Freelance journalist Dan Slater in the NYT’s “Dealbook” (via Above the Law) spies a “bailout for the plaintiff’s bar”:
…settlements resulting from the scores of shareholder suits against TARP entities will stretch into the stratosphere.
Sure, through TARP, taxpayer money may be used to pay off mortgages and fund bonus pools. But, in what will amount to a far more expensive proposition, TARP money will also be used to line the pockets of allegedly aggrieved shareholders and the lawyers who, wrapped smugly in the flag of corporate governance, are in the process of making a billion-dollar cottage industry out of filing strike suits.
Tagged as:
class actions,
securities litigation,
TARP
A Fifth Circuit panel is looking closely into whether the disgraced attorney’s payments to Mississippi state judges had enough of a nexus to federal programs to trigger the application of the federal bribery statute. Tom Freeland explains (and has more).
Tagged as:
Paul Minor
Paul Karlsgodt wonders how we arrived at a system in which consumer behavior that would ordinarily be considered eccentric at a near-Grey-Gardens level — such as saving receipts from the purchase of supermarket chicken years in the past — becomes an important determinant for entitlement to compensation. More on water-in-chicken class action: March 15 (cross-posted from Point of Law).
Tagged as:
class actions
It’s thought to be the longest judgment ever handed down in Australia [Andrew Main, "Banks must pay $1.58bn in compensation for Bell asset grab", The Australian, Apr. 30]
Tagged as:
Australia,
judges
- “Sioux split on suit seeking money for Black Hills” [Associated Press]
- More on nomination of Mothers Against Drunk Driving CEO to head highway safety agency [Balko, see also comments on earlier post]
- Push by advocates in Congress to extend shakedown-enabling Community Reinvestment Act to all financial institutions [Victoria McGrane, Politico] And some numbers from Bank of America raise doubts about those oft-heard “CRA default rates lower than regular default rates” assertions [Weisenthal, Business Insider]
- Illinois attorney general Madigan to Craigslist: purge vice ads or I’ll see you in court [L.A. Times]
- Here and there, acknowledgments in the press of the damaging effects of laws entrenching auto dealers against termination [L.A. Times via Craig Newmark]
- How many people get arrested for “contempt of cop”? [Coyote Blog] Blogosphere has helped spread awareness of police-abuse issues [Greenfield]
- Virginia Postrel: I told you so on that light bulb ban story [earlier]
- U.K. law reform panel: “charlatan” and “biased” expert witnesses put defendants at risk of wrongful conviction [Times Online]
Tagged as:
auto dealership protection laws,
Craigslist,
expert witnesses,
Indian tribes,
MADD,
mortgages,
police,
South Dakota
If you’re not reading my other legal site, Point of Law, here’s some of what you’re missing:
Tagged as:
asbestos,
attorneys general,
California,
forum shopping,
international human rights,
international law,
labor unions,
New Mexico,
Pennsylvania,
politics,
prosecution,
whistleblowers
The judge said Inez Sparks, of the Detroit suburb of Eastpointe, should not have named a police dog as defendant in her dog bite claim against the Warren, Mich. police department and its officers. [WDIV/ClickOnDetroit.com]
Tagged as:
animals
Upholding a $40,000 jury award, the Michigan Court of Appeals has “said a church was liable for the fall of a woman who was ’slain in the spirit’ during an altar call” (see Jun. 21, 2007) [On Point News] And per the same site, a new Oregon case presents a somewhat different fact pattern: Shin Lim Kim was allegedly acting as a “catcher” at the Portland Onnuri Church in Beaverton, but suffered a fractured spinal vertebra when fellow congregant Hyun Joo Hoon fell on her:
The church was negligent, the complaint says, in not providing multiple catchers; failing to discuss “safe catching strategy” with congregants; selecting Kim — “a small and not particularly strong person” — as a catcher; and failing to instruct congregants on “the correct procedures to fall, so that they would not injure themselves and injure the person assisting and/or catching them.”
More coverage of this genre of suits: June 8, 2008.
Tagged as:
churches,
Oregon
Yes, it’s a locavore’s dream, but as you search for nettle, wild radish and miner’s lettuce, you might consider taking a lawyer along [Peter Jamison, SF Weekly]
Tagged as:
food safety
- Forensics gone wrong: Alabama mom spends nine months in jail after medical examiner misdiagnoses stillbirth as murder [Patrick @ Popehat]
- Bouncer shot outside bar going after owners individually to collect $1.5 million verdict [W.V. Record]
- “Feds Seize Assets of Companies Suspected of Hiring Illegal Aliens” [Reisinger, Corporate Counsel]
- Dealing with compulsive-hoarder tenants who fill apartment up to the ceiling with trash can be legally tricky [San Francisco Weekly]
- NYC has paid more than a half billion dollars over past decade to settle police misconduct suits [NY Post]
- Los Angeles schools taking aim at state laws that make it near impossible to fire teachers [L.A. Daily News via Kaus]
- Another parent put through mistaken-identity child-support hell, this time in Pennsylvania [Harrisburg Patriot-News via Amy Alkon] For a similar case from California, see August 7-8, 2001;
- Disabled man finds vehicle towed, wheels himself in cold to distant lot, catches pneumonia. Liability for tow company and parking lot owner? [John Hochfelder, who also hosts Blawg Review #209 this week on a theme of remembering his father, a veteran of the WWII battle of Iwo Jima]
Tagged as:
child support,
expert witnesses,
immigration law,
landlord tenant law,
NYC,
Pennsylvania,
police,
workplace
