U.K.: Fast-food giant Kentucky Fried Chicken has backed off its attempt to browbeat the proprietress of the Tan Hill Inn in North Yorkshire into no longer billing her traditional Christmas dinner as a “Family Feast”. In a letter from its lawyers, Freshfields, KFC had claimed trademark ownership of the phrase. (Will Pavia, “Fast food giant is licked in battle with pub”, Times Online, May 11; Weigel, Reason “Hit and Run”, May 10).
Author Archive
“Free expression gets smoked”
Bowing to pressure from 32 state attorneys general to curb the depiction of smoking in movies, the Moving Picture Association of America has just conceded “the basic principle that public-health lobbyists and politicians should have a big role in deciding what people will see, instead of letting the industry merely cater to its audience.” But state governments “have no more business determining what appears on movie screens than they do in deciding what goes into Judy Blume’s next novel. …The MPAA’s response validates the politicians in their intrusions, and beckons them to find new ways to regulate art and other matters that are supposed to be exempt from their control.” (Steve Chapman, syndicated/Orlando Sentinel, May 21). More: Michael Siegel, May 11, May 16, May 17; Jacob Sullum, May 16. Earlier: Sept. 1, 2003.
“The Panhandler’s Payday”
Eddie Wise got along by cadging a dollar here and a dollar there from strangers in the Bronx. Not in a thousand years would he have dreamed of waking up with $100,000 in his pocket, had he not had the good fortune to be wrongfully arrested. Thanks, NYC taxpayers! (Jennifer Gonnerman, New York magazine, May 14).
Charge: Little League didn’t teach base-sliding
On Staten Island, New York, “Jean Gonzalez is suing a beloved veteran coach for not teaching her son Martin how to slide properly”. The boy, 12 at the time, was hurt sliding into second base. Coach Leigh Bernstein, along with “the New Springville Little League, and its international umbrella organization, Little League Baseball and Softball Inc., are all named as defendants in the suit, which charges them with never teaching him ‘skills needed to avoid and/or minimize the risks of injury,’ specifically how to run bases and slide.” (James Fanelli and Mike Scholl, “Base Accusation”, New York Post, May 20).
Update: A million little refunds
Or maybe a few thousand, depending on how many readers send in for them: a judge has approved a settlement between Random House and class action lawyers who claimed that consumers had suffered injury from purchasing writer James Frey’s fictional autobiography, A Million Little Pieces. Earlier: last April 19 and many previous posts. As Ted reported early on in the controversy, Random House long ago offered refunds to dissatisfied readers of the book. (Thomas Zambito, ” Author’s $2.3M lie”, New York Daily News, May 18; “New York Judge Tentatively Approves Refunds for Buyers of James Frey’s Fabricated Memoir”, AP/FoxNews.com, May 18).
P.S. Here’s more from WSJ Law Blog, as well as a post of theirs from when the settlement was announced.
Update: Pizza Hut door victim awarded $311K
Following up on our Mar. 13 and Apr. 25 coverage: “Madison County Circuit Judge Nicholas Byron awarded Amanda Verett a $311,700 default judgment for injuries she allegedly received while holding a Pizza Hut door open for a Troy police officer.” Verett obtained the default judgment against defendant Clarence Jackson; co-defendant Pizza Hut filed a defense, so it will presumably be entitled to face a trial separately. Verett says her shoulder was jarred when Jackson suddenly moved the door or allowed it to move. According to testimony from her husband, she also slipped and fell on ice and snow on her driveway four days later; the couple appear to blame her injuries from that fall on her earlier bad experience with the Pizza Hut door. It’s a small world, lawsuit-wise, in the far-famed Illinois county: the chiropractor who’s been treating Verett, Mark Eavenson of Granite City, “is best-known as the most prolific filer of class action lawsuits in Madison County”. (Steve Gonzalez, “Byron awards $311,700 to Pizza Hut door victim”, Madison County Record, May 16).
More on government-hired contingency-fee lawyers
I had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal yesterday on the subject, hailing the recent California state court decision which recognized the unethical nature of that class of fee arrangements for public counsel. More at Point of Law here; Ted had a related post on Wednesday.
Not renting to lawyers
Professor Bainbridge has some thoughts on a policy apparently pursued by some landlords (at least when the law permits them to do so) (May 15).
How to spend $100 million not building a mall
In 1995 the Taubman Centers announced a plan to redevelop a defunct copper wire factory site in Syosset, just off the Long Island Expressway, into a high-end mall. Twelve years of grueling legal battles later, Taubman has spent $100 million, won most of the rounds in court, and signed up Neiman Marcus and other elite retailers, yet an end is nowhere in sight. And it happens that the civic coalition that has been so successful at running up Taubman’s costs has gotten some help from Simon Property Group, the large mall developer that currently dominates the local market and doesn’t welcome competition. On TimesDelete, unfortunately (Peter Applebome, “A Mall Plan, a Call to Arms, a Plot of Land Still Empty”, New York Times, May 13). Earlier coverage, not behind screen: Dawn Wotapka Hardesty, “For Taubman, no choice but to fight”, Long Island Business News, Dec. 29.
Sleeping in dumpster proves imprudent
Robert Baswell, 44 and homeless, went to sleep in a trash bin, which was a really bad idea: garbage collectors emptied the container into their truck, and Baswell
…was repeatedly crushed each time the truck compacted a new load of trash, breaking his legs and ribs.
The cringe factor on that is pretty high.
But now there’s another reason to cringe.
We got a press release from this man’s new lawyers — Steinger, Iscoe & Greene in West Palm Beach. The press release simply says that they are representing him, presumably for a future lawsuit.
(Rochelle E.B. Gilken, Behind the Yellow Tape (Palm Beach Post blog), May 10; “Man Crushed By Trash Truck Shares Story”, KFOX, May 15; law firm’s press release).