Josh Gerstein of the New York Sun has details (“Class-Action Expert Pleads Guilty”, Nov. 4). The plea agreement, on charges unrelated to his class-action expert witness testimony, “does not contain any language requiring Torkelsen to cooperate with the inquiry” into Milberg Weiss, reported earlier (see Oct. 10).
Author Archive
Flimsy numbers behind Canadian gun suit
Prime Minister Paul Martin incorrectly blamed the United States for gun crime in Canada by using an unsubstantiated figure to assert that 50 per cent of this country’s gun crimes involve smuggled firearms, U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins said yesterday.
Mr. Wilkins said that Canadian officials admitted in meetings with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice this week “that that figure was just grabbed out of thin air.”…
The figure, which others have used previously, is not based on any statistical study that could be traced by The Globe and Mail, and police forces and other authorities said yesterday it is not verifiable.
“I know that figure of 50 per cent has been bandied about, but no one can substantiate that figure,” said Staff Sergeant Paul Marsh, a spokesman for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
As noted Oct. 24, Martin’s government says it is considering suing American gun manufacturers for failing to prevent the smuggling of their products across the border. (Campbell Clark, “Don’t blame U.S. for gun crime, Canada told”, Globe and Mail, Oct. 27).
“Grandpa is sued over grandson’s downloads”
“A 67-year-old man who says he doesn’t even like watching movies has been sued by the film industry for copyright infringement after a grandson of his downloaded four movies on their home computer.” The Motion Picture Association of America earlier demanded $4,000 from Fred Lawrence of Racine, Wisc. and is now suing him for as much as $600,000 in damages. Lawrence says the grandson, who was 12 at the time, downloaded the files out of curiosity and deleted them immediately; the family already owned three of the four films on DVD. (AP/Business Week, Nov. 2).
“Gripe site” protected as opinion
Continuing a trend toward the protection of “gripe sites” as free speech, a Manhattan judge has ruled that a New Jersey man’s website assailing an auto warranty company did not constitute actionable defamation. Penn Warranty Corp. sued Ronald DiGiovanni over eight allegedly libelous statements posted on his site, including assertions that it is a “blatantly dishonest company” that has been “running scams,” “committing fraud on a grand scale,” and “ripping off its contract holders for quite a while.” The judge granted DiGiovanni’s request for a summary judgment dismissing the action, however, ruling that “the web site, when viewed in its full context, reveals that defendant is a disgruntled consumer and that his statements reflect his personal opinion based upon his personal dealings with plaintiff. They are subjective expressions of consumer dissatisfaction [and] are not actionable because they are defendant’s personal opinion.” (Mark Fass, “Court Finds ‘Gripe Site’ Is Protected Free Speech, Not Defamation”, New York Law Journal, Nov. 1).
Squabbling Oz opera companies
They’ve been fighting over a A$1.8 million bequest left by the late Edith Melva Thompson, with the result that at least a third of the sum is expected to be consumed in legal fees. (Katrina Strickland, “Lawyers the winners in bequest to opera”, The Australian, Oct. 27).
Merck wins N.J. Vioxx case
Point of Law contributors have been following the case, and KevinMD rounds up blogger reactions.
Sekulow’s fundraising
Bob Felton of Civil Commotion got a fund-raising appeal from the ACLJ in his email last April, and was not impressed by its contents. He hasn’t been troubled with any follow-up appeals, though. See yesterday’s post.
18,299
That’s how many visitors our servers recorded yesterday, thanks in part to Andrew Sullivan and others who linked to our Jay Sekulow item. Not sure that’s the highest number ever for one day, but it’s certainly among the better showings.
Satire in The Onion
The humor publication, taking note of lawmakers’ recent passage of industry-by-industry liability limits protecting gun manufacturers and makers of fattening food, suggest a bunch more “New Corporate Responsibility Laws”. Among them: “Camera manufacturers no longer held accountable for embarrassing intimate photos posted on Internet” and “Slushee Corporation cannot be blamed for lowered sexual desire when product is accidentally spilled on lap”.
Haberman on Port Authority verdict
New York Times columnist Clyde Haberman, on a jury’s determination last week (Oct. 27, Oct. 29) that negligent security on the part of New York’s Port Authority was more responsible for the damage from the first (1993) bombing at the World Trade Center than the Islamist terrorists themselves:
Through some mathematical wizardry, the jurors held the authority to be 68 percent at fault, the murderers only 32 percent.
Poor terrorists! Guess they couldn’t help themselves. They must have felt they had no choice but to take advantage of a security lapse.
(“Sometimes Big Brother Is a Protector”, Nov. 1, immured behind Times Select wall).