Devin Thompson, 16 at the time, is charged with murdering two Fayette, Ala. policemen and an emergency dispatcher in June 2003. Now members of the victims’ families are suing the maker of the Grand Theft Auto video game, retailers Wal-Mart and Gamestop, and Sony, which manufactures the PlayStation, as well as Thompson himself, on the grounds that the violent game “trained” the teen to commit the real-life killings. Representing the families, if you haven’t already guessed, is attorney Jack Thompson, whose anti-videogame crusade has for years provided material for these columns (Sept. 26 and Dec. 17, 2003, etc.)(Johnny Kampis, “Lawsuit claims video violence precipitated Fayette police shootings”, Tuscaloosa News, Feb. 15; Tony Smith, “Grand Theft Auto firm faces ‘murder training’ lawsuit”, The Register (UK), Feb. 17). More: “The supporters [of anti-videogame government action] think violent games produce violent teens, but the evidence is lacking.” (Steve Chapman, “Violent video games and Illinois’ loopy legislators”, syndicated/Chicago Tribune, Mar. 20)
Archive for February, 2005
“Deadbeat dads”
A decade of harshly punitive laws later, policymakers discover it’s not so simple (Leslie Kaufman, “When Child Support Is Due, Even the Poor Find Little Mercy”, New York Times, Feb. 19). See Feb. 3, Jun. 11 and Aug. 19, 2004 and many other posts in our family law category.
Berkeley student government successfully extorted
Henry Kissinger once said “University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.” As I would tell my 21-year-old self if I ever ran into him today, that inverse ratio holds true by several orders of magnitude when it comes to student government. Yvette Felarca was disqualified in a student government election in a squabble over rules; she claimed (with the aid of precedent) constitutional violations and sued, which caused election delays because the government didn’t want to have to count votes twice; the student government changed the rules to give her her seat; the federal court dismissed the lawsuit as moot with leave to refile; and Felarca did just that. Faced with a demand to pay her legal fees of $15,000 or spending more than that defending themselves, the student government capitulated, and Felarca got both her $15,000 to drop the suit and presumably also law-school-application essay material. (Traci Kawaguchi, “ASUC to Settle Suit for $15,000”, Daily Californian, Feb. 11; “Editorial: ASUC-ing Money Away”, Daily Californian, Feb. 15; CalStuff blog, Feb. 12; Tina Nguyen, “Federal Judge Tosses DAAP Lawsuit Against ASUC”, Daily Californian, Nov. 16; Yvette Falarca, “Senator Justifies Lawsuit”, Daily Californian, Aug. 31).
Corrected post: Washington police can’t search dumped trash
(Apologies to readers. On occasion, I run across a news story, save the link on Movable Type, and then finish writing a post later after I’ve proofed it. On February 17, I accidentally published a draft squib instead of a finished post. The published draft (1) failed to reference relevant federal precedent as I had intended; (2) incorrectly identified the Washington Supreme Court as the authors of the opinion in the news story; (3) incorrectly stated that a conviction was reversed; and (4) had a subject-verb disagreement. Fortunately, Overlawyered has a full-time proofreader, an anonymous law student at the Appellate Law & Practice blog, who prefers fact-checking Overlawyered to his/her own posts. He/she caught two out of the four errors, and defends the appellate court’s decision.)
A Washington court holds that police can’t arrange to search dumped garbage without a warrant, and invalidates a meth-dealer’s indictment. (Michael Ko, “Court: Meth maker’s privacy was invaded”, Seattle Times, Feb. 16).
This seemed to be straight out of a “Law and Order” episode I would scoff at, but the hair-splitting judges are forced to engage in to determine the stage at which trash becomes searchable is phenomenal. See, e.g., the seven separate opinions in the 8-5 en banc decision United States v. Redmon, 138 F.3d 1109 (7th Cir. 1998) (garbage can in shared driveway searchable without warrant); Clinton administration brief. The landmark Supreme Court opinion on garbage is the 6-2 decision in California v. Greenwood, 486 U.S. 35 (1988) (trash bag at curb searchable without warrant).
No good deed goes unpunished
In the same vein as a potluck, AP covers Oscar party excess:
So what happens to all those untouched short ribs, lobsters, truffles and tortes?
Governors Ball leftovers are donated to homeless shelters and other charitable causes around town. But the lawyers got in the way of any such benevolence at the Elton John party, fearing the caterer would be liable for anyone who got sick on the scraps.
(Beth Harris, “Planners get ready for Oscar parties”, Feb. 17) (via Defamer).
And now for something completely different…
I don’t know if I buy this Globe and Mail paragraph, which John Palmer saw first.
An indignant Israeli is suing a pet shop that he says sold him a dying parrot, reports the Ma’ariv newspaper. Itzik Simowitz of the southern city of Beersheba contends the shop cheated him because the Galerita-type cockatoo not only failed to utter a word when he got it home, but was also extremely ill. Mr. Simowitz adds that the shop owner assured him the parrot was not ill but merely needed time to adjust to its new environment.
The Australian provides enough additional detail that one believes that Ma’ariv printed it. On the other hand, Ma’ariv seems prone to parrot tales that sound like urban legends.
(Alex thought of the post title first.) Previous Python-related litigation: Dec. 27.
Church potlucks
The Indiana legislature turns out to have banned them and is now scrambling to fix matters (Robert King, “Heavens! Potlucks are illegal”, Indianapolis Star, Feb. 13)(via Balko). See Apr. 15, 2004.
Zwebner lawsuits on Internet posts
Michael J. Zwebner, the CEO of penny-stock holding company Universal Communication Systems , is unhappy that he’s being flamed on the RagingBull.com message board, run by Lycos. He may have a legitimate beef to some extent; the dozens of John Doe usernames he’s seeking to discover in one lawsuit are being represented by a lawyer, L. Van Stillman, who apparently pled guilty to SEC charges of “pump and dump” schemes. (Then again, UCSY has a fishy 10-K, being forced to admit that their auditors don’t think that the company can be maintained as a going concern. They’ve certainly had some bad luck: UCSY’s 2003 10-K was late “because of a fire at the building which houses the Company’s corporate headquarters”. The most recent 10-Q was late “due to a fire at the corporate accountant’s office”.)
More importantly for our purposes here, Zwebner’s litigation methods, through his lawyer John H. Faro, are questionable. He’s filed five lawsuits in federal court in Miami, against anonymous posters, against Lycos (for, among other things, “trademark violations” for naming a message board after the ticker symbol UCSY), and even a couple of purported class actions. He’s especially upset at one anonymous poster, who has the especially credible username of Wolfblitzzer0 [sic]. So, Zwebner has sued… CNN and the real-life Wolf Blitzer! It seems, according to Zwebner’s view of the world, that Blitzer is supposed to be on the lookout for anonymous posters using similar names, and should be held liable for such posters’ postings when he fails to police the use of such usernames. (Jessica M. Walker, “Executive Faces Uphill Battle in His Suits Over Anonymous Web Attacks”, Daily Business Review, Jan. 28).
A Google search shows that Zwebner seems to have had previous success intimidating posters into silence. Update: Professor Volokh comments.
Rasheed Wallace sued
Portland, Oregon, tattooist Matthew Reed doesn’t quite want an arm and a leg in his lawsuit against Rasheed Wallace, but he’s close. Reed is upset that the large Egyptian tattoo he gave Wallace in 1998 for $450 is being used in Nike advertising, and wants an injunction and damages for alleged copyright infringement. (Ashbel S. Green, “Ink is dry on tattoo but fresh on lawsuit”, The Oregonian, Feb. 15; AP/Det. News, Feb. 16 (with photo)).
My law firm has represented Nike in other litigation.
Light posting; Mencimer reply
I’ve been mostly out of commission owing to one of the bugs that’s been going around, so although there are a lot of great items in the pipeline, I expect they’ll have to wait a bit. Ted will be posting, though.
In the mean time, for readers who followed Stuart Taylor’s refutation (posted here Jan. 19, with comment) of Stephanie Mencimer’s tendentious Washington Monthly article of last October, the Washington Monthly has at length notified its online readers of Taylor’s response, and posted a (to me, very lame) defense by Mencimer of her article (Feb. 15).