A former Bethlehem, Pa. city employee who “was charged with and ultimately pled guilty to harassment” after persistently bothering an ex-girlfriend co-worker has lost his wrongful-termination suit against the city, with the Third Circuit upholding its dismissal on summary judgment. [Eric B. Meyer]
Archive for November, 2012
Overlawyered makes the ABA Blawg 100 again
The ABA’s beauty contest/collection of notable law blogs is in its sixth year and once again we’ve been nominated, in the “Torts” category.
The News/Analysis category has the really tough competition, including Ken White at Popehat, Above the Law, and Volokh Conspiracy. Also, in other categories: Stephen Bainbridge’s Prof. Bainbridge, Scott Greenfield’s Simple Justice, Paul Caron’s TaxProf, Robert Ambrogi’s LawSites, and many others. And they’ve cited Jim Dedman’s excellent Abnormal Use blog, but I’m not supposed to mention that because it’s competing with Overlawyered.
Molly McDonough, Sarah Randag, and Lee Rawles of the ABA Journal describe all the various entrants, with links, here. There’s also a new Hall of Fame of perennial nominees and a Twitter list.
To vote for (or for that matter against) Overlawyered, you’ll need to register: do that here.
Environment roundup
- As wildlife policy goes wrong, it’s guano on the rocks for La Jolla [Matt Welch, language]
- Georgia-Pacific West vs. NEDC: “Millions of jobs at stake in logging case” [David Hampton, Wash. Times; Henry Miller, Forbes]
- Ontario environment ministry won’t investigate complaint of noise from neighbor’s basketball play [National Post, earlier]
- Maryland: Following state mandate, Howard County prepares to stifle farmland development without compensation [HoCoRising]
- Role of local government structure: “New England vs. Midwest Culture” [George Mattei, Urbanophile]
- More re: suits vs. utilities over Sandy outages [Bloomberg (Long Island), NJ.com] Pre-Sandy, NY pols kicked around Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) for decades [Nicole Gelinas/ NYP]
- “Reckless Endangerment: Global Warming in the Courts” [Michael Greve, Liberty and Law] Various interest groups have already locked themselves into EPA’s jury-rigged scheme to limit carbon emissions [Greve]
Must be a case for Child Protective Services
In Rockville, Maryland, a ten-year-old kid is riding the city bus [Free-Range Kids]
“Beware of sharks swimming in your office lottery pool”
“Lawsuits involving lottery pool winnings have been common enough to create a new set of case law, said Russ Weaver, a University of Louisville law professor. A cursory Google search shows some ‘Lotto lawyers’ across the country who specialize in such disputes.” [USA Today/AZCentral]
Foreign liquors that you can’t buy here
“There are many potential reasons, but a big one is a very simple regulation defining the volume of bottles legally permitted in the American market.” Our regulators allow the sale of alcoholic beverages in 750 ml bottles, but not in the 700 ml bottles standard elsewhere. So unless a foreign maker perceives enough potential in the U.S. market to set up a special production run with the required bottle size, its wares are unlikely to reach our shores. [Jacob Grier]
Prosecution and police roundup
- “‘Stand Your Ground’ task force offers no big changes to Florida law” [Orlando Sentinel, Tampa Bay Times]
- “Statutes of Limitations Apply Especially to Government Agencies” [Ilya Shapiro on Cato Institute amicus brief in Gabelli/SEC case] “The rule of lenity is violated when people go to prison for breaking ambiguous laws/regulations.” [Roger Marzulla, Federalist Society “Engage”]
- Sen. Rand Paul on the Missouri rabbit breeder case [Daily Caller]
- Mondale Act of 1974 (CAPTA) laid down basis for child abuse witch hunts [William Anderson, Agitator]
- Sententiousness vs. due process, plus a window into comments moderation at BoingBoing [Popehat] Background on State v. Fourtin [Gideon’s Trumpet first, second post]
- Massachusetts: “State’s Chemist Admits ‘Testing’ Drug Samples by Looking at Them” [Lowering the Bar]
- Plea bargaining: For Scott Greenfield, a showdown for justice at high noon turns into one of life’s little compromises [Simple Justice]
Evading CAFA, class action lawyers also put ethics at risk
The Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 aims to steer all but relatively small nationwide class actions into federal court, in part because lawmakers wanted to prevent plaintiff’s lawyers from exploiting the system by forum-shopping cases into state courts that might be biased or ill-equipped to prevent abuse. It therefore allows defendants to remove cases to federal court where the aggregate claim exceeds $5 million. To evade that limit, plaintiff’s lawyers have been proffering stipulations that disclaim (at least temporarily) any intent to ask for more than that sum, even when plausible theories of the case would suggest a larger potential recovery. If the ploy works, they get to stay in the favored state court, and in later stages of litigation they sometimes succeed in using various further tactics to shuffle off the supposed limit and ask for more than $5 million after all.
Aside from the end run it does around the intent of the statute, this practice raises serious ethical issues arising from the lawyers’ duty toward clients, including absent class members who may not even be aware of the suit, let alone in a position to second-guess tactical choices. Disclaiming damages above $5 million, in particular, may be helpful to the lawyer (by obtaining less stringent oversight of the manner in which the suit is prosecuted) yet harm some clients’ interest in obtaining the best recovery.
The U.S. Supreme Court will take up this issue in the spring, and the Cato Institute has filed an amicus brief (PDF) urging the Court to recognize the ethical problem and direct lower federal courts to grant removal where appropriate. Ilya Shapiro has more. Ted Frank at the Center for Class Action Fairness also filed amicus briefs on behalf of certiorari and on the merits; related.
Corrected by their own former lawyer
Floyd Abrams, famous for representing the New York Times in the landmark Pentagon Papers litigation, writes in to correct the paper’s faulty grasp of the Citizens United decision [NYT letter]
With gun and camera through darkest Kristof-land
The popularity of auxiliary home power generators is somehow proof that taxes should be higher? John Steele Gordon tries to parse a New York Times columnist’s argument. [Commentary]