March 20 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“Virginia Blogger Targeted With Outrageous Subpoena” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Patent Troll Tracker case: second blogger subpoenaed is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

I’m proud to note that I helped break the story in April and have posted regular updates since then.

Not directly related, but also of note from Kathleen Seidel’s blog: you’re not going to believe what some attorneys consider a source of credible evidence when pressing claims in the government’s Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (Jun. 13).

P.S. Comments take issue with its being “quite a slapdown”, and suggest that it was more like a slap on the wrist.

Shoemaker slammed with Seidel-subpoena sanction is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

• Christiansburg, Va. land developer Roger Woody sues local bloggers and two other critics for more than $10 million for speaking ill of big dirt pile on one of his properties [Roanoke Times, editorial; more on Woody’s dealings]
• Lots of developments on free speech in Canada: trial begins in Vancouver in complaint against Mark Steyn and Maclean’s over book excerpt critical of Islam [his site]; after defending speech-restricting network of human rights tribunals, Conservative government in Ottawa now says it will take another look [Ezra Levant, with much other coverage including favorable nods from Toronto literati]; Alberta tribunal orders conservative pastor to “cease publishing in newspapers, by email, on the radio, in public speeches, or on the Internet, in future, disparaging remarks about gays and homosexuals.” [Levant; Calgary Herald; Gilles Marchildon, Egale.ca] (more, Eugene Volokh)
• Brief filed for Kathleen Seidel in her resistance of abusive subpoena, with assistance of Public Citizen [her site, theirs, and our comment section]; Seidel is among autism bloggers profiled in NY mag [w/pic]; profile of thriving Boston “vaccine injury” law firm” Conway Homer & Chin-Caplan [NLJ; Seidel’s critical comments on that firm]
• Views critical of religion unlawful unless expressed in respectful and non-scoffing way? Lots of precedent for that approach, unfortunately [Volokh on Comstock]
• Score one for fair use: judge denies Yoko Ono preliminary injunction against creationist film’s use of 15 seconds of John Lennon’s “Imagine” in context implicitly criticizing song’s point of view [Hollywood Reporter, WSJ law blog, Timothy Lee/Ars Technica]

June 10 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Shoemaker’s lawyers respond to Seidel is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

In another indication that heavy-handed pursuit of a blogger might not have worked out very well as a legal strategy, Shoemaker’s own clients, the Sykes family, have now voluntarily dropped their vaccine-autism suit against Bayer, which was the basis for the subpoena (Seidel, Orac).

Perhaps-ominous sequel: Seidel points out in a new post that Shoemaker’s legal papers accuse her of arguably tortious conduct in her comments on autism litigation, including interfering with “witnesses’ professions, professional relationships, and economic opportunities”, and that the witnesses in question in the Sykes suit, Dr. Mark Geier and David Geier, have previously pursued long and costly litigation against four scientists and the American Academy of Pediatrics over an article in Pediatrics which disputed the Geiers’ findings. The suit — which was eventually dismissed without prejudice as to the scientists, and dismissed with prejudice as to AAP — contended that damages were owing because the article in question had cut into the Geiers’ potential income as expert witnesses.

Seidel subpoena aftermath is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

*Okay, one flaw in the profile: If Prof. Irving Gottesman compares Seidel to Erin Brockovich he probably doesn’t know much about Brockovich.

April 29 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Autism blogger Kathleen Seidel reports that the online free speech project at Public Citizen has agreed to provide her with legal assistance in responding to vaccine lawyer Clifford Shoemaker’s subpoena (see earlier coverage here, here, and here). One way to read this is as a fairly devastating commentary on just how weak Shoemaker’s position is, since there is ordinarily no more potent public presence on behalf of the plaintiff’s side in pharmaceutical litigation than Public Citizen. Seidel also has discovered that as a Shoemaker target she is in distinguished company:

I learned that on March 26, 2008 — the same afternoon that I was greeted at my doorstep with a demand for access to virtually the entire documentary record of my intellectual and financial life over the past four years — Dr. Marie McCormick, Sumner and Esther Feldberg Professor of Maternal and Child Health at the Harvard School of Public Health, and Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, was subjected to a similar experience at her Massachusetts home.

From 2001 to 2004, Dr. McCormick chaired the Immunization Safety Review Committee of the Institute of Medicine (IOM), charged with analyzing and reporting on data regarding the safety of vaccination practices. …As a result of her voluntary work on the committee, Dr. McCormick has found herself a frequent target of suspicion by plaintiffs, their attorneys and advocates, and opponents of vaccines, who disagree with its conclusions, and whose legal and political positions are not supported by its reports.

McCormick’s lawyers are likewise seeking to quash the subpoena. Much more here (& Beck & Herrmann, Orac, Pharmalot).

Update: judge quashes Seidel subpoena is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Update 5:30 p.m.: Here’s James Taranto at WSJ Best of the Web, giving just the shove the story may need:

It might behoove the ACLU, or some organization devoted to civil liberties, to devote some resources to figuring out how to defend speech that is inconvenient to plaintiffs lawyers.

Kathleen Seidel blogger-subpoena furor is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system