I’m in today’s New York Post with a second take on yesterday’s Ricci (New Haven firefighters) case. Link thanks: Instapundit, Damon Root/Reason “Hit and Run”. My first take on the decision, at Forbes.com yesterday, is linked here.
Archive for June, 2009
A fortune in his coffee cup?
Annals of bounty-hunting: “A recent ruling on an obscure, century-old statute has opened the door for people familiar with the finer points of patent law to sue companies that stamp their products with expired patent numbers.” Washington, D.C. patent attorney Matthew Pequignot “noticed the patent marks on the lid to his daily cup of coffee, did some research and found that the lid’s maker, Solo Cup Co., was continuing to claim patent protections for disposable lids that had expired nearly 20 years ago.” So he’s sued Solo and E.D. Va. federal judge Leonie Brinkema has allowed his case to go forward, ruling that the requisite harm to the government is satisfied because the government’s laws against “false markings” were violated. (A federal judge in New York, however, ruled differently on the harm-to-government issue in a recent case with similar facts.) Pequignot has offered to settle the Solo suit for $9 million and has sued Gillette on similar theories; the bounty-hunting law allows claimants to keep half of the recovery.
Pequignot, for his part, says he does not expect an avalanche of false markings lawsuits, despite the fact that [attorney Raymond] Stauffer and some others have already followed in his footsteps. He said that, even as a patent attorney, it took him many hours of research to be able to file his lawsuit.
[AP/Fort Wayne Journal Gazette via ABA Journal; Sheri Qualters, NLJ]
Lawprof’s bias suit cites curriculum, panel imbalance
Catching up with a story from a while back: a law professor at Oklahoma City University, Danne Johnson, has filed a federal lawsuit accusing the university of discrimination. Per this account six months ago in The Oklahoman, the lawsuit sounds as if it will raise issues of wider interest. It is apparently based at least in part on the handling of an October 2007 memo by four OCU law professors alleging, in The Oklahoman’s words, “sexual harassment, pay disparity and insensitivity”:
The female professors also complained the OCU law school has no regular civil rights course, criminal law classes don’t cover rape, and the landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade is only covered sporadically in constitutional law.
The memo was sparked by two incidents: the alleged sexual harassment of two female professors at Dean Lawrence Hellman’s home in July 2007 and the all-male panel chosen for a Constitution Day program in September 2007. …
The memo notes the lack of women on a faculty appointment committee, which regularly included two university professors who are “openly hostile” to the idea of giving special consideration for women and minorities.
According to The Oklahoman, Johnson’s lawsuit cites as indicative of the university’s discriminatory stance that its general counsel, William J. Conger, “indicated the issues raised by Johnson and the other professors were misunderstandings or ‘cultural’ issues, rather than legal issues” (via Secunda/Workplace Prof Blog).
Big firms as patent trolls
Lawyer-driven entities with no manufacturing side are not the only ones making exorbitant demands for the use of marginal patents, critics charge (via). Related: Encyclopedia Britannica versus GPS systems.
D.C. Metro crash client-chasing
Yes, the online ads are already up. Washington’s City Paper tracks down one California-based law firm marketer: “This is the only marketing I do — it’s the highest cost per click online. What else can you do, a young guy like me? I don’t want to do porn [sites].” According to one report via Twitter, “the Google ads are running on the WMATA Web site.” More: Maryland Daily Record (first suit filed); Eric Turkewitz. And Ron Miller, on the dilemma of the young man quoted above: “Dare I suggest this is a false choice? There has to be a third option after porn and train wreck chasing, right?”
Also: Overlawyered favorite Willie Gary is in the case.
Murdered girlfriend, blames Zoloft
Nebraska inmate Randall Robbins II is serving time for strangling his girlfriend and blames the antidepressant pill. He wants millions from Pfizer and a Lincoln doctor. [AP/Forbes]
Now up at Forbes.com: my reactions on Ricci
I’ve got an opinion piece up at Forbes.com on today’s Supreme Court decision in Ricci v. DiStefano, the New Haven firefighter reverse-discrimination case. The title: “Sued If You Do, Sued If You Don’t: Through the Looking Glass on Affirmative Action” (& link thanks to Ramesh Ponnuru, NRO “Corner”, Daniel Schwartz, Connecticut Employment Law Blog, Jon Hyman, Ohio Employment Law (to whom thanks for the kind comments as well), and Scott Greenfield, Simple Justice).
“Chambliss blocks regulatory pick over animal lawsuits”
Speaking of renowned Chicago law professors with reputations that cut across ideological lines: “Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) has blocked President Obama’s candidate for regulation czar, Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein, because Sunstein has argued that animals should have the right to sue humans in court.” [The Hill; mostly favorable coverage of Sunstein’s nomination and views at my other site, Point of Law].
Bar “linking to or paraphrasing copyrighted materials”?
Heads are still shaking over what would appear to be a non-satirical proposal from Judge Richard Posner:
…Expanding copyright law to bar online access to copyrighted materials without the copyright holder’s consent, or to bar linking to or paraphrasing copyrighted materials without the copyright holder’s consent, might be necessary to keep free riding on content financed by online newspapers from so impairing the incentive to create costly news-gathering operations that news services like Reuters and the Associated Press would become the only professional, nongovernmental sources of news and opinion.
More: Jeff Jarvis notices other dubious ideas on enforceable “exclusivity” floating about. And more thoughts from Carolyn Elefant at Legal Blog Watch and David Post @ Volokh.
UK library: no hot coffee allowed
An elderly club that had been meeting for four years every Tuesday at the Eye Library in Eye, Cambridgeshire, were told that they could no longer have hot tea or coffee at their meetings, lest it be accidentally spilled on a toddler. They’ve retreated to holding meetings in members’ homes. [Telegraph] Hat tip to F.R.