“One may sympathize with the family of Todd Jette, who was killed in an unsuccessful attempt to slide down a stair railing at Adobe Gila’s Bar and Grill in Dayton, Ohio. … One has less sympathy for the lawyers who have just filed suit on behalf of Jette’s estate, arguing that the restaurant was negligent for failing to save Jette from himself.” (Social Services for Feral Children, Dec. 9; “Greene restaurant facing lawsuit”, WHIO, Dec. 9; Kelli Wynn, Dayton Daily News, Dec. 13, 2006).
Archive for December, 2008
“Bumping” online item not republication for purposes of defamation law
Thus a New York lower-court judge has ruled (NYLJ).
More patent litigation sanctions
A trend? Following up on yesterday’s post about the camera and Medtronic cases: “A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Monday upheld an attorney fee award of nearly $17 million because of baseless filings and bad faith patent litigation by two drug companies. A district court awarded the fees to Takeda Chemical Industries, which had sued two generic drug companies — Mylan Laboratories and Alphapharm Pty. Ltd. — for patent infringement. …The district court agreed with Takeda that both companies lacked a good faith basis for their certification filings and had engaged in litigation misconduct.” (Marcia Coyle, “Panel Upholds $17M Attorney Fee Award, Cites Bad-Faith Patent Litigation by Drug Companies”, National Law Journal, Dec. 9).
Bad anonymous reviews for donut shop
Zebulon Brodie, the owner of a Dunkin’ Donuts on the Eastern Shore, “argued to Maryland’s highest court yesterday that the host of an online forum should be forced to reveal the identities of people who posted allegedly defamatory comments” about his eatery. The comments were posted at NewsZap.com. (Henri E. Cauvin, “Md. Court Weighs Internet Anonymity”, Washington Post, Dec. 9; Citizen Media Law, Dec. 11).
“Another ‘successful’ DUI roadblock”
Bakersfield, California: 3000 drivers stopped, no drunk drivers apprehended. “By the way, the Supreme Court carved out an exception to the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment for roadblocks — but only for apprehending drunk drivers,” not for other purposes such as catching drivers with lapsed licenses. (DUIBlog, Dec. 9 via LexMonitor).
Microblog 2008-12-09
- Everything that makes Chicago politics what it is: Gov. Blagojevich shook down a children’s hospital [Massie] Time to play Name That Goon: guess which statements are by Illinois governor and which by Tony Soprano [Daily Beast] The most closely watched Obama appointment is and should be the U.S. Attorney for Chicago [@patrickruffini]
- Many writers including me relied on UAW assertion that oft-heard $73/hour figure for GM compensation was misleading because it included vast army of retirees; but per one new paper, the number really does reflect only payments for currently active workers [James Sherk, Heritage] Contra, the New York Times sides with the original critique of the number [David Leonhardt]
- Green activists contact the authorities to report illegal logging, turns out to be beavers [OK!; Poland]
- Pride and Prejudice: the Facebook feed [DeeDee Baldwin]
- Economists invite volunteers to play game simulating investment behavior. Usual result? Bubbles & crashes [Postrel]
- “Watermelon smell”, “ferret odor”, “gasoline fumes”: Japanese site uses Google maps to track stinky locations [Japan Probe via Tyler Cowen]
- Subprime-implosion lawsuits haven’t gone well for plaintiffs, who’ve had trouble showing guilty state of mind [CCH Wall Street] But are things beginning to shift in their favor? [Frankel, American Lawyer]
- Nifty “Atlas of True Country Names” displays place names as their underlying meanings [Telegraph]
Excessive entanglement of press and state
One reason of many it’s a bad idea:
[Illinois Gov. Rod] Blagojevich, Harris and others are also alleged [in the federal indictment] to have withheld state assistance to the Tribune Company in connection with the sale of Wrigley Field. The statement says this was done to induce the firing of Chicago Tribune editorial board members who were critical of Blagojevich.
More: Eugene Volokh. Similarly: Patterico.
P.S.: “When the Tribune-owned Chicago Cubs wanted permission to install lights at Wrigley Field, Ald. Ed Vrdolyak let it be known it would require an end to editorial criticism of him. An editorial responded that the Cubs would ‘be playing morning games on a sandlot in Gary first.’ Vrdolyak — this will surprise you — is now headed for prison, another victim of Fitzgerald.” (Steve Chapman, Reason, Dec. 11).
“Thank goodness for especially greedy lawyers in high-profile lawsuits”
David Giacalone figures that at least the jaw-dropper fee cases serve one useful purpose: they remind judges, the public and the legal profession itself “that we really do have a ban on unreasonable fees and expense charges — we [lawyers] can’t agree on them, charge them, or collect them”. With discussion of the Coughlin Stoia/Coke, Lawrence v. Miller, and certain lawyers’ willingness to bill two clients full freight for the same hour on the clock. (f/k/a, Nov. 21).
Judge issues Rule 11 sanctions on camera infringement claim
“Frequent patent defendants say they’re hit by frivolous lawsuits all the time. But it’s very rare for a judge to find a patent lawsuit to be frivolous enough to grant sanctions and attorney’s fees.” Last week, however, a judge in Peoria issued Rule 11 sanctions against a company called Triune Star which held a patent on a certain type of GPS-using camera. The patent examiner had taken care to limit the patent to infrared cameras to overcome an obviousness objection, but the plaintiff’s lawyers — Keith Rockey and Kathleen Lyons of Chicago-based Rockey, Depke & Lyons — then proceeded to sue three big companies that had sold conventional cameras. A judge awarded the defendants reasonable costs and attorney’s fees, something defense lawyer Brian Rupp says has happened only a few times in the last decade. (Joe Mullin, Prior Art, Dec. 4 via TechDirt; Techdirt, Feb. 26 (Medtronic)).
December 9 roundup
- Go vote for Overlawyered now, please, in the ABA Journal best-blogs contest; some details on contestants in other categories;
- Update on “Got Breastmilk?” trademark dispute [Giacalone; earlier]
- Trauma patient is bleeding while you fumble to get the IV equipment out of its blister pack. Soon it’ll be even more complicated. Thanks OSHA! [Throckmorton] And where are the stand-up medical comedy routines?
- Arkansas Supreme Court’s handling of school finance litigation suggests it’s making it up as it goes along [Jay Greene]
- “Linux Defenders” is tech-firm consortium’s new effort to create “no-fly zone” protecting open-source system from patent trolls [Parloff, Fortune]
- Zero tolerance roundup: 10 year old who took $5.96 Wal-Mart cap gun to school arrested, fingerprinted, faces expulsion [11alive.com, Newton County, Ga.] Harford County, Md. mom, acting as chaperone on school field trip, “reached out to tap” third grader to shush him, now faces ten years if convicted of assault [ABC2News.com, Baltimore] Related: we’re too afraid of touch [Times Online] Teasing is bad for children and other living things. Really? Are you sure? [Althouse, NYT]
- Columnist has opposed bailouts and favored free market liquidation of uneconomic firms. Now that his newspaper faces bankruptcy, has he changed his mind? [Steve Chapman]
- Good way to suffer reputational damage: file a lawsuit claiming characters in movie “Dazed and Confused” were based on your own teenage selves [four years ago on Overlawyered]