Minnesota Lawyer Blog

Just as Faegre & Benson absorbed a bitter blow last week when the U.S. Supreme Court reduced its original damages award in Exxon v. Baker by 90 percent, a pair of Twin Cities law firms could stand to benefit greatly from a case decided in Dakota County this week.

In Braun v. Wal-Mart, District Court Judge Robert King, Jr. found that Wal-Mart violated Minnesota’s Fair Labor Standards Act on more than 2 million occasions. More than seven years ago, Maslon Edelman Borman & Brand, along with Schwebel Goetz & Sieben, took the case, which resulted in a class of about 65,000 current and former hourly workers at Wal-Mart’s Minnesota stores seeking compensation for off-the-clock work, and for missed mandatory meal and rest breaks.

King already has awarded more than $6.5 million in damages to about 56,000 current and former Minnesota Wal-Mart employees, but that could be just a beginning. He has ordered a second phase of the trial to begin in October, when a jury will determine punitive damages and the amount of statutory penalties to be imposed against Wal-Mart. Minnesota’s wage and hour laws allow for a penalty of up to $1,000 for each violation, meaning that if the jury awards the full penalty for each, the award could be in excess of $2 billion.

Maslon wouldn’t confirm that it took the Wal-Mart case on contingency, though unofficial sources say they did. Regardless, the fact remains that when firms of their size take on such cases, it can mean stretching resources and risking a lot. In those cases, decisions like this one can be extra gratifying.

In next week’s Minnesota Lawyer, there will be an article about some of the technological developments that are most worth keeping an eye on for attorneys in 2008, and one of them is pay-for-click advertising – search term-based advertising in which the advertiser pays only when a user clicks on an ad to visit the advertiser's website.

Some law offices, notably personal-injury firms, have already mastered the art of pay-for-click. Take Twin Cities PI giant Meshbesher & Spence. For weeks, it has attached an ad to numerous search terms (including neuropathy, kill floor, and numbness+tingling) in an effort to attract potential clients who wish to make a claim against Quality Pork Processors in Austin.

So far, 13 QPP workers have complained of similar neurological symptoms. An undisclosed number of QPP workers have contacted Meshbesher’s Rochester office, according to the firm’s website.

It’s not hard to dream up a search string that will produce a link to a local PI firm: accident+Minnesota, Medtronic+lawsuit, slip+fall+Minneapolis, and Vioxx+Duluth all did the trick. Even the geographically generic search injury+negligence turned up a link to Schwebel, Goetz & Sieben.

Say what you like about personal-injury lawyers, but when it comes to drumming up business, they know how to stay ahead of the curve.

Rochelle Olson has an interesting piece in today's Star Tribune on the lawyers handling the 35W bridge collapse litigation ("Lawyers seek cause in preparing for lawsuits").

As we have blogged here before, there is a group of local lawyers handling some of the victims' cases pro bono, and then there is Jim Schwebel (right) and his firm, Schwebel, Goetz and Sieben, handling the cases of a number of the victims -- reportedly 19 -- under the the typical contingent-fee arrangement.

While the pro bono effort is laudable in that it will help some of the victims, I also do not have any problem with a good personal-injury firm charging for representation. It's what they are in business to do, isn't it?

That said, I am not sure Schwebel is doing the image of P.I. lawyers much of a favor by having quotes like the one that concludes the Strib piece: "We wouldn't be on the top floor of the IDS building if we made a lot of bad judgments as to which cases to get involved in," Schwebel humbly told the Strib.

Hmmm. So much for the meek inheriting the Earth. In any event, I thought Eva Gabor (left) in the theme song from the TV show 'Green Acres' expressed Schwebel's underlying sentiment far more eloquently: "I just adore a penthouse view/ Darling, I love you, but give me Park Avenue."

Jim Schwebel reports that the Minnesota Department of Transportation and the Attorney General have allowed his expert witnesses on to the site of the 35-W bridge collapse. Five bridge experts employed by the law firm were finally allowed near the bridge collapse site on Thursday, Sept. 6, Schwebel said.

U.S. District Court Judge Patrick Schiltz denied the firm access to the site last month. But negotiations with the state proceeded. At this time, parts of the bridge site are controlled by the state and parts by the federal goverment. The state allowed access to "its" areas, said Schwebel.

The National Transportation Safety Board is another story, however. Schwebel reported that the NTSB still controls part of the site and has refused access--even to the extent of banning photographs taken from areas of the site it didn't control.
Schwebel calls this an example of "remarkable insensitivity" and a "turf war." They NTSB has offered no rational basis for refusing to allow photos, he said. Ultimately the NTSB's conclusions about the bridge collapse may be supported, but the NTSB isn't the only source of expertise in this area, Schwebel observed. However, he is confident that ultimately his experts will collect all the information his clients require, he added.

Bridge experts appearing on behalf of the survivors included representatives of Weidlinger & Associates Consulting Engineers, which in the past was involved in the investigation of the collapse of the World Trade Center Towers, Marcy Pedestrian Bridge, Tropicana Hotel & Casino parking ramp, and numerous other catastrophic structural failures, said Schwebel. Also present were representatives of Sam Schwartz, PLLC, and Barsom Consulting, Ltd., both of which are also internationally known for their expertise in fracture mechanics, failure analysis and bridge collapse, he said.

"We are grateful for MnDOT’s cooperation and for its recognition of the fact that the bridge survivors are entitled to have their own independent evaluation of this tragedy,” Schwebel said.