ThePopTort

The Right Side of Civil Justice

In November 2009, some very brave medical malpractice victims decided to visit the district offices of Virginia’s two U.S. Senators in the hopes to showing them the importance of the civil justice system.  When they arrived, the local Tea Party group was demonstrating.  As the families tried to get through the door, they were yelled at and harassed with cruel taunts and screams (“communists!”) and more.  That was then.  This is now.  I hope. 

Since that time, many in the conservative movement have said that actually, the right to access the courts and civil jury trials is fundamental to our democracy, enshrined in the Bill of Rights and in need of protection right now.  If they need any more reminder of that, I hope they think about the fact that the tool they are using to sue the IRS – a class action – is on the brink of extinction in many areas, thanks to Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court. 

So far, there have been two cases filed against the IRS.  The latest is from “True the Vote, a Texas-based Tea Party-related group, [which] claims it was unfairly targeted by the Internal Revenue Service and wants the government to admit its mistake and pay for damages totaling more than $85,000." The other is by “the Nor Cal Tea Party Patriots.”  Writes Fox,

The NorCal lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court of Cincinnati, seeks group status for “all conservative and libertarian groups targeted for additional scrutiny” between March 2010 and May 2013. It’s also seeking unspecified monetary damages for the alleged violation of its constitutional rights and the costs associated with trying to comply with IRS demands.…

The lawsuit seeks unspecified monetary damages for the IRS’ alleged violation of the Privacy Act of 1974 and the First and Fifth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. It is not known exactly how many groups could qualify to be members of the class-action lawsuit. There were 296 applications reviewed in the inspector general’s report released last week.  

Also interesting is the fact that the ACLU, still sometimes tagged with the "communist" label by the right,  (ah, remember when Bill O'Reilly had this lovely remark: "Hitler would be a card-carrying ACLU member. So would Stalin. Castro probably is. And so would Mao Zedong."?) is now representing two editors at a libertarian online magazine, Antiwar.com, who were targeted for surveillance by the FBI. 

After a year, the FBI has failed to produce any documents, so Garry’s and Raimondo do not know the full extent of the surveillance and whether it is ongoing. The editors are asking the FBI to turn over relevant documents, and to stop collecting records of their constitutionally protected speech.

“Freedom of the press is a cornerstone of our democracy, whether it’s the Associated Press or Antiwar.com,” said Julia Mass, staff attorney at the ACLU of Northern California. “Government surveillance of news organizations interferes with journalists’ ability to do their jobs.” 

And speaking of the Associated Press and the surveillance of journalists, SNL star Dana Milbank’s column in the Washington Post is a must read.

Forced Arbitration and the Supreme Court’s Stealth Annihilation of Civil Rights

I do hate taking any focus off Prop 8 and DOMA today. To quote that famous legal scholar George Clooney, “At some point in our lifetime, gay marriage won't be an issue, and everyone who stood against this civil right will look as outdated as George Wallace standing on the school steps keeping James Hood from entering the University of Alabama because he was black.” (“Outdated” being a polite euphemism here.)

However, also this week, there was a Supreme Court argument to which few paid any attention. The case was Oxford Health Plans LLC v. Sutter.  We thought it worth mentioning for a couple of reasons.  First, it is one in a series of cases constituting the Supreme Court’s long march to eradicate class actions, and for that matter, to eradicate access to the civil courts.  (See more in the Center for Justice & Democracy’s new FAQ, “Vanishing Rights and Remedies Under Forced Arbitration.")

Second, because of the 2011, 5-4 decision, AT&T Mobility LLC. v. Concepcion, which upheld contracts with forced arbitration clauses and class action bans, Oxford involves what may be one of the last class action lawsuits by doctors against a managed care company – a device that physicians have made widespread and somewhat hypocritical use of.  But likely, not for long.  Maybe now organized medicine will understand what it means to have one’s legal rights stripped away.    

Here’s how Daniel Fisher at Forbes explained the case:

The Oxford case involves a dispute between doctors and the insurance company over payments. …

In Oxford, the judges must decide whether an arbitrator was out of line by allowing a class action to proceed on behalf of some 20,000 doctors even though there was no provision for class actions in the arbitration agreement between doctors and Oxford. The court seemingly decided this question three years ago in Stolt-Nielsen vs. Animal Feeds, when it held class arbitration couldn’t be forced on parties if they didn’t agree to it. The decision, by Justice Samuel Alito, left open a very slim question over whether under different circumstances an arbitrator could determine that the parties might have agreed to class actions although not in the explicit terms of the agreement.

Court observers believe Oxford will win this.  Of course, the impact of the decision will extend far beyond these 20,000 doctors. Fisher again: “One of the biggest impacts may come in employment law, where class-action attorneys are pressing lawsuits on behalf of thousands and even millions of employees over wages, hours, discrimination and working conditions.”

So, you know those civil rights that Mr. Clooney was talking about?  Just watch.

UPDATE: Wow, as if by clockwork, the Court today threw out yet another class action in a 5 to 4 Scalia-written decision, drawing strong dissents. 

ALEC’s Phony Crony Capitalism

The American Legislative Exchange Council is the secretive organization of conservative lawmakers and corporations that draft and shop around model bills without identifying that these bills are written by national corporate lobbyists. It’s been called many things lately.  Let’s see.  Union buster.  Voter suppresser.  Concealed weapon and shoot to kill champ. Mistreater of asbestos victims.  Abuser of its charitable status.  

We also like Paul Krugman’s descriptive paragraph:

…ALEC’s claim to stand for limited government and free markets is deeply misleading. To a large extent the organization seeks not limited government but privatized government, in which corporations get their profits from taxpayer dollars, dollars steered their way by friendly politicians. In short, ALEC isn’t so much about promoting free markets as it is about expanding crony capitalism. 

That more or less fits ALEC’s civil justice agenda too.  It’s new priorities are listed in a brand new report called ALEC 2013: Jobs, Innovation, and Opportunity in the States, and when it comes to people harmed or killed by corporate wrongdoing, it focuses on three areas: making it more difficult for people injured or killed by unsafe or defective products to hold manufacturers accountable in court; limiting the availability of “class actions,” so that big companies can more successfully violate large numbers of people with impunity; and limiting lawsuits by people who have been defrauded under state consumer protection laws.  All such laws transfer the costs of injuries away from those who caused them and onto others (like taxpayers, when people are severely hurt and need care.)

In other words, ALEC would like to undermine the tort system’s economic function -  deterrence of non cost-justified accidents - replacing it with new rules constraining what is now a free-market approach to holding corporations accountable for their negligence.  (You can read more about the tort system's important economic function in the 1987 book, The Economic Structure of Tort Law by conservative economic theorists William M. Landes and Richard A. Posner.)

So let's add one more ALEC description - subverter of the free market tort system.

California’s Magic Number Shapes Next Wal-Mart Class Action

Class actions are a vital tool for holding accountable corporations that profit by violating a large number of people.  Emphasis on large number of people.  In other words, if your employer at the local deli withholds wages from you and your fellow “sandwich artists,” you probably don’t have a class action.  In “class action” parlance, that’s called the “numerosity requirement" and usually, the question that worries lawyers is: is the number “large enough”?  Although I should say that by “worry,” I do note that in the view of some (like class action attorney blogger Russell Jackson), this requirement has never gotten the respect it deserves:

As I have lamented in this space before, too many people (courts, lawyers, litigants) treat numerosity as a throw-away requirement.  If there are potentially more than some magic number of claimants (often 40 or 100), some treat numerosity as "established" and can get very upset if a defendant won't concede it.

Whether or not that’s true, one thing’s for sure.  “Large enough” isn’t the only issue to worry about these days. “Too large” has become a front and center concern thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court in the 2011 decision, Wal-Mart vs. Dukes (which we last covered here  and here.)  In that case, national discrimination against female Walmart employees created too large a class.  We said then, “there is no longer any financial incentive for massive employers like Wal-Mart to settle with victims and stop pervasive discrimination like this."

OK we admit, that may have been an over-reaction – but only a little one.  Thanks to a federal court decision last Friday, the number of female employees discriminated against by Walmart California is, indeed, just right.  Yippy!  Writes the San Francisco Chronicle:

A statewide discrimination suit against Walmart on behalf of at least 100,000 current and former female employees has survived its first test in federal court, more than a year after the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed a nationwide sex-bias suit against the retail giant.

The California case is an offshoot of the national class action that was filed in San Francisco federal court in 2001 on behalf of as many as 1.6 million Walmart employees. Like the earlier case, this suit accuses the company of systematically discriminating against women - who, according to the plaintiffs' experts, were paid less than men and promoted less often.…

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer ruled Friday that the high court had not foreclosed state or regional class actions against Walmart if workers could show they were victims of a uniform policy of discrimination.

He cited the plaintiffs' claims that all California store managers are required to attend training sessions where they are cautioned that women may not be qualified for promotion. Those allegations, if proven, would help to show a "culture and philosophy of gender bias," Breyer said.

More from Bloomberg, here.  So Walmart, numerosity requirement?  Check.  Next stop February, when Judge Breyer will decide if the class will be certified.  We'll keep you posted!

ALEC Hearts Immunity - Read All About It!

Some important updates on a few stories we’ve been following:

First comes breaking news that George Zimmerman will be charged with Travyon Martin’s murder today, which we assume means he won’t be able to take advantage of the civil immunity provision in Florida’s Stand Your Ground laws.

And on the related ALEC front, kudos to Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton for vetoing yet another ALEC bill (see our coverage of some of his other vetoes). This legislation would have protected the asbestos industry and successor companies from liability, greatly harming asbestos victims.  Meanwhile, Wendy’s joined the list of other high-profile ALEC corporate members disassociating itself from that organization.  And now, shareholders may be joining anti-ALEC efforts, as well. 

Following up on our coverage of the struggles of a severely injured former Pennsylvania student, Ashley Zauflik, to overcome a Draconian $500,000 cap on the school district’s liability, today her lawyers went back to court.  They are arguing that not only is the cap unconstitutional, but also that “the district should face sanctions [because it] withheld the existence of a $10 million insurance policy until after the trial.” 

Meanwhile, medical device manufacturer St. Jude lost its efforts to force a retraction by the medical journal that published devastating research, led by renowned cardiologist Dr. Robert Hauser, about the horrendous defects in its implanted heart defibrillators.  Writes the New York Times, “the journal’s editor, Dr. Douglas P. Zipes, said in an interview late Monday that the publication had looked at St. Jude’s complaint and did not plan to pull back the article, which had undergone review by experts associated with the journal before its online publication two weeks ago.”  This is all part of St. Jude’s (backfiring) “scorched earth” attack on its critics.  

Now this next one isn’t exactly an update, but the irony is just too good: the exceedingly pro-tort reform, anti-litigation Koch brothers are filing another suit against the Cato Institute, which sponsors the exceedingly pro-tort reform, anti-litigation blog, Overlawyered.com. Oh my. Talk amongst yourselves.

The Various Trials of Neighborhood Watch

There’s a front page New York Times article today about 20^th Century Fox's sudden marketing nightmare for its upcoming summer popcorn comedy, “Neighborhood Watch.” You can imagine how the country might not see the “funny” in a film like that right now, even though it’s about “four suburban watch members who save their neighborhood, and the world, from an invasion of space aliens.” Fox is trying its darndest to push the “space alien” angle (as opposed to the “vigilante” angle), but I have to say this summer might still be “too soon.”  As the timing of George Zimmerman’s arrest gets pushed later and later into the infinite future, the Trayvon Martin murder story is not going away.  And here's another thing that may keep "Neighborhood Watch" problems in the news.

There is an AP story today out of Sanford, FL about the possibility of a civil lawsuit against Zimmerman’s neighborhood homeowners association, “The Retreat at Twin Lakes.”  According to lawyers familiar with the situation,

Exhibit A would be a newsletter sent by the association to residents in February, the same month as the shooting. It said Zimmerman was the go-to person for residents who had been the victims of a crime.”

Under the heading “Neighborhood Watch,” the newsletter’s message recommended that residents first call police and then “please contact our Captain, George Zimmerman ... so he can be aware and help address the issue with other residents.”

That seeming endorsement of Zimmerman exposes the 7-year-old association to possible legal action by Martin’s parents, homeowners association attorneys said.

“It’s almost like if you give your son the keys to a brand new Corvette when he turns 16” and he gets in an accident, said Roberto Blanch, a South Florida attorney who specializes in homeowners associations. “You may be seen as enabling the occurrence or the loss.”…

“So, if you’re going to send out a newsletter saying, ‘Hey, he is the captain. Whatever he says goes,’ You have now basically rented a free police officer for your neighborhood,” [attorney Justin] Clark said. “He certainly took on that role with the homeowners association, and it seems to me that they recognized that.”

It's not just the film's name that has that studio worried. They have also pulled the trailer out of movie theaters (see it below) and even pulled back the movie poster (see it above.)  What do you think.  Too soon?  Or just more bad Karma for Rupert Murdoch.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being ... Unaccountable

You know how much I love quoting Ronald Reagan.  (Kidding.) (No offense, Tea Party friends.)  Here’s a good one: “We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.”

I’m guessing he believed that cigarette smokers, as one example, fell into that “individual accountability” category.  But what if the law breakers are the people who are supposed to be enforcing the law?  Should they be accountable?  Which brings us to last night’s 60 Minutes, and a couple other hot topics. 

The show last night was about the exoneration of Michael Morton, wrongly convicted of murdering his wife in 1987.  He was freed after 25 years in prison based on DNA evidence, thanks to the hard work of the Innocence Project. 

But, reports 60 Minutes, Morton’s attorneys, “recently discovered something astonishing: sitting in his prosecutor's file all those years was evidence that could have established Morton's innocence during his trial.”  That evidence was a police report, relating how Morton’s then 3-year-old son, who witnessed the murder, described in detail the guy who really killed his mother, and it wasn’t Michael Morton.  The DA who apparently failed to turn the report over to Morton at the time, Ken Anderson, later “was named prosecutor of the year in Texas and since 2002 he's been a district judge in the same court where Michael Morton was convicted. All those years, Morton languished in prison.” 

Here’s some of the conversation between 60 Minutes correspondent Lara Logan and Barry Scheck of the Innocence Project, and Logan and Anderson’s lawyer, Eric Nichols:

Lara Logan: So just to be clear, from both of you, you believe that Ken Anderson, the prosecutor in Michael's case, willfully, deliberately withheld evidence.

Barry Scheck: We believe that there's probable cause to believe that he violated a court order, withheld exculpatory evidence, and violated other laws of the State of Texas.

In February, a Texas judge agreed with Michael Morton's legal team that there was probable cause to believe Ken Anderson violated the law, and Anderson is now the subject of a special criminal inquiry. That's extremely rare. Studies have shown prosecutors are hardly ever criminally charged or disciplined for serious error or misconduct. And one thing Ken Anderson doesn't have to worry about is being sued for damages by Michael Morton because the Supreme Court has ruled that prosecutors have "absolute immunity" from civil lawsuits for their legal work.

Lara Logan: Doctors, lawyers, policemen, there are all kinds of people who do their job with limited immunity or no immunity. It just seems hard to understand why prosecutors have to have a different standard to everybody else.

Eric Nichols: Seeing that justice is done, in many instances, requires very difficult judgments. And to come back behind those prosecutors and second guess them, or sue them would throw a wrench into that system of prosecutors seeking justice.

Lara Logan: I have to say, there's a certain irony in hearing you say it's the job of a prosecutor to seek justice, right? Because in this particular case, that's exactly what Michael Morton did not get. …

Michael Morton: I don't have a lotta things really driving me. But one of the things is, I don't want this to happen to anybody else. Revenge isn't the issue here. Revenge, I know, doesn't work. But accountability works. It's what balances out. It's the equilibrium. It's the social glue in a way. Because if you're not count-- accountable, then you can do anything.

Pay attention, corporate and medical lobbies pushing for laws to limit their liability for wrongdoing, so-called "tort reform."  He's talking about you.  As Logan notes, accountability doesn’t just mean criminal accountability but also, civil liability - something we touched on last week in our post about how the civil justice system can sometimes step in where the criminal justice fails.  That is, except if the destructive, corporate-backed, right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) (which we’ve covered many times, like here, here, here) has anything to do with it. 

Paul Krugman's column in today’s New York Times, called "Lobbyists Guns and Money," hits it out of the park with a great piece about how ALEC is responsible for the spread of Stand Your Ground laws (among many other horrendous laws), which many believe not only contributed to the killing of Trayvon Martin but also, the failure by police to arrest his killer.  Writes Krugman:

Florida’s now-infamous Stand Your Ground law, which lets you shoot someone you consider threatening without facing arrest, let alone prosecution, sounds crazy — and it is. And it’s tempting to dismiss this law as the work of ignorant yahoos. But similar laws have been pushed across the nation, not by ignorant yahoos but by big corporations.

Specifically, language virtually identical to Florida’s law is featured in a template supplied to legislators in other states by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-backed organization that has managed to keep a low profile even as it exerts vast influence (only recently, thanks to yeoman work by the Center for Media and Democracy, has a clear picture of ALEC’s activities emerged). And if there is any silver lining to Trayvon Martin’s killing, it is that it might finally place a spotlight on what ALEC is doing to our society — and our democracy. …

But where does the encouragement of vigilante (in)justice fit into this picture? In part it’s the same old story — the long-standing exploitation of public fears, especially those associated with racial tension, to promote a pro-corporate, pro-wealthy agenda. It’s neither an accident nor a surprise that the National Rifle Association and ALEC have been close allies all along.

There’s a lot more in Krugman’s piece about the corrupting influence of corporate money behind ALEC’s work.  So where does civil liability fit into this picture?  Well, forget prosecutor immunity laws.  These Stand Your Ground laws turn everyday people into prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner, and then immunize them not just from criminal prosecution but also civil liability.  Just like dirty prosecutors in Texas are protected.  Just like the corporate members of ALEC are protected from civil liability when they commit wrongdoing, thanks to laws written and pushed by ALEC's civil justice task force, chaired by our friend Victor Schwartz, the General Counsel of the American Tort Reform Association.  Here’s Victor, below.  As they say, everything’s connected.

Occupy Wall Street vs. Erin Burnett and the NYPD

I’m glad someone else caught CNN’s new celeb “anchor du jour” Erin Burnett offering a “condescending and reductionist” analysis yesterday while covering the Occupy Wall Street movement.  Of course, it isn’t the first time this ex-Goldman Sachs/Citigroup employee used her TV perch to serve as a mouthpiece and apologist for Wall St. abuses, but at least people are noticing. 

Speaking of Occupy Wall Street, which is marching today along with at least 15 major unions not too far from ThePopTort’s offices in Lower Manhattan, a group of them have now filed suit against New York City and the NYPD for tactics used in arresting 700 peaceful protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge last weekend.   

A lot of people have been taking note of how the NYPD has been handling this protest, which is mostly taking place in an area that has been a virtual police state since 9/11 - just between the World Trade Center and the New York Stock Exchange.  We know.  We used to work a couple blocks away.  (Just forget trying to cross a street without navigating block-long barricade.)  While the NYPD has been getting lots of media attention for their anti-terrorism work, they’re also getting tons of attention for their abuses.  And it’s not just the Occupy Wall Street protestors or the city’s Muslim community that has grounds to complain.  

As we wrote in June,

[New York City] paid out $135 million to settle claims made against the NYPD last year - a soaring 71% jump in settlements against the department from a decade ago.

The surge - part of a half-billion dollars paid out by the city - included $56.4 million for alleged police misconduct, including excessive force and false arrest, an analysis by City Comptroller John Liu found.

Advocates said the number marks a disturbing trend: in 2003, Mayor Bloomberg’s first fiscal year in office, the city paid out $68 million in NYPD tort claims.

“This number and the increase over past decade cry out for close monitoring of the police,” said Donna Lieberman, head of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

“The NYPD’s hyper-aggressive tactics create a situation that is ripe for litigation,” she said.

And as we also noted, the solutions to this “pay out” problem lie not with taking away people’s rights but with reducing the misconduct that leads to claims in the first place.  Lets hope it doesn’t escalate now.

 

Goodbye Andy Rooney, and Thank You for Reading Our Letter!

Andy Rooney signed off on 60 Minutes last night, you may have heard.  So allow us to dig back into the Center for Justice & Democracy archives for a curmudgeonly charming Andy Rooney story, which we’ll preface with part of the interview between Andy and Morley Safer on last night’s show:

Safer: You-- you've gotten tons of mail over the--

Rooney: I get---a lotta mail. I--more mail than---most people.

Safer: Do you answer any of them?

Rooney: Not much, no. I mean, who would wanna answer an idiot who has the bad sense to write me a letter? I mean, it's a certain kind of person who writes and they're not my kind of people, usually.

Safer: Well, they are your kind of people.

Rooney: Well--

Safer: They're the people who are--

Rooney: I suppose. But I-- I-- every once in awhile I answer one. But not very often.

You know, that’s what we thought too.  But back in November 2002, we were not very happy with a piece Andy did called “I'm Going To Sue,” which was full of so many inaccuracies and inflamed rhetoric about the civil justice system that he may as well had the U.S. Chamber of Commerce or American Tort Reform Association substituting as guest commentator.

So CJ&D wrote Andy a letter, politely but firmly challenging virtually every statement in his entire piece, figuring it would end up in some intern’s trash bin.  But we were very wrong.  Andy did read the letter.  Not only that, he called CJ&D, said he liked the letter and was going to mention it on the air.  And sure enough, on January 13, 2003, he said in a most curmudgeonly endearing way:

ROONEY: (Voiceover) This is from Joanne Doroshow at the Center for Justice & Democracy, whatever that is.

She complains, but it's a good letter.

(Footage of letter)

ROONEY: (Voiceover) 'Your commentary did a disservice to the debates over the importance of the civil justice system.'

Well, maybe it did and maybe it didn't, but next time that woman buys takeout coffee at McDonald's, I'll bet she'll have it with milk.

(Hopefully, he caught Hot Coffee on HBO this summer!)

Meanwhile, not the same can be said for Morley Safer, who also in 2002 did a disgraceful piece about the civil justice system in Mississippi.  In a similar letter, CJ&D wrote to Mr. Safer:

It was not enough that the piece simply parrots the outrageous claims of the business and medical communities that Mississippi jurors are rendering large verdicts against negligent drug companies and doctors not because jurors have listened to the evidence in a case (unlike Mr. Safer, I might add), but because they are poor, dumb, uneducated and black (or, in an equally unbelievable allegation, redneck and trying to render “payback for the Civil War.”)  But you don’t stop there. You allow an unidentified man to make a completely outlandish, highly inflammatory and unsupported statement that jurors in Mississippi were being paid for their verdicts. So they’re not only poor and dumb, they’re also crooks.

This letter apparently did end up in the 60 Minutes trash heap. But the program was sued over this piece,  and incredibly, the person who told Safer that juries were being paid off, "since told local reporters he was joking and thought the cameras were off, according to local reports. 60 Minutes, which has stood by the story, said in its report that it tried to contact several jurors, but none would talk.” Wow, not exactly the kind of response what might expect from the paragon of journalistic integrity that 60 Minutes thinks it is.

It’s a shame because as we also noted in our letter to Safer, “In the 1980s, 60 Minutes engaged in some ground-breaking journalism with correspondent Ed Bradley and producer David Gelber that exposed myths about juries and the civil justice system, which were then and continue to be perpetuated by the insurance industry, drug companies, tobacco companies, medical lobbies and other special interests seeking to limit their liability from lawsuits.”

We never said thanks to Andy Rooney so we'd like to say it now, and under the circumstances, we’re bound to miss him even more.

The Private Hell of Military Contractor Employees

This week, it’s “Mission Accomplished” for private military contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.  No silly, not actual military accomplishments.  (Fool me twice, shame on me, right?)  This has to do with what’s apparently the other mission of these private miliary contractors – to mistreat their workers. 

This week, ProPublica reports that “private contractors injured while working for the U.S. government in Iraq and Afghanistan filed a class action lawsuit” against private contracting companies and their insurers for refusing their medical treatment and disability payments.  They say that in order to boost profits, companies like insurers AIG and contractor KBR “routinely lied, cheated and threatened injured workers, while ignoring a federal law requiring compensation for such employees.” (See the earlier investigation by ProPublica, the Los Angeles Times and ABC’s 20/20). 

Hundreds of thousands of civilians working for federal contractors have been deployed to war zones to deliver mail, cook meals and act as security guards for U.S. soldiers and diplomats. As of June 2011, more than 53,000 civilians have filed claims for injuries in the war zones. Almost 2,500 contract employees have been killed, according to figures kept by the Department of Labor, which oversees the system.

And speaking of KBR, this week a federal judge slammed KBR’s revolting attempt to force Jamie Leigh Jones to pay them $2 million in attorneys fees after Jamie failed to win her rape case against one of her KBR co-workers in Iraq.  She lost even though she was unconscious (due to drugs or alchohol, what’s the difference?) during a sexual encounter that her alleged attacker says was “consensual.”  (Sound familiar?)  However, although the judge clearly didn’t want to do it, he was forced by statute to order her to pay KBR $150,000 in court costs.  He stated in his order, “The fact that Jones presented prima facie claims of sexual harassment and hostile work environment highlights the impropriety of an award of attorneys’ fees in this case.”  Of course, the hostile work environment for women at this company could hardly be more clear but the jury never heard about it.  And you wonder why she lost? 

So after assassinating her character and getting away with not having to defend itself for what they put Jamie and other women through (check out the film Hot Coffee for more about Jamie when the DVD comes out in November), KBR and its corporate lawyers now want her to pay them money.  This is reprehensible on so many levels, but we like how Gawker put it:

In July, Jamie Leigh Jones lost her federal civil trial against KBR—one of America's most capable government contractors—when a Houston jury determined that her coworkers had never drugged, raped, and shoved her into a shipping container. Or maybe they had, but she'd been asking for it—you know, like KBR said.

Originally KBR had asked for $2 million from Jones, an IT worker whose claim stemmed from an incident that allegedly took place in Baghdad in 2005 (you can find the complaint here). But the presiding judge dropped attorneys fees from her bill, so now all she owes is $145,073.19—money she reportedly does not have, this being America. (I bet you $145,073 that KBR would quibble over the 19 cents.)...

[This is] the result of KBR taking advantage of its right under the federal Civil Rights Act to collect from Jones. However, the company could have decided against pursuing the costs (because they're already super-loaded), or possibly sought to recoup them from the government (because having taxpayers foot the bill for corporations is how we do business).