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Home Front: Politix
Looking out for the public interest
2005-10-14
Things like this are the reason I get angry when someone calls trial lawyers "jackals." It's a degrading and insulting metaphor. To jackals.

Like many shoppers, attorney Stephen Diamond buys lots of stuff online. But unlike other consumers, he sues retailers that don't charge him state and local sales taxes -- and is making a profit doing it. Mis-Using a state whistle-blower law, Mr. Diamond since 2002 has filed about 95 suits in Cook County court here against retailers that failed to charge him taxes on Internet sales, alleging that they broke the law. In cases where the state of Illinois joins the suits and prevails, he is entitled to up to 25% of the financial damages, with the rest going to state coffers.

"This is a no-brainer," says Mr. Diamond, a veteran shyster class-action attorney who has a scenic view of Lake Michigan from his downtown office. "I started going on the Internet and discovered to my astonishment that companies like Target Corp. and Wal-Mart were not collecting taxes on their Internet sales. I was like, "Wow!"
Totally. Fer sure.

In 2003, in Tennessee's Davidson County Chancery Court, Mr. Diamond filed about 30 suits alleging noncollection of sales taxes on online purchases by Wal-Mart, Target, Amazon.com Inc., PetsMart Inc., and Bass Pro Shops, among other companies. But he didn't reckon on the reaction of Loren Chumley, Tennessee's commissioner of revenue, who wasn't happy that a private citizen was using the whistle-blower law to enrich himself.

Viewing Mr. Diamond as an asshole opportunist exploiting a legal loophole, Ms. Chumley immediately set out to change state law. She succeeded, and the cases were dismissed. Ms. Chumley says that Mr. Diamond was misusing the law. Mr. Diamond counters that Tennessee wasn't being aggressive enough in collecting taxes.

But Ms. Chumley wasn't through. In 2003, she told Virginia's tax commissioner, Kenneth Wayne Thorson, about Mr. Diamond. Mr. Thorson says he notified the staff of Virginia Gov. Mark Warner and said, "We don't want to go there. It is going to be a mess. We need to put a stop to this."
May I suggest tar-and-feathering? Or lynching? It was good enough against the Stamp Act enforcers.

In February 2004, Virginia's state legislature voted unanimously to change the year-old law, which now excludes private citizens from getting money by suing online retailers that don't collect sales taxes.
Contact your local legislators.
Posted by:Jackal

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