Scam investigators are starting to assess the harm done by a pretend “law firm,” including $6,775 in losses to a victimized British man. Fortunate that it was just fake; imagine how much more damage the law firm might have done had it been real! [AmLaw Daily]
Author Archive
Tough as nails on manicure discrimination
“A Maryland man who was charged $1 more for a manicure than women has filed a lawsuit for $200,000 claiming sex discrimination.” [MyFoxDC]
Conrad Black “supercilious” in the slammer?
Watch out for sentencing spin, warns Scott Greenfield.
Liquor store licensing rules
They could drive you to drink — especially if you’re not politically well-connected [Coyote]
“Judge rules Righthaven lacks standing to sue, threatens sanctions over misrepresentations”
Copyright troll tripped up:
A federal judge in Las Vegas today issued a potentially devastating ruling against copyright enforcer Righthaven LLC, finding it doesn’t have standing to sue over Las Vegas Review-Journal stories, that it has misled the court and threatening to impose sanctions against Righthaven. … [U.S. District Court Judge Roger] Hunt’s ruling today came in a 2010 Righthaven lawsuit against the Democratic Underground, operator of a big political website.
One of DU’s message board posters had reprinted without permission, but with link and credit, four paragraphs’ worth of an article under copyright to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which is one of a number of newspapers with working agreements with RightHaven. And this part’s interesting:
In their counterclaim [which Judge Hunt allowed to proceed], attorneys for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digital free speech group based in San Francisco, hit Righthaven and Stephens Media with allegations of barratry (the alleged improper incitement of litigation); and champerty (an allegedly improper relationship between one funding and one pursuing a lawsuit)….
Some fans of entrepreneurial lawyering in the academy and elsewhere have sought to portray rules against barratry and champerty as wrongheaded survivals of a much older approach to the role of the legal profession. But it looks as if EFF — no one’s idea of a Blackstone-reading antiquarian club — just put those rules to powerful use. [Las Vegas Sun]
P.S. Bloggers who settled wonder: can we get our money back?
“A hospital drug shortage made in Washington”
I’ve got a post at Cato at Liberty getting into more detail about some of the deadly side effects of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulation, an issue raised previously in this space.
Before being suspended over hungry crocodiles
You’ll need to sign a really strong liability release [St. Petersburg Times]
David Rossmiller on the Dickie Scruggs scandal
David Rossmiller, whose blog provided some of the most penetrating analysis of the Dickie Scruggs judicial corruption scandal of 2007-08, has now penned a review of one of the books to emerge from the scandal, “Kings of Tort” by Alan Lange and Tom Dawson. Rossmiller, an Oregon lawyer, also has some kind words for my book The Rule of Lawyers, published a few years earlier, which lays out the background for the scandal by showing how once-obscure plaintiff’s lawyers in states like Mississippi, working with courts known for “home cooking” and in alliance with local political figures, had begun redistributing billions of dollars in big-ticket litigation from tobacco and asbestos on down. [Mississippi College Law Review PDF via Insurance Coverage Blog; related here and here]
Will California regulate social networking?
State Senator Ellen Corbett (D-San Leandro) has vowed to press the idea, the apparent idea being that the government is a better guardian of privacy interests than Facebook and similar services [Jacqueline Otto, CEI “Open Market”] Meanwhile, Geoffrey Manne reports that the feds are itching to start an antitrust or unfair competition case against Google [Main Justice via Truth on the Market]
CPSC: never mind
“Thanks for standing by for eight months after we told you to stop selling your infant slings pending a recall. We’ve decided no recall is needed. What, you’re out of business? Never mind.” [Commissioner Nancy Nord] (& Greenfield)