Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘international law’

“Troubling signals on free speech”

In “a little-publicized October 2 resolution … [the U.S.] State Department joined Islamic nations in adopting language all-too-friendly to censoring speech that some religions and races find offensive, notes Stuart Taylor, Jr.’s new column for National Journal. Legal academics, including some who have gone on to join the Obama Administration, have sketched out doctrines indicating “how the resolution could be construed to require prosecuting some offensive speech and how it could be used in the long run to change the meaning of our Constitution and laws… In my view, Obama should not take even a small step down the road toward bartering away our free-speech rights for the sake of international consensus.” More: Reason, Jonathan Turley/USA Today. And (h/t comments): A Monday statement by Secretary of State Clinton is being widely greeted as reaffirming a free-speech position, but Taylor is not convinced that it undoes the damage. Nor, it seems, are Eugene Volokh and Ilya Somin.

P.S. What Rick Brookhiser told the Yale Political Union about that cartoonless Mohammed-cartoons book from Yale University Press [NRO] And here’s word that in the U.S., liberal church denominations will ask the FCC to probe conservative broadcasters [Jeffrey Lord/American Spectator]

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New at Point of Law

If you’re not reading my other legal site, Point of Law, here’s some of what you’re missing:

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The costs of universal jurisdiction

“International human rights law” — what could sound more cuddly and humanitarian? Who could disapprove of such a thing? That’s one reason it’s so popular at almost every law school nowadays following years of generous support by the Ford Foundation, Soros, and other donors. In practice, as is now clear, it often tends to furnish a set of handy weapons for carrying on “lawfare” — warfare by means of courtroom action against one’s adversaries, particularly in the courts of third countries. (Anne Herzberg, “Lawfare against Israel”, WSJ, Nov. 5). For the closely related issue of laws empowering private attorneys and litigants to pursue foreign entities over alleged terrorist support whether or not such actions advance U.S. diplomatic goals, see Sept. 12, 2007.

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U.K.: Great moments in international human rights law

Fowzi Badavi Nejad, the only survivor among six terrorists who seized the Iranian Embassy and 26 hostages in London 28 years ago, “has reportedly been assured he will not be deported back to his native Iran because of human rights laws, and will instead stay in Britain at taxpayers’ expense.” (Chris Irvine, “Iranian Embassy terrorist to be freed this month can claim benefits”, Daily Telegraph, Oct. 9).

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June 20 roundup

  • Federal judge: asking employee to get coffee not an intrinsically sexist act [Legal Intelligencer]

  • Kilt-clad Montgomery Blair Sibley, at press conference, adds certain je ne sais quoi to tawdry Larry Sinclair sideshow [Sydney Morning Herald]

  • Remind us why Florida Gov. Crist is supposed to be an acceptable veep pick? [PoL]. Also at Point of Law: Hill’s FISA compromise may end pending telecom-privacy suits; interesting Second Circuit reverse-preference case on New Haven firefighters.

  • Virginia bar authorities shaken by charges that Woodbridge attorney Stephen T. Conrad pocketed $3.4 million in injury settlements at clients’ expense [Va. Lawyers Weekly; case of Christiansburg, Va. lawyer Gerard Marks ties in with first links here]

  • U.K.: Local government instructs staff that term “brainstorming” might be insensitive to persons with epilepsy, use “thought showers” instead [Telegraph; Tunbridge Wells, Kent]

  • Big personal injury law firm in Australia, Keddies Lawyers, denies accusations of client overcharging and document falsification [SMH]

  • Will this be on the bar exam? Massachusetts law school dean eyes war crime trials culminating in hanging for high officials of Bush Administration [Ambrogi and more, Michael Krauss and I at PoL]

  • “Just another cash grab”? New Kabateck Brown Kellner “click-fraud” class actions against Google AdWords, CitySearch [Kincaid, TechCrunch/WaPo]

  • Former Rep. Bob Barr, this year’s Libertarian presidential candidate, is no stranger to the role of plaintiff in politically fraught litigation [six years ago on Overlawyered, and represented by Larry Klayman to boot]

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June 13 roundup

  • High school graduation got rained out in Gilbert, Ariz., and a dad wants $400 from the school district for that [Arizona Republic]

  • Happens all the time in one-way fee shift awards, but still worth noting: lawyer in police-misconduct case “billed 22 hours at $480 an hour — a total of $10,560 — just to figure out how much his fees are going to be” [Seattle Times]

  • We get to decide and that’s that: New York judge orders that salaries of New York judges including his own be raised [PoL, Bader] Also at Point of Law: white-shoe Clifford Chance throws a party for New York lefties, should anyone be surprised? outsourcing of interrogation to profit-minded private contractors is bad when it’s Blackwater, good when it’s Motley Rice; tax break for trial lawyers said to be blocked for now.

  • One firefighter killed in Boston restaurant blaze had sky-high .27 blood alcohol level, the other traces of cocaine, which probably won’t impede the inevitable lawsuit against the restaurant and other defendants [Globe, background]

  • Writing again on U.S. exceptionalism, Adam Liptak contrasts our First Amendment with Canadian speech trials; James Taranto thinks he’s siding with the Canadians, but the piece looks pretty balanced to me [NYTimes, WSJ Best of the Web]

  • Milberg said to be on verge of deferred prosecution agreement deal with feds involving $75 million payment and admissions of wrongdoing [NLJ]

  • Courts in Australian state of Victoria, emulating a model tried in Canada, will resort more to mediation of intractable disputes [Victoria AG Rob Hulls/Melbourne Age]

  • Great moments in international human rights: KGB spy on the lam sues British government for confiscating royalties he was hoping to make from his autobiography [five years ago on Overlawyered]

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Franco v. Dow Chemical: special prosecutor for Girardi and Lack

Thomas Girardi, of Girardi & Keese, and Walter Lack, of Engstrom Lipscomb & Lack, are among California’s highest-profile plaintiff’s lawyers, often working closely together on litigation; perhaps their best-known case was the “Erin Brockovich” action against Pacific Gas & Electric, which I covered here and again here (highlight: the chartered Mediterranean cruise to which Girardi and Lack invited the three arbitrators soon after winning their split of $133 million in fees). Now both men are in a spot of bother with the Ninth Circuit, where a special master, senior circuit judge A. Wallace Tashima, has recommended hundreds of thousands of dollars in sanctions against them and where a three-judge panel (Kozinski, Reinhardt, Berzon) has just moved to appoint a special prosecutor to recommend further discipline in the case.

The imbroglio arose from a pesticide toxic tort which resulted in a Nicaraguan court’s $489 million judgment against defendants including Shell Oil, Dow Chemical and Dole Food, which plaintiffs had sought to enforce in this country. Amid mounting evidence that many of the various American and Nicaraguan lawyers involved had not been entirely (as they say) candid with the tribunal on a variety of points, the court has been trying to sort out who knew what when. “In his 65-page report, Tashima said Lack had a personal role in asserting repeatedly that a writ of execution made by the Nicaraguan judge to enforce the judgment in America was corrected to name Dole Food Co. and Shell Chemical Co. Girardi, meanwhile, allegedly allowed the misstatements to continue on his behalf without becoming directly involved.” (Evan Hill, “9th Circuit Taps Special Prosecutor for Toxic-Tort Case”, The Recorder, Jun. 10; latest order and March special master’s report from Judge Tashima, both PDF, via California Appellate Report). We understand that changes to California ethics rules have put a crimp in Girardi and Lack’s former practice of throwing luxurious events for judges, but even aside from that, we don’t think judges Tashima, Kozinski, Reinhardt and Berzon would probably have been making any plans to attend.

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“Whatever is Greek, wherever in the world, we want back.”

Why does the idea of cultural property have so many advocates? “It seems to establish a bulwark against the plunder of antiquities.” And yet how quickly it’s turned into a way of looting premodern artifacts from Western owners whose claim of title is stronger than that of foreign governments or indigenous/Indian tribes. “But if cultural property really did exist, the Enlightenment museum would be an example of it: an institution that evolved, almost uniquely, out of Western civilization. And the cultural property movement could be seen as a persistent attempt to undermine it. And take illicit possession.” (Edward Rothstein, “Antiquities, the World Is Your Homeland”, New York Times, May 27).

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April 5 roundup

  • Ninth Circuit, Kozinski, J., rules 8-3 that Roommates.com can be found to have violated fair housing law by asking users to sort themselves according to their wish to room with males or other protected groups; the court distinguished the Craigslist cases [L.A. Times, Volokh, Drum]
  • Class-action claim: Apple says its 20-inch iMac displays millions of colors but the true number is a mere 262,144, the others being simulated [WaPo]
  • U.K.: compulsive gambler loses $2 million suit against his bookmakers, who are awarded hefty costs under loser-pays rule [BBC first, second, third, fourth stories]
  • Pittsburgh couple sue Google saying its Street Views invades their privacy by including pics of their house [The Smoking Gun via WSJ law blog]
  • U.S. labor unions keep going to International Labour Organization trying to get current federal ground rules on union organizing declared in violation of international law [PoL]
  • Illinois Supreme Court reverses $2 million jury award to woman who sued her fiance’s parents for not warning her he had AIDS [Chicago Tribune]
  • Italian family “preparing to sue the previous owners of their house for not telling them it was haunted”; perhaps most famous such case was in Nyack, N.Y. [Ananova, Cleverly]
  • Per their hired expert, Kentucky lawyers charged with fen-phen settlement fraud “relied heavily on the advice of famed trial lawyer Stan Chesley in the handling of” the $200 million deal [Lexington Herald-Leader]
  • Actor Hal Holbrook of Mark Twain fame doesn’t think much of those local anti-tobacco ordinances that ban smoking on stage even when needed for dramatic effect [Bruce Ramsey, Seattle Times]
  • Six U.S. cities so far have been caught “shortening the amber cycles below what is allowed by law on intersections equipped with cameras meant to catch red-light runners.” [Left Lane via Virtuous Republic and Asymmetrical Information]

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Haiti to France: pay us $21,685,135,571.48

Reparations madness, cont’d: almost 200 years after a slave revolt won Haiti’s independence, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide “has launched a controversial campaign to get France to repay its former colony billions of dollars in restitution. And he has already sent Paris a bill, down to the very last cent: $21,685,135,571.48.” A legal adviser to the Aristide administration is considering taking the case to international court (Jacqueline Charles, “Aristide pushes for restitution from France”, Miami Herald, Dec. 18; Henry Samuel, “You owe us $21,685,135,571.48”, Daily Telegraph (UK), Oct. 8; “The sad bicentennial of a once fabulous sugar colony”, The Economist, Dec. 18). No word yet on whether any reparations will be offered in the opposite direction for the 1804 massacres during which newly emergent strongman Jean-Jacques Dessalines ordered the slaughter of almost the entire French population resident in Haiti, an estimated 20,000 persons. (Update: another side of the story from Tunku Varadarajan, who argues that the government of France really was “first a brutal colonizer, and then a usurious bully”.)

In other news, the highly popular videogame “Vice City”, part of the Grand Theft Auto series, has drawn fire from New York and Florida officials “and from the government of Haiti, which has threatened to sue the game’s manufacturer, New York-based Rockstar Games, its parent company, Take 2 Interactive Software Inc., and the game’s distributors. A Miami lawyer representing the Haitian government said the game violates the hate crime laws of Florida and other states. ‘It’s the kind of thing that has no business being sold because it’s not just a game,’ attorney Ira Kurzban told the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel. ‘It’s a teaching device for young kids and high school students. What is it teaching them? Violence, hatred and racism.'” (“Haitian, Cuban Leaders Denounce ‘Grand Theft Auto'”, WTVJ South Florida, Dec. 16). More on videogame lawsuits: Sept. 26 and links from there.

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