As the city’s $100 million lawsuit unfolded in court, a “dispute that a year or so ago seemed goofy — Arte Moreno’s decision to rename his baseball team the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim — has lost its humor content.” (Dana Parsons, “Can Angels Name Spat Have a Winner?”, Los Angeles Times, Jan. 15)(more).
Author Archive
“Tainted trials, stolen justice”
Criminal prosecutions often go seriously wrong in the Santa Clara County, Calif. courts, according to an investigative series in the San Jose Mercury-News.
Support Denmark
Today it’s their freedom of speech and the press under attack; tomorrow it could be ours. (SupportDenmark.com; Malkin, Jan. 30 and Jan. 31; Andrew Sullivan, and again; Brussels Journal; Judith Apter Klinghoffer; Stephen Pollard, Daily Telegraph; Stuttaford; Althouse; Danish food shop).
L.A. to rename school after Johnnie Cochran, Jr.
The former Mt. Vernon Middle School will be renamed after its most famous alum, the late attorney best known for employing racial demagoguery to spring client O.J. Simpson. Glad we won’t have to be there for the “character education” classes. (AP/Reuters). A small sampling of our Cochran coverage: Aug. 13-14, 2001, Nov. 8-10, 2002, Aug. 29, 2003, Dec. 6, 2004, Mar. 30, 2005.
Unrelatedly, here’s one more logo designed by the prolific and talented David Thomasson (earlier)(about logo series).
He’s a doctor, a lawyer, and so much more
The Barnes Firm, formerly Cellino & Barnes, is a powerhouse in the personal-injury business in upstate New York, where it is a ubiquitous advertiser. According to the Buffalo News, it’s built one of the largest caseloads of Vioxx lawsuits in the nation by hawking its star attorney, Brian A. Goldstein, who in television ads
described how he was uniquely qualified to represent Vioxx users. Not only was he a personal injury lawyer, he told viewers, he was a former physician and board-certified surgeon….
The lawsuits accuse the drug’s maker, Merck & Co., with failing to tell patients the whole truth about Vioxx.
Goldstein, though, appears guilty of the same charge about his medical background. Georgia’s Composite State Board of Medical Examiners revoked Goldstein’s license to practice medicine on Jan. 10, 1991.
Goldstein was found guilty of providing Georgia licensing authorities with misleading and incomplete information about his education, according to records obtained by The Buffalo News. The licensing board found that Goldstein:
• Attended college and medical school at the same time in the Dominican Republic.
• Graduated from medical school less than three years after he graduated from high school.
• Received credit for courses he had not taken, had not completed or failed.
• Said he attended Tulane University when he had not, falsified his earlier training and submitted a false letter of recommendation for a residency at the Manhattan Psychiatric Center.
The hearing officer in Georgia not only recommended revocation but also said the decision should be published “as a public reprimand for [Goldstein] for his conduct.”
But none of that information was mentioned in the Vioxx ads, or in Goldstein’s biography on The Barnes Firm Web site.
The Buffalo News investigation includes various defenses of his conduct offered by Goldstein, including the following:
He also said Georgia authorities failed to consider the fact he had received an undergraduate degree from Empire State College.
The News confirmed that degree from the college, which grants degrees based on life experience as well as academic studies. But the degree was granted in 1988, three years after Georgia filed charges against him.
The newspaper asks medical ethicist Arthur Caplan about Goldstein’s “selective use of parts of his medical background to recruit legal clients”. Caplan’s response: “I think it’s sleazy”. (Michael Beebe, “Did Barnes Firm lawyer tell the whole truth?”, Buffalo News, Jan. 22). Carolyn Elefant comments at My Shingle (Jan. 22), and the incident also stirs memories for blogger Gina at Together Again (Jan. 23). The law firm of Cellino & Barnes has figured in these pages before: see Jul. 15, 2005.
“Exit, pursued by a lawyer”
In his suit against playwright Nancy McClernan and producer Jonathan X. Flagg, director Edward Einhorn claims (inter alia) “that his staging contributions to [the play] ‘Tam Lin’ — contributions that his former collaborators say they excised — constitute a copyrighted work of intellectual property, owned by him, and that the defendants must therefore pay for infringing the copyright.” According to the New York Times, the suit raises wider questions of interest to “the famously collaborative process of theater-making”:
Are directors engaged in anything akin to the kind of authorship protected by copyright laws? If so, what’s to stop them from demanding payment whenever a play they once directed is revived? And what would that mean to the free flow of ideas in an art form that borrows heavily from all available sources?
(Jesse Green, New York Times, Jan. 29). P.S. Lattman has more (Jan. 30) including a link to the play’s website.
Unrelatedly, the third in our series of proposed logos is one of several sent in by David Thomasson of Washington, D.C., whose many writing and consulting activities include a dynamite series of editorials on litigation reform in the recently launched newspaper, the Washington Examiner.
Teacher always liked girls better
Assisted by his lawyer dad, 17-year-old Doug Anglin, a senior at Milton High School in suburban Boston, has filed a federal civil rights complaint against his school system for, he says, systematically favoring girls and their ways:
Among Anglin’s allegations: Girls face fewer restrictions from teachers, like being able to wander the hallways without passes, and girls are rewarded for abiding by the rules, while boys’ more rebellious ways are punished.
Grading on homework, which sometimes includes points for decorating a notebook, also favor girls, according to Anglin’s complaint, filed last month with the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.
”The system is designed to the disadvantage of males,” Anglin said. ”From the elementary level, they establish a philosophy that if you sit down, follow orders, and listen to what they say, you’ll do well and get good grades. Men naturally rebel against this.”
(Tracy Jan, “Schoolboy’s bias suit”, Boston Globe, Jan. 26). Although critics such as Christina Hoff Sommers have raised interesting questions about boys’ underperformance in the schools, young Anglin’s lawsuit gets very poor grades from Mike Sierra (Jan. 26):
[The complaint says] boys “naturally rebel.” Could this naturally rebellious behavior have something to do with boys’ special need for supervision in school hallways? Just a thought.
As a way to bolster male achievement (at least on paper), the Anglins recommend that we give out academic credit for playing sports and grade students on a pass/fail basis, measures that are unlikely to improve the education of any student. As far as I can tell, their only legitimate complaint concerns one teacher who gives extra points to students who decorate their writing assignments, a practice that is certainly suspect and academically insubstantial, but hardly worth clogging the courts.
Unrelatedly, here’s a suggested Overlawyered logo (more) devised by the anonymous coordinator of “Blawg Review”, who sets it alongside some very kind words about our linking habits. All very jagged and Barbara Kruger-esque.
Readers come through with logos
Once again we have reason to be grateful to our readers, since about a dozen of you responded generously to our request last week for an Overlawyered logo measuring 130 pixels wide by 150 pixels high, for use by a large media organization which is thinking of sending visitors our way. There were lots of nicely executed ideas, and any best-of selection inevitably depends in part on personal taste, but we’re going to reprint four of our favorites alongside this and forthcoming posts. Webmasters alert: if you’re linking to Overlawyered either as a sidebar permalink or on a one-off basis, these logos would make a nifty graphic link, don’t you think? 
The first logo of the four, then, was submitted by freelance graphic artist Lise Holliker Dykes of Crofton, Md.
Busted flush
Federal toilet-flow regulation, writes Andrew Ferguson, resulted from a successful collaboration between organized industry and environmentalists against the interests of the general public. (“Can Deregulating Toilets Revive Republicans?”, Bloomberg News, Jan. 24).
Socially unproductive
If ordinary workers and producers are having trouble sharing in the expanding economy, Steve Antler at EconoPundit thinks he may know one reason (Jan. 19).