Our very first embedded YouTube video. It originally appeared on Comedy Central’s “The Hollow Men” (via Nicole Black):
Archive for January, 2007
“Telecommuters Are Reaching Out to Sue Their Employers”
A possibly more accurate headline on this National Law Journal article from last month would have been, “Class-Action Lawyers Are Reaching Out to Sue Employers on Behalf of Telecommuters”. And for many of the putative beneficiaries,the consequences are apt to be unpleasant: some employers will curtail their use of telecommuters, while others will insist on legally defensive paperwork and work rules which add dreariness to the job, such as those suggested by a lawyer with one leading employment-defense firm:
Companies can minimize the risk of legal disputes with work-at-home employees by inking formal agreements about the work and hours, said Mark Batten, a Boston lawyer for New York-based Proskauer Rose.
Batten, a defense attorney, also recommends timesheets, a written policy banning overtime without prior approval and rules requiring employees to monitor and record work-related activities such [as] logging on or off a computer. …
“Just allowing employees to work at home without an understanding about how much time is actually needed for work will get the employer in trouble,” Batten said.
(cross-posted from Point of Law).
Penguin “black interest” lawsuit, cont’d
Our post of Wednesday on an author’s complaint that Penguin Group steered her work into “African-American interest” marketing channels, although she would have preferred for it to be marketed as a general interest book, has spurred a somewhat heated discussion in the reader comments section. It also drew an informative comment in email from Charles Petit, author of the publishing-law blog Scrivener’s Error, which we’ve appended to the original post.
Not about the money files: Steve Yerrid’s shallow forgiveness
If you ever want to see a trial lawyer manipulate the press, and the press unskeptically eat it up, you could do worse than to watch the recent performance of Steve Yerrid (Oct. 5-6) in a recent Tampa trial.
The facts convey an undeniably terrible accident. Fifty-year-old high-school-dropout Denzil Blake was cleaning an Isuzu Rodeo at Town ‘N Country Car Wash when he accidentally hit the gearshift, sending the car (which should not have been running) out of neutral. Blake didn’t know how to drive (Florida law allows a person without a driver’s license to operate a vehicle on private property, so there was nothing illegal about allowing unlicensed drivers to move cars in a carwash), panicked, and accidentally hit the accelerator instead of the brake, sending the car speeding into 43-year-old Brenda Lee Brown, striking her just after she pushed her young son’s stroller to safety; she died of her injuries two days later. Blake was not criminally charged.
Slow typist sues law school
According to Adrian Zachariasewycz, a/k/a Adrian Zack, of Woodlyn, Pa., some exams given at the University of Michigan Law School reward fast typists with a chance at higher scores. So he’ll see school administrators in court, in a pro se lawsuit that also names as a defendant the Wilmington, Del. law firm of Morris, Nichols, Arsht & Tunnell, where his associate’s gig didn’t work out. He’s suing two of the law school’s career counselors individually for alleged bad advice, too. (WSJ law blog, Jan. 26; complaint in PDF format). More: Feb. 5.
“Homicide conspiracy” indictments in Tennessee
“Not about the money” files: Dickie Scruggs edition
“It was never about the money for me, this litigation,” said Dickie Scruggs, who stands to collect between $26 million and $46 million from a settlement accomplished by the use of the state attorney general, Jim Hood, to extort State Farm with the threat of criminal proceedings for daring to enforce their flood exclusion clauses in their contracts. [Lattman] Many many posts on the subject at Point of Law.
Lowering fees — and infuriating colleagues?
“I recently ran a television advertisement offering to represent car accident victims in exchange for a 15 percent contingency fee, which is more than 50 percent less than the traditional 33 percent contingent fee. …One of the goals of my advertising campaign is to reform the tort system in the marketplace, without the need for legislation. … Making a lower contingency fee the centerpiece of an ad campaign, albeit just for car accident victims, educates consumers about the standard fee and how a lower contingency fee can benefit them, by putting more of the net recovery in their pocket.” New Haven, Ct. attorney Joshua A. Winnick sure isn’t angling for popularity among his peers (“Putting a Price on Plaintiffs Work”, Connecticut Law Tribune, Dec. 28). More: David Giacalone.
January 26 roundup
- DOJ subpoenas of online-gambling firms spark UK outrage (Times Online)
- “Don’ts” for lawyers: don’t supplement your criminal-defense practice by running escort service on the side [NY Law Journal]
- Maternity-clothing retailer tripped up on pregnancy discrimination claim [Lenard]
- Filling out a Quicken-software will for an elderly client deemed “unauthorized practice of law” in South Carolina [McCullagh, Giacalone]
- Champerty ‘n’ maintenance update: New York courts allow suspended lawyer Ross Cellino [Jul. 15, 2005] to resume practice [Business First of Buffalo]
- Worried about long-dormant restitution or repatriation claims that might arise to put a cloud on your art holdings? Buy art-title insurance [Forbes pay archive]
- Snatching whole milk from schoolkids not such a great idea, maybe [Musil]
- Yes, let’s stop slamming lawyers for representing unpopular clients — and let’s start being consistent about it [Ted “no relation” Olson, Katyal via Adler]
- Pfizer sued on theory its frisky Viagra ads encourage spread of sexually transmitted diseases [AP/WaPo](complaint courtesy Slate)
- After his experiment in splitting up his blogs, Steve Bainbridge has reunited them again [ProfessorBainbridge.com]
- Remove Child Before Folding author Bob Dorigo Jones interviewed about wacky warnings (see Jan. 6, Jan. 12, etc.) [Illinois Review].
- Note: one item originally posted here [on air-show crash] removed as duplicative of one of Ted’s earlier.
Privacy and trial lawyers
You often hear about the plaintiffs’ bar and their solicitous concern for the privacy of citizens, and how they’ll be happy to bring class actions to protect that privacy. Of course, as we have repeatedly noted (e.g., Jun. 20, 2005 and Feb. 9), that concern for privacy extends only as far as it doesn’t interfere with trial lawyers’ desire for a payday. The California Supreme Court has ruled that consumers who contact a vendor are subject to having their names given to plaintiffs’ attorneys (in this case, the super-ethical firm of Milberg Weiss) in California-state-court discovery unless such consumers explicitly take the trouble to opt out to each and every opportunity for such notification, reversing an appellate court’s ruling that names should only be given out if consumers opt in to such notification. Bruce Nye has more details about Pioneer Electronics v. Superior Court. The opinion doesn’t appear to create any limits on the ability of plaintiffs’ attorneys to use that information. We look forward to the usual suspects commenting on the need for protective legislation to prevent such privacy breaches. Right?