And now police have charged mom with a felony. [AP/Hartford Courant]
Archive for October, 2009
Buried on page 1431: Potemkin tort reform
Commentary’s Jennifer Rubin notices:
A friend points out a little nugget of absurdity and political mendacity in the Pelosi health-care bill. Remember Obama’s effort to try a “test” for tort reform? (We don’t actually need a test, since it has worked to lower medical malpractice coverage and help increase access to doctors in states that have tried it.) Well, Pelosi’s bill has an anti-tort-reform measure. On pages 1431-1433 of the 1990-page spellbinder, there is a financial incentive for states to try “alternative medical liability laws.” But look — you don’t get the incentive if you have a law that would “limit attorneys’ fees or impose caps on damages.”
In other words, Congress is providing a financial incentive to uncap damages. Marvelous.
A new mass tort, at the cash register?
Concern is raised over bisphenol-A (BPA) in printed cash register receipts [Gordon Gibb, Lawsuits and Settlements] Adds reader Rogers Turner: “Brilliant…what does almost every single person in the U.S. touch multiple times a day?”
Breaking: $16.6 M award in “Hold your wee” case
A Sacramento jury has told a radio station to pay $16.6M in the “Hold your wee for a Wii” contest death [Radio Online, earlier here; via Bill Childs, TortsProf].
Hallowe’en costumes at the deposition
Boston lawyers recall a very strange sexual harassment lawsuit in which the defendant’s CEO “wore a different Halloween costume to each day of his [six-day] deposition”. [Zach Lowe, AmLaw Daily]
Anti-reform incentives in House health bill
Jennifer Rubin at Commentary has the scoop on how the bill’s language will reward states financially if they do not “limit attorneys’ fees or impose caps on damages”. P.S. And see Ted’s fuller treatment above.
“Disbarred Seattle attorney sues state bar association”
“A Seattle civil-rights attorney who was disbarred earlier this month after the state Supreme Court unanimously found that he had gouged some clients and bullied others into unwanted settlements has sued the Washington State Bar Association, claiming its investigation was rife with errors and conflicts of interest.” [Seattle Times]
October 30 roundup
- Annals of discrimination lawsuits: a Tennessee cop contests his firing [Chattanooga Pulse]
- New book on lawsuits against universities: Amy Gajda, “The Trials of Academe: The New Era of Campus Litigation” [Harvard University Press via Stanley Fish, NYT]
- Bernard Kerik’s bail revoked because he used Twitter to promote a website put up by his friends flaying the prosecution? [Scott Greenfield] Plus: More complicated than that, says Bill Poser in comments;
- Another big setback for birther litigation [Wasserman/ Prawfsblawg, Little Green Footballs, earlier]
- “I won’t be able to function,” says Missouri woman after judge rules her monkey is not a service animal [On Point News, Molly DiBianca] More: service ferret gets owner kicked out of North Carolina mall [DigTriad]
- Eleventh Circuit agrees that U.S. cannot prosecute criminal defense lawyer Ben Kuehne for money laundering charges for having written opinion letter saying untainted money was available for legal fees [WSJ Law Blog, coverage (and update) at Scott Greenfield’s site, Miami Herald]
- One for the Coase Theorem literature? Cranky neighbor forces closure of famed South Carolina recording venue [Ribstein]
- Hallowe’en is safe [BoingBoing, earlier on Pennsylvania town’s trick-or-treating ban] “Toronto schools: Hallowe’en insensitive to witches” [four years ago on Overlawyered]
“Troubling signals on free speech”
In “a little-publicized October 2 resolution … [the U.S.] State Department joined Islamic nations in adopting language all-too-friendly to censoring speech that some religions and races find offensive, notes Stuart Taylor, Jr.’s new column for National Journal. Legal academics, including some who have gone on to join the Obama Administration, have sketched out doctrines indicating “how the resolution could be construed to require prosecuting some offensive speech and how it could be used in the long run to change the meaning of our Constitution and laws… In my view, Obama should not take even a small step down the road toward bartering away our free-speech rights for the sake of international consensus.” More: Reason, Jonathan Turley/USA Today. And (h/t comments): A Monday statement by Secretary of State Clinton is being widely greeted as reaffirming a free-speech position, but Taylor is not convinced that it undoes the damage. Nor, it seems, are Eugene Volokh and Ilya Somin.
P.S. What Rick Brookhiser told the Yale Political Union about that cartoonless Mohammed-cartoons book from Yale University Press [NRO] And here’s word that in the U.S., liberal church denominations will ask the FCC to probe conservative broadcasters [Jeffrey Lord/American Spectator]
Soupy Sales, 1926-2009
The comedian once served as an expert witness on pie-throwing. [Danny Jacobs/Maryland Daily Record, CAAFlog via Legal Blog Watch; L.A. Times]