These are the last few days to visit the oddball eating establishment before it moves to more conventional and less cramped quarters precipitated by an ADA lawsuit [Sacramento Bee]
Author Archive
“Cleveland police no more grasp the 4th Amendment than they do the Rule Against Perpetuities”
Russ Bensing reports on the Ohio criminal-law scene.
UT hassling Longhorn users
IP lawyers for the University of Texas are busy creatures, according to Eric Johnson:
A couple years ago, they sued an outfit making t-shirts, sold to fans of rival Texas A&M, that depicted a broken Longhorns logo with the taunt, “Saw ’em off.” (Fellow UT alum Siva Vaidhyanathan’s take is here.)
And I remember when I was going to school at UT, in the early 1990s, the university was hassling local business with “Longhorn” in their names. Since then, UT has been very aggressive about trademark issues.
Yet all this activity has not really been as much of a profit center as you might think: the cost of running the IP program, Johnson calculates, may eat up something on the order of half the $800,000 in annual royalties brought in (via Ron Coleman).
By reader acclaim: great moments in “targeted disabilities”
The federal government is seeking applicants who are mentally ill, mentally retarded or both to work as lawyers in the Justice Department. Specifically, a job announcement for “up to 10 experienced attorneys for the position of Trial Attorney in the Voting Section in Washington, D.C.” contains the following language:
The Civil Rights Division encourages qualified applicants with targeted disabilities to apply. Targeted disabilities are deafness, blindness, missing extremities, partial or complete paralysis, convulsive disorder, mental retardation, mental illness, severe distortion of limbs and/or spine. Applicants who meet the qualification requirements and are able to perform the essential functions of the position with or without reasonable accommodation are encouraged to identify targeted disabilities in response to the questions in the Avue application system seeking that information.
[via Eugene Volokh and many others]
£300 billion worth of long memories
Ugandans sue Britain over crimes during a 1893-1899 war [Telegraph]
February 3 roundup
- Many of our readers liked the ruling, but someone didn’t: “Judge censured for ordering class-action lawyer to take pay in $125,000 worth of gift-cards” [BoingBoing, ABA Journal, Leonard/L.A. Times, Lowering the Bar]
- “NFL Concedes In Who Dat Battle” [Lowering the Bar, more, earlier; here’s a protest t-shirt, and more on those]
- Some plaintiff’s lawyers give their side of the story, disputing fraud allegations in Dole banana-worker pesticide cases [Bronstad, NLJ, earlier]
- “Google Blog Bundle — 42 criminal defense blogs” [Mark Bennett] And while you’re at it, why not take a moment right now to put Overlawyered in your RSS blog reader?
- Massachusetts hardball: state lawmaker says private law schools might be breaking antitrust laws in working to oppose state school proposed in his district [ABA Journal via Above the Law; public law school plan OK’d]
- Making the rounds: why medieval trial by ordeal may not have been so crazy after all [Peter Leeson, Boston Globe and full paper (PDF) via Volokh]
- “Rothstein E-Mails Reveal Role of Former Plaintiffs’ Lawyer” [Brian Baxter, AmLaw Litigation Daily]
- Obama: I tried to reach across aisle on medical liability reform but GOP wasn’t nibbling. Fact check please [Wood, PoL]
Hundreds of California lawyers investigated over alleged loan modification abuses
It would appear that a lot of bad practices went on, but San Diego discipline-defense attorney David Cameron Carr at his nicely named blog KafkaEsq cautions against rushing to judgment.
“How patient privacy laws impede electronic communication with doctors”
Staying in touch with your doctor via IM? It’s more likely to happen in Mexico than here. Kevin MD quotes one doctor who “suspects that the demand that patients have to electronically talk to their doctors will force a change in privacy laws. We can only hope.”
“Cyber-harassment” and speech codes
Eugene Volokh and Scott Greenfield worry that free speech could be the loser from a buzz of law school interest in the topic of “cyber-stalking” or “cyber-harassment” — rather broadly couched in one description to include law students’ “using websites to make outrageous gender– or race-specific comments.” Volokh:
I’m sure that most backers of these restrictions would stress that of course they’re not trying to shut down substantive debate, only incivility. But once viewpoint-based restrictions are accepted, once speech can be suppressed because it’s “outrageous” or “smearing,” it’s pretty hard to have much confidence that substantive (but to some “outrageous”) discussion of ideas will remain untouched; and even if actual punishments for such speech are rare, the risk of punishment may powerfully deter the substantive debate as well as the nonsubstantive smears (of which I agree there is plenty). That has certainly been the experience with “civility codes” at university campuses, and governmentally coerced restrictions on “harassment” in workplaces.
New Orleans coroner’s race ad
One for the hardball-campaign-ad Hall of Fame. Background: Times-Picayune (incumbent Minyard says ad is so over-the-top that it may actually be helping him), ProPublica.