A retired businessman from New Jersey is suing Goldman Sachs after losing $15 million in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme, claiming Goldman Sachs should have insisted that he follow its advice and remove money from the Madoff Fund.

In a lawsuit filed in federal court, Jerome Goodman claims that Goldman Sachs had a fiduciary duty to insist that Goodman follow its advice to remove $5 million of the $12 million from the Madoff Fund and invest it in a Goldman Sachs hedge fund.  Goodman didn't do so, the suit says, because the Madoff and Goldman Sachs funds had the same apparent risk level and he felt Goldman Sachs' advice was self-serving and not in line with his request for diversification.
 
But, then, Goodman goes on to claim that, "Goldman Sachs implemented an internal ban on investment with the Madoff Fund in or around 1999, after Goldman Sachs conducted or attempted to conduct satisfactory due diligence into the Madoff Fund,” and that this was further grounds for insisting that he diversify.

The plaintiff's lawyer, Richard Lippe of Meltzer, Lippe, Goldstein & Breitstone in Mineola, N.Y., who represents several Madoff victims, says, meanwhile, there is a precedent for the notion that an investment adviser who does not follow a mandate to diversify a portfolio can be liable.

C. Evan Stewart of Zuckerman Spaeder in New York, a lawyer for Goldman Sachs, responded that the lawsuit is without merit because the company never instituted an internal ban on Madoff.  Moreover, Stewart noted, Goodman was never a client of the firm.

—Source: Law.com

A Seattle-area woman who said her daughter was injured by a glass shard in a bottle of water has been sentenced to jail for carrying out a hoax.

Kelsey Macom was sentenced to 30 days in jail and three months of home detention after demanding $3,000 from Coca-Cola to settle her 2008 claim that her 7-year-old daughter was injured by a piece of glass in a bottle of Dasani water, a Coke product. Macom claimed her daughter’s throat was cut so badly she could hardly eat foods and was coughing up blood.

The federal judge in the case described the crime as “despicable.”  Prosecutors said the case was even more troubling considering Macom was a former Better Business Bureau employee.

—Source:  The Seattle Times  

A recent Virginia Supreme Court ruling upheld sanctions imposed by the state bar against a plaintiff’s lawyer who filed a medical liability lawsuit against the wrong physician. 

The lawsuit began when attorney Michael P. Weatherbee filed a liability action on behalf of his client alleging that ob-gyn Ward P. Vaughan, M.D. and others had been negligent in their treatment of Broyles.  As it turns out, Weatherbee might not have done enough homework to make sure he had the right Vaughan listed as a defendant.

According to news reports, there were 15 physicians with the same last name listed on the Virginia Board of Medicine’s website, three of whom practiced obstetrics.  Two of them were women who practiced outside of Virginia, so Weatherbee assumed the third was the co-defendant.  The problem for Weatherbee is that this Dr. Vaughan was not involved in the surgery at issue.  In fact, this Dr. Vaughan didn’t even have privileges at the hospital when the procedure was performed there. 

Eventually, Dr. Vaughan was successful in getting himself dismissed from the case, but not before he had to hire an attorney to help him.  He then filed a complaint against Weatherbee with the Virginia State Bar, which found that Weatherbee failed to independently verify Dr. Vaughan’s involvement.

Weatherbee challenged the state bar’s ruling, first before a three-judge panel of the Arlington County Circuit Court, and then on appeal to the Virginia Supreme Court, which unanimously upheld the lower court’s finding of liability for filing a non-meritorious claim.  More particularly, the court took issue with the fact that Weatherbee did not take “simple” steps to adequately research Dr. Vaughan’s involvement.  The court also noted that the lawsuit had a “deleterious impact” on Dr. Vaughan’s practice after local radio and television stations reported the lawsuit and he lost patients.

"The record demonstrates by clear and convincing evidence that Weatherbee's action against Dr. Vaughan was frivolous because it had no basis in law or fact," Chief Justice Leroy R. Hassell Sr. wrote.

The underlying medical liability action ultimately was settled.

—Source:  American Medical News (AMA Publication)

A Virginia man is suing his local PetSmart store claiming that while shopping he slipped on a pile of dog feces and badly hurt his back, struck his head and knocked out four of his false teeth.
 
Robert Holloway is suing the Newport News (VA) PetSmart for $1 million, alleging that the store and its manager were negligent the day of the accident because they either knew or should have known there was a pile of feces on the floor.  Holloway's lawsuit further contends that if the store did know about it then its employees should have cleaned it up before Holloway stepped in it, specifically stating that PetSmart and its employees "negligently allowed animals to enter the premises and deposit feces in such a manner as to create a dangerous and hazardous condition."
 
Holloway's lawyer, Michael Goodove of Norfolk, said, "That's the problem - you can bring your pet on the premises.  But that requires a higher level of diligence. You've got a duty to remove dangerous substances."
 
PetSmart counters that the store and manager were not negligent in the accident and that pet accidents are a fact of life in its stores, where leashed pets are welcome visitors and every store has "oops" stations, clearly marked, with clean-up supplies.  PetSmart spokeswoman Jessica White added that employees are trained to clean up messes and customers are encouraged to clean up after their pets.
 
According to news reports, PetSmart's annual reports say it is a frequent target of personal injury litigation, but the costs of such suits were not released.
 
—Source:  The Virginian-Pilot