- As governor, Huckabee signed a good tort reform package capping punitive and non-economic damages, and reforming joint and several liability and venue law, but the rest of his economic record is big-government. And David Harsanyi is critical of Huckabee’s claimed opposition to nanny-statism. [Insurance Journal; Human Events; Harsanyi; RCP; Michael Tanner @ FoxNews]
- Update to the popular Bridezilla flowers lawsuit; florist files opposition. Lots of comments ensue. [Lattman]
- South Dakota Supreme Court: no, you can’t sue a pharmacy for being a “drug dealer” when plaintiff steals prescription medicine for a disabled friend and injures himself OD’ing on it. [On Point]
- Former litigator hired to invest $100m in court cases for UK hedge fund. [Times Online]
- Atkins fallout in Texas and California, as professional anti-death-penalty experts there happily minimize subject IQs to call their intelligent clients retarded. Earlier: Feb. 2005; Sep. 2003. [Science Evidence blog; and again]
- Heartbalm tort of alienation of affection withstand constitutional challenge in Mississippi. Earlier: Jul. 5; Nov. 2006, etc. [Torts Prof]
- Bob Woodruff biography: I would have died if my injury happened in the United States because of fear of liability. [Murnane]
- I’ve updated my paper on Thomas Geoghegan’s new book. [SSRN]
- Overlawyered holds slim lead at ABA Blawg 100 popularity contest. But why aren’t any of you voting for Point of Law? [ABA Journal]
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t files: “Cyber-bullying”
School districts have learned that they cannot discipline students for abusive Internet postings they make off-campus. Layshack v. Hermitage Area School District, No. 074465 (pending 3d Cir.); Dwyer v. OceanPort School District No. 03-6005 (D. N.J.) ($117,500 settlement to student suspended over web site). “Lawyers say school districts are in a legal quandary: If they punish a student for something they did off school grounds, they could get hit with a freedom of speech claim. If they do nothing, they could get hit with failure to act litigation.” (Tresa Baldas, “As ‘cyber-bullying’ grows, so do lawsuits”, National Law Journal, Dec. 10).
December 7 roundup
- Speaking of privacy, consider what happens when lawyers get a hold of your email. (When will we see law professors eager to create new causes of action consider the privacy-destroying implications of ediscovery?) [Fulton County Daily Report/law.com; Toronto Globe & Mail; Point of Law] Earlier: Jan. 9 and links therein.
- Speaking of privacy and reputation, Mary Roberts goes to trial, but Above the Law doesn’t mention our coverage (June 2004; Sep. 2005; Feb. 6; Mar. 19; May 17), and misses the juicy details.
- Oy: “Woman who ‘lost count after drinking 14 vodkas’ awarded £7,000 over New Year fall from bridge.” News from the compensation culture not entirely bad: damages were reasonable, and the court did hold the woman 80% responsible, the exact opposite of the McDonald’s coffee case. [Scotsman.com]
- No good deed goes unpunished: Sperm donor liable for child support, judge rules. [Newsday/Seattle Times]
- Bad attorney gets fired, sues DLA Piper for discrimination, represents herself pro se, demonstrates firsthand why she got fired: law firm wins on summary judgment. [ABA Journal; update: also New York Law Journal]
- Romney on tort reform; McCain on medmal. [Torts Prof Blog; Torts Prof Blog]
- Another day, another Borat lawsuit. I’m still waiting for the consumer fraud lawsuit from moviegoers upset that it was not actually a Kazakh documentary. [Reuters; earlier]
Daniel Solove’s The Future of Reputation
Daniel Solove’s solution to the potential problem of damning information on the Internet is to open up the libel laws and to remove the Communications Decency Act safe-harbor for site owners. As Amber Taylor points out in a provocative review, one could take this chain more seriously if Solove more directly considered the real-world consequences of such a rule, and the amount of true speech it would shut down because of the potential legal expense of defending speech in the absence of bright-line rules. Eric Turkewitz’s review finds his blogger identity trumping his plaintiffs’ attorney identity to also oppose the expanded litigation that Solove proposes. David Giacalone is more favorable, though also unwilling to endorse Solove’s policy prescriptions.
Black hydrants and unintended consequences
The state of Texas recently enacted legislation requiring that all non-working fire hydrants, defined as those pumping less than 250 gallons of water per minute, be painted black so that firefighters do not waste time during emergencies hooking up to futile sources (and presumably so that nearby homeowners can also assess their risk before a fire). Alas, the new law has had an unintended consequence, according to this Sept. 18 press release (PDF) from the State Firemen’s and Fire Marshals’ Association of Texas:
Unfortunately, some water utilities in Smith County have over-reacted to the legislation by painting all fire hydrants black, most of which are functioning hydrants that pump well over 250gpm. “The utilities are painting all hydrants black to protect against liability,” said, Cody Crawford, Fire Chief of Chapel Hill Fire Department. “While this makes sense to the lawyers, it doesn’t make good common sense and it puts homeowners at risk.”
Crawford goes on to give his opinion that the practice “creates more liability than it removes”; presumably the water utilities’ lawyers disagree with that assessment (h/t reader Eric Bainter).
December 5 roundup
- Fear of “retribution” and “legal action” among reasons docs don’t report hazardous colleagues and conditions [WaPo on new Annals of Internal Medicine study]
- Judge rips Milberg for high Chiron fee proposal, questions Skadden’s conflict [The Recorder]
- Felony murder rule is an American exception with results that can be hard to defend [Liptak, NYT]
- UK: “Man broke girlfriend’s leg in damages fraud” [Times Online]
- Often driven by defensive medicine, CAT scans may pose their own risks to patients who undergo them [Newsday on NEJM study]
- Commentator is glad post offices are lawyering up their Operation Santa gift programs [McDonough, CalLaw LegalPad; earlier; possibly related]
- Quebec judge nixes suit by Concordia University mass murderer against former colleagues [Canadian Press]
- Update on Kennewick man and Indian-remains legislation [WashTimes; earlier]
- Magic of compound interest? Uncollected 1977 award for victim of Evel Knievel attack said to have mounted by now to $100 million [AP/Yahoo]
- School discipline now a heavily lawyer-driven affair [Charleston Post & Courier courtesy Common Good]
- Complaint: Cleveland housing authority should have done more renovations to accommodate extremely obese tenant [four years ago on Overlawyered]
Gauer Distinguished Lecture
I’ve been blogging a bit less in the last few months because in September, the National Legal Center for the Public Interest merged into AEI and I’ve been heading up the combined AEI Legal Center for the Public Interest ever since. Tonight, AEI continues the NLCPI’s long tradition of the Gauer Distinguished Lecture in Law and Public Policy when SEC Chair Christopher Cox speaks tonight on government investment in the private market. In today’s American, I discuss the history of the NLCPI.
Judean People’s Front v. People’s Front of Judea Dept.
You remember last year, when the Association of Trial Lawyers of America tried to hide their identity and changed their name to the considerably less accurate American Association for Justice. (Aug. 2006; July 2006, etc.) Well, a new organization, led by J. Keith Givens, a former partner of the late Johnnie Cochran, has attempted to usurp the old acronym with an organization called The American Trial Lawyers Association, arguing that ATLA abandoned the name. “The name defines who we are and what we do,” which is very similar to the remark made by AAJ when they surrendered the Trial Lawyer title. Litigation, of course, ensued. (Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, “A Case of Trial Lawyers v. Trial Lawyers”, Washington Post, Nov. 30; commentary from Murnane, Lattman, Adler @ Volokh, Scheuerman). The Association of Trial Lawyers of America surrendered the American Trial Lawyers Association name decades ago when the American College of Trial Lawyers complained it was too similar, and the ACTL is also unhappy with the new ATLA’s use of the name. The fact that the previous sentence is so confusing suggests that the plaintiffs have a point.
December 3 roundup
- Drunk driving by St. Louis Blues hockey player Rob Ramage killed his passenger in a Toronto crash, and now Missouri verdict puts car rental company on hook for $9.5 million [Post-Dispatch]
- Consumers trust lawyer ads in phone book, or at least so say the Yellow Pages people [WV Record]
- Latest flip in marine-mammal litigation: Ninth Circuit orders curbs on Navy’s sub-hunting sonar [L.A. Times; earlier coverage]
- More on colorful Judith Regan suit against News Corp. [Carr, NYT]
- Lesson for law-firm “foreclosure mills”: don’t file the action before your client actually acquires the instrument being sued on [ABA Journal]
- John Fund on Salvation Army and English in the workplace litigation [WSJ/OpinionJournal; earlier]
- Comstock Act for the web is one of departed Rep. Hyde’s less happy legacies [McCullagh, CNet]
- A view from Boston on Lone Star State med-mal reforms [Globe]
- Shaker abstinence, cont’d: FDA mulls petition to crack down on salt in foods, and AMA has joined busybody brigade [L.A. Times; earlier, see also]
- Texas tort tycoon John O’Quinn probably isn’t winning prizes these days from historic preservationists [ABA Journal]
- Run for your lives! Toxic chocolate! [six years ago on Overlawyered]
December 2 roundup
- Remember that ludicrous case where the Florida driver fell asleep, crashed his Ford Explorer, his passenger was killed, and a jury blamed Ford to the tune of $61 million? (See also Sep. 10.) A Florida court got around to reversing it, though only to grant a new trial under a variety of erroneous evidentiary rulings that prejudiced Ford, rather than because the suit was too silly to ever conceivably win in a just society. The remand goes back to the same judge that let the suit go forward and committed multiple reversible errors in favor of the plaintiff. [Ford Motor v. Hall-Edwards (Fla. App. Nov. 7, 2007); Krauss @ Point of Law; Daily Business Review; Bloomberg/Boston Globe]
- Not really a man-bites-dog story, but Geoffrey Fieger (Aug. 25 and rather often otherwise) speaks. [ABA Journal]
- Uh-oh: Former litigator hired to invest $100m in court cases for UK hedge fund. [Times Online]
- The real NatWest Three deal. [Kirkendall; July 2006 in Overlawyered]
- Homeowners fined $347,000 for trimming trees without a permit—after the Glendale Fire Department sent them a notice telling them to trim their trees for being a fire hazard. (h/t Slim) [Consumerist]
- Disclaimers at children’s birthday parties (h/t BC) [Publishers Weekly]
- British Christmas parades handcuffed by litigation fears. (h/t F.R.) [Telegraph]
- Underlawyered in Saudi Arabia: A “19-year-old Saudi gang-rape victim was recently sentenced to 200 lashes and six months in jail for being in a car with an unrelated male when the attack occurred. Last week, her lawyer was disbarred for objecting too vociferously.” [Weekly Standard]
- Don’t forget to vote for us at the ABA Journal Blawg 100.