From the United Kingdom: “Foreign squatters given legal aid to fight eviction from £1 million house… as its British owner has to represent himself in court” [Daily Mail, back in February]
Archive for July, 2011
“Proposed plan would keep lawyer misconduct secret”
“Under the proposed rule change [at the Iowa Supreme Court], lawyers suspended for stealing from clients, drug and alcohol problems, and neglecting important cases could hide what they did and resume practice without clients ever knowing what ethical violations they committed.” [Des Moines Register, more]
“Happier than a tick on a fat dog”
A Kentucky judge’s colorfully worded order is grist for my latest post at Cato.
July 29 roundup
- Don’t: “Lawyer Disbarred for Verbal Aggression to Pay $9.8M Fine for Hiding Cash Overseas” [Weiss, ABA Journal]
- Loser-pays might help: “Dropped malpractice lawsuits cost legal system time and money” [Liz Kowalczyk, Boston Globe]
- “Kim Kardashian and the Problem With ‘Celebrity Likeness’ Lawsuits” [Atlantic Wire]
- Kim Strassel on the Franken-spun Jamie Leigh Jones case [WSJ]
- Peggy Little interviews Prof. Lester Brickman (Lawyer Barons) on new Federalist Society podcast;
- Worse than Wisconsin? “Weaponizing” recusal at the Michigan Supreme Court [Jeff Hadden, Detroit News]
- New York legislature requires warning labels for sippy cups [NYDN]
“How Campaign Finance Laws Made the British Press so Powerful”
My Cato colleague John Samples detects a perhaps intended consequence of the imposition of regulations that stifle political speech other than that conveyed by the institutional press. More: Paul Sherman, Make No Law (Institute for Justice blog).
“Lawyer Up. Get A Lawyer In 15 Minutes”
Mitchell Rubinstein at Adjunct Law Prof is distrustful of a lawyers-on-tap service.
Fla.: police can be sued for releasing drunk
Better lock ’em up? A Florida appeals court has reinstated a lawsuit against the city of Boca Raton over its police department’s decision to release from police custody a highly intoxicated 24-year-old, Christopher Milanese, who then walked onto railroad tracks and was fatally struck by a train. [South Florida Sun-Sentinel; opinion courtesy Leagle]
Happy Meals and Campbell’s Soup
This week has brought one nudge forward and one push back for the paternalistic “food policy” crowd, or so I argue in a new opinion piece for the New York Daily News (& welcome Instapundit/Glenn Reynolds readers, Center for Consumer Freedom “Quote of the Week“).
An end to impunity
The Lawsuit Abuse Reduction Act (LARA), versions of which have been discussed in this space for years, would reverse the 1993 gutting of Rule 11, the federal rule providing sanctions for baseless lawsuits, and would thus establish that lawyers, like other professionals, should expect to be responsible for compensating those they injure by negligence or worse. Early this month LARA won the approval of the House Judiciary Committee, but is unlikely to prevail (this term, at least) in the more Litigation-Lobby-friendly Senate. [Stier, ShopFloor; earlier here, etc.]
“Go sue yourself”
A brief history of auto-litigation [John G. Browning, Southeast Texas Record]