Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

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Standing for trees to sue

Critics of Obama science czar (and sometime Paul Ehrlich-ite) John Holdren are noting that way back in the 1970s he had favorable words for law professor Christopher Stone’s notion of extending to trees and other natural objects a right to sue, a concept endorsed by none other than Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. This prompts a poetic flight from one of Jonah Goldberg’s readers at National Review Online:

I think that I shall always rue
The day a tree got rights to sue.

A tree whose hungry lawyer’s plea
Is filed on a contingency…

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“Revenge of the ‘Shoe Bomber’”

“I am at war with America,” says convicted shoe bomber Richard Reid, whose inmate litigation has been enjoying more success than one might expect. Reid has argued that his freedom of religion requires prison officials to permit him access to “group prayers” with co-believers; other jihadists are also housed at the federal prison in Florence, Colorado. Now federal prison authorities are considering moving him to a different facility [Debra Burlingame, Wall Street Journal]

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$1.6 billion tax break for plaintiff’s lawyers

According to the U.S. Chamber-backed Legal NewsLine, the litigation lobby is quietly preparing to push through a $1.6 billion (with a “b”) tax break that would let contingent-fee lawyers deduct expenses as made, rather than in the year of settling a suit. American Association for Justice lobbyist Linda Lipsen says Sens. Harry Reid and Max Baucus and Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Charles Rangel are among those on board, as well as “some Republicans”, but “the problem is there is not a tax vehicle yet,” — “You cannot have a stand alone bill to help lawyers … so we have to tuck it into something.” [cross-posted, and slightly adapted, from Point of Law; updates and additional links there]

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“The unique hell that is Massachusetts alimony law”

The Bay State’s law is seriously hostile to breadwinners, but also exceedingly vague, giving ex-spouses reason to contest and appeal every issue. Reform in the state legislature is perennially getting derailed by lack of lawyer support:

Guy Ferro, the Connecticut family law attorney, says they won’t [work against their own financial interest]. Indeed, when a committee of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers tried to draft alimony guidelines, other attorneys successfully pushed to spike that initiative. Ferro says the thinking was: “If a person can go to guidelines and plug in a number to show what they have to pay in alimony and for how long, what do they need lawyers for?”

[Boston Magazine via Above the Law]

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July 30 roundup

  • Federal judge throws out wrongful-termination suit filed by pants suit judge Roy Pearson, he’ll probably appeal [D.C. Examiner] More: Lowering the Bar.
  • Sebelius signs documents providing lawsuit immunity for swine flu vaccine developers [Orato]
  • How Sacha Baron Cohen keeps from getting sued, part umpteen [The Frisky]
  • More on British Chiropractic Association’s defamation suit against skeptic Singh [Citizen Media Law, Orac/Respectful Insolence; earlier here, here, and here]
  • Next round of lawsuits against Dov Charney’s American Apparel may allege “looks discrimination”, though that’s probably not actually a relevant legal category [Gawker, Business Insider, earlier here, etc.]
  • Demand that Chicago set aside municipal contracts for gay-owned businesses [Sun-Times]
  • “Grandstanding anti-Craigslist politicians still not satisfied” [TechDirt, TG Daily]
  • Judge Kozinski: this is America, behaving disrespectfully toward a cop isn’t a crime [Greenfield]

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“EU to Extinguish Lightbulb Art?”

This fall’s proposed European ban on incandescent bulbs, barbed with $70,000 fines, apparently makes no allowance for the upkeep of “works that take the lightbulb as a primary material, such as Laszlo Moholy-Nagy’s Light-Space-Modulator, which uses 140,” among works by Rauschenberg, Olafur Eliasson and a long list of other well-known artists. Another unpleasant effect on the art world will be to constrain the way installations can be lit, even if curators and others believe particular works are best served by incandescent illumination. [ARTINFO.com via Andrew Hazlett]

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