Editorial: Stop ridiculous debate over state rock
ANG Newspapers, SF Bay Area, August 13, 2010
Updated: We've updated and streamlined the collection of links to articles, editorials, and blog posts about the SB 624 issue.
Disgraced securities fraud trial lawyer Bill Lerach thought he had a great idea. Teach a class at UC Irvine's law school called "Regulation of Free Market Capitalism -- Are We Failing," and burn off some of the community service time that went along with his two-year prison sentence.
As Paul McCartney once said, the judge did not agree and he told him so.
In fact, according to Law.com, U.S. District Judge John Walter in Los Angeles devoted several minutes during a hearing Monday reciting public statements in which Lerach appeared to display a lack of remorse for his crime. As a result, Walter said, the only message Lerach could offer students was this: "Don't get caught."
Walter oversaw the criminal case that federal prosecutors brought against Lerach's former law firm, now called Milberg LLP, and several former partners involving kickbacks to lead plaintiffs. Lerach pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy. Walter sentenced him to two years in federal prison, a $250,000 fine and 1,000 hours of community service. Lerach completed his prison sentence earlier this year, paid his fine and another $7.75 million in forfeitures, and is in the process of finishing his community service.
...Walter then cited several recent newspaper articles in which Lerach appeared to indicate that he wouldn't have done anything differently, despite having served a prison sentence, and that the case was simply a "political prosecution."
Lerach "still denies that he did anything wrong," Walter said. "He misled and fooled the court into believing he had remorse at the time of his sentencing." Walter said that he now believes the sentence was "way too lenient" and regretted having accepted Lerach's plea deal.
You can read the entire article here. (sub req'd)
Q: What's worse than a class action lawsuit settlement that provides millions of dollars for trial lawyers and a coupon for the alleged victims?
A: A settlement that provides millions of dollars for plaintiffs' attorneys and absolutely nothing for the alleged victims.
That's the situation in a settlement that Ted Frank's Center for Class Action Fairness has formally objected to. The case is In Re Yahoo, in which the Internet giant was accused of "click fraud" against advertisers, allowing ads to be displayed in spyware, domain name parking sites, pop-ups, pop-unders, and typosquatting sites.
In the settlement agreed to by both sides, Yahoo agreed to implement an ad placement option similar to that used by competitor Google - but only until Microsoft takes over Yahoo's search engine and ad sales program. After that, all bets are off.
As for the approximately 800,000 members of the class:
- The three representative plaintiffs get $10,000.
- Class members that have gone out of business can get $20, if they submit a claim form.
- The lawyers get $4.3 million.
- Everyone else gets nothing - no refunds, no discounts on future ads, nothing.
The Ted Frank brief is merciless in its condemnation:
"(T)here are two possibilities. The Putative Class Attorneys have brought either (1) a meritorious case that is being settled for an infinitesimal fraction of the case's real value in a 'sellout' of the attorneys' and class representatives' fiduciary duties to the class, or (2) a meritless lawsuit where the 'class device had been used to obtain leverage for one person's benefit....'
"In either instance, the Putative Class Attorneys' actions should be deterred, rather than rewarded: the court should not approve the settlement and should not award attorneys' fees when the vast majority of the class gets nothing."
The entire brief can be read here.
CJAC urges that opponents of SB 624, the state rock bill, maintain their opposition to the bill, regardless of whether the author removes the findings that mischaracterize serpentine. Regardless of the bill's stated language, the purpose and circumstances behind it are well-known. Removing the designation will still allow plaintiffs' lawyers involved in asbestos litigation to claim that the bill was enacted because of the connection between serpentine and asbestos-caused disease. That remains an erroneous assertion and removing serpentine as the state rock remains an unnecessary and misleading action.
Unless you read the state's two major legal papers, you missed a significant letter to the editor that ran in each a few days ago. It was signed by 31 past presidents of the Bar Association of San Francisco. They urged voters in judicial elections this fall to consider candidates' qualifications and not party affiliations (in California, contested elections occur only at the trial court level).
As the bar presidents (whose terms extend back to 1973) wrote in their joint letter:
"What brings us together is our united belief that nothing is more important in the pursuit of justice than the independence of the judiciary. Partisan politics, by their very nature, can threaten judicial independence."
The report of the Commission on Impartial Courts issued in December included Recommendation 22, which stated: "Judicial candidates should be prohibited from seeking or using endorsements from 'political organizations,' as defined in the terminology section of the Code of Judicial Ethics." Comments in the Commission's report noted that "seeking or using endorsements" was as far as the group thought it could go without raising constitutional problems. The report made the point that it was not prohibiting a judicial candidate from "accepting" a party endorsement (because of the necessity then of a candidate to reject an endorsement).
California's Constitution [Article II, Section 6(a)] states that all judicial offices in California are non-partisan.
(The Commission was established by Chief Justice Ron George, chaired by Justice Ming Chin, and met over a two-year period. I was appointed to the Commission's 20-member steering committee composed of trial and appellate judges and representatives of the State Bar and other groups involved in civil justice issues.)
Information on the Commission and its December 15, 2009, final report (408 pages) is available here.
The California Supreme Court recently ruled that a driver convicted of leaving the scene of an accident can be required to pay restitution to the victim's relatives and to the hospital that treated the victim for costs of the injuries suffered.
In People v. Anderson, the court ruled unanimously on July 22 that the trial court did not abuse its discretion when it ordered the driver to pay restitution to the hospital to pay for the victim's final medical expenses.
The incident occurred shortly after midnight on July 2, 2005, in San Diego when Eli Jordan Anderson became distracted while driving and struck an object that shattered his windshield. He told police later he thought it might have been be an animal or person, but after he was unable to find it he left the scene.
A passing motorist observed the collision and provided police with sufficient information for them to locate and arrest Anderson the next day. The victim, who had been jaywalking, had died shortly after the accident a nearby hospital.
In court the victim's family - not the hospital - sought restitution for $31,398 in medical bills, plus funeral costs, even though they would not have been liable for the hospital bill. Restitution was granted, upheld in the Court of Appeal, and reinforced by the California Supreme Court in a unanimous opinion written by Justice Janice Corrigan.
The case is S170778 and can be read here (PDF).
The cleanest description of the California Supreme Court decision (Santa Clara v. Superior Court) overturning the longstanding rule against government prosecutors hiring contingency fee lawyers to do the public's business appeared with an "up" arrow (denoting a plaintiffs' lawyer win) in The Recorder legal newspaper's eye-catching "BAR-OMETER" feature on August 2.
A recent report found that federal securities class action activity has fallen to the lowest semiannual level since the first half of 2007. But there's a good reason, said the author of the report.
"The securities fraud litigation wave stimulated by the credit crisis now appears to be history. We have an inventory of cases waiting to be dismissed, settled, or tried, but to borrow a phrase from the current Gulf oil spill crisis, it seems that this flow has largely been capped," said Joseph Grundfest, director of the Stanford Law School Securities Class Action Clearinghouse.
You can read more about the report's findings here.
The Miller-McCune blog today has a great piece about shakedown class action suits in which the lawyers make millions from settlements and the supposed victims get coupons.
Class action suits are a particularly major problem in California because the state's one-way rule lets a plaintiff immediately appeal a judge's refusal to "certify" (i.e., legitimize) a class action lawsuit. But when the situation is reversed and a defendant wants to appeal a decision to certify a class action, California law in effect tells the defendant to suck it up and pay the plaintiffs' lawyers big money in order to get out of the case.
Here's the lead-in to the piece:
Class action lawsuits are becoming so prevalent that some legal experts worry the headlong rush to certify so many cases -- and the settlements that result -- may compromise fundamental principles of justice and place an unsustainable burden on an already creaky court system.
The most barbed criticisms are aimed at settlements that increasingly line legal pockets with millions of dollars in fees while plaintiffs make do with paltry sums or, more controversially, coupons for compensatory goods or services. In some cases, the awards would be so inconsequential to individuals that the money goes into a public trust that may never directly benefit the aggrieved plaintiffs.
You can read the entire article here.
It's that time of year again. Bob Dorigo Jones's 13th Annual Wacky Warning Label contest announced a winner: The "Drive 'N' Talk Speakerphone - Not for use while driving."
Runners up include:
• a motorized go-cart that warns "This product moves when used"
• a Bluetooth headset that cautions "Use of a headset that covers both ears will impair your ability to hear other sounds"
• a swine growth supplement labeled "for animal use only"
• and a pair of swim goggles that advises consumers "not [to] pull goggles away from face, as they may snap back and cause injury."
As John Stossel points out in this recent video clip, studies show that when people are overloaded with warning labels they quit reading them. Even more dangerously, they may miss entirely warnings that actually matter.
So why include them? To avoid getting sued!
Our entry last year didn't make the cut, but we're working on one for next year's contest. No doubt there will be no shortage of candidates.