Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Author Archive

Great moments in teacher tenure

Julie Mack, Kalamazoo Gazette (via Mark Hemingway, Examiner):

In 1993, Chelsea High School teacher Stephen Leith shot to death his superintendent and wounded his principal and another teacher during a confrontation at the school. Leith was convicted of homicide and given a life sentence; from prison, he continued to pursue an appeal of his firing from Chelsea Public Schools, blaming his actions on medication.
“He murdered his superintendent. It’s crazy,” said Tom White, associate director of labor relations for [the] Michigan School Board Association.

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November 26 roundup

  • Reason TV interviews Richard Epstein;
  • On the SEC’s big new “insider trading” sweep [Ribstein, Bainbridge, Lambert, Salmon, more Ribstein]
  • Losing = winning? Ambitious claim for fees in environmental case [California Civil Justice, scroll]
  • “Unintended consequences department: canceled flights” [Ted at PoL] And check out Ted’s new TSA Abuse Blog, on one of the hottest issues of the moment. More on that from Popehat and Simple Justice;
  • H.R. 1408, the Inclusive Home Design Act, would compel handicap accessibility in private home design, yet another dreadful idea from Rep. Jan Schakowsky of CPSIA fame [AmendTheCPSIA]
  • “This place would be a shoplifter’s paradise (and a liability insurance abuser’s motherlode) in the United States, but we were in Japan, where they don’t seem to worry as much about that kind of thing.” [Mark Frauenfelder, BoingBoing, on the Showa Kan museum of everyday midcentury life in Takayama]
  • UK: “I moved out for decorators and squatters took over my house” [Evening Standard]
  • From the ruins of Pompeii, a reflection on government and disaster relief [Dum Spiro Spero]

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Annals of prosecutorial stunts

Prosecutors in a Georgia murder trial produced a birthday cake and proceeded to sing “Happy Birthday” to the deceased child victim for the benefit of the jury as well as a national Court TV audience. The defense lawyer failed to object, and the Georgia Supreme Court declined to order a new trial. [A Public Defender, Balko]

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November 24 roundup

  • Jack Park on Bruesewitz v. Wyeth vaccine preemption case at Supreme Court [Heritage]
  • Incidentally happening to assure lawyers more access to work: Harvard’s Tribe devises “access to justice” initiatives for Obama administration [BLT]
  • New Haven cops accidentally photograph themselves deleting video of an unlawful arrest [Balko]
  • How elite law culture miscomprehends the military [Second Circuit chief judge Dennis Jacobs speech at Federalist Society convention, YouTube]
  • “Later, Bad Lawyer”: a blogger heads to prison [Greenfield]
  • Reform medical liability? Depends on how badly you want neurosurgeons’ services [Michael Lavyne, NYDN]
  • “Cab-rank principle” in legal ethics explained [Lawyers’ Lawyer, Australia; via Legal Ethics Forum]
  • $3.5 million award to unsuccessful suicide-while-in-custody is one of long series of such cases [six years ago on Overlawyered]

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For livestock and poultry producers, more lawsuits ahead?

As regulatory agencies go, the USDA’s Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration, or GIPSA, generally stays out of the limelight. But lawmakers and agriculture commentators are sounding the alarm about regulations proposed this summer that they say would open up extensive new liability among livestock and poultry producers for marketing violations. Raising murmurs in particular: the Obama administration’s head of GIPSA, J. Dudley Butler, is a Mississippi trial lawyer who had made a specialty in private practice of suing livestock producers. Sample criticism: Troy Marshall/Beef Magazine; Steve Kay/Beef Magazine; Derek Hunter/Daily Caller; Bob Barr/The Hill; Greg Conko/Open Market.

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Great moments in judicial conduct

“Former justice Elizabeth Weaver, who retired this year after 16 years on the Michigan Supreme Court, evidently made secret recordings of internal court deliberations and has released transcripts of some of the meetings.” Most of Weaver’s former colleagues on the court have signed a letter condemning her resort to secret taping, saying they were unaware of it and would never have consented to it or to her revelation of court deliberations generally. Weaver came to the bench as a Republican but was long at odds with the other GOP members of the court. [WSJ Law Blog, Knake/Legal Ethics Blog]

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