Honda and Nissan Odometer Lawsuits

Have you been paying attention to your odometer lately?

If you drive a Honda or a Nissan, hopefully you have been. These two car makers have been accused of designing cars with faulty odometers that rack up miles faster than they’re supposed to. The extra miles can affect a whole slew of things, from your warranty coverage to your car’s resale value, according to CBS News.

The class action lawsuit brought against Honda was settled in November of 2006. You may be entitled to receive benefits from the settlement if you “bought or leased a model year 2002 through 2006 Honda or Acura automobile or a model year 2007 Honda Fit, in the United States or its territories, between April 13, 2002 and November 7, 2006,” according to HondaOdometerClassAction.com.

The Nissan odometer class action is still underway. For more information about it, you can visit EagerOdometers.com or the homepage of attorney James Holmes.

Attorney-manned Help Desk for Civil Litigants

Though this isn’t directly related to class actions, it’s definitely useful advice that I’m sure someone out there (especially someone living in Chicago!) could use:

CHICAGO - Mountains of paperwork and confusing legal terms can be intimidating to the thousands of people who forgo a lawyer and represent themselves in court. But a federal court here is staffing a new help desk with an attorney to assist people involved in civil cases, and experts say it is believed to be the first of its kind in the nation.

The attorney offers free advice on how to file motions and interpret documents, and tells people if a lawsuit would be a waste of time.

“These are lay people and so they are walking into a legal world that is strange and alien to them,” said Charles P. Kocoras, chief federal judge for the Northern District of Illinois. “This desk will put people on the right track at the beginning of a case where there is often a lot of lost time.”

Kocoras said the help desk, which opened Thursday, will help unburden the judicial system by eliminating unnecessary cases. It also allows people to access proper legal forms.

“It helps the judges because we have to sift through these pleadings and see if they’re comprehendible to us,” he said. “It eliminates a lot of stuff that we have to deal with at some point.”

In 2004, people without attorneys, excluding prisoners, filed 1,026 civil cases in the Northern District of Illinois, up from 913 cases the previous year, said Sheldon H. Roodman, executive director of the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago.

“The cost of legal services is very high, and getting higher, so these cases are springing up in court systems throughout America,” Roodman said.

Similar help desks have been effective in state, circuit and U.S. bankruptcy courts around the country to help low-income clients or those who simply choose not to hire an attorney, said Dick Carelli, spokesman for the federal courts’ administrative office. But the Chicago help desk is believed to be the first to have a real attorney giving advice, he said.

Not everyone thinks the program cuts to the core of the problem.

Gilda Klein, 53, of Chicago, represented herself in a lawsuit she filed in 2001 against the U.S. Postal Service, claiming she was unjustly fired. She said federal agencies that investigated her complaints created obstacles even before she could file the suit, which was dismissed in 2002.

“The whole process of filing complaints even before you get to court was too bureaucratic,” she said. “People get lost in the process even before they get to court.”

The help desk was the brainchild of the U.S. District Court and the Chicago Bar Foundation. The Bar Foundation, the charitable arm of the Chicago Bar Association, supplied more than $100,000 for the project.

“A lot of people, not having anywhere else to turn, come to court and file something that may not have any merit,” said Bob Glaves, executive director of the Chicago Bar Foundation. “If they had the opportunity to speak to an attorney beforehand, they might understand that court isn’t their best bet. On the flip side, if a person hasn’t been able to articulate his case, the desk will be able to help those with valid cases.”

“Help Desk Offers Advice to Civil Litigants” was penned by AP writer Megan Reichgott.

Class action kings move to NY

TheLawyer.com is reporting that “Houston-based Lanier Law Firm has launched in New York with four lawyers, with the aim of expanding the presence to eclipse its headquarters within three years.”

Officially opened today (16 November), the mid-town Manhattan office of the class action specialists will be overseen by resident head Richard Meadow, who will be supported by three attorneys and five administration staff.

Founding partner Mark Lanier said the firm hoped to rapidly increase the size of the office, with the “expectation to have that eclipse the size of our Houston office within three years.” The Houston office consists of 24 lawyers and 50 additional support staff.

Lanier plans to divide his time between Houston and New York to facilitate this expansion, which will focus on increasing the firm’s client litigation practice, including pharmaceutical, product liability and toxic tort claims.

The New York office is the firm’s second presence, after its Houston headquarters was launched in 1990.

Lanier shot to fame earlier this year, after winning a $253m verdict (the first in the US) against Merck & Co, the maker of Vioxx, an arthritis drug that was found to increase the risk of heart attack.

Asbestos lawyers’ scams

Here’s the start of an interesting Washington Examiner article about asbestos laywers’ scams:

A Supreme Court vacancy has forced the Senate Judiciary Committee to delay other business, including a bill that would create a trust fund to compensate victims of asbestos-related illness. In the meantime, trial lawyers continue the feeding frenzy that this bill could halt.

New light was recently shed on their brazen scam by Lester Brickman, a law professor at the Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University. Writing in the Hofstra Law Review, Brickman details ethical lapses of a plaintiff’s bar run amok. Grab a sick bag and we’ll give you an overview.

Through 2004, about 845,000 people had filed claims in asbestos cases, with 60 to 70 defendants named in each case. About 90 percent of claimants are unimpaired by any illness. How, then, do they become litigants? Most are recruited through advertising and massive, assembly-line screening operations designed solely to collect evidence for asbestos lawsuits.

To attract class-action prospects, trial lawyers run hard-sell ads in mass media, send out reams of letters and maintain shrill Internet sites. Milliondollarlungs.com, for example, opens with this measured pitch: “Find out if YOU have MILLION DOLLAR LUNGS! If you worked with or around asbestos prior to the year 1972, you could be entitled to millions of dollars … yet you might not know it.”

It gets better. Check it out here.

Milberg Weiss under investigation

Newsday.com is reporting that “class action behemoth” Milberg Weiss is now being probed by the federal government:

After decades of going after big corporations for fraud and corruption, Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman now finds itself under investigation.

A pioneer in class-action litigation, Manhattan law firm Milberg Weiss is caught up in a federal probe of illegal kickback payments to a client.

While the case may give class-action lawyers a black eye, experts said, it is not likely to affect the number of suits filed. It may, however, dilute the power of Milberg Weiss, which those in the field call an 800-pound gorilla.

Though the indictment doesn’t name Milberg Weiss, it said a “New York law firm” paid retired attorney Seymour Lazar $2.4 million over more than two decades so he and his family members would serve as plaintiffs in the firm’s suits. During that time, the firm collected more than $44 million in fees from those cases.

Milberg Weiss acknowledged it is the firm referred to in the charges by the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles.

“We are outraged that these allegations have been made against the firm and reject them as baseless,” Milberg Weiss said in a statement.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office did not return calls seeking comment.

Founded in 1965 by Lawrence Milberg and Melvyn Weiss, the firm has been at the forefront of the field, often bringing suits on behalf of individual shareholders or consumers. Among its most notable recent wins are a $600-million settlement with Lucent Technologies for misleading investors and a $1-billion settlement with various technology companies over their initial public offerings. All told, it has recovered more than $45 billion for its clients.

The firm also did pro bono work in suits against German companies and Swiss banks on behalf of Holocaust victims.

Even tangential involvement in a kickback scheme may dent the reputations of Milberg Weiss and plaintiffs’ lawyers, who are often seen as extremely aggressive, said Jacob Frenkel, a former federal prosecutor who heads the securities enforcement practice of Shulman Rogers in Rockville, Md.

But it remains to be seen whether Milberg Weiss or any of its partners are indicted and what any fallout might be, said Donald Langevoort, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center.

Regardless of the impact on Milberg Weiss, plaintiffs will have no shortage of law firms clamoring for their attention, experts said. Many firms, including one founded by former Milberg Weiss partner William Lerach, now vie for cases.

“I don’t see a lessening in securities class-action lawsuits as a whole,” said Michael Perino, a law professor at St. John’s University. “There are enough other firms who can pick up any slack.”

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