Hennessey Now Cooking Up a Class Action

Below is a comment just posted by Joseph Hennessey on this blog.  He's the lead lawyer in the case against legal process outsourcing in Washington D.C. federal court, Newman McIntosh & Hennessey vs. Bush, which was withdrawn only a few days after the filing of a motion to dismiss.  Hennessey now says he's busy hunting for "those who have been victimized by the use of foreign legal process outsourcers," so he can file "an action for damages on a class wide basis."  But judging from the first "example" he's found, where Indian doctors allegedly were used to assist in a surgery that "went horribly wrong," it looks like he still has more plaintiff-searching to do.   If anybody can see a connection between this allegedly botched surgery and legal outsourcing, please let us know!  

Meanwhile, Hennessey also is threatening to file an ethics complaint, due to the fact that four Indian legal professionals at SDD Global Solutions are credited by name in the motion to dismiss Hennessey's first lawsuit.  The motion was signed and filed not by SDD Global, but by an attorney admitted to the bar of the D.C. federal court.  Yet Hennessey claims that the legal research and drafting done by the Indian team amounts to "the unauthorized practice of law."  What an odd position to take, given that summer associates, paralegals, new-hires, and others not admitted to the bar perform legal research and drafting at every major law firm in the U.S., and often are credited at the end of legal papers in an "on the brief" section.  I'm getting the feeling that Hennessey really does not like the outsourcing of legal services to India! 

Here's his comment about the new lawsuit he's concocting:

Joseph Hennessey has joined John J. Beins and Seth D. Goldberg who have significant expertise in litigating consumer class action lawsuits -- as well as other business litigation. John Beins, Seth Goldman, Anthony Newman, Ernie McIntosh and I will be combining our various areas of expertise to identify those who have been victimized by the use of foreign legal process outsourcers. Collectively, we decided that rather than litigate an academic declaratory judgment action, we would bring an action for damages on a class wide basis. We have, for example, already heard a person who believes their HIPAA rights were violated when Indian doctors were video-conferenced to consult and make recommendations about a surgical procedure -- a procedure that went horribly wrong. Not only did this person not consent to consultation, but all of this persons private medical records were transferred to these Indian-based doctors -- a transfer that violated her HIPAA rights. So, stay tuned -- we are not at the end of this issue, we are at the beginning.