Our very first embedded YouTube video. It originally appeared on Comedy Central’s “The Hollow Men” (via Nicole Black):
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Penguin “black interest” lawsuit, cont’d
Our post of Wednesday on an author’s complaint that Penguin Group steered her work into “African-American interest” marketing channels, although she would have preferred for it to be marketed as a general interest book, has spurred a somewhat heated discussion in the reader comments section. It also drew an informative comment in email from Charles Petit, author of the publishing-law blog Scrivener’s Error, which we’ve appended to the original post.
Privacy and trial lawyers
You often hear about the plaintiffs’ bar and their solicitous concern for the privacy of citizens, and how they’ll be happy to bring class actions to protect that privacy. Of course, as we have repeatedly noted (e.g., Jun. 20, 2005 and Feb. 9), that concern for privacy extends only as far as it doesn’t interfere with trial lawyers’ desire for a payday. The California Supreme Court has ruled that consumers who contact a vendor are subject to having their names given to plaintiffs’ attorneys (in this case, the super-ethical firm of Milberg Weiss) in California-state-court discovery unless such consumers explicitly take the trouble to opt out to each and every opportunity for such notification, reversing an appellate court’s ruling that names should only be given out if consumers opt in to such notification. Bruce Nye has more details about Pioneer Electronics v. Superior Court. The opinion doesn’t appear to create any limits on the ability of plaintiffs’ attorneys to use that information. We look forward to the usual suspects commenting on the need for protective legislation to prevent such privacy breaches. Right?
Tradeable permits for sinful foods?
Policy wonkery meets health nannyhood in a truly daft proposal from the David-Cameron-led Tories in the UK, a commission of which has deemed cakes and ale (at least in excess) to be “social pollutants”. One searches in vain for the “April Fool’s” giveaway tag. (Patrick Hosking, “Tories plan strict quotas for makers of fatty foods”, Times Online, Jan. 19) (via NRO “The Corner”).
Lawyer for families: MySpace “no different” from day-care center
Kiki, the cheerleader
Ted proves himself to be a superior purveyor of Supreme Court gossip (Jan. 23).
Author: Penguin tagged my book as “black interest”
Many large bookstores carry sections devoted to works of African-American interest, and a number of book clubs and other specialized selling channels do a thriving business by specializing in black themes and authors. In October, however, Florida-based author Nadine Aldred, who writes under the pen name “Millennia Black“, filed a pro se lawsuit in federal court in Manhattan against her publisher, Penguin Group, on the grounds that Penguin (she alleges) insisted on steering her work into black-interest channels although she would rather have been marketed as a general-interest author. On the Wrong Side of the Alligator has reprinted excerpts from the complaint (Jan. 6).
The estimation of whether a particular author’s work will sell better if marketed to a niche or to a more general audience is inescapably going to depend on case-by-case judgment (assuming that marketing dollars and available cues of cover design, etc. are limited and cannot be dispatched in both directions at once). It is not immediately apparent why Penguin would not have an interest in taking a path that maximized its author’s sales. Aldred’s suit asks $250 million. See also Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, “Why book industry sees the world split still by race”, Wall Street Journal/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Dec. 6.
P.S. Disclosure, for whatever it’s worth: Penguin was my publisher on my first book (The Litigation Explosion).
More: Charles E. Petit of Scrivener’s Error writes to say:
The real problem in this instance is not with Penguin. The real problem is an antitrust nightmare: the book distribution system, which is probably the paradigmatic example of “one man’s antitrust is another man’s economy of scale”–at least until you look into the financing and terms of doing business, which makes me ask “What economies of scale?” The _distributors_ are the ones who demand “pigeonholing” of books, and Penguin’s best defense will be to point out that books that are released _without_ a category tend to stay in distributors’ warehouses unshipped. In other words, “We had to put _some_ category on it as a business necessity, and this is the one that in our commercial judgment was the best fit.”
January 23 roundup
- Trial lawyers look for Democrats to punish. [Point of Law; Investors’ Business Daily]
- Point of Law Vioxx trial updates: California, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.
- Men seeking laws freeing them from child support when DNA proves they’re not the father. Earlier: May 10 and Feb. 3, 2004. [Time]
- Latest creative defense to a murder charge: Asperger’s syndrome. [Boston Globe]
- A complicated medmal case is trumped by the sympathy factor [Cortlandt Forum via Kevin MD]
- Cost of EMTALA (Sep. 2, 2005) in LA County alone: $1.6 billion. LA Times doesn’t
mention the law by name orconsider the obvious conclusion. [LA Times] - Why the painfully obvious explanations on painfully obvious objects? [comments at Obscure Store; New York Sun; new Mike Judge movie Idiocracy]
- Lessig: stop me before I regulate again! [Hit & Run]
- Right-wingers take on Dinesh D’Souza [roundup of links at Postrel]
- The meaningless and counterproductive Democratic House bill on student loans. [Novak @ WaPo]
- Do big law firms really care about attrition? One theory. [Ivey Files]
- My girlfriend thinks I spend too much time arguing with idiots. Relatedly, Eugene Volokh responds to Anisa Abd el Fattah about the First Amendment and Jews. [Volokh]
“Candid Camera”
Apparently the long-running show was sued very little, if at all, by victims of its hidden-camera stunts. Was that because, as host Allen Funt maintained, the show’s spirit was genial rather than sadistic, in contrast to more recent shows? Or because its liability releases (presumably proffered to the victims after the embarrassing stunt had been sprung) were more likely to be upheld? Or just because people then weren’t as primed to sue? (Ann Althouse, Jan. 20).
January 22 roundup
- “Don’t Google the lawyers.” Do judges need to be that explicit in admonishing jurors? [New Jersey Law Journal]
- Ky. lawyers bail out of hospital-infection suits [Courier-Journal, Dr. Wes, KevinMD]
- Man accused of extorting Oprah Winfrey earlier inserted himself into dispute arising from Prudential workplace-bias suit, lawyer says [Sun-Times]
- Nevada smoking ban scuppers taverns’ business, no real surprise there unless your name’s Bloomberg [Las Vegas Review-Journal]
- Panic! Another thermometer spill! (earlier, here and here) [Szwarc, and sequel]
- Write your legislator urging vote on pot decriminalization, get reported to police [Sullum]
- Heavy-handed: Calif. lawmaker proposes ban on spanking kids <4 years old [Saunders, Fisher]
- Think twice before driving your neighbor to the hospital: the Border Patrol just might seize your car [Tucson Citizen via Reason “Hit and Run”]
- Golf club ejectee sued for discrimination, but club says it was because of his many financial scams [Las Vegas Sun]
- Populist Dems vs. free trade: we’re all the losers [Chapman, syndicated]
- Student sues over excessive summer homework [Two years ago on Overlawyered]