The sudden slamming of brakes on the housing boom seems to be coinciding with a rise in litigation against condominium developers, according to the Wall Street Journal. Most peculiar-sounding lawsuit mentioned: one against a Miami developer that has canceled an unbuilt 49-floor condo tower and, it says, has refunded prospective buyers’ deposits with interest. It’s still being sued by 58 buyers demanding the profits they expected to reap had the condos been built — though the plunging South Florida real estate market makes such profits sound, um, speculative at best. Maybe they should thank the developer for canceling. (Troy McMullen, “Condo buyers take developers to court over promises”, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Nov. 11).
Author Archive
A greener shade of envy?
Or credit unfairly denied for an accompaniment that was better than the song itself? Saying he was instrumental in the creation of the 1967 rock classic A Whiter Shade of Pale, former Procul Harum organist Matthew Fisher has sued in British courts for a share of royalties. His lawyer “said that the 38-year delay in making a formal legal claim was because Mr Fisher was unaware of his legal entitlement.” (Lucy Bannerman, “They skipped the light fandango and are turning cartwheels in the courts”, Times Online, Nov. 14).
“Dear FTC: please adopt tougher regulations…”
Who writes to a federal agency encouraging it to adopt regulations imposing new burdens on the private sector? In at least one recent case, the public-spirited correspondent turned out to be a lawyer representing a short-seller who would profit if the enactment of new regulations caused a target company’s stock price to fall:
In one instance, a lawyer representing an investor who had shorted Pre-Paid Legal’s stock filed documents with the agency urging the rules’ adoption. Without explaining his client’s motivation, the lawyer, Hal Neier, wrote that “Pre-Paid and companies like it provide concrete examples of the very sort of practices that the proposed rule was designed to eradicate.”
The New York Times has more (Charles Duhigg, “Why Short Sellers Want to Crash the Tupperware Party”, Nov. 13).
Will the Democrats spoil trade?
The Lou Dobbs faction in the Democratic Party seems to have grown, and the Bill Clinton faction to have shrunk, compared with six years ago, notes CoyoteBlog (Nov. 9). More: Jacob Weisberg, “The Lou Dobbs Democrats”, Slate, Nov. 8)(via Postrel); “Australian PM: US Dems Hurt Trade Reform”, AP/Houston Chronicle, Nov. 13.
Letter from a new father
Reader Greg Dwyer of Oregon sends the following:
Yours is the website I have been continuously reading the longest and the one I most identify with. So I figured I’d tell you something. I recently celebrated the birth of my first son, Michael Gabriel. And he will not go through life padded in Nerf.
He is going to play dodge ball and tag.
I will let him eat trans fats and foie gras.
He can play Grand Theft Auto when he is old enough.
He will know that medicine is a risky business that doesn’t always provide perfect cures.
He is going to be able to shoot a gun well by the time he is 21 and I will take him to get his gun license myself.
Most of all, I will teach him that life is what you make of it and if he fails at something, he will have no one to blame but himself.
Loving father and non-victicrat,
Greg Dwyer
UK: “Payout for inmates forced off heroin”
Great Britain: “The Government was accused of ‘caving in’ over drugs yesterday following the disclosure that the Home Office is about to pay out tens of thousands of pounds to prisoners because they were forced to stop taking heroin or other opiates in jail. ….The inmates, who were dependent either on heroin or the heroin substitute methadone, claimed they suffered ‘trespass’ and clinical negligence by the Prison Service in being forced to endure ‘short, sharp’ detoxification programmes resulting in ‘cold turkey’ symptoms. They were said by their lawyers to be ‘upset’ by the short time they were allowed to stay on opiate drugs while on remand or following the start of sentences.” And in case you were wondering: “The claimants’ case is being funded by taxpayers through legal aid.” (Neil Tweedie, Daily Telegraph, Nov. 13; Dominic Kennedy, “Payouts for prison drug addicts”, Times Online, Nov. 13). More: James Slack & Matthew Hickley, “Outrage after drug-addicted convicts get £700,000 compensation”, Daily Mail, Nov. 13.
UK free speech, cont’d
Too much liberty of expression survives in that country for the government’s liking:
New laws to clamp down on racism are being prepared by the Government after the leader of the far-right British National Party was cleared of stirring up racial hatred by attacking Islam.
Gordon Brown swiftly pledged to bring in tougher powers to raise the chance of convictions in similar cases, calling the BNP’s statements offensive.
His intervention came after an all-white jury decided that Nick Griffin, the BNP chairman, broke no law when he condemned Islam as “a wicked, vicious faith” at a secretly filmed meeting.
Plans for an offence of incitement to religious hatred were thrown out in a rare Commons defeat for the Government in February after a campaign led by the comedian Rowan Atkinson.
(Andrew Norfolk and Greg Hurst, “Race-hate laws to be changed after BNP case fails”, Times Online, Nov. 11). More: Feb. 4, etc. Comment: Rod Liddle.
Update: “Gentle Wind drops lawsuit against couple”
The Kittery, Me.-based Gentle Wind Project “has agreed to drop a defamation lawsuit against two former members who wrote articles comparing the self-styled spiritual healing group to a ‘mind control cult.'” (see Aug. 30, 2004). Last year a federal court threw out the group’s lawsuit against Jim Bergin and Judy Garvey, a married couple from Blue Hill, Me. (see Jan. 19, 2006), but the family of project director John Miller refiled the action in state court. Miller “claimed that he could communicate with the ‘spirit world’ [and] said he received designs for ‘healing instruments’ that resembled cards and hockey pucks, and could cure physical and emotional damage caused by illnesses ranging from alcoholism to paralysis.” (Gregory D. Kesich, Portland Press-Herald, Nov. 10).
“Shameful, discouraging, tragic”
That’s restaurant bad boy Anthony Bourdain (Kitchen Confidential), on Chicago’s foie gras ban. Bourdain told interviewer Baylen Linnekin that if America does turn into a Singapore-style nanny state, “I can only hope we’ll have food as good as they do.” Asked about fast food: “People should be teased and humiliated for eating at McDonald’s,” he says. “I don’t think we should legislate them out of business.” (“Anthony Bourdain, Just Like Me: Is the Kitchen Confidential author-turned-television star a libertarian?”, AFF DoubleThink, Oct. 29).
Disputed $30,000 legal fee
The client’s battle contesting it has cost more than $300,000 so far. (Mary Alice Robbins, “The Seven-Year War: Former Clients to Continue Fighting Firm Over Legal Fees”, Texas Lawyer, Sept. 19).