Boy meets girl. Boy marries girl and later assaults her. Girl successfully sues Internet foreign-brides matchmaking agency Encounters International for as much as $434,000 before a Baltimore jury, “for failing to screen its male clients and failing to tell her about the so-called battered spouse waiver, a provision in immigration law intended to help foreign nationals escape abusive relationships without fear of automatic deportation.” (Eric Rich, “Battered Wife Wins Suit Against Md. Matchmaker”, Washington Post, Nov. 19). More: Nadya Labi covered the Fox-Spivack lawsuit in Legal Affairs’ Jan.-Feb issue. And the text of the 1996 federal law on mail-order brides is here.
Author Archive
Dodgeball unsafe for 7-year-olds, suit says
Looks like all those school districts that banned dodgeball, and the professor who described the popular kids’ game as “litigation waiting to happen” (see Jun. 13, 2001), were on to something. A New York appeals court has rejected a request by the Vestal Central School District to dismiss a suit demanding compensation for the injury that seven-year-old Heather Lindaman suffered when she “became entangled with another student during the game, fell on a hardwood floor and fractured her left arm”. The school said the players were adequately supervised, but the court said a jury should decide whether second graders are too young for the game. (Yancey Roy, “Vestal lawsuit could put dodgeball on trial”, Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin, Nov. 20) David Giacalone comments.
Update: Canadian loser-pays
In my brief essay on loser-pays posted early in the history of this site, I observed: “While some loser-pays jurisdictions suspend the principle [of costs following the event] for what are viewed as true ‘cases of first impression’ where there is no established law, most are skeptical about applying any exemption more liberally, as one sees in this 1996 case from Alberta, Canada.” A belated update on that case, Vriend v. Alberta: on appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, the plaintiff in 1998 won his case on the merits (with an award of costs), thus presumably escaping any need to pay costs arising from his “case of first impression” loss at the earlier stage. Thanks to Doris Wilson of the Alberta Law Reform Institute for calling my attention to this.
Update: Dow Jones settles online defamation suit
Dow Jones & Co. “has settled a defamation lawsuit launched against it by an Australian mining magnate”, agreeing to pay $137,500 plus $306,000 in legal fees to Joe Gutnick and issuing a statement in court that it never intended to suggest that he was a client of a Melbourne man jailed for financial misdeeds. The case drew wide attention (see Jan. 18-20, 2002) primarily because it occasioned a “landmark ruling in December 2002 [in which] the High Court of Australia unanimously ruled that the case could be heard in Gutnick’s home state of Victoria because people there could have read the article online. … The settlement is not likely to affect the precedent already set, said University of Ottawa professor Michael Geist, who noted courts in the United Kingdom and Canada have already cited the Australian decision in asserting jurisdiction over other Internet defamation cases.” (“Dow Jones Settles Precedent-Setting Internet Defamation Suit”, AP/Editor & Publisher, Nov. 16).
Negligent entrustment
The “dangerous instrumentality” to which a menace of liability attaches doesn’t have to be something as big and lethal as a car. According to a Florida appellate panel (Weissburg v. Albertson’s, filed Nov. 10, PDF) it can be a power-assisted grocery cart (courtesy Abstract Appeal).
The horn is now silent
Cultural vandalism dept.: the Blair government has pushed through the House of Commons its ban on fox hunting. (“Hunt ban forced through Commons”, BBC, Nov. 19) (via Englishman’s Castle)(more on the hounds of John Peel).
Victory in Illinois
In another spectacular rebuke for the proponents of gun-control-through-litigation, the Illinois Supreme Court has unanimously tossed out both Chicago’s lawsuit and a lawsuit by private parties seeking to hold gun companies liable for “negligent marketing” and alleging that sales of guns at suburban gun shops constitute a public nuisance along the lines of smoke or stray animals. (John O’Connor, “Chicago gun suits tossed”, AP/Chicago Tribune, Nov. 18). Chicago’s case had been thrown out by a trial court (see Sept. 20, 2000) and then reinstated by an appeals court before yesterday’s denouement. The Illinois Supreme Court is considered among the nation’s most unfriendly by business defendants, but Chicago’s theories were too extreme and too unrooted in precedent to pass muster even there. (City of Chicago v. Beretta; Young v. Bryco Arms). Smallest Minority has much more on the decisions (Nov. 18).
Most of the 30+ municipal gun suits have now been dismissed, but the burden of fighting the litigation has been a crushing one for many defendants, which are often small and family-owned. Their tormentors in the Brady Campaign and other anti-gun groups — funded by George Soros as well as deep-pocketed foundations — show no signs of relenting in their strategy of filing an unending series of flimsy suits in an attempt to achieve through lawyering what voters have denied them at the ballot box. Federal pre-emption, as discussed yesterday, is thus more needed than ever; and it would also help if courts began considering the issuance of sanctions against the groups that file such meritless suits. Update Nov. 22: Steve Chapman comments.
Muscovite files McDonald’s coffee-spill case
“The fashion to sue fast food enterprises has reached Russia. Thirty-seven-year-old Muscovite Olga Kuznetsova claimed a 100,000 ruble ($3,500) compensation from McDonald’s for the burn that a spilled cup of coffee had left on her body.” (Pravda, Nov. 15; Novosti, Nov. 12). For Ted’s take on the much-discussed Stella Liebeck case, see Dec. 10, 2003, Aug. 3, 2004, and Aug. 4, 2004.
That “million dollar Vioxx” page
Monday’s post on the “Get your million dollars” webpage drew a big response from readers, many of whom commented on the question of the page’s sponsorship (the elusive “Leon”, interviewed by New York Sun reporter William Hammond). A typical response was that of reader T.J. McIntyre, who wrote:
You might already know that this appears to be an attempt to make money via the Google AdSense program. You’ve already commented on this in the related context of paid keywords and asbestos.
As such, I suspect that this site isn’t affiliated (at least directly) with any law firms. The webmaster is probably making the bulk of his money from pay per click advertising. Still sleazy, but if he was linked to specific law firms, he wouldn’t be using AdSense, which gives him no control over which firm’s ads will appear. For more on AdSense see this link.
And, of course, “Leon” is also trying to make money by selling for $100 the document containing supposed secrets of Vioxx litigation that Lawyers Don’t Want You To Know. Reader Matt Baucom suspects the page is “filled with outlandish info just to get people to come and click on the links or purchase the document”. That sounds right, too.
Gun pre-emption looking good
Last time up, Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s poison-pill amendment passed 52-47, dooming the urgently needed bill although it enjoyed the support on paper of a wide majority of Senators. Now five Democrats among those 52 votes are going to be gone. “Conservative Republicans, all of whom were endorsed by the NRA, will replace all five Democrats.” (Jim Snyder, “Gun lobby, GOP have lawsuits in their crosshairs”, The Hill, Nov. 17). For more on this bill, see my dialogue with Michael Krauss, linked Jul. 21; Mar. 12, Feb. 25; Oct. 9, 2003 and many others.