Law And More

Chinese, French, Germans Reading about Mickey Pohl, Jack McConnell in their native languages

Thanks to Google, the Chinese, French, Germans, Spanish et al. are reading about Jones Day's Mickey Pohl and Motley Rice's Jack McConnell in their native languages.  Yeah, all the details and snark surrounding lead paint public nuisance and personal injury litigation are being translated. 

The latest clicks I have received have been from the Chinese very interested in whether Sherwin-Williams will be suing the state of Rhode Island.  That's a theory value investor Todd Scott wanted me to run by the attorneys.

Oct 1 - Big Lead Paint Day

Tomorrow, Monday, October 1, 2007 is a big day for lead-paint watchers.  Here's what is happening or could happen:

• Jury selection starts in "Thomas."  After the disaster in Rhode Island, you bet the defense is picking mighty carefully.  Some legal experts opine that a more educated, more worldly RI jury might have bucked those instructions.  In pre-selection motions, defendants pushed for two vs. four alternates.

• Influential USA TODAY [it's distributed free in many upscale hotels] is scheduled to publish a major article on lead paint litigation with special attention to "Thomas." You can retrieve the publication here onlne.  Recently USA TODAY also did a major spread on E-Coli and plaintiff attorney in that field Bill Marler of Marler Clark found the coverage important.

• Opponents of Ohio "117" will realize that the clock is really ticking.  The deadline for the over 200,000 signatures is October 30th.  They could panic and make a mess of the drive or they can parachute in professional organizers.

• If opponents of the RI $2.4 billion abatement plan are smart they will exploit the attention the criticism is getting. My post this evening was picked up immediately on google, with a #2 ranking.  The hook seemed to be the topic of economic development in RI.  The Amgen layoffs have been an arrow in the hearts of RI visionaries.

Topps' 21,700,000 pounds recall - Bill Marler on Crisis Management

"We thought that we had the meat-safety issue fixed."  That's what Bill Marler of Marler Clark, a Seattle law firm specializing in food-borne diseases, told me a few months ago.  There had been a large meat recall. Following the Jack-in-the-Box E-Coli incidents in the early part of the first Clinton Administration, government pulled out all stops to make the meat supply chain fail-safe.  Last year it was produce the nation was worried about.  But that meat fix has become undone. 

This weekend Bill and I discussed the horrific Topps' recall of 21,700,000 pounds of meat because of possible E-Coli contamination.  Already his firm has been contacted by the families of four victims who fell ill.  Bill's no slouch at reaching out to anyone and everyone with the authority and resources to identify and address the current weak links. 

But his oversight on this matter goes beyond that.  He's advocating that Topps, just as when Chi-Chi, Dole et al. were in similar situations, pay medical expenses now.  Those E-Coli victims who are lucky enough to have health insurance probably have high deductibles.  In addition, there are associated costs of being out of work. Litigation takes forever.  During that forever they can go bankrupt.

If this goodwill gesture becomes standard, the companies' brand can be preserved and, as often happens, lawsuits can be prevented.  We tend to sue those with whom we've had a bad relationship - or at least the perception of such.  Bill keeps asking the food industry to put him out of business by taking care of their gaps in safety.  This immediate coverage of medical expenses, no questions asked, might just do the trick.  You can read all about this on Bill's blog.

I want to thank Bill Marler and his colleagues at Marler Clark for keeping me up-to-the-minute on food-contamination outbreaks.

RI Paying Attention to Criticism of $2.4 Billion State Abatement Plan

Rhode Island residents, at least those who are web-savvy, are paying attention to criticism of that $2.4 billion state lead-paint abatement proposal. 

Over the weekend, Maureen Martin's Friday PROVIDENCE JOURNAL opinion-editorial analyzing what was so wrong about the cost, logistics and dubious results of the plan was one of the most e-mailed articles for PROJO.  On this blog and on search engines such as google, my post on Ms. Martin's thinking also received heavy traffic. 

So, this whole mess - which Motley Rice's Jack McConnell et al., not the former lead paint industry might have made - has become a compelling issue outside lawyering circles.  Maybe those jobs lost at biotech Amgen got mainstream RI looking at the economic-development implications of this "mess."

RI $2.4 B Abatement Plan Flunks Giggle Test

Forget focus groups, polls, and studies with control groups. If you, or at least if we pros in public affairs and marcom, want to know if something will work: USE THE GIGGLES TEST.  It's cheap, fast and is devastatingly on the money.  That's exactly what I did with the Rhode Island's $2.4 billion abatement plan which will import 10,000 construction workers into the state and toss out thousands from their apartments and This Old House.  Where will the Newport mansion set store their antiques?

Well, over the weekend I old-lady bobbed to where the teenagers hang in our neighborhood in New Haven, Connecticut. 

"Want to make a few bucks?" 

I had more than enough takers.  I explained in sixth-grade concepts and language the cost, logistics and supposed results of the $2.4 billion Rhode Island lead-paint abatement plan.  I kept a straight face. 

Their faces went into puzzlement, then a glaze-over. [If they were my Gen they would have asked, "Is this 'Candid Camera?'"]  The situation was so weird that it never triggered giggles.

"So what would you do if you were the government officials in Rhode Island?" That's what I asked them.  They said they would paint over the flaking paint. 

The last time I used the giggles test was to help a client, who heads sales for a financial-services outfit, out of a slump.  On Tuesdays, those coin washers and dryers are free in a laundromat just off New Britain Avenue In Hartford, Connecticut.  I told him to give a brief version of his salespeople's pitches to the Tuesday crowd.  He got it.  And I got the assignment to develop the new marketing communications and sales scripts. [This case study got published as a letter-to-the-editor in ADVERTISING AGE.]

Question: Will the 12 jurors in "Thomas" - who are getting selected starting tomorrow - giggle when they hear Motley Rice plaintiff attorneys Fidelma Fitzpatrick/Jack McConnell gush about the wonderful finding of "thousands of documents" on the history of lead paint, health hazards and that alleged nefarious cabal the Lead Industries Association [LIA]. If not, then the giggles might rip if Professors Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner describe in painstaking detail their alleged objective analysis of those thousands of documents. ...

As one general counsel, not associated with "Thomas," sighed, "Oh to be in Milwaukee." In a Midwest setting this caricature of a trial could descend into total cartoon.

 

Poop on Worm Poop - TerraCycle Settlement

That wonderful website campaign www.SuedByScotts.com that boosted sales for $6-million David TerraCycle in its lawsuit with Goliath $2.7 billion Scotts' Miracle-Gro wasn't all exuberance.  In AD AGE, September 24th, Jack Neff reports that the old squeeze was happening to the little guy in this suit and TerraCycle had been pushed into settling.  As we all know, Goliath has a distinct advantage when it buries the tiny company in requests for documents and does a document dump into the startup's attorneys' lap.

So, settle TerraCycle did, which we reported last week. The terms and conditions of that settlement are here.  But that isn't its only problem.  Here is an object lesson on how imagination without the resources to execute the plan can blow up.  Among its marketing tactics, green TerraCycle launched a school-based bottle recycling program, paying 5-cents for each bottle collected.  Publicity for that program came largely from a bullish write-up in inspirational-category leader GUIDEPOSTS.  Unfortunately, that successful program is costing TerraCycle $20,000 to $25,000 a month.

TerraCylce seems backed into the same corner that many of us creative, passionate entrepreneurs are: It needs a financial backer to fund its growth.  Like the rest of us independent creatures, TerraCycle might have to grow up in the interrelated world of business.

Personal Disclosure: For the first 15 years of my business I too was a capitalist virgin.  Grow or go.

PROJO Martin Oped on RI Abatement Plan - Inside Beltway Attorney adds one thing

"The only fact that is not cited in Maureen Martin's opinion-editorial in THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL today," observes Inside the Beltway attorney, off the record, "is that the contingency fee lawyers stand to make 16% of the $2.4 billion, about $385 million! The only good thing about the financial diversion to South Carolina-based billionaire trial attorneys is that it cannot be used to invade Rhode Island private property, which Martin so astutely warns is bound to be the natural reaction of many, if not most, owners."

Reader reaction to Maureen Martin's op-ed welcome. Please contact Mgenova981@aol.com.

Deep-Fried Lead-Paint Watchers - Weekend of 9/28/07 Mandatory Holiday

Caught between that over-the-top Rhode Island abatement plan and the divided opinions about the importance of "Thomas," we lead-paint watchers are beyond burnt-out. Call us Deep-Fried. 

I am calling for a mandatory weekend off from watching lead paint issues, to begin today at 5:00 PM East Coast time and to end at 4:00 PM Sunday, again East Coast time.  That only applies to the non-defense legal team who are probably already on their way to "The Fresh Coast." Jury selection begins Monday.

Extreme Home Makeover - Brought to RI by Attorney General Patrick Lynch

Extreme Home Makeover could come to owners of This Old House as well as apartments in Rhode Island.  Yeah, a free everything, as Maureen Martin points out today in an opinion-editorial in THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL. And that extreme home makeover would be sponsored by RI Attorney General Patrick Lynch who recently filed in RI Superior Court a $2.4 billion abatement plan in the RI Lead Paint Public Nuisance Trial II.

Senior Fellow for legal affairs at the Heartland Institute, Martin describes this windfall for anyone in RI whose digs were built before 1978 when the feds banned lead paint.  "Under the plan," reports Martin, "windows will almost always be replaced with new, energy-efficient ones, and new drywall will cover existing lead-based paint.  The plan can call for new doors, new flooring, new kitchen cabinets, and new stairways, banisters, spindles, and newel posts."  Property owners can choose the color paint for their interiors.  Unfortunately, AG Lynch didn't explicitly include in the abatement plan the services of Martha Steward to help with the color scheme.

There's also another negative: Whether they want it or not, have children on their premises or not, property owners have to endure this extreme home makeover.  Government officials, whom Martin calls the "state rehab police," and I call "storm troopers" will come knocking. 

Actually, this is exactly how Martin begins her op-ed, "If Rhode Island Atty. Gen. Patrick C. Lynch has his way, the state 'rehab police' will be knocking on the doors of some 240,000 homeowners and apartment dwellers statewide, forcing them to move to temporary quarters, and arranging for mandatory renovations to their homes even without their consent."  Yeah, everyone from the horsey set in Newport mansions to the family with three kids and an aging grandmother will have to hustle off to various shelters authorized by the state.  Sounds to me like what they forced Japanese-Americans do during World War II.

Odd, we thought that violation of privacy was just a Bush Administration issue.  The Democrats in RI could make the alleged intrusions on privacy via George W. Bush seem like amateur hour.  The proposed RI abatement plan could go down in history as the most evil state-mandated "solution" to a problem which doesn't exist.  Statistics show, year after year, that the incidences of elevated blood lead levels in children are significantly declining.  There's more: That actual levels of lead in the blood are also significantly declining.

Reader comment welcome.  Please contact Mgenova981@aol.com.

Labeling - When That Wasn't Done & "Thomas"

Yeah, sometimes labeling does make sense. In California, reports MARKET WATCH's Thomas Kostigen, there's a bill in the legislature which would require labeling of bottled water.  Consumers, unlike those who bought Coca-Cola's Dasani brand, would know where the water came from as well as what minerals and chemicals are in it.  Serves a purpose.

But more frequently the label reflects the worst vestiges of the Nader era.  I wonder if the plaintiff attorneys in "Thomas" will pretend, as they did in much of Rhode Island Lead Paint II, that those all-inclusive labels bordering on the bizarre were standard business practice before the consumer movement of the early 1970s? 

During RI II, state witnesses were asked if the lead paint or lead pigment from way back in, say 1920 or 1950, were labeled that the content could be hazardous.  When the answer was "no," was the court room supposed to break into a collective gasp at this failure-to-warn - at a time when there wasn't even a consensus among science and the medical community that a hazard existed?

With a Midwestern jury, defense attorneys might have a better shot at demonstrating how different those times were during most of the period when lead paint and pigment were legal products.  Therefore, it's an insult to their common sense to have lines of questioning about: Where were the labels.  Maybe from eBay the defense has already ordered products from mid-20th century which were label-less, every one of them.