Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Archive for August, 2016

Jury convicts Pennsylvania Attorney General

“Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane was convicted Monday of perjury, obstruction and other crimes after squandering her once bright political future on an illegal vendetta against an enemy.” Kane has thus far refused calls to resign from office, although her law license has been suspended [Philly.com] We’ve covered her ethical travails for some time, which included this excerpt from a post two years ago:

Pennsylvania attorney general Kathleen Kane dropped a longstanding corruption “sting” probe that had snagged several Philly officials. The Philadelphia Inquirer raised questions about her decision in its reporting, which contributed to a public outcry over the episode. Then Attorney General Kane brought a prominent libel litigator with her to a meeting with the Inquirer editors, and that lawyer announced that Kane was exploring her options of suing the paper and others that had reported on the matter, and that he was going to do the talking for her.

That was extraordinary behavior for a sitting public official — and, as we now know, indicative that underneath the bad appearances were some bad realities.

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Wage and hour roundup

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“Why is a dog such a liability bomb?”

Daniel Fisher looked into the issue of dog bite liability after a utility worker’s suit charged him with failure to confine his dog (which was in fact confined by an electric fence) setting off a scramble at insurance renewal time to find a way both to keep his house insured and not lose his beloved pet.

Why is a dog such a liability bomb? Blame lawyer-friendly state laws that make it almost impossible to contest a dog-bite claim, especially when there are only two witnesses to the incident and one of them isn’t talking. Dog bite claims now account for a third of homeowners’ insurance liability payouts, according to the Insurance Information Institute, at more than $530 million a year, up more than 75% since 2003. Some of the most devastating claims don’t even involve bites: A $100,000 “dog bite” claim might stem from someone running from the dog and tripping in your driveway. Dog-human contact is not required.

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OSHA: unlawful for employers to have rule requiring drug tests after accident

Jon Hyman, Ohio Employer’s Law Blog:

Buried in OSHA’s impending final rule on electronic reporting of workplace injuries and illnesses is this little nugget. OSHA believes that you violate the law if you require an employee to take a post-accident drug test. Let me repeat. According to OSHA, you violate the law if you automatically drug test any employee after an on-the-job accident.

Allow me to pause while this sinks in.

The agency concedes that employers might still lawfully do some post-accident testing on a case by case basis so long as they are willing to develop evidence pointing to, e.g., a given employee’s drug use as an accident cause. Of course it is precisely such effectively accusatory, singling-out testing that is most likely to provoke litigation for having unfairly cast suspicion on an individual employee.

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Free speech roundup

  • New, much-anticipated documentary Can We Take a Joke? When Outrage and Comedy Collide [on demand, Greg Lukianoff] More on the fining of comedian Mike Ward by the Quebec Human Rights Tribunal [Guardian, earlier]
  • “It is not ‘freedom of the press’ when newspapers and others are allowed to say and write whatever they want even if it is completely false!” [@donaldjtrump Sunday on Twitter] 25 years ago in my stump speech on lawsuit reform I criticized Trump for his use of legal threats to silence critics. More reportage on that history, a familiar topic around here [Frances S. Sellers, Washington Post, earlier here, etc.]
  • Eighth Circuit: Nebraska regulators improperly retaliated against financial adviser over (inter alia) his criticism of Obama [Eugene Volokh]
  • Nine senators (Boxer, Durbin, Franken, Markey, Reid, Sanders, Schumer, Warren, Whitehouse): we demand 22 right-of-center think tanks open their donation records to us [Carolina Journal]
  • “Copyright infringer issues bogus DMCA over someone calling him out. Then denies all of it” [Mike Masnick, TechDirt]
  • Lawsuit demanding R ratings on films with “tobacco imagery” deserves to be hit with SLAPP sanctions; “suing the MPAA to force censorship raises the stakes.” [WSJ Law Blog, Scott Greenfield]

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Guestblogger archive week: V

Daniel Schwartz, of the law firm of Shipman and Goodwin, writes the Connecticut Employment Law Blog, long on my reading list. Some highlights of his visit: “After setting fires, firefighter wants job back” (Erie, Pa.); man jumps from train, then sues (“If you guessed that alcohol would somehow be involved, you are correct”); and recurring arguments of the durably demagogic “pay equity” debate. [archive / Twitter]

Jason Barney, a claims investigator and insurance professional in the Northwest, has guestblogged for us several times, some high points being a case of drunken equestrianism; aide to politician fails to secure Pennsylvania workers’ comp benefits after panel rules that “media criticism of him did not constitute ‘abnormal working conditions'”; man sues 1-800-FLOWERS after it sends him a thank you note for buying flowers for his mistress, which note wound up in the hands of his wife [archive]

Peter Morin, Boston-area land use lawyer, joined us over two stints to discuss an ethics complaint by a Rhode Island woman against two lawyers she said sidled up to her and pitched her services as she was standing at her dead son’s casket; whether an offer to send text messages to the NBC game show “Deal or No Deal” in hopes of winning a prize was an unlawful lottery for which participants should be permitted to seek damages; and a classic Massachusetts judicial opinion about liability for “a fish bone lurking in fish chowder.” [archive]

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I’ve worked my way less than halfway through the list and have missed many superb talents as well as many of my best friends, so there’s room for me to come back another time should I repeat this idea. Those I missed include guestbloggers Hans Bader, James Copland, Steven Erickson, Andrew Grossman, Keymonk, Kip Esquire, Steven Hantler, Dave Kopel, Jim Leitzel, Jeff Lewis, Leah Lorber, Warren Meyer, Skip Oliva, Victoria Pynchon, Gerald Russello, Greg Skidmore, SSFC, and Kevin Underhill. Participant-blogger Ted Frank, a lawyer of many interests best known these days for his efforts on class action reform, contributed between 2003 and 2010; his posts are archived here. I’m not sure why anyone would want to check out my own archives, but if you do, they’re here.

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