May 7, 2008

New York Lottery sued

According to the would-be class action on behalf of Take Five ticket buyers, those supposed chances of "winning" are inflated by counting a free play as a win. "The lawsuit says merchants who sell the tickets should be held liable since they were in on the fraud." (Thomas Zambito, "A lotto nonsense, says $5M lawsuit", New York Daily News, May 6; Kati Cornell, "You've Gotta Sue To Win", New York Post, May 6; Lottery Post)(cross-posted from Overlawyered).

May 2, 2008

GOP House Leader Calls for Hearings into Milberg Weiss

Today, House Republican Leader John Boeher and Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to Committee Chairman John Conyers asking for a hearing prompted by the criminal conspiracy and convictions involving the Milberg Weiss law firm. (Copy of the letter here.)

As the two note in their letter: "Mr. Lerach himself told the Wall Street Journal his illegal conduct and that of his law partners was an 'industry practice.' At his sentencing, one of his supporting letters quoted Mr. Lerach as saying, 'Everybody was paying plaintiffs so they could bring their cases.'"

The two ask for hearings by May 19th, the date Weiss is to report to prison. The questions they want asked:

How many of these cases are brought as a result of illegal payments to plaintiffs?

What other types of conflicts exist between trial lawyers and the injured investors they purport to represent?

What reforms should Congress enact to eradicate these abuses from our judicial system?

More at Shopfloor.org, where we conclude:

We would be naive to think partisanship didn't enter into this request. Trial lawyers represent a major political force within the Democratic party, much appreciated for their generosity in campaign contributions. If Chairman Conyers declines to hold a hearing, the Republicans will make an issue of it.

But so what?

UPDATE (11:59 a.m.) Nathan Koppel reports on the letter at the WSJ Law Blog, noting that Congress passed the PSLRA in 1995 to prevent this sort of thing. The point being?

May 1, 2008

More on the World Trade Center bombing decision

I have an op-ed in today's New York Sun on the affirmance of the "Port Authority is 68% responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center car bomb" verdict. Earlier.

April 28, 2008

Around the Web, April 28

• Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's interview with "60 Minutes" is online at the CBS News website. A 4,200-word story AND video. The major revelation: Scalia's an originalist. NPR's Nina Totenberg also had an interview with Scalia on "Morning Edition" today.
• Business Week celebrates the successes of Tanya Andersen, who has back pain and a quiet voice, "Yet this woman is behind a fierce assault on the music industry and its tactics for combating music piracy on the Internet." Relevance, your editor! Andersen is suing the Recording Industry Association of America for conspiracy, committed while it pursues music pirates. The article in the April 24th issue is entitled, "Does She Look Like a Music Pirate?" The class-action lawsuit is Andersen v. Atlantic, filed in the U.S. District Court, Portland (OR) District.
• In New York, the AP reports: "A federal appeals court on Friday reinstated a lawsuit by credit card holders that claimed some of the nation's biggest banks joined forces to prevent class-action suits...The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said lawyers for the credit card holders might prove the banks agreed to make it harder for individuals to make legal claims by requiring them to go to arbitration.
The case, a class-action antitrust suit, is Ross v. Bank of America N.A. (06-4755-CV), and the court's order is here. The plaintiff's counsel is Merrill G. Davidoff of the Philadelphia firm, Berger & Montague.
• An editorial in the Memphis Commercial Appeal, "Only a baby step": "Supporters of tort reform in Tennessee are touting a measure approved by the General Assembly as a step toward eventual passage of comprehensive legislation that will revolutionize medical malpractice litigation...That's an optimistic assessment that might be borne out in the future, but it's far from a certainty."
• Is Rex Morgan from Tennessee? Anyway, from the Sunday Rex Morgan comic strip, dialogue in a storyline about an outbreak of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and a dead boy. That nice Dr. Reed was just served in a malpractice lawsuit. "Dr. Morgan: Isn't Max Mallory one of those lawyers who advertises on TV? June Morgan, R.N: That's right. He's Max the Ax, Legal Warrior."

Update (4 p.m.): The Comics Curmudgeon website notes something we overlooked: Max the Ax can't spell subpoena.

April 22, 2008

Cheney at the Manhattan Institute

And the Vice President has some kind words for the publisher of this site:

Continue reading   Cheney at the Manhattan Institute

April 18, 2008

$959,733 for lobbying, $585,134 in campaign contributions

That's what was spent by the trial lawyers in Albany last year, an off year as elections go. Health care and hospital groups spent more -- in excess of $3 million on lobbying, $931,000 on contributions -- but their attention was divided among a variety of policy issues, most prominently those relating to state reimbursement of health care outlays. The Commission on Public Integrity's 2007 annual report is here.

April 15, 2008

Law school pork-barreling in Albany, cont'd

It's actually worse than we thought in our report the other day about earmarks in the state budget to establish new law schools at SUNY Stony Brook and at St. John Fisher College near Rochester. "State politicians have guaranteed $3 million to fund initial design and planning stages of a proposed Binghamton University [SUNY Binghamton] law school, Sen. Tom Libous announced Wednesday," according to the student newspaper at the state-run school, which reported the legislative sponsors' fairly shameless rationale: "the proposal would benefit BU's reputation and offer economic development. ...[quoting Libous:] 'It will provide a very significant long-term economic benefit to the Southern Tier.'"

April 12, 2008

Albany: legislative earmark for Stony Brook, Rochester law schools

Because we all know if there's anything New York needs to subsidize, it's the creation of more lawyers: In the bloated new state budget, Sen. Ken LaValle (R-Port Jefferson) managed to insert $45 million for the purchase or construction of a new law school at SUNY Stony Brook. Touro Law School, a private school, had been in talks (now discontinued) over a possible affiliation with Stony Brook; the new budgetary move "could put pressure on Touro because a Stony Brook-created law school could undercut Touro, which charges much more in tuition than a state school would, and take away its student base." (Long Island Business News). And Sen. Joseph Robach (R-Greece) got $2.25 million in state funds to support a proposed new law school at St. John Fisher College in Fairport, which would be the first law school in the Rochester area. The future lawyers of New York thank you, taxpayers! (Rochester Daily Record/RedOrbit, Democrat and Chronicle). More Apr. 15: SUNY Binghamton, too, which will get $3 million.

April 11, 2008

Medical no-fault for New York?

Per the New York Sun, whose coverage of these matters runs rings around some of its larger competition, trial-lawyer-allied groups are trying pre-emptively to head off medical no-fault proposals that had been under serious consideration by the administration of departed Gov. Spitzer. No indication just yet of the view Gov. Paterson will take. Bonus extra moment of pawky humor: the Center for Justice and Democracy, a group that would ardently defend any and every $30 million infant-injury award the NYC hospital system might be ordered to pay, repositions itself as being oh, so concerned about the danger of, you guessed it, government budget deficits.

April 7, 2008

Greenhouse replacement: Times gets lucky

Readers may have noticed that when we cite the NYT's legal coverage favorably (honest, that does happen sometimes), a disproportionate share of the time the byline on the linked stories will read "Adam Liptak". Apparently, favorable regard from people like us has not served as a bar to his advancement. Congratulations are in order to him, to the Times, and to its readers.