June 10th, 2009

New York’s Extraordinary Government

Let me briefly summarize the state of New York’s government.

As I write, the Senate is in disarray due to a coup. The Republicans were ousted in the last election after holding that chamber for 40 years. Eight months later two Democrats allegedly switch sides and dump their party in the name of “reform” but no one can decide if the vote was legal. And they are actually fighting over who has the keys to the Senate chamber.

Our governor was ousted in a prostitution scandal. Our new governor has approval ratings so low you need a shovel to find them, largely due to his fiasco in trying to replace Senator Clinton.

Our judiciary has sued the governor and the legislature because they haven’t had pay raises since the days of the flood.

So the only thing left to do is make fun of New Jersey.

 

June 10th, 2009

Welcome New Readers (USA Today, Fox Business News — Ken Feinberg Story)


After my interview with the Financial Times the other day regarding Ken Feinberg — Special Master of the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund and now the Obama administration’s delegated compensation czar for bailed out companies — I was called by USA Today and Fox Business News.

I did the Fox segment yesterday live on Neil Cavuto’s show at 6 PM. The role of talking head on a live cable news show was something new for me. While I’d been interviewed many times before for news shows (where I sometimes hit the cutting room floor), I’d never done the live thing. The subject was my experience with Feinberg in conjunction with the Victim Compensation Fund, in an attempt to glean some tidbits as to how he might work in his new role. Unfortunately, they didn’t put the video up on the web. Here is Cavuto’s lede as he spoke to his business viewers in The Pay Czar Knows No Limits:

Kenneth R. Feinberg.

Don’t know the name?

Don’t worry.

Pretty soon, he’ll know yours.

Here’s the deal.

And tomorrow morning USA Today has this piece where I am also quoted:New executive compensation chief has fortitude for job:

If Feinberg’s new duty comes with a measure of stress, no one may have a better disposition to handle it, says Eric Turkewitz, a lawyer who represented two 9/11 plaintiffs. He says he found it remarkable that Feinberg never delegated. Working pro bono for 33 months, Feinberg listened, by himself, to 1,000 cases, “hour after hour, day after day, month after month,” with a box of tissue by his side and boxes of replacement tissue in the closet, Turkewitz says.

I can’t say the reporter nailed it exactly, though, as that would do a disservice to his hard-working staff. While he made all the decisions, and he was the man sitting solo in the room with the families and the tissues, there was a large staff that he delegated an exhaustive amount of legal and administrative stuff to.

 

June 10th, 2009

Brooklyn Man Sues Match.com for Humiliation and Disappointment


A Brooklyn man filed suit yesterday against Match.com for humiliation and disappointment. That humiliation, of course, will be nothing compared to being known as the guy that sued Match.com for humiliation and disappointment. His name is Sean McGinn.

It seems that the women McGinn was sending missives to were no longer on Match.com, but the service kept their names and profiles up anyway. Having sent hundreds of letters, this tended to waste a lot of time. He was steamed. He started a class action based on deceptive practices.
But it seems to me that if he has a legitimate beef about his time being wasted, then that is what he should have sued for. Overreaching into the realm of a personal, psychological injury is just the kind of thing that will get you skewered up, down and sideways. It’s a distraction from the real issue, and not a healthy distraction.
It’s not unusual to overreach, of course. Judge Robert Bork famously did that when his lawyer sued — when he slipped ascending the dais at the Yale Club for a speech and hurt himself — for “in excess” of a million dollars, punitive damages, legal fees and interest from the time of the accident. Even if the hematoma on his leg that he claimed he needed surgery for was significant, New York law doesn’t even provide for legal fees and interest from the time of the accident in such an instance, and punitive damages were an idiotic claim. The reputation of this tort “reformer” was badly tarnished by his hypocrisy in overreaching.
The lesson? Don’t overreach in demands. Because an legitimate complaint will get overshadowed by the illegitimate ones.

Links to this post:

match.com: your inactive profiles are breaking hearts
sean mcginn of brooklyn, and lawyers seeking class-action status, say match.com left canceled profiles up, resulting in “humiliation and disappointment” suffered by paying members who sent love-struck missives to the old accounts. …
posted by Walter Olson @ June 11, 2009 11:16 AM

 

June 9th, 2009

NY Ct. of Appeals: Code Violation Is Insufficient In Dog Case


The New York Court of Appeals today tossed out a personal injury case premised on a violation of a local leash law. (Petrone v. Fernandez, June 9, 2009)

The dog in question here did nothing wrong. Rather, the defendant’s rottweiler was lounging on the unfenced lawn of its owner and the plaintiff, a mail carrier, made a bee-line back to her car in panic. She broke her finger trying to leap through the window to safety. The dog never barked or attacked and returned to its owner when called.

Plaintiff wanted to prove negligence against the owner by virtue of the unleashed dog, as being unleashed was a violation of a local ordinance. But New York’s high court tossed that out, since a suit based on personal injury from an animal rests solely in strict liability. The rule of strict liability is simple. It is premised on “harm caused by a domestic animal whose owner knows or should have known of the animal’s vicious propensities.” So sayeth the court.

And what of the leash law violation being evidence of negligence? Irrelevant. According to the court:

[D]efendant’s violation of the local leash law is “irrelevant because such a violation is only some evidence of negligence, and negligence is no longer a basis for imposing liability”

The pictured pup, by the way, is our own. And he’s very friendly. Unless you fear being licked to death.

 

June 8th, 2009

Welcome New Readers (Financial Times of London, Ken Feinberg Story)

For those finding this site after reading my quotes in a June 9th story in the Financial Times (of London), welcome.

(For other readers, the story deals with appointment of former September 11th Victim Compensation Fund Special Master Kenneth Feinberg to “a new role overseeing banks’ compensation schemes to ensure that they do not reward unnecessarily risky behaviour.” See: From 9/11 heartache to bankers bonuses)

I had previously written quite a bit of praise of Feinberg and his endless hours hearing the stories of victims in order to administer the fund that had been set up in the wake of the attack. (See: The Days After September 11th — A Tribute To An Attorney)

From the article coming out on Tuesday the 9th is this part:

Eric Turkewitz, a New York lawyer who represented two of the victims, said he remained impressed by the stamina of Mr Feinberg. “He was a tremendous public servant,” he said. “This is a guy who was personally hearing cases from early in the morning until late at night. How he did it and stomached it and stayed fresh for it after tale after tale I don’t know.”

If new visitors want to see at a glance some of the stories I’ve written about over the last couple of years, you can see this “best of” list that I update periodically.

And if it seems interesting, feel free to add me to your RSS feed. No extra charge.

(Related: Welcome Economic Times of India Readers!)