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.
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.
How to Buy Friends and Influence Politicians
March 2, 2010
Legal Newsline has a piece tracing the trial bar’s largesse to the Senate’s second highest ranking Democrat, Dick Durbin. Although he isn’t up for re-election until 2014, Durbin has already raked in more than $86,000 from asbestos litigation mill Simmons Cooper, making the firm his #1 funder. All told, lawyers and law firms have funneled more than $2.4 million into Durbin’s war chest, according to the invaluable folks at opensecrets.org. That’s more than triple the donations of any other industry.
So what is the trial bar buying? According to Jim Copland, who runs the Manhattan Institute’s Center for Legal Policy:
“He is the majority whip of the Senate so he can basically prevent any sort of legal reform ideas that are adverse to the plaintiffs’ bar from getting through the Senate. Similarly, he can help to drive legislation through the Senate to expand litigation, to expand liability.”
We already know the trial bar successfully kept medical liability reform out of bills to overhaul the health care system. As Copeland noted last week in the Wall Street Journal, in the last election cycle, lawyers donated about $25 million more than all the doctors, pharmaceutical companies, HMOs, hospitals and nursing homes combined.
Illinois Supreme Court Turns Back Tort Reform
February 5, 2010
In a disappointing and tortured decision, the Illinois Supreme Court threw out limits on noneconomic damages in medical liability cases yesterday, overturning bipartisan legislation passed in 2005 that enjoyed broad public support. Ed Murnane, President of the Illinois Civil Justice League, blasted the court for “siding once again with the trial lawyers” over patients and doctors.
According to American Medical Association President James Rohack (who is quoted in today’s Chicago Tribune), when the Illinois Supreme Court overruled the state’s previous damage cap in 1997:
“Severe problems with patient access to care emerged as the unrestrained excesses of the state’s legal system forced Illinois physicians to limit services, retire early, or move to other states where liability premiums are more stable. Without a cap on noneconomic damages from 1997 to 2005, Chicago physicians saw their liability premiums increase an average of 10 to 12 percent each year. When the cap was reinstated in 2005, premiums for Chicago physicians stabilized and even began to shrink.”
This is the third time the Illinois high court has struck down medical liability limits, demonstrating that it “simply will not be bound by the duly enacted acts of the legislature when certain issues important to its lawyer constituency are at stake,” writes Walter Olson in a post at PointofLaw.com that picks apart the court’s legal analysis.
The Illinois court’s “lawless” decision (Olson) demonstrates beyond any doubt that the best tort reform is getting the right judges on the bench.
NYT Article Cites AJP Report
January 28, 2010
Yesterday’s New York Times business section featured on article on global warming litigation. The reporter cites a 2008 report published by the American Justice Partnership - the organization I head up - and the Southeastern Legal Foundation entitled, The Most Dangerous Litigation in America.
It appears that business is finally waking up to the threat these suits possess. Here’s an excerpt from the article:
“…In the context of climate change, such cases were once derided as frivolous long shots that would be shot down quickly. Scott H. Segal, a lawyer for energy companies, joked in a 2004 article in Grist magazine that the cases brought “new meaning to the term ‘nuisance lawsuit.’
“No one is laughing now. In a report issued last year, Swiss Re, an insurance giant, compared the suits to those that led dozens of companies in asbestos industries to file for bankruptcy, and predicted that ‘climate change-related liability will develop more quickly than asbestos-related claims.’”
Trial Lawyers Buy Themselves Gifts
January 26, 2010
In previous posts (here and here) I highlighted the trial-bar-friendly provisions that magically made it into House and Senate health care bills. Carter Wood over at PointofLaw reports that not only were these “friendly” provisions - they might well have been authored by trial lawyers themselves. The trial bar spent more than $1.3 million lobbying Congress on a host of pet issues, including special health care provisions.
Trial Lawyers Seeking Goodies in Congress (or What Does $233 Million Buy in Washington?)
January 12, 2010
“Coming off a likely victory in the healthcare debate, the trial lawyer lobby is gearing up for other items in its legislative agenda for the year, hoping to gain as much ground as possible before the midterm elections,” according to a report in Congress Daily (subscription required). Considering that lawyers/law firms funneled an astounding $233 million to federal campaigns in the last election cycle (thanks, opensecrets.org), as you might expect, that list is pretty long.
So what is the trial bar hoping $233 million buys this year in Washington? The goodies on the trial bar’s agenda include:
- Legislation to make it easier to sue manufacturers of medical devices;
- Legislation to make it easier to sue nursing homes;
- Legislation to make it harder for businesses to use alternative dispute procedures such as pre-dispute arbitration clauses in contracts;
- Legislation to make it easier to sue foreign manufacturers.
Of course, the trial bar already scored a huge win at the expense of doctors and patients when both the House and Senate balked at including medical liability reform in health care legislation. This despite the fact that everyone knows curbing frivolous malpractice cases reduces both health insurance premiums and the practice of costly defensive medicine.
Letting Trial Lawyers Pick Their Judges
January 11, 2010
Back in November, I wrote about the danger that the fuzzy new recusal standards adopted by Michigan’s Supreme Court would encourage unscrupulous trial lawyers to try to remove justices they fear might be unsympathetic to their cases. As if on cue, sleazeball supreme Geoffrey Fieger is demanding that the court remove not one but three justices from the appeal of an upcoming case.
Fieger’s past attempts to sideline justices have been dismissed as the incoherent rantings they are. Now, however, any group of four Michigan justices can decide to temporarily unseat a colleague (or three) for any reason whatsoever. The Supreme Court’s action on this recusal request will help decide whether, under the new rules, the composition of Michigan’s top court is determined by Michigan voters or by the likes of Geoffrey Fieger.
Democrats vs. Michigan Health Care Jobs
December 3, 2009
Today’s Detroit News ran a commentary piece I wrote, putting the spotlight on Michigan Democrats’ efforts to help their trial lawyer buddies at the expense of Michigan jobs. You can find the piece here.