Our latest free newsletter, summing up the past five weeks’ worth or so of items on the site (yes, we had fallen behind), went out this morning to its 2000+ subscribers. If you didn’t receive it, you can sign up here for future mailings and to read older newsletters. It’s a great way to keep up with items on the site you may have missed.
Posts Tagged ‘about the site’
Welcome National Review Online and Weekly Standard readers
At National Review Online, our Manhattan Institute colleague Jim Copland contrasts Hollywood’s oddly heroic image of the trial lawyer with the often socially destructive reality, citing the blame-shifting for profit exemplified in the Ninth Circuit’s recent Ileto v. Glock case (gun manufacturer, as opposed to criminal, gets sued over racist’s murder spree). (“Fiction to Fact”, Nov. 26) And the Weekly Standard, discussing the same case in its “Scrapbook” feature (Dec. 1, last item, “Shooting Blanks” — currently subscribers only) cites this commentary by Ted Frank on “the excellent website Overlawyered.com”. The Standard’s editorialists also point out that despite the plaintiffs’ elaborately spun theories of negligent distribution, the Glock in the case “was originally sold to a police department. … [In future,] manufacturers like Glock will presumably want to be wary about the kind of police departments they sell their firearms to.”
Hall of reciprocity
Welcome visitors from GruntDoc, “Ramblings of an Emergency Physician in Texas”, which has a pleasing graphically rendered blogroll as well as the expected reflections on medical and military matters. And Southern Appeal, “The random musings of a Southern Federalist and his co-conspirators”, notably including Prof. Michael DeBow of Samford U.’s Cumberland School of Law, who’s written some great stuff on the tobacco-Medicaid litigation. The site is also your one-stop resource for commentary supportive of the appeals court nomination of Alabama AG Bill Pryor. Speaking of such nominations, Prof. Bainbridge offers cogent thoughts about a much-criticized speech by appeals court nominee Janice Rogers Brown (Nov. 4; see Nov. 1) but did startle us several paragraphs before the end with a sudden rhetorical question about whether we personally at this site are “just wasting [our] time.” Alex Wellen, author of the much-talked-about new memoir Barman (relating his experiences as a graduate of a second-tier law school turned intellectual property litigator) has launched a new legal weblog in which he generously lists us among his “blog mentors”; when Wellen’s book tour took him to Manhattan we had a chance to meet and compare notes in person. And we got a great many visitors last week when Todd Dominey of Atlanta (WhatDoIKnow.org) called us “nice” and put us on his “Enjoying” list.
Off for a few days
I’ll be away through Tuesday speaking at the American Tort Reform Association‘s 2003 Annual Conference for State Coalition Leaders in Las Vegas. Co-blogger Ted Frank, however, will still be watching the news for postworthy items. See you on Wednesday.
Job opening
The Manhattan Institute Center for Legal Policy (with which I’m associated) tells me that it has an opening for a staff position to work on compiling articles, reports and other material related to the Trial Lawyers Inc. project. Candidates need not be located in New York City but should have a strong interest in litigation reform issues combined with writing ability and familiarity with Web-based publishing (you might be a blogger, for example). If you fit the bill, email me at editor -at – thisdomainname and I’ll forward your response to the Institute.
New newsletter
Our latest free newsletter, pithily summing up the past three weeks’ worth or so of items on the site, went out this afternoon to its 2000+ subscribers. If you didn’t receive it, either because you still haven’t signed up for our mailing list or because you’ve changed email addresses and lost your subscription, you can sign up here. It’s a great way to keep up with items on the site you may have missed.
Carnival of the Capitalists
The recently launched weekly feature Carnival of the Capitalists rounds up notable weblog posts on business and economic topics of all kind, much as its widely known cousin, Carnival of the Vanities, rounds up posts of general interest. This week (Oct. 20) CotC includes our (Ted Frank’s) obituary notice of Bill Shoemaker from Oct. 12. Check out the other entries, too.
Welcome Sydney Morning Herald readers
“Increasingly, Australians live in a society in which it is always someone else’s fault; in which perpetrators masquerade as victims; in which personal responsibility has been replaced, all too frequently, by a readiness to lie, to sue, to redirect blame or, worse, to find scapegoats. … It is a cruel irony of modern life that the only people who can regularly be relied on to accept — indeed, to claim — responsibility for their actions are terrorist bombers.” Cites a certain website where “many examples of the lunacy of litigation are to be found”. Our special section on Australian cases, covering stories since June of this year, is here; for stories before that date, use our search function. Our section on personal responsibility is here, with older items here. (John Huxley, “Not my fault”, Sydney Morning Herald, Oct. 4)
Welcome InstaPundit readers
Leftist filmmaker Michael Moore is again drawing fire for not being willing to submit himself to the sorts of borderline-harassment journalistic investigation to which he has long subjected others. Thanks to reader Robert Racansky, our Sept. 16, 1999 coverage of Moore’s hypocrisy has now become the subject of a Glenn Reynolds Instalanche (Sept. 27). Also, welcome readers from Law.com which linked to our recent Wilbur Wright item.
Legal Reform Summit
As mentioned, I spent Monday attending the fourth annual Legal Reform Summit in Washington, D.C., an event co-sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform, the American Tort Reform Association, the Business Roundtable, the Doctors Company of Napa, Calif., and law firms Jenner & Block and Mayer Brown, Rowe & Maw. I gave a short talk on the subject of “who’s next as a target of mass litigation?”, which correspondent Mark Hofmann of Business Insurance magazine wrote up on the magazine’s web journal (“Employers face new wave of lawsuits”, Sept. 22).
I was also surprised and gratified, at the Summit’s awards luncheon, to be named the recipient of its annual “Individual Achievement Award”. The engraved glass award is now sitting on my desk even as I type. Many thanks to all concerned!