“Police dogs are being muzzled to prevent them from biting criminals. Instead of clamping their jaws around the legs of suspects, the dogs are trained to leap at their targets and disable them with a flying butt. … The policy follows a rise in compensation claims against forces from members of the public, and even serving officers, who have been bitten by police dogs. One force, in Greater Manchester, has paid out £59,000 in five years to 36 bite victims.” (Ben Leapman, Daily Telegraph, Oct. 15).
Author Archive
Jack Thompson, officer of the court
When anti-videogame crusader and perennial Overlawyered favorite Jack Thompson (Sept. 26, Oct. 15, etc.) lost his case over “Bully”, he dashed off the following letter to the judge who ruled against him:
Dear Judge Friedman:
Now that you have consigned innumerable children to skull fractures, eye injuries from slingshots, and beatings with baseball bats, without a hearing as to the danger, let me tell you a few things, with all respect for your office and with no respect for the arbitrary way in which you handled this matter. I can handle an adverse ruling by a judge. I’ve had plenty of those in my lifetime, and that’s fine. But the way you conducted yourself today helps explain why a great Dade County Judge, the late Rhea Pincus Grossman, could not abide you. She was not the only one . . . .
Next time you promise a “hearing,” I’ll bring a parent with me whose kid is in the ground because of a kid who trained to kill him or her on a violent video game. Try mocking that person, I dare you.
Full text of the letter here courtesy GamePolitics; via Lat who got it from ACSBlog. And a commenter at ACSBlog writes:
Jack Thompson did his part to inspire me to go to law school. I knew that if people of his mental capacity could succeed in the profession, I certainly could.
More: GamePolitics.com reports that lawyers for the game company are seeking to have Thompson held in contempt of court (further update here; h/t RebeccaFrog).
See someone smoking? Call 911
In Omaha, which recently enacted a restaurant smoking ban, authorities are urging vigilant citizens who notice illicit smoking to call 911 to summon a police response. The local emergency coordinator has objected, saying 911 calls over smoking could overwhelm the system and distract dispatchers from more dire emergencies, but the police department says it is sticking by its advisory. (“Dial 911 To Report Smokers”, KETV, Sept. 28; “911 Director: Smoking Reports Could Overwhelm System”, Sept. 28).
Overtime-suit spam
Unsolicited email arrived a few hours ago from a return address of [email protected] with the message: “Do You Know Your Rights As An Employee? Are Your Work Rights Being Neglected? Are You being paid for: Overtime? Putting your uniform on or off? Time spent preparing for your shift? Attending safety meetings? Travel time and expenses?” The link, when clicked, led to this page at a domain entitled legalleadshost.com. Overtime and employee-classification suits have emerged as a highly lucrative field of practice for the plaintiff’s bar in recent years. “In December, a California jury awarded $172.3 million to Wal-Mart workers for missed meal breaks.” (Sophia Pearson and Margaret Cronin Fisk, “Wal-Mart Loses Pennsylvania Suit Over Missed Breaks”, Bloomberg, Oct. 12).
Online gambling ban, cont’d
“EU to regulate video blogs?”
A new European Commission proposal would require Web sites and mobile phone services that feature video images to conform to standards set by that body, the Times of London reports. …
Shaun Woodward, the U.K. broadcasting minister, described the draft proposal as catastrophic, saying it could end up forcing someone to get a license to post videos of an amateur rugby team.
(CNet Blogma, Oct. 18). And here’s the Times Online:
Personal websites would have to be licensed as a “television-like service”.
Viviane Reding, the Media Commissioner, argues that the purpose is simply to set minimum standards on areas such as advertising, hate speech and the protection of children.
(Adam Sherwin, “Amateur ‘video bloggers’ under threat from EU broadcast rules”, Times Online, Oct. 17). However, there are some indications that the EU bureaucracy itself intends a less sweeping definition of the law’s application than that: Nate Anderson, ArsTechnica, Oct. 18.
“Trial Lawyers Inc. — Illinois”
At Point of Law (Oct. 18), Jim Copland announces a new report from the Manhattan Institute’s Trial Lawyers Inc. project:
This afternoon, the Manhattan Institute released Trial Lawyers, Inc.: Illinois, A Report on the Lawsuit Industry in Illinois 2006. The first comprehensive look at litigation in the Prairie State, the report synthesizes work done by the Illinois Civil Justice League, American Tort Reform Association, and U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform, among others. The report also includes new information, such as the percentage of 2004 contributions to the Illinois State Democratic Party that came from plaintiffs’ lawyers and their firms (78 percent) and Illinois’ quantitative rank in terms of its medical-malpractice liability as a percentage of gross state product (49th of the 50 states) and its corporations’ self-insured liability as a percentage of GSP (48th).
The Madison County Record has already reported on the new study here.
More coverage: Adam Jadhav, “Metro East courts have improved somewhat, think tank concludes”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Oct. 19.
New Times column — age-bias law
My new column in the Times Online is up. First paragraph:
So now Britain has its own law banning employers from considering workers’ age in most job situations. If your experience follows ours in America, the results will include a range of unintended consequences, some of which will worsen the plight of the workers the law was meant to help.
(Walter Olson, “If the US experience is anything to go by, be sceptical of Britain’s new age-bias laws”, Times Online (U.K.), Oct. 18, newer link and reprint). I treated this subject at length in my 1997 book The Excuse Factory and did a USA Today opinion piece back then exploring some of the ways the law backfires against older workers. The new British law has been getting some attention in the States, in part because of the news item about the company that has banned office birthday cards as potentially ageist (Oct. 13) and the one about the recruiting agency (Oct. 17) that is barring use of any of a list of words including vibrant, dynamic, gravitas, ambitious, and hungry to describe potential employees.
Tag, you’re out
The game, that is: “Officials at the Willett Elementary School in Attleboro [southwest of Boston] have banned playground tag, touch football and any other unsupervised chasing games over concerns about the risk of injury and liability for the school.” (“Attleboro elementary school bans tag”, AP/Boston Globe, Oct. 18)(more on lawsuit-fearing fun-busters).
Come to Brooklyn, the suing’s fine
Here’s the top elected official in Brooklyn promoting one of his borough’s few truly prosperous industries:
“If you like white-shoe law firms, stay in Manhattan,” said Brooklyn’s borough president Marty Markowitz, who attended the bank’s grand opening. “But if you’re looking for the biggest settlement, come to Brooklyn.”
“The bank” in this case is Esquire Bank, which as Peter Lattman of the WSJ law blog explains (Oct. 10):
[claims] to be the first bank in the country to specialize in serving trial lawyers. It’s located on Court Street in Brooklyn’s judicial epicenter. To some folks in these parts, a “Court Street lawyer” has the pejorative connotation of an ambulance-chasing, personal injury attorney.
Another highlight of Lattman’s account: a quote from an attorney who operates the website moneyforpain.com.