Ted Frank

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For the president of the private company Axentis, see Ted Frank (businessman).
Ted Frank

Born December 14, 1968 (1968-12-14) (age 39)
Education BA, Brandeis University;
JD, University of Chicago
Occupation Lawyer

Theodore H. Frank (b. 1968) is an American lawyer and a "leading tort-reform advocate" in the United States.[1] He is a fellow with the conservative American Enterprise Institute, and director of the AEI Legal Center for the Public Interest (formerly the National Legal Center for the Public Interest). Frank has written and spoken on liability matters such as product liability, asbestos litigation, medical malpractice, and pharmaceuticals.

Frank has written articles for several publications, including the Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, as well as several law reviews. He has acted as pundit for several news networks, including NPR, the BBC, and Fox News. He is on the Executive Committee of the Federalist Society's Litigation Practice Group and contributes regularly to several conservative legal weblogs.

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[edit] Background and early career

Frank earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Brandeis University in 1991. He authored a number of columns for his campus newspaper and several political magazines. He was a member of the student senate and had objected to a campaign to stop serving pork at the Jewish university.[2] He also led an unsuccessful campaign to prevent fraternities and sororities from coming to campus.[citation needed]

In 1994 Frank earned his Juris Doctor with high honors from the University of Chicago Law School.[3] At Chicago he earned Order of the Coif and served on the law review.[4] After clerking for Judge Frank H. Easterbrook of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Frank entered private practice as a litigator on class action tort cases at law firms Kirkland & Ellis, Irell & Manella, and O’Melveny & Myers.[5] As part of his practice he defended a lawsuit filed by the ACLU to delay the 2003 California gubernatorial recall election, defended Vioxx liability cases, and also served on the defense team of several antitrust and patent cases.[5]

While at Chicago Law, he was a well-known presence on Usenet groups,[6] where he researched urban legends, wrote the alt.folklore.college FAQ[7], and regularly participated along with snopes in an activity then known as "trolling for newbies" (the term "trolling" did not then have the negative connotations it does today).[8][9] He also delivered rebuttals to hard right and conspiracist legal arguments on alt.conspiracy.[10] Frank was also an early contributor to the Baseball Prospectus collective through essays on rec.sport.baseball.[11][12]

[edit] Advocate of tort reform

Frank joined the AEI as a fellow in 2005, where he has a record of speaking and writing on matters of legal liability.[5] Areas of interest and expertise include product liability, asbestos litigation, medical malpractice, and pharmaceuticals such as Vioxx. Frank's writing appears in law reviews, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and National Review Online. Appearances and interviews include NPR, BBC, C-SPAN, and Fox News.[13] As head of AEI's Liability Project his opinions and analysis of liability litigation have been quoted in the New York Times, BusinessWeek and the New York Law Journal.[14][15][16]

Frank, together with Walter Olson, contributes regularly to the conservative legal weblog Overlawyered. He has also contributed to PointofLaw.com, maintained by Olson and sponsored by the Manhattan Institute.[17] He also sits on the Executive Committee of the Federalist Society's Litigation Practice Group.

[edit] Recorded viewpoints

Frank is known for his views supporting tort reform in the United States, drawing criticism from the CEO of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America.[18] In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece, Frank argued that the Department of Treasury and SEC should urge the Supreme Court to reject expanded securities litigation liability in Stoneridge v. Scientific-Atlanta.[19] Frank has criticized obesity lawsuits, calling them "rent-seeking vehicles that are neither good law nor good public policy."[20]

Frank has been critical of Michael Moore, calling him and his film Sicko "misleading".[21] He is also critical of Wikipedia, as quoted by CBS News. "Wikipedia in general suffers from a severe bias; articles about controversial topics reward persistence over accuracy," he wrote.[22][23]

[edit] Personal life

Frank is the cousin of Washington Post reporter Garance Franke-Ruta.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Peter Lattman (October 30, 2006). Trial Lawyers Defend Themselves While Taking On Terrorism. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved on 2007-08-25.
  2. ^ Special to the New York Times. "'Pigtown' at Brandeis U. Protests Food Policy", New York Times, 1988-05-28.  "Ted Frank, a member of the Brandeis student senate, said that a majority of students disagree. He said, 'The general feeling is that we're not forcing them to eat pork and they shouldn't be forcing us not to eat pork.'"
  3. ^ O'Brien, John (July 16, 2007), Attorney: W. Va. SC ignoring law for benefit of trial lawyers, The West Virginia Record. Retrieved September 1, 2007.
  4. ^ Listed as "Theodore Frank" on masthead for vols. 60-61. Frank wrote a student comment, "The Economic Interest Test and Collective Action Problems in Antitrust Tie-in Cases", 61 U. Chi. L. Rev. 639.
  5. ^ a b c aei.org - official American Enterprise Institute biography
  6. ^ Net Surf. Wired (Sept./Oct. 1993).
  7. ^ Subject: Alt.folklore.college Frequently Asked Questions Date: Mon, 17 Jan 1994 16:10:26 G
  8. ^ Cecil Adams (2000-05-14). The Straight Dope. Retrieved on 2007-08-26. “To be fair, not all trolls are slimeballs. On some message boards, veteran posters with a mischievous bent occasionally go "newbie trolling.”
  9. ^ See Michele Tepper, "Usenet Communities and the Cultural Politics of Information" in David Porter, ed., Internet Culture (1997) at 48 ("[T]he two most notorious trollers in AFU, Ted Frank and snopes, are also two of the most consistent posters of serious research.").
  10. ^ Chip Berlet (2000). When Hate Went Online..
  11. ^ Baseball Prospectus '97. Joe Sheehan, Clay Davenport, and Gary Huckabay, Eds. Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books Inc. (former Brassey’s Inc.), 1997. ISBN 0-9655674-0-0.
  12. ^ Gary Huckabay (2003-07-11). 6-4-3:State of the Prospectus, July 2003. Baseball Prospectus.
  13. ^ Liability Project Scholars and Staff
  14. ^ Competing for Clients, and Paying by the Click, Adam Liptak, New York Times, October 15, 2007
  15. ^ Cell-Phone Contract Disputes Heat Up, Olga Kharif, Businessweek, August 20, 2007.
  16. ^ Observers Speculate Justices Could Rejoin Securities Issue, Tony Mauro, The New York Law Journal, August 21, 2007.
  17. ^ PointofLaw.com masthead
  18. ^ Jon Haber (2006-10-21). A Response to 'End Open-Ended Litigation'. Washington Post. Frank responded on the Point of Law weblog.
  19. ^ Ted Frank. "Arbitrary and Unfair", Wall Street Journal, 2007-05-31.  Congressmen John Conyers, Jr. and Barney Frank criticized this op-ed in their late amicus brief, claiming that Frank's argument substituted policy considerations for the plain text of statute. Frank rebutted the allegation on the Overlawyered weblog.
  20. ^ Theodore H. Frank (2006). "A Taxonomy of Obesity Litigation". University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review. 
  21. ^ "Sicko’s Box Office Numbers are Fuzzy, Too" by Ted Frank, The American, Wednesday, August 8, 2007
  22. ^ "Stephen Colbert Sparks Wiki War", CBS News
  23. ^ Ted Frank (August 3, 2006). Trial lawyer "Wikiality". Overlawyered.com. Retrieved on 2007-12-21.

[edit] External links