I’m quite surprised that nobody has mentioned Geoffrey Feiger in this thread yet.
Ah, xploder! Way to inject the thread with new life.
Reading quotes from Mr. Feiger in the news is better than the funny pages. A billion dollars lawsuit! You should hear how he attributed to the death of the latest alleged shoplifter directly to unnamed but guilty-as-sin Rite Aid Executives. Haw haw haw! He kills me.
I don’t know what the people of the state of Michigan were thinking when they didn’t elect Mr. Feiger Governor. Couldn’t they see that he is the best thing since sliced bread?!
In (minimal) defense of Geoffrey re: Dr. Kevorkian, assisted suicide is an important issue and one that is properly before the courts, and as many people were taken in, we really can’t blame Feiger for not immediately recognizing that his client was a psycho.
Sua
Ahh yes, my great Pit failing. I can’t start a Pit thread that doesn’t turn into a GD. I guess I’m just not pissy enough.
'Course, I can rant in response to someone else - Zebra and I met for dinner with some other Dopers just last week, after spending the day blasting each other in a Pit thread. It was very funny.
Thanks in response to you, Muffin. 'Twas a good talk.
Sua
All of the above demonstrates the need for tort reform in the USA. This has been promised by every incoming presidential administration, but somehow never happens. Clinton, whose party took milliuons of dollars from the trial lawyers association, was never seriously interested in tort reform.
Since this has never happened, I tend to think that that best way to deal with the situation is to ENCOURAGE the filing of frivolous lawsuits. We should encourage shyster lawyers to do this, so as to bring a complete collapse of the court system. Then we can reconstruct the system on a rational basis. We might start by educating people in common sense-and requiring jurors 9in tort cases) to have a minimum educational level (like a BS in science or engineering).
That would be a good start!
Shove that tort reform straight back up your ass from whence it came, egkelly. (Not really, but hey, this is the Pit. We got standards to uphold here.) There ain’t no goddamn need for tort reform when the claim you’re bitching about is already 100%, explicitly, and undeniably barred by federal fucking law.
So without further ado, allow me to present 28 U.S.C. section 2680, the list of exceptions to tge Federal Tort Claims Act’s general waiver of sovereign immunity in section 2674. Right there in subsection (j), you will find this little humdinger of a debate killer, prohibiting suits against the United States for “Any claim arising out of the combatant activities of the military or naval forces, or the Coast Guard, during time of war.”
Case dismissed with prejudice, and sanctions to be assessed against the publicity-hound lawyers who filed this piece of shit in the first place.
Here’s another thought-I wonder if this ridiculous case (against the USA by holocaust survivors) isn’t a neat little bit of propaganda? Ariel Sharon is getting ready to start a war in the mideast-he has already closed off the Gaza and most of the west bank. I find it a little more that coincidental, that this foolish lawsuit gets announced at this time. Frankly, I cannot see any other motive in announcing this bit of leagl trickery to the world.
Who’d’ve thunk that, just a week after I raised the issue here, I would suddenly find myself a member of such a class?
The essence of the suit is that users alleged problems with their (Iomega) Zip drives, causing damage to the drives, the disks, and to the data stored on the disks. Plus there was some question of misleading advertisement.
The proposed settlement?
For the class members, rebate coupons, good on - what else? - buying more (increasingly obsolete) Iomega Zip products.
For the lawyers, $4.7 million in cold cash.
And they’ll also make a charitable donation of $1M worth of (like I said, increasingly obsolete) Zip drives, disks, and software, to K-12 schools.
A hearty FUCK YOU to the lawyers involved.
If I didn’t have a million things more pressing to do, it would be tempting to exercise my right to show up at the settlement hearing for the purpose of objecting to the attorneys’ fees, which the Notice specifically gives me the right to do, if I file to do so by a certain date. Maybe I could get the settlement changed as in the case Zoff mentioned:
I couldn’t get the link to work, and I think allowing the attorneys to take 3/4 of their award in cash was still too much, but at least it was a step in the right direction.
I should’ve mentioned that I really don’t care if I get a nickle out of this (I won’t anyway); but if the plaintiffs are getting nothing, the lawyers - who presumably took this case on a contingency basis - should get nothing. If the class members get cash, the lawyers’ share should be in cash. But if the plaintiffs get rebate coupons, so should the lawyers.
Otherwise, these class-action suits become a game that benefit the lawyers for the class, without doing the class members themselves a damned bit of good. The lawyers, then, are effectively in business for themselves, rather than genuinely representing a class.
I suppose thtat what is needed is a class action against class action lawyers. 
I hate the rebate coupon settlements myself, RT. It makes the legal profession look horrible when they come out golden in circumstances where the people who are actually injured only get any benefit at all if they spend more money with the company that screwed them over in the first place. If I were a judge who had to approve these settlements, I’d tell all involved to go fuck themselves until they either come up with a settlement that gives a legitimate benefit to the class members or take that sucker to trial so that we can really figure out what happened.
Nevertheless, I do want to point out one advantage of these class actions. It deters big companies from screwing over their customers in small ways that aggregate to big money. When Widgetco rips off its millions of customers for a nickel apiece, it is not worth any individual customer’s time and effort to sue to recover their losses. But when a lawyer can file a class action that seeks recovery on behalf of all those injured customers, Widgetco can at least be deprived of the benefit of its bad behavior. The benefit to the individual customers is still only a few cents each, but the overall societal effect is to discourage such tiny ripoffs.
And not surprisingly, the lawyers can make a lot of money.
Well, an Australian lawyer checking in here. I’m attempting to cut across the matters raised by SuaSponte, Collounsbury,
Muffin, Ned and others and speak broadly without getting bogged down in the nitty gritty of the holocaust and the sopranos.
I am a defense lawyer basically, and I often find myself feeling a little disgusted by the antics of wild plaintiff’s lawyers. However, I feel very strongly that blaming the lawyers is shallow. Yes they are out to make money, and yes their methods are not always squeaky clean. Unlike which other businesspeople?
Pragmatically, if there is a method of making or winning money or glory available, someone will take advantage of it. It’s that simple. Whether we are talking about selling something, or manufacturing something or bringing lawsuits, it’s all the same. Whether lawyers should issue law suits about this or that depending upon whether YOU believe that law suit should succeed or not is so much hot air. Are you seriously suggesting the following scenario:
- person sees an opportunity for obtaining money, fame or whatever through certain lawful actions.
- person goes to professional in the relevant field, who agrees that the opportunity exists and that they both want money, fame or whatever.
- professional decides that although he and client will get what they want out of opportunity, he should not assist because you, me or Collounsbury doesn’t think it right.
Bullshit. You are living in fairyland.
Blaming the lawyers is a distraction. You want to stop wild lawsuits, you have to change client attitudes (good luck) or change the court system or the substantive law so that it does not provide the rewards that it clearly does at present. Pointless bellyaching about lawyers advancing the interests of clients and themselves by using the system that the law and the courts provide is drivel.
Collounsbury, you focus on narrow law school attitudes for criticism. If a narrow law school attitude will win your client money, then (in one very important sense) it’s an entirely understandable and effective attitude. If you think such attitudes should not result in success, then change the system, don’t blame the lawyer for using a tool that works.
As so often happens when lawyers and laypeople discuss such topics, the lawyer talks about what will work, and the layperson talks about what they believe should work. And the layperson then criticises the lawyer for the state of the law (which was not created by the lawyer) and the lawyer for being too lawyerish, as if it was somehow useful for the lawyer to have told the layperson that the law was what the layperson thinks it should be.
Get real.
On the other hand, there are rules which lawyers are expected to know and follow regarding nuissance lawsuits. Laypeople are not held to these standards. Lawyers are granted a certain amount of priviledge in out society, in the understanding that they will use it within predefined rules. Just as a doctor should not disregard the various rules by which he is bound, regardless of the patient’s wishes, so should lawyers not break the implicit contract they have with society to honor the promises made in return for the priviledge to practice law before its courts.
When meritless cases are brought by publicity-hungry lawyers, the public is rightly appalled at the lawyers it entrusted as its first line of defense against a corrupt and inefficient legal system. Unlike officers of private companies, lawyers have the ability to expend vast quantities of the public’s time and money, but are trusted not to do so without reason.
IANAL, myself, but I recognize the need for lawyers to have a strong and effective system of professional ethics, and their right to claim to live up to a higher standard than their clients.
Well, I’m afraid I am going to have to differ on a few things here.
I would say quite simply there is a false dichotomy here. In casting aspersion of bad lawyers I by no means intend to excuse idiotic plaintiffs. However at the same time, insofar as abuse of the legal system is actualized by bad lawyering and to an extent winked at by Bar Associations, they deserve to carry the responsibility. The profession gains certain priviledges in order to more effectively serve society in this particular aspect of conflict resolution. The profession also carries responsibilities for those same priviledges with the same goal.
Insofar as any and all industries require some rules and regulations to exclude non-productive behaviour and limit negative externalities, discussion of failings of the profession strikes me as both good and necessary. Nor do I think one could characterize this discussion as empty lawyer bashing, but rather critiques of bad-lawyering which also strike me as fully necessary and welcome even if they do not come from within the “priesthood.” (see below)
I grow rather tired of this bullshit lawyer argument regarding taking any client. It’s not fucking relevant to my comments, ** at all ** – it’s a fucking straw man.
Frankly, my critique does not presuppose blocking any fucking lawyer from taking any particular client. Not at all. Rather we discussed failings and abuses.
Straw man.
A bit of criticism regarding abuses of the legal system does not strike me as “empty bellyaching” about the holy profession, as some seem to view it.
There are professional ethics and regulation (in the USA largely self-regulated as I understand the system) for clear reasons.
Critiquing failures in that regard strikes me as useful.
You have missed my point entirely. I clearly noted the utility of legal remedies, ** in the right fucking context **: my comments were pointed to the abuse of such. Of course lawyers given lawyerly advice and one should not expect them to do otherwise, although a bit of realisism about the limits of the legal process would be welcome. Rather it is up to the employer of lawyers to put their advice in the wider, more useful context. As such one can clearly see that my comments in re narrow law school attitudes were in regards to why lawyerly thinking and use of legal remedies is often not an appropriate remedy to every problem… Perhaps you have trouble understanding this, but my analysis has been to pull back from the narrow concern with the minutia of the legal questions and look at the process and the choices in a larger framework.
First, sice this is the Pit, I feel free to tell you to take your misplaced condensation and shove it up your ass.
Second, presuming you are engaging what was actually said here as opposed to a convienent straw man I will observe the following: Much of the conversation was about appropriate choices for a society in terms of resolving open issues and disputes, not what would “work” legally. Further, it strikes me as quite necessary for a society to discuss whether the legal tools at its service are being used appropriately from a wider social perspective and not soley from the point of view of the specialist. Of course, the final analysis has to be balanced and change has to come within the context of the profession, however the pretension that all this is above or beyond discussion strikes me as fundamentally wrong-headed.
Again, take your holier than thouness and stick it up your narrow ass and let it fester.
Let me turn this around. I have noted a tendency among some lawyers, such as the pious asshole who wrote this message, to adopt a priestly attitude towards the profession and condescend towards those who have not formally entered into the “mysteries” of the holy church of the profession. As noted above, the specialist is not the sole concerned.
Apparently this type of priestly personnage seems to feel that the mysteries, being too much for the layperson to understand and too holy to understand in a wider context (e.g. such as a wider cost-benefit analysis), should neither be discussed for analyzed except in their own special liturgical language, without reference to wider issues.
Since I have little respect for such formalisms, I think I’ll just ignore this idiocy.
Otherwise, as I see the issue it is perfectely appropriate and in fact recommendable that non-lawyers discuss and critique current practice if there are problems. Law is here to serve society. To the extent to which some aspect of legal practice has departed from being a benefit to society at large and perhaps has even become a negative, then remedies and limits are in order. I’ll hasten to add I don’t mean just because someone like WB is pissed because he’s a drooling moron and tends to do things which get him in legal trouble, that the system is broken or something is wrong. I specifically refer to balanced rational analysis.
Amen, brother.
That’s the principle of class actions in general, certainly.
My point is that that purpose would be just as well served by splitting the $4.7 million cash, and all the rebate coupons as well, 2/3 for the class, and 1/3 for the lawyers.
And as far as I can tell, in my particular instance, Iomega Corp. probably benefits from the use of the rebate coupons. Those of us who didn’t have the mechanical problem with the Zip drives get $5 off on a Zip 100 drive (retails for about $100), and similar discounts on other Zip products; those who had the problem get $12.50 off. So my WAG is that they’re still making money off each transaction involving a rebate, just less so than otherwise. That’s not gonna deter anything; the only deterrent here is the $4.7M to the lawyers.
And what we’d get is a rebate coupon to be used on more lawyer bills. :rolleyes:
Must…remember…preview. :o
[lots o’ snips]
Well. A hearty fuck you to you, Princhester. In case you didn’t notice, I am an attorney. Like you, I practice almost exclusively defendant-side litigation.
Your fascinating insights :rolleyes: are completely off-point. I raised the issue of two lawsuits that, as a matter of law, either cannot be won (the Holocaust lawsuit runs directly afoul of sovereign immunity), or where “winning” would have no legal effect (the declaratory judgment sought in the Sopranos case). So, I wasn’t talking about cases where I “believe they should succeed.” I was talking about cases that CANNOT succeed. Thanks for paying such close attention.
As the thread progressed, people brought up class action lawsuits where the plaintiffs (the vast majority of whom didn’t know the lawsuit was going on) get coupons while the attorney gets cold, hard cash. These are attorney-driven lawsuits (right now, I’m working on a case where the plaintiff’s attorneys contacted the class representatives and suggested they sue. This is an absolute ethical no-no, but they are getting away with it), and the clients do NOT “get what they want out of the opportunity” - the lawyers do. Again, your insight and attention to detail are worthy of any fine attorney.
The whole point of this thread is that attorneys SHOULD be “advancing the interests of clients and themselves by using the system” and, in the cases discussed here, are not. They are advancing only their own interests; the clients be damned.
If you want to rethink your post and pay attention, perhaps we could have a good discussion of the meaning of fiduciary duty, as well as whether attorneys need to maintain a higher ethical standard out of self-interest, so as not to jeopardize our self-regulated status.
Until then, go take a leap.
Sua
Well fuck all this talk of straw men and holy priestlike attitudes. And yes I did read the other posts, but sometimes if you want to get somewhere in a debate you have to ignore the nitty gritty of what has gone before and come in fresh.
My point is very simple. Yes, lawyers should exercise more restraint and be more ethical. Yes, lawyerlike attitudes are often too narrow and do not take into account the wider view. I think that SuaSponte and Collounsbury would be surprised at the extent to which I heartily agree with them on most issues in this area. Where we disagree is in the nature of the solution.
Because IMHO as long as the court procedures and the law allow clients and/or their lawyers to gain advantage through issuing lawsuits that are silly (and yes, SuaSponte, even unwinnable) or that do not benefit the client much or at all, using narrow legalistic attitudes or otherwise, a few lawyers will do so. Period. Every business opportunity that exists and is legal is exploited somehow.
And complaining about the personalities of the lawyers involved, or which ethical lectures they should have listened to at law school, (let’s face it, few of us listened to lectures at law school, even the ethical amongst us), or that narrow legalistic attitudes shouldn’t be as effective in making money and gaining glory as they self evidently are, is not going to actually achieve jack shit when it comes to changing anything.
Western Europe, Canada, NZ, the UK and probably dozens of other places have perfectly viable legal systems that do not result in the sort of craziness emanating from US courts. Unless you are going to suggest that US plaintiff lawyers are just some sort of weird anomaly, the difference lies in the procedures and laws they work under.
My jurisdiction is an interesting case in point. Until about 5-10 years ago we were a very non-litigious society, compared to the US in particular. Since then, all has changed. And no, we did not import a bunch of US plaintiff attorneys. The system changed. Advertising was allowed. Fee charging rules were relaxed. Class action laws were created. And we are looking at more and more US-style litigiousness every day.
So my conclusion once again is that plaintiff lawyer bashing (scum though they may be) is just irrelevant hot air and the debate would be better focussed (if anything is actually to be achieved) on changing the system in which lawyers work.
This thread sucks. Can I sue someone?
Sure. But can you pay the sanctions for filing a frivolous lawsuit?