Just when we thought the Toyota situation couldn’t get any thornier comes news of this: According to the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, documents recently received by the committee show that Toyota deliberately withheld records in “rollover” litigation and other cases and engaged in a “systematic disregard for the law.” Click here for the WSJ story.

The documents, obtained as part of a subpoena issued by the House committee, were produced by Dimitrios Biller, a former in-house lawyer for Toyota who is now involved in litigation with the auto maker.

In this letter to Yoshimi Inaba, chief of Toyota’s North America operations, Rep. Edolphus Towns (D., N.Y.), the Oversight Committee chairman, demanded answers about the documents.

“We have reviewed these documents and found evidence that Toyota deliberately withheld relevant electronic records that it was legally required to produce in response to discovery orders in litigation,” according to the letter.

A Toyota spokeswoman said Friday Toyota takes its legal obligations seriously “and strives to maintain the highest professional and ethical standards in its legal and regulatory practices. ”

“It is not uncommon, however, for companies to object to certain demands for documents made in litigation,” said the spokeswoman, Cindy Knight. “Consistent with that philosophy, we take appropriate steps to maintain the confidentiality of competitive business information and trade secrets. ”

She said Toyota was confident it had acted appropriate with respect to product liability litigation.

We’ve read lots — trust us, lots — on the pros and cons of the Citizens’ United case. Frankly, at this point, the debate is getting a little shopworn. On the one hand, you’ve got First Amendment concerns. On the other, a desire for a democracy untainted by money. Free
Speech v. Democracy; Democracy v. Free Speech. Click here for an overview of some of the takes on the ruling.

But Harvard law professor and corporate governance expert Lucian Bebchuk, the author of Pay Without Performance, which took a critical look at current executive compensation practices, weighed in on Thursday with a thoughtful piece about why fewer limits on corporate campaign expenditures is a bad thing.

Bebchuk’s main point: that the influence of corporations on “political outcomes” can actually serve to weaken the rights of shareholders. And that would ultimately, he argues, be a bad thing for capitalism.

To understand his argument, writes Bebchuk,

It is important to focus on the individuals who make decisions for companies. When corporations decide which politicians to support . . .their general investors are not consulted. Rather, such decisions are likely to reflect the preferences and objectives of the insiders who manage the companies, ostensibly on shareholders’ behalf. And politicians that benefit from corporate spending and access to corporate resources will have an interest in serving the insiders’ preferences and objectives.

However, continues Bebchuk,

In some countries, such as the US, ownership and control are separated, and companies are de facto controlled by professional managers. Such managers can be expected to use their influence to obtain and maintain rules that weaken the rights of dispersed shareholders and make it difficult for shareholders to replace them. Thus, in the US, corporate influence makes it difficult to obtain long-needed reforms that would eliminate barriers to takeovers and remove legal impediments to the ability of shareholders to replace company directors.

In other words, an increase in corporate power in the electoral process will likely only serve to strengthen corporate insiders and weaken the rights of shareholders. And Bebchuk thinks that increasing, not decreasing, shareholder rights is key to improving corporate governance generally. He writes:

In sum, corporate meddling in politics is bad not just for those members of society who are not corporate shareholders. It also can be expected to reduce shareholder value and retard the development of an economy’s corporate sector. That is bad for capitalists – and thus for capitalism.

Update, 10:12 a.m.: NBC News is reporting that New York Governor David Paterson is suspending his 2010 reelection campaign.

The lede to one of the NYT stories on the situation involving New York Governor David Paterson pretty much summed it up: “It had to have been one of the more awkward phone calls that either man had ever experienced.”

True. So true.

After all, you had the embattled Paterson, currently taking heat over allegations that he interfered in a domestic violence case involving an aide, calling Cuomo, who wants his job, asking Cuomo to start an investigation. Even by Albany standards, it doesn’t get more bizarre than that.

The only thing that may have made the call easier is this fact, as the NYT reports: Cuomo couldn’t have said no, even had he wanted to. He has a statutory obligation to investigate.

That said, it’s probably not the type of investigation that Cuomo is going to relish, even if it stands to decimate his rival. The NYT’s Jeremy Peters writes that the move could even be seen as “effective” by Patterson, “who no doubt realizes the glaring conflict of interest he has handed the attorney general.”

“It puts the attorney general in the spot of being both the chief law enforcement officer in the state and someone who also has a political interest,” Columbia law professor Richard Briffault told the Times. “So he has to be very careful. It’s going to require a lot of delicacy on his part.”

And while it may be Cuomo’s responsibility to investigate, he doesn’t necessarily have to do it himself, reports Peters. He could outsource the job elsewhere, like to a former state attorney general, for instance.

But, at least so far, it doesn’t appear that Cuomo has to take that path. Walter Ayres, a spokesman for the New York State Commission on Public Integrity, told the Times that the issue would not pose a conflict so long as Cuomo was not yet an official candidate.

Ayres declined to say what might happen if Cuomo threw his hat in the ring.

“As a matter of law, the attorney general currently is not a candidate, and we can’t make decisions based on what might happen in the future,” Ayres told the NYT.

For more on the Paterson story, click here for the WSJ’s story Friday; here, here and here for the NYT’s coverage.

By Karl Vick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 25, 2010

NEW CANAAN, CONN. -- The gate to 855 Weed St. is always open, and the driveway curves invitingly toward a cheerful Cape Cod. But what mattered to Mary Margaret Farren in the darkness of Jan. 6 was that lights were on inside.

The 43-year-old lawyer swung the BMW into the drive of a family she didn't know, leaned on the horn, pounded on the front door. When it opened, she collapsed, bleeding, in the airy stillness of a New Canaan foyer.

Read more:

>> washingtonpost.com


J. Michael Farren
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

John Michael Farren (born 1953 in West Hartford, Connecticut) is an American attorney who served as Deputy White House Counsel in the Office of Counsel to the President under the 43rd President of the United States George W. Bush from 2007 to 2009. Mr. Farren also served as Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade at the United States Department of Commerce and Head of the International Trade Administration under the 41rd President of the United States George H. W. Bush from 1989 to 1992.

Career

Prior to joining the Office of Counsel to the President under President George W. Bush, Mr. Farren was corporate vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary at Xerox. From 1989 to 1992, Mr. Farren was Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade at the United States Department of Commerce and Head of the International Trade Administration. During the 1988 United States presidential election, he was deputy director of former President George H. Bush’s transition team. And during the 1992 United States presidential election deputy campaign manager for the Bush-Quayle Re-election Committee

Education

Mr. Farren received his bachelor's degree from Fairfield University, his master's degree in public policy analysis from Trinity College, and his law degree from the University of Connecticut School of Law.

For now, unless and until it becomes law, at which point the litigation firestorm will almost assuredly break loose, there just aren’t that many legal angles to the health-care debate. It’s all preexisting conditions, insurance premium costs, and the expansion of Medicaid. Over and over and over again. On MSNBC and Fox, behind closed doors and in the open. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

But there is one topic within the broader health-care debate that lies near and dear to our hearts: what to do about medical-malpractice lawsuits? We’re generalizing here, but many Republicans think they’re partly to blame for ballooning insurance premiums and the practice of defensive medicine; many Democrats think the argument’s a red herring.

Those issues got a little airtime on Thursday at this much ballyhooed health-care summit, mostly as raised by Republicans looking to push reform. According to the BLT blog, at the start of the meeting, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), said there are too many “junk lawsuits against doctors.” He continued:

“In our state, [in] half the counties, pregnant women have to drive to the big city to have prenatal health care or to have their baby, because the medical malpractice suits have driven up the insurance policies so high that doctors leave the rural counties,” Alexander said.

And according to the Washington Post, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) emphasized the importance of restricting malpractice lawsuits.

But on these issues, the real battle took place on Thursday in, where else, the Twitter-sphere! The American Association for Justice, a group that lobbies for the plaintiffs’ bar, just wrapped up its Twitterly coverage of the hearings. The Institute for Legal Reform, meanwhile, hasn’t yet signaled that it’s done for the day. On into the night for both of you, we say! On into the night!

So who won the Med-Mal Twitter War? Well, for sheer volume it was the AAJ, who managed to put up over 50 tweets (by our count) over the course of the day. The ILR put up about 20.

For readability, we can’t discern a clear readers. Both included nuggets that made perfect sense, we’re guessing, only for those with a huge interest in the debate and who had the time to pay attention to C-SPAN III for six hours today. From the ILR:

Seelye on state pilots in NYTimes: comparatively small budget commensurate w/ Admin’s level of interest in subject http://is.gd/9awfW #hcr

Compelling? Absolutely! But check out this morsel from the AAJ:

Once again, CBO says most anti-patient tort law changes save 1/2 of 1% of all HC costs, but may increase mortality rate http://bit.ly/2Npa9i

Nothing, we say, like cramming a debate on one of the most complex issues to ever come before Congress into a series of 140-character blasts. Well done!

There was no way not to feel left with a handful of questions after the initial news stories broke last month concerning John Michael Farren.

After all, you don’t read stories like that every day. No, it’s a pretty rare event to read of a former Fortune 500 general counsel and high-ranking White House lawyer accused of brutally attacking his wife. But such was the fate confronting Farren early last month, when he was arrested and jailed for allegedly beating his wife (a Skadden lawyer) with his hands and a flashlight inside the couple’s New Canaan, Conn., home. How in the world does this happen?, we asked.

The Washington Post on Thursday sheds some light on the situation. It’s an interesting story, touching as it does on domestic violence in upscale neighborhoods like New Canaan.

But for our money, the main takeaway from the piece involved insight into Farren’s character: the story quotes several people who knew Farren who spoke about a fairly serious anger problem.

Said an anonymous friend to the WaPo: “He definitely was — is — a very intense guy. Had a temper. He could get extremely angry, in a way that would stand out from other people.” The friend reportedly continued: “I work in politics . . . .There’s a lot of swearing. It’s a general part of the day. And this was unique.”

Said a White House colleague of Farren’s: “When I saw him get really, really mad at people, it was if people didn’t show the proper deference to the heirarchy. . . I never saw anybody at the White House get as mad at his secretaries and assistants. It was very unusual. He would raise his voice very high and get red-faced. . . . ”

Farren, who was charged with attempted murder, in January, is being held at Garner Correctional Institution, a maximum security prison in Newtown, Conn., on a $2 million bond.

t’s about time.

It’s about time we blog something from McSweeney’s, an outlet we discovered and grew quite fond of after reading Dave Eggers’s first book about a decade ago.

And it’s also about time that we come across a piece as funny, well-written and genuinely uplifting as this one, from McSweeney’s, about a 2007 U.C. Davis law grad who managed to teach himself enough bankruptcy and foreclosure law to help a family stave off foreclosure.

The story’s too long to describe in any meaningful way, but trust us, it’s a good, nay, great read. It’s the Pelican Brief (sorta) meets Erin Brokovich (well, that’s a stretch) all written in a voice as lively as Bill Simmons’s.

Let us excerpt here just a couple paragraphs.

Ali, on meeting his clients for the first time:

I was hoping they would never guess that despite being a licensed attorney two years out of law school, I was utterly paralyzed with fear—and earnestly praying to Allah that my potential clients were not about to call me out as an incompetent charlatan, punch me in the face, storm out of the office, and call the state bar seeking to disqualify me.

I was the guy who was going to save these people from being evicted from their own home? Who was I kidding?

Ali, on his post law-school situation:

But given the economy . . . instead of being employed at all, like thousands of others who were unlucky enough to graduate law school in 2007, I ended up in my old bedroom, sharing the family home with my parents and my grandmother.

Despite being thoroughly emasculating for a twenty-eight-year-old, living at home certainly has its benefits. You never have to cook, given that your mother, a culinary Jedi Knight, makes fresh Pakistani food every night. You avoid doing the laundry and the dishes, because your father has a “specific system” that only he has mastered. Also, you have your own personal “prayer factory” in the form of a very pious grandmother, who constantly sends duaas and blessings your way—and reminds you nonstop that the only reason she’s still living is to see you married and with kids. And for a solo attorney without any money, home can also serve as a convenient and rent-free law office.

And Ali on DIY law:

Tired of being rejected, I decided to venture forth and learn the law on my own. It didn’t take a genius to figure out we were heading toward a full-blown recession . . . [O]ff I went to Google.

I typed in “Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 bankruptcy guides” and found the trusted and respected Nolo legal guides for less than thirty dollars apiece. These guides are manna from heaven for aspiring attorneys; they ostensibly teach the layman all the fundamentals of how to “do it yourself ” so you won’t have to spend money on people like me, but it turns out they’re just as useful to law school graduates living with their parents.

I devoured every bankruptcy book I could find, and then turned to my associate legal counsel, Google, for more (free) information on bankruptcy law. Somewhere along the way I read an article predicting a rise in foreclosures due to the disastrous economy, and realized the rate of Chapter 13 bankruptcies was going to increase exponentially as people desperately tried to save their homes.

Silly us. We thought the situation with Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Sharon Keller had run its course.

After all, last month, the special master appointed to find facts on the matter ruled that Keller doesn’t deserve to be removed from office or given a reprimand for her conduct in a death row inmate’s failed effort to file a last-minute appeal before his execution. His findings were later submitted to the state’s judicial conduct commission.

But it appears the saga still has some legs to it. In a recent filing, prosecutors for the State Commission on Judicial Conduct argued that Keller’s “willful and/or persistent conduct” in the case authorizes the commission to sanction her anyway. Click here for the Texas Lawyer story; here for the Houston Chronicle story.

In its filing, according to the Texas Lawyer, prosecutors took issue with the findings of the special master, David Berchelmann, which included his positioning some of the blame at the feet of the lawyers for Michael Richard: “In effect,” wrote the prosecutors, “the Special Master improperly turned the proceeding before him into the semblance of a tort case or other proceeding in which comparative responsibility or fault is an issue. The issue here is not [Richard's lawyers'] conduct, but Judge Keller’s conduct.”

According to the Texas Lawyer story, the commission can drop the charges against Keller, reprimand her or recommend to the state Supreme Court that she be removed from office.

Keller’s lawyer, Chip Babcock, however, in his response to the commission’s filings, says that disregarding everything the special master found and kicking Keller off the bench would violate her constitutional due process rights.

“Somebody’s job is a property right,” Babcock says. “You can’t take away a property right without due process.”

Click here for all previous LB coverage of the Keller situation.

The Austin City Council unanimously approved a deal to offer LegalZoom.com Inc. $200,000 in incentives to go with $1 million from the state, as the company seeks to create 600 jobs over five years.

The vote could indicate the city council is becoming more aggressive with business attraction in the face of mounting unemployment rates.

Read more:

>> City OKs $200K in incentives for LegalZoom - Austin Business Journal

We got a huge kick out of the spate of coverage on Tuesday about the decision by folks at the Thomas M. Cooley law school to buy the naming rights to a minor-league baseball stadium in Lansing, Mich. Click here for the story from the Lansing State Journal; here for ATL’s blog post; here for today’s NLJ story.

According to the NLJ, the law school will pay just shy of $1.5 million to the Lansing Lugnuts (a single-A affiliate of the Toronto Blue Jays) in return for the naming rights for 11 years. What used to be called Oldsmobile Park is now, just like that, Cooley Law School Stadium.

Much of the coverage was, well, critical of the decision in a way that didn’t necessarily seem unfair. To summarize the skeptics’ main question: What’s a law school not exactly at Harvard’s level doing throwing money at a baseball stadium in the middle of a severe economic downturn?

For a little help, we chatted today with Don LeDuc, the dean of the law school to ask him what about the deal, and to give him a chance to answer his critics.

Hey Don. So tell us about the deal.

The agreement we have with the Lugnuts has two elements, a marketing element and also an amenities element. Along with the name recognition, you also get some amenities at the park. We’ll be doing a sort of extended version of what we used to do at Comerica Park, where the Tigers play, in which we matched up students with alumni working in Detroit and all went to a ballgame. We’ll be doing that with the Lugnuts too. We’ll also do some community outreach at the stadium, too, in which we’ll take kids from Lansing to a game.

Okay. And you think the attention is going to increase visibility for the school?

We do. We’re a national school — more than 75 percent of our students come from out of state, and we’ve worked hard to attract more attention, both nationally and in-state.

We’ve got a really advanced presence on the Web, and we sponsor a booth at the ABA every year, and continue to have a pretty large marketing budget. We were the first school that I know of to buy a billboard here in Michigan, and now it seems like just about every school in the state has a billboard.

Our feeling is that the naming rights will be much like the billboard. The sign is visible from all four directions for anyone approaching the stadium. You also get the benefit of getting on street signs in town. We also get an advertisement inside the stadium and get on the team’s Web site. There really are a lot of ancillary benefits.

Well, so far, I’ve read a good deal of criticism of the plan. People are wondering why a law school is doing this. How do you answer your critics?

Yeah, I can agree that this is the sort of thing that reasonable people can disagree over — whether this is a reasonable thing to do. But most people don’t have the perspective of what this really means. It’s not the bulk of our advertising budget by a longshot. The billboards cost much more. It’s only $135,000 a year over 11 years. It’s just not an out-of-line expense, and I’m hopeful that we’ll look back on it and see that it’s really been worthwhile.

And your hope is what? To bring in students who might not be even thinking about law school or bring in students who might be thinking about law school but haven’t thought about Cooley?

The latter, really. I think what people don’t see or understand is that we need to attract students to the school; we need to find more people to come. We’re a tuition driven operation and we need to bring in new revenue.

You guys raised tuition not too long ago. Do you foresee any more raises on the horizon?

Probably. But if it is, it won’t be because of this. We’re a multi-million dollar operation, and this expenditure represents only a fraction of one percent of our total expenditures.

Nationally, we’re one of the lowest priced private schools in the country.

Expenditures are one thing, and bringing in tuition dollars are another. But you’ve also got to be providing jobs for your students, right? How are you guys looking on that front?

Right now, we’re gathering our preliminary information on last year, but it’s showing that we really haven’t had a dropoff from where we’ve consistently been for the past 8 or 9 years. If anything, [the Lugnuts arrangement] will help with employment. We’ll be putting students in the way of alumni, hopefully in the way of jobs.

Okay, Don. Well, best of luck with it.

Thanks.

When it rains, it pours.

It seems that for years, everything Toyota touched turned to gold. And now, we’d forgive Toyota brass for feeling like they just can’t catch a break. As we watch Toyota’s president, Akio Toyoda, get grilled by a House committee, we get word that the FBI has raided three Michigan auto suppliers that make parts for Toyota vehicles.

For now, the details are a little hazy on the FBI raid. But an FBI spokeswoman said that on Tuesday search warrants were carried out on Yazaki North America in Canton, Denso International America, in Southfield and Tokai Rika, also known as Tram, in Plymouth. She wouldn’t confirm the purpose of the investigation. That said, Denso confirmed it was inspected by the FBI and said the investigation was based on allegations of violations of antitrust laws. Click here for the WSJ story, by Dionne Searcey and Jeff Bennett.

Yazaki supplies several electronic components while Denso makes a variety of parts including accelerator pedals Toyota has used in its vehicles. Those pedals were not involved in the recent recalls of Toyota vehicles based on complaints of unintended acceleration.

Denso said it was cooperating with the investigation. The other two companies could not be reached immediately for comment.

A spokeswoman for Toyota did not immediately return a call for comment nor did the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Michigan.

We’ll keep you posted on this as news warrants.

Pity the Kansas City Royals. Since the late 1980s, the team has been mostly downright awful, boasting only one winning season since 1994. Ask a casual baseball fan to name one Royal, and the answer is likely to be either “Zack Greinke,” the team’s lone legitimate star, or “Is George Brett still on the team?,” referring to the Hall of Fame third baseman who retired in 1993.

To this sad legacy, we add this, well, sad little story.

A Kansas man sued the team this month, alleging that a hot dog thrown by the team’s mascot, Sluggerrr (that’s right — two g’s and three r’s) at a game last September struck the man and detached his retina. Really. This could only happen to the Royals. Or maybe the Cubs. Click here for the story, from the Kansas City Star.

The Kansas City Star describes the alleged incident like this:

According to the lawsuit, filed in Jackson County Circuit Court, John Coomer was attending a night game Sept. 8 at Kauffman Stadium and was sitting about six rows up from the third-base dugout.

During a break in the action, Sluggerrr mounted the dugout and began blasting ’dogs into the stands with that awesome air gun.

He finished with the air gun and then began throwing food into the stands with his paws.

“While doing so, (Sluggerrr) attempted to throw a hotdog into the stands with a throw behind his back,” the lawsuit alleged. “Instead of throwing the hotdog at an arch high into the stands, (Sluggerrr) lost control of his throw, or was reckless with his throw, and threw the hotdog directly into plaintiff, who was sitting a few feet away.”

According to the story, court records said Coomer has since undergone two surgeries and has suffered permanent vision impairment in his left eye.

A spokesman for the Royals declined to comment to the Star. The Royals have not formally responded to the lawsuit.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Conman 33

Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, left, and Gen. Ratko Mladic attend an assembly session in Pale, near Sarajevo, Bosnia. (AP Photo/Srdjan Ilic )


The big international legal news of the week is the recent arrest of Radovan Karadzic, who’s accused of genocide and other war crimes against Muslim and Croatian civilians during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990’s — particularly in connection with the 1995 slaughter of some 8,000 Muslims at Srebrenica, a small mountain town on the eastern border of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Karadzic, the president of the self-proclaimed Bosnian Serb Republic during the war, was first indicted thirteen years ago by prosecutors in The Hague.

Yesterday, a Serbian judge approved Karadzic’s extradition to The Hague, though his Serbian lawyer, Svetozar Vujacic, said he plans to appeal the ruling by the Friday deadline. Karadzic’s trial may still be two years out. A judge at the U.N. tribunal yesterday said a trial wouldn’t start for “years.” (The delay could provide authorities with enough time to snag Ratko Mladic, the general of the Bosnian Serb army who allegedly orchestrated the massacres in both Srebrenica and Sarajevo, to stand trial with Karadzic.) But whenever the trial begins, Karadzic, 63, plans to appear pro se.

“He is going to have a legal team in Serbia but he will be defending himself (without a lawyer) during his trial at The Hague,” Vujacic, his Serbian lawyer, told the Irish Times. “He is convinced that with the help of God he will win.” Opposing him is Serge Brammertz, the U.N.’s chief prosecutor at The Hague.

The WSJ editorial board sounded off on the Karadzic prosecution in today’s paper.

The one dark lining is the prospect of “international justice.” . . . The last thing his victims deserve is a repeat of the [Slobodan] Milosevic case, which dragged on for five years and was ended, with no verdict in sight, by his fatal heart attack. We have a better idea. Try these men in Bosnia, where the crimes took place. It’s now a sovereign country with legitimate courts and EU aspirations in its own right. It would be the just thing to do.

Tuesday’s congressional hearings on Toyota’s safety issues gave politicians the chance to probe, Toyota execs to issue solemn apologies, and alleged victims the chance to vent.

They also gave plaintiffs’ lawyers more ammunition to use in suits against the auto maker. Several lawyers who represent Toyota drivers traveled to Washington on Tuesday to watch as committee members grilled company executives about what they knew and did about complaints of sudden acceleration involving thousands of Toyota and Lexus vehicles.

Click here for WSJ reporter Dionne Searcey’s piece on lawyers and the hearings.

The panel highlighted testimony by Sean Kane, president of Safety Research & Strategies, Inc., who criticized Toyota for not doing enough to examine its electronics—which he suspects are causing surges in acceleration—or to undertake safety recalls.

Vivid testimony came from an angry survivor of a sudden acceleration incident. Rhonda Smith says her Lexus roared to 100 miles an hour before she stopped it. And new accusations from committee members that Toyota failed to act when it knew it had a problem have prompted plans by several lawyers to amend suits to accuse the auto maker of violating federal racketeering laws, said Tim Howard, a law professor at Northeastern University in Boston, who is coordinating dozens of lawsuits against Toyota across the U.S.

“This is a much larger, more nefarious and more significant case than we initially imagined,” Howard said.

Okay. And is this a good thing? A couple of plaintiffs’ lawyers, Mark Robinson and Kevin Calcagnie of Newport Beach, Calif.-based Robinson, Calcagnie & Robinson, writing on the WSJ’s opinion page (yes, that’s right, writing on the WSJ’s opinion page) think so.

The placement on the opinion pages becomes a little less surprising considering Robinson and Calcagnie’s take: that plaintiffs’ suits provide a private way to perform a valuable regulatory function when government fails. They write:

The alleged need for “tort reform” has become a refrain in American political life. Yet for all the demonizing of trial lawyers, the reality is that product-liability litigation has become an ever more important means of keeping consumers safe.

Case in point: the current Toyota Motor Corp. recalls, with their attendant revelations of corporate obfuscation. This is only the most recent situation in which lethal defects have gone uncorrected for years at least in part because of insufficient government oversight.

The duo continue:

Litigation has not only advanced public safety, but has encouraged improvement in products almost too numerous to mention: air bags, seat belts, child safety seats, tires, minivan doors, hot water vaporizers, children’s pajamas, farm machinery, firearms, building materials, tobacco products, intra-uterine contraceptive devices, tampons, sleeping pills, anti-depressants, pain medication, appetite suppressants and many more. Toyota is just another sign of how much work remains to be done.

Strong product liability laws remain vital to public health and safety—no matter how passionate the political debate on tort reform.

Tort reformers out there, any thoughts?

We’ll keep this one short.

If you read one piece on Tuesday about the U.S. Supreme Court, we suggest it be Tom Goldstein’s piece over at Scotusblog on the likelihood of what might happen with comings and goings on the court heading into the summer.

We’ll likely ruin some of the fun here, but that shouldn’t keep you from reading the thoughtful and artfully done piece in full. It’s worth it.

Goldstein’s predictions: Justice John Paul Stevens will step down at some point this year; Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will keep on trucking.

Who will replace Stevens, in Goldstein’s mind? Of the frontrunners, Seventh Circuit Judge Diane Wood, D.C. Circuit Judge Merrick Garland and Solicitor General Elena Kagan, Kagan will likely get the nod, largely because Kagan doesn’t have a “material track record” on many issues.

For Ed Whelan’s response to Goldstein over at the National Review Online, click here.

In actual doings at One First St., N.E., the Court on Tuesday ruled 9-0 that a corporation’s principal place of business is where its top executives work, typically at the corporate headquarters, rather than where its products or services are sold. Click here for the opinion, penned by Justice Breyer.

Love them or loathe them, one thing that’s undeniable about former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Bush administration lawyer John Yoo: neither has shrunk from the public eye quietly.

The latest on Yoo, who’s been making appearances on this blog on a practically weekly basis: The Berkeley law professor still has some arrows left in his quiver for his detractors, including Dawn Johnsen, President Obama’s nominee to head the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, the same office that once employed Yoo.

The remarks made by Yoo and his lawyer, Gibson Dunn’s Miguel Estrada came in this reply brief, filed Friday to the Ninth Circuit, in the case involving federal prisoner Jose Padilla and Yoo. The court is reviewing a lower court’s refusal to dismiss a lawsuit Padilla that accuses Yoo of approving his allegedly illegal detention and providing the legal cover for the government’s harsh interrogation techniques. Click here for the San Francisco Chronicle story (Hat tip: Main Justice); here and here for previous LB posts on the Padilla/Yoo situation.

In his filing, Estrada dismissed Yoo’s critics as uninformed academics or Democrats with political axes to grind. At the top of Estrada’s list: Dawn Johnsen, who worked in the Office of Legal Counsel under President Clinton. Johnsen has written that Yoo’s memos approving waterboarding and other practices violated legal standards and the office’s tradition of impartial advice.

In a 2006 law review article, she proposed guidelines for the office that stressed its duty to stand up to the president.

In Friday’s filing, Estrada said Johnsen’s guidelines reflect “only partisan disagreement with the policies of the previous administration.”

Estrada also cited the Justice Department’s report last week concluding that Yoo committed no professional misconduct in his memos. He did not mention earlier findings by the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility that Yoo gave Bush one-sided advice.

Last fall, when Texas’ highest criminal court — the Court of Criminal Appeals — denied Charles Hood’s request for a retrial, we figured Hood had reached the end of the line.

But perhaps not. Hood (pictured), who was sentenced to death twenty years ago by a Texas judge who had been sleeping with the prosecutor in his case, has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear his case. And on Monday, a whole bunch of people — some 21 former judges and prosecutors and 30 legal ethics experts — signed on to amicus briefs supporting his request. Click here, here and here for previous LB coverage of the case; here for today’s story on the cert petition, from the NYT’s Adam Liptak.

In a 6-to-3 decision, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled in September that Hood that he had taken too long to raise the issue of whether a love affair between a judge and a prosecutor amounted to a conflict of interest.

But according to Liptak’s story, the briefs filed Monday take strong exception to the ruling: “A judge who has engaged in an intimate, extramarital, sexual relationship with the prosecutor trying a capital murder case before her has a conflict of interest and must recuse herself,” the brief from the ethics experts said. “Of all the courts to have considered the issue, only the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in this case failed to recognize this imperative.”

The district attorney on the case, John R. Roach, has said that the case should not be reopened in light of the gravity Hood’s crimes — he was convicted of murdering a couple he’s been living with in 1989 — and in light of Hood’s delay in pursuing rumors of the affair.

Will the Supreme Court bite on the case? Liptak seems to intimate the answer is perhaps, as the Supreme Court has “lately taken some interest in the integrity of the judicial system.”

Last year, it ruled that millions of dollars in campaign spending on behalf of a West Virginia judge was reason enough to require his disqualification from a case involving his supporter.

“The probability of actual bias on the part of the judge,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority, was “too high to be constitutionally tolerable.”

We return to the Toyota acceleration madness in light of some big news today ─ none of it good for the auto maker.

First, Toyota confirmed today that it has received subpoenas from a U.S. federal grand jury and the Securities and Exchange Commission, both requesting documents related to sudden unintended acceleration and the braking system of its Prius hybrid. Toyota said it intends to cooperate with the investigations and is preparing its responses to the requests.

Also, Congressmen Henry Waxman and Bart Stupak, who chair committees charged with looking into sudden acceleration issues, sent a pointed letter today to Jim Lentz, Toyota’s head of U.S. sales, raising questions about whether the company has addressed acceleration issues in good faith. Here’s a WSJ article on the latest developments.

The legislators in the letter say that their review of internal Toyota documents raises “significant concerns,” including that Toyota “consistently dismissed the possibility that electronic failures could be responsible for incidents of sudden acceleration.”

Toyota, they write, has produced just one report purporting to test and analyze potential electronic causes of sudden acceleration, but the report “appears to have serious flaws,” including using “extremely small sample sizes.”

Third, they claim, Toyota has issued misleading comments about the adequacy of its recent recalls.

A separate letter today from Waxman and Stupak to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood raises concerns that federal safety regulators “lack the expertise needed to evaluate defects in vehicle electronic controls.”

Click here for the letter to Lentz and here for the letter to LaHood.

The letters set the stage for a potentially dramatic showdown tomorrow in Congress when Lentz and LaHood are set testify.

Readers, brace yourselves: The BacMer Saga is drawing to a close.

Judge Jed Rakoff today signed off on the SEC’s $150 million settlement with Bank of America, stemming from allegations the bank misled investors about its 2009 merger with Merrill Lynch & Co. The SEC claimed the bank violated federal proxy laws by failing to disclose “extraordinary financial losses” at Merrill Lynch prior to a shareholder vote on the merger in late 2008.

Rakoff, as our loyal readers know, eviscerated the SEC’s initial $33 million settlement in September, which prompted BofA to sweeten the pot. Rakoff’s objections have centered on whether the settlement did enough to punish any BofA execs who were to blame for misleading investors. It’s not fair, the judge has said, to require shareholders to pay for misconduct committed by the bank’s top brass.

The extra money in the new and improved settlement did little to improve Rakoff’s mood, according to this piece from WSJ’s Chad Bray and this one from NYT.

Rakoff said today that if he were reviewing the merits of the merger “de novo,” he would reject it as inadequate and misguided.”

But, he added, “as both parties never hesitate to remind the court, the law requires the court to give substantial deference to the SEC as a regulatory body having primary responsibility for policing the securities markets.”

The judge did ask the parties to include several minor revisions to the deal, including giving the SEC a say in hiring an independent auditor who will assess whether the bank’s accounting controls and procedures are adequate.

“We’re very pleased that the settlement has been approved,” said Robert Stickler, a BofA spokesman.

Robert Morgenthau, during his three decades as Manhattan DA, was known as the world’s district attorney, because he took on Wall Street banks, which of course do business worldwide.

So Will Cyrus Vance Jr. (pictured far left), who replaced Morgenthau this year, also qualify as a world-beater?

WSJ’s Amir Efrati profiles the 55-year-old Vance, who’s five weeks into his new gig.

Vance (Georgetown; Yale Law) is already making noise that he’ll be the latest New York-based prosecutor to claim jurisdiction over high-profile white-collar cases, feds be damned.

Vance is launching an effort to prosecute New Yorkers who evade taxes through offshore accounts, and he plans to form a “major economic crimes bureau,” vowing to Efrati that he’ll pursue financial frauds even if critics claim that he’s encroaching on the fed’s turf.

Vance, for example, is investigating alleged fraud by Connecticut hedge fund Plainfield Asset management even though that falls squarely within the jurisdiction of federal securities regulators.

“We’re going to be active in all areas of the financial community,” said Vance, noting that he will devote more prosecutors to white-collar cases.

Settlements in financial prosecutions can be cash cows for the Manhattan DA’s office, allowing some prosecutors to get raises even in recessionary times.

But lest the business community grow too concerned about Vance, none other than Eliot Spitzer says not to worry. Spitzer in the 1980s worked with Vance in the Manhattan DA’s office. Vance is a “very careful lawyer,” Spitzer says, who “understands business . . . and is not one to act precipitously or without care.”