• I thought we already had a gas tax.  Farmers protest EPA plans to tax greenhouse gas “emissions” from cattle (Via Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, who will probably have to come up with a new name in a few weeks);
• Another way to reduce discrimination against fat people: taxpayer funded stomach stapling;
• Navy settles anti-sonar environmental lawsuits filed by Natural Resources Defense Council.  I can’t tell from reading this AP story precisely what good the settlement will do for the Navy, or for whales, porpoises, and dolphins, but it appears money is changing hands;
• This explains a lot:  former attorney general John Ashcroft makes his best decisions “when I have a lot of morphine in my system” (Via Classical Values);
• A perfect season for the Detroit Lions;
• You’re a mean one Mr. Grinch: Alabama man sets own home ablaze in rage over not receiving Christmas presents;
• Newspapers are receiving and printing outsourced, slanted opinion pieces for free. Question: how does this differ from blogging?  Answer: I’m wearing pajamas (well, a sweatshirt and sweatpants), as I write this, and I have a dog in my lap.  Presumably the outsourced writers wear business casual in a fur-free environment;
• If you read the European libertarian blog Samizdata, send good wishes to Brian Micklethwait, one of their best writers, who has unfortunate news to report.

Tomorrow, I predict that somewhere, someone will be sued.

Daily Roundup 2008-12-28 is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Plus, the ultimate in post titles for the case: “Habeas Porpoise“.

The Navy wins… is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

October 9 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

• Business groups have signed off on dreadful ADA Restoration Act aimed at expanding disabled-rights lawsuits, reversing high court decisions that had moderated the law [WSJ; more here and here]
• U.K. man to win damages from rail firms on claim that trauma of Paddington crash turned him into deranged killer [Times Online]
• Patent cases taken on contingency lead to gigantic paydays for D.C.’s Dickstein Shapiro and Wiley Rein [Kim Eisler, Washingtonian; related last year at Eric Goldman’s]
• Fort Lauderdale injury lawyer disbarred after stealing $300K in client funds; per an ABA state-by-state listing, Florida has not enacted payee notification to help prevent/detect such goings-on [Sun-Sentinel; more]
• I’ll pay top dollar for that spot under the bridge: tech firms hope to outbid patent trolls for marginal inventor rights [ABA Journal]
• Enviro-sympathetic analysis of Navy sonar case [Jamison Colburn, Dorf on Law, first and second posts via Adler @ Volokh]
• Obama proposal for youth national service “voluntary”? Well, schools will lose funds if they fail to meet goals [Goldberg, LAT; bad link fixed now]
• Not-so-independent sector: under pressure from Sacramento legislators (Feb. 6, PoL May 30), California foundations pledge to redirect millions toward minority causes [CRC]
• James Lileks on lawyer-friendly Microsoft Minnesota settlement [four years ago on Overlawyered]

July 8 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

• To hold a party in the public parks of Bergenfield, N.J., you’ll need homeowner’s or renter’s insurance to throw on the line [Bergen Record]
• More on suits against Victoria’s Secret over allegedly hazardous bras, thongs, and undergarments, including an aspiring class action over contact rashes [Heller/On Point News]
• Supreme Court will review Navy sonar controversy, which we’ve long covered in this space [Adler @ Volokh]
• Hope of legalized online gambling fades, and you can blame Republicans on Capitol Hill for that [Stuttaford, NRO “Corner”]
• Disney said to be behind bad proposal to soak foreign tourists to fund visit-America promotions [Crooked Timber]
• “Squishier than most”: Nocera on A.M.D.’s predatory-pricing antitrust suit against Intel [NYT]
• Process serving company lied about delivering SEC witness subpoena and falsified later document, judge rules, awarding victim $3 million [Boston Globe]
• Revisiting the false-accusation ordeal of Dr. Patrick Griffin, and how it relates to pressure to have needless chaperones at medical procedures [Buckeye Surgeon, Dorothy Rabinowitz Pulitzer piece]
• Overlawyered turns nine years old tomorrow (more). Commenters: how long have you been reading the site? Any of you go back to its first year?

June 30 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

WSJ on Navy sonar and Pacific whales is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

• Judge allows lawsuit to go forward as class action claiming consumers defrauded because gasoline expands in summer heat and so there’s less in a “gallon” [KC Star, TodaysTrucking.com; earlier at PoL]
• Online speech: when a lawprof says it silences someone not to let them sue for defamation, it’s time to check definitions [Reynolds, Bainbridge, Volokh]
• Should a law school invite Lerach of all people to teach legal ethics? [Massey/Faculty Lounge; earlier] Plus: Congress should investigate how widespread Lerach-style abuses were at other law firms [Columbus Dispatch editorial]
• Usually no one gets hurt when a physician dodges having to deal with a litigious patient, but then there are those emergencies [Brain Blogger]
• A lesson for Canada: judged by results in places like Kansas, the American approach to hate speech (i.e., not banning it) seems to work pretty well [Gardner/Ottawa Citizen]
• “Way way too egocentric”: a marketing expert’s critique of injury law firm websites [Rotbart/LFOMA via ABA Journal]
• More students are winding up in court after parodying their teachers on the Internet [Christian Science Monitor]
• Money in the air? It happens the quiet little Alaskan Native village suing over global warming is being represented by some lawyers involved in the great tobacco heist [NY Times]
• Ninth Circuit panel hands Navy partial defeat in enviro whale sonar suit; ditto federal court in Hawaii [Examiner; earlier]
• Le Canard Noir “Quackometer” flays pseudo-science, some of its targets complain to ISP which then yanks the site: “We do not wish to be in a position where we could be taken to court” [Orac; earlier]
• Hans Bader guestblogged at Point of Law last week, on such subjects as: courts that decide punishment before damages; presumed guilty of child abuse? inconsistent straight/gay treatment in sexual harassment law; and signs that today’s Supreme Court doesn’t exactly show a pro-business bias in discrimination cases.

March 4 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

• Calling it “oppressive”, committee chair in Mississippi legislature vows to defeat proposal to ban restaurants from serving obese patrons [AP/Picayune-Item; earlier]
• Latest in whales vs. sub sonar: judge deep-sixes Bush’s attempt to exempt Navy from rules against bothering marine mammals [CNN; earlier]
• Much-criticized opener of ABC’s new series Eli Stone aired last Thursday, and Orac takes a scalpel to the vaccine-scare script [Respectful Insolence, which also covers new autism studies]
• Scary proposal approved by California assembly would strong-arm larger private foundations — and businesses that deal with them — into “diversity” numbers game [Lehrer/Hicks @ L.A. Times]
• New Dutch study finds thin people and nonsmokers cost health system more in long run than obese and smokers — theories behind Medicaid-recoupment litigation are looking more fraudulent every day, aren’t they? [AP]
• Late, but worth noting: blogger nails John Edwards’s demagoguery on Nataline Sarkisyan case [Matthew Holt @ Spot-On, via KevinMD; more here, here, and from Ted here]
• Puff piece on food-poisoning lawyer William Marler [AP/KOMO]
• Ready, set, all take offense: Sen. McCain likes to tell lawyer jokes [WSJ law blog]
• In suit charging UFCW with “racketeering”, Smithfield cites as an underlying offense union’s having lobbied city councils to pass resolutions condemning the meatpacker; company has hired Prof. G. Robert Blakey, who denies the RICO law he drafted is a menace to liberty [Liptak, NYT; some earlier parallels in federal tobacco suit]
• Golden age of comic books was 1930s-1950s, but golden age of comic book litigation is now [NLJ]
• New at Point of Law: Hillary’s “disastrous” mortgage scheme; Qualcomm sanctions ruling could curb discovery abuse; if Mel Weiss has been kind to you, why drop him down memory hole?; new academic theory on uniformity of contingency fees; the trouble with patenting tax avoidance strategies; and much more [visit][bumped Wed. a.m.]

February 6 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

After years of wrangling in the Ninth Circuit and lower courts over environmentalist efforts to block Navy anti-sub sonar exercises on the grounds that they disturb marine mammals, the issue may be resolved by a Presidential assertion of national security interest.

A commenter asked why Bush had the authority to do this. President Bush’s order is on-line. The claimed authority is based on 16 U.S.C. § 1456(c)(1)(B), which reads in relevant part:

After any final judgment, decree, or order of any Federal court that is appealable under section 1291 or 1292 of title 28, or under any other applicable provision of Federal law, that a specific Federal agency activity is not in compliance with [the Coastal Zone Management Act], and certification by the Secretary that mediation under subsection (h) of this section is not likely to result in such compliance, the President may, upon written request from the Secretary, exempt from compliance those elements of the Federal agency activity that are found by the Federal court to be inconsistent with an approved State program, if the President determines that the activity is in the paramount interest of the United States.

The claim by the NRDC that the president’s action is “an attack on the rule of law” and “flouting the will of Congress” is thus invalid: Congress explicitly reserved to the president the power to override a court decision finding a federal agency in violation of the Coastal Zone Management Act by exempting the agency from its requirements. The case has been remanded to district court, but whether it is sound policy to value military convenience over whales is now a political question that will now be resolved by Congress and the President, with nothing more for the court to decide, as the court does not have the authority to second-guess the president’s decision whether something is in the “paramount interest of the United States.”

(Separately, the Navy complied with the National Environmental Protection Act when the Council for Environmental Quality issued a letter (151-page PDF, but pages 3-4 are the relevant ones for the lay curious) under 40 C.F.R. § 1506.11; this will likely get litigated by NRDC, as who better to determine the military needs of the United States than a private litigant and a federal judge?)

“Bush Exempts Navy from Environmental Law” II is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“Bush Exempts Navy From Environmental Law” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system