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Fake Friends and Fake Followers

January 28th, 2018

In the Black Mirror production of Nosedive, based upon a short story by Charlie Brooker, a young woman named Lacie lives in a world in which social media approval metrics determine social, economic, and political opportunities. Every interaction is graded on a scale from one to five. Lacie’s approval rating is slipping, thus jeopardizing her participation in her friend’s wedding, and she is determined to improve her rating. She tries her best to be “nice,” and then enlists a ratings coach, but her efforts cannot stop her approval rating from its nosedive. Perhaps if Lacie had greater financial resources, she could have improved her ratings by paying people to like her on social media.

Would people really pay for the appearance of social approval? “Celebrities, athletes, pundits and politicians have millions of fake followers,” and they paid for them. Thus announces the New York Times in an exposé of the practice of paying for followers on social media.1 Perhaps even the President has paid for fake followers who are mere bots. Maybe bots are the only friends he has.

Although I am skeptical of the utility of Facebook and Twitter, I have come reluctantly to admit that these and other social media – even blogs – have some utility if properly used. The business of buying followers, however, is just plain sick.

Finally, Eric Schneiderman has announced an investigation into an issue of some importance. He is investigating Devumi, a company that he claims sells fake followers on social media. The company is alleged to have created over 55,000 bots based upon living people and their identifying features.2

Stealing identities and selling fake followers is deplorable, and Scheiderman’s crusade is a laudable exercise of prosecutorial discretion. But so is buying fake followers to lard up one’s social media metrics. The crime involves two separate criminal acts, and we should not lose sight of the fraudulent nature of the representations about inflated number of followers. It takes two parties to enter the contract to defraud the public. Devumi’s clients may well be in pari delicto.

Let us hope that when Schneiderman opens the books at Devumi, he will have the fortitude to tell us which “celebrities, athletes, pundits, and politicians” have been juking their stats. Schneiderman’s investigation has the promise of making Eliot Spitzer’s commercial transactions look like child’s play. Inquiring minds want to know who would buy a friend or a follower.

1 Nicholas Confessore, Gabriel J.X. Dance, Richard Harris, and Mark Hansen, “The Follower Factory: Everyone wants to be popular online. Some even pay for it. Inside social media’s black market,” N.Y. Times (Jan. 27, 2018).

2 Nicholas Confessore, “New York Attorney General to Investigate Firm That Sells Fake Followers,” N.Y. Times (Jan. 27, 2018).

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Divine Intervention in Litigation

January 27th, 2018

The Supreme Being, or Beings, or their Earthly Agents (Angels) rarely intervene in mundane matters such as litigation. Earlier this month, however, there may have been an unsuccessful divine intervention in the workings of a Comal County, Texas, jury, which was deliberating whether or not to convict Gloria Romero Perez of human trafficking.

After the jury reached a verdict, and rang the bell to signal its verdict, the trial judge, the Hon. Jack Robison, waltzed in and proclaimed that that God had told him that Perez was not guilty. According to jury foreperson Mark A. House, Judge Robison told them that he had prayed on the case and that God told him that he had to tell the jury. The state’s attorney was not present to object to the hearsay. House reported that the jury signaled again that it had reached a verdict, and again Judge Robison appeared to proclaim the defendant’s innocence.

Judge Robison’s pronouncements apparently anguished the jurors, some of who were “physically sick, crying and distraught” from the appearance of a putative prophet in the courthouse. Nonetheless, guilty is guilty, and the jury returned its verdict unmoved by Judge Robison. According to news reports, Judge Robison later apologized to the jury, but added something like “if God tells me to do something, I have to do it.” Zeke MacCormack, “Judge facing complaints over trying to sway jury,” San Antonio Express-News (Jan. 20, 2018); Ryan Autullo, “Texas judge interrupts jury, says God told him defendant is not guilty,” American-Statesman (Jan. 19, 2018). Foreperson House filed a complaint against Judge Robison with the judicial conduct commission, but told a local newspaper that “You’ve got to respect him for what he did. He went with his conscience.” Debra Cassens Weiss, “Judge informs jurors that God told him accused sex trafficker isn’t guilty,” A.B.A.J. online (Jan. 22, 2018).Or he was having a stroke. Somewhere, Henry Mencken is laughing and crying uncontrollably.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

For better or worse, I have not experienced divine intervention in my cases. At least, I think not. In one of my cases, the jury foreman and several jurors were in the elevator with my adversary and me, at the end of the trial. The situation was awkward, and punctuated by the foreman’s simple statement that God had directed them to their verdict. No one questioned the gentlemen. I thanked the jurors for their service, but I have never been able to verify the source of the direction or inspiration given to the jury. To this day, I prefer to believe the verdict resulted from my advocacy and marshaling of the evidence.

The case was Edward and Carmelita O’Donnell v. Celotex Corp., et al., Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas, July Term 1982, No. 1619. My adversary was a very capable African American lawyer, Sandy L.V. Byrd, then of the Brookman, Rosenberg, Brown & Sandler firm in Philadelphia, now a sitting judge in Philadelphia County. As you will see, race was an important ingredient in this case, and perhaps the reason it was tried.

Sandy and I had pulled Judge Levan Gordon1, for the trial, which was noteworthy because Judge Gordon was one of the few trial judges who stood up to the wishes of the coordinating judge (Hon. Sandra Mazer Moss) that all cases be tried “reverse bifurcated,” that is, with medical causation and damages in a first phase, and liability in the second phase.

This unnatural way of trying asbestos personal injury cases had been first advocated by counsel for Johns Manville, which had a huge market share, a distinctive lack of liability defenses, and a susceptibility to punitive damages. In May 1989, when Sandy and defense counsel announced “ready” before Judge Gordon, Johns Manville was in bankruptcy. Reverse bifurcated had long outlasted its usefulness, and had become a way of abridging defendants’ due process rights to a trial on liability. If a jury returned a verdict with damages in phase One, plaintiffs would argue (illegitimately but often with court approval) that it was bad enough that defendants caused their illness, how much worse is it now that they are arguing to take away their compensation.

Worse yet, in trying cases backwards, with reverse bifurcation, plaintiffs quickly learned that they could, in Phase One, sneak evidence of liability, or hint that the defendants were as liable as sin, and thus suggest that the odd procedure of skipping over liability was desirable because liability was well-nigh conceded. The plaintiffs’ direct examination typically went something like:

Q. How did you feel emotionally when you received your diagnosis of asbestos-related _[fill in the blank]____?

A. I was devastated; I cried; I was depressed. I had never heard that asbestos could cause this disease..…

So clearly there was a failure to warn, at least on that colloquy, and that was all juries needed to hear on the matter, from the plaintiffs’ perspective. If the defendants lost in the first phase, and refused to settle, juries were annoyed that they were being kept from their lives by recalcitrant, liable defendants. Liability was a done deal.

At the time, most of the asbestos case trials in Philadelphia were brought by government employees at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. The government was an extremely knowledgeable purchaser of asbestos-containing insulation products, and was as, or more, aware of the hazards of asbestos use than any vendor. At the time, 1989, the sophisticated intermediary defense was disallowed under Pennsylvania strict liability law, and so defendants rarely got a chance to deploy it.

In a case that went “all issues,” with negligence and even potential punitive damages, however, the sophisticated intermediary defense was valid under Pennsylvania law. Judge Gordon’s practice of trying all cases, all issues, opened the door to defending the case by showing that there was no failure to warn at all, because the Navy, at its shipyards, was knowledgeable about asbestos hazards. If plaintiff’s testimony were true about lack of protections, then the Navy itself had been grossly negligent in its maintenance and supervision of the shipyard workplace.

Before trial began, on May 8, 1989, the Brookman firm had signaled that the O’Donnell case was on track to settle in a dollar range that was typical for cases involving the age, medical condition, and work history of the plaintiff, Mr. O’Donnell. The settlement posture of the case changed, abruptly however, after jury selection. When the jury was sworn, we had 12 Philadelphians, 11 of whom were African American, and one of whom was Latina. When I asked Sandy whether we were settled at the number we had discussed the previous day, he looked at me and asked why he would want to settle now, with the jury we had. He now insisted that this trial must be tried. Racism works in curious ways and directions.

So we tried the O’Donnell case, the old-fashioned way, from front to back. Both sides called “state of the art” expert witnesses, to address the history of medical knowledge about asbestos-related diseases. We called product identification lay witnesses, as well as several physicians to testify about Mr. O’Donnell’s disputed asbestosis. The lovely thing about the O’Donnell trial, however, was that I had the opportunity to present testimony from the Philadelphia Navy Yard’s industrial hygienist, Dr. Victor Kindsvatter, who had given a deposition many years before. Kindsvatter, who had a Ph.D. in industrial hygiene, was extraordinarily knowledgeable about asbestos, permissible exposure limits, asbestos hazards, and methods of asbestos control on board ships and in the shops.

The result of Judge Gordon’s all issue trial was a fuller, fairer presentation of the case. Plaintiffs could argue that the defendants were horribly negligent given what experts knew in the medical community. Defendants could present evidence that experts at the relevant time believed that asbestos-containing insulation products could be used safely, and that the U.S. Navy was especially eager to use asbestos products on board ships, and had extensive regulations and procedures for doing so. The testimony that probably tipped the balance came from a former shipyard worker, George Rabuck. Mr. Rabuck had been a client of the Brookman firm, and he was their go-to guy to testify on product identification. In the O’Donnell case, as in many others, Rabuck dutifully and cheerfully identified the products of the non-settling defendants, and less cheerfully, the products of the settled and bankrupt defendants. In O’Donnell, I was able to elicit additional testimony from Mr. Rabuck about a shakedown cruise of a new Navy ship, in which someone had failed to insulate a hot line in the boiler room. When an oil valve broke, diesel fuel sprayed the room, and ignited upon hitting the uninsulated pipe. A ship fire ensued, in which several sailors were seriously injured and one died. In my closing argument, I was able to remind the jury of the sailor who died because asbestos insulation was not used on the Navy ship.

On May 18, 1989, the jury came back with a general verdict for the defense in O’Donnell. Judge Gordon entered judgment, from which there was no appeal. Ignoring the plaintiffs’ lawyers intransigence on settlement, Judge Moss was angry at the defense lawyers, as she typically was, for tying up one of her court rooms for Judge Gordon’s rotation in her trial program. Judge Moss stopped asking Judge Gordon to help with the asbestos docket after the O’Donnell case. Without all-issue trials that included negligence claims, sophisticated intermediary defenses went pretty much unexercised in asbestos personal injury cases for the next 25 years.

My real question though, in view of Texas Judge Robison’s epiphany, is whether the defense won in O’Donnell because of the equities and the evidence, or whether an angel had put her finger on the scales of justice. It’s a mystery.

1 Ryanne Persinger, “Levan Gordon, retired judge,” Tribune Staff (Oct. 6, 2016). Judge Gordon was one of the most respected judges in Philadelphia County. He had graduated from Lincoln University in 1958, and from Howard University School of Law in 1961. Gordon was elected to Philadelphia Municipal Court in 1974, and to the Court of Common Pleas in 1979. He died on October 4, 2016.

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Ninth Circuit Quashes Harkonen’s Last Chance

January 8th, 2018

With the benefit of hindsight, even the biggest whopper can be characterized as a strategic choice for trial counsel. As are result of this sort of thinking, the convicted have a very difficult time in pressing claims of ineffective assistance of counsel. After the fact, a reviewing or an appellate court can always imagine a strategic reason for trial counsel’s decisions, even if they contributed to the client’s conviction.

In the Harkonen case, a pharmaceutical executive was indicted and tried for wire fraud and misbranding. His crime was to send out a fax with a preliminary assessment of a recently unblinded clinical trial. In his fax, Dr Harkonen described the trial’s results as “demonstrating” a survival benefit in study participants with mild and moderate disease. Survival (or mortality) was not a primary outcome of the trial, but it was a secondary outcome, and arguably the most important one of all. The subgroup of “mild and moderate” was not pre-specified, but it was highly plausible.

Clearly, Harkonen’s post hoc analysis would not be sufficient normally to persuade the FDA to approve a medication, but Harkonen did not assert or predict that the company would obtain FDA approval. He simply claimed that the trial “demonstrated” a benefit. A charitable interpretation of his statement, which was several pages long, would include the prior successful clinical trial, as important context for Harkonen’s statement.

The United States government, however, was not interested in the principle of charity, the context, or even its own pronouncements on the issue of statistical significance. Instead, the United States Attorney pushed for draconian sentences under the Wire Fraud Act, and the misbranding sections of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act. A jury acquitted on the misbranding charge, but convicted on wire fraud. The government’s request for an extreme prison term and fines was rebuffed by the trial court, which imposed a term of six months of house arrest, and a small fine.1 The conviction, however, effectively keeps Dr Harkonen from working again in the pharmaceutical industry.

In post-verdict challenges to the conviction, Harkonen’s lawyers were able to marshal support from several well-renown statisticians and epidemiologists, but the trial court was reluctant to consider these post-verdict opinions when the defense called no expert witness at trial. The trial situation, however, was complicated and confused by the government’s pre-trial position that it would not call expert witnesses on the statistical and clinical trial interpretative issues. Contrary to these representations, the government called Dr Thomas Fleming, as statistician, who testified at some length, and without objection, to strict criteria for assessing statistical significance and causation in clinical trials.

Having read Fleming’s testimony, I can say that the government got away with introducing a great deal of expert witness opinion testimony, without effective contradiction or impeachment. With the benefit of hindsight, the defense decision not to call an expert witness looks like a serious deviation from the standard of care. Fleming’s “facts” about how the FDA would evaluate the success or failure of the clinical trial were not relevant to whether Harkonen’s claim of a demonstrated benefit were true or false. More importantly, Harkonen’s claim involved an inference, which is not a fact, but an opinion. Fleming’s contrary opinion really did not turn Harkonen’s claim into a falsehood. A contrary rule would have many expert witnesses in civil and in criminal litigation behind bars on similar charges of wire or mail fraud.

After Harkonen exhausted his direct appeals,2 he petitioned for a writ of coram nobis. The trial court denied the petition,3 and in a non-precedential opinion [sic], the Ninth Circuit affirmed the denial of coram nobis.4 United States v. Harkonen, slip op., No. 15-16844 (9th Cir., Dec. 4, 2017) [cited below as Harkonen].

The Circuit rejected Harkonen’s contention that the Supreme Court had announced a new rule with respect to statistical significance, in Matrixx Initiatives, Inc. v. Siracusano, 563 U.S. 27 (2011), which change in law required that his conviction be vacated. Harkonen’s lawyer, like much of the plaintiffs’ tort bar, oversold the Supreme Court’s comments about statistical significance, which were at best dicta, and not very well considered or supported dicta, at that. Still, there was an obvious tension, and duplicity, between positions that the government, through the Solicitor General’s office, had taken in Siracusano, and positions the government took in the Harkonen case.5 Given the government’s opportunistic double-faced arguments about statistical significance, the Ninth Circuit held that Harkonen’s proffered evidence was “compelling, especially in light of Matrixx,” but the panel concluded that his conviction was not the result of a “manifest injustice” that requires the issuance of the writ of coram nobis. Harkonen at 2 (emphasis added). Apparently, Harkonen had suffered an injustice of a less obvious and blatant variety, which did not rise to the level of manifest injustice.

The Ninth Circuit gave similarly short shrift to Harkonen’s challenge to the competency of his counsel. His trial lawyers had averred that they thought that they were doing well enough not to risk putting on an expert witness, especially given that the defense’s view of the evidence came out in the testimony of the government’s witnesses. The Circuit thus acquiesced in the view that both sides had chosen to forgo expert witness testimony, and overlooked the defense’s competency issue for not having objected to Fleming’s opinion trial testimony. Harkonen at 2-4. Remarkably, the appellate court did not look at how Fleming was allowed to testify on statistical issues, without being challenged on cross-examination.

2 United States v. Harkonen, 510 F. App’x 633, 638 (9th Cir. 2013), cert. denied, 134 S. Ct. 824 (2013).

4 Dave Simpson, “9th Circuit Refuses To Rethink Ex-InterMune CEO’s Conviction,” Law360 (Dec. 5, 2017).

Posted in Causation, Scientific Evidence, statistical evidence | Comments Off on Ninth Circuit Quashes Harkonen’s Last Chance

The Amicus Curious Brief

January 4th, 2018

Friends – Are They Boxers or Briefers*

Amicus briefs help appellate courts by bringing important views to bear on the facts and the law in disputes. Amicus briefs ameliorate the problem of the common law system, in which litigation takes place between specific parties, with many interested parties looking on, without the ability to participate in the discussion or shape the outcome.

There are dangers, however, of hidden advocacy in the amicus brief. Even the most unsophisticated court is not likely to be misled by the interests and potential conflicts of interest of groups such as the American Association for Justice or the Defense Research Institute. If the description of the group is not as fully forthcoming as one might like, a quick trip to its website will quickly clarify the group’s mission on Earth. No one is fooled, and the amicus briefs can be judged on their merits.

What happens when the amici are identified only by their individual names and institutional affiliations? A court might be misled into thinking that the signatories are merely disinterested academics, who believe that important information or argument is missing from the appellate discussion.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has offered itself up as an example of a court snookered by “58 physicians and scientists.”1 Rost v. Ford Motor Co., 151 A.3d 1032, 1052 (Pa. 2016). Without paying any attention to the provenance of the amicus brief or the authors’ deep ties with the lawsuit industry, the court cited the brief’s description of:

“the fundamental notion that each exposure to asbestos contributes to the total dose and increases the person’s probability of developing mesothelioma or other cancers as an ‘irrefutable scientific fact’. According to these physicians and scientists, cumulative exposure is merely an extension of the ancient concept of dose-response, which is the ‘oldest maxim in the field’.”

Id. (citing amicus brief at 2).

Well, irrefutable in the minds of the 58 amici curious perhaps, who failed to tell the court that not every exposure contributes materially to cumulative exposure such that it must be considered a “substantial contributing factor.” These would-be friends also failed to tell the court that the human body has defense mechanisms to carcinogenic exposures, which gives rise to a limit on, and qualification of, the concept of dose-response in the form of biological thresholds, below which exposures do not translate into causative doses. Even if these putative “friends” believed there was no evidence for a threshold, they certainly presented no evidence against one. Nonetheless, a confused and misguided Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed the judgment below in favor of the plaintiffs.

The 58 amici also misled the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on several other issues. By their failure to disclose important information about themselves, and holding themselves out (falsely but successfully) as “disinterested” physicians and scientists, these so-called friends misled the court by failing to disclose the following facts:

1. Some of them were personal friends, colleagues, and fellow-party expert witnesses of the expert witness (Arthur Frank), whose opinion was challenged in the lower courts;

2. Some of the amici had no reasonable claim to expertise on the issues addressed in the brief;

3. Some of the amici have earned substantial fees in other asbestos cases, involving the same issues raised in the Rost case;

4. Some of the amici have been excluded from testifying in similar cases, to the detriment of their financial balance sheets;

5. Some of the amici are zealous advocates, who not only have testified for plaintiffs, but have participated in highly politicized advocacy groups such as the Collegium Ramazzini.

Two of the amici are historians (Rosner and Markowitz), who have never conducted scientific research on asbestos-related disease. Their work as labor historians added no support to the scientific concepts that were put over the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Both of these historians have testified in multiple asbestos cases, and one of them (Markowitz) has been excluded in a state court case, under a Daubert-like standard. They have never been qualified to give expert witness testimony on medical causation issues. Margaret Keith, an adjunct assistant professor of sociology, appears never to have written about medical causation between asbestos and cancer, but she at least is married to another amicus, James Brophy, who has.

Barry Castleman,2 David F. Goldsmith, John M. Dement, Richard A. Lemen, and David Ozonoff have all testified in asbestos or other alleged dust-induced disease cases, with Castleman having the distinction of having made virtually his entire livelihood in connection with plaintiffs-side asbestos litigation testifying and consulting. Castleman, Goldsmith, and Ozonoff have all been excluded from, or severely limited in, testifying for plaintiffs in chemical exposure cases.

(Rabbi) Daniel Thau Teitelbaum has the distinction of having been excluded in case that went to the United States Supreme Court (Joiner), but Shira Kramer,3 Richard Clapp, and Peter F. Infante probably make up for the lack of distinction with the number of testimonial adventures and misadventures. L. Christine Oliver and Colin L. Soskolne have also testified for the lawsuit industry, in the United States, and for Soskolne, in Canada, as well.

Lennart Hardell has testified in cellular telephone brain cancer cases,4 for plaintiffs of course, which qualified as an expert for the IARC on electromagnetic frequency and carcinogenesis.5

Celeste Monforton has earned credentials serving with fellow skapper David Michaels in the notorious Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy (SKAPP) organization.6 Laura S. Welch, like Monforton, another George Washington lecturer, has served the lawsuit industry in asbestos personal injury and other cases.

Exhibit A to the Amicus brief lists the institutional affiliations of each amicus. Although some of the amici described themselves as “consultants,” only one amicus (Massimiliano Bugiani) listed his consultancy as specifically litigation related, with an identification of the party that engaged him: “Consultant of the Plaintiff in the Turin and Milan Courts.” Despite Bugiani’s honorable example, none of the other amici followed suit.

* * * * * * * *

Although many judges and lawyers agree that amicus briefs often bring important factual expertise to appellate courts, there are clearly some abuses. I, for one, am proud to have been associated with a few amicus briefs in various courts. One law professor, Allison Orr Larsen, in a trenchant law review article, has identified some problems and has suggested some reforms.7 Regardless of what readers think of Larsen’s proposed reforms, briefs should not be submitted by testifying and consulting expert witnesses for one side in a particular category of litigation, without disclosing fully and accurately their involvement in the underlying cases, and their financial enrichment from perpetuating the litigation in question.

* Thanks to Ramses Delafontaine for having alerted me to other aspects of the lack of transparency in connection with amicus briefs filed by professional historian organizations.

1 Brief of Muge Akpinar-Elci, Xaver Bauer, Carlos Bedrossian, Eula Bingham, Yv Bonnier-Viger, James Brophy, Massimiliano Buggiani, Barry Castleman, Richard Clapp, Dario Consonni, Emilie Counil, Mohamed Aquiel Dalvie, John M. Dement, Tony Fletcher, Bice Fubini, Thomas H. Gassert, David F. Goldsmith, Michael Gochfeld, Lennart Hadell [sic, Hardell], James Huff, Peter F. Infante, Moham F. Jeebhay, T. K. Joshi, Margaret Keith, John R. Keyserlingk, Kapil Khatter, Shira Kramer, Philip J. Landrigan, Bruce Lanphear, Richard A. Lemen, Charles Levenstein, Abby Lippman, Gerald Markowitz, Dario Mirabelli, Sigurd Mikkelsen, Celeste Monforton, Rama C. Nair, L. Christine Oliver, David Ozonoff, Domyung Paek, Smita Pakhale, Rolf Petersen, Beth Rosenberg, Kenneth Rosenman, David Rosner, Craig Slatin, Michael Silverstein, Colin L. Soskolne, Leslie Thomas Stayner, Ken Takahashi, Daniel Thau Teitelbaum, Benedetto Terracini, Annie Thebaud-Mony, Fernand Turcotte, Andrew Watterson, David H. Wegman, Laura S. Welch, Hans-Joachim Woitowitz as Amici Curiae in Support of Appellee, 2015 WL 3385332, filed in Rost v. Ford Motor Co., 151 A.3d 1032 (Pa. 2016).

2 See “The Selikoff – Castleman Conspiracy” (Mar. 13, 2011).

4 Newman v. Motorola, Inc., 218 F. Supp. 2d 769 (D. Md. 2002) (excluding Hardell’s proposed testimony), aff’d, 78 Fed. Appx. 292 (4th Cir. 2003) (affirming exclusion of Hardell).

6 See, e.g., “SKAPP A LOT” (April 30, 2010); “Manufacturing Certainty” (Oct. 25, 2011); “David Michaels’ Public Relations Problem” (Dec. 2, 2011); “Conflicted Public Interest Groups” (Nov. 3, 2013).

7 See Allison Orr Larsen, “The Trouble with Amicus Facts,” 100 Virginia L. Rev. 1757 (2014). See also Caitlin E. Borgmann, “Appellate Review of Social Facts in Constitutional Rights Cases,” 101 Calif. L. Rev. 1185, 1216 (2013) (“Amicus briefs, in particular, are often submitted by advocates and may be replete with dubious factual assertions that would never be admitted at trial.”).

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