- Torquay, England: cops to give flip-flops to drunken women exiting nightclubs to reduce high-heel trip/fall risk [Daily Mail]
- Mumbai attack introduced new terrorist tactics, expect to see them employed elsewhere [John C. Thompson/National Post, Bill Roggio] Heroic hotel employees [Reuters] Twitter, Flickr come into their own as breaking news sources during attacks [TechCrunch]
- “15 ways to get more out of Pandora” [Lifehacker h/t @lilyhill]
- NYT covers legal difficulties of pursuing pirates (but we did get to the story first) [NYT]
- Interview with Eve Tushnet [Norm Geras via Ann Althouse]
- “Dear @barackobama – thank u 4 another email with ‘donate’ at the bottom. Pls note my future donations will be called ‘taxes'” [@JerseyTodd]
- Pictorial tour of America’s ugliest motel [Lileks] At the time people were duly impressed. What equivalents are we building today?
Author Archive
Livery car liable for passenger’s later crash
Massachusetts: “A livery company and its driver are liable in a fatal car accident caused by a drunk passenger after he left the livery van, the state’s highest court ruled yesterday. … The court said [the hired driver] should not have dropped off a drunk passenger at a location where he would probably get into a car and drive.” (Denise Lavoie, “SJC rules livery firm negligent in crash”, AP/Boston Globe, Nov. 27).
November 29 roundup
- Disturbing implications from Lori Drew case of criminalizing website “terms of service” [Kerr @ Volokh and more; earlier]
- Not quite what lawprof proponents of the class action format had in mind? Proposed law in South Korea “would allow businesses who suffer financial losses due to violent public protests to file class actions” against protesters [Korea Times via Karlsgodt, Class Action Blawg]
- BlockShopper retains high-powered First Amendment attorney to fend off Jones Day’s don’t-blog-about-us suit [Ambrogi; earlier here, etc.]
- New filings in pro wrestlers’ labor suit against WWE [Schwartz; earlier here and here]
- “Brits Propose Potential Life Sentence for Johns” [Balko, Reason “Hit and Run”]
- Narrowing “fair report” privilege, N.J. appeals court decides reporters can be liable for publishing defamatory allegations in court filing, while lawyers still immunized when they put those allegations there [Feral Child, Media Law, CT Blue; Salzano v. North Jersey Media Group, PDF]
- It’ll be hard to live up to some of the high praise for my new web project with Heather Mac Donald, John Derbyshire, Razib Khan et al, Secular Right [D.R. Tucker, Human Events “Right Angle”; some other reactions]
- Late in catching up on this, but Target in August agreed to pay $6 million to settle the big lawsuit over accessibility of its website to blind users [The Recorder; Ben Duranske discusses implications for virtual online worlds]
India
In our thoughts.
Chicago’s gun control defiance
How strange to think that the Supreme Court’s writ would stop at the borders of Cook County, Ill. (Steve Chapman, “Chicago defies forgotten 2nd Amendment”, Chicago Tribune, Nov. 27).
Breathalyzer readings are racist
Well, at least that’s one theory cited by a DUI defense lawyer on behalf of his Connecticut client. (Defending PeopleA Public Defender, Nov. 20, via Above the Law)(blog misattribution corrected).
“Man With Apple Hovering In Front Of Face Sues René Magritte’s Estate”
Humor, from The AppleOnion (Nov. 27).
Blog comments sections…
…are not meant to further anyone’s marketing campaign, okay? So don’t be surprised if your promotional URL gets scissored off your comment, or the comment itself gets deleted if its primary purpose appears to be promotional.
And if, worse yet, you’re actually paying a service to go around planting comments of this sort, consider whether there might be better uses of your money.
“White Line Fevers From Mars”
From the annals of fevered pro se cases, a lawsuit filed by Kent © Norman [sic], which advanced various confused legal theories including that then-President Ronald Reagan had caused Norman’s “civil death without legislation”; it also asked that parking tickets be forgiven. An Oregon federal court dismissed the case in 1982 for failure to prosecute, noting in its opinion, among many other oddities:
There is included in the file a process receipt which bears the “Received” stamp of the Supreme Court of the United States. On this form are the notations, apparently written by the plaintiff, “Taxes due” and “D.C. Circuit was green” as well as “Rule 8 … Why did you return my appeal form? Why isn’t the ‘1840’ W. 7th mailbox still next to the 1830 one?” and “Something suspicious about that mailbox.”
(Lowering the Bar, Nov. 26; Norman v. Reagan, 95 F.R.D. 476 (D. Or. 1982).)
“Jury convicts mom of lesser charges in online hoax”
“A Missouri mother on trial in a landmark cyberbullying case was convicted Wednesday of only three minor offenses for her role in a mean-spirited Internet hoax that apparently drove a 13-year-old girl to suicide.” Numerous critics had assailed the prosecution of Lori Drew as based on overbroad criminalization; we covered the controversy here, here, and here. (Greg Risling, AP/Buffalo News, Nov. 26).