It started as a joke, but Bozeman, Mont. attorney Christopher Gillette is going through with the ambitious aquarium installation, whose saltwater inhabitants will include venomous fish as well as sharks. [Bozeman Daily Chronicle; AP/El Paso Times] In the 1980s the now well-known law firm of Bickel & Brewer adopted the snake exhibit at the Dallas Zoo. (Mark Donald, “Rambo Justice”, Dallas Observer, Mar. 19, 1998).
Author Archive
January 4 roundup
- Housekeeping service in Florida proclaims, “We Speak English”. So will they get sued? [Smerconish/Phila. Daily News]
- Update: Dad who long ago walked out on his family won’t get chunk of estranged son’s $2.9 million 9/11 fund benefit [NY Post (link fixed now); earlier]
- Did Illinois state’s attorneys advise Marine sergeant complaining of car vandalism that there wasn’t much point trying to recover from the suspected offender since he was a lawyer? [Blackfive via Zincavage and many readers; Kass/Tribune] And what kind of trouble might the lawyer be in if he suggested slipping the repair costs along to an insurer? [Patterico commenters, Goldberg/NRO Corner correspondent] More: Bainbridge.
- Not long after American Lawyer pronounces the demise of securities class actions, we learn they may be back on a cyclical upswing [August TAL; new Stanford Clearinghouse]
- If rising tide of outrage leads to abolition of peremptory challenges, many lawyers won’t have anyone to blame but themselves [Reed]
- Brooklyn judge’s presenting of box of candy to plaintiff among grounds for reversal of $14 million brain-damaged infant verdict [NYLJ]
- Yet more health privacy madness: “HIPAA is adversely affecting our ability to conduct biomedical research” [Reuters on JAMA study via Kevin MD; relatedly, Karvounis/HealthBeat]
- People kept tearing down no-swimming signs at much-used park in Bellingham, Wash., and you know what’s going to happen next without our having to tell you [AP/Seattle Times]
- Two Illinois judges in drunk-driving accident that broke other driver’s leg draw mere reprimand with “no consequences other than public embarrassment” [Post-Dispatch]
- Suit against Avvo lawyer-rating suit dismissed on First Amendment grounds [Seattle Times, Post-Intelligencer; earlier]
- Saves her friend’s life, then sues her [seven years ago on Overlawyered]
Divorce law in the Northeast
Prompted by our post of yesterday about Virginia lawyer-legislators, commenter Hans Bader at his own blog nominates New York, Massachusetts and New Jersey as examples of how bad matrimonial law can get: “the more lawyers are in a state legislature, the more unfair a state’s divorce laws tend to be”. (OpenMarket.org., Jan. 2). Plus: our family law archives are here.
January 3 roundup
- Surely not something 007 would do: judge reproaches Sean Connery and opponent neighbor over “slash-and-burn” litigation tactics in long-running townhouse dispute [NYLJ, NYTimes]
- Famed attorney Mark Geragos suing San Francisco Zoo on behalf of tiger maulees [AP/KPIX, Mercury-News, SFist]
- Clients, lawyers who formerly worked for it have many complaints ethical and otherwise about heavy-advertising San Diego law firm Pacific Law Center [Union-Tribune via San Diego Injury Board]
- Who knew the demanding workload of law students and federal-judge clerks left any time for (allegedly) tying up, robbing and torturing boyfriends? [Reynolds; Lat]
- The Scruggs et al prosecution continues to evolve and develop, but at present we haven’t much to add to the energetic threesome of sites that have been leading the news hunt [Rossmiller, Lotus/Folo, YallPolitics]
- UK man wrongly accused of rape will get public compensation, but minus a fee for bed and board at the prison [Daily Mail]
- Under Louisville’s new smoking ban, business owners are required to call cops if customers refuse to stop smoking inside [Catallaxy]
- Garry Wise takes issue with our comments on free speech in Canada, but we may be talking past each other since we never got to the question whether the proper fix is a motion by columnist Steyn to quash the dangerous inquiry [Wise law blog]
- Injury suits filed against little kids? “It does happen.” More on the Scott Swimm ski-collision case [L.A. Times/Chicago Tribune; earlier]
- Hope he’ll reconsider: David Giacalone says he’s weary of the legal-ethics beat he’s covered so well, and intends to leave it behind [f/k/a]
Nineteen votes short…
Although we fell just short of the votes we needed in the ABA Journal contest, we truly appreciate the time and trouble taken by our supporters as well as the kind things said about us by other sites (catalogued in the post just below this one). Congratulations to QuizLaw, which has won a big and loyal readership by staying on top of offbeat news stories about the law in a consistently lively style.
Help us win the ABA contest (and ruin someone’s day…)
The ABA Journal’s contest for best general legal weblog ends momentarily (Wed., Jan. 2) and as of this writing we’re still lagging a mere 50 or so votes behind the front-runner, not an impossible margin you’d think to overtake in a last-minute surge. Unfortunately, we’ve more or less run out of winning tactics that wouldn’t mire us in an embarrassing degree of groveling, nagging, cheating, conniving, etc.
Quite a few folks associated with the American Bar Association have been open-minded and even friendly toward Overlawyered over the years, but we have reason to believe that some others high up in that organization regard us as the web equivalent of hot buttered death. Who can deny that it would be amusing to tick off that second group by having Overlawyered win the ABA’s own contest? Perhaps readers in comments can suggest vote-winning techniques we haven’t thought of. (Beg Michelle Malkin and Glenn Reynolds to send their readers to cast ballots for us?). Okay, here’s one: recommend that your readers vote for us, and we’ll give you a grateful shout-out (within reason) in this column.
P.S. Thanks to Caleb Brown, who does the Cato Institute’s podcast series, for filling in over the holidays. Check out his site Catallaxy.net. And stay tuned for another guestblogger we expect to be joining us in the not too distant future.
[Bumped Wednesday morning for continued prominence. First we pulled to within a dozen votes of QuizLaw, it seems, and now (around midnight EST) they’re back ahead by 40.]
And: a most grateful thanks for the boost to:
- Larry Ribstein (Ideoblog);
- Sam Munson (Commentary mag’s Contentions);
- Carter Wood (NAM Shop Floor);
- Ron Coleman guesting at Dean Esmay’s and also at his own site, Likelihood of Confusion;
- Hans Bader (Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Open Market);
- Eugene Volokh (Volokh Conspiracy);
- Alan Lange (Mississippi’s Y’All Politics);
- David Rossmiller (Insurance Coverage Blog);
- Dave Zincavage (Never Yet Melted);
- Tom Kirkendall (Houston’s Clear Thinkers);
- Not endorsements, exactly, but we won’t quibble: Angela Gunn (USA Today “TechSpace”), Robert Ambrogi (LawSites), and David Lat (Above the Law);
- Sean Higgins (JeremyLott.net);
- Point of Law (wait a minute, that’s me).
Fewer lawyers in Virginia legislature
Glenn Lewis, president of the Virginia Bar Association, thinks it’s a bad thing that there are only 29 lawyers in the commonwealth’s 100-member House of Delegates (and 16 in its 40-member Senate). In the “President’s Page” column of the association’s magazine, the VBA News Journal, he recently argued that the Old Dominion suffers from “a dearth of lawyer-legislators” to which he attributes such ills as “wrong-minded analyses” as well as shortcomings in drafting. He believes lawyers should hold at least half the seats in the legislature. Despite a marked decline in its percentage of lawyer/legislators, Virginia still well exceeds the national average of 17 percent. (Laurence Hammack, “Fewer lawyers make Virginia’s laws”, Roanoke Times, Dec. 30).
Of course, one possibility is that lawyers do on average bring with them a superior skill set on issues of legislation and governance, but that the voting public no longer trusts the independence of their judgment and their allegiance to the general good as it once did, fearing that they will instead advance the interest of organized factions, perhaps including the self-interest of the legal profession itself.
California town grapples with judgment 3x its budget
“Half Moon Bay is wrestling with unpleasant options for responding to a court ruling that officials say threatens the ‘very existence of our city government’ – a $36.8 million judgment against the city for turning a proposed housing development site into wetlands.” The town’s annual budget is $10 million. The property in question had become unbuildable when protected wetlands appeared on it, as a result, the owner contended, of negligent town policies affecting water flow and retention. The plaintiff had bought the property in 1993 for $1 million. “Under the worst-case scenario, officials say, Half Moon Bay would become the first Bay Area city forced to dissolve, and the coastal town’s land would become an unincorporated part of San Mateo County.” (John Coté, San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 18).
“Pigeon poop plunge wins New Yorker six million dollars”
The city’s lawyer unsuccessfully argued that Sheldon Stewart had changed his story about what exactly he’d slipped on in his injurious descent down a subway staircase in the Bronx. The NYC transit authority plans to appeal the jury’s verdict. (AFP/Yahoo, Dec. 24; Denise Buffa, “Poop and $coop”, New York Post, Dec. 24).