A federal judge has dismissed the airline’s suit against pilots seeking to reclaim pension outlays arising from what it said were paper divorces followed by remarriages to the same spouse. Still pending are the pilots’ suits against Continental for wrongful dismissal and invasion of privacy stemming from the airline’s investigation of the episode. [ABA Journal; earlier here and here]
Archive for 2009
Getting Overlawyered posts in your Outlook inbox
I’m not a Microsoft Outlook user, but this advice from Volokh.com sounds as if it should work for this site as well.
Copyrighting currency?
C’mon, Canada [Coleman; originally Eric Johnson, Pixelization]
“Milan Prosecutors Request Jail Sentence for Google Executives”
Bloomberg reports that the trial in Italy is going forward
on charges related to a clip uploaded to Google Video in 2006.
The clip was created and posted on the Web by a group of students at a Turin school, who filmed themselves bullying a disabled classmate. Google says that it removed the video as soon as it was notified and that it helped Italian police identify those responsible. The trial has been closed to the media at Google’s request.
“Seeking to hold neutral platforms liable for content posted on them is a direct attack on a free, open Internet,” Google spokesman William Echikson said in June.
More: AP.
That nice person friending you on Facebook
Just might be a police investigator. [Radley Balko, LaCrosse Tribune, Patrick at Popehat]
Jerry Brown’s “toxic clothes” crackdown
Rick Woldenberg talks back to the California attorney general, and also raises some questions about Proposition 65 and the finances of the freelance enforcers in the case, the Center for Environmental Health (CEH). Two years ago we covered CEH’s crusade against the iPhone. More: Darleen Click/Protein Wisdom and a followup from Woldenberg.
“Red Hat Club” author loses suit over portrayal
A Hall County, Georgia jury has awarded $100,000 in damages to a woman who said that a character in the best-selling novel “The Red Hat Club” was recognizably based in part on herself, and was falsely portrayed as an “alcoholic slut.’ The lawsuit also named New York-based St. Martin’s Press (which, I should mention, is the publisher of my own book The Rule of Lawyers). [Gainesville Times, OnPoint News, decision in PDF]
More: Fulton County Daily Report (per defense counsel, jurors “were essentially instructed that, in Georgia, modeling a fictional character after a real person is a strict liability offense.”)
“How Litigators Tried to Sneak a Pet Earmark into Health Reform”
The Progressive Policy Institute (!) criticizes a provision almost snuck into the health-care bill that would have been a windfall for trial lawyers at the expense of the rest of us. Earlier and earlier on Overlawyered, which was the first to publicize the provision.
November 24 roundup
- “California’s Largest Cities and Counties Spent More Than $500 Million in Litigation Costs in Two Years” [CACALA]
- Violence Policy Center blames handgun carry permits for offenses that include … strangulation? [Sullum]
- New allegations in New York school district lawyers pension scandal [Newsday]
- Plush doll twade dwess dispute made Tonstant Weader fwow up [Schwimmer]
- “School Hit With a Lawsuit over Dodgeball Game Injury” [FindLaw “Injured”, Bronx]
- Too bad judges are so reluctant to sanction lawyers for filing papers that contain false assertions [Coleman]
- Hundreds of asylum clients could be deported after law firm founders are convicted of fraud [ABA Journal]
- Congratulations to superlative juryblogger Anne Reed, picked to run Wisconsin Humane Society [Deliberations; also Turkewitz]
Coshocton pulls WiFi
An Ohio town discontinues its municipal WiFi network after MPAA lawyers rattle swords about a copyrighted movie that moved through the system. Andrew Moshirnia at Citizen Media Law explains. And (h/t reader CTrees) note that the town turned the system back on at Sony’s request, following a national outcry over the incident.
And at least somewhat relatedly: “Viacom’s top lawyer: suing P2P users ‘felt like terrorism'” [ArsTechnica]