Once again Title IX spoils the fun for kids of both sexes, this time in the realm of cheerleading, where school officials, reports the New York Times, are “redefining the role of cheerleaders in response to parental and legal pressures” — in particular, they’re requiring that cheerleaders be forced to devote half their time to cheering girls’ sports, “regardless of whether the girls’ basketball teams wanted and/or asked for” them, to quote the New York rule. It would be too much to expect actual criticism of the sacrosanct sex-equality-in-sports law, but the report does make clear that most of the kids involved, including a large share of the girls as well as the boys, don’t find the new way of doing things an improvement. “Rosie Pudish, the parent who filed the original complaint, said she did so even though her own daughter, Keri, a varsity basketball player at Johnson City High School, did not particularly want cheerleaders at her games.” (Winnie Hu, “Equal Cheers for Boys and Girls Draw Some Boos”, Jan. 14) [broken link fixed now]. More: Nov. 2, 2006, May 7, 2005, etc., as well as here and here.
Archive for January, 2007
Fatal draught of water
Tomorrow’s headlines today on Overlawyered: scarcely had Ted speculated in this space (Jan. 12) about the possibility of warning on water bottles that excessive drinking of water can be fatal, than a sensational news story comes down the wires that a California radio station, apparently ignorant or heedless of the very real risks involved, staged a water-drinking contest which proceeded to kill one of its participants (“Woman drinks so much water she dies”, AP/CNN, Jan. 13; Respectful Insolence, Jan. 14). Profs. Childs and Berman discuss the legal implications. More: In an update, Respectful Insolence provides further evidence of the recklessness of radio station personnel; the station’s ownership has fired ten of them.
Worst judges, cont’d
On Jan. 5 we linked a story about an Alabama lawyer who faces serious disciplinary action because he collected a $1.2 million fee for writing a will for a dying man without in fact meeting the man; after the controversy had arisen, voters elevated him to the bench. Now, in North Carolina, authorities are wondering what to do about Judge James Ethridge, “stripped [by the state bar] of his law license in October after deciding he had swindled an ailing, older woman of her home and life savings while he was a lawyer in 2001. …Without a law license, Ethridge is barred from holding court and signing orders. But he is not barred from keeping the job,” in which he has presided over criminal and family cases arising in Johnston, Harnett and Lee counties. “The predicament is getting expensive. …The state may be forced to pay Ethridge’s annual salary of $101,376 until his term as judge ends in December 2008” and in the mean time taxpayers are shelling out for substitute judges to hear the cases. (Mandy Locke, “Disbarred judge can’t hold court but holds onto pay”, Raleigh News & Observer, Jan. 9).
Update: Per Dr. Mary Johnson in comments, Ethridge has resigned.
January 14 roundup
These roundups aren’t so hard to do once you get the hang of them:
- Boutrous on suit against “recovered-memory” doubter Loftus [W$J]. Earlier: here, here.
- Yet another expose of the “scrumptiousness epidemic” [Beato/Reason]
- OK to challenge jurors based on occupation, Calif. appeals court rules [Egelko/SF Chronicle]
- UK: “Murderer and his fraudster wife are given £20,000 legal aid to fight for an IVF baby” [Daily Mail]
- Truce, seemingly, between class-actioneers Bernstein Litowitz and Milberg Weiss [Koppel/WSJ Law Blog]
- Behind one of the biggest med-mal awards in Canadian history, a question of whether risk of bearing twins was warned of [KevinMD]
- Judge Patel grants class-action status to Costco gender-bias suit [Lattman/WSJ law blog]
January 13 roundup
About to fly away for the Martin Luther King Day weekend; Walter will approve comments, but there may be delays. I leave you with:
- Judge Senter channels Hugo Chavez: $2.5M in punitive damages in Mississippi for noting that an uncovered storm surge was responsible for the destruction of a $225k house. [Point of Law; Insurance Coverage Blog; Chicago Trib]
- Public Citizen calls medical malpractice crisis a “hoax.” Are they right? [Point of Law]
- Mass torts and multiple misjoinders. [Point of Law; Drug and Device Law Blog]
- Sasha Baron Cohen isn’t exactly sympathetic to the Borat litigation plaintiffs. [LA Times]
- “High-profile trial looms large for controversial class-action leader” [DC Examiner]
- Still more on warning labels. [Mass Tort Litigation Blog]
- New Jersey Dem wants voting rights for idiots. No, really. [CNN/Reuters]
- I found this tale of a Supreme Court argument poignant [WSJ Law Blog]
- Harris County courthouse “rocket docket”: delay people with lengthy metal-detector lines, then throw them in jail when they’re late for court. [Kirkendall]
- Different kind of rocket PSA: Don’t explode fireworks in your hand. [GruntDoc; Unbounded Medicine (gory)]
John Edwards on wacky warnings
There’s been a lot of discussion over wacky warnings in the last couple of weeks (e.g., Jan. 8). Professor Jonathan Turley has criticized the wacky-warnings lists as examples of “bad lawyering,” rather than bad law; it’s essentially an allegation that highlighting these warnings is attack on strawmen. Relatedly, Eugene Volokh expressed skepticism yesterday about the liability rationale for refusing to give aspirin.
Well, what do plaintiffs’ lawyers have to say about warnings when these things go to trial? Here’s an example from the trial lawyer presidential candidate’s mouth:
“[Edwards & Kirby partner David Kirby] had asked [the defendant’s chief engineer] a fairly straightforward question: ‘Would you agree that the manufacturer of a product has an obligation to inform all of the users of its products of all the dangers that are known that are associated with the use of their product?’
“‘I don’t believe that.’ The reply was chilling.”
(John Edwards, Four Trials 197-98 (emphasis added).) Well, I don’t believe that, either, and neither do the vast majority of people: that’s why there isn’t a warning on my bottle of Poland Spring that excessive water drinking can be fatal. But Edwards went on to use that deposition excerpt at trial to argue that the defendant exhibited “corporate indifference.”
The warning in question would have been merely redundant and irrelevant, rather than wacky, but Edwards’s position can be one of only two things: either (1) omitting the tiniest detail from a list of warnings is “chilling” indifference to safety; or (2) it’s perfectly alright for trial lawyers to lie about the meaning of deposition excerpts and misrepresent a reasonable answer as damning evidence.
Separately noted about the District of Columbia Public Library, without comment:
- Number of copies of Four Trials by John Edwards, districtwide: 18.
- Number of copies of Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman, districtwide: 1.
Lott v. Levitt, Part VIII, and Karla Knafel v. Chicago Sun-Times
The major claim of libel from the use of “replicates” in Freakonomics was thrown out because it could reasonably be constructed to have an innocent meaning; a smaller claim regarding Levitt’s accusations in an e-mail to a single person in response to a solicited query remain. John Lott’s link to the decision suggests a world where he isn’t going to give up even on the first claim, but that decision is soundly based on the recent precedent in Knafel v. Chicago Sun-Times, 413 F.3d 637 (7th Cir. 2005), a case of relevance to Overlawyered. In Knafel, columnist Richard Roeper criticized a woman suing Michael Jordan over an affair that they had:
In other words, you had sex with a famous, wealthy man, and you claim he promised to pay you $5 million to keep quiet about it, and now you want your money.
Knafel was once an aspiring singer. She’s now reportedly a hair designer. But, based on the money she’s been paid already and the additional funds she’s seeking in exchange for her affair with Jordan, she’s making herself sound like someone who once worked in a profession that’s a lot older than singing or hair designing.
Knafel sued over the column; the court noted that “Roeper almost certainly refers to prostitution when he talks about an ‘older’ profession,” but held that the possibility of an innocent construction permitted a motion to dismiss. (See also Media Law Prof blog from 2005.) And that passage was significantly less ambiguous than that in Lott’s case.
(Via Deltoid via Cowen.) Earlier coverage: Aug. 21 and links therein.
Panic! Broken thermometer!
Should retired judges practice law?
Not according to the view of many in Britain:
The London Solicitors Litigation Association has attacked Government proposals to allow some judges to return to private practice, warning that public perception of judicial impartiality could be compromised. The body, which represents around 800 City litigators, called the proposals “a retrograde step”.
(“The Water Cooler”, Times Online, scroll to Dec. 13). For the benefit of international readers, it should be noted that retired judges in the U.S. can and often do return to private practice. Most elect to practice relatively sedate forms of law, but an exception familiar to Minnesotans is former federal judge Miles Lord, whose personal injury practice, established after he departed his controversial tenure on the bench, has taken out full-page Yellow Pages ads touting his background.
Duke rape accuser changes story again
Maybe its time to join FoxNews.com in putting quote marks around rape in the headline (“Duke Lacrosse ‘Rape’ Accuser Changes Story Again, Says Seligmann Didn’t Touch Her”, AP/FoxNews.com, Jan. 11; Joseph Neff, “Accuser changes story in lacrosse case”, Raleigh News & Observer, Jan. 11). Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal is one who isn’t laughing (“The Michael Nifong Scandal”, OpinionJournal.com, Jan. 11).