- Bill Moyers calls his lawyers. [Adler @ Volokh]
- Jim Copland: 9/11 suits against New York City over emergency recovery work “simply wrong.” [New York Post]
- Did the PSLRA help shareholders? [Point of Law]
- 32-year-old Oregon grocery store employee sues, claiming that Green Day stole his never-recorded high-school writings. [Above the Law]
- Does one assume the risk of a broken nose if one agrees to a sparring match at a karate school? [TortsProf]
- “At KFC (né Kentucky Fried Chicken), the chicken is still fried. At Altria (né Philip Morris), the cigarettes still cause cancer. And at the American Association for Justice, some will say that the trial lawyers are still chasing ambulances.” [New York Times via Point of Law]
- More on global warming lawsuits. [Point of Law]
- Dahlia Lithwick, wrong again when bashing conservatives? Quelle surprise! [Ponnuru @ Bench Memos; see also Kaus] Earlier: POL Oct. 6 and links therein. Best commentary on New Jersey gay marriage decision is at Volokh.
- Michael Dimino asks for examples of frivolous lawsuits. What’s the over-under until it turns into a debate over the McDonald’s coffee case? [Prawfsblawg]
- Unintended consequences of campaign finance reform. [Zywicki @ Volokh; Washington Times]
- Who’s your least favorite Supreme Court justice? [Above the Law]
- More on Borat and the law. [Slate] Earlier on OL: Dec. 9 and links therein.
- “Thrilled Juror Feels Like Murder Trial Being Put On Just For Her.” [Onion]
- A revealing post by the Milberg Weiss Fellow at DMI: companies make “too much” profit. I respond: “Again, if you really think the problem is that insurance companies charge ‘too much’ and make ‘too much’ money, then the profitable solution is to take advantage of this opportunity and open a competing insurance company that charges less instead of whining about it. (Or, you could use a fraction of the profits to hire a dozen bloggers and thus solve the problem at the same time keeping the whining constant.)” [Dugger]
Posts Tagged ‘Oregon’
“Camper sues government over stumble”
“While finding a place to relieve himself, plaintiff walked off the unguarded and unprotected cliff falling approximately 20 to 30 feet to the creek bed below,” reads the complaint. And so Jerry Mersereau is suing the United States of America, which maintains the Mt. Hood National Forest in Oregon where the mishap occurred. (Noelle Crombie, The Oregonian, Aug. 4).
Update: Michael Jordan lookalike drops suit
Updating our Jul. 8 item:
The Northeast Portland man who sought more than $800 million from Michael Jordan and Nike founder Phil Knight because he said he was tired of being mistaken for the famous basketball player is giving up his defamation lawsuit….
Vada Manager, Nike spokesman, said no payment was made to [Allen Ray] Heckard to get him to drop the lawsuit.
“It’s fairly simple,” Manager said Monday. “He finally realized he would end up paying our court costs if the lawsuit went to trial.”
(Holly Danks, “Man throws in towel on Jordan lawsuit”, The Oregonian, Aug. 1). For more on the principle that costs should follow the event — and not just in cases as wacky as this one — see our loser-pays page.
Overlawyered commenters in the spotlight
Word Around the Net is Christopher Taylor’s site devoted to reprinting interesting comment threads from around the blogosphere. His latest selection is the reader comments that followed our post on Allen Heckard, the Oregon man who’s tired of being mistaken for basketball star Michael Jordan and has reacted by suing Jordan and Nike’s Phil Knight.
“Cat-owner suit seeks $1.4 million in pet death”
In Portland, Ore., Janet Dumas, age 86, says neighbor Chad F. Christensen let his two dogs run loose which spelled the end of her pet cat Clyde; she claims Christensen tried to cover up the deed. Did he realize that her son was a lawyer? He does now. (Mark Larabee, The Oregonian, Jul. 7).
$1.6 million for loss of dog? Not so fast
Just as a media boomlet was getting started, a Clackamas County judge has ruled that Oregon law does not permit Mark Greenup and his family to seek loss-of-companionship damages over their neighbor’s having run over their mixed cocker spaniel-Labrador retriever, Grizz, an injury for which they were asking a cool $1.625 million. The case had been touted as a potential breakthrough in the campaign to authorize essentially unlimited monetary damages over the human unhappiness caused when a pet is killed or injured (see May 10, 2005, etc.) and advocates thought they had an unusually sympathetic fact pattern to work with: the Greenups’ neighbor, Raymond Weaver, had been convicted of first-degree animal abuse. Once the principle of damages for loss of companionship had been established, of course, it would be likely to spread to contexts where simple negligence was alleged on the part of veterinarians, drivers or animal handlers. Circuit Judge Eve Miller permitted the Greenups to seek punitive damages and intentional infliction of emotional stress against Weaver (who continues to deny that he harmed the dog intentionally) but said loss-of-companionship damages are barred by Oregon law. (“Judge rejects part of dog lawsuit claim”, AP/Roseburg (Ore.) News-Review, May 23; Steve Mayes, “Case Could Redefine Value of a Pet”, Newhouse/The Oregonian, May 23; “US neighbours in dead dog lawsuit “, BBC, May 23; letters to the editor, The Oregonian, May 24).
P.S. While we’re at it, what a very bad idea: federal mandates for pet evacuation plans.
When jurors bring expertise
The decay of occupational exemptions to jury service means that more doctors, nurses and other persons with considerable professional expertise are making it into jury pools and even sometimes being allowed to sit as jurors, at least assuming that lawyers decline to use challenges to exclude them. One Nassau County, N.Y. judge even recalls “presid[ing] over a business dissolution case in which the lawyers allowed an accountant to sit on the jury. ‘Why they left the accountant on I’ll never know, but the lawyers were quite satisfied,” he said. (Imagine — relevant life experience not being screened out in the course of the jury selection process!) Oregon prosecutor Joshua Marquis, an official with the National District Attorneys Association, does harbor a prejudice against one particular kind of professional called to jury service, namely lawyers themselves. “They’re terrible jurors — I should hit myself in the face with a stick if I ever let a lawyer on a jury again.” (Leonard Post, “Dealing With Jurors’ Expertise”, National Law Journal, Dec. 23).
Safari park gives up, fences off lions from cars
Fear of lawsuits by park guests who ignored warning signs and opened their car windows (see last Feb. 2) has had its effect:
In the competition for most feared creature, lawyers have now eclipsed lions.
If Lion Country Safari can’t stop people from opening their car windows in front of the dangerous cats, they can put up a fence to prevent a potential frightful outcome — lawsuits….Fearing an attack will cause a traumatic injury and lawsuit, the park put up a fence between the cars and the lions last month, essentially ending one of the quirky attractions of South Florida since 1967.
Once a popular family attraction around the country, most drive-through “safari” parks have now closed, “and only one in Winston, Oregon, still allows people to drive among the kings of the jungle”. (Rochelle E.B. Gilken, “At Lion Country, cats cut off from cars”, Palm Beach Post/Miami Herald, Dec. 29).
Chat room harassment
George Gillespie of Medina County, Ohio, is suing America Online for allegedly failing to do anything about teasing, humiliation and abuse he endured in one of the online service’s chat rooms. His suit also names individual defendants who live in Oregon and Alabama; Gillespie alleges that the Alabama man actually traveled to Ohio to further his campaign of harassment. Attorney Mark Tarallo of Holland & Knight in Boston believes the plaintiff “will face a tough battle, particularly in the fight with AOL.” (Tresa Baldas, “Chat Room Chatter Draws Lawsuit”, National Law Journal, Jan. 6; Julie Wallace, “Internet, civil liberties collide in unique lawsuit”, Akron Beacon Journal, Dec. 19).
Vatican as defendant
A couple of ambitious lawyers have managed to sue the Vatican itself in pursuit of the Catholic Church’s priest-abuse scandals, but it isn’t easy:
…even if a process server could get past the Swiss guards, handing the pope a copy of a lawsuit doesn’t count as service.
Because the Vatican is a foreign country, all documents must be translated into its official language.
In this case, that means Latin. And there’s still the major obstacle to get around of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which bars most suits against foreign governments. (Ashbel S. Green, “Suit reaches new heights: the Vatican”, The Oregonian, Dec. 11). See PoL Mar. 10. More on church scandals: this site Sept. 16, 2003, Jul. 11, 2004; Point of Law Aug. 10, Sept. 29, 2004; Aug. 28, Aug. 31, Sept. 1, 2005.