Posts Tagged ‘about the site’

Welcome Mona Charen readers

She gives both me and this website a kind mention in her column (“Stupid lawyer tricks”, syndicated/Jewish World Review, Jul. 1). The case of Carl Murphy, the young criminal trespasser in England, can be found here. Other cases mentioned (yes, we had them) include: drunk passed out in snowbank; Milwaukee volunteer; fen-phen indictments; train crash worsened his drinking.

In other publicity, columnist James Pinkerton quotes me on a New York federal judge’s ruling on panhandling which is likely to lead to the enrichment of some fairly unsavory characters (“Limousine Liberals and Crime on the Rise”, syndicated/Newsday, Jun. 14, reprinted at New America Foundation). State, Court and County Law Libraries News, newsletter of a subgroup of the American Association of Law Libraries, includes us on a short list of legal weblogs “you might want to check out” (Winter 2005, p. 21, PDF). And we figure in the Thomas-Jefferson-themed Blawg Review #13, this week’s assemblage of posts worth noting from law-related weblogs. (bumped Tues. morning).

Publicity roundup

Texas Lawyer has a well-reported and personality-filled article, unfortunately not online, detailing how the state’s plaintiffs lawyers became “in many ways…the victims of their own success”; it happened when “tort reformers, provoked by the plaintiffs bar’s hubris, particularly as it was asserted at the state Capitol in Austin, galvanized themselves over the past 15 years to topple the trial lawyers’ dominance over Texas politics.” Also a lot about asbestos-suit reform (Miriam Rozen, “Paradise Lost; Plaintiffs Bar Bemoans End of an Era as Tort Reformers Target Asbestos”, Texas Lawyer, Feb. 28, not online). A Medill News Service dispatch from last December quotes me on the subject of class action jurisdiction (Betsy Judelson, “On the Docket: Getting Out of Madison County”, Medill News Service, Dec.). And Automotive Industries, in an ambitious backgrounder on the liability explosion, mentions my Hillsdale College speech of last year (Gary Witzenburg, “Urgent Need for Tort Reform”, April).

Site disruption

Around 24-36 hours ago Overlawyered suffered an unexplained failure in our posting software, arising from a breakdown in the system’s handling of TrackBack pings; the ill effects have included an inability to update our front page. I’ve been working with the people at Movable Type all day and following their suggestion have deactivated TrackBack pings for the moment, which seems to restore the site’s other features, including front-page posting, to normal operation. (Old incoming pings have not been lost, but are just not being displayed). I expect there will be quite a bit of further work needed in coming days to fix matters for the future including, I hope, restoring TrackBack functionality.

Incidentally, if at any time the site should show signs of having frozen up, it is always a good idea to check my other site, Point of Law, for updates.