Behrouz Foroughi, 43, says he volunteered for the exclusion list at the Star City casino and was told he would be denied entry, but was admitted anyway and lost large sums due to his gambling compulsion. (Gemma Jones, Daily Telegraph, Jun. 19). Similar claims have been tried a number of times in the U.S. but without much success: see Apr. 28, 2004, Apr. 19, 2005, Nov. 22, 2005 (France), etc.
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Oz high court: restaurant review was defamatory
Now it’s Australia where food writers are getting nervous: the country’s High Court decided that Sydney Morning Herald critic Matthew Evans had defamed the Coco Roco restaurant in 2003 in a review:
The flavours of the limoncello oysters “jangled like a car crash”, he wrote, while the sherry-scented apricot white sauce on a steak was a “wretched garnish”.
Overall, he concluded that “more than half the dishes I’ve tried at Coco Roco are simply unpalatable”.
The ruling does not however preclude the defendants from offering defenses as proceedings continue in the case. (Deborah Cameron and Helen Westerman, “Ruling leaves sour taste for food critics”, Melbourne Age, Jun. 15; Barbara McMahon, “Review of meal that ‘jangled like a car crash’ deemed defamatory”, The Guardian, Jun. 16). Eoin O’Dell at the Irish law site Cearta.ie has assembled a substantial links list on this and earlier restaurant-review lawsuits from various countries (Jun. 16). Previously at this site: Mar. 10, etc.
Avandia-suit spam
Unsolicited email is beginning to arrive in people’s inboxes soliciting clients to sue over the Glaxo SmithKline diabetes drug, Avandia. Bill Childs has more, as does Eric Turkewitz, who observes that no law firm is named in the ad, and proposes a course of action:
Figuring out which law firms have hired the spammer should be easy for an enterprising citizen-journalist, simply by filling out the form at the website that TortsProf linked to and waiting to see who calls or emails in response. Then publish the names online for the world to see.
Things might not be that simple, however. As earlier cases of spam of this sort indicate, such emails are typically sent by a middleman who assembles “leads” and then offers them for sale to actual law firms. The middleman, not being a lawyer, will claim not to be bound by bar rules against solicitation, while the law firms that buy the leads (if confronted on the matter) may or may not disclaim any knowledge of how the leads were generated. They’ll probably deny having hired an agent with instructions to send spam; but if someone happened to run a spam campaign just before selling them names, well, that’s not their doing, is it? So the New York bar-ethics rules are circumvented in perfect safety by all concerned, or so it would seem. Earlier: Jan. 8, 2006, Jan. 5, 2005, Mar. 29-31, 2002.
Scrap over “bandaged-client” graphic
Not just promotional and eye-catching, but creative and artistic too: “A New York lawyer who used a cartoon image of a heavily bandaged patient to advertise his personal injury practice may be entitled to copyright protection for the drawing, a federal judge has ruled.” Richard P. Neimark of Rockland County (toll-free number: 1-888-PAL-RICH) had been using the picture of a bandaged patient lying in a hospital bed in Yellow Pages ads and on his website and had even gone so far as to register it with the U.S. Copyright Office in 1990, so you can imagine his annoyance when a personal injury firm with an office in nearby White Plains, Ronai and Ronai, adapted the drawing for its own ad, later saying it thought the drawing was in the public domain. A federal judge has urged the parties to settle, noting that the Ronai firm had pulled down the graphic immediately and that no evidence had been presented of any actual injury. (Anthony Lin, “Copyright Infringement Suit Over Lawyer’s Advertising Cartoon Continues”, New York Law Journal, Jun. 11).
Funniest law blogs
Nicole Black is throwing a contest; thanks to the readers who nominated us (and the one who dissented was awfully nice about it too). P.S. We’ve made the finals and readers can vote through Jun. 25 (& discussion at QuizLaw).
That security patch your product needs? Sorry, we’ve patented it
Another new way to bring the idea of software patents into disrepute, per eWeek/SecurityWatch:
Security researchers, are you tired of handing your vulnerability discoveries over to your employer, as if that were what you’re paid to do? Helping vendors securing their products—for free—so that their users won’t be endangered by new vulnerabilities? Showing your hacking prowess off to your friends, groveling for security jobs or selling your raw discoveries to middlemen for a fraction—a pittance—of their real value?
Take heart, underappreciated, unremunerated vassals, for a new firm is offering to work with you on a vulnerability patch that they will then patent and go to court to defend. You’ll split the profits with the firm, Intellectual Weapons, if they manage to sell the patch to the vendor. The firm may also try to patent any adaptations to an intrusion detection system or any other third-party software aimed at dealing with the vulnerability, so rest assured, there are many parties from which to potentially squeeze payoff.
Intellectual Weapons is offering to accept vulnerabilities you’ve discovered, as long as you haven’t told anyone else, haven’t discovered the vulnerability through illegal means or have any legal responsibility to tell a vendor about the vulnerability.
Also, the vulnerability has to be profitable—the product must be “highly valuable,” according to the firm’s site, “especially as a percentage of the vendor’s revenue.” The product can’t be up for upcoming phaseout—after all, the system takes, on average, seven years to churn out a new patent. The vendor has to have deep pockets so it can pay damages, and your solution has to be simple enough to be explained to a jury. …
The firm says it “fully [anticipates] major battles.”
(“New Firm Eager to Slap Patents on Security Patches”, Jun. 7; Slashdot thread).
Committee votes to disbar Nifong
The Duke lacrosse prosecutor acted as a “minister of injustice”, said State Bar prosecutor Douglas Brocker. The disciplinary committee wound up agreeing unanimously on nearly every element of the ethics charges against Nifong, who’s agreed to quit as Durham prosecutor. (Aaron Beard, “N.C. Panel Disbars Duke Prosecutor”, AP/Chattanooga Times Free Press, Jun. 16; “Nifong stripped of law license”, Sports Network, Jun. 17). We’ve covered the case extensively from early on; K.C. Johnson at Durham in Wonderland, who’s led the blog charge on the issue, notes that the New York Times’s Duff Wilson is still slanting his coverage of the case (Jun. 16).
New at Point of Law
If you’re not reading our sister site, you’re missing posts about federal indictments in the Ky. fen-phen scandal; great moments in labor arbitration; a big embarrassment (and maybe even liability?) for Yale Law School; more cosmetics from John Edwards on med-mal; New Jersey and Missouri high courts rule against lead-paint nuisance suits; federal judge refers for possible prosecution criminal contempt charges against Pascagoula potentate Dickie Scruggs; lots of Stoneridge coverage; and much more.
Privacy laws and Seung Hui Cho, cont’d
Better late than never:
Virginia Tech has provided some of Seung Hui Cho’s medical records to a panel investigating the April 16 massacre, after negotiating with family members to waive their privacy rights….
The records were released after weeks of frustration among the eight panel members over not being able to analyze Cho’s mental health in the years leading to the massacre, the worst mass shooting by an individual in U.S. history….
…panel officials said Thursday that they will continue to press for additional records, which also are protected under state and federal privacy laws.
(Tim Craig, “Panel Given Some Medical Files on Cho”, Washington Post, Jun. 15). And from a Thursday news report, also in the Post:
Authorities’ abilities to identify potentially dangerous mentally ill people are crippled across the nation by the same kinds of conflicts in privacy laws that prevented state officials from being able to intervene before Seung Hui Cho went on his rampage at Virginia Tech, according to a federal report commissioned after the Blacksburg shootings that was presented to President Bush yesterday.
Because school administrators, doctors and police officials rarely share information about students and others who have mental illnesses, troubled people don’t get the counseling they need, and authorities are often unable to prevent them from buying handguns, the report says.
(Chris L. Jenkins, “Confusion Over Laws Impedes Aid For Mentally Ill”, Washington Post, Jun. 14). My writings on the topic from April are here, here and here.
Vienna, Va. attorney Thomas J. Fadoul, Jr., who represents twenty victim families, has threatened to sue unless a family representative is appointed to the panel investigating the massacre so as to help “steer” its proceedings; Virginia governor Tim Kaine has replied that the panel was chosen so as not to include parties involved, and noted that the panel does not include any representative of Virginia Tech itself.