Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press have submitted an amicus brief in the case, urging the New Hampshire Supreme Court to uphold the website’s position on First Amendment grounds. The popular site Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter had published a New Hampshire Banking Department document containing information about a private company; that company proceeded to sue the site demanding that the document be taken down, and also demanded discovery of how the document had come into the site’s possession. Earlier here.
Author Archive
On a bench, “Caution: Seats may become wet”
Britain’s Daily Mail has a pictorial feature on superfluous warning signs (via Free-Range Kids). Another peril to watch out for: “uneven surfaces” on beach sand.
Annals of legal marketing
Our “law firm would be happy to discuss your rape case with you during a free consultation” [The Briefcase, Ohio law blog; original, posted by a Boston law firm, Jan. 2008]
While we’re at it, Above the Law spots a San Antonio lawyer whose advertising leaves something to be desired in the tastefulness department; and Patrick at Popehat enters into communication with the Twitter account @SueEasy (more on which) with lively results.
“If you keep track of what you’re taking, none of this is an issue for you”
An FDA panel’s recommendation to withdraw Vicodin, Percocet, and other opioid-plus-acetaminophen painkillers seems calculated to “sacrifice the interests of consumers who follow instructions for the sake of consumers who don’t”, says Jacob Sullum. ER blog Crass-Pollination has some thoughts as well.
“Man Burned at Burning Man Assumed Risk of Injury”
“Get too close to the Burning Man fire and you assume the “obvious and inherent” risk of being burned, a California appeals court has ruled in dismissing a personal injury lawsuit against the operators of the iconic countercultural arts festival.” [OnPoint News, ruling in PDF, Bob Egelko/San Francisco Chronicle, Shaun Martin/California Appellate Report (sees ruling as expanding scope of existing California assumption-of-risk defense), Michael Krauss/Point of Law (hails ruling), Lowering the Bar]
Overlawyered turns 10
Ten years ago — July 1, 1999 — I put up the first post in this space. You can read the first fifteen days’ worth of posts here.
Thanks for the congratulations and kind words that have been coming in:
- Patrick, Popehat: “Here’s to ten more years for Overlawyered. And may your name never be featured there.”
- Scott Greenfield, Simple Justice: “That’s 10 years of holding lawyers’ feet to the fire. Thank you!” [Twitter]
- Social-media champion Kevin O’Keefe, of the LexBlog empire: “Don’t always agree, but inspired me to blog.” [Twitter]
- Eric Turkewitz of New York Personal Injury Law Blog has an exceedingly generous post that notes my interest in linking to views from across the conventional divide. I hope I succeed in living up to his high praise.
- Carter Wood, NAM “ShopFloor”: “the Web’s single most effective puncher-of-holes in the excesses of the litigation industry”.
- Ron Miller, Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog: “You always feel like you are getting his thoughtful views as opposed to a knee jerk ‘party platform’ opinion.”
- David Bernstein, Volokh Conspiracy: “I think it was the first legal blog, and I know it’s still one of the best.”
- Cathy Gellis (Statements of Interest): “Blog so old he used to post with typewriter and carbon paper ;)”
- Robert Ambrogi, Law.com “Legal Blog Watch”: “That is a full decade of chronicling the abuses and excesses of the litigation system, of commentary that is consistently cutting and wry. I may not always agree with Walter Olson, but I sure as heck always read him.”
- Mickey Kaus, Slate “Kausfiles”: “The high process costs of litigation are what lawyers — for obvious reasons — habitually leave out of their let’s-have-notice-and-a-hearing-for-everything reasoning. One thing Olson does is to put them back in.”
- And more: Doctor Wes of the eponymous blog [Twitter], Steven Cohen’s LibraryStuff, Spada (U.K.) Swordplay, Wise Law Blog (Toronto), Milwaukee Federalists, Ron Coleman/Likelihood of Confusion, and Christopher Robinette at TortsProf.
“Court: Discriminate — with discretion”
I’m in today’s New York Post with a second take on yesterday’s Ricci (New Haven firefighters) case. Link thanks: Instapundit, Damon Root/Reason “Hit and Run”. My first take on the decision, at Forbes.com yesterday, is linked here.
A fortune in his coffee cup?
Annals of bounty-hunting: “A recent ruling on an obscure, century-old statute has opened the door for people familiar with the finer points of patent law to sue companies that stamp their products with expired patent numbers.” Washington, D.C. patent attorney Matthew Pequignot “noticed the patent marks on the lid to his daily cup of coffee, did some research and found that the lid’s maker, Solo Cup Co., was continuing to claim patent protections for disposable lids that had expired nearly 20 years ago.” So he’s sued Solo and E.D. Va. federal judge Leonie Brinkema has allowed his case to go forward, ruling that the requisite harm to the government is satisfied because the government’s laws against “false markings” were violated. (A federal judge in New York, however, ruled differently on the harm-to-government issue in a recent case with similar facts.) Pequignot has offered to settle the Solo suit for $9 million and has sued Gillette on similar theories; the bounty-hunting law allows claimants to keep half of the recovery.
Pequignot, for his part, says he does not expect an avalanche of false markings lawsuits, despite the fact that [attorney Raymond] Stauffer and some others have already followed in his footsteps. He said that, even as a patent attorney, it took him many hours of research to be able to file his lawsuit.
[AP/Fort Wayne Journal Gazette via ABA Journal; Sheri Qualters, NLJ]
Lawprof’s bias suit cites curriculum, panel imbalance
Catching up with a story from a while back: a law professor at Oklahoma City University, Danne Johnson, has filed a federal lawsuit accusing the university of discrimination. Per this account six months ago in The Oklahoman, the lawsuit sounds as if it will raise issues of wider interest. It is apparently based at least in part on the handling of an October 2007 memo by four OCU law professors alleging, in The Oklahoman’s words, “sexual harassment, pay disparity and insensitivity”:
The female professors also complained the OCU law school has no regular civil rights course, criminal law classes don’t cover rape, and the landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade is only covered sporadically in constitutional law.
The memo was sparked by two incidents: the alleged sexual harassment of two female professors at Dean Lawrence Hellman’s home in July 2007 and the all-male panel chosen for a Constitution Day program in September 2007. …
The memo notes the lack of women on a faculty appointment committee, which regularly included two university professors who are “openly hostile” to the idea of giving special consideration for women and minorities.
According to The Oklahoman, Johnson’s lawsuit cites as indicative of the university’s discriminatory stance that its general counsel, William J. Conger, “indicated the issues raised by Johnson and the other professors were misunderstandings or ‘cultural’ issues, rather than legal issues” (via Secunda/Workplace Prof Blog).
Big firms as patent trolls
Lawyer-driven entities with no manufacturing side are not the only ones making exorbitant demands for the use of marginal patents, critics charge (via). Related: Encyclopedia Britannica versus GPS systems.