Stuart M. Rees of Stu’s Views nails it again in depicting the true thoughts of most juries.
The ultimate jury verdict
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Author Archives: Tom
Coopertown?
Dr. Kenneth Cooper of Dallas may have oversold the benefits of aerobic exercise, but will the same be true for his new real estate venture?:
Dr. Cooper is developing a $2 billion residential wellness community here called Cooper Life at Craig Ranch that is going up on the first 51 of an eventual 151 acres on the Texas plains, north of Dallas.
Taking the concept of spa real estate into the medical realm, Dr. Cooperís community promises home buyers a life that sounds equal parts Norman Rockwell and Olympic village: a small town where doctors will make house calls and where every resident has a bevy of experts close at hand for keeping in tiptop shape.
It appears to be the first of its kind. . . .
Included in the monthly residential fee ($1,041 for an individual to $2,181 for a family of six) will be an annual physical and a six-month follow-up, which Dr. Cooper calls key to his utopian vision of a place where everyone can live in peak health. The fee also includes home doctor visits, a fitness center membership, concierge services and exterior home maintenance, lectures and social activities.
While a diverse mix of ages and fitness levels are welcome, Dr. Cooper admits that many prospective residents may well be baby boomers with cushy bank accounts. ìTheyíve got the money,î Dr. Cooper said, ìnow they want to live long enough to enjoy it.î
I get exhausted just thinking about the thought of living there. ;^)
Something ailing you?
If so, and even if not, check out these 100 Web Resources for Medical Professionals.
The risk of exploration
Need a refresher course on just how risky it is exploring for oil and gas?
If so, check out this Wired article on Chevron’s venture to drill for oil 30,000 feet under the Gulf of Mexico.
I don’t know about you, but I think the folks investing in such ventures deserve every penny of profit that is may be generated from them.
More on “Book’em Horns”
The legal problems of current and recent Texas Longhorn football players prompted this Book’em Horns post awhile back, but yesterday’s news that yet another Longhorn football player had been arrested on criminal charges generated a new round of barbs toward the Longhorns, including the farked message below on the Godzillitron at UT’s Royal-Memorial Stadium. Things have gotten so bad that Austin sports columnist Kirk Bohls is wondering whether the UT football team has replaced the University of Miami as the bad boys of big-time college football?
Seaside in Texas?
First, the Wall Street Journal discovered the Hamptons of Houston. Now, this Wall Street Journal ($) article reports that the popular Seaside beach community just east of Destin, Florida is the model for several similar projects under construction on the Texas Gulf Coast:
Inspired by Seaside, the Florida-panhandle resort community that relies heavily on traditional architecture and planning, Mr. [Tofigh] Sherazi is overseeing development of a $1 billion, 260-acre beachfront community that seeks to reflect Galveston’s past. The first of the project’s four phases, 160 lots for single-family homes, is sold out. The development is designed to include a pedestrian-friendly mix of homes, shops and two hotels. “This is going to be a real town,” he said.
Beachtown, as Mr. Sherazi’s project is called, is part of a wave of New Urbanism on the Texas coast, from Galveston to South Padre Island. A planning movement that advocates walking over driving and borrows heavily from the design of traditional neighborhoods, New Urbanism has been largely overlooked on the Texas coast, even as it has flourished in Florida and beyond. [. . .]
. . . In addition to Beachtown, a 93-acre, $175 million urban village known as Evia is taking shape in Galveston. The work of local developers, the project will include a total of about 350 residential units, with 70% of the 222 lots for single-family homes sold.
Near Corpus Christi, the Sea Oats Group, of Atlanta, is developing a 64-acre, $250 million project called Cinnamon Shore that casts itself as a traditional seaside village, complete with a town center. Sales began in February, and 42 of 82 lots in phase one are sold. And on South Padre Island, a development in excess of $250 million called the Shores of South Padre also portrays itself as New Urbanist, though local developer Richard Franke’s plan to include high-rise and midrise condominiums indicates he is no purist. “It’s quite different from anything else in our area,” said Mr. Franke. [. . .]
James Gaines, an economist at Texas A&M University’s Real Estate Center, said beachfront property in Texas costs about a fifth of the price of similar property in California, in part because of its geography. Except for Galveston and a few coastal areas near Houston, none of Texas beachfront property is near a major urban center.
In an effort to market Cinnamon Shore, Sea Oats compared the cost of beachfront lots and beachfront homes in a number of markets. A lot at Seaside costs about $2.98 million, according to the company, but lots at Cinnamon Shore are going for about $625,000. In the same survey, the company said a beachfront home at Cinnamon Shore is valued at no more than $1.5 million, while a similar home could cost as much as $6.9 million across the Gulf of Mexico in Sarasota, Fla.
Wisconsin no longer confused with The Woodands
As noted earlier here and here, the University of Wisconsin apparently does not have enough substantive legal work to keep its lawyers busy, so the university has made a cottage industry out of threatening high schools around the country that use a “W” logo that resembles the one used by the university’s sports teams.
According to this article, it looks as if UW has proven that it has more money to waste on pursuing one of those frivolous lawsuits than my local high school here in The Woodlands. The Woodlands High School has agreed to change its “W” logo to the one on the left above.
I sincerely hope that the Iowa Hawkeyes kick Wisconsin’s ass on the gridiron this Saturday. ;^)
The Lerach deal
Former class action securities plaintiffs’ lawyer William Lerach finally cut a non-cooperation plea deal (Nathan Koppel’s WSJ Law Blog post is here) to resolve the longstanding criminal investigation into alleged undisclosed payments that Lerach and his firm made to class representatives and co-counsel in cases that they handled.
In certain defense and business circles, there is a fair amount of schadenfreude over Lerach’s demise — he had no reservation about alleging criminal conduct against business executives, such as he did when he claimed that Enron was shredding documents during the early stages of that company’s bankruptcy case (that claim turned out to be wrong).
However, before we get too sanguine about Lerach’s plea deal, let’s not forget the circumstances under which it has been obtained. The 61-year old Lerach was facing a horrifying trial penalty if he chose to fight the charges, and he almost certainly will lose his law license as a result of pleading guilty to a felony. And as Larry Ribstein has repeatedly pointed out, it doesn’t say much for our criminal justice system that the government is paying witnesses to testify against Lerach for the crime of paying his class representative clients. As Larry points out in his most recent post on the matter, the non-cooperation nature of the plea deal does not necessarily mean that the government isn’t providing Lerach some form of hidden incentive for his plea.
Update: Ted Frank argues that Lerach’s plea deal is, all things considered, not so bad for him, after all. On the other hand, Peter Henning is not so sure.
An enduring myth of regulation
The New York Times is shocked to discover that big, established businesses often attempt to manipulate governmental regulation to their advantage over entrepreneurial startups. This hidden cost of regulation is one that I noted awhile back in regard to the proposed XM-Sirius merger. Many well-meaning folks — usually those without much experience in business matters — believe that regulation is good for the consumer because most established businesses generally abhor such regulation. However, established businesses typically use a part of their superior resources to manipulate regulation to their advantage and against the threat of beneficial competition from new companies. A big, well-established business can absorb the high cost of regulation and pass it along to the consumer. A thinly-leveraged start-up generally does not have that luxury.
Warren Meyer, who actually confronts this phenomenom as he runs his small business, makes the same point here and provides the following insightful quote on the subject from the late Milton Friedman:
The justification offered is always the same: to protect the consumer. However, the reason is demonstrated by observing who lobbies at the state legislature for the imposition or strengthening of licensure. The lobbyists are invariably representatives of the occupation in question rather than of the customers. True enough, plumbers presumably know better than anyone else what their customers need to be protected against. However, it is hard to regard altruistic concern for their customers as the primary motive behind their determined efforts to get legal power to decide who may be a plumber.
Thom Lambert also chimes in.
A dose of Americana
Will Veber over at Road Tips reports on his trip (with pictures) to one of the last bastions of pure Americana — the Iowa State Fair.