Kathleen Parker [Washington Post/syndicated] on the Sierra Pacific/Moonlight Fire case, in which judicial findings of misconduct by the state of California have now mushroomed into allegations that the U.S. Department of Justice was party to a fraud on the court. Sidney Powell, author of “A License To Lie,” has been calling attention to the case for a while.
Archive for 2014
December 18 roundup
- Michael Greve reviews new James Buckley book offering critique of fake (“cooperative”) federalism under aid-to-state programs [Liberty and Law; Chris Edwards/Cato on Buckley book, more]
- Cuban expatriates will now have access to US banking services. Next step: call off Operation Choke Point so domestic businesses can have it too. [earlier coverage of Choke Point including its effects on, yes, cigar shops; details on new relaxation of Cuba sanctions, and related effects of banking sanctions]
- Sac and Fox tribe appeals ruling in favor of town of Jim Thorpe, Pa. on demands for disinterment and return of remains of athlete Jim Thorpe [Allentown Morning Call, my recent writing on the case here and here]
- NFL owners “rarely settle any dispute… Each owner pays only 1/32nd of the legal bill, and the owners love to fight” [ESPN]
- Adios Google News: Spanish press “not even waiting for the blood to dry on the hatchet before bemoaning the loss of their golden eggs” [Julian Sanchez, Cato]
- Union official knew New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman was going to sue pizza operator before the operator did. Hmmm [Kevin Mooney, Daily Signal]
- Nevada goes to ridiculous lengths unsuccessfully trying to regulate airport taxis, but at least they’ll try to keep you from using ride-sharing, so that’s something [Blake Ross, Medium; Reuters]
Jim Hood, a go-to guy for Hollywood?
Who’d have guessed that movie studios would entrust populist Mississippi Attorney General and longtime Overlawyered favorite Jim Hood with a key role in pushing their rights as copyright owners against online services and search engines? Not I [Eli Lehrer, Weekly Standard] More from Mike Masnick at TechDirt: “it appears the MPAA and the major Hollywood studios directly funded various state Attorneys General in their efforts to attack and shame Google.” Related: The Verge.
Sequel: Google goes to court to block a sweeping subpoena from Hood [ArsTechnica, HuffPost (Hood: “salacious Hollywood tale”)] “One of Hood’s letters critical of Google, published earlier this week by The New York Times, was ‘largely written by lawyers for the movie industry,’ the company points out.” More: Hood vs. Google, from our archives.
Best of Overlawyered — January 2014
A few highlights from January:
- Who killed traditional Edison light bulbs? “Government did it, at the request of big business.”
- Never saw that one coming: “Psychic Love Spell Center stole my money, lawyer alleges in lawsuit”
- Border agents vs. musical instruments;
- Britain considers criminalizing “emotional blackmail“;
- One of the U.S. Supreme Court’s most celebrated and important tort reform decisions came 50 years ago, you might not guess it at first;
- Mass patent asserter sent 16,000 demand letters to businesses, got 17 of them to pay;
- Maker of Candy Crush Saga asserts trademark rights against various makers of games using the word “Saga”;
- Lawyer defending police in Australia says court cannot rule out the possibility that man Tasered by officer may have been screaming in “joy”;
- Lawyer’s BMW jumps curb and pins 6-year-old twins against wall, his court filing says they “placed themselves in a position of danger“
- “Taxpayer Scores $862,000 from IRS after Tripping over a Phone Cord.”
“Tell them I went rogue and (you) had no idea and you immediately fired me”
The Costa Mesa, Calif. police union scandal breaks wide open with new court papers shedding light on the conduct of a law firm representing the union. [Orange County Register] Two private investigators hired by the law firm called in a fake DUI on the town’s mayor and attached a GPS to a councilor’s car to track his movements, according to the county district attorney’s office. [Daily Pilot] We’ve been covering the scandal for more than two years here, here, and here.
More: union gumshoes alleged to have set honeytrap for opposing councilmember. [Matt Coker, OC Weekly] It’s like Costa Mesa Confidential!
P.S. And yet more from the “playbook”: “keep the pressure up till that person assures you his loyalty then move on to the next victim.” [Steven Greenhut, San Diego Union-Tribune (“Yes, ‘victim'”)]
Banking and finance roundup
- House Oversight Committee report finds evidence FDIC used Operation Choke Point to strangle access to banking for lawful but disliked businesses [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Bloomberg, report, Kevin Funnell, HalfWheel (cigar shops), Pete Kasperowicz, The Blaze (guns), Joe Adler/American Banker (critical views)]
- “Fallout for the S.E.C. and the Justice Dept. From the Insider Trading Ruling” [Peter Henning, NYT DealBook, on challenges to previous cases; earlier]
- Congress finally trims Dodd-Frank, with a nose hair clipper. Imagine what Sen. Warren will say if it takes up a scalpel or axe [Michael Greve; but see A. Barton Hinkle defending Warren’s position; Matt Levine (“not worth caring about”)]
- Did tax policy set out to make life tough for American expatriates, or does it just seem that way? [Neil Gandal, WSJ on FATCA, FBAR, etc.]
- “Like other federal agencies, the SEC has long been good at publicizing its initial accusations of wrongdoing …not so good at letting the public know when those accusations turn out to be unfounded or an overreach” [Russell Ryan via Bainbridge, more on SEC press releases on enforcement actions]
- A market with next to no entry: “If Primary Bank, Mr. Greiner’s proposed firm, wins approval, it would be only the second new bank the FDIC has cleared in the U.S. since 2010.” [WSJ]
- “The only people who benefit from shareholder litigation over M&A deals are lawyers. Period. End of discussion.” [Stephen Bainbridge; related, Steve Bradford via Bainbridge (“Delaware’ entire fairness standard morphs into a tax on deals for the benefit of plaintiff lawyers”), earlier here, etc.]
Fewer professors willing to teach rape law
Because, says Harvard Law professor Jeannie Suk, they’re afraid of upsetting students. [The New Yorker] Other views: Corey Yung, Concurring Opinions; Ann Althouse. More: Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic (trigger warnings, sensitive subjects generally).
Suit seeks to blame Newtown school massacre on gun suppliers
The new lawsuit by the prominent Connecticut personal-injury firm of Koskoff, Koskoff, and Bieder [news coverage: WSJ Law Blog, CNN] seeks to get around the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act by latching on to the law’s narrow exception for “negligent entrustment.” That’s not a reasonable reading of the law, and I argue in a new post at Cato at Liberty that courts should toss attempts like these to revive gun control through litigation, all the more so because legislative attempts to overturn PLCAA (as I discussed last year) are rightfully going nowhere.
Some out there seem to think it’s okay to use litigation as a way of lashing out against opponents, whether by way of a winning case or not:
Newtown families sue gunmaker for massacre http://t.co/ZmbbAqd0lL good for them even tho may be dismd at least they take a swing at them
— Danny Wash (@danwash) December 15, 2014
More: “The Sandy Hook Families’ Lawsuit Against Bushmaster Will Fail. Here’s Why.” [Bob Adams, Bearing Arms] And Eugene Volokh’s analysis breaks down the provisions of PLCAA and its interaction with the specifics of Connecticut law, concluding that “unless there is some evidence that the defendant manufacturers and gun sellers in this case violated some specific gun regulations (judgments actually made by legislatures), plaintiffs’ claim will go nowhere — and rightly so, I think.” Yet more: Steve Chapman.
Tweet-suing Chicago landlord sunk by class action
When Horizon, a large Chicago apartment building manager locked in a legal dispute with one of its tenants, chose to sue her over a disparaging tweet a few years back (more), one of the owning family’s members was quoted in the press as saying that “the suit was warranted and that Horizon is ‘a sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization,'” a comment for which the company subsequently apologized. You’ll never believe what happened next…
Nuisance, NIMBYs, and the non-living
Is a cemetery an objectionable land use, and does it matter if the neighbors’ objections are religious? [Gideon Kanner]