Lowering the Bar

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished # 174

On April 29, a group of canoers, or canoeists, or canoe wranglers, or whatever you call people who canoe (if "canoe" is a verb), tried to help out when they saw a woman fall or jump from the Perrine Bridge over the Snake River in Idaho.  The woman didn't survive, so for obvious reasons the group was pretty shaken up by the time they reached her and got her to shore.

This good-Samaritan act cost them $170, the cost of the two tickets that an officer immediately wrote them for not having life jackets on.  "The body was right there," said Dennis Bohrn, a member of the canoeing party.  "A deputy was trying to console everybody.  Then a sergeant walked up.  He said, 'I see you don't have any life jackets so I am going to give you a citation.'  It seemed a little cold."

The local sheriff said he stood by the officer's decision, though he added, "Could it have been done at another time?  He had a discretion."  Well, that's really not a rhetorical question, sheriff -- yes, it could have been done at another time, or not at all, which is what discretion is for.  "They should use common sense," Bohrn suggested.  "Maybe his superiors could tell him, 'Next time, wait until they get to the dock and the girls aren't crying.'"

Link: AP via Yahoo! News

Paris Hilton Will Lead The Very Simple Life for the Next 45 Days

Paris Hilton, who you may have heard of, was sentenced to 45 days in jail today after violating her probation for a drunk-driving arrest last year.

Her license was suspended at that time, but she was driving again in January when she was pulled over by police.  Officers then reminded her about her suspended license and had her "sign a document acknowledging she was not to drive," which sounds like celebrity treatment to me already.  But she was arrested again in February for speeding with her headlights off.  That, plus her failure to enroll in an alcohol education program by February 12 as she was supposed to, seems to have irked the judge a bit.  It probably also did not help that she showed up late for her probation hearing.

Hilton claimed that she thought her license had been suspended for only 30 days, and that she had not actually looked at the document she signed in February saying her license was suspended.  She also had her spokesman take the stand to testify that he had advised her that he believed her license was no longer suspended.  (Hilton's attorneys characterized the spokesman as the "liaison" between Hilton and her lawyers.)

The Spokesman Defense did not work, though.  Judge Michael T. Sauer did not believe Hilton, her spokesman or her attorneys, saying he had no doubt that Hilton knew her license was suspended.  He sentenced her to 45 days in jail, with no opportunity for work release, furloughs, electronic monitoring, or a provision that apparently allows rich people to pay to serve time in an "alternative jail" of their choice.

Paris herself was apologetic and said very little, but her mom threw a tantrum, saying "This is pathetic and disgusting, a waste of taxpayer money with all this nonsense.  This is a joke."  When the judge ruled, she blurted out, "May I have your autograph?"  Maybe she wanted to accompany Paris to jail, but the judge did not take her up on that offer.

Link: Huffington Post

Further Details Emerge on $65-Million-Pants Lawsuit

We learned more this week about the lawsuit by a D.C. administrative law judge against his diabolical neighborhood dry cleaners, who allegedly lost or stole or set fire to or irradiated or otherwise acted tortiously towards a pair of pants that he dropped off for cleaning four years ago.

WARNING: these people
want your pants

You'll recall that the bulk of the damages were calculated in a very straightforward manner under the D.C. consumer-protection statute.  Applying the simple equation

X=1500D*V*W
(where X=1500 x [number of Days violation persisted] x [number of Violations] x [(number of Wrongdoers])

yields a total of $64,800,000.  It is not clear yet how the judge derived 12 violations from one pair of pants, so assuming he is just a bit optimistic there, a more reasonable lost-pants valuation would seem to be $5.4 million.

A new detail is that an additional $15,000 was claimed in order to compensate the plaintiff, who obviously can no longer use this neighborhood cleaners, for the cost of having to rent a car each weekend for a ten-year period in order to go to another one.  Based on rough calculations, that comes out to just $15.64 per day, which again is a very reasonable value for car rental.

The remaining $647,500 claimed by the judge appears to be a combination of litigation expenses and time, and his "mental suffering, inconvenience and discomfort."  At least some of the "discomfort," however, may be due to the alternative cause of the judge's pants having become "uncomfortably tight" in the first place, damages that he could have mitigated.

Finally, the publicity over the lawsuit has led some of these unscrupulous Internet people to dig up the opinion from Judge Pearson's divorce proceedings a few years ago, in which he was demanding support from his wife.  Consistent with his current tactics, he sought sanctions at least twice, demanded the judge recuse himself, filed multiple motions to compel his wife to respond to his 248 requests for admission, and, according to the trial judge, "in good part [was] responsible for driving up" everyone's legal costs, "including threatening both the wife and her lawyer with disbarment" which created "unnecessary litigation."

No news yet on whether Judge Pearson, who is up this week for another ten-year term as an administrative law judge, will be reappointed.

Link: CNN.com
Link: Pearson v. Vanlowe (Va. Ct. App. 2005) (on FindLaw.com)

Mr. Peepers Survives Vehicular Assault

A 35-year-old Seattle man was arrested earlier this month after nearly running over Mr. Peepers while fleeing the scene of an attempted shoplifting.  Peepers, a duck, and reportedly associated with the man's girlfriend in a pet capacity, was unharmed.

Authorities said that Kenneth Quinlan, his girlfriend, and Peepers drove to a shopping center in Lynnwood, Washington, where he entered a Linens-n-Things outlet (somehow getting through the Impenetrable Shield of Boredom that normally keeps men out of such a place) while she and Peepers entered a Petco.  According to court papers, a security guard thought he saw Quinlan try to shoplift one of the Things (specifically, an iPod speaker system), and Quinlan fled after a scuffle.

Peepers, meanwhile, was eating some bugs inside Petco when Quinlan burst in, pursued by the guard.  Quinlan managed to get the car keys from his girlfriend and then dashed outside, trying to escape, followed by the guard, girlfriend, and Peepers.  As Quinlan was backing the car up, the open door knocked his girlfriend down, causing her to drop Peepers and putting him in harm's way as Quinlan began to pull forward, heedless of the impending avicide he was about to commit.

Then, in a sequence that I very much hope will be re-enacted and filmed in slow motion, maybe for the Discovery Network or something like that, a Petco employee spied Peepers facing imminent death and "ran to save Peepers from the front of the car."  Quinlan drove forward.  Peepers looked about helplessly.  Petco Girl continued her dash, in frustrating though extremely dramatic slow motion.  Pulse-pounding music swelled to a crescendo.  Suddenly, over a thousand miles away, a woman sat bolt upright in bed, gripped by a nameless dread she could not explain, but then she realized it was nothing and went back to sleep, so she's really not part of this story, although it is a strange coincidence, but just then Petco Girl managed to reach Peepers, knocking him out of the way.  But Quinlan drove on, running over the woman's leg and breaking bones in her foot and ankle.

But Peepers was safe.

Quinlan was arrested after managing to crash his car into another one nearby.  He was charged with two counts of third-degree assault, one count each of vehicular assault and hit-and-run, and one count of causing emotional distress to a mallard.

Link: Seattle Times

Magicians Make Lawsuit Appear Out of Thin Air

The AP reports today that a group of forty-nine Japanese magicians have sued two broadcasting networks for allegedly revealing the secrets of various coin tricks in programs that aired last year.  In a press conference, magician/plaintiff Shintaro Fujiyama told reporters that the shows had "instantly deprived professional magicians of their assets," presumably leaving behind only a flash and a ball of smoke in the place where the assets once were.

Questioned about the particular tricks involved, the wily Fujiyama refused to give any further details.

The plaintiffs claim to have lost closely guarded secrets comprised in part of professional skills and concepts built up through the accumulation of ideas and long-term practice.  (I assume they don't mean the closely guarded secrets you can find on GoodTricks.net.)  It may be a sad commentary on the state of the Japanese magicians' guild that the forty-nine plaintiffs are seeking a total of $16,000 for the destruction of their life's work, or about $326.53 each.

Link: AP via Yahoo! News

ATRA Offers to Buy Plaintiff New Pants (Presumably for Something Less Than $65 Million)

The other day I mentioned the story of the judge in D.C. who has claimed $65 million in damages in a dispute over a pair of pants.  In today's D.C. Examiner, the president of the American Tort Reform Association says ATRA has written an open letter to the D.C. Administrative Law Commission suggesting that the judge's reappointment -- to a 10-year term -- be reconsidered.

He also offers to buy the judge a new pair of pants if he will drop the lawsuit.

Actually, ATRA's gone beyond that and offered a whole new suit (business suit, not lawsuit) in exchange for a dismissal.  Full disclosure -- ATRA is a client of our firm, and its general counsel Victor Schwartz is a partner in our D.C. office.  But I think this report is consistent both with ATRA's objective of furthering the tort-reform agenda, and my personal goal of publicizing a $65 million lawsuit about a pair of pants.

In the Examiner article, Sherman Joyce of ATRA stated that the "pants were found long ago and are readily available" to Judge Pearson (whether they still fit may be another question), and that the judge's $65 million demand was "wholly outrageous and abusive."  Joyce also quoted former NLRB chief administrative law judge Melvin Welles, who wrote in a letter to the Washington Post today that Judge Pearson should be removed from his current position and should be disbarred from any bar to which he currently belongs.

Joyce warned the commission that if the lawsuit is allowed to go forward and the judge is retained, that the matter will "become fodder for late-night comics."  It's probably too late to avoid that, but maybe not too late for some damage control.

Link: Examiner.com