Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Archive for June, 2008

Losing patience with Jonathan Lee Riches

The federal judges in the Northern District of Georgia decided to place curbs on the famously litigious inmate who’s filed more than 1,000 lawsuits nationwide naming celebrities and politicians as members of hallucinatory cabals against him. In March the judges enjoined him from filing more suits without permission in the district, which he can do only if he agrees to be prosecuted for false statements. (Miami Daily Business Review, Jun. 12, also with some discussion of Jack Thompson and of a few other Florida litigants who’ve had their acts shut down after filing (e.g.) 18, 20 and 60+ meritless or inappropriate actions.)

The order in the Northern District of Georgia has not prevented Riches from continuing to file lawsuits against celebrities and public figures elsewhere, as in the federal District of South Carolina. (Rachel Barron, “Vinod Khosla Slapped With $43M Lawsuit”, Greentech Media, Jun. 20).

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Time Warner Cable settlement

Craig Newmark dissects a class action settlement notice he recently received, and finds the classic gimmick/ploy in which the contrite company agrees to give certain free services to customers who file claims, but then will begin billing them monthly if they forget to cancel the services after a short trial run. (Newmark’s Door, Jun. 30).

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June 30 roundup

  • To hold a party in the public parks of Bergenfield, N.J., you’ll need homeowner’s or renter’s insurance to throw on the line [Bergen Record]

  • More on suits against Victoria’s Secret over allegedly hazardous bras, thongs, and undergarments, including an aspiring class action over contact rashes [Heller/On Point News]

  • Supreme Court will review Navy sonar controversy, which we’ve long covered in this space [Adler @ Volokh]

  • Hope of legalized online gambling fades, and you can blame Republicans on Capitol Hill for that [Stuttaford, NRO “Corner”]

  • Disney said to be behind bad proposal to soak foreign tourists to fund visit-America promotions [Crooked Timber]

  • “Squishier than most”: Nocera on A.M.D.’s predatory-pricing antitrust suit against Intel [NYT]

  • Process serving company lied about delivering SEC witness subpoena and falsified later document, judge rules, awarding victim $3 million [Boston Globe]

  • Revisiting the false-accusation ordeal of Dr. Patrick Griffin, and how it relates to pressure to have needless chaperones at medical procedures [Buckeye Surgeon, Dorothy Rabinowitz Pulitzer piece]

  • Overlawyered turns nine years old tomorrow (more). Commenters: how long have you been reading the site? Any of you go back to its first year?

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Suit: it’s the manufacturer’s fault that I backed a lawn mower over my son

The manual for the L120 John Deere mower reads:

DANGER: ROTATING BLADES CUT OFF ARMS AND LEGS

· Do not mow when children or others are around.

· Do not mow in reverse.

· Look down and behind before and while backing.

· Never carry children even with blades off.

Read On…

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Ticketed? Stall ’em

Wired magazine (May) carries this bit of advice from attorney David Brown, author of Beat Your Ticket:

3. Stall. Two weeks before your trial, request a continuance from the court clerk. The longer you delay, the more likely the officer won’t be able to attend, which should result in a dismissal if you ask for one.

Question: is it ethical to advise clients to ask for continuances with the purely tactical aim of increasing the burden on an opponent, as opposed to the more aboveboard reasons one might have for such a request?

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June 29 roundup

  • New FASB regulation may provide fodder for trial lawyers: publicly disclose your internal analysis of liability (thus giving away crucial settlement information and attracting more lawsuits), and/or face lawsuits when your disclosure turns out to be incorrect. [CFO.com; CFO.com; NLJ/law.com ($); FASB RFC]
  • NBC settles a “You-made-me-commit-suicide-by-exposing-my-pedophilia” lawsuit. [LA Times; WSJ Law Blog; Conradt v. NBC Universal]
  • A victim of overwarning? 17-year-old loses hat on Six Flags Batman roller-coaster ride, ignores multiple warning signs to jump multiple fences into unauthorized area, retrieves hat, loses head. [FoxNews/AP; Atlanta Journal-Constitution; TortsProf]
  • Lots of Ninth Circuit reversals this term, as per usual. [The Recorder/law.com]
  • A no-Twinkie defense doesn’t fly in a maid-beating case. [CNN/AP via ATL]
  • The Chinese government demonstrates that it can enforce laws against IP piracy when it wants to [Marginal Revolution]
  • “Justice Scalia said he thought that the United States was ‘over-lawed,’ leading to too many lawyers in the country. ‘I don’t think our legal system should be that complex. I think that any system that requires that many of the country’s best minds, and they are the best minds, is too complex. If you look at the figures, where does the top of the class in college go to? It goes into law. They don’t go into teaching. Now I love the law, there is nothing I would rather do but it doesn’t produce anything.'” [Telegraph]
  • Above the Law commenters decidedly unimpressed by my looks. Looking forward to feminists rushing to my defense against “silencing insults.” [Above the Law]

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Social life of a blogger; guestblogger thanks

Off-topic: Commentary magazine, with which I go way back, and Alarming News threw a pleasant cocktail get-together for New York City political bloggers last night at a bar on Avenue A and 13th (around the corner from the first place I ever lived in New York). I met most of the attendees listed here, along with some others not listed including Fallen Sparrows and the mysterious proprietor of opera blog An Unamplified Voice.

Also, in case it was not clear, I’ve now completed the writing project for which I took the week off. Many thanks to Andrew Grossman (Heritage Foundation) and Jim Copland (Manhattan Institute) for filling in in my absence.

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Shoemaker slammed with Seidel-subpoena sanction

Our source describes it as “quite a slapdown” by the judge, good news for bloggers who may have been feeling chilled by the now-celebrated subpoena aimed by Virginia vaccine attorney Clifford Shoemaker at investigative blogger Kathleen Seidel, who had criticized him. (Neurodiversity, Jun. 23; ruling in PDF at Public Citizen, which defended Seidel; Orac, Citizen Media Law Project, Bug Girl).

I’m proud to note that I helped break the story in April and have posted regular updates since then.

Not directly related, but also of note from Kathleen Seidel’s blog: you’re not going to believe what some attorneys consider a source of credible evidence when pressing claims in the government’s Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (Jun. 13).

P.S. Comments take issue with its being “quite a slapdown”, and suggest that it was more like a slap on the wrist.

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