Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
“That’ll show him, Catharine!”
is Amber Taylor’s reaction to Professor Catharine MacKinnon’s boast that she obtained a civil injunction against Radovan Karadzic prohibiting him from engaging in genocide.
Starbucks claims exclusive rights to “doubleshot”
We normally see Starbucks in this space when they’re being sued over hot coffee, much like the infamous McDonald’s coffee case.
A Tulsa, Oklahoma, coffeeshop, Doubleshot Coffee, however, has received a scary-lawyer letter from Starbucks, claiming that Starbucks has an exclusive right to use the term “double shot” in relation to coffee. The proprietor writes in his blog (via Romenesko):
So today, as a legal clarification, I would like everyone to know that we are not Starbuck’s Doubleshot. If we tricked you into coming in here, thinking you could get a can of Starbuck’s DoubleShot here, please let me know. And if you thought that $2 Tuesday was a sale on Starbuck’s Doubleshot, I vehemently apologize for the confusion and ask you to please not come in here anymore because stupid people annoy me.
The Do-Not-Shop List
According to the Washington Post, “The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control maintains its ‘Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List’ to be easily accessible on its public Web site.” It is a list of foreign persons and entities suspected of certain terrorist or criminal activities and associations. Per federal law, American businesses are forbidden to engage in transactions with those listed, on pain of “harsh penalties that include 30 years in jail and fines up to $10 million against corporations, and $5 million against individuals, and civil penalties of up to $1 million per incident”.
Although the main regulatory impact of the law appears to have fallen on financial institutions and on big-ticket retailers such as auto dealers, per Maryland attorney Thomas B. Hudson of Hudson Cook LLP, the law’s regulatory reach is wider than one might think, because it “prohibits anyone, not just car dealers, from doing business with” those on the list, so that selling a newspaper, or a bottle of soda pop, or a shoeshine, to one of the malefactors, is equally unlawful. Purveyors of all these goods and services are apparently expected to get their customers’ names, and check them against the list, before doing business if they really want to feel secure they’re not breaking the law (Don Oldenburg, “Hit-and-Miss List: If You’re in This Directory, Forget Shopping”, Washington Post, Apr. 9). For more on the weird implications of the concept I once dubbed “merchandise laundering”, see my Reason piece of March 1999.
Larry Flynt, hero?
[Joe] Escalante, a devout Catholic who says he is no fan of p0rn, knew going in that his show’s name, “Barely Legal Radio,” might run into some copyright issues with Flynt’s Barely Legal brand of adult magazines and videos. But Flynt did not challenge the show’s application for a trademark.
“I heard from some people inside that [Flynt] didn’t think there was any confusion,” Escalante says. “If this is true, he’s the only guy I’ve ever heard of whose response is ‘Why would I sue these people?’ That sort of makes him a hero of the ‘Barely Legal’ show. You never hear something like that. In this town? Usually you’d at least get a letter.”
(Hank Stuever, “The DJ With the JD”, Washington Post, Apr. 10).
Thanks and Adieu
My humble thanks to Walter and Ted for giving me the opportunity to contribute to Overlawyered. It was a pleasure and an honor. I shall now return to my role as regular reader and commenter under the blogonym Wavemaker.
It’s In the Tiny Print
Law prof Kris W. Kobach, former advisor to the Attorney General on immigration issues, finds some of the more hideous provisions of the current immigration bill.
Like that surprise hidden on page 302 – which would replace the country’s entire bench of experienced immigration judges with pro-immigration advocates.
With a few exceptions, today’s immigration judges (who serve for life) are dedicated to enforcing the law, and they do a difficult job well. This bill forces all immigration judges to step down after serving seven years – and restricts replacements to attorneys with at least five years’ experience practicing immigration law.
Lawyers meeting that description, he notes, are not particularly inclined to enforce the law.
Eeek.
(Via Lucianne.com).
Legal Snafu Halts N.O. Bus Auction
In the “Can’t Do Anything Right” category, the New Orleans public school system was instructed to halt an internet auction of one of the infamous flooded school busses when it was discovered that the state School Board’s authorization for the auction did not include the internet variety.The State board’s lawyer discovered that although the board authorized an “auctioneer” to handle the sale, the system is bound by the state’s definition of that term, which does not include Internet auction sites.
Bids had reached $6,700 for the soggy scrap metal, but were thrown out as re-authorization is sought.
Via Lucianne.com.( Times Picayune, Apr. 7)
Pigs at the Slaughterhouse?
The team of lawyers who recently won the largest-ever bad faith insurance verdict in Pennsylvania — more than $7.9 million — are asking U.S. District Judge Cynthia M. Rufe to make new law by awarding them $2.3 million in fees, the largest award of attorney fees that would ever have been granted in such a case.
The lawyers argue that the lodestar approach,under which their fee would be about $323,000, is flawed for two reasons: because the lawyers who bring such cases almost never bill for their work at an hourly rate, and their clients have most often agreed to a contingent fee in which the lawyers will be paid a set percentage of any verdict or settlement they win, usually one-third.
As a result, Tanner and Newman argue, the lodestar approach “unduly focuses the court’s scrutiny on a fictional contrivance as opposed to an approach which accurately reflects the manner in which such cases are handled.”
Of the $7.9m jury verdict, $6.25m is punitive damages, which, the defense argue, is a sufficient pot of money out of which the lawyers can extract their fees. (Law.com, Apr. 7)
More Delicious Language
Continuing to mix my business with pleasure, I pass along this fine prose from Ballarin, Inc. v. Licensing Board of Boston, 49 Mass. App. Ct. 506 (2000):
For some diners, consuming an appetizer of duck liver pâté, rolled in pistachio, lingonberry coulis, served with garlic pita points, followed by an entrée of venison au poivre, finished with a dessert of chestnut mousse gateau, apricot glacé, is still more rapturous if preceded by a dry martini or ended with a cognac. To satisfy that want, Ballarin, Inc., which operates The Hungry I restaurant at 71 1/2 Charles Street at the foot of Beacon Hill in Boston, applied in 1995 to the licensing board for the city of Boston for a seven-day all-alcoholic beverages license….
…At what was to be a first hearing on Hungry I’s application before the licensing board, proponents and opponents of the award of an all-alcoholic beverages license made known their views, by speech and writing. Among Hungry I’s adherents were some abutters and many patrons, one of whom touted the salubrious tendency of a Bloody Mary to increase levels of good cholesterol. Those opposed mustered all the political artillery–the Beacon Hill Civic Association and elected public officials. The principal argument advanced against granting the application was “opening of the floodgates”; i.e., were Hungry I to receive an all-alcoholic beverages license, how could the licensing board say no to others? The neighborhood would go down the drain….
Foreigners to Massachusetts might get the impression that rhetorical flourish is a sine qua non of our judicial appointees. Would that it were the case.