Posts Tagged ‘recusals’

August 10 roundup

  • Maine Supreme Court agrees that not having to show up in court might be reasonable accommodation for plaintiff claiming PTSD disability [Volokh]
  • Guess how much Richard Kreimer, the New Jersey homeless guy, has made in his many lawsuit settlements [Newark Star-Ledger, PoL]
  • Given the problems with business-method patents, you can see why banks would want to dodge them [Felix Salmon]
  • Contempt: “Calling the jailing of a person ‘civil’ doesn’t mean they put curtains on the cell windows.” [Greenfield]
  • “Class Counsel Request $90.8M In Fees In Black Farmers Case” [BLT]
  • Law school accreditation, recusal standards, international law among topics in new issue of Federalist Society’s ABA Watch;
  • Electricity-wise, EPA puts the squeeze on the juice [Andrew Grossman, Heritage; Weston Hicks, AgendaWise; Tatler]

July 29 roundup

  • Don’t: “Lawyer Disbarred for Verbal Aggression to Pay $9.8M Fine for Hiding Cash Overseas” [Weiss, ABA Journal]
  • Loser-pays might help: “Dropped malpractice lawsuits cost legal system time and money” [Liz Kowalczyk, Boston Globe]
  • “Kim Kardashian and the Problem With ‘Celebrity Likeness’ Lawsuits” [Atlantic Wire]
  • Kim Strassel on the Franken-spun Jamie Leigh Jones case [WSJ]
  • Peggy Little interviews Prof. Lester Brickman (Lawyer Barons) on new Federalist Society podcast;
  • Worse than Wisconsin? “Weaponizing” recusal at the Michigan Supreme Court [Jeff Hadden, Detroit News]
  • New York legislature requires warning labels for sippy cups [NYDN]

July 19 roundup

  • More on CPSC’s crib ban train wreck [Commissioner Anne Northup, more, earlier]
  • One man’s nightmare of false accusation [LA Times via PoL]
  • How many plaintiff’s-side flicks is HBO going to air this summer, anyway? [“Mann v. Ford,” Abnormal Use]
  • Apple granted “incredibly broad patent” over screen gesture technology [Tabarrok]
  • Will Congress reverse this term’s much-attacked SCOTUS decisions? [Alison Frankel] Podcast on Wal-Mart v. Dukes with Brian Fitzpatrick [Fed Soc] “Wal-Mart ruling no knock-out blow for class actions” [Reuters] Contrary to some assertions, current law does strongly incentivize individual job-bias claims [Bader] More on case: Dan Bushell, and welcome Craig Newmark readers.
  • Mississippi stops proceedings in $322 million asbestos case to consider judge’s possible conflict [JCL, earlier here, here]
  • Nice coat, where’dja get it? [annals of incompetent crime, UK Daily Mail]

July 15 roundup

Judge’s impartiality questioned in $322 million Mississippi jury verdict

“In a motion filed Tuesday, attorneys for Union Carbide said Circuit Judge Eddie H. Bowen neglected to notify defense lawyers that his parents had been involved in similar asbestos litigation and had settled a case against Union Carbide.” A rural Mississippi jury earlier this month returned the largest asbestos verdict in American history, $322 million, against Union Carbide and other defendants. [AP/Stamford Advocate; Jackson Clarion-Ledger] More problems with verdict: Point of Law.

April 27 roundup

Federalist Society videos online

The Federalist Society has posted numerous videos from its recent National Lawyers’ Convention, including sessions on the aggressive regulatory stance of today’s Environmental Protection Agency, the constitutionality of Obamacare, anonymity and the First Amendment in media and campaign-regulation law, NYU’s Richard Epstein debating Yale’s Bill Eskridge on the court battle over California’s Prop 8, recusal and campaign rules for judges, Dodd-Frank, and the Christian Legal Society v. Martinez case on accreditation of student groups, among other topics. And civil procedure/Iqbal-Twombly buffs may be interested in a luncheon panel held just yesterday in D.C. (I was in the audience) in which four law professors (Don Elliott of Yale, Martin Redish and Ronald Allen of Northwestern, and Rick Esenberg of Marquette) outlined ideas for reforming the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to reduce discovery costs and improve screening of cases in the earliest stages of filing.

The video above is of the Society’s 10th annual Barbara Olson Memorial Lecture, in which Second Circuit Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs provocatively criticizes legal academia and other precincts of influential legal thinking for misunderstanding the role of the military and its relation to the law.

November 21 roundup

  • Federalist Society annual convention (which I attended) included panels on anonymity and the First Amendment, judicial recusals, many other topics;
  • Nomination of R.I.’s McConnell to federal bench could soon reach Senate floor [ProJo]
  • “Why U.S. Taxpayers Are Paying Brazilian Cotton Growers $147 Million” [NPR via Popehat]
  • “Litigation Governance: Taking Adequacy Seriously” [Trask, Class Action Countermeasures]
  • “Family” groups vs. a family, cont’d: Vermont Supreme Court upholds Miller-Jenkins custody ruling [Volokh, BTB]
  • OSHA allows more comment on what could be an extremely expensive mandate against noise in the workplace [ShopFloor]
  • Cops who inform on cops are often left to twist in wind [Balko]
  • Interview with Mark Zaid, collector of comic book art with law/legal themes [Abnormal Use]