Lowering the Bar “Best of 2008”

The legal humor site has nominated its favorite stories of 2008. Among them:

Judge denies Indian tribal immunity to supposed “Wampanoag Nation” that turns out to have been “founded in an Arby’s restaurant in Provo in 2003“;
Colorado inmate hurt in attempted breakout claims state failed to make jail “reasonably escape-proof” (earlier);
Australian parliament so rowdy that lawmakers asked to submit to periodic breath tests;
EU issues noise protection rules setting decibel limit on playing of bagpipes (earlier);
German lawmakers debate giving babies the ballot by reducing voting age to zero.

Filed under: Australia, Germany, Indian tribes

Stole money from clients, now practices without license

81- year-old Manhattan attorney Bertram Brown was banished from the legal profession but authorities allege he’s continued to practice under three different aliases since his disbarment. (NY Post).

Filed under: ethics, NYC

University of Michigan dental student $1.7 million award

We briefly mentioned this recent jury award in our roundup this morning (other coverage: AP, Michigan Daily) and now a commenter refers us to this rather extraordinary (if unsuccessful) motion for summary judgment by the university (PDF) that sheds some light on the problems plaintiff Alissa Zwick was having with her dentistry education, and the demands she made for accommodation under disabled-rights law. The verdict includes $1 million in punitive damages against defendant Dr. Marilyn Lantz, an associate dean.

Filed under: colleges and universities

January 6 roundup

Griffin Bell, Carter AG dead at 90, was (among much else) respected Democratic voice for litigation reform [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]
“700,000 squiggles”: historic NY high court crackdown on trial lawyers’ pothole map [NYT; D’Onofrio v. City of New York slip op h/t reader Andrew Barovick; way back, City Journal]
Judge gets off pretty easy after her drunken crash into cop car [Hartford Courant via ChicTrib] Connecticut’s wild-n-crazy judiciary [Courant]
Follow the rules and seat Burris: National Journal quotes me in its bloggers’ poll [Illinois Senate appointment]
Legal history moment: Statute of Anne, 1710, turned copyright law into force for liberty [Cathy Gellis]
Blind editorial squirrel finds acorn: NY Times editorial on Calif good-Samaritan liability not half bad [yes, NYT]
“Win yourself a $50,000 bounty by busting a patent” [Forbes]
Dental student dismissed from University of Michigan wins $1.7 million from four profs, argued that claimed academic deficiencies were just ruse [ABA Journal]

Filed under: colleges and universities, Connecticut, copyright, Good Samaritan, NYC, patent quality

“Suing Cold Medication Manufacturers Because Drug Dealers Make Drugs out of the Medication”

If it seems like a far-out idea — suing legitimate makers of cold and allergy medications containing ephedrine and pseudoephedrine because underground labs use them to make meth — be aware that it’s actually been tried, by public officials in the Midwest, often working closely with ambitious private contingency-fee lawyers. The Eighth Circuit has just rejected one such case in Ashley County v. Pfizer; Eugene Volokh and commenters discuss.

Filed under: pseudoephedrine, regulation through litigation

Grim portent on Madoff clawbacks

In the Bayou case, the most notable recent case of massive investment fraud, lawyers had some success going after investors who’d pulled money out of the fund before its collapse — but according to Bloomberg News, quoting investor lawyer Carole Neville, $20 million of the $33 million they recovered went to pay legal fees. The piece quotes law professor Lynn LoPucki, now of Harvard, being scathing on the subject: “Bankruptcy trustees ‘spend huge amounts of money trying to get money from some investors and give it back to other investors,’ LoPucki said. ‘The incentive of the trustee and the lawyers is to churn, to bring lots of cases, spend lots of time and charge lots of fees.'”

Filed under: bankruptcy, securities litigation

Caching glitch resolved?

After tinkering with some of the file and cache issues I should have handled more carefully during the WordPress upgrade, I may have succeeded in solving the problem reported by many users of a front page frozen at Jan. 3. It may be necessary to do a forced-refresh (SHIFT click reload page) to produce the current page. If this still doesn’t work for you, please let me know in comments or email.

Filed under: about the site

Are you seeing a Jan. 3 version of our front page?

Many readers are reporting that their Overlawyered front page is stuck on the Jan. 3 version, although they can still navigate to posts like this one through, say, Google or RSS. The front page displays correctly for me (including its more recent posts) in Firefox, but when I try it in Safari it returns the Jan. 3 version readers are complaining about (at a moment just before I upgraded to WordPress 2.7).

Just to make matters more confusing, the site’s RSS feed seems to have slowed down but not frozen; at the moment the most recent Overlawyered post in my Google Reader is from the early hours of this morning, which means several more have failed to appear in the feed.

Reports, comments and explanations would be welcome, including those from IE users. I wonder whether I made some mistake in copying cache files in replacing the old install with the new, in such a way as to freeze the site in some browsers but not others.

Securities law webcast tomorrow

Has there been a more dramatic year than 2008 in the securities-law world since the 1930s? I’ll be among the participants tomorrow (Tuesday) afternoon at 2 p.m. Eastern in the first of an ongoing series of webcasts on a new “Securities Litigation and Enforcement Channel” being launched by prominent securities-law blogger Bruce Carton. It’s free, but registration is required: details here. I’ll be the relative amateur, with the other seats at the table held by some very highly qualified observers of the securities law scene: Lyle Roberts (The 10b-5 Daily), Kevin LaCroix (D&O Diary), Francine McKenna (re: The Auditors), and Thomas Gorman (SEC Actions), as well as Carton (cross-posted and updated from Point of Law, where I do most of my blogging on the subject).

Filed under: securities litigation

More on “KopBusters” sting

Last month we noted the controversy about a video purportedly showing police misconduct caught on hidden tape, namely the raiding of a fake “drug house” in Odessa, Texas without probable cause. Orin Kerr @ Volokh writes that it’s looking increasingly likely that there’s less (or more) to the story than meets the eye, and that many bloggers’ initial assumption of police misconduct was too hasty.

Filed under: illegal drugs, police