The new ABC show may cause the legal profession’s on-air image to sink to a new low, worries Mark Donald in Texas Lawyer (“Lawyer Prestige Hits New Low With Fall TV Season”, Dec. 8) For more on the views of show creator David E. Kelley, an ex-lawyer who also created the shows “Ally McBeal” and “Boston Public”, see Nov. 21, 2000.
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Should have taken the Happy Meal
John Gregg of Shaker Heights, Ohio wasn’t satisfied with the $30,000 that an arbitrator awarded him for supposedly slipping on soap and water in the men’s room of a McDonald’s restaurant. He insisted on a jury trial instead, but as the trial date approached the restaurant chain investigated the case further and found that Gregg, “who had a 2002 arson conviction connected to burning a relative’s car for insurance money,” wasn’t telling the strict truth when he said he didn’t know the customer who was serving as his key witness in the claim. In fact, the man had worked with Gregg at a construction firm and the two had both collected payments from Geico two years earlier after claiming that their cars had collided with each other. Calling his actions “fraudulent”, Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Timothy J. McGinty found Gregg in contempt of court, “ordered him jailed for 30 days and fined him $250.” (Jim Nichols, “Pass up $30,000, go directly to jail”, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Dec. 17; “Outcome of McDonald’s suit should be modeled” (editorial), Richmond, Ind., Palladium-Item, Dec. 22).
Forbidden Broadway
The latest installment in the beloved musical spoof series sending up Broadway shows opened this month at the Douglas Fairbanks Theater in New York. As founder Gerald Alessandrini makes clear in his liner notes to vol. II, the series is made possible by the good-natured forbearance of many in the theater community: “Also special thanks to the real composers and lyricists and writers (alive and past) who have let us make mince meat out of their beautiful and well-crafted work. Without their reluctance toward lawsuits there would certainly be no Forbidden Broadway.”
The Lawyers of “Spamalot”
Continuing Broadway Monday at Overlawyered, Eric Idle reports that the musical production of “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” has spent more money on lawyers than the comedy troupe did on the entire budget of the original coconut-laden film. No word on whether last year’s threatened action by “Camelot” producers complaining about possible confusion is behind those expenses. Hormel, producers of food-like substance Spam, has adopted the more productive approach of co-optation, rather than litigation, and is offering a “Collectors’ Edition” Spam tin. (Eric Idle, “The Tale of Spamalot”, Daily Llama, Sep. 6; AP/USA Today, “‘Spamalot’ heads to Broadway”, Dec. 3; Ernio Hernandez, “‘Monty Python’ Musical Spamalot Urged to Change Title by Broadway-Bound Camelot”, Playbill, Nov. 14, 2003; “Monty Python Star Faces Costly Broadway Wrangle”, WENN, Nov. 12, 2003).
“One-Question Interview: Tom Perrotta”
From this August:
Yankee Pot Roast: Which do you prefer (to munch on, not to adorn book covers): Pepperidge Farm Goldfish or chocolate-chip cookies?
Tom Perrotta: I prefer chocolate chip cookies. They don’t have as many lawyers.
Background detail: Malcolm Jones, “Fiction: New Snack Attack”, Newsweek, May 24; before-and-after book covers; Perrotta’s Little Children.
Watch what you say about lawyers, cont’d
Madison County: Gordon Maag, the trial-lawyer-backed candidate who last month was defeated in a race for the Illinois Supreme Court in what is said to have been the most expensive judicial race in American history, has filed a $100 million defamation suit against an arm of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce for saying bad things about him during the recent campaign. (St. Louis Post-Dispatch/Edwardsville Intelligencer/Southern Illinoisan/Illinois Leader). Jim Copland comments at Point Of Law. For two other widely noted efforts by Madison County lawyers to silence or intimidate their critics, see Nov. 4 and Nov. 30, 1999 and Feb. 29, 2000 (class action lawyers sue Post-Dispatch columnist Bill McClellan for making fun of them) and Jun. 9, Jul. 12, Jul. 26, 2003 (dragging national tort reform groups to court). For efforts to suppress the airing of ads affecting the Maag-Karmeier race, see Oct. 27. For other watch-what-you-say-about-lawyers cases, see Mar. 16 and Nov. 15, 2004, Nov. 30, 2003, and earlier posts; and Point of Law, Oct. 25 and Dec. 22, 2004.
Good Yomtov
I didn’t see any mention of lawsuits in the Lileks column the Key Monk cites immediately below, but for the polite rejoinder to the underlying point, see Virginia Postrel.
Thank you and goodnight
Overlawyered.com readers, thanks for reading my posts and allowing me to invade your cyberspace. Thank you Mr. Olson for letting me sap your bandwidth on this site. Two things to leave you with, as The Monk’s one-week term as guest blogger ends:
1) This amusing entry from James Lileks regarding the social aspects of the various lawsuits urging that church-state separation means no “Christ” in Christmas.
2) Merry Christmas, Joy of the Season, All the Best and Happy New Year.
Thanks to KeyMonk
…for a highly productive week as guestblogger (five posts yesterday alone). His regular blog (“Politics, Sports, Law, and occasionally Religion — whatever you want to argue about”) can be found here.
Free Speech losing in the UK?
In the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, a group of Sikh “protesters” forced the cancellation of a controversial play described as a “black comedy” that centered around rape and murder at a Sikh temple. The details are in this article (registration is gratis) and some outrage is in this short lead editorial.
Here is what is most worrisome — the notion that free speech must give way to the (violent) protests of the community (and the concurrent lack of protection by peace officers). The attitude is nicely encapsulated by these two reactions: