Lowering the Bar on the complaint in a San Francisco trip-fall case:
Sure, you could write “plaintiff tripped on the curb,” but that almost makes it sound like it might have been plaintiff’s fault. Writing instead that “the curb disrupted the motion of plaintiff’s foot” makes it clear that the curb was the bad actor here. …
The curb’s co-defendant, Gravity, settled before trial.
Because, as the magazine explains, “Those states do not allow operation of a skill contest that requires an entry fee.” Which results in the following rather awesome disclaimer (via Petapixel):
CONTEST IS VOID IN CUBA, IRAN, NEW JERSEY, NORTH KOREA, THE PROVINCE OF QUEBEC, SUDAN, SYRIA, VERMONT AND WHERE PROHIBITED.
Rubbing it in a bit about the unfreedom, no?
Sony Pictures has decried the suit as frivolous:
In Midnight In Paris, Gil Pender, the disillusioned Hollywood screenwriter played by Owen Wilson, says, “the past is not dead. Actually, it’s not even past. You know who said that? Faulkner. And he was right. And I met him, too. I ran into him at a dinner party.” The rightsholder[s] say the slightly paraphrased quote could “deceive the infringing film’s viewers as to a perceived affiliation, connection or association between William Faulkner and his works, on the one hand, and Sony, on the other hand.”
David Olson, a professor of law at Boston College (and no relation), disputed the notion that a license was needed just because the movie was intended to make a profit. “Commercial use isn’t presumptively unfair” he said. He said no one watches “Midnight in Paris” as a substitute for buying “Requiem for a Nun.” [Deadline.com, Washington Post]
P.S. “Is the complaint written in Faulknerese?” [@jslubinski]
“[An] unnamed company … had filed a suit, under seal, to challenge aspects of the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s new public database. The federal district court found for the company earlier this week, ruling that the agency’s attempt to publish an incident report on the database about the company’s product was arbitrary and capricious, and an abuse of discretion. See Company Doe v. Tenenbaum, No. 8:11-cv-02958 (D. Md.10/9/12).” [Sean Wajert] I covered the CPSC’s problematic safety-complaints database last year in a Cato post and in Overlawyered posts here, here, etc.
C-SPAN has the speech here. From Blog of Legal Times coverage:
Giuliani said at the Chamber’s Legal Reform Summit that almost every year he was mayor, the city’s tort bill for hospitals was $300 million because of all the malpractice lawsuits. “I would have to say without even worrying about being contradicted that half of that and more was just absolutely phony claims because we have a tort system in new York that is completely unfair, completely biased,” he said. …
As an example, Giuliani cited the case of a man who was fleeing from the police when he tripped on a pothole and became paralyzed. The man recovered a $70 million dollar settlement, he said. The number was reduced to $4 million–but it still made him the richest man his prison, he said.
With Hurricane Sandy bearing down, I expect that power and connectivity may be a challenge for me over the next few days, so I’ve set up a number of items to post automatically at Overlawyered. Be aware that comments moderation may be much slower than usual, depending on my access to communications.
Snags for the D.C. subway system [Washington Post via @andrewmgrossman]
The first shipment of the new [SmarTrip card] machines did not have the audio and Braille features required under the Americans with Disabilities Act. But Metro thought it could roll out the machines and add the audio and Braille a couple of months later. When disability advocates raised concerns, Metro realized that going forward would violate the ADA, and the transit agency halted the rollout.
So nearly three weeks after every station was to have its own SmarTrip card dispenser, riders at nearly half of the stations in the Metrorail system are out of luck if they need to buy a card.
Riders who stay with paper Farecards are charged an extra dollar a trip.
I opine on the federal school lunch (and breakfast, and after-snack, and weekend and summer and vacation-feeding) program as part of a mini-symposium on food policy arranged by Baylen Linnekin at Reason. The account of New York’s surplus of school-feeding over science-education specialists is here. Related from Linnekin: “10 Federal Food-Policy Issues Obama and Romney Should Discuss.”
Also on school lunches: Calorie cap not so welcome for poorer kids ill-fed at home [Bettina Elias Siegel] And from Falun, Sweden: “Lunch lady slammed for food that is ‘too good’.” [The Local]