Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Author Archive

California wants to be your parent

If there’s a backlash underway against paternalism, you’d never know it from the crowded agenda of “nanny bills” under consideration in Sacramento, which include a ban on smoking in cars with kids present and proposed restrictions on keeping unspayed cats or dogs as pets. (Nancy Vogel, “Big mother is watching with new laws in mind”, Los Angeles Times, Mar. 8).

P.S. Regarding an Illinois version of the cigarettes-in-cars idea, Jacob Sullum has the good headline: “I Do Miss Mom, but At Least the Car is Smoke Free”.

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Microsoft’s privacy measures didn’t foil FBI

Michael Alan Crooker, currently in jail in Connecticut, says he tried to keep the data on his hard drive confidential, but FBI agents probing his alleged gun crimes nonetheless managed to duplicate its contents and turned up various embarrassing sex material. He wants $200,000 from Microsoft for disappointing his expectations that its privacy protections would prevent such a thing from happening. (Paul McDougall, “‘Embarrassed’ Gun Suspect Sues Microsoft After FBI Finds Sex Videos On His PC”, InformationWeek, Mar. 2).

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Lawsuits against restaurant critics

New York Times legal correspondent Adam Liptak has a good article summing up the state of play on legal actions arising from unkind reviews of eateries, including several cases familiar to our readers (Feb. 27, Philadelphia; Feb. 10, Belfast; Jan. 3, 2006, Dallas)(“Serving You Tonight Will Be Our Lawyer”, Mar. 7). More: PhilaFoodie.

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I can’t believe it’s not (legal) butter

“In a twist of science, the law and what some call trans-fat hysteria, [New York City] wholesale bakers are being forced to substitute processed fats like palm oil and margarine for good old-fashioned butter because of the small amounts of natural trans fat butter contains.” (Kim Severson, “Trans Fat Fight Claims Butter as a Victim”, New York Times, Mar. 7). More: Feb. 15, 2005; Jun. 14, Jul. 30, Sept. 27, Oct. 16, Dec. 5, Dec. 10, 2006; Mar. 3, 2007.

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U.K. roundup

Because you were clamoring for one:

  • Police warn householders of three convicted burglars but say they cannot describe them for fear of violating their human rights [Telegraph]

  • Eight year old Connor McCreaddie is very fat indeed, so North Tyneside officials are considering taking him from his mum into protective custody [Gillespie, Reason “Hit and Run”]

  • Sounds promising but haven’t seen: author Simon Carr has published compendium of legal horror stories entitled “Sour Gripes” [Telegraph]

  • As in the U.S., prospect of discrimination suits has deterred efforts to keep unhealthily thin fashion models off the catwalk [Guardian]

  • Ban on fox hunting not only is widely evaded but in fact has led to renaissance of the sport [Telegraph]

  • “An incompetent expert [witness] can cause more misery than a psychotic gang member.” [Slapper/Times]

  • Vacationing cop busted for Swiss Army knife [Daily Mail]

  • In hospitals, perhaps a surfeit of privacy [Huddersfield Daily Examiner via KevinMD] and sensitivity [Daily Mail via ditto]

  • Man obsessed by sex after motorcycling injury expected to get multi-million-pound award [Telegraph]

  • Children’s sack race scrapped for lack of liability insurance [Telegraph]; industrialist says inordinate playground risk-aversion is bad omen for economy [ditto]

  • Convicted armed robber “given legal aid to sue over a telephone message that reveals that his phone calls come from prison” [Telegraph]

  • Familiar ring? Controversy mounting over “ambulance chasing”, allegations of sharp practices as no-fee-no-win injury work makes fortunes for some well placed solicitors [Times here, here, here, here]

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Obama finally pays his traffic tickets

Because it’s not as if traffic law counts as real law, right? (Howie Carr, “Hillary circling as Obama searches for parking space”, Boston Herald, Mar. 8).

P.S. in response to comments: I think it’s a cultural fact worth recording that the editor of the Harvard Law Review felt no obligation at the time to settle up on a stack of unpaid parking tickets. It’s not wholly unrelated to the phenomenon of attorney general nominees’ not having bothered to tell the IRS about their household employees, or of U.S. Supreme Court justices’ meeting for regular poker nights reputedly in noncompliance with local law: namely, it suggests that sonorous Law Day maxims about the need for each of us to respect the law in its full majesty have surprisingly little traction even in (especially in?) elite law circles. That’s a fact worth knowing, if true.

That Obama is running for president now is the least interesting bit of the story (and indeed is only of significance in that it provided the impetus for him to pay up). Far from being received as an unforgivable blot on his character, I suspect the story will (like his smoking habit) serve to humanize the senator for many voters, perhaps especially among those who, like many readers of this site, have a somewhat rebellious attitude toward law to begin with.

P.P.S. There have apparently been some malfunctions with comments on this entry — if you entered a comment and it didn’t show up within a reasonable time, you might want to email and let us know.

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“Wrongful birth” in Boston

We’ve covered a number of cases over the years in which parents sue physicians and others over the “wrongful birth” of perfectly healthy children, demanding, as part of the claimed damages, the cost of raising the youngsters to adulthood: May 9, 2000 (Phoenix), Jun. 8, 2000 (Revere, Mass., outside Boston), Apr. 9, 2006 (Scotland), and Nov. 1, 2006 (Germany). Many such cases arise from failed sterilizations or other efforts at birth control, but a new suit by Jennifer Raper of Boston against Planned Parenthood and two doctors claims that an abortion went awry. “The [Massachusetts] high court ruled in 1990 that parents can sue physicians for child-rearing expenses, but limited those claims to cases in which children require extraordinary expenses because of medical problems, medical malpractice lawyer Andrew C. Meyer Jr. said. Raper’s suit has no mentions of medical problems involving her now 2-year-old daughter.” (“Boston woman sues for child-rearing costs after failed abortion”, AP/Boston Globe, Mar. 7; Jonathan Saltzman, “Suit seeks compensation for botched abortion”, Boston Globe, Mar. 7). More: “One day Jennifer Raper’s daughter will punch her mother’s name into Google and discover that she was the result of ‘a failed abortion.'” (Taranto)

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“Scruggs offered immunity in bribery trial”

Lands on his feet every time, it seems: “The U.S. Justice Department has offered immunity from prosecution to attorney Richard ‘Dickie’ Scruggs in exchange for his testimony in a judicial bribery trial involving his former colleague, Paul Minor.” (Biloxi Sun-Herald, Mar. 7). We’ve extensively followed the trial and now retrial of Minor, a prominent Mississippi attorney, and several judges.

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