Archive for February, 2010
Loss-of-a-chance doctrine?
As part of a class action settlement agreeing to offer more same-sex date matching, eHarmony has allotted $500,000 to persons who can show they were harmed by its failure to offer it before. [San Francisco Chronicle, earlier]
Trademark case drags on after nearly 25 years
TTABlog reports on the oldest pending case before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board.
Update: Sacramento’s Squeeze Inn
These are the last few days to visit the oddball eating establishment before it moves to more conventional and less cramped quarters precipitated by an ADA lawsuit [Sacramento Bee]
KALW and free lawyers in deportation cases
I give an interview to KALW on the question, a question I’ve written about at length.
“Cleveland police no more grasp the 4th Amendment than they do the Rule Against Perpetuities”
Russ Bensing reports on the Ohio criminal-law scene.
UT hassling Longhorn users
IP lawyers for the University of Texas are busy creatures, according to Eric Johnson:
A couple years ago, they sued an outfit making t-shirts, sold to fans of rival Texas A&M, that depicted a broken Longhorns logo with the taunt, “Saw ’em off.” (Fellow UT alum Siva Vaidhyanathan’s take is here.)
And I remember when I was going to school at UT, in the early 1990s, the university was hassling local business with “Longhorn” in their names. Since then, UT has been very aggressive about trademark issues.
Yet all this activity has not really been as much of a profit center as you might think: the cost of running the IP program, Johnson calculates, may eat up something on the order of half the $800,000 in annual royalties brought in (via Ron Coleman).
By reader acclaim: great moments in “targeted disabilities”
The federal government is seeking applicants who are mentally ill, mentally retarded or both to work as lawyers in the Justice Department. Specifically, a job announcement for “up to 10 experienced attorneys for the position of Trial Attorney in the Voting Section in Washington, D.C.” contains the following language:
The Civil Rights Division encourages qualified applicants with targeted disabilities to apply. Targeted disabilities are deafness, blindness, missing extremities, partial or complete paralysis, convulsive disorder, mental retardation, mental illness, severe distortion of limbs and/or spine. Applicants who meet the qualification requirements and are able to perform the essential functions of the position with or without reasonable accommodation are encouraged to identify targeted disabilities in response to the questions in the Avue application system seeking that information.
[via Eugene Volokh and many others]
£300 billion worth of long memories
Ugandans sue Britain over crimes during a 1893-1899 war [Telegraph]
Stripper: getting tipsy was part of my job (update)
Patsy Hamaker, who in 2007 had an alcohol-related one-car wreck on the way home from The Furnace (NSFW link, unless you work some place that approves of stripclub websites) and sued her employer over the accident, claiming that the club encouraged her to drink, won $100,000 from a Jefferson County, Alabama, jury, somewhat less than the $1.2 million she sought.
Hamaker, whose stage name was Tessa, went to work at The Furnace on Oct. 17, 2007. She drank enough that night for her blood-alcohol content level to rise to nearly three times the legal limit, was pulled by security from one of the VIP rooms, and then left after at least three attempts to stop her, according to testimony during the trial. Her car wrecked on the interstate, and she suffered a broken nose and back.
…
The club’s records show a customer bought Hamaker one “dancer drink,” a commission drink or bottle ranging in price from $12 to $2,500. The club did not have a record of other drinks she may have [ordered on her own].
…
Attorneys for the Furnace pointed out that dancers can specify their preference for non-alcoholic or diluted dancer drinks. And the club’s general manager, Jennifer Etheridge, testified that she does not want dancers getting intoxicated. Asked why, Etheridge said: “You try working with 30 drunk people.”
(Erin Stock, “Former stripper gets $100,000 in lawsuit: Blamed club for drunken wreck”, Birmingham News, Feb. 2) (h/t P.E.).