Not necessarily a line you want on your resume as a lawyer, especially if you practice with the respectable Detroit firm of Miller Canfield.
Author Archive
Donald Trump v. Tim O’Brien
Latest reports from the real estate figure’s defamation suit against New York Times writer Timothy O’Brien for allegedly underestimating his net worth. Our earlier coverage of the suit: Jan. 25, Feb. 12, and Mar. 12, 2006. (& welcome Adrianos Facchetti readers)
Small business, big business and regulation
Coyote has some thoughts on the tendency of market regulation to entrench bigger, more experienced companies at the expense of small:
I hate to admit it, but regulation in my own business (which I neither sought nor supported) has killed off many of my smaller competitors and vastly improved our company’s competitive position. It is no accident that the list of the largest companies in heavily-regulated Europe nearly never change, decade after decade, whereas the American list has always seen substantial turnover.
Or, put differently, CPSIA in its effects as a regulatory enactment is not so atypical as we might like to think.
Mencken on laughter in court
“The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail. If it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.” — H.L. Mencken (via Melissa Gomez). The excellent Yale Book of Quotations (Fred Shapiro & Joseph Epstein) says the quote is found in Mencken’s A Little Book in C Major, ch. 4 (1916).
Conference tomorrow: “Libel Lawfare”
From the Federalist Society, which is among the sponsors of the D.C. event tomorrow, along with the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression and other groups:
Lawfare is the use of the law and legal institutions to achieve military, political or strategic objectives. In recent years, lawfare has come to include libel litigation aimed at suppressing public dialogue about radical Islam and terrorism. Parties with financial means have been filing lawsuits, in American courts and abroad, against people who speak out against or write critically about radical Islam. Defendants include authors, researchers, journalists, politicians, and human rights advocacy groups.
“Libel Tourism,” is a form of forum shopping, where plaintiffs bring actions against American citizens in foreign jurisdictions that lack the free speech protections afforded by the U.S. Constitution. As a result New York State has passed the Libel Terrorism Protection Act, and the U.S. government is considering the Free Speech Protection Act, both of which operate to nullify said foreign libel judgments.
Our conference will address these fundamental issues: What does freedom of speech truly mean? Is U.S. legislation prohibiting the enforcement of foreign libel judgments necessary? What should be the role of the European Union and the United Nations in addressing these issues?
Some further reading: Brooke Goldstein/Family Security Matters, Aaron Eitan Meyer/New Majority.
Frontiers of disabled-rights law
Via Daniel Schwartz: in Connecticut, S.B. 114, a bill introduced into the legislature this year by labor committee chair Sen. Edith Prague (D-Norwich) would protect the right of learning-disabled workers not to be fired by their employers “for taking long meal periods and losing track of time”.
“Insane Man Who Killed His Mother Can’t be Her Heir”
“The Washington state Supreme Court has ruled that a criminally insane man who murdered his mother should not profit from his crime by pocketing a share of the proceeds from a lawsuit related to her death.” [Heller, OnPoint News; Joshua Hoge, Pamela Kissinger]
May 18 roundup
- Historic preservation and habitat preservation laws can backfire in similar ways [Dubner, Freakonomics]
- Serious points about wacky warnings [Bob Dorigo Jones, Detroit News]
- Texas solons consider lengthening statute of limitations to save Yearning for Zion prosecutions [The Common Room]
- A call for law bloggers to unite against content-swiping site [Scott Greenfield]
- Drawbacks of CFC-free pulmonary inhalers leave asthma sufferers gasping [McArdle, Atlantic]
- Try, try again: yet another academic proposal for charging gunmakers with costs of crime [Eggen/Culhane, SSRN, via Robinette/TortsProf] More/correction: not a new paper, just new to SSRN; see comments.
- California businesses paid $17 million last year in bounty-hunting suits under Prop 65 [Cal Biz Lit]
- Trial lawyer lobby AAJ puts out all-points bulletin to members: send us your horror stories so we can parade ’em in the media! [ShopFloor]
Great moments in jury deliberations
According to affidavits in a Texas case, one juror slept during deliberations, another “all but read” a newspaper account about the incident aloud to others, some used “personal feelings” to decide, and one juror “asked to be told how to vote so she could get out of deliberations.” An appeals court sustained the defendant’s conviction anyway; Colin Miller at Evidence Law Blog explains the legal logic, if that is the right word for it.
Mutual of Omaha vs. Oprah Winfrey
Their lawyers are locked in a dispute over who gets to use the phrase “aha moment”. [L.A. Times, Omaha World-Herald, Yakima Herald-Republic]