“Houston plaintiffs’ attorney Warren Todd Hoeffner, whose criminal case ended in a mistrial in October 2009, has struck a deal with federal prosecutors. Prosecutors agreed to defer a new trial for one year on the criminal charges against Hoeffner. Among other conditions, the agreement calls for Hoeffner to pay the government $2,485,000 and agree to a voluntary suspension of his Texas law license for two years.” Prosecutors said Hoeffner paid millions to insurance company claims department employees in the course of obtaining $34 million in silicosis payouts; his lawyers argued at trial that the employees extorted consideration as a condition of approving otherwise fair settlements. [Brenda Jeffreys, Texas Lawyer; earlier here and here]
Author Archive
U.K.: Woman’s hobby of filing bias complaints costs others dearly
The Telegraph profiles a “race equality campaigner [who] has cost taxpayers more than £1 million by bringing a string of discrimination claims – several of them against anti-racism groups.”
Update: “Judge Bars Woman From Suing Over Faulty Google Map”
“Finding that Google has no duty to provide accurate content on its website, a Utah judge has thrown out the novel case of a woman who claimed that faulty walking directions on Google Maps caused her to be hit by a car.” [OnPoint News, earlier here, etc.] The same post, updating another story we’ve noted, reports that a bill to make guidebook publishers liable for some injuries to tourists has died in the Hawaii legislature.
“Whoops! Plaintiff Hired Lawyer First, Then Bought Product”
Judges, the sticklers, still expect it to be done the other way round if you’re going to be the named plaintiff in a class action. This one was a claim of improper labeling filed against the Arizona iced tea company by attorney Michael Halbfish as well as the well-known New Jersey firm of Wilentz, Goldman & Spitzer. [Dan Fisher, Forbes; opinion in Coyle v. Hornell Brewing, PDF, courtesy Sean Wajert]
“Streisand Effect”
It’s Nancy Friedman’s Word of the Week.
Albany’s lawyer-legislators, part CLXII
“Over the past five years, New York State has awarded more than $7.4 billion in contracts to clients of law firms that employ state legislators, according to a review of court filings and other records.” [New York Times]
June 14 roundup
- Bizarrely overbroad: “Tennessee law bans posting images that ’cause emotional distress'” [Tim Lee, Ars Technica]
- “Superlawyer Stanley Chesley Faces Reckoning Tuesday” [Dan Fisher, Forbes, Cincinnati Enquirer, reporter Jim Hannah, earlier]
- More on record run-up in used car prices [Perry; my Cato take]
- Winkler County, Texas nurses case illuminates evils of prosecution-as-weapon [Texas Observer via PoL; earlier here, here, and here]
- Not a parody: claim that litigious celebs should be doing more to support Litigation Lobby [CJD]
- “Feminism by Treaty: Why CEDAW is Still a Bad Idea” [Christina Sommers, Policy Review]
- Why do agents of so many miscellaneous government agencies pack guns? [Quin Hillyer last year]
- New idea for who to sue over sex scandals [Conan show lawyer ad parody, adult content]
California closes a yogurt business
No wonder it had to go:
Her business, while it lasted, consisted of herself, making yogurt on the instructions of her father. Ms Dashtaki was renting space in the kitchen of an Egyptian restaurant where she and her father, “like elves before and after their working hours”, lovingly cultured their yogurt under a blanket, then drained it through a certain kind of cheese cloth, then stirred it for hours, and so forth. For the taste to be divine, everything has to be just so. And, being artisans, they kept the volume tiny, about 20 gallons (76 litres) a week, for sale only at local farmers’ markets.
Homa Dashtaki was eager to demonstrate that her yogurt was safe and healthful, but complying with California regulations turned out to be not so easy. In fact, authorities told her that she would face possible prosecution unless she established a “Grade A dairy facility” employing processes more commonly found in factories. A highlight: she’d have to install a pasteurizer even though she made her yogurt from milk that was already pasteurized. What’s more, California law makes it illegal to pasteurize milk twice, so there went any hope of continuing her straightforward way of obtaining milk, namely bringing it home from a fancy grocery store.
Ms Dashtaki is pondering whether to move to another state, one whose rules allow for artisanal products. She would not be the first entrepreneur to flee the Golden State.
Although a small artisan cheese sector struggles to get by, the California dairy market generally is dominated by mass-market producers selling blandly standardized wares. And you can see how that winds up happening. [The Economist]
More: Coyote. And more on the California regulatory climate from Ted at PoL, including a link to Cal-Peculiarities (PDF), by David Kadue of Seyfarth Shaw, on the state’s distinctively onerous employment laws.
“IHOP v. IHOP, Round 2”
Lowering the Bar has more on the trademark dispute between the International House of Pancakes (restaurant) and the International House of Prayer (church)(earlier).
Dershowitz on DSK case
Cynical? Even more so than usual? The Harvard lawprof lays out a theory that ex-IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn and his accuser share an interest in cooperating to foil prosecutor Cy Vance [Newsweek]