Format change

As of 3:30 p.m. EST Tuesday, Overlawyered has a new format, based on the Movable Type blogging system. (Thanks to Dean Esmay and the MT people for helping.) In addition to saving us a great deal of time and effort compared with the primitive hand coding we’d been using (“baking [my] HTML on clay tablets”, as Glenn Reynolds puts it), the new system gives us much wider scope for such features as guest blogging and on-the-road blogging, pings and trackbacks, and so on. The site’s existing archives can still be reached (follow links in right column of front page), but the search and archive functions will operate separately for postings after June 20. And there will now be topical archives which collect all the new postings on a single subject into a single file, saving readers a lot of clicking around.

What happened to the left column with its long list of links? Much of it is inside now at a new General Links page. One consequence of the new format is that we’ll probably drop our self-imposed norm of posting only once a day, around midnight, in favor of blogging at all hours as the rest of the world does. And: Thanks not only to Instapundit but to other sites that have noted the switch with kind words: Ernie the Attorney, Legal Reader (formerly Weird of the News), and Scott Ferguson (who recalls our editing as “affably ruthless”, and concludes with an assertion that is falsified by this very linkback).

Filed under: about the site, blog mechanics

“Loitering” outside their workplace?

Kim Phann and Bruce Rosaro say they were both hit with summonses for “loitering” when a cop spotted them smoking outside Sha’s Big Time, a barbershop in the Bronx. The two “weren’t just hanging outside the Bronx barbershop. They work there. ‘We can’t smoke inside because it’s against the law,’ Phann, 23, told the Daily News. ‘What are we supposed to do? Go home to have a cigarette?'” (Fernanda Santos, New York Daily News, Jun. 10) (via Eve Tushnet). Plus: New York Post’s Page Six has more (via Gene Healy).

Filed under: tobacco

Class Action Fairness Act editorials

“[N]o area of U.S. civil justice cries out more urgently for reform than the high-stakes extortion racket of class actions, in which truly crazy rules permit trial lawyers to cash in at the expense of businesses. Passing this bill would be an important start to rationalizing a system that’s out of control,” editorializes the Washington Post (“Reforming Class Actions”, Jun. 14). “Federal courts are better equipped to handle complex cases with national implications. Of course, they’re also more likely to dismiss class-action suits. So it’s no wonder that trial lawyers are up in arms about this legislation,” notes the Chicago Tribune, which likewise supports the bill (“The class action money-chase”, Jun. 18). As does the Las Vegas Review-Journal (“A real class act”, Jun. 13) (& see Apr. 25-27 (Christian Science Monitor).

The bill passed the House Jun. 12 by a 253-170 vote with not only near-unanimous GOP support but also significant backing among liberal lawmakers, including Emanuel (D-Ill.), Harman (D-Calif.), Ford (D-Tenn.), Peterson (D-Minn.) and McCarthy (D-N.Y.), according to roll calls posted by the National Association of Manufacturers, which like the U.S. Chamber and virtually every other business group supports the bill. See also Christopher Armstrong, “Class Action Reform Gets Verdict in the House, Jury Still Out in the Senate”, Center for Individual Freedom, Jun. 19. Opposed: New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Columbus Dispatch, Rep. John Conyers, as well as L.A. Times and Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel (not online).

Filed under: Class Action Fairness Act, class actions, Philadelphia

For personal responsibility, a Custard’s Last Stand

Roundup of opinion on fast-food-made-me-fat lawsuits quotes our editor; his lame joke about personal responsibility facing a “Custard’s Last Stand” with these suits didn’t quite come through in the final copy (Steve Brown, “Possible Immunity for Fast Food Industry a ‘Different Ballgame’ From Tobacco”, Cybercast News Service, Jun. 24). Reason’s correspondents cover the recent AEI conference on “obesity policy” (Ronald Bailey, “Time for Tubby Bye Bye?”, Reason.com, Jun. 11; Jacob Sullum, “Thinning the Herd”, syndicated/Reason, Jun. 13). And the restaurant-defense Center for Consumer Freedom has dug up a bunch of alarming quotes from the activists propelling the campaign (“Cabal Of Activists And Lawyers Plot To Sue Food Companies”, Jun. 19)

Filed under: personal responsibility, tobacco

EU: “Ban sought on sexual stereotyping”

According to EUObserver.com, “Brussels is said to be preparing new legislation to monitor sex discrimination outside the workplace. The proposal could lead to a ban on programmes and advertisements that stereotype women or men.” The idea is to ban “images of men and women affecting human dignity and decency”. At the same time, “safeguards on freedom of expression are thought to be included” — very comforting. In the spring of 2002 it was reported that Norway’s Ombudsman for Gender Equality, whose duties include monitoring sexism in toy ads, was proposing to ban a particular toy ad which referred to boys as “tough”. More: Daily Telegraph.

Filed under: advertising, Europe, harassment law, Norway

Let that gator do his thing

Michael McCormick of Lake County, Fla., has now gotten off with a simple warning, instead of the original $180 ticket from the Florida Wildlife Commission, for roping an alligator he saw headed toward some children and their adult caretaker. The mechanic “says he’s certain what would have happened if he had not put himself between the 5 or 6 foot gator and the family. ‘Considering the size of the small children, I honestly think he was coming after them.'” To his surprise, wildlife officials when they arrived treated him as the wrongdoer for illegally “possessing” an alligator. A 12-year-old Tavares, Fla. boy was recently killed by an alligator. (Man Ticketed After Catching Gator That Was Threatening Children, WFTV.com.)

Filed under: animals

Next: Mercedes sues Merced, Calif.

The Volo Antique Auto Museum and Mall in Volo, Ill. (population 200) exhibits and vintage and historic automobiles and runs a website Volocars.com. Now the Volvo division of Ford Motor has failed in a bid before the World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva to take away the museum’s right to the volocars.com domain. (Dan Rozek, “Volo car museum nets a win in Volvo Web fight”, Chicago Sun-Times, Jun. 20; Declan McCullagh’s Politech, Jun. 11 and Jun. 10; TechDirt, Jun. 20).

Filed under: Ford Motor, technology

Engle: a $710-million loose end

Assuming the $145 billion punitive damages verdict in the Florida tobacco class action is not revived by the state’s supreme court, one major loose end remains, but it’s a really big one. Three tobacco companies agreed to fork over $710 million in exchange for class counsel’s agreeing “not to challenge a new state law, passed at the behest of the cigarette makers, capping appeals bonds at $100 million.” The enormous sum was placed in escrow for the class, but now the class does not exist since it’s been decertified. Does the class somehow get reconstituted for purposes of dividing the booty? Does it go back to the defendants? To some worthy cause? And how much of it, if any, are plaintiff’s lawyers Stanley and Susan Rosenblatt going to be allowed to grab for themselves? The agreement between the Rosenblatts and the three companies says nothing about decertification. (Matthew Haggman, “The $710 Million Question”, Miami Daily Business Review, Jun. 19).

Filed under: class actions, Stanley and Susan Rosenblatt, tobacco

Lightning bolt in amusement park’s parking lot

Cincinnati attorney Drake Ebner admits cynics will think he’s suing the Kings Island amusement park — in whose parking lot his client was struck by lightning — just because it’s a deep pocket. “But they should hold the park accountable, for not telling his client and thousands of others about an impending lightning storm, Edner said Monday. ‘They could have told the people not to go to their cars, which are large metal objects that can attract lightning.'” (Kimball Perry, “Family sues Kings Island”, Cincinnati Post, Jun. 17).

Filed under: Cincinnati, deep pocket, personal responsibility

Misguided search for a sanitized jury

The “legal defense team for Lee Boyd Malvo, the young suspect in last fall’s Washington-area sniper attacks, is seeking a change of venue from Fairfax County. It contends that all potential jurors in the county were victims of the terror spread by the sniper attacks and that jurors contaminated by news coverage make a fair trial impossible. … But impartiality only means without bias. It does not mean without knowledge. The courts have long recognized that jurors can set aside what they might know about a case, and that it’s preferable to have jurors who are tuned into the world around them than ones who are hermits.” (Charles H. Whitebread, “Jurors Must Be Impartial. They Shouldn’t Be Clueless”, Washington Post, Jun. 22).

Filed under: procedure