Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

“South Carolina Court Awards $1.8 Million Libel Judgment Against Blogger”

Ad agency head Scott Brandon sued Donald Wizeman “claiming that Wizeman was the author of Myrtle Beach Insider and that Wizeman had defamed him by publishing a June 2007 post calling him a ‘failed lawyer’ and criticizing one of his ad agency’s campaigns. Wizeman denied that he was the author of Myrtle Beach Insider, but admitted agreeing with its content.” Note, however, some oddities that make the case far from typical: Wizeman did not hire a lawyer at first and claims to have been unaware of some key proceedings that were decided against him, and the judge awarded summary judgment to the plaintiff, which is extremely unusual in defamation cases. [Sam Bayard, Citizen Media Law; Mike Cherney, Myrtle Beach Sun-News]

P.S. Some commenters are reading the case as one of “defendant doesn’t show up to contest complaint, gets hit with default judgment”; I wasn’t sure from the story (and am still not sure) that the sequence of events was that cut and dried. Obviously, it doesn’t count as especially odd if an absent litigant gets hit with a big judgment.

Update Aug. 2009: Case settled [Citizen Media Law]

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Update: “Quebec dad sued by daughter after grounding loses his appeal”

“A Quebec father who was taken to court by his 12-year-old daughter after he grounded her in June 2008 has lost his appeal.” [CBC] For some reason the litigation has not done wonders for family harmony:

The girl — who now lives with her mother — doesn’t have much of a relationship with her dad now, [attorney Kim] Beaudoin said.

“We went from a child who wanted to live with her father, and after all this has been done, they’re not speaking anymore.”

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Library employee objects to “Harry Potter” promotion

And now Deborah Smith of Poplar Bluff, Missouri has won a $45,000 settlement of her claim that library managers should have been more accommodating of her religious scruples about helping promote the popular Rowling wizard-themed books. The library had offered to let her remain behind the scenes during a special Potter event but said she did have to help. The ACLU represented her. [On Point News]

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CPSIA, tangled politics of, cont’d

Last week twenty-eight Democratic senators sent a letter (PDF) to Acting CPSC Chair Nancy Nord the gist of which can be summed up as, “Never mind the law we passed, start enforcing the more reasonable law we wish we’d passed”. Neat move, if somewhat at odds with the concept of the “rule of law”.

Rick Woldenberg scrutinizes the politics (with particular attention to ATVs/minibikes) and also points out something seldom brought out in press accounts: the last 23 commission votes on CPSIA have been settled by 2-0 votes, with reputedly “good” CPSC commissioner Thomas Moore (cozy with Congress, vocally pro-CPSIA, a Democrat) voting exactly the same way as Nord, the reputedly “bad” commissioner (at odds with Congress, unenthusiastic about much of CPSIA, known to be a Republican, etc.) Fickle friends Which particular decisions, one wonders, would have turned out differently had some new appointee been installed in the vacant third seat, as Rep. Henry Waxman is reputedly demanding as a precondition for even considering hearings on the law? Woldenberg makes the same point today in a Chicago Tribune letter to the editor, responding to an exceptionally lame April 4 editorial in that paper. More on CPSC politics: news-side WSJ; Nord responds to attack from Sen. Durbin, and requests that President Obama name permanent chair to replace her (more). (Update: the National Law Journal is out with coverage of the “furor” CPSIA has set off in Washington).

On a brighter note, AmendTheCPSIA has posted videos (slow loading) of the Capitol Hill rally two weeks ago to demand action on the law. Here’s the video of dirtbike racing dad Rod Yentzer and 6-year-old (!) son Chase:

And here’s bike dealer Steve Burnside of DSD Kawasaki in Parkersburg, West Virginia:


Also, Carol Baicker-McKee has a another excellent post on the rally, while Rick Woldenberg discusses the politics of the event. Earlier rally coverage here.
Public domain image: Yankee Mother Goose (1902), illustrator Ella S. Brison, courtesy ChildrensLibrary.org.

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Online-speech symposium at Concurring Opinions

As Scott Greenfield notices, the lawprof chatfest (organized by Danielle Citron, Frank Pasquale, David Hoffman, and Deven Desai) is tilted toward participants who want to restrict online speech in the name of feminism and civil rights.

P.S. One of the symposium participants most inclined toward the free-speech position, Michael Froomkin, draws some particularly lively comments. And Paul Horwitz at Prawfsblawg offers some pointed criticisms.

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Great liars of the law

Our item on the lawyer who “lies so much he had to hire someone to call his dog” reminded Tom Freeland of a lawyer who flourished during the boom years in early Mississippi that began in the 1830s, one Ovid Bolus, Esq., as portrayed in a book of the 1850s:

Bolus was a natural liar, just as some horses are natural pacers, and some dogs natural setters. What he did in that walk, was from the irresistible promptings of instinct, and a disinterested love of art. His genius and his performances were free from the vulgar alloy of interest or temptation.

Accordingly, he did not labor a lie: he lied with a relish: he lied with a coming appetite, growing with what it fed on: he lied from the delight of invention and the charm of fictitious narrative.

The much longer passage of which that is a sample is well worth reading in its entirety, if only for its historical flavor (and not because any lawyers like that still walk among us, of course).

Freeland, incidentally, is well known to many readers as longtime contributor “NMC” at Folo, a blog that for years shed invaluable light on Mississippi politics and law and in particular the state’s judicial scandals; that blog and its editor Lotus have lately gone on hiatus, but Freeland has set up with his own Mississippi-focused blog.

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“Someone’s Gotta Go” and employment law

According to descriptions of a forthcoming Fox reality TV show, “actual, struggling companies with about 15 to 20 employees will let their staffs decide who gets laid off. The employee-judges will use confidential information — salaries, job evaluations — to make that final call on the show.” If that’s really the show’s format, the employers are setting themselves up for lawsuits under discrimination, retaliation, and other employment laws, not all of which can be fended off by having the employees sign waivers. [National Law Journal] More: Evil HR Lady.

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Damned if you do, damned if you don’t files: United Airlines customer service

There is a horrifying tale on Consumerist about a family that missed a flight to visit their dying mother in the hospital because a ticket agent refused to help them because it was time for her break.  What the story doesn’t tell you, and what none of the commenters seem to realize, is that it’s the trial lawyers that put United Airlines in that situation.  Oregon labor laws California labor laws require workers to be permitted to take breaks; plaintiffs’ attorneys have made a multi-million-dollar cottage industry out of class action lawsuits against employers where customer service was permitted to take priority and workers occasionally didn’t take their breaks.  (In California, the penalty for failing to provide a ten-minute break is an hour of pay.) To avoid this, the employer has to enforce the break period stringently, because they can potentially be held liable even if the employee voluntarily avoids the break.

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Food safety law and small producers, cont’d

My post last week on a bill that would greatly expand federal food safety law, and the dangers it could pose to small producers, drew a large number of readers, especially from Andrew Sullivan’s link; some other notable mentions and reactions include Rod Dreher, Nick Gillespie @ Reason “Hit and Run”, Hans Bader and more, John Phipps/Incoming, and Vines and Cattle.
Fluffy and insubstantial?
At the same time, bill sponsor Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Ct.) and allies continue their efforts to dismiss alarm about possible effects on small producers as just hysteria whipped up from nothing, a trope that Patrick at Popehat has a bit of fun with. DeLauro has given interviews along these lines in recent days to the Hartford Courant and Huffington Post. Meanwhile, Factcheck.org criticizes untruths and hyperbole about the bill found in a widely sent chain email, most of which is fair enough — lots of misinformation is being circulated — but can’t resist a bit of Snopes-like over-reassurance about the law’s supposed general innocuousness. (Incidentally, for those who keep track of such things, oft-accurate FactCheck.org has just conferred its seal of approval on oft-accurate Snopes.com. Everyone can feel better now.)

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports (blog summary) that Pennsylvania is cracking down on women who prepare home-baked pies for church fish fries without arranging for a license and state inspection access to their kitchens. Back away slowly from that pie, ma'am Little in the story is surprising to those who’ve followed our coverage over the years of similar controversies over pies in Connecticut, cupcakes in Massachusetts, cookies in Maine, county-fair jams in Virginia, and church potlucks in Indiana. All these instances of regulation, one might note, were at the hands of state and local governments, which are widely reputed to be more easily reached by irate constituents and less likely to regulate with a heavy hand than the feds in Washington.

More to come later, including an effort to sort out the confusion over what H.R. 875 as currently written exempts (e.g., many direct farm-to-consumer transactions) and what it does not exempt (lots and lots of other small and local transactions).

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