Historians are disturbed over a “royalties claim being brought by the heirs of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s minister of propaganda, against the publisher Random House Germany.” A book being published this month quotes from Goebbels’s diaries, and scholars are worried of precedent being set which would not only entitle heirs to profit from war criminals’ writings, but also give them approval authority over the usage of excerpts, which could lead to permission being traded for more sympathetic treatment. Goebbels committed suicide during the last days of the Nazi regime. [Matthew Reisz, Inside Higher Ed] “Maybe history needs a Son of Sam Law” [@KenSherrill on Twitter]
Archive for May, 2015
“Justices say addicts can sue doctors, pharmacies for addiction”
West Virginia: “A state Supreme Court ruling says juries can decide if residents who have broken the law by obtaining and using prescription painkillers can sue physicians and pharmacies for their addictions.” [Chamber-backed W.V. Record]
“How jury duty almost turned me into an anarchist”
Matt Welch’s experience being called for a civil jury [Reason] I, and this site, get a mention; I’ve had multiple reports of people bringing my books with them to the courthouse so as not to be picked for a jury. And I wrote for Reason about the jury selection process a while back.
More: In a followup post, Welch quotes passages from my 2003 article and confirms that, alas, the same practices are going on today, at least in New York City: the rigorous exclusion of jurors with any expertise or familiarity with difficult technical issues, and independent-minded people likely to be “thought leaders”; the avid efforts to plant preconceptions about the facts and issues of the case and extract individual “promises” of favorable votes, with no judge present; and so forth. There were hopes the round of reforms introduced by then-Chief Judge Judith Kaye some years back would clean up New York’s awful voir dire (jury selection) process, but clearly it hasn’t. Much less nonsense tends to go on in jury selection if the judge is present, and a key to the awfulness of New York voir dire — and its empowerment of lawyers — is the judge’s absence. Plus: Ilya Somin weighs in.
Buy our protective services, or we’ll rat you out to the feds
I’ve got a new post at Cato summarizing dramatic new testimony in the case (briefly noted here last year) of a laboratory company that got reported to the Federal Trade Commission for data breach — and drawn into a crushingly expensive legal battle — after it declined to buy data security services offered by a company with Homeland Security contracts. The battle has been raging for a while, with the nonprofit Washington, D.C. group Cause of Action representing LabMD and outlets like Mother Jones running coverage unsympathetic to its case.
Police and law enforcement roundup
- The magic of immunity: DEA commandeered truck for fatal sting, but doesn’t owe owner even the cost of bullet holes [Houston Chronicle, Radley Balko, Scott Greenfield] More: Lowering the Bar.
- Federal takeover of local policing is a truly bad idea [Glenn Reynolds, USA Today; Elizabeth Price Foley]
- Some of government’s worst messes come when there’s bipartisan agreement, as with lack of police accountability [Coyote]
- “Is Rakoff the Only Judge Not In Love with DOJ?” [Matt Kaiser, Above the Law on Judge Jed Rakoff’s “Mass Incarceration: The Silence of the Judges,” New York Review of Books]
- San Antonio cop “held his wife and children at gunpoint, striking his wife in the head with his gun, and had a 20 minute standoff with police before surrendering” but will keep law enforcement officer license [Cato National Police Misconduct Reporting Project, “worst case” for February] “Arbitrator says Cleveland police officer who sexted crime victims, visited women on duty, should keep job” [Cleveland.com, with a related series including “Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson says arbitration process keeps bad cops on police force“]
- “We Should Be Wary of Federal Body Camera Funds” [Matthew Feeney, Cato, related from Feeney here, here, and here] More on bodycam programs from several points of view: Uri Friedman via Althouse, Bloomberg editors (anti), Alex Tabarrok, Radley Balko;
- Those ATF sting operations were even more exploitative and predatory than imagined [Balko, earlier]
Amtrak crash: #toosoon to trawl?
From attorney Larry Bodine’s Twitter account, two hours after last night’s crash of Amtrak’s Northeast Regional outside Philadelphia that left six dead and more than 65 injured:
The link in his tweet leads here, to a page at PersonalInjury.com with his branding.
P.S. Dean Weitzman of Silvers, Langsam & Weitzman, P.C.’s MyPhillyLawyer.com wasted little time in getting out a press release offering the firm’s services [Philadelphia mag]
Prof. Laurence Tribe flayed for arguing business side in SCOTUS cases
And critics such as lawprof Tim Wu in the New Yorker aren’t ready to accept as an excuse the genuineness of Tribe’s belief in the argued-for positions [John Steele, Legal Ethics Forum] Perhaps the idea is that strong lawyers — like cartoonists? — have an obligation not to “punch down,” whether or not justice in a given case is on the side of the putatively less empowered party.
I’ve got an extensive discussion of law professors’ real-life litigation involvements in my book Schools for Misrule.
In California law enforcement news…
Authorities in southern California are doubtful about a private fraternal group’s claim of lawful right to wield police jurisdiction over 33 states and Mexico, even though one of its promoters happens to be a deputy director for community affairs in the office of real-life California Attorney General Kamala Harris. “A website claiming to represent their force cites connections to the Knights Templars that they say go back 3,000 years.” [Los Angeles Times] As I’ve often noted about the phenomenon I call “folk law,” just as fantasies about living in past ages never seem to involve being a serf oneself, but always being Cleopatra or a Viking raider, so fantasies about alternative orders of legal legitimacy tend toward giving you the right to arrest other people, rather than vice versa.
May 13 roundup
- “Lawyers Won 10x Fee Payoff By Avoiding Competition, Objector Claims” [Daniel Fisher, Center for Class Action Fairness on Capital One TCPA settlement]
- DMCA surprise: “Automakers are supporting provisions in copyright law that could prohibit home mechanics and car enthusiasts from repairing and modifying their own vehicles.” [Mike Masnick, TechDirt; Pete Bigelow, AutoBlog]
- Comments deadline May 19 on proposed Indian Child Welfare Act regulations; American Academy of Adoption Attorneys files comments warning they go beyond statute, will harm kids [related group, earlier and general]
- Asbestos lawsuits are “economic engine” of rural Edwardsville, Ill. [Associated Press]
- Chicago pays damages to victims of police torture, suggestively labeled “reparations” [Sandhya Somashekhar, Washington Post, thanks for quote]
- Court dismisses pro se litigant’s handwritten “God v. gays” complaint for lack of basis for federal jurisdiction, other predictable deficiencies [Volokh, Lowering the Bar and followup]
- “Starbucks not liable in police coffee-spill case, jury decides” [WRAL, earlier]
“You’re a great lawyer… I mean, it says so right there on your website.”
Counsel’s Ninth Circuit arguments on behalf of copyright troll Prenda Law did not go well, to put it mildly. Trouble was evident even before Judge Pregerson commented, regarding the clients, “They should have asserted the Fifth Amendment because they were engaged in extortion.” [Ken at Popehat; Joe Mullin, Ars Technica] More on the Prenda Law saga here.