Author signings are an important source of traffic for many small community bookstores, but the new California law discussed in this space last year could make them impractical. The bill requires that retailers provide witnessed certificates of authenticity for signed items of value, which must record extensive information on matters such as the size of the edition and price paid, all on pain of steep penalties. They must also retain the resulting paperwork for seven years and will be subject to bounty-hunting suits by “private attorney general” attorneys. The bill’s sponsor apparently did not realize it would apply to signed books. Now Pacific Legal Foundation is challenging the statute in a lawsuit on behalf of San Francisco’s Book Passage store, co-owned by lawyer Bill Petrocelli. [Anastasia Boden, PLF Blog]
Archive for May, 2017
Soon, tumbleweeds in E.D. Tex.? SCOTUS strikes at patent forum-shopping
This morning’s Supreme Court opinion in TC Heartland v. Kraft Foods, hinging on what I described in January as a dry point of statutory interpretation, is likely to stand as a landmark win for defendants in patent litigation – and, on a practical level, for fairer ground rules in procedure. A unanimous Court (8-0, Thomas writing, Gorsuch not participating) rejected the broad reading of a venue statute by which the Federal Circuit had empowered lawyers to forum-shop disputes from all over the country into a few decidedly pro-plaintiff venues, above all the largely rural Eastern District of Texas. From here out, defendants can still be sued in a district such as E.D. Tex. if they have a regular and established place of business in it, but the decision is likely to shrink what I called in my January preview a “jackpot patent litigation sector… that shifts around billions of dollar.” By redirecting cases into more neutral venues, it should bring outcomes closer to reflecting cases’ actual merits, which would in turn do much toward restoring confidence in this sector of the law.
If Congress believes the Court has erred it is free to restore patent venue to a more shopper-friendly set of rules. But after the experience of recent years, it is unlikely that a Congress of either party or any likely political complexion will have an appetite for doing that.
[cross-posted from Cato at Liberty] More: Mike Masnick, TechDirt; Daniel Nazer, EFF. [& welcome SCOTUSBlog, Washington Post readers]
Virginia mom arrested, charged over $1 gag-gift alarm clock
Daphne Page, 52, says she bought the “sticks of dynamite” novelty alarm clock for $1 at a garage sale and was going to give it to her daughter as a gag gift. After she left it in the back seat of her car at a grocery store, someone noticed it and raised an alarm which drew emergency fire and police response. “Page was charged with the manufacture, possession or use of explosives — a statute that includes the manufacture and possession of hoax devices.” [Ned Oliver, Richmond Times-Dispatch]
For one possibility as to what the clock might have looked like, there is a “bomb-like alarm clock” listed at Amazon Canada though not currently for sale (h/t Claudia C.). In the Virginia incident, assuming that Ms. Page’s account is accurate, the item would presumably not have been powered and turned on, and would thus not have been displaying any time numbers, blinking lights or the like. A similar object may have been involved in this Sonoma County, California incident last year in which emergency crews responding to what turned out to be unrelated fires at a mobile home complex ordered an evacuation after seeing the item in a bedroom.
While it is easy to see why lawmakers might seek to attach criminal penalties to pretend-bombs in some circumstances, it is less clear that charges are appropriate where there is no evidence of intent to use them to panic or threaten people. Posts on toy guns, including proposals for bans and for manufacturer liability, are here.
Food roundup
- “What’re You In For?” “Lemonade.” A Boston professor wants sugary drinks handled the same way as alcohol [my new Cato post]
- Hershey, many other firms sued over “slack fill” packaging by guy who wrote book entitled “Sue and Grow Rich” [John O’Brien, Legal NewsLine]
- What if we forced food to be more local? The unintended consequences might surprise you [Jayson Lusk]
- “Shaking up the Conventional Wisdom on Salt” [Michelle Minton, CEI, in January]
- Demands in U.K. to put “junk food” in plain packaging the way some countries require for cigarettes [Trevor Little, World Trademark Review] Another demand of U.K. anti-food campaigners: stop discounting and offering deals on snacks and candies [BBC]
- Missed from 2011: FDA vetoes culinary use of the subtle tonka bean, but is it actually any more toxic than nutmeg? [Ike DeLorenzo, The Atlantic]
Virtual rabbits fall victim to IP dispute
Their food source is snarled in litigation, so this weekend thousands of virtual rabbits in Second Life began to die. [Rock Paper Shotgun]
Class action: Box set of “all” James Bond films didn’t have all of them
A class action seeks money because a movie compendium whose promotional literature described it as containing “All of the Bond films gathered for the first time in this one-of-a-kind box set” lacked the 1967 David Niven spoof version of Casino Royale and 1983’s Never Say Never Again. The latter is sometimes denied canonical status by Bond-film buffs even though it stars Sean Connery, having been made by a screenwriter who had worked with Ian Fleming “to create the Thunderball story and was given the green light by a London court to make his own film after claiming co-authorship of the characters and elements.” MGM responds that a reasonable consumer would not have been misled because the box set package and its promotion list the films it includes. [Ashley Cullins, Hollywood Reporter]
Grad student to sue over portrayal in Laura Kipnis book
Laura Kipnis, who wrote a widely read article on the problems with the Title IX accusation process on campus and then herself had to fend off a Title IX complaint based on having written the article, is now being sued by the same Northwestern University graduate student who pursued the earlier Title IX complaints. The woman says she was portrayed under a pseudonym in Kipnis’s new book Unwanted Advances: Sexual Paranoia Comes To Campus and was unfairly characterized as, among other things, “litigious.” [Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Ed, Robby Soave, earlier on Kipnis]
Medical roundup
- “Apple Watch can detect an early sign of heart disease…. Apple has been communicating privately with the FDA for years about medical devices and so far the FDA has taken a light touch to Apple but these issues are coming to a head.” [Tyler Cowen]
- “[Investor] lawsuits targeting life sciences firms jumped 70 percent from 2014, according to a survey provided earlier this year by Dechert.” [Amanda Bronstad, New York Law Journal]
- Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad signs medical malpractice reforms into law [Brianne Pfannenstiel, Des Moines Register]
- Summing up what is known re: talc and ovarian cancer as background to jury’s $105 million verdict against Johnson & Johnson [BBC (in story’s second half), earlier here, here, and here]
- $5,300 for an MRI that would cost Medicaid $500? Personal attendants for crash victims, even the ones well enough to participate in mixed martial arts? All part of Michigan no-fault crash system [Detroit Free Press investigative series, see yesterday’s post]
- Dear D.C.: ditch the FDA deeming regs and let vaping save smokers’ lives [Jeff Stier/Henry Miller, NRO, Tony Abboud/The Hill (vaping trade association), Juliet Eilperin/Washington Post (FDA temporarily suspends enforcement)]
N.J.: “Drunken driver hurt in crash sues bars for serving him alcohol”
“Antonio Salomon-Merlino of Carlstadt claims in a lawsuit he drank several Tequila-based drinks at two bars before crashing his motorcycle in Lodi. He alleges he was visibly intoxicated but the bars served him anyway.” [NJ.com] “He was definitely intoxicated,” said his lawyer. “In addition to the businesses, Salomon-Merlino is suing the borough of Lodi for allegedly failing to keep Outwater Lane in good repair and free from hazardous or dangerous conditions.”
Image: Thomas S. on Flickr, reproduced unchanged, Creative Commons license.
Detroit Free Press investigates crash-claim abuse
“Detroit drivers face the highest average auto insurance rates in the country, often more than $3,000 a year for a single vehicle,” while residents of Michigan as a whole pay the third highest rates of any state. A Detroit Free Press investigation by J.C. Reindl and others “finds that runaway medical bills, disability benefits payouts and lawsuits under Michigan’s one-of-a-kind, no-fault insurance system play a key role in driving up costs.” One key difference: of the twelve states that mandate no-fault insurance, only Michigan provides for unlimited lifetime benefits.
Some findings from the series:
* “Ambulance chasing” and solicitation thrive notwithstanding laws intended to curb those practices. Despite privacy rules governing police reports and hospital admissions, for example, those involved in crashes are often solicited within hours, then signed up with law firms that later disavow any knowledge of solicitation. And how did an accident treatment clinic in suburban Detroit come to be owned by a California and Florida plastic surgeon noted for appearing on “The Real Housewives of Orange County” who seldom visited?
* While crashes in Wayne County (Detroit) declined from 72,227 to 50,548 between 2003 and 2015, “first-party” lawsuits — against one’s own insurance company for no-fault benefits — increased from 1,699 to 6,327 and negligence suits against other drivers from 2,527 to 3,435. Many “first-party” claims, of course, are paid without anyone filing suit, which is how no-fault law contemplated would be normal practice;
* Auto insurers have launched racketeering lawsuits aimed at proving forms of collusive fraud. Unlike many states, Michigan has no official watchdog charged primarily with combating auto claims fraud.
* “Defenders of the current system include the powerful Coalition Protecting Auto No-Fault, made up of trial lawyers, medical clinics, disability advocates and, until recently, the state’s hospital lobby.”
* Other states’ approaches to containing no-fault costs.