Chronicling the high cost of our legal system
From the monthly archives:
Those of you who remember my earlier posts about the settlement and my brief on behalf of objectors might be interested in seeing the briefs that putatively settling plaintiffs and defendants submitted in support of the settlement.
So as not to clutter Overlawyered with these posts, I have started a new weblog focusing on my class action work. You can also keep up with this work by becoming a Facebook supporter of the Center for Class Action Fairness.
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Sued-if-you-do, sued-if-you-don’t dept.: “United Parcel Service tentatively settled a 10-year-old lawsuit Tuesday by agreeing to allow some deaf and hard-of-hearing employees to compete for jobs driving small delivery vans after special testing and training. …UPS argued that deaf drivers were more likely to get into accidents because they couldn’t hear sirens, screeching tires or other danger signals.” [Egelko/SF Chronicle] We covered the litigation in 2006.
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The Federal Trade Commission seems particularly interested in checking up after blogs that participate in affiliate programs like Amazon’s while making favorable mention of books and other products sold there. [Morrissey, "Hot Air"; Elizabeth Jacobson, CEI "Open Market"] “Do we seriously expect people to hire lawyers before launching a mommy blog? Apparently so.” [James Joyner via Instapundit; Ron Coleman] Earlier here and here.
More: Patrick at Popehat is feeling commercial.
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The New York Times’s “Room for Debate” includes views by Richard Pildes, Jamal Greene and Hans von Spakovsky. Abigail Thernstrom and Edward Blum wrote on the case earlier.
Per CQ Politics, “A House committee approved a sweeping food safety overhaul bill Wednesday after tweaking it to address most remaining GOP concerns, including the bill’s effect on small food producers. …Republicans had expressed concerns about the effect of [a provision increasing frequency of inspections] on small producers, but were assuaged by language adopted as part of a manager’s amendment that would allow the FDA to modify that inspection schedule for some producers at its discretion.” An annual fee per establishment has also been cut from $1000 to $500. More: WSJ. Earlier here, etc.
“Joints and baggies sold at California’s medical marijuana dispensaries will soon carry a new warning label” now that a state panel has added reefers to the long list of officially recognized carcinogens that must be warned about under Prop 65. [San Jose Mercury News via CalBizLit]
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Most of the 37 guards who work at the Cornwall Island, Ontario border crossing have notes from doctors saying that tensions arising from relations with the local Mohawk Indian tribe make it too stressful to work there and could result in harmful health effects. [CanWest/Vancouver Sun]
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The issue generated a five-page legal memo from the City Attorney before being resolved in March. [Matier & Ross, SF Chronicle via Lowering the Bar, California Beat CBS5 with link to City Attorney opinion]
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What am I bid? $1.00? Not even that? (via Caron).
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Press coverage has been rather hostile toward AIG, which insures USAir, for its reluctance to cut large checks for therapy and the like to passengers aboard the miracle flight. (One major reason for it to balk may be the lack of any showing that the airline was negligent; also, passengers got $5,000 checks right after the rescue.)
Given the insurer’s status as public relations pariah, it’s interesting to note that at least one voice has been raised in its defense from a perhaps unexpected quarter: Ron Miller of Maryland Injury Lawyer. His “plea to every lawyer in the United States: please don’t file a lawsuit in these cases to get your name in the paper.” Earlier here and here.
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“A Portland attorney who blamed his German luxury car for a speeding ticket was told he was responsible, not the automaker,” reports AP/OregonLive: C. Akin Blitz brought in a PowerPoint presentation and the testimony of a mechanic to bolster his argument “that he had no idea his BMW 535xi was going 76 mph in a 55 mph zone because of its handling characteristics”, but Clatsop County Circuit Judge Philip Nelson disagreed and fined Blitz $182.
P.S.: Ken at Popehat: “Legal realism note: as a rule, you will not find traffic court judges sympathetic to the defense ‘Your honor, I am not guilty because my German luxury car is too awesome.”
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The Corzine Times, a website of the Republican Governors Association publicizing negative news stories about the politically vulnerable New Jersey governor, received a cease and desist letter from The New York Times, which so far doesn’t seem to have seen fit to include that fact for its readers, though other papers have at least blogged about it. [WaPo; USA Today]
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“The Senate unanimously passed a resolution [Thursday] apologizing for slavery, making way for a joint congressional resolution and the latest attempt by the federal government to take responsibility for 2 1/2 centuries of slavery.” [WaPo] Not altogether surprisingly, if you ask leading reparations advocates Randall Robinson and Charles Ogletree, Jr., whether this should reignite talk of reparations, they say yes. My City Journal article of last year explains why I think the latter very bad idea never picked up the political momentum its advocates expected.
Stephen Bainbridge has this response to the resolution’s sponsor:
“You wonder why we didn’t do it 100 years ago,” Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), lead sponsor of the resolution, said after the vote. “It is important to have a collective response to a collective injustice.”
Memo to Senator Harkin: We had a collective response. It was called the Army of the Potomac.
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A White House press release quotes my comments on Judge Sotomayor (in which I have been critical of some of the critics). More: Boston Globe.
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A rain check on KFC’s hugely popular grilled-chicken offer isn’t good enough, say the class-action-seekers. [L.A. Times/Chicago Tribune via Obscure Store, WSJ Law Blog]
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