Chronicling the high cost of our legal system
From the monthly archives:
Courts will often bend over backward to accommodate litigants who file cases without attorney assistance, but in this case the judge lost patience with one who “embarked on a pro se campaign of litigation that has lasted nearly seven years [and] needlessly consumed a large amount of judicial resources”. [NJLJ]
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The Sep. 21 issue of Forbes magazine, now on newsstands, has a lengthy profile by Dan Fisher of my founding of the Center for Class Action Fairness, complete with a photo of my ugly mug gracing the story.
Of interest is a new revelation in the infamous Toshiba class action:
After few consumers availed themselves of a $2 billion settlement over supposedly defective laptop computers in 2000, for example, Toshiba America handed $353 million to a Beaumont charity whose chairman was plaintiff attorney Wayne Reaud, the lawyer on the case. Six years later the charity was still sitting on $250 million and the Texas attorney general sued for breach of fiduciary duty, including paying its president, W. Frank Newton, $560,000 in 2004. Newton is the former president of the State Bar of Texas.
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… on its website. Some lawyers — among others — are not happy about that. [ABA Journal]
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A human rights tribunal has found Canada’s hate-speech law, or at least some applications of it, to be an unconstitutional infringement of free expression. [National Post] Mark Steyn hopes this portends an end to a dark chapter in the nation’s history, but the Western Standard’s Shotgun Blog cautions that the ruling is narrower than one might assume. More: Blazing Cat Fur.
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As lighting “to interview my daughter’s boyfriends”, says an Ann Althouse reader. [more, earlier here, here, etc., as well as Katherine Mangu-Ward, Reason "Hit and Run"]
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“…for her role in the apple scare. She told me so.” [Elizabeth Whelan, National Post]
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Scott Thomas Zielinski was shot while robbing Nick’s Short Stop Party Store in Clinton Township, Michigan, at knifepoint, and is serving an 8-to-22 year sentence. Now he’s suing the store’s owner and some of its clerks for in excess of $125,000 for pain and suffering and emotional distress. [WXYZ] More: reader VMS recalls the story of an unrepaired stair tread.
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As noted earlier in this space, many ordinary rocks — you know, the kind you kick with your foot — flunk the exceedingly stringent lead limits in the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act. And that’s not all, as Rick Woldenberg relates:
… if foolish educational companies want to sell rocks to schools or for inclusion in educational kits sold in toy stores, they must now test the rocks not only for lead but also for sharp points. Yes, rocks with sharp points need to be restricted under ASTM F963 for children aged eight years old or younger. The CPSC has yet to issue guidance to millions of curious Americans on how to manage this exposure when walking to the park or playing catch with the dog in the backyard. …
Is there a testing standard for rocks in the head? Is the concern lead, sharp points or that irritating rattling noise?
Per the Woldenberg entry we linked in May, “Michael Warring of American Educational Products reports that a school opted to stop using AmEP’s rocks to teach Earth Science and will instead rely on a POSTER.”
PUBLIC DOMAIN IMAGE from Benjamin Cobb, Yankee Mother Goose (Ella Brison, illustrator), courtesy ChildrensLibrary.org.
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Whoa, Gristies, that may go a bit too far. [Coyote]
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I’ve got a link roundup on the new charges at Point of Law. Earlier here.
According to U.S. Justice Department and Colorado bar authorities, Denver immigration lawyer Ravi Kanwal was himself in the United States unlawfully. [Legal Profession Blog via Ambrogi, Legal Blog Watch]
George Will on the H. Walker Royall/Carla Main case (in which one of the defendants, Encounter Books, is also a publisher of mine). Earlier here, here, and here.
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A new Maine law forbids wine tastings that could be witnessed by children. [Free Range Kids] (& welcome Damon Root, Reason “Hit and Run” readers)
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