June 30th, 2009

Metro Train Accident and Client Solicitation


In the wake of Continental Flight 3407 crashing near Buffalo, I tracked how a number of firms from around the nation were using Google ads to hustle clients (see here, here, here, and here). The point was to discuss New York’s attorney anti-solicitation rules and, to see if they were effective, compare them to local attorney advertising responses in two other disasters. The other disasters were the Staten Island Ferry crash in 2003 and the Metrolink train crash in Southern California in 2008.

So now we can add another disaster to the mix: The Washington City Paper reports that:
Lawyers Use Web Site, Google Ads to Find Metro Crash Victims (via Overlawyered). An individual named Jared Reagan started a website (metrotrainaccident.com) and then started hustling lawyers to advertise on it. There is no indication that Reagan is even an attorney.

So what does this mean? For those lawyers that retain Reagan to act as their agent to solicit via web sites, it means that those lawyers have outsourced their ethics to him. Let’s be clear about this equation:

outsourcing marketing = outsourcing ethics

Notably, the site itself does not list any New York lawyers, either because he hasn’t reached us with his own solicitations for his site yet, or because New York attorneys, under stricter ethics rules than those in other states, have learned to become wary of outsourcing their marketing such people. See: New York’s Anti-Solicitation Rule Allows For Ethics Laundering and Must Be Modified.

On a final note, New York’s ethics rules are currently being challenged in court. Oral argument was heard before the Second Circuit in January. Judge Sonia Sotomayor was on the panel. A decision is pending.

Links to this post:

Disbar the Connecticut 5
No, not really. I don’t care whether they get disbarred or let off. A lawyer can’t pay a nonlawyer for a referral. This is an uncontroversial proposition. In Connecticut, paying a nonlawyer for a referral can even be a felony. … 

posted by Mark Bennett @ November 06, 2009 8:14 PM

adam winter and thomas dicicco: lying asshats of the day
today’s asshats of the day are adam winter and thomas a. dicicco, jr. of “web guardian” (i don’t know if it’s this webguardian, but it’s probably just a boiler room in boca raton). the first time adam called he gave his full name (”adam … 

posted by Mark Bennett @ July 10, 2009 3:48 PM

dc metro crash client-chasing
yes, the online ads are already up. washington’s city paper tracks down one california-based law firm marketer: “this is the only marketing i do — it’s the highest cost per click online. what else can you do, a young guy like me? …
posted by Walter Olson @ June 30, 2009 12:14 AM

 

June 26th, 2009

Michael Jackson: The Mother of All Malpractice Suits?

With Michael Jackson’s sudden death yesterday at 50 have come swirls of rumors about prescription medications he was taking for dancing related injuries. And if toxicology tests show over-medication being a substantial cause of death, that leads to the inevitable questions regarding potential medical malpractice as well as potential criminal liability.

So these are the issues and questions that would/should float about if those rumors prove accurate:

1. Were the medications all provided by a single doctor? If the self-proclaimed King of Pop was getting all the medication from one place, then the prescribing doctor ought to have a good lawyer due to issues of criminal prosecution (possible but unlikely), action against the medical license (much higher probability) and civil suit (discussed below).

2. If there was more than one doctor, did they know about each other and what the other was prescribing?

3. Did all the drugs all come from one pharmacy? Did that pharmacy have an internal system to tickle the pharmacist if there is an inordinate amount of medication going to one person or that some of the drugs are contraindicated given the other meds? If so, did that pharmacist make a call to the doctor(s) issuing the prescriptions?

4. Where were the prescriptions written and filled? This would be a jurisdictional issue that could be particularly important for a pharmacist, who may have immunity if s/he simply followed the doctor’s orders. There is no way to know at the moment if the drugs were prescribed, or even filled, in the U.S. given that Jackson spent a substantial amount of time overseas.

5. Who has standing to bring such a suit? That is a two-part question, as his personal property may be governed by an executor or administrator. But he also has three kids that are all minors and need a legal guardian. Will the mother of two of them, who reportedly gave up legal rights to the kids, be seeking that position in a fight with family members? (This also assumes proper paternity.)

6. From the point of a medical malpractice suit, does it even matter? Jackson was allegedly in debt to the tune of over $300 million, though I suspect a forensic accounting may take some time. But if this was the case of one or two doctors/pharmacists, then there would likely not be much more than a million dollar (or two) insurance policy. When you are that steeply in hock, a malpractice suit may be too insignificant to matter (assuming a limited insurance policy). The estate’s executor and creditors may be unlikely to have an interest, concentrating on the big picture.

7. You can toss out #6 above if the investigating authorities make a slam-dunk decision on liability. That makes a lawsuit easy, and no one would give up an easy million if it were there.

8. In a wrongful death suit, by contrast, the losses suffered by the children would likely go directly to them, bypassing the estate. And if the estate itself is bankrupt, then the kids might actually need the money depending on how Jackson managed his affairs and the nature of any trusts he did (or did not) set up for his children. You’d like to think he was a savvy music mogul, but if he also saw himself as a forever young child, then estate planning could well be something he put off for the future. No one really likes to make decisions about their death, least of all someone with a child’s view of the world.

Best guess from my perch in the cheap seats:


A. Criminal liability is the big concern if there was one doctor prescribing a bucket load of drugs to Jackson without having the nerve to cut off the famous patient. While prosecutors don’t generally bring these kinds of actions, they also don’t usually deal with such a high profile figure. That could alter the decision-making process of prosecutors. That doctor would also have separate licensing concerns.

B. Civil liability in a medical malpractice suit on behalf of the estate is not likely to garner much of a return relative to the debt. It only comes if authorities find an easy case against someone.

C. The kids will pursue a wrongful death case (via their guardian, whoever it may be) only if: Jackson failed to provide for them; there is little left in the estate after the creditors tear it to pieces; and the case is an easy one.

Update:

(Top photo courtesy of Rolling Stone, with more here. Headline from Extra, Rio de Janeiro)

Links to this post:

why the michael jackson wrongful death lawsuit may be worthless….
well, it hasn’t been filed yet, but there’s no doubt its coming– a wrongful death lawsuit by the estate of michael jackson. some lawyers are calling it the “mother of all medical malpractice lawsuits.” …

posted by [email protected] (Blog Author)15999 @ July 28, 2009 9:00 AM

personal links: july 4th weekend edition
if you have any suggestions for links, send me an email, i’m all ears. maryland specific links are at the bottom: the new york times reports that general motors will continue to have responsibility for products liability lawsuits filed …

posted by @ June 30, 2009 9:53 AM

friday follies 1.5
a few more michael jackson law-related (at least tangentially) headlines: what will happen to michael jackson’s kids? and michael jackson: the mother of all malpractice suits? (via) and, of course, michael jackson’s will: the details, …
posted by Tim @ June 26, 2009 5:44 PM

 

June 24th, 2009

Why is LegalX.net Spamming Me? (Ethical Issues with Attorney Search Sites) – Updated


LegalX.net is one of the gazillion attorney search sites that seem to float about the web. You pay them a fee, and they add you to their directory while they try to hustle clients. Many of them seem to me to have questionable ethics. But this one, LegalX, has been trying to spam the comments of my blog like crazy over the last couple weeks. And it appears they are doing it to others.

Now I’m used to getting comment spam from various companies hustling gold, drugs and knickknacks of all sorts. And even on occasion from lawyers. But I’ve never been hit with this kind of persistence from a law firm or lawyer search company.

This is interesting on two different levels. First, attorneys that pay these marketers have entered into, what appears to me, an agency relationship. And their agents are sending out spam. But the attorneys are likely responsible for the acts of their agents. So the hundreds of law firms that LegalX appears to have taken money from are now associated with one of the most insidious practices of the web. Due to ethics rules that exist in some places for attorney marketing, ethics and lawyering go hand-in-hand. So when a firm outsources its marketing, it also outsources its ethics.

Second, I think that there is very little that is actually gained by the spam. There is no link juice, since comments on blogs are routinely set as “do not follow” so that Google doesn’t give them any link love. Their pagerank doesn’t benefit from the practice.

And some of the posts are one to two years old. This same drivel below, for example, was presented for comment in one of the Dr. Flea posts as well as one on the Million Dollar Advocates Forum:

It is essentially important for human beings to follow laws and orders without which a man can be brutal enough harm others. It can be easily mentioned that law plays a vital role in arranging the mob in a systematic manner. So, one should never fail to follow laws of any kind, concerning anything.

It also appears to have been spammed hundreds of times on other attorney blogs, which you can discover if you Google the first part.

Awhile back, I switched over from having open comments to moderated comments that need to be approved. I didn’t want to do that, but it was the only way to keep the spam out.

In sum, LegalX appears to be engaging in a widespread spam campaign. When it comes to blogs, it’s hard to think of more reprehensible conduct from a company.

Who is LegalX that has persuaded so many law firms to turn over their cold hard cash to them? Great question. Glad you asked. And I wish I had a good answer. Its website gives a Canadian address, 7018 14th Avenue, Burnaby, British Columbia, but no names. Some further searching finds that it was for sale in October 2008 by an anonymous individual located in Los Angeles under the pseudonym “fargreater.” Fargreater says that:

all seo optimization done by widecircles.com the advanced optimizers

Whether the site was sold to someone else that is doing the spamming, or it remains in this person’s hands, I don’t know. But it was also for sale (either still or again) just a month ago by someone named “Johnfa.”

I also checked out the “blog” that is on the site. I put that in quotes because the one post I read, entitled “Medical Malpractice Happens,” was in large part an unattributed rip-off (/MedMalHappens–LegalX.pdf) of this post by Patrick Malone at The Huffington Post.

Now cutting to the chase, who would want to hire a lawyer that has a mysterious company spamming for them? And yet, hundreds of law firms appear to be listed at their site. Most are likely to be unwitting dupes, though some may simply be turning a blind eye to the conduct. Either way, is that the type of lawyer someone would want? (Assuming that these lawyers have, in fact, paid to be listed on this site. Their advertising page says it is $349-489/year for a listing.)

If I were a stockbroker, I would not only mark this stock “avoid,” but also the lawyers that paid them any money.

[Note: LegalX.net is the spamming lawyer site. But there is also a LegalX.com, which is a litigation outsource support firm with a Los Angeles phone number. While both seem to have an L.A. contact, I do not presume they are related.]

Update 12/22/09: In early December I received email from someone identifying himself as “Richard Cohen,” claiming that his “organization” outsourced SEO and content writing to some other company and apologized for the spam. He never named the alleged outside company, and provided no address for himself and no means of verifying anything what he wrote.

He (if it is a “he”) also demanded that I take down the LegalX logo. I refused, based on fair use and the First Amendment. He threatened me with a DMCA take-down notice. I told him to Google “Turkewitz Avis” and to be careful of the considerable downside of filing a DMCA take-down notice without a legitimate basis for doing so.

I think any lawyer that outsources its marketing to such a company is a fool, due to the risks of outsourcing marketing (and ethics) to others.

It’s also worth noting that shortly after this email exchange took place at the beginning of December, comments started to appear on this post. There had been none from the time it was first posted on June 24, 2009 until December 7, 2009.

Links to this post:

Denver Motorcycle Lawyer Comment
I received the following comment in my inbox on Monday morning: I was just made aware that if the person who hit you is under-insured, you may be able to use your own motorcycle insurance or even your car insurance for compensation. …

posted by @ October 22, 2009 2:59 PM

comment spam — from law firms
as eric turkewitz notes, “when a firm outsources its marketing, it also outsources its ethics.” tags: chasing clients, legal blogs. related posts. march 25 roundup (2); youtube lawyer ads (3); willie gary marketing tactics (2) …
posted by Walter Olson @ June 25, 2009 10:26 AM

 

June 23rd, 2009

Welcome Washington Time Readers (And Sonia Sotomayor Fans)


I am quoted in an editorial of The Washington Times for Wednesday, June 24 (Sotomayor’s Ethical Oversight). The editorial deals with Sotomayor’s former firm Sotomayor & Associates, when there don’t appear to have been any associates. My original post can be referenced here: Did Sotomayor Violate NY Ethics Rules in Private Solo Practice with “& Associates” Name?

The first half of the editorial comes pretty much straight from my posting. From there the Times goes off on a tangent trying to find greater significance.

I will leave it to others to comment on whether the Washington Times took a long stretch in the significance of the violation. (For the last two weeks I’ve been too busy with work to put together much new content on this blog.)

In the meantime, if you are a new reader, here is a “greatest hits” for this blog, so that you can consider subscribing or adding this site to your RSS feed. But remember, do it today because the price will double next week.