Have Coat, Will Travel — Lose Suit, Will Sue
March 11, 2010
What do you do if you’re a Texas personal injury lawyer who forgets his $800 leather jacket at an airport when boarding a flight?
Well, since you’re a personal injury lawyer and owned an $800 coat, you could probably afford to buy a new one.
Or since you make your living bringing personal injury lawsuits you could…
- Threaten to sue the city where the airport is located;
- Threaten to sue the the concession where you think you left your jacket;
- And threaten to sue the airline!
That’s what William Ogletree, a Houston trial lawyer chose. The Ogletree case is just one more example of lack of personal responsibility that runs rampant these days. For more of the gory details read this article from the Southeast Texas Record.
AG Blumenthal: Lawsuits “Create Jobs”
March 4, 2010
Carter Wood over at Point of Law posted a little gem yesterday. Wood reports that Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut’s long-time attorney general and now a candidate for governor, recently made the extraordinary claim that all those lawsuits he’s filed over the years “actually create jobs.” Well, knock me over with a feather.
For those interested in something closer to the actual truth, I refer you to a report that Pacific Research Institute’s Lawrence McQuillan authored. McQuillan’s study catalogs the devastating impact of excessive litigation on our economy - including thousands of lost jobs.
Lerach Book Cont’d
March 3, 2010
For more on the new book, Circle of Greed, chronicling the exploits of uber-trial lawyer Bill Lerach, check out Kim Strassel’s review from yesterday’s WSJ.
The Rise and Fall of Lerach
March 2, 2010
The New York Times Deal Blog has a good, extensive review of a brand new book that describes the rise and fall of trial lawyer titan, Bill Lerach. The book’s title: Circle of Greed.
An excerpt from the review describing how Lerach began his rise to fame:
“’…Mr. Dillon and Mr. Cannon trace how…Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach, began paying secret fees to people who agreed to serve as the representative plaintiff in their cases. In those days, securities class actions were a race to the courthouse, with the first to file often controlling the litigation. Called ‘pets,’ these plaintiffs were lapdogs willing to serve Milberg Weiss while taking a cut of any settlement in the case, while telling the court that they had received nothing more than what any other class member got from the case.’”
And how his tremendous fall began:
“[F]ederal prosecutors in Los Angeles in late 1999 began the painstaking task of putting together a criminal case against the firm and four of its name partners for making secret payments to plaintiffs and an expert witness. The criminal case began almost by accident when one of the “pet” plaintiffs, trying to avoid a substantial prison term, spilled what he knew about Milberg Weiss. Over the next nine years, prosecutors painstakingly pulled together a case that resulted in the conviction of four of the named partners in Milberg Weiss and the firm itself.”
Unfortunately the reviewer, Peter Henning, misses the point of what Bill Lerach represented when he writes:
“But was his crime all that significant? In one sense, the answer is ‘No’ because it is hard to identify any real victims from making the secret payments. But the answer is ‘Yes’ because Mr. Lerach showed an utter disregard for the legal system, and any defense of the Milberg Weiss payments devolves into an argument that ‘the end justifies the means.’”
Yes, Lerach represents unchecked arrogance and the utter disregard for our legal system. But his crimes were far from “victimless.”
Those of us who have been fighting in the trenches for many years against unscrupulous trial lawyers know all too well that Bill Lerach stood as the singular example of jackpot justice and trial lawyer greed. The abusive actions of Lerach and dozens of others like him have cost every one of us very dearly. Many American Courthouse readers know the stats well - but here’s just one: according to the 2008 Towers Perrin study on US tort costs, every man, woman and child in the U.S. pays a “lawsuit tax” of $835 per year. That’s more than $3300 a year for a family of four. We pay this tax through higher prices for products and services due to the ever-increasing costs of litigation…all brought to you by the likes of sleazy Bill Lerach.
Schwarzenegger to Fight for Legal Reform
January 8, 2010
As even casual political observers know, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenneger has had a turbulent tenure as the state’s executive-in-chief. That promises to continue, based on a bold pledge he made in his final State of the State address this week.
In a tribute to his previous body-building career, Ahh-nold has vowed to take on nothing short of a Herculean task: enacting legal reform in the Golden State.
With Democrats in charge of the state legislature — all backed by powerful trial bar interests — is the Gov. simply looking to go down as the action hero he once was, guns firing in a blaze of glory?
Nope - Gov. Schwarzenegger gets the same thing that Gov. Haley Barbour in Mississippi (still fighting to protect legal reforms), Gov. Rick Perry in Texas, and many other governors get: legal reform powers job creation.
California voters get it, too. A recent poll reported that 71% believe lawsuits are a job killer and more than six in ten say lawsuit reforms would bring new jobs to the state. Tom Scott, executive director of the California Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse, puts it succinctly:
“One lawsuit can be the difference between being in business and being out of business.”
And jobs, jobs, jobs, are what the state needs — more than 2.2 million Californians are out of work and state unemployment is above 12%.
Unfortunately, recent surveys don’t paint a pretty picture for boosting employment anytime soon. Chief Executive magazine recently delivered more grim news when it comes to attracting the capital investment necessary to fuel job growth. Its readers ranked California as the worst state in the nation in which to do business.
The best state? Texas, where common-sense legal reforms enacted several years ago continue to constrain medical costs and to attract new corporate headquarters to the state.
Taking a page from the Texas playbook, Schwarzenegger issued the following statement, outlining his intended reforms:
“Unfair and frivolous suits impact where companies locate or expand. California’s current litigation laws lead to large settlements with little value to consumers but become worth millions to lawyers at the expense of California businesses. Current statutes also impede growth by holding businesspersons liable for defective products - even if the seller had no knowledge or control over the defect - and allowing for punitive damage awards that are wildly unpredictable among similar cases.
“The Governor will propose a set of statutory changes that will set forth clear guidelines for class action lawsuits improve California’s litigation climate by allowing defendants to appeal class action certifications and by requiring the plaintiff rather than the defendant to pay for notification to other potential class members.
“In addition, these reforms will provide for limitations on the scope of damages assessed against business persons for defective products and eliminate unreasonable and excessive noneconomic and punitive damages awards.”
Nearly 1.4 million lawsuits are filed each year in the state of California. And for many years our friend John Sullivan, head of the Civil Justice Association of California, has chronicled and fought against job-crushing, trial lawyer tactics including ADA lawsuit mills, high-dollar asbestos claims, employment lawsuits, and on and on. To say the governor is facing an uphill battle would be kind.
But the need could hardly be more clear. The CJAC blog recently reported that fully 91% of California businesses were sued in 2009 and nearly one-third (32%) faced more than 20 lawsuits.
Rather than sending their governor back to Washington to beg for federal bailouts, California’s Democratic legislators ought to ally with Schwarzenegger, enact serious legal reform and jumpstart job-creation.
ATRA Releases Annual “Judicial Hellholes” Report
December 15, 2009
It’s that time of year again — today the American Tort Reform Association (ATRA) released its yearly Judicial Hellholes report. Topping the list this year:
- South Florida
- West Virginia
- Cook County, IL
- Atlantic County, NJ
- New Mexico Appellate Courts
- New York City
On ATRA’s “Watch List”
- California
- Alabama
- Gulf Coast and Rio Grande Valley, TX
- Jefferson County, MS
- And our perennial favorite: Madison County, IL
ATRA’s president, Tiger Joyce, had a good reminder for policymakers looking for ways to boost the economy and create jobs:
Every dollar spent defending against a groundless lawsuit is a dollar that won’t be spent on research and development, capital investment, worker training or job creation.
The report isn’t all bad news - included are “Points of Light” highlighting parts of the country where good reforms have been enacted and where attempts to roll-back improvements to the legal system have been beaten back, including Arizona, California, Ohio, Oklahoma and Texas.
Congratulations to Tiger Joyce and his team for putting out yet another well-researched, hard-hitting report — and for reminding us of the need to keep fighting for legal reform.
New Report: An Empire Disaster
November 20, 2009
Earlier this week the New York Daily News ran a great op-ed co-authored by Lawrence McQuillan of the Pacific Research Institute and Mark Kriss, head of New Yorkers for Lawsuit Reform. The piece describes how lawsuit abuse is harming New York state’s economy and how trial lawyers and their friends in the state legislature are blocking attempts to stop the abuse.
Just what would legal reform mean for New York? Money quote:
…if such reforms were put in place, New York would create at least 86,000 new jobs, increase state output $17 billion annually, boost state tax revenues by more than $1 billion a year, raise the income of every New Yorker by more than $2,600 a year, attract new customers and entrepreneurs to the state and cut insurance premiums up to 16% per annum.
For more, read the terrific report that PRI just released, “An Empire Disaster.”
More On Health Care Bill Trial Lawyer Protections
November 12, 2009
Last week I called attention to the trial lawyer protections that were in the health care reform legislation the House was preparing to bring to the floor for a vote. Well, those provisions made it into the final bill that passed in the middle of the night last Saturday.
Today’s Wall Street Journal editorial page weighs in.
Swine Flu Profiteers
May 4, 2009
Doctors, nurses and other health care professionals … airlines … any employer that lets a sick employee come to work: these are the potential targets in one what trial lawyer speculates could be a wave of swine flu lawsuits. “The good news is this is not panic state yet,” personal injury lawyer Salvatore Zambri told the Legal Times blog. “But it’s not something we can ignore. We all have to play our role.”
And, for a trial lawyer, what role is that? Suing airlines for one thing:
“The airline doesn’t need to ask every patron who’s handing in their boarding pass to state whether they have swine flu,” Zambri says. “However, if it turns into a pandemic, they would have to take reasonable steps to avoid liability.”
So next time you fly, and your row mate in the next seat coughs, just be thankful that the trial lawyers are on the job.
Wacky Warning Labels
April 30, 2009
As long as we have a system that permits so many frivolous lawsuits, expect to see silly warning labels like the first-prize winner of the Foundation for Fair Civil Justice’s 12th annual “wacky warning label” contest.
It reads: “Not for use on moving vehicles”—from a portable toilet seat for outdoorsmen that attaches to a trailer hitch.
Other warning labels from this contest, managed by the esteemed Bob Dorigo Jones, include:
“‘Always use this product with adult supervision,’ on a cereal bowl. A baby stroller with this warning, ‘remove child before folding.’ And this one, ‘For animal use only.’ It is from a bag of livestock castration rings.”
While we laugh at the absurdity of these warning labels, the dangerous reality is that they only exist because our legal system has become completely susceptible to frivolous lawsuits over any imaginable misuse of a product.