According to David Giacalone (Sept. 15), a referee/judge has decided that the law firm of Pape & Chandler has a constitutional right to use a logo depicting a pit bull and a 1-800-PIT-BULL telephone line, and has accordingly dismissed the Florida Bar’s ethics complaint against the firm (see Aug. 23). Update Jan. 15, 2006: Florida Supreme Court rules against firm.
Author Archive
Welcome Romenesko readers
Jim Romenesko’s widely read media-watch weblog, sponsored by the Poynter Institute, links to our Wednesday commentary with the following blurb: “U.S. News screw-up: Why doesn’t mag reveal sources?” (see left column)
Also, I keep getting web-based publicity of a more personal nature. The co-blogger of Jane Galt (who is a perfect hostess, by the way) recounts my evenings out, so does James Taranto, Andrew Tobias discusses my political sentiments, and — is nothing too private? — Martin Grace has a comment on my sleeping habits.
Juror #4’s little nip
Juror #4 did seem awfully convivial and garrulous, didn’t he? Not to say scatterbrained. The reason became clearer after the verdict when he admitted that his Poland Spring water bottle had been half filled with vodka. But the judge declined to upset the defendant’s conviction: “There is apparently no law against drinking while serving as a juror and deliberating the fate of a fellow New Yorker.” (Michael Wilson, “Retiree Found Guilty, Juror Found Tipsy, and Verdict Stands”, New York Times, Sept. 16). Fool in the Forest has more (Sept. 17).
Libel: the damage winning can do
About a year ago the conservative magazine National Review (disclosure: I’ve written for them and for a while served as a contributing editor on their masthead) was sued by a Muslim activist who claimed to have been defamed by an article containing inaccuracies about his connection to a controversial gathering. The communications director for the local chapter of the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) expressed the hope that the lawsuit would “deter hate-mongers from undermining the character and work of those who do not share their extremist views.” The magazine eventually succeeded in getting the suit thrown out and even got a small payment from the plaintiff, but its libel insurance policy carried a $50,000 deductible, and its total expenses exceeded $65,000. It’s opened an appeal for contributions to cover the resulting hole in its budget — a “post-defense defense fund”. As Voltaire put it, “I was never ruined but twice: once when I lost a lawsuit and once when I won one.”
Oz: “Policeman gets $500,000 after tripping”
Senior constable Terence William Hall, 43, tripped on an unlit footpath on a rainy night at Narrabri Police Station in New South Wales. He got a hematoma from the bump “and was later told he was suffering from deep vein thrombosis”, and now he has A$500,000 to show for it. (AAP/Sydney Morning Herald, Sept. 7).
Human subjects protection regs
Federal regulations require universities to maintain something called an Institutional Review Board which preapproves research on human subjects to make sure it is not improperly injurious to the persons being studied. There is a certain kind of logic to such requirements when it comes to, say, invasive medical experiments. “Yet the human subjects protection racket has been able to extend its claws around social science research, subjecting it to the same rigmarole as demanded of the medical types,” writes Mark Kleiman (Sept. 8). “This is stupid, because almost no social science research actually poses important risks to its subjects that couldn’t be handled perfectly well by an informed-consent system audited retrospectively rather than a pre-approval system”. He adds:
Worse, since social-science research is often controversial, the risks of censorship are much more prominent, especially given diversity requirements demanding, for example, that a representative of prisoners be involved in clearing any study involving prisoners.
Any collection of data from an identifiable person counts as “human-subjects research,” even, for example, interviewing a group of judges about how they handle probation revocations. How answering such questions puts the judge at risk is more than I can figure out. And heaven help you if you submit a proposal saying “I intend to ask judges what happens in probation cases.” That’s far too vague: you have to submit a questionnaire for review, as if you knew in advance what questions were going to turn out to be relevant.
Update: for more, see Point of Law, Dec. 7, 2006 (paper by Dale Carpenter).
Wrongful birth (cont’d)
Yorba Linda, Calif.: The basic fact pattern underlying this wrongful-birth suit will be familiar to longtime readers of this site (Aug. 22-23, 2001, Jul. 1, 2003, etc.): little Leilani Duff’s parents say they love her, but also say they’d have aborted her if they’d realized she was at risk of spina bifida, so they’re suing their obstetrician, Dr. William Dieterich, for unspecified damages. (Claire Luna, “If Only We’d Known, Parents Say”, Los Angeles Times, Sept. 9). The L.A. Times’s account includes the following comment about the incentives this burgeoning field of litigation may be sending to doctors practicing in the field:
The rise in wrongful-life suits and the threat of legal responsibility for a child’s defects puts obstetricians in the uncomfortable position of recommending, if not insisting on, abortion when there is the slightest doubt, said one physician.
“On one side you have a liability mess that puts you on the hook for the rest of the child’s life,” said Dr. T. Murphy Goodwin, chief of maternal-fetal medicine at USC’s Keck School of Medicine [and also, as the article notes, a member of the American Assn. of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists].
“The other side, you have carte blanche to avoid the potential for these kinds of problems by shading the discussion to advocate abortion. There’s almost no adverse reaction if a doctor tells someone to terminate a pregnancy based on faulty information.”
Farmer’s market veggie tumble
Stamford, Ct.: “A senior citizen who fractured her hip when she tripped over vegetables at a farmer’s market two years ago is suing the city and the downtown business improvement district that sponsored the event.” (Donna Porstner, “Woman trips on vegetables, files lawsuit”, Stamford Advocate, Sept. 10). For more on the menace of open-air food markets, see Jul. 14 (suits over slaughter by driver of runaway car at Santa Monica market; on which, see this commentary as well at LAVoice.org). If we sue them enough, maybe they’ll go away and we can all get back to patronizing supermarket chains with their full-time risk managers and security staffs — so much safer that way.
House votes to strengthen sanctions against meritless suits
By a 229-174 vote, largely along party lines, the U.S. House of Representatives has passed the proposed Lawsuit Abuse Reduction Act, sponsored by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas); it now goes on to an uncertain future in the Senate. (see Point of Law Sept. 9, Aug. 17, Jun. 21; this site, Jun. 21). (Bloomberg, Reuters, AP). The bill would restore the stronger Rule 11 standards which used to entitle victims of meritless litigation in federal court to recompense in the form of sanctions: a previous Congress, following a major push by the litigation lobby, gutted Rule 11 in 1993. A source on Capitol Hill who is in a position to know suggests that we might want to provide a link to the House Judiciary Committee Report on today’s bill, the Lawsuit Abuse Reduction Act. “The report compiles in one place a ton of information on the problem of lawsuit abuse, with many of the examples of frivolous lawsuits drawn from your Web site”. And indeed, a quick glance at several sections of the report suggests that we did serve as an important source of material, for which we’re grateful.
U.S. News regrets
Major media foulups, cont’d: in its Sept. 20 issue, the newsmagazine U.S. News sets forth a lengthy and on the whole abject apology (couched, not at all accurately, as a “Clarification“) regarding a piece it ran in its Aug. 8 issue, “Secrets Behind the Mask“, by Christopher H. Schmitt, which had assailed the 3M company for alleged deficiencies in face masks which left workers unprotected against on-the-job hazards. The Aug. 8 article had consisted of little more than a recitation in sensational language of various claims advanced by plaintiff’s lawyers who’ve been naming 3M as a defendant for years (mostly without success) in asbestos and other workplace-injury litigation. In that respect it resembled a good many media pieces which are less a product of investigative journalism as such than of the “litigation communications” branch of public relations.
The details revealed by U.S. News’s inquiry into its own misreporting are damning indeed. Here’s the first: