Unless you live in some remote part of Alaska, you are sweating in America. Here in the Midwest is no different, and I came down to the Levison Towers to enjoy one of the few benefits of working here- free air conditioning on the weekends. As a (slight) side benefit, I also get some work done without the phone and other interruptions of regular days.
Sundays at the Towers have been one of my best kept secrets-no one comes in to the office on Sundays. I can turn up my radio, kick off my shoes and not worry in the slightest that I am offending a co-worker. Why my co-workers would be offended by David Allen Coe loud on the stereo is beyond me, but that is a different question.
This particular Sunday, I was surprised to find Benn, the mail clerk, tugging heavy bags down the hall.
“What ya got going there, Benn?” I asked.
He looked a bit sheepish. Seems that summer had brought out that sad denizen of the law office, the summer slacker. Benn had not sorted all of the mail in weeks. Lawyers and staff had not noticed the decrease in volume, as mail inevitably means more work. We are all busy enough as it is.
“Mostly your fault” Benn muttered.
“How so?”
“Half a bag is full of your DVDs.”
And he is right. My Netflix subscription is out of control. Time to watch a film or two. First out of the bag, as luck would have it, was a documentary called “Hot Coffee.” A bit ironic that I would open a movie named with the very adjective I came to work to escape. Still, this one has made the rounds on HBO and was due for a watch. “Hot Coffee” is, ostensibly, about the McDonald’s coffee lawsuit, filed by Stella Leibeck. The real message is much hotter. Leibeck was burned in the McDonald’s parking lot by a cup of coffee that, by anyone’s standards, was too hot- 180-190 degrees in fact. (By comparison, most commercial car washes run at 140 degrees or below. Water boils at 212 degrees.) A jury heard days of evidence and reached a verdict, which the trial judge promptly reduced.
Perhaps the second most disturbing part of the movie were pictures of Leibeck’s burns. That, and the general ignorance of most of the folks on the street who thought they knew about the case. No, she wasn’t driving. She was in the passenger seat. The car was parked. And McDonalds had over 700 complaints of burns from coffee before hers.
That, Gentle Reader, was at best a distant second in the disturbing category. A few years back, lawyer and novelist John Grisham wrote “The Appeal,” a fictional account of a corporation losing a case at trial, but then spending a ton of money on the election of an appellate judge. Conveniently, the judge was slated to hear the appeal of the case.
I wrote Grisham’s novel off to fantasy. While it seemed unlikely that millions of dollars would flow into a judicial campaign, it certainly wasn’t impossible. Turns out that it wasn’t impossible at all. Nor was it fiction.
Midway through “Hot Coffee”, the film maker tells the story of Oliver Diaz. Diaz was a justice of the Mississippi Supreme Court. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and others spent millions supporting Diaz’ opponent. Some would say Diaz was targeted because he was viewed as the justice most likely to side with David against Goliath. Perhaps there is a more viable reason to spend millions to sway a job that paid a few hundred thousand dollars to the recipient. This conspiracy theorist can’t find it. I can, however, foresee the amount of money that will be spent in the future now that the US Supreme Court has declared foreign corporations free to spend limitless money on elections.
My home state of Missouri crafted a plan years ago to avoid influence in our judicial selections. Appellate judges here are selected by a nonpartisan commission and then appointed by the governor, and the plan has worked well through the years, with governors from both major parties making the appointments. The nonpartisan court plan, or Missouri Plan, is expected to be under attack again this year. Curiously, the folks who attack the plan say that they want more openness and transparency in judicial selection, but they won’t say where or how they are getting the money to fund their challenge. The bottom line is that it is much cheaper to buy influence when an appellate court is for sale than when buying influence across an entire legislature.
I enjoyed “Hot Coffee”, but confess that it appeals to my prejudices. Not as a trial lawyer- we have long known that claims of frivolous lawsuits are overblown if not outright manufactured. Not as a taxpayer and citizen either- it is impossible to underestimate the ignorance of our fellow citizens. Actually, “Hot Coffee” appealed to my cynicism. Much is bubbling beneath the surface, of coffee and otherwise.
©2011 under analysis llc. under analysis is a nationally syndicated column of the Levison Group. Spencer Farris is the founding partner of The S.E. Farris Law Firm in St Louis, Missouri. He will personally buy a cup of coffee, your choice, for readers submitting details on frivolous lawsuits. Contact him for details. Comments or criticisms about this column may be sent c/o this newspaper or directly to the Levison Group via email at comments@levisongroup.com.