Recently in Plaintiffs' Lawyers Category

There's a great piece today from Bloomberg on how the four disgraced securities lawyers from Milberg Weiss are adjusting to life after prison. Needless to say, with the money the four pocketed during their years of raiding corporate America over fluctuations in stock prices, they're doing a lot better than most of us.

Melvyn Weiss reports that he's "enjoying my freedom" and playing lots of golf in Florida. Bill Lerach is enjoying a ski vacation in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, and is planning future trips to go trout fishing in Alaska and exploring his roots in Bavaria. David Bershad is enjoying life in suburban New Jersey.

The fourth convicted trial lawyer, David Schulman, refused to comment.

Prosecutors said the men, who industrialized the filing of securities fraud class actions, secretly paid clients to pursue such cases, bringing the firm $251 million in attorney fees from 1979 to 2005. All four pleaded guilty. Their old firm, now Milberg LLP, agreed to pay $75 million to end the case.

You can read the full article here, and an account from the WSJ Law Blog here.

Here's another article you won't see the trial lawyers talking much about, courtesy of today's National Law Journal.

A federal judge in Riverside has balked at a proposed class action settlement with American Honda Motor Co. over ads for the company's Civic Hybrid after objectors, including the attorneys general of 25 states, questioned whether the plaintiffs or their attorneys would benefit most. Our own AG, Jerry Brown, was one of those questioning the settlement.

And rightly so:

• The alleged victims of Honda's allegedly misleading advertising - 158,000 Civic Hybrid owners - would have received a DVD on how to maximize fuel efficiency and rebates on future purchases of Honda vehicles ranging from $500 to $1,000. If an owner had made a documented complaint, he or she would get $100 cash.

• The plaintiffs' attorneys would have collected nearly $3 million in fees.

The usually loquacious lead attorneys on the case were unavailable for comment.

You can read the full article here.

Former Milberg Weiss plaintiffs' lawyer Bill Lerach, out of jail and now serving probation, has filed a request to take a 44-day vacation to 18 cities in Europe this summer accompanied by as many as 18 family members and friends.

Justice Department officials are fighting the request from Lerach, who pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy for his involvement in a plaintiff kickback scheme, according to Politico.

In court papers filed in Los Angeles on Monday, prosecutors state that Lerach has made a series of public statements seeking to minimize the seriousness of his guilty plea and seems to be backing away from offers he made during the sentencing process in 2008 to perform community service by speaking to lawyers about the need to avoid the kinds of legal and ethics breaches he committed.

"It is premature for defendant to obtain the Court's approval of a lengthy European vacation starting a few months after his supervised release term begins while his fulfillment of a key component of his sentence -- performing 1000 hours of community service -- remains essentially unresolved," states the court document from the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles.

Josh Gerstein of Politico writes that prosecutors seem particularly galled by a recent interview Lerach gave to the California Lawyer. "I'm not ashamed of myself in any way," Lerach said in the interview. He said there was "no question this was a politically motivated prosecution," but also added, "You can be targeted and be guilty. They're not mutually inconsistent."

A founding partner of a Florida-based plaintiffs' firm was found to have breached his duty to a proposed class by orchestrating a $7 million class action settlement that benefited only seven people rather than all Miami taxpayers.

In a disciplinary case brought by the Florida Bar, Broward Circuit Judge Jack Tuter ruled that plaintiffs' lawyer Henry Adorno accepted an excessive attorney fee of $2 million for his work on the settlement, which was thrown out when its limitations were uncovered, according to an article in the Daily Business Review.

Tuter sided with Adorno on another count, ruling he could not conclude from a brief transcript that the attorney intentionally misled Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Peter Lopez into approving the settlement in a suit challenging an unconstitutional city fire fee.

But Tuter concluded, "No rational person could explain how seven individual plaintiffs ... could end up dividing $5 million in settlement proceeds and their attorneys $2 million."

Adorno was admitted to The Florida Bar in 1973 and attended the University of Florida, Fredric G. Levin College of Law.

On Wednesday, the Assembly Insurance Committee will consider a scheme that would let private lawyers become self-deputized vigilantes and go after insurance companies to get damages and, of course, attorney's fees.

The attempt in Assembly Bill 989 would allow lawsuits against insurance companies by anyone alleging to be harmed -- including people who aren't even policyholders.

CJAC President John H. Sullivan pointed out in an opinion article in Capitol Weekly, a Sacramento newspaper, that this isn't the only area in which plaintiffs' lawyers are trying to expand their "private attorney general" status.

For example, they are attacking a long-respected case rule that protects government impartiality by prohibiting public prosecutors from hiring private lawyers on a contingency-fee basis.

However, as Sullivan notes, state legislators have another chance this legislative session to consider reforms that would help reverse the perception that California is a sue-happy state. Read about suggested reforms in the op-ed here.

Sullivan wrote: "Jobs and the economy suffer when a state's litigation field tilts toward plaintiffs' lawyers. State lawmakers should grab a mallet and wallop Assembly Bill 989, then focus on some affirmative ways to rein in abuses of our civil justice system."

A San Francisco plaintiffs' lawyer faces a three-year suspension from practicing law after he reportedly "repeatedly badgered, berated, screamed, yelled and/or raised his tone at witnesses and the court, despite court warnings, admonitions and orders not to do this."

The Recorder's Mike McKee writes that a California State Bar Court judge has recommended the three-year suspension as well as five years' probation for Philip Kay, who specialized in litigating sexual harassment suits.

Judge Lucy Armendariz also found that Kay had entered into an illegal fee-splitting agreement with other lawyers in a sexual harassment suit that resulted in a $3.5 million judgment in the early 1990s.

"But somewhere during his overzealous advocacy, he lost it," Armendariz wrote in Tuesday's ruling. "Not the cases, but his integrity, professional decorum, credibility and respect of the court."

During his State Bar Court trial, Kay defiantly engaged in the same kind of behavior that got him into trouble in the first place. He often refused to answer questions, accused the judge of a "railroad job" and demanded to be held in contempt.

A Texas plaintiffs' lawyer whose office advertises "Call the firm that cares" is reported to have kicked off the holiday season by filing a lawsuit against a day center for homeless people in Houston.

The suit from personal injury lawyer Harry C. Arthur seeks a permanent injunction to shut down the operation on the grounds that it's a "private" nuisance, and has created a "health hazard" in the area, according to Texas Lawyer.

Arthur wants a minimum of $250,000 in damages from the shelter, The Beacon, and its operator, Christ Church Cathedral, to compensate him for the loss of rentals in his building and the loss of its market value.

Earlier this month, shelter officials promised to do everything they can to keep The Beacon open for those in need.

"People of Christ Church Cathedral have been on this corner for 170 years -- actually on this corner right across the street -- trying to take care of the poor and the needy and the homeless," Andy Vickery, attorney for The Beacon, told a local television station. "That's the Christian admonition, that's the mission of the cathedral and of The Beacon and we don't intend to be shut down."

A second federal bill backed by the plaintiffs' bar aims to change a U.S. Supreme Court ruling -- currently a much-needed standard that will reduce federal court caseloads and could help weed out weak or frivolous lawsuits.

The Court's 5-4 ruling in Ashcroft v. Iqbal threw out a claim that former Attorney General John Ashcroft and current FBI Director Robert Mueller violated the Constitutional rights of a detainee caught up in the Bush Administration's post-9/11 roundup, according to this story from AmLaw Litigation Daily.

But, as reported on The Wall Street Journal Law Blog, the Court essentially established heightened pleading standards under Rule 8 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which lays out the general rules for what the initial documents in a lawsuit -- the "pleadings" -- have to put forth.

"A wide range of cases have already been affected by Iqbal," noted a National Law Journal article.

The bill, H.R. 4115, would restore the pleading standards in federal cases to those prior to the Court's decision. A hearing on it will be held in the House Subcommittee on Courts and Competition Policy on December 16. It is the House version of Senator Arlen Specter's S. 1504, which was introduced in July.

J. Russell Jackson also has a take on the plaintiffs' bar "fix" on his Consumer Class Actions & Mass Torts blog.

A pair of attorneys who drafted a California statute have collected or billed about $4.3 million in three cases arising from claims that minorities were shut out of local elections -- and could reap much more from two pending lawsuits and future litigation.

All of the cases have been initiated by the lawyers who drafted the statute -- Seattle law professor Joaquin Avila and Robert Rubin, legal director for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as other lawyers working with them, an Associated Press investigation has found.

As the AP reports:

" ... it is unusual that after seven years all legal efforts are so narrowly focused, especially since Avila told lawmakers when he testified for the bill in 2002 that he expected other attorneys would take on cases because of favorable incentives written into the measure."

The law makes it easier for lawyers to sue and win financial judgments in cases arising from claims of voter discrimination, while shielding attorneys from liability if the claims are tossed out.

"It's a money grab," said John Stafford, superintendent of the Madera Unified School District, which was slapped with a $1.2 million attorneys' bill even though it never contested a lawsuit. To pay, he said the school district would have to slash money for books and lunches for its mostly Hispanic students -- an odd consequence for a law intended to aid Hispanics.

Officials in several California communities told the AP they never heard complaints of voter discrimination until the lawyers stepped forward. One case, which could go to trial as early as January, is being closely watched by communities around the state. If the law is upheld, it could lead to a massive recasting of local election district boundaries, or more lawsuits.

Avila wouldn't disclose his earnings from the lawsuits. He bills at $725 an hour, according to the AP. Rubin can bill his legal work at $700 an hour. Though he drafted "probably the whole" law, Avila told the wire service, "I don't think that should preclude me from enforcement."

Despite the fact that it was based on false facts, a Swedish filmmaker continues to shop his film "Bananas!*" at film festivals around the country and beyond.

Fredrik Gertten's film chronicling a 2007 lawsuit against Dole Food Company for the alleged misuse of a pesticide on banana plantations in Nicaragua was shown at the recent CMJ Film Festival in New York, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Gertten then headed to Sao Paolo to show the film at the Mostra Internacional de Cinema.

However, a statement from Dole explains how the film "promotes as fact a false story that was found to be a fraud on Dole and on U.S. courts," according to the Journal.

The lead plaintiffs' lawyer in the case, Juan J. Dominguez, is accused of defrauding Dole Food Company by training Nicaraguan men to make false claims that they were harmed by pesticides used on banana plantations in their country. Earlier this year, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Victoria Chaney dismissed two tort cases, ruling that Dominguez and co-counsel in Nicaragua committed a "fraud on the court" and a "blatant extortion" of the defendants.

For more background, click here.

Defendants and their lawyers -- and more and more judges -- aren't the only ones getting their fill of California's unpredictable, ungoverned surge of class action litigation.

Here's what plaintiffs' lawyer Brian S. Kabateck* said in part of a "Roundable" panel article on Consumer Class Actions published in the November California Lawyer magazine:

Recently there have been an awful lot of folks -- who don't understand class actions -- filing class actions and becoming overnight class action specialists. It's very disconcerting.

When I started doing class action cases more than a decade ago, judges were very respectful of the cases. They'd look at them very seriously. Now I'm seeing more and more judges raising their eyebrows, looking at cases as if, "Oh, another class action." You've got to almost start behind the line explaining to the court, "No, this is really a justifiable class action."

I've seen class actions being brought claiming medical injury, which we know you can't bring. It demonstrates to me a lack of knowledge and understanding. We have to be vigilant about these kinds of bad class actions. Half a dozen years ago, you'd hardly see a seminar in class actions. Today, I can't pick up my mail without getting a brochure or some sort of e-mail about educational seminars on class action cases.

You can link to the entire roundtable exchange of defense and plaintiffs' attorneys by clicking here.

*Kabetek is a partner at Kabateck Brown Kellner in Los Angeles.

In politics, just like in war, success comes not just from anticipating a direct response to your latest move, but also from looking far across the theater for your adversary's counter-measure.

So it was no surprise when, after getting the attention of federal policymakers on the benefits of putting some legal reform into a national health-care package, backers of reform found their own flanks attacked.

"Medical malpractice insurers . . . take advantage of [a federal] antitrust exemption to maximize their profits, to the detriment of doctors who buy their coverage," a group of personal injury lawyer-backed organizations recently told federal lawmakers. "Millions of consumers and their health-care providers would benefit if real competition were restored in the health insurance and medical malpractice insurance markets," a letter from the Consumer Federation of America and others told U.S. Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) in support of H.R. 3596.

What these lobbying groups conceal from their audience when attacking medical professional liability insurance providers, however, is that the overwhelming number of U.S. physicians get their liability protection from companies they themselves own and govern. In California, for example, four major doctor-owned companies actively compete for the bulk of private practice physicians in the state.

These companies, all staunch supporters of the state's landmark Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act, help account for physician liability protection rates that are as much as half of those found in comparable states not protected by MICRA.

Moreover, an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office refutes the lawyer-backed groups' contention that rates for the two types of insurance targeted -- health and medical professional liability -- would fall under H.R. 3596 and its Senate counterpart, S. 1681. "Enacting the legislation would have no significant effect on the premiums that private health insurers would charge," according to the CBO. "[S]tate laws already bar the activities that would be prohibited under federal law if this bill was enacted."

In "The Art of War," Sun Tzu promoted sowing division among one's adversaries. So when advocates of federal medical liability reform showed that a decline in defensive medicine would save billions of health care dollars, they likely knew better than to expect a response on the merits.

But in the end, the trial lawyers' weak attempt to drive a wedge between doctors and the companies that American physicians themselves own and direct betrays a further escalation of their tactics -- to outright deception.

***
Gordon Ownby is general counsel of the Cooperative of American Physicians, Inc., www.cap-mpt.com, and can be reached at gownby@cap-mpt.com.

Six months after a Los Angeles Superior Court judge unraveled a corrupt client recruitment scheme involving pesticide litigation, California Lawyer magazine has featured the plaintiffs' lawyer-engineered scam in the cover story of its October issue.

The article describes how two lawyers for one of the defendant companies, Dole Food Co., obtained crucial evidence that the lead plaintiffs' lawyer, Juan J. Dominguez, had coached a plaintiff in his office in Nicaragua and supervised the recruitment and coaching of many more sham plaintiffs.

Their work led to Judge Victoria Chaney's dismissal of the case in April, where she spoke in her ruling of recruiting captains grabbing "groups of men to make spurious claims that they are sterile," of sham lab reports, and of corrupt Nicaraguan judges awarding "judgments based on trumped-up allegations and facts."

She dismissed the plaintiffs' claims with prejudice, "preventing their ability to ever come back, at least in this court, and hopefully in any other court, and raise these claims again." She added, "I have serious, serious doubts about the bona fides of any plaintiff claiming to have been injured as a result of exposure to (the pesticide) DBCP while working on banana plantations. Because of all this, lesser sanctions are wholly inadequate."

Dominguez now faces civil charges of contempt of court. Chaney has asked the U.S. Department of Justice to open a criminal investigation and has also made a disciplinary complaint to the State Bar of California.

Our earlier blog posts took a closer look at a Wall Street Journal article, a Los Angeles Times article, a documentary based on the lawsuits (click here and here), and our original blog post about Judge Chaney's ruling.

A former plaintiffs' attorney from southern California has agreed to plead guilty to federal criminal charges for squandering nearly all of a $2.7 million settlement he won for employees in a class-action lawsuit.

As we reported in our Balance newsletter earlier this year, Sandeep Baweja of the Baweja Law Group in Irvine voluntarily resigned from the State Bar after he invested the settlement funds into an Ameritrade brokerage account. The stock market took a dive, and the sum was whittled down to less than $55,000, according to the Daily Journal.

The case originally settled for $3.55 million. After subtracting court costs and attorney's fees -- Baweja earned $650,000 in attorney's fees -- about $2.7 million was left over to disperse among the class members.

A graduate of the Syracuse University College of Law, Baweja had been licensed to practice in California since 1998 and had no prior record of discipline. The Daily Journal's follow-up story on Friday noted that the attorney's "record of public service" included working as a field coordinator in Seattle for Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign (subscription only).

Shrugging off a recent failed legal challenge to California's Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act, an organization of lawyers formerly affiliated with the State Bar has passed a resolution calling for a change in MICRA's limits in certain cases.

But in the midst of intense public interest in the issue of health care availability, the personal injury lawyers' push to change MICRA has done nothing to show how such a change would benefit Californians.

In August, the California Supreme Court declined to review a lower-court ruling that fully backed MICRA. The state high court's action in Van Buren v. Evans showed that the justices found no novel issues in the Fifth District Court of Appeal's support for MICRA in the face of the personal injury lawyers' campaign to paint the 1975 legislation as constitutionally flawed. Then, in September, the Conference of Delegates of California Bar Associations (which is now funded by voluntary contributions, not state bar mandatory dues) voted to pursue an idea that MICRA's cap of $250,000 for non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases should be eliminated if a defendant rejects an offer to settle for that amount and then loses at trial or arbitration for more.

The personal injury lawyers' activity over the summer gave them a fresh opportunity to go before the media with their opposition to MICRA, which at times includes the mythical proposition that the law keeps people with meritorious cases from finding attorneys. In a well-reported TV segment that aired in the state capital, however, a Sacramento pediatrician clearly articulated the message that MICRA benefits all Californians by keeping medical professional liability costs down.

"MICRA stabilized that situation and provided a mechanism of compensating patients fairly, while still preserving access for patients to quality, affordable medical care," Dr. Paul Phinney said in the segment that aired August 10. Dr. Phinney is a physician with Kaiser Permanente and is active in the leadership of the California Medical Association.

Dr. Phinney explained the risks to patient care if the law were changed: "The more money that is pulled out of health care into the pockets of personal injury lawyers, the less money is available for health care."

Trial lawyers may pursue legal appeals and trade-association resolutions to voice their opposition to MICRA, but when plain-speaking doctors like Dr. Phinney get their chance to be heard, the public ends up the winner.

***

Gordon Ownby is general counsel of the Cooperative of American Physicians, Inc., www.cap-mpt.com, and can be reached at gownby@cap-mpt.com.

"It's understandable that it could make economic sense for a defendant to settle a series of class actions after years of litigation. But this settlement's so-called 'equitable' relief involving the defendant's advertising and labeling makes it crystal clear that these lawsuits were not based on any real fraud at all," writes J. Russell Jackson on his Consumer Class Actions & Mass Torts blog.

Jackson writes about a $35 million settlement filed by Dannon in federal court in response to class actions over its advertising of the health benefits of some of its yogurt products (a California suit was filed in January). The class members may receive $15 to $100 depending on whether they can provide proof of purchase. The attorneys indicate in the settlement agreement that they want $10 million -- plus expenses.

However, as Jackson points out, the statements made by Dannon and challenged in the lawsuits were not false. "The settlement allows Dannon to say practically the same thing it always has said," he wrote. "The lawsuits obviously were lawyer-invented, and although they may have survived some motions to dismiss, the settlement's equitable relief demonstrates that the defendant's statements were backed up by real science."

He concludes:

"Is this another instance of regulation by litigation in which the only ones who really benefit are class counsel, who seek to take more than $10 million of the settlement fund in fees and expenses?"

Television advertisements soliciting plaintiffs for medical malpractice lawsuits have increased nearly 1,400% in the past four years, a new study from the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform has found.

The number of ads increased to more than 156,000 ads in 2008 from 10,150 ads in 2004. The study, conducted by the Campaign Media Analysis Group, also showed that spending for the ads spiked to almost $62 million from $3.8 million.

President Lisa Rickard said the finding is a window into what appears to be the growing role of medical malpractice cases in the overall litigation landscape.

"Lawsuits are ultimately a business driven by the plaintiffs' bar, and when you see the marketing of medical malpractice lawsuits exploding like this, it tells you that these lawsuits are a growing sector within the larger lawsuit industry," she said.

A closer look at the findings shows that medical malpractice advertising peaked in 2006, airing nearly 180,000 times in national television and cable markets.

Areas most saturated with such ads in 2008 included Baltimore (12,000 ads), New York (10,000), and Orlando (8,000).

Personal injury and other plaintiffs' lawyers have given more than $570,000 to incumbents and candidates in California from January 1 through June 30, according to data compiled by CJAC from the Secretary of State's web site.

Of the $570,000, more than $140,000 came through political action committees, entirely financed by plaintiffs' lawyers. However, individual lawyers and their law firms contributed three times as much than the political action committees - their direct contributions totaled more than $420,000.

The plaintiffs' lawyers also show an early interest in supporting candidates for the offices of attorney general and insurance commissioner, according to a CJAC news release.

To see how much the lawyers have sent to individual candidates, click here.

While California's personal injury attorneys continue to strike out in their legal attempts to overturn the state's Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act, they're testing a venue that may be more receptive: Their own bar group.

During the State Bar of California's Annual Meeting September 10-13, the Conference of Delegates of California Bar Associations will consider a proposal to eliminate MICRA's limit on medical malpractice awards for non-economic damages when there has been an offer by the plaintiff to settle for that limit ($250,000). If the defendant declines the offer and the plaintiff subsequently wins a higher amount, MICRA's limit would not apply. Though the Resolutions Committee of the conference found "no similar resolutions" in its history, the proposal certainly cannot be considered without recalling what happened when the State Bar -- in which membership is mandatory for all the state's active attorneys -- entered the MICRA fray.

In 1997, the Bar's Board of Governors endorsed legislation in the state Assembly that would have increased MICRA's liability limits. Though the legislation did not pass, the State Bar's action prompted then Gov. Pete Wilson to veto the State Bar's funding legislation. In his veto message, Wilson listed financial and policy decisions made by the organization -- including its support of the MICRA bill -- that went beyond the role of the attorney-governance organization. Wilson described the State Bar as "bloated, arrogant, oblivious and unresponsive."

Unlike in 1997, the MICRA resolution up for consideration at this month's meeting is before the Conference of Delegates, an entity that is voluntarily funded and separate from lawyer governance.

Indeed, when the Conference of Delegates moved to separate from the State Bar itself, the State Bar Journal in 2002 described the separation as giving the conference "the independence it desires while at the same time protecting the bar from the kind of political fallout which has resulted from some controversial positions taken by the conference in past years."

The Conference of Delegates says that its work results in "improving the laws and the administration of justice in California and advancing the science of jurisprudence." If that is true, then the proposal to circumvent MICRA clearly is beyond the body's mission.

Perhaps only in the insular confines of a lawyers' trade group could one equate undermining MICRA's three-decade record of protecting Californians' access to medical care with the "science of jurisprudence" or say that promoting sue-and-settle gamesmanship "improves" the law.

In fact, the proposal to remove the MICRA cap is just bad policy. Nowhere does the resolution address MICRA's benefits in reducing defensive medicine, thereby keeping billions of dollars in the system to provide essential care to patients. Nor does it explain how to avoid higher healthcare costs for consumers and taxpayers without MICRA's benefits.

Those attorneys who truly care about making the law work for the people of California would do well to remind the Conference of Delegates that it should stick to its mission. Falling for the personal injury lawyers' trick to eliminate MICRA's protection against runaway verdicts for a select few (thus jeopardizing the availability of care to the many) could again make the legal profession appear -- in a word -- "oblivious."

Gordon Ownby is general counsel of the Cooperative of American Physicians, Inc., www.cap-mpt.com, and can be reached at gownby@cap-mpt.com.

"Make a list of threats to your job and your health," CJAC President John H. Sullivan wrote in an op-ed published in today's San Francisco Chronicle.

"Layoff, pay cut, swine flu, West Nile virus, for starters. You probably won't list personal injury lawyers. But you should."

California personal injury and other plaintiffs' lawyers are working to preserve laws that make the state a haven for speculative lawsuits and a risky place for businesses to operate and create jobs.

Their other schemes include asking California courts to destroy the state's model medical liability law, and lobbying to kill individuals' right to choose less-costly arbitration to settle disputes.

"Anyone injured through the negligence of another should have access to justice and a fair opportunity for compensation," Sullivan wrote. "But when a state's litigation playing field tilts toward lawyers, then jobs and the economy suffer."

It's a scheme that sounds more fit for a legal thriller than real life: A group of top plaintiffs' lawyers and doctors conspiring to recruit accident victims and persuade them to undergo serious -- sometimes needless -- surgeries, to inflate the size of personal-injury claims.

The result, as Fortune magazine reported, was multimillion-dollar insurance settlements, even for dubious cases, and lucrative fees for the doctors, the lawyers, and one man whom prosecutors allege was at the center of the fraud: Howard Awand, who called himself a "medical consultant."

According to Fortune:

The alleged scheme began in 1999 and lasted for at least six years, prosecutors charge. Business and court records and local press reports suggest that the group -- which numbered about 30 -- colluded in hundreds of suits that yielded hundreds of millions in settlements. According to government evidence, the group coordinated their testimony as expert witnesses, lied under oath, protected one another from malpractice lawsuits -- even after the surgeries left a few patients paralyzed -- and ate away at the plaintiffs' settlement money with kickbacks disguised as contingency fees.

In May 2007, federal prosecutors unveiled indictments against Awand and plaintiffs' lawyer Noel Gage that charged them with conspiracy, fraud, and (in Awand's case) witness tampering. But so far, Awand and his associates have thwarted medical prosecutors. A judge dismissed indictments against Awand and one plaintiffs' lawyer because a key witness wouldn't testify.

Awand moved to Indiana in 2007, but now faces a second case: He and his wife were charged with four counts of misdemeanor tax evasion. They have pleaded not guilty and the trial is scheduled for September.

Personal injury lawyer Juan Dominguez has been in the news a lot lately. The Los Angeles plaintiffs' lawyer has been accused by a judge of participating in a massive fraud in helping fabricate claims that Nicaraguan banana workers had become sterile from exposure to a pesticide used on banana plantations in the 1970s.

But Dominguez appears to be just one in a line of personal injury lawyers to set up shop in Nicaragua and recruit clients to file lawsuits against Dole Food Company, as a front-page article in The Wall Street Journal details.

Among those mentioned in the Journal is Los Angeles lawyer Walter J. Lack, named a Superlawyer of Southern California for the sixth year in a row (by none other than Superlawyer Magazine). His resume includes lead counsel in the "Erin Brockovich" toxics case and a nice mention in her movie.

Not mentioned in the article was even more prominent Los Angeles plaintiffs' lawyer and State Judicial Council member Tom Girardi. The Daily Journal legal newspaper reported last year that, as one of the paper's writers Dan Levine blogged on March 27, 2008:

Girardi, Lack face Huge Ninth Circuit Fines ... Looks like Los Angeles plaintiff attorneys Tom Girardi and Walter Lack are facing nearly $400,000 in sanctions from the Ninth Circuit for filing a frivolous appeal. The two lawyers spearheaded a lawsuit on behalf of Nicaraguan workers against Dole Food Company and other corporations over pesticide use. Check out A. Wallace Tashima's brutal 67 page recommendation here.

And Daily Journal staff writer Cortney Fielding wrote in ink the next day (a link to the full article is available at the end of this post):

"LOS ANGELES - An overlooked 'clerical error,' discovered by Dole Foods during litigation with Nicaraguan banana farmers who claimed they were injured by pesticides, could cost high-profile plaintiffs' attorneys Tom Girardi and Walter Lack $400,000 in sanctions.

"In a 67-page report released this week, 9th Circuit Judge A. Wallace Tashima was highly critical of the two attorneys. Tashima said the pair knew, or should have known, their Nicaraguan counterparts had provided them with faulty translations of a foreign writ used against Dole and Shell Chemical Co.

"He said both lawyers had therefore misled the court and filed a frivolous appeal by attempting to win a judgment in the U.S. based on those suspect documents.

"On Thursday, Girardi issued a written statement saying the sanctions against his firm, Girardi & Keese, were unfounded. He said three law firms were involved in the litigation, and his had nothing to do with the Nicaraguan writ or the appeal.

" 'Neither I nor our law firm had any responsibility for the motion. We did not draft it. We did not see it. We did not contribute to it. We did not even know when it was argued and what the result was,' he wrote. 'With respect to the appeal, the only information I had was that the ruling was being appealed. We did not write the briefs. We did not see the briefs. We did not contribute to the briefs.'

"Lack did not return calls for comment.

"The proceedings will move to a 9th Circuit panel, which will decide whether to approve Tashima's recommendation."

A curtain seems to have been pulled over this matter ever since.

Writing of the pesticide lawyers this week, Wall Street Journal reporter Steve Stecklow observed that, "Emboldened by a developing-world legal system that heavily favored plaintiffs, they filed an avalanche of lawsuits here against California-based Dole and eventually won $2.1 billion in local judgments."

But the validity of some of those cases have been called into question after Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Victoria Chaney, citing "clear and convincing evidence" of fraud, in June dismissed two cases brought by Dominguez on behalf of Nicaraguan plaintiffs. Dominguez is now under federal criminal investigation for his actions in the cases and also faces an investigation by the State Bar of California. (Read more in a Los Angeles Times story here.)

As the Journal noted: "The banana-pesticide litigation is unusual in that few of the parties involved, including plaintiffs, defense and plaintiffs' lawyers, and lab workers, dispute that many claims were faked. Judge Chaney noted that more Nicaraguans have filed claims against Dole than ever worked on the plantations when (the pesticide) DBCP was in use."

'Clerical Error' May Cost Pesticides Case Lawyers - Daily Journal.pdf

Take these lawsuits with a grain of salt, the Los Angeles Times urges in an editorial this week about two suits that "bring little common sense to the table."

The lawsuits, both out of New Jersey, include one demanding a warning label that says consuming hot dogs "increases the risk of cancer," and another that demands Denny's restaurant menus include the sodium content of all its dishes.

The Times states the suits "represent the kind of where-does-it-end silliness that makes even reasonable food-labeling laws seem out to lunch."

The one benefit to such lawsuits, the paper concludes, is that crazy-making headlines make consumers ask more questions about their food.

According to the Times, "In June, Denny's introduced a line of healthier alternatives with lower salt and fat content. It did so because of consumer demand, not fringe lawsuits."

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has thrown out a suit by a plaintiff who assumed the role of a "spam sleuth" in order to capture massive volumes of e-mail marketing messages to fuel his "litigation enterprise" and then share the settlement proceeds with his "clients."

The spam scam went like this, according to Recorder newspaper reporter Pam Smith:

The plaintiff, James S. Gordon, Jr. created a personal e-mail address through GoDaddy, a domain registrar and web hosting company. He then set up additional e-mail accounts for a half dozen friends and family members, and subscribed himself and his "clients" to e-mailing lists for various online promotions and prize giveaways between 100 and 150 times.

Soon after, these accounts began receiving e-mails from businesses marketing their goods and services, according to the opinion in Gordon v. Virtumundo, Inc. In 2004, Gordon began filing lawsuits in state and federal court against the companies or individuals who sent the solicitations to the e-mail accounts. In this particular case, he sought injunctive relief, several million dollars in statutory and treble damages, and his attorney fees and costs.

The court ruled that Gordon did not have standing to bring a private action under the federal CAN-SPAM Act, noting: "Gordon has purposefully avoided taking even minimal efforts to avoid or block spam messages. Instead, Gordon devotes his resources to adding his 'clients' e-mail addresses to mailing lists and accumulating spam through a variety of means for the purpose of facilitating litigation."

"The CAN-SPAM Act was enacted to protect individuals and legitimate businesses -- not to support a litigation mill for entrepreneurs like Gordon," the court continued.

However, the court noted that it has granted standing to plaintiffs with similar schemes before. In a concurring opinion, Judge Ronald Gould wrote, "We accord standing to individuals who sue defendants that fail to provide access to the disabled in public accommodation as required by the Americans with Disabilities Act ('ADA'), even if we suspect that such plaintiffs are hunting for violations just to file lawsuits."

Two years after the Los Angeles Times ran a lengthy story on the plight of some banana plantation workers and the heroics of one Los Angeles plaintiffs' lawyer, the paper today published an entirely different account on its front page.

The plaintiffs' lawyer, Juan J. Dominguez, now stands accused by a judge of participating in a broad conspiracy built on phony claims that Nicaraguan banana workers had become sterile from exposure to a pesticide used on banana plantations in the 1970s, according to the paper.

Cases that Dominguez expected would go to trial this year have been thrown out. A $3.2-million jury verdict on behalf of six plaintiffs in 2007 is likely to be overturned.

Dominguez, 52, continues to protest his innocence, but he faces investigations by the State Bar of California and scrutiny by the U.S. Department of Justice.

The story details Dominguez's campaign to recruit and manage plaintiffs.

Jose Francisco Gutierrez Fletes, 58, who worked as a "captain" to recruit and manage plaintiffs, told the Times he faced constant pressure from Dominguez's office to deliver more. "We had to keep bringing people in," he said.

In a 2008 deposition, plaintiff Francisco Donald Quinonez testified that one of Dominguez's captains had trained him "like a parrot" to recite facts about the farm.

On Saturdays, Dominguez would go on national radio to talk about his efforts. He liked to be introduced as a "super lawyer."

Now, Dominguez is going to need his own "super lawyer" to face the accusations in the case, which were deftly unraveled by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Victoria Chaney in April.

Dominguez and other plaintiffs' attorneys had set out to find legitimate claims but turned to fraud when they found few, Chaney wrote. What resulted was a "heinous" scheme "cemented together by human greed and avarice," she said in making her ruling.

Read CJAC's earlier coverage of the case by clicking here, here, and here.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has agreed to hear a legal challenge to a case involving Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell's hiring of a contingency fee law firm to sue a drug maker on behalf of the state.

As explained in an editorial in today's Wall Street Journal, the lawsuit concerns Bailey Perrin & Bailey, a Houston law firm tapped by the Rendell administration to prosecute Janssen Pharmaceuticals.

As the Journal notes, "it appears as if pay-to-sue politics was involved in the choice of Bailey Perrin."

"While F. Kenneth Bailey, the law firm's founding partner, was negotiating a potentially lucrative no-bid contingency fee contract with the Governor's office, he was also making political donations totaling more than $90,000 to Mr. Rendell's 2006 re-election campaign."

The court will consider a motion filed in January by Janssen, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, which questioned the appropriateness of the state hiring for-profit lawyers to sue on its behalf.

The Journal concludes: "A Pennsylvania ruling wouldn't be binding on courts in other states, but it would be noticed. An increasing number of state AGs and other public officials are offering contingency fee contracts to their political funders in the plaintiffs' bar, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's scrutiny of this dubious new litigation model is most welcome."

This isn't the first time the Journal has published an editorial blasting the unseemly state practice of hiring outside lawyers to sue private companies on a contingency fee basis -- and how the trial bar returns the favor with campaign donations to state office holders.

California has so far escaped from the potentially corruptive influence of such agreements.

The state's attorneys general and district attorneys have headed off plaintiff lawyer solicitations and conflicts of interest by following the guidance of long-time Justice Stanley Mosk and a unanimous court in the 1985 decision Clancy v. Superior Court, CJAC President John H. Sullivan noted in a news release.

In an amicus brief, CJAC has urged the California Supreme Court to preserve the case rule when it considers County of Santa Clara v. Superior Court. The case involves city attorneys and county counsels in a handful of jurisdictions hiring contingency fee lawyers to bring a public nuisance action against lead-based paint manufacturers.

Is this starting to sound familiar? In a settlement agreement of a class action lawsuit against Wal-Mart Stores Inc., plaintiffs' lawyers will get $10.5 million.

The class members will receive between $50 and $950, depending on how long they worked for Wal-Mart and how much detail they can provide about the violations they suffered, according to an Associated Press story. The company has agreed to pay up to $35 million to settle the suit over meal and rest breaks brought on behalf of 88,000 workers at Washington state stores. The three plaintiffs who brought the suit will each receive $10,000.

Wal-Mart announced in December it would pay as much as $640 million to settle 63 lawsuits across the country over wage and hour violations. Only cases in California and Pennsylvania went to trial, and those verdicts are on appeal, said a Seattle lawyer for the Washington plaintiffs.

"Let's be honest -- fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, and plaintiffs' lawyers make their living filing lawsuits," writes Kevin M. LaCroix on his web blog, The D&O Diary. "The very idea that the plaintiffs have run out of targets is a flawed conclusion built on a faulty premise."

LaCroix was referring to recent news reports showing that the number of securities class action lawsuits declined during the first half of 2009 compared both to last year and to historical norms. (See this National Law Journal story for more details.)

But, LaCroix notes, "it's not as if the plaintiffs' lawyers were idle - they were just otherwise occupied. ...The way I look at it, the plaintiffs' lawyers have not had a shortage of targets, they have just had a shortage of time. But evidence suggests that they are getting caught up and they are now getting around to working off the backlog that has been accumulating. The one thing I know for certain is that they will continue to file lawsuits. Consider how reliable the birds and fishes are, and I think you will see what I mean."

A new feature on the Civil Justice Association of California's web site -- the first-of-its-kind "Legal Fee-o-Meter" -- will help legal service consumers take charge of their lawsuits by determining how much money they might take home in a lawsuit after contingency fee lawyers deduct their fees and costs. Try it out at www.cjac.org/newsandresearch.

The CJAC contingency fee calculator permits a consumer to enter an estimated amount for a settlement or award, the percentage the attorney wants as a contingency fee, an estimate of other lawsuit costs, then automatically calculates the dollars the attorney gets and what will be left for the client. Options are given for the two most common ways lawyers apply their contingency fee percentage.

Contingency fee legal representation, as opposed to hiring by the hour, lets people get legal help with little or no upfront money. But, as explained on the CJAC web site, consumers of legal services should know what costs they will bear if their lawyer wins a settlement or verdict for them -- or loses.

There is a link on the web site to more tips about hiring a contingency fee lawyer, as well as links to the State Bar's sample contingency fee agreement and index of lawyers, which shows where a lawyer attended law school as well as any record of formal discipline.

"Some years ago," CJAC President John H. Sullivan said in a news release, "Consumer Reports ran a survey and article on legal services and concluded that 'Of all the services we've surveyed over the years, only diet programs have received a worse score.' We hope matters have improved. But regardless, one piece of advice from Consumer Reports to legal service consumers certainly still holds true: 'Start by taking charge.' We hope CJAC's new web feature helps consumers to do that."

While Los Angeles plaintiffs' lawyer Juan J. Dominguez presumably prepares for his upcoming contempt hearing at the end of the month, one Southern California law professor raises an important question: Why was this case in California in the first place?

Dominguez, known best for his "Accidentes" advertisements on Los Angeles buses, is accused of defrauding Dole Food Company by training Nicaraguan men to make false claims that they were harmed by pesticides used on banana plantations in their country.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Victoria Chaney dismissed two tort cases, ruling in April that Dominguez and co-counsel in Nicaragua committed a "fraud on the court" and a "blatant extortion" of the defendants.

Meanwhile, writes Ronald D. Rotunda, a Constitutional law scholar and professor of law at Chapman University School of Law: "Increasingly, foreign plaintiffs who have never set foot in America are suing in the United States for events, or 'torts,' in their own countries, where the U.S. company violated no law. Many U.S. courts are accepting these lawsuits and applying U.S. law to foreign countries."

Foreigners choose U.S. courts because U.S. law is typically much more pro-plaintiff, offers procedural advantages such as class actions, and allows extensive discovery, he wrote.

"What is hard to understand is why U.S. courts let foreigners sue here," Rotunda wrote. "U.S. courts should not accommodate countries, like Nicaragua, that have adopted laws targeted against U.S. companies. In such cases, our court system is importing two things: foreign judgments and foreign plaintiffs. As Judge Chaney said, referring to Nicaragua law, 'There is a lack of respect for law down there.'"

In related news, Judge Chaney has been appointed by Governor Schwarzenegger to California's Second District Court of Appeal and plans to hand the Dominguez case over to another Superior Court judge before her confirmation hearing, which was scheduled to be held July 1.

She also rescheduled Dominguez's hearing for late July, when it is expected a judge will decide whether the attorney should be held in contempt of court and fined.

"... I am frankly embarrassed by the inundation of billboards and TV ads for personal injury lawyers who have little respect within the profession and seldom if ever set foot in a courtroom."

Those words were written on a blog by a self-described serious personal injury attorney in Atlanta.

In a post published in April, Ken Shigley took to task plaintiffs' lawyers who advertise heavily but lack solid professional track records.

"If you or a loved one has a serious injury or wrongful death case, you would do better throwing a dart at the attorneys section of the phone book than choosing a lawyer on the basis of a billboard or a 30 second TV ad," he wrote. "At least you would have a chance of getting to a decent, honest attorney who would know how to identify a specialist for an appropriate referral, rather than a 'mill' that focuses on volume and accepts low offers rather than doing the hard work of litigation.

"The subtly misleading slogans of the billboard and TV lawyers, e.g., 'one call that's all' and 'all the help the law allows,' and their use of celebrity spokesmen on TV, does a real disservice to members of the public who are drawn into personal injury 'mills' rather than to serious lawyers who would fight for them."

Out of curiosity, Shigley wrote, he ran a search of the names of the top advertising lawyers in metro Atlanta, seeking reported decisions in which they appeared representing a party.

He found minimal reported court decisions and losses. One lawyer who portrays himself as a specialist in trucking litigation has never tried a trucking accident case, nor does anyone in his firm participate in the organizations of trucking trial attorneys.

In California, personal injury lawyers have been airing ads about asbestos exposure, at least one with a "mesothelioma hotline" number to call. A number of web sites also offer to match potential plaintiffs with an attorney in their area. One such site contains the following disclosure: "All attorney listings are a paid attorney advertisement, and do not in any way constitute a referral or endorsement by an approved or authorized lawyer referral service."

The Los Angeles Film Festival and a movie production company should head off wasteful litigation by moving their discredited movie "Bananas!*" from the "documentary" category to a clearly fictional class in this weekend's festival, CJAC President John H. Sullivan urged Thursday.

A CJAC news release explains that the film purports to document the work of Los Angeles personal injury lawyer Juan J. Dominguez, who led a lawsuit in Los Angeles on behalf of hundreds of Nicaraguan banana plantation workers claiming they were rendered sterile by chemicals Dole Food Company, Inc. used on the crops.

But as the film was being wrapped, Dominguez's heroic story was being unwrapped in the Los Angeles County courtroom of Superior Court Judge Victoria Chaney. Dismissing the case after a long trial, she said that "... if you took all the bad cases I've read and put them together, they don't even come close to what's happened here. ... The actions of the attorneys in Nicaragua and of some of the attorneys in the United States, specifically the Law Offices of Juan Dominguez, have perverted this court's ability to deliver justice to those parties that come before it."

The film has been moved out of competition, according to a release from Swedish filmmaker Fredrik Gertten, and will now screen in a special "case study" screening slot that will center on "what happens when a film is finished and new developments come to light."

The L.A. Film Festival, however, still lists the movie as a documentary.

Sullivan said in the news release, "It's understandable that Gertten as a movie maker is pained by the unexpected publicity his movie is receiving. But as 'one of Sweden's preeminent documentarians and investigative journalists' he should be interested in a sequel that does qualify as a documentary."

Click here to read an earlier post about the case.

Will Major League Baseball teams be able to recognize gender-specific holidays, such as Mother's Day? Some teams may decide to forgo promotions that recognize the holiday in light of a lawsuit against the Oakland Athletics.

The A's just lost a $510,000 suit that alleged the club discriminated against men by giving away reversible bucket hats and tote bags only to adult women who attended the game on Mother's Day of 2004, according to The Wall Street Journal's Law Blog.

The plaintiff's lawyer, Alfred Rava, has filed about 40 anti-male discrimination suits in the past, according to the Journal. Aside from the suit against Oakland, the San Diego Padres and the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim have also been served in recent years for holding similar promotions.

"Perhaps not surprisingly, all three teams have either stopped doing such promotions or have offered the giveaways to everyone rather than just women," the Journal's Chris Herring wrote.

As ESPN columnist Rick Reilly wrote in a column about Rava's suits, "Gee, I wonder what a sue-happy lawyer from San Diego would be doing at an A's-Twins game the very day that they were holding a women-only giveaway?" Reilly asked Rava: "You went to a game on Mother's Day, to a game that was promoting breast cancer awareness, and you felt victimized by not getting a floppy plaid sun hat?"

"Rava insisted it was a fishing hat," Reilly wrote.

Rava, of the The Rava Law Firm in San Diego, and others have cited California's Unruh Civil Rights Act to argue their claims. According to the California State Bar web site, Rava graduated from California Western School of Law in San Diego and was admitted to the bar in 1997.

With California courts facing closure one day a month to save money, and the state's budget deficit estimated at $24 billion, one court in California was forced to use its resources on a lawsuit by a plaintiff who alleged she was misled by a cereal box.

A U.S. District Court judge in California has tossed a lawsuit filed by a woman who said she had purchased "Cap'n Crunch with Crunchberries" cereal because she believed the crunchberries contained real fruit. The plaintiff brought her claims under California's Unfair Competition Law and Consumer Legal Remedies Act.

As the Lowering the Bar blog so aptly described the case:

"The plaintiff, Janine Sugawara, alleged that she had only recently learned to her dismay that said 'berries' were in fact simply brightly-colored cereal balls, and that although the product did contain some strawberry fruit concentrate, it was not otherwise redeemed by fruit. She sued, on behalf of herself and all similarly situated consumers who also apparently believed that there are fields somewhere in our land thronged by crunchberry bushes.
Plaintiff did not explain why she could not reasonably have figured this out at any point during the four years she alleged she bought Cap'n Crunch with Crunchberries in reliance on defendant's fraud."

Judge Morrison C. England, Jr., in dismissing the case, wrote: "In this case, however, it is simply impossible for Plaintiff to file an amended complaint stating a claim based upon these facts. The survival of the instant claim would require this Court to ignore all concepts of personal responsibility and common sense."

The judge noted that the same plaintiffs firm, Hewell Law Firm in San Diego, had filed a similar claim against the packaging of Froot Loops cereal, which was rejected by another California district court. The Hewell Law Firm is headed by Harold Hewell, identified by the State Bar web site as a graduate of the California Western School of Law in San Diego and admitted to the bar in California in 1994.

Meanwhile, California's judicial branch is facing a $495 million shortfall for fiscal year 2009-10, according to the Daily Journal legal newspaper. On top of that, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced last week additional budget cuts of more than $150 million for the courts.

The Civil Justice Association of California suggests the Legislature enact the following to help state courts deal with budget cuts and matters like the Crunchberry case: Give every judge in the state the option to calendar one case each month for hearing on a set day each month. If the case is not heard on that day, it is dismissed. That set day, explained CJAC President John H. Sullivan, would be the same day as the designated one day-a-month courtroom closures resulting from the budget crisis.

Calling its tactics a "waste of the court's time," Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Aurelio Munoz criticized a plaintiff's law firm for playing the same "grisly game of asbestos litigation" in at least nine cases.

In the trial court opinion, Judge Munoz reluctantly denied defendant Crane Co.'s motion for summary judgment, but then blasted plaintiffs' firm Waters & Kraus for its tactics, Amanda Bronstad wrote in the National Law Journal. In Judge Munoz's own words:

• "This court does not have the authority to summarily prohibit the use of otherwise admissible testimony even if the court does not approve of the games, and they are games, that are being played."

• "The main theme seems to be settle or we'll run up the attorneys' fees so high that it is cheaper to settle. Rarely do the cases go to verdict. Instead what is accomplished is a waste of the court's time, the burning of numerous jurors because of the one day one trial rules and what seems to be a type of judicially sanctioned extortion."

• "In short this is the grisly game of asbestos litigation that occurs in the courts. The court is of the opinion that it cannot grant the relief requested, but perhaps an appellate court can."

Read the full opinion here.

The buzz continues to expand over the remarkable revelations in Los Angeles of one of the most massive and methodically-corrupt client recruitment schemes ever uncovered.

The plaintiff lawyer-engineered scam was based on phony allegations that thousands of Nicaraguan banana workers were rendered sterile by pesticides used on Central American banana plantations.

Nicaraguan lawmakers got the ball rolling with a legislated assumption that anyone who worked on a banana farm got poisoned. Nicaraguan judges, lawyers, and heavy-handed client "recruiters" rolled the ball into perhaps 10,000 class action plaintiffs. Some California lawyers took over and pitched it into an L.A. courtroom.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Victoria Chaney upheld the integrity of the courts in unraveling this ball and exposing it. In her words: "... if you took all the bad cases I've read and put them together, they don't even come close to what's happened here."

News stories don't do this travesty justice. It had -- still has -- elements of physical danger to plaintiffs, defense lawyers, and investigators. It has a cast of Central American political and legal pirates. Most amazingly, it got a toe hold in our state in our courts!

But fortunately, Judge Chaney was there: "... although there has been a strong attempt to bring the seeds of the Nicaraguan corruption here to this country, it has not succeeded, and if I have anything to say about it, it will not succeed."

As Judge Chaney told a courtroom audience when she dismissed the case last week: "The actions of the attorneys in Nicaragua and of some of the attorneys in the United States, specifically the Law Offices of Juan Dominguez, have perverted this court's ability to deliver justice to those parties that come before it."

And she concluded by assuring that: "I will be making referrals that I believe are appropriate to either the state bar of this state, perhaps state bars of other states, and to prosecutorial agencies."

There is no substitute for reading this ruling. Here it is, 28 pages, large type, following this warm-up from the American Lawyer web site.

"Breathing Fire from the Bench, Judge Finds Plaintiffs' Lawyers Committed Fraud, Dismisses Tort Case Against Dole as Sanction
It's not that we're jaded, exactly, but it takes more than run-of-the-mill allegations of attorney misconduct to impress us. So when we say that a hearing that took place last Thursday in Los Angeles superior court addressed the most egregious plaintiffs lawyer extortion and fraud allegations we've seen this side of criminal indictment, we're not being hyperbolic. And if that description isn't enough to make you click on our link to the hearing transcript, consider this: Judge Victoria Chaney may also have set a record for the most extended metaphor that we've ever heard in a courtroom. We're talking fire-breathing chimeras, people."

Read, too, what aforementioned plaintiff attorney Juan J. Dominguez says -- admits -- on his web site about his role in the case: "Significantly, I am currently the lead attorney representing over 10,000 workers, in combination with several other law firms ... I oversee the legal work by all lawyers both here in the United States and in Central America. I also have monthly radio broadcasts providing status to the affected communities, public, and clients."

You will be amazed to read, in Judge Chaney's ruling, the message of some radio broadcasts.

Read more about Mr. Dominguez, whose web site bio tells us he is "one of the most widely known, recognized and respected personal injury attorneys in Southern California ... regularly interviewed by the news media for legal rights that he seeks to champion for thousands of seriously injured workers in Central America."

The Los Angeles Times on May 27, 2007, ran a long story on the plight of the banana workers and the heroics of Mr. Dominguez and his thunder speeches in Nicaragua. The article was titled: "Plantation workers look for justice in the North."

They found it, in a most sad manner. Those who led them on may now find justice, too.

"Personal injury lawyers shoveled millions of dollars into Assembly and Senate races in an attempt to elect legislators who will support their pro-litigation agenda," CJAC President John H. Sullivan said in a news release revealing the total amount spent on incumbents and candidates from January 1, 2007, through December 31, 2008.

Of the $4.1 million spent by personal injury and other plaintiffs' lawyers, more than $2.1 million came in direct contributions from individual lawyers and their law firms, according to data compiled by CJAC. More than $720,000 came through political action committees, which are entirely financed by plaintiffs' lawyers. Another $1.2 million was spent by plaintiffs' lawyer-controlled independent expenditure committees.

While there were no statewide races during this session, $361,500 of the plaintiffs' lawyer money went to current office holders and potential candidates in statewide elections in 2010.

More information -- as well as a breakdown of contributions to each candidate and incumbent -- is available on CJAC's web site.

Plaintiffs' lawyer Thomas Frankovich, who has filed hundreds of lawsuits against businesses on behalf of a small stable of clients, could be in for a judicial rebuke this summer that would make him the first California attorney disciplined over the filing of lawsuits under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The California State Bar last year charged the cowboy boot-wearing litigator from Marin County with filing frivolous claims based on contrived injuries and using extortion to get quick cash settlements out of businesses, the Daily Journal's Amy Yarbrough reported (subscription only).

According to the State Bar complaint, Frankovich would typically wait up to a year before filing a complaint in order to maximize the damages, requesting $4,000 per day from his client's visit until the problems were corrected. Along with the complaint, he'd send a letter to the business that was "misleading and intimidating" in hopes of getting it to quickly settle, according to the State Bar.

"He actually advised people, 'Don't bother getting a lawyer,'" Scott Drexel, the State Bar's chief trial counsel, told the legal newspaper.

If Frankovich is found guilty of misconduct, it might discourage serial plaintiffs, prompt attorneys to more carefully investigate claims and follow up to make sure ADA violations are fixed, and end other abuses of disability access laws, said Martin Orlick, a San Francisco real estate litigator who has represented businesses sued by Frankovich's clients.

Frankovich is no stranger to judicial rebukes. In December 2004, the late U.S. District Court Judge Edward Rafeedie of Los Angeles declared one of Frankovich's most active clients, Jarek Molski, a vexatious litigant, because of a suit Molski filed against a Chinese restaurant in the central California tourist town of Solvang. The court ordered both Frankovich and his client to win permission from a judge before filing any more ADA lawsuits in the Central District and sanctioned the attorney. (Read our earlier blog posts here and
here.)

Plaintiffs' lawyers have started a new trend in class action lawsuits -- one that could further drive up retailers' cost of doing business.

In an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle, Daniel A. Rozansky and Scott M. Pearson, partners at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP in Los Angeles, write that some lawyers have taken a California statute and started filing class action lawsuits against retailers asking for ZIP codes.

California prohibits businesses from requesting "personal identification information" when accepting a credit-card payment. Now some attorneys here are filing class action lawsuits alleging that retailers can't ask customers for any information at the time of a credit-card transaction -- not even ZIP codes.

The law requires merchants to pay penalties of $250 for the first violation and up to $1,000 for later ones -- even when customers can't prove they were harmed.

Rozansky and Pearson write: "Unless the Legislature fixes the statute to make clear what information retailers can ask for and when they can ask for it, lawyers seeking big fee awards will file these cases in the hope of forcing the retailers to settle."

In honor of April Fools' Day, CJAC sent out a news release challenging readers to find the fake lawsuit in a list of outrageous suits.

In one lawsuit, a California professional stuntman was nabbed by security officers while trying to jump from the top of the Empire State Building. He later sued the building owners for $30 million, alleging, among other things, that being temporarily handcuffed to a railing forced him to sleep 12 hours a day and depressed the reflexes that he needs to jump from high places in the future.

In another suit, a handyman helped lawyers launch a class action lawsuit over the money he said he lost when he bought "Made in the U.S.A." locks that someone later found out contained screws from Taiwan. But once in court, it was revealed that some of the locks were paid for by his customers, and his lawyers gave him money to buy the rest!

For more details and the full list of suits, click here.

One of the longest running Unfair Competition Law cases ever has finally been brought to an end -- maybe.

The saga of Benson v. Kwikset began in 2000 and ricocheted between trial courts and the 4th District Court of Appeal in Orange County until a decision a few weeks back.

In a just-published article John H. Sullivan, CJAC's president, tracks the case's journey --before and after voters approved Proposition 64 in 2004 -- and recalls the facts and appellate opinion that made it a poster child for the shakedown lawsuits that the CJAC-sponsored initiative shut down. You can read the article and Appellate Justice David Sills' cut-to-the-chase description of the shakedown gambit in the March 25th Daily Journal legal newspaper on the CJAC web site.

Kwikset was sued by former class action plaintiffs' lawyer Williams Lerach's firm for selling "Made in the USA" locks with screws made in Taiwan. (As Sullivan notes, Lerach, just beginning the second year of a two-year federal prison term for illegally paying class action clients, has become far more familiar with locks than he ever could have imagined when his lawyers first went after Kwikset.)

Proposition 64 brought to the Unfair Competition Law the common sense requirement that a private plaintiff bringing an unfair competition/consumer protection lawsuit must have incurred "injury in fact and lost money or property" to have standing before the court.

The Kwikset case is notable for providing some of the best judicial arguments for fixing the Unfair Competition Law's non-existent standing rule. Justice Sills' observations, Sullivan writes, "are more relevant than ever today as some plaintiffs' lawyers, evidently addressing a shortage of legitimate plaintiffs, are attempting to recast Proposition 64 as overkill intended only to squelch" no-name lawyers bringing serial small-stakes shakedown lawsuits.

"His acts of misconduct with regard to the fee petitions are among the most egregious that this court has seen in almost 14 years on the bench," federal Judge Susan Illston wrote in sanctioning a San Francisco plaintiff lawyer $25,000 for submitting false fee applications in civil rights litigation against FedEx.

The lawyer, Waukeen McCoy, is also forbidden from filing any more FedEx-related fee petitions in the future, according to an article in The Recorder legal newspaper.

McCoy had requested $2 million in fees. The fee fight started after McCoy won jury verdicts against FedEx for workplace discrimination. Illston appointed a special master, Edward Swanson of Swanson McNamara & Haller, to deal with the fees, and FedEx accused McCoy of fabricating many of his hourly estimates, wrote Recorder staff writer Dan Levine.

McCoy got into deeper trouble with the special master, and now Illston, after he failed to produce contemporaneous time records he had been ordered to turn over. Illston also found that the vast majority of McCoy's petitions were not actually based on such time records, contrary to what McCoy had repeatedly represented in sworn declarations.

McCoy, who graduated from University of California, Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, was admitted to the State Bar of California in 1993.

There appears to be something missing from The American Lawyer's "Layoff List" of 80 law firms which have cut attorneys and staff in 2008 and so far this year. What is it? A plaintiffs' law firm.

"The Layoff List," compiled by The American Lawyer, its sibling publications, and other media organizations, is a web site with ongoing coverage of law firm layoffs.

In one of the largest cuts of this layoff season to date, Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe sent home 12% of its non-partner lawyers on March 3, according to The Recorder legal newspaper. The firm, which laid off 40 lawyers and 35 staff in November, let go of 100 more associates and 200 staff members. In February, Latham & Watkins confirmed that it laid off 190 associates, or about 12% of the firm's associate base. It also cut 250 non-legal staff, including paralegals.

As we plough into the fourth decade of authorized lawyer advertising (read "solicitation") far fewer lawyers are around who remember the strict and honorable rules that made ambulance chasing a disreputable endeavor.

The U.S. Supreme Court justices who in 1977 launched the solicitation era in Bates v. Arizona admitted they didn't know for sure what it would lead to. Were they ever right on that score!

See staff writer Petra Pasternak's February 26 article in The Recorder legal newspaper on "pay-per-click" Internet advertising (subscription required but a free trial is available) for a look at a world that Justice Warren Burger and friends could not have even imagined.

We learn there that plaintiffs' lawyers at "The Veen Firm" felt driven to it ... "a philosophical jump for us. We thought of ourselves as one of the more prominent firms in the city, not a 1-800 ambulance firm. ... But we need to make sure that our names are out there."

The Recorder tells us that "Oakland attorney Steven Kazan, who focuses on asbestos cases, says that competition for work is tougher than it's ever been. 'It's no longer a local practice,' he said. 'Lawyers from all over the country now compete for the guy who gets sick in Oakland.' His 21-lawyer firm, Kazan, McClain, invests in search engine optimization to help its five Web sites stay relevant. Non-lawyer Carolyn Chitty handles online marketing and advertising at the firm."

Lost over the years are the issues driving the Bates decision. As Chief Justice Burger noted in his concurrence/dissent: "Pressures toward some relaxation of the proscription against general advertising have gained force in recent years with the increased recognition of the difficulty that low- and middle-income citizens experience in finding counsel willing to serve at reasonable prices."

Most of the Bates court discussion focused on the price list advertised by the pair of Phoenix legal aid lawyers looking to bring in lower income people for a little legal help. The advertisement was simply: " Do you need a lawyer?... Legal services at very reasonable fees ... Divorce or legal separation -- uncontested (both spouses sign papers) ... $175.00 plus $20.00 court filing fee" and so on.

Much of the justification for Bates was to make legal services more accessible and affordable.

Justice Burger was not sold on this: "Although the exact effect of those changes cannot now be known, I fear that they will be injurious to those whom the ban on legal advertising was designed to protect -- the members of the general public in need of legal services. I am apprehensive, despite the Court's expressed intent to proceed cautiously, that today's holding will be viewed by tens of thousands of lawyers as an invitation -- by the public-spirited and the selfish lawyers alike -- to engage in competitive advertising on an escalating basis. Some lawyers may gain temporary advantages; others will suffer from the economic power of stronger lawyers, or by the subtle deceit of less scrupulous lawyers."

Sixteen years later, in a speech, Justice Burger provided an updated opinion on Bates, saying that lawyers taking advantage of it have taken the legal profession's standing to "its lowest ebb in the history of our country."

And what about advertising as promoting cost-cutting competition and increasing access to the legal system? Recall that a California Judicial Council survey in 2005 found that while the public's attitude toward the courts has been becoming more positive, the cost of an attorney was the most commonly stated barrier to access to the courts -- no matter what the respondent's income level.

Former plaintiffs' lawyer Richard "Dickie" Scruggs is on his way to Mississippi from the federal prison in Kentucky where he is serving five years for bribing a state judge in a legal-fee dispute.

On Tuesday, Scruggs is expected to plead guilty to corruption charges related to a second judicial bribery scheme, The Clarion-Ledger reported.

The second scheme dates back to 1994, when two of Scruggs' former law partners alleged he never paid them their share from asbestos and tobacco litigation. The case bounced from court to court until 2005; when U.S. Magistrate Judge Jerry Davis ordered Scruggs to pay one partner, Alwyn Luckey, $17 million. A year later, special master Bobby Sneed made recommendations that largely sided with the other partner, Bob Wilson, leading his lawyers to seek $15 million in legal fees.

Scruggs installed his one-time lawyer Joey Langston as lead counsel, assisted by then-lawyer, Timothy Balducci. A few months later, Hinds County Circuit Judge Bobby DeLaughter ruled entirely in Scruggs' favor, saying Scruggs owed nothing more than the $1.5 million he'd made in belated payments.

In a hearing last year, Balducci testified Scruggs called his brother-in-law, then-U.S. Sen. Trent Lott, to swing consideration for a federal judgeship so DeLaughter would rule in Scruggs' favor. Rather than pay DeLaughter money, Balducci said the Scruggs camp promised to have Scruggs contact Lott so DeLaughter would be considered for the judgeship.

DeLaughter has been suspended while his case is being considered by the state Commission on Judicial Performance.

The Daily Journal's recent special section on up-and-coming lawyers had some good news for California defendants who've been encountering Paul Sizemore of the plaintiffs' firm Girardi & Keese. He's studying for the European Union's bar exam and may not be bringing lawsuits into California courtrooms as often.

The bad news: If he passes he'll be Girardi's second lawyer eligible to practice law in Europe, where many of the firm's favorite pharmaceutical targets have operatons, if not headquarters.

The Tortification of Europe continues.

A southern California attorney who brought a class action against a clothes retailer will be paid $125,000 for his legal services -- in gift cards.

Yorba Linda attorney Neil B. Fineman brought a class action lawsuit against Windsor Fashions, alleging the company was committing routine violations of the Song-Beverly Credit Card Act, according to the Metropolitan News-Enterprise.

Per the settlement agreement, class members won't receive cash, only a $10 gift card. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Brett Klein also provided that Fineman will be paid his fee with "12,500 ten-dollar Windsor Fashions gift cards."

The lawyer is to get 3,500 of those cards by next Monday and 750 of them on the third day of each month through January of next year. The named plaintiff, Jacqueline Cohen, will garner 250 of the gift cards as an "incentive reward" for leading the charge.

According to the paper, "What Fineman has done is to promote purchases at the defendants' stores."

The Civil Justice Association of California salutes the judge for his innovation. In many class action cases, the lawyers walk away with millions -- in real dollars, while the class members receive coupons.

These cases illustrate a central problem of class action lawsuits in California -- the pressure to settle cases, meritorious or not -- after the class has been certified. In California, only the plaintiff has the right to appeal the all-important class certification decision at the outset of a case. If both sides were allowed the same right to appeal the certification decision, there would be a greatly reduced opportunity to leverage a questionable class action lawsuit into a big settlement.

Yesterday, we brought you the story of how plaintiffs' lawyers already making bold demands of the new president.

But what might he do? For one take, we turn to an article in The Economist, January 17-23. The full article is worth reading; here is an excerpt:

"The new president is a lawyer from a party dominated by lawyers. His vice-president publicly thanked God last year that lawyers are such a problem for corporate America. When Mr. Obama was in the Senate, he once voted for a mild curb on jurisdiction-shopping by class-action lawyers, but otherwise tended to vote against tort reform. And Democrats in the new Congress are itching to reward the lawyers who donated so generously to their election campaigns ...

" ... On the plus side, Mr. Obama will probably never face another Democratic primary contest, so he no longer needs to outdo other Democrats in cosying up to the trial bar. And he seems to understand how to weigh the benefits of new rules against their costs. A good sign is his expected naming of Cass Sunstein, a Harvard law professor, to head the office within the White House that vets new regulations."

President Barack Obama was only sworn in a day ago, but the plaintiff's bar has already made bold demands on the new president, seeking broader liability rules, limits on arbitration, and a new final rule denying any attempt to preempt state tort law.

The trial lawyers' national lobbying group called on Obama to repeal a bevy of regulations that the organization claims limit corporate liability, according to Legal Newsline.

"Instead of coming up with proposals to benefit our economy, the trial lawyers' first proposal is a stimulus package for themselves -- legislation and calls for executive action aimed at creating more litigation and more legal fees," Lisa Rickard, president of the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform, told the newswire.

The new president of the California trial lawyers' lobbying group told the Daily Journal newspaper that she hopes to see federal judicial appointments and even Supreme Court appointments that will swing future decisions about federal pre-emption.

One Florida county settled 189 playground lawsuits in five years. Another Indiana school district was sued after a boy slid down a slide head-first and broke his femur. A 2004 survey reported that 78% of middle and high school teachers have been subjected to legal threats from students "bristling with rights," columnist George F. Will wrote in "Running at Recess."

The column explores America's pervasive legal culture and points to a new book on public affairs, attorney and author Philip Howard's "Life Without Lawyers: Liberating Americans from Too Much Law."

As a result of fears over liability, warnings multiply: "The warning label on a five-inch fishing lure with a three-pronged hook says, 'Harmful if swallowed;' the label on a letter opener says, 'Safety goggle recommended,'" Will wrote.

"Lawsuits express the theory that anyone should be able to sue to assert that someone is culpable for even an idiotic action by the plaintiff, such as swallowing a fishing lure," he wrote. "... A predictable byproduct of this theory is brazen cynicism, encouraged by what Howard calls trial lawyers 'congregating at the intersection of human tragedy and human greed.'"

Imprisoned class action lawyer Bill Lerach, who was recently upgraded to a high-security suite after he attempted to give a guard football tickets, has fired high-power criminal defense attorney John Keker of San Francisco and retained Michael Lipman of the San Diego firm Coughlan, Semmer & Lipman.

Speculation is that the change was a result of Keker's apparent failure to get Lerach into an alcohol treatment program -- which is seen by some corporate convicts as a ticket to an early release. Lerach agreed to serve a maximum of 24 months in prison.

As 2008 draws to a close we can say goodby to the costly antics of two plaintiffs lawyers: Harpreet Singh Brar and Jarek Molski.

Brar was a frequent filer under pre-Proposition 64 B&P Code 17200. But he wasn't slowed much by the CJAC-sponsored 2004 initiative that brought sensible injury requirements to unfair competition lawsuits filed by private attorneys. He tried some creative attempts to establish damages despite Proposition 64, but all went for naught as disbarment proceedings progressed. The result, as published in the California Lawyer magazine's "Discipline Report," included:

"Harpreet Singh Brar, State Bar # 206460. Brar, 37 was disbarred after being found culpable of misconduct in seven matters. He was disciplined for maintaining illegal actions, engaging in acts of moral turpitude, failing to cooperate with a State Bar investigation, and disobeying court orders ... he failed to maintain just actions by filing an unmeritorious appeal and by commingling funds in the client trust account. He acted in bad faith by filing a frivolous motion and appeal. He also harmed the public and the administration of justice by wasting judicial resources and by interfering with the attorney general's duty to protect California consumers. In the current disciplinary matter, the misconduct demonstrated a pattern of misconduct that harmed the pubic and the administration of justice. Brar also demonstrated a contemptuous attitude toward disciplinary proceedings."

As for Molski, as Los Angeles Times writer Carol Williams put it, "Whether Jarek Molski is a crusader for the diabled or an extortionist who abused the law for personal gain, the vexatious litigant has filed his last lawsuit."

The U.S. Supreme Court turned down Molski's appeal of a lower federal court ruling barring Molski from future litigation. In 2004 the late U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie branded Molski a "hit and run plaintiff" and accused him of systematic Americans with Disabilities Act extortion lawsuits across California. Molski is believed to have earned hundreds of thousands of dollars suing businesses and demanding $4,000 a day in penalities for the disabled access violations he claimed to observe.

Two lawyers who have traded hostile rhetoric in recent weeks as they try to gain advantage for their rival class-action suits -- which could produce $5 million for the victorious legal team -- opened a hearing with a schoolyard brawl, according to The (New Orleans) Times Picayune.

Attorneys Madro Bandaries and J. Robert Ates are pursuing class action lawsuits against Louisiana Citizens Property Insurance Corp. Bandaries said he was sitting at the table when Ates came up behind him, put his hands on his shoulders and said something about Monday being Bandaries' funeral or the case's funeral, according to the paper. Bandaries claims that Ates then turned him around and pushed him.

"Next thing you know, he has me on the floor," Bandaries testified.

Judge Kern Reese (who was not amused) fined Ates $100 and ordered he spend 24 hours in jail; an order which the judge later recanted and released Ates from Central Lockup at 7 p.m.

Lawyers who recently negotiated a $750 million settlement with Xerox are waiting to find out if their request for $83 million in fees for work done by temporary attorneys will be approved -- even though the temp attorneys only cost the firms $11 million.

The fee request pending in a Connecticut district court asks for a total of $150 million in fees, according to a Forbes article, "Nice Work If You Can Get It."

According to Forbes, two law graduates were hired through a temp agency to work on the Xerox case. They "often performed glorified secretarial work, including reviewing electronic documents to identify their author and destination," and were paid $35 to $40 an hour.

Yet the law firms in the case are asking for roughly $500 an hour for their services.

For the past decade, CJAC has tracked the hundreds of thousands of dollars that personal injury and other plaintiff's lawyers have spent to elect statewide and legislative candidates to office.

The 2007-08 election cycle is no exception.

So far, plaintiff's lawyers, their firms, their political action committees, and independent expenditure committees controlled by the trial bar have spent more than $3.1 million.

Of that, more than $1.6 million was in direct contributions from individual lawyers and their law firms. More than $660,000 came from political action committees, which are entirely financed by the plaintiff's bar, according to CJAC research compiled from the California Secretary of State's web site.

In addition, three independent expenditure committees controlled by plaintiffs' lawyers spent $780,000 to elect legislative candidates.

More information about trial lawyer contributions can be found on the CJAC web site.

"This Court is not troubled by the apparent fact that Coughlin attorneys seek high comfort on their journeys, but ..." a judge wrote as he proceeded to chastize plaintiffs' firm Coughlin Stoia for overcharging for its lawyers' time and expenses in a class action lawsuit against Coke.

Read today's Wall Street Journal Law Blog for more on the big cuts handed down.

While many contend that voters called for "change" in their vote in the Nov. 4 election, it's clear that their view of frivolous lawsuits remains consistent.

An election night poll released by the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform found 83% of those surveyed saying the number of frivolous lawsuits was a serious problem, including 77% of Democrats, 80% of Independents, and 92% of Republicans.

In addition, 77% of voters said they would have a less favorable impression of Congress if they pass laws allowing trial lawyers to bring more lawsuits.

The poll was a national sample of 800 Americans who voted in the 2008 election.

Which group is more important -- trial lawyers or doctors? Last week's comments by famed plaintiff's lawyer Gerry Spence at the trial lawyer' lobbying organization's annual convention are still getting hits on the blogosphere, including this post by American Courthouse's Dan Pero.

"I want to ask you which would be more important: If all of the doctors in the country somehow disappeared or all the trial lawyers in America somehow disappeared?" Spence asked, according to Legal Newsline. "We can live without medical care, but we cannot live without justice."

San Francisco Chronicle writer Steve Rubenstein has a tongue-in-cheek take on the conference, held in San Francisco from Nov. 6-9. His article begins: "Five hundred lawyers, none of whom is in it for the money, came to San Francisco on Friday. It's all about helping people ..."

Rest the rest here.

The California Supreme Court has granted review to a case that began when California-based Simpson Strong-Tie Co., Inc. sued a plaintiff's attorney for unfair business practices, false advertising, and libel after he placed a newspaper advertisement seeking clients for a potential lawsuit.

The ad, which ran in the San Jose Mercury News and the Los Gatos Weekly Times, said that purchasers of the company's galvanized screws "may have certain legal rights and be entitled to monetary compensation."

The company sued after its public opinion survey showed the ads unfairly reduced public opinion of its product.

The plaintiff's class action attorney, Pierce Gore, filed a motion to strike the action as a SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation). A trial court agreed, and the Sixth District Court of Appeals affirmed that ruling in April.

In its decision, the Court of Appeal determined that the plaintiff bears the burden of showing that the cause of action of which the plaintiff complains -- in this case, the advertisement -- is exempt from the protections of the anti-SLAPP statute. The Supreme Court will consider this question as well as whether a section of the Code of Civil Procedure exempts from anti-SLAPP protection an advertisement by a lawyer soliciting clients for a contemplated lawsuit, according to the California Appellate Courts case information web site.

The case is Simpson Strong-Tie Co, Inc. v. Pierce Gore.

The $9.75 million that Melvyn Weiss will pay in forfeitures as part of his felony plea deal is a drop in the bucket compared to what the convicted securities class action lawyer will bring in as part of a lucrative deal he signed with his former firm, Milberg, according to a Wall Street Journal editorial.

The firm was indicted in May 2006 for fraud, racketeering and money laundering. The Justice Department added Weiss to the indictment in September 2007. A month later, Weiss "signed a deal agreeing to pay him lucrative fees for settlements in some of its most high-profile cases, including those against Tyco, Xerox, Exxon, Enron, and dozens more," the Journal reported. "The formula is complex, but in many cases Weiss will receive roughly 15 percent of the firm's fee award multiplied by the firm's profit margin for the year of the settlement. The precise payout is uncertain but could well add up to tens of millions of dollars."

Weiss must now obtain court approval for any fees for legal services he provided, which he is scheduled to do at a Tuesday hearing.

The paper continues:

"The firm also agreed to pay Melvyn Weiss's legal fees and expenses stemming from his indictment (including travel, room and board) -- even if he pleaded guilty. Two days after Weiss pleaded guilty, on March 17, 2008, Milberg amended the agreement, so he would continue to get his share of the settlement loot even if he resigned from the firm."

The Justice Department, the Journal concludes, has some explaining to do.

"Now it appears that this settlement remorse was as phony as its previous strike-suit plaintiffs. Even as it publicly repented for Weiss, the firm knew it had cut him in on its winnings despite his past misconduct. Imagine the political uproar if Enron had agreed to pay millions to Jeffrey Skilling for prior services rendered even while publicly blaming him for fraud."

Today and tomorrow in Valencia personal injury lawyers from around Europe are meeting to hear about American-style punitive damages and product liability from some people who would love to see them expand on the Continent. On the agenda are the president and president-elect of the U.S. national trial lawyer organization, currently named the "American Association for Justice."

The European group hasn't gone to the pseudonym well yet and goes by the name "Pan European Organization of Personal Injury Lawyers" (PEOPIL). The group's web site indicates official support from the European Union.

To the extent that members are trying to harmonize legal rules across borders in Europe, no harm. To the extent they are a vehicle for importing U.S. liability law, there's pushback. As CJAC reports in our soon-to-be-published 2nd quarter Balance newsletter, the head of a German shareholders group recently stated that: "We don't want a litigation industry." And the European Union itself has proposed rules that prevent American-style class action litigation.

Bill Lerach, scheduled to report to prison today to begin serving a two-year sentence, should leave the golf clubs at home, according to The American Lawyer.

Lerach, who pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy for his involvement in a plaintiff kickback scheme at his former firm, Milberg Weiss, may be heading to a minimum-security prison in Lompoc, Calif. The request, approved by the court, still must be approved by the Bureau of Prisons, according to the Wall Street Journal Law Blog.

American Lawyer reporter Ross Todd writes: "When Bill Lerach, Dickie Scruggs, and Mel Weiss check into prison, each will be handed a uniform, photographed, fingerprinted, and asked to disrobe for a mandatory cavity search. Whatever personal property they have will be taken from them and inventoried."

The former plaintiff's attorneys will -- with good behavior -- be allowed 300 minutes' worth of calls per month, and 400 minutes during November and December.

Lerach may see some familiar faces, Todd writes. "One lawyer recently released from the prison camp in Otisville, New York (near the New Jersey and Pennsylvania borders) says there was usually about a half-dozen lawyers inside. The lawyer, who declined to be identified, says the group was well regarded and approached frequently for help with appeals or habeas corpus petitions. But, like other prisoners, he says, they spent most of their time on more mundane pursuits, such as mopping floors."

As Bill Lerach gets ready to don his prison uniform and start serving a two-year prison sentence, some Washington lawmakers are calling for an investigation into the practices of the securities class action litigation industry.

Lerach, involved in a plaintiff kickback scheme at his former firm, Milberg Weiss, told The Wall Street Journal that his illegal conduct and that of his law partners was an "industry practice," House minority leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Lamar Smith (R-Texas) wrote in letters to the chairman of the House judiciary committee, John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), and to House majority leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

"If in fact the crimes committed by Mr. Lerach and his colleagues are an 'industry practice,' as Mr. Lerach himself confessed, then the United States Congress is sitting idle while criminal behavior in the trial lawyer industry threatens American jobs and feeds like a parasite on the prosperity of working families," they wrote.

Boehner and Smith ask for answers to three questions:

How many 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," and what reforms Congress can enact to erase these abuses from the judicial system.

They ask that a hearing be scheduled by May 19 -- the date Lerach is ordered to report to prison.

An Investor's Business Daily article applauds California's 33-year-old healthcare reforms and urges other states to take a cue to reduce the cost of their medical malpractice premiums, attract new doctors, and increase the quality of healthcare.

David Ridenour, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy Research, writes that some greed-filled lawsuits "play a major role in our nation's ever-escalating health care costs."

"Lawsuits that unnecessarily increase the liability risk of healthcare providers only tend to increase costs and add to the current crisis," he writes, citing as an example the case of a physician who sued the Charleston (W.V.) Area Medical Center after it refused to recognize his medical malpractice self-insurance plan. The physician was awarded $25 million from local jurors.

"With America's healthcare increases far outpacing the cost-of-living index, West Virginia and other 'judicial hellhole' states should wake up and take a cue from California and Texas," Ridenour concludes.

Bill Lerach, Dickie Scruggs and Melvyn Weiss were once called the nation's most successful trial lawyers, a Washington Post editorial states on April 9. "Today," it continues, "all three can simply be called crooks."

The editorial notes the three attorneys' successes and downfalls, from Weiss' guilty plea and $10 million fine, to Lerach's yearlong-jail sentence. Both men pleaded guilty to paying kickbacks to plaintiffs they recruited to file class action lawsuits against companies. Scruggs, who pleaded guilty to conspiring to bribe a Mississippi judge, faces a five-year prison term and a $250,000 fine.

The Washington Post says what is needed now is a "sober discussion about how best to achieve a fairer, more balanced legal system through comprehensive tort reform."

"Such a system would not be lopsided but would shield businesses from legal blackmail, just as it would protect the rights of legitimate plaintiffs to win compensation from negligent businesses that caused them real harm. Smart and ethical businesspeople and lawyers -- and yes, there are many who fit the bill -- would be wise to start working together to craft such a fix."

A March 21, 2008, Wall Street Journal editorial names the growing list of plaintiff's attorneys who have, at various times in the past year, proclaimed their innocence, agreed to plea deals and then expressed regret for their felonious actions.

"In the wake of the felony admissions of (Melvyn) Weiss and (Bill) Lerach and last week's bribery plea by Dickie Scruggs, where are the cries in Congress to crack down on these wealthy wrongdoers who abused their positions of legal trust?" the editorial asks. "Weiss's corner of the tort bar has enriched itself for decades on the backs of shareholders who took home a pittance while the lawyers became mega-millionaires."

The Journal calls this likely the biggest pay disparity in the country -- but one that won't change any time soon.

"The tort lawyers have seen to that by sharing a percentage of their riches, almost like a service fee, with the politicians who prevent any meaningful legal reform," the paper states.

A Journal reader responded to the editorial on March 24 with this letter:

"I'm posting your March 21 editorial 'Felony Bar' on my pegboard next to the three checks I've received over the years as a result of being a member of one of those 'class action' lawsuits to correct grievous harm done to consumers by evil corporations. In ascending order, they are in the amounts of $0.12, $0.33, and $0.86. The checks to the tort lawyers involved were slightly larger."

This just in: The last of the five defendants in the high-profile judicial bribery case has entered a guilty plea, reports The Wall Street Journal Law Blog.

Zach Scruggs, son of well-known plaintiff's attorney Richard "Dickie" Scruggs, pleaded guilty to a federal felony charge that he was aware of but did not report that associates were inappropriately trying to influence a Mississippi judge.

Scruggs Sr. pleaded guilty to conspiring to bride the judge for a favorable ruling in a legal-fee dispute over Hurricane Katrina-related insurance litigation.

The crime, in federal parlance called "misprision of a felony" will cost the 33-year-old Scruggs his law license, according to the (Biloxi, Miss.) Sun Herald. Judge Neal B. Biggers Jr. could sentence Scruggs to a maximum of three years in prison, but prosecutors have recommended three years' probation.

Brea lawyer Harpreet S. Brar, who first made headlines by filing shakedown lawsuits against more than 400 nail salon owners in southern California in 2003, may be disbarred following a recommendation by a State Bar Court judge.

Brar was later jailed for contempt of court for persisting in other harassing legal tactics and then convicted of federal tax evasion. He has a collection of State Bar suspensions and probations over the past two years, but it has taken until February 1, 2008 to reach the disbarment recommendation stage.

The final decision rests with the California Supreme Court, which will take up Judge Richard Honn's recommendation that Brar be disbarred for actions that amount to "serious breaches" of an attorney's fundamental ethical mores, the California Bar Journal reported this month.

Brar "has engaged in a nearly continuous course of serious misconduct" since his admission to the bar in 2000, Honn said. The attorney refused to let Proposition 64 stop him from filing shakedown lawsuits -- even though an Orange County judge called him "basically an extortionist," ordered him to pay $1.8 million in civil penalties, and enjoined him from filing any more cases under the California unfair competition law.

After the CJAC-sponsored Proposition 64 closed the door on unfair competition law shakedowns in 2004, Brar filed used his wife as a plaintiff and filed three new lawsuits within nine months accusing liquor stores of not posting notices of 50-cent debit-card fees charged at ATM machines in their stores and claiming her debit-card fees as a loss of money and property. He also sent the defendants a threatening letter in which he offered to settle the matter for about $750 and encouraged a quick settlement to avoid additional fees and costs.

Orange County Superior Court Judge Peter Polos held Brar in contempt and sentenced him to 15 days in jail.

Brar, 36, was convicted of five felony counts of tax evasion last July and is currently serving one year in county jail. He failed to file 1999 personal income tax and corporate income tax returns, as well as his 2002 personal income tax returns.

A Los Angeles police officer who sued after he didn't receive $44.63 in overtime pay was awarded $10,500 -- but his request for $46,000 in attorney's fees was denied by the trial court.

On appeal, the request also rankled the Second District Court of Appeals.
"At the risk of understatement," wrote Justice Miriam Vogel, according to The Recorder, "there is no way on Earth this case justified the hours purportedly billed by (the plaintiff's) lawyers."

The rates for the attorneys ranged from $525 an hour to $200 an hour, according to court documents.

The court agreed that the plaintiff should receive attorney's fees but reduced the fee award to $500. The court quoted L.A. Superior Court Judge William Fahey, who had rejected the $46,000 fee request.

"(Plaintiff) has been paid a windfall of $10,500 which can and should be shared with his many attorneys," Fahey wrote. "To award an additional amount of money for attorneys' fees would be confiscatory and unfair."

The officer was represented by Los Angeles' Harris & Ruble; the lead attorney declined comment to the press.

Read the case, Harrington v. Payroll Entertainment Services Inc., here.

With more than $3.8 billion in recoveries, Milberg Weiss tops the list of plaintiffs' law firms ranked by the largest total dollar amount of final securities class action suits settlements in 2007 in which the firms served as lead or co-lead counsel.

"There were more settlements in 2007 than at any other time in history," said Adam Savett of RiskMetrics, which released the Securities Class Action Services annual list of the top 50 plaintiffs firms.

The other top firms and their settlement totals are:

• Grant & Eisenhofer -- $3,451,300,000
• Schiffrin Barroway Topaz & Kessler -- $3,302,265,000
• Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins -- $1,853,990,000
• Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann -- $1,338,110,000

In a RiskMetrics Group press release, Savett said he expects the number of new cases to continue to rise, in part due to the ongoing expansion of the subprime fallout.

More than a year has passed since the State Bar was requested to investigate a California law firm which was kicked out of an Ohio asbestos lawsuit for numerous ethical violations including lying to the court, providing false testimony under oath and submitting false information to bankruptcy trusts.

Shortly after Judge Harry Hanna removed the Novato, Calif.-based law firm Brayton Purcell and its attorney, Christopher Andreas, from his courtroom, the Civil Justice Association of California sent a letter to the California State Bar, requesting an investigation into whether the violations in Ohio are part of a larger pattern of conduct.

"We share your concern," Dane C. Dauphine, supervising trial counsel for the State Bar, wrote in response to CJAC's request in February 2007. "We appreciate your comments regarding the January 18, 2007, (court order), which found that a member or members of the California Bar had committed misconduct before the court."

But in a letter to CJAC in August 2007, the bar stated that it had closed the file on CJAC's complaint because the association was "not a witness to the attorney's conduct" in the Ohio court ruling.

Confidentiality rules prohibit the bar from commenting further, Dauphine said March 10.

He added that "there are no disciplinary charges pending against this attorney." Andreas is still listed as an active member on the State Bar's website; he has no public record of discipline.

John B. Torkelsen, a former financial analyst in Princeton, N.J. and a damages expert used extensively by Milberg Weiss and other securities class-action firms, agreed to plead guilty to perjury on February 28.

Torkelsen admitted that he lied to numerous federal judges across the county who were presiding over securities class actions, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Torkelsen testified as an expert on shareholder damages in Milberg cases in the 1980s and 1990s. The prominent law firm, to which now disgraced plaintiffs lawyer Bill Lerach once belonged, paid tens of millions of dollars to Mr. Torkelsen.

The firms who hired Torkelsen as an independent expert were precluded from paying him on a contingent basis, but they secretly did so anyway and concealed the payment arrangement from the courts, the defendants and the absent class members, according to a Department of Justice press release.

In the news release, Thomas P. O'Brien, the United States Attorney in Los Angeles, said: "Mr. Torkelson has compromised the pursuit of justice and potentially compromised the rights of shareholders involved in these lawsuits. The cases involving Mr. Torkelson should give pause to all courts tasked with the difficult job of determining the fairness and reasonableness of attorneys' fee and cost requests in class-action lawsuits."

Some of Jim Hood's largest campaign donors are the very firms to which he's awarded the most lucrative state contracts, The Wall Street Journal editorial board found while examining documents from the Mississippi Attorney General's office.

According to the WSJ, the Mississippi Senate recently passed a bill requiring the Attorney General's office to pursue competitive bidding before signing contracts of more than $500,000 with private lawyers. It also requires a review board to examine contracts and limits contingency fees to $1 million. Hood is trying to block the law in the state House, the WSJ reports.

"Should state Attorneys General be able to outsource their legal work to for-profit tort lawyers, who then funnel a share of their winnings back to the AGs?" the editorial asks. "That's become a sleazy practice in many states, and it is finally coming under scrutiny -- notably in Mississippi, home of Dickie Scruggs, Attorney General Jim Hood, and other legal pillars."

The documents show that the 27 law firms Hood hired to pursue state lawsuits returned the favor with $543,000 in campaign contributions. Most of the contracts were awarded on a contingency fee basis.

To read more from The Wall Street Journal, go here and here.

In related Hood news, The Wall Street Journal Law Blog on Feb. 27 posted this interesting item: "According to an FBI memorandum, (Dickie) Scruggs promised to pay Tim Balducci and Steve Patterson $500,000 each if they could persuade Mississippi AG Jim Hood to hold off on filing criminal charges against State Farm. According to the memo, Scruggs worried that State Farm would back out of a near-settlement he'd struck with the insurer over Hurricane Katrina litigation if Hood filed criminal charges. Ultimately, Hood decided not to file."

For more on that story, go here and read a copy of the FBI document here.

Looking west, a bill introduced in the California Legislature on Feb. 21 aims to reduce the ability for state officials to misuse the power of their office.

Senate Bill 1444, introduced by Senator Abel Maldonado, would require an elected official offered a bribe to report it to the Fair Political Practices Commission within 30 days from the time the bribe was offered.

Prosecutors recommended two years. In court documents, class-action lawyer Bill Lerach asked a federal judge to sentence him to one year, with half of that spent at home.

He didn't get it. Instead, he'll spend two years in prison.

U.S. District Judge John Walter also sentenced Lerach, 61, to two years probation, fined him $250,000 and ordered him to complete 1,000 hours of community service, according to The Associated Press. He has also agreed to forfeit $7.75 million to the government.

Lerach, who pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy, said before his sentencing: "I pleaded guilty in this case because I was guilty. It was, as they say, felony stupid."

Lerach had admitted to participating with several other Milberg Weiss attorneys in a scheme giving clients kickbacks in return for their serving as plaintiffs in the firm's lawsuits.

A Los Angeles Times story examines how the class action arena has changed in light of Lerach's guilty plea.

Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood was slammed on the witness stand for hours by a State Farm attorney over his criminal investigation of the company and relationship with plaintiffs lawyer Richard "Dickie" Scruggs. The outcome was a settlement with the company (terms not disclosed).

State Farm accused Hood of threatening a criminal investigation unless the company settled policyholders' Katrina claims with Scruggs and other attorneys, the (South Mississippi) Sun-Herald reported. State Farm now wants to question Scruggs, who, the company argues, conspired with Hood to deprive the insurer of its legal rights.

Hood and Scruggs stood to earn millions in legal fees from a 2007 global settlement of policyholders' Hurricane Katrina claims.

Hood called Scruggs a "confidential informant" for his office, according to an Associated Press story. Scruggs was charged in November with attempting to bribe a state judge in a legal-fee dispute.

For a detailed take of the courtroom drama, go here.

The first person charged in the federal criminal investigation into the Milberg Weiss securities law firm was not sentenced to prison because a judge took his health and age into consideration.

Seymour Lazar, a former entertainment lawyer now living in Palm Springs, pleaded guilty to making a false declaration in federal court, filing false tax returns, and obstruction of justice, according to a Jan. 29 Daily Journal story.

Lazar or his family members served as lead plaintiffs in 60 class actions filed by Milberg Weiss from 1979 to 2002 in exchange for a total of $2.5 million in kickbacks from attorney fees, according to his plea agreement. Lazar will pay $2.1 million in fines and forfeiture and serve two years of probation, including six months of home detention.

Meanwhile, the Feb. 11 sentencing date closes in for Bill Lerach, the California class action plaintiffs' lawyer who was a partner in the Milberg Weiss operation for most of the period it was nourishing Lazar. Lerach pleaded guilty last fall to criminal conspiracy in the "hire a plaintiff" fraud and conspiracy scheme.

Why did the names Enron and WorldCom become household names, but the allegations against Mississippi trial lawyer "Dickie" Scruggs and securities attorney Bill Lerach haven't made the same waves?

"Now it's one of the slimier sectors of our legal system that's suffering a slew of scandals -- though they're not receiving nearly as much attention as the corporate misdeeds did," notes a recent editorial in the Richmond (Virginia) Times-Dispatch.

Lerach pleaded guilty to one count of criminal conspiracy for his role in a kickback scheme at his former law firm, Milberg Weiss LLP. He is due to be sentenced Feb. 11.

Dr. Randy Fink, an obstetrician/gynecologist in Miami, Florida, says he spends time daily correcting information patients found on the Internet -- often on sites paid for or sponsored by class action law firms or legal marketing sites searching for plaintiff referrals.

"Every day, I spend time undoing damage done by patients reading faulty or misleading information from the Internet," Fink is quoted in a new report published by the New York-based Center for Medicine in the Public Interest. "I am fond of telling patients that the Internet is the world's biggest bathroom wall. It is a natural tendency to either over-interpret or under-interpret information about one's health, so there is no substitution for an objective opinion from a clinician who knows your personal history."

The report analyzed results from Google searches on several medications and found -- with few exceptions -- the information online was presented in a way that the sites appeared legitimate but had no medical authority whatsoever.

"Patients who use Google to find important information about such drugs will be overwhelmed with negative information and will find little, if any, solid medical information to help them weigh the risks versus the benefits of using these medications," the report states.