$1.9 million in legal fees in a case with a $190,000 verdict

After six years of overseeing a reverse race discrimination case against DeKalb County executives during which defense lawyers filed 14 motions for summary judgment, more than 50 discovery pleadings and made an unsuccessful run at review by the U.S. Supreme Court before the case went to trial, U.S. District Judge William S. Duffey Jr. saw enough to convince him that lawyers for the county had employed a deliberate strategy to run up the litigation tab.

Last Thursday, Duffey did what a split, low-dollar jury verdict had failed to do: send a message to DeKalb County and its lawyers. Duffey awarded plaintiffs’ counsel $1.9 million in legal fees and expenses in a case where two plaintiffs were awarded a total of $190,000.Plaintiffs’ lawyers had asked the jury to award at least $2 million.

From the Daily Report Online.

Reed Elsevier/Lexis Nexis:Public as no constitutional right of access to courts

At least that’s the argument their lawyer is making in Dekalb Superior Court. At issue is Fulton County’s requirement that you use the Lexis/Nexis e-filing service and the associated fees. Now I like a good legal argument as much as the next person but this is a stretch.

Witness this exchange from the hearing:
“On the constitutional claims,” said Whitner, “they repeatedly refer to it as a ‘right to access to the courts.’ … The Georgia Supreme Court has repeatedly held that there is no constitutional right to access to the courts.”
“Did you just say there’s no right of access to the courts?” asked Castellani.
“No constitutional right,” said Whitner.
“So a court could establish a filing fee of $1,000, and if somebody didn’t have it, that would be OK?” asked the judge.
“It’s not even a close call,” said Whitner, citing Article 1 of the state Constitution, which states that “no person shall be deprived of the right to prosecute or defend, either in person or by an attorney, that person’s own cause in any of the courts of this state.”
“This provides a right to representation,” he said. “That’s the what the case law says; I’m not saying it’s right or wrong.”
“I hope that’s not what your case rests on,” replied Castellani.

From the Daily Report

Where are Georgia’s Lawyers

According to the state Bar they’re mostly around Atlanta. Two-thirds of Georgia’s 27,000 attorneys live with 60 miles of Atlanta, an area that includes just over half of Georgia’s population. Forty percent work in Fulton County alone. Georgia’s four second cities, Savannah, Macon, Augusta, and Columbus have roughly 2000 lawyers combined.

They also report that 18 of Georgia’s 159 counties have only one or two lawyers, and five rural counties have no resident attorneys. You hear a lot about how there’s too many lawyers but if you’ve ever been to rural Georgia you know the problem isn’t too many but too few.

Apportioned Premise Liability in Georgia

In July the Georgia Court of Appeals decided Cavalier Convenience v. Sarvis, a case that dealt with the liability of a store that sold alcohol to a minor who was later in an accident while driving drunk. In the Court’s opinion, Judge Herbert E. Phipps wrote: “Given the ‘if any’ clause so placed in that portion of [the statute], it is clear from that subsection’s plain language that the legislature did not intend for apportionment to be limited to those cases wherein the plaintiff was to some degree at fault.”

Now some plaintiff’s lawyers are complaining that the statute as written is too confusing to judges and juries. The Daily Report has the story of how this ruling impacted one premise liability case.

Rethinking Liability for Vaccine Injury

I’ve just finished reading an excellent article on an area of the law I really haven’t given a lot of thought to. Rethinking Liability for Vaccine Injury re-examines the current system of liability and purposes a principled basis for new liability legislation.

William H. Pryor and Race

Remember William H. Pryor? He was nominated by GWB to the 11th Circuit but the Democrats had some concerns with his views on race and blocked the nomination. Eventually he was confirmed under the Gang of 14 compromise and joined the 11th. Well now a recent decision has people talking about Pryor’s views on race again. William H. Pryor has joined with another 11th Circuit judge from Alabama to say that a white supervisor calling black men “boy”—as in “Boy, you better get going” and “hey, boy”—is not evidence of racial animus.

As a native southerner I find the decision shocking. The south has a complicated and quite frankly unpleasant history on race and when it is whitewashed (no pun intended) as in this decision it reminds us we still have a long way to go.

Stephen B. Bright of the Southern Center for Human Rights, had an excellent piece on the decision in the Daily Report Online.

Losing Sucks

I was in court this week assisting in a felony trial. We lost and yes it sucked. What surprised me was my reaction to losing. I thought I had prepared myself mentally for a guilty verdict. Yet, it still hit me like a ton of bricks. Later talking to a veteran PD at the jail I was reminded that in criminal defense you have to get used to losing. But it’s still tough, especially when you don’t think you’re client deserves be locked up.

Still the trial was great experience, especially the vior dire. I don’t normally work with many criminal cases so I was a little out of my element. Instead of endless rounds of discovery and depositions, it seemed there was precious little other than the testimony of the witnesses on which to build a prosecution or a defense. More than anything it was a reminder of how hard the work of PDs and ADAs is. There caseload is ridiculous and yet they take every case seriously.

Still losing sucks.

The Unintentional Summer Vacation

Quite by accident, I landed a summer job. It was at very small firm and there was plenty (almost too much) of work to do. Unfortunately, between work and my summer research project my blogging duties were ignored. Now I’m back in class, it’s my last year, and the Admiralty & Maritime Law Blog is back in action.

Plaintiff Sues Over Court Requiring LexisNexis for E-Filing

This is a very important case regarding access to the courts.

From Law.com

A requirement that civil litigants in a state district court in Montgomery County use LexisNexis for court filings violates the U.S. and Texas constitutions, a woman alleges in a class action filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas in Houston.

Karen McPeters, the plaintiff for the proposed class action, filed McPeters v. Edwards, et al. on April 6. The original complaint names as defendants 9th District Court Judge Frederick Edwards, Montgomery County, District Clerk Barbara Adamick, and Reed Elsevier, an English-Dutch conglomerate doing business as LexisNexis.

As alleged in the original complaint, an order Edwards signed on Feb. 10, 2003, requires McPeters, as a party in a civil suit in the 9th District Court, to exclusively use LexisNexis’ online electronic filing service to file pleadings and documents in her suit.

San Antonio solo Robert L. Mays Jr., McPeters’ attorney, says the district clerk returns unfiled any documents not filed through LexisNexis. The requirement that litigants use LexisNexis exclusively for the court filings violates the Texas Constitution’s open courts provision, he maintains.

“If a litigant does not have a computer, he’s denied access to the courts,” Mays says.

Another legal angle on the 4th Gen iPhone

Over at the Volokh Conspiracy Orin Kerr questions whether or not Gizmodo violated the federal Economic Espionage Act, 18 U.S.C. 1832; the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 18 U.S.C. 1030, or California’s computer crime statute.