (and kudos to the parties for allowing claimants to do it online); if you’re a class member who has concerns about the settlement, contact me.
{ 2 comments }
{ 2 comments }
Point of Law