Felix Salmon doubts things will turn out entirely as hoped for Charles Smith, the one doing the suing.
From the monthly archives:
October 2010
Among its most insidious features, notes Ira Stoll, is a $2.5 million cy pres fund earmarked for “corporate governance programs at 12 universities across the country,” and which will predictably encourage such academic programs, at law schools and elsewhere, to align themselves further with the agenda of the plaintiff’s securities bar and against the interest of actual shareholders at companies like Apple. I’ve got much more about cy pres law school slush funds in Schools for Misrule, forthcoming. [Future of Capitalism; Jim at PoL]
“The Wisconsin Court of Appeals has refused to follow a convicted child molester ‘down the rabbit hole’ and allow her to sue the parents of the 13-year-old boy she assaulted for failing to protect him from her.” [Matthew Heller, OnPoint News]
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The New Jersey Supreme Court will take up the appeal of a case where a Brick, N.J. man hurt in a motorcycle crash was allowed to proceed with a suit against the Toms River restaurant that had served him. [Asbury Park Press via NLJRA, earlier]
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For a number of years organized trial lawyerdom has made it a top priority to attack contractual clauses providing for arbitration of employment, consumer and other disputes, arguing that only litigation — that is to say, their own services — can provide the needed fairness, deterrence and compensation. Such is the Litigation Lobby’s overreach in this matter that even a veteran liberal, former Ninth Circuit judge and Carter education secretary Shirley Hufstedler, is constrained (with co-author William Webster) to part company with bills introduced by Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold and others: “Astonishingly, such legislation would effectively abolish arbitration as a viable alternative for such disputes.” [National Law Journal]
- Lawsuit of the Day: Partner Booted From Three Firms Sues ‘Em All! [Legal Blog Watch]
- Drawing wrong lessons from the Rutgers suicide [Greenfield and more (proposed "Tyler's Law"), John Schwartz/NYT (quoting Orin Kerr), Volokh and more, Above the Law]
- John Sullivan leaving after 15 years at helm of Civil Justice Association of California [L.A. Times]
- Maybe consumers don’t feel so victimized by overdraft “protection” after all [Bank Lawyer's Blog]
- Yes, it’s another dust-up pitting all sensible Supreme Court commentators against Dahlia Lithwick, if you like that sort of thing [Kerr, Bodie/Prawfs, Ponnuru, Frank; bonus, Richard Epstein on Erwin Chemerinsky and Hans Bader on a prize flight of Lithwick fancy]
- Blog post relatively sympathetic to Righthaven copyright trollery draws many responses [Robert Zelnick, Patently-O]
- “Should they have let the guy’s house burn down?” [Tyler Cowen; Firey, Cato]
- “Drunken man passes out, wins $850K from police” [six years ago on Overlawyered]
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The Human Rights Campaign has issued a report rating major law firms (among other large employers) on how well they address LGBT issues. It takes off points for law firms that have represented anti-gay clients, such as Foley & Lardner, which has represented opponents of gay marriage in litigation in the District of Columbia.
Many nonlawyers will not see anything unusual in this. The thing is, it’s a passionately held tenet of N.Y. Times-reader legal liberalism — sometimes, at least — that law firms must not be publicly shamed for electing to represent “bad” clients in important legal matters. After all, representing those clients does not necessarily mean they share the clients’ objectives or viewpoints. For example, former Bush administration defense official Cully Stimson was widely excoriated after he suggested that it was to the discredit of leading law firms that they had thrown a tremendous effort into the pro bono defense of Guantanamo detainees.
Elie Mystal at Above the Law and John Steele at Legal Ethics Forum are among those to raise the question whether there is any real consistency to all this. And does it make a difference whether the “bad” client is being represented pro bono, or is paying handsomely, as with Sen. Kristen Gillibrand’s repping of Big Tobacco as a young lawyer?
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Obesity as such has generally not been included as a disability in the past, so the case may signal a newly activist stance at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission [EEOC press release, AP]
P.S. As commenters point out, “obesity-as-perceived-disability” would be more precise. The law’s recent extension to complainants “perceived as” disabled is proving, just as advocates hoped and defendants feared, to be a major engine of expansion of legal coverage to complainants who in the past could not claim disabled status. More: John Bratt (recalling “Simpsons” episode).
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Mrs. Stayart searched on her own name and was dismayed to find icky and spammy sites, so she sued and went on suing. This time it was the turn of the federal appeals court to tell her no. [Eric Goldman ("While this *should* be the end of Stayart's litigation, it probably won't be. She can refile her state law claims against Yahoo in state court. She also still has a pending lawsuit against Google."); Lowering the Bar; earlier]
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Eugene Volokh attempts to answer that question [Volokh Conspiracy]
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“Less than 40 percent” of lawyers surveyed in the U.S. considered corruption to be a big problem in our legal system [WSJ Law Blog; summary and study by International Bar Association and others, see p. 10 of study]
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- “Mark Lanier, Marie Gryphon and Ted Frank debate if a free market can protect consumers as well as lawyers.” [John Stossel's Fox Business show last week; Point of Law (Lanier has kind words for loser pays); Bob Dorigo Jones]
- Corner-cutting document prep proves costly to mortgage lenders at foreclosure time [NYTimes; related, Felix Salmon and more] Connecticut AG Blumenthal orders 60-day halt to all foreclosures, whether or not paperwork-impaired, conveniently carrying him through Election Day [WaPo]
- High court grants cert on a bunch of business cases [Beck, WLF, WSJ Law Blog, Fisher, PoL on Scalia stay in tobacco class action]
- The myth of the sabotaged streetcar system [Market Urbanism]
- Another big Title IX casualty: Cal Berkeley kills varsity rugby [Saving Sports and various followups; gymnastics; related on Boston Globe coverage]
- “N.J. Bill Proposes Use of Screening Panels to Thwart Frivolous Suits Against Public Entities” [NJLJ]
- Cop informs on cop’s misbehavior, what happens next isn’t pretty [Greenfield; Kansas City, Kansas]
- There’s money in glass-eating, son [three years ago on Overlawyered]
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Scott Greenfield has some questions following the conviction of a New York lawyer who impersonated a scholar online “in a heated academic debate over the origins of the Dead Sea Scrolls.”
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I’ll be speaking at Tulane law school late in the afternoon of Mon., Oct. 18, and then at Loyola-New Orleans at lunchtime on Tues., Oct. 19. Both events are sponsored by student Federalist Society chapters; my topics will be legal ethics/lawyer unpopularity and employment law/ADA litigation, respectively. To bring me to your campus, convention or group, drop me a line at editor – at – thisdomainname – dot – com or, if you prefer, work through the Cato Institute’s speaker service (202-789-5226) or the national office of the Federalist Society. And don’t forget that early next year I’ll start touring to speak on my new book on law schools, Schools for Misrule.
Despite much speculation that the Court’s rollback of the law of “honest services fraud” might help his case, the justices yesterday “let stand without comment a ruling by a federal appeals court that upheld most convictions of the lawyer, Paul Minor, and the judges, John Whitfield and Wes Teel. The men were convicted for their roles in a complicated scheme involving loans for the judges and allegedly favorable rulings in civil cases involving Minor.” [AP/Biloxi Sun-Herald, YallPolitics]
Sorrows of a Texas fen-phen lawyer now accused (in a civil lawsuit) of getting creative with his clients’ expense allocations. [Houston Chronicle via Ted at PoL]
- O.J. Simpson trial 15 years after [Tim Lynch, Cato at Liberty; a couple of my reactions back then]
- Hackers expose internal documents of British copyright-mill law firm [Steele, LEF] Insult to injury: now that target law firm may be fined for privacy breach [same]
- BAR/BRI antitrust case: “Judge Cites ‘Egregious Breach’ of Ethics, Slashes Law Firm Fee from $12M to $500K” [ABA Journal]
- “Confessions of former debt collectors” [CNN Money via CL&P]
- Big investigative series on prosecutorial misconduct [USA Today]
- “Even with malpractice insurance, doctors opt for expensive, defensive medicine” [Jain/WaPo] “Medical malpractice suits drop but take a toll” [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Paul Carpenter, of the Allentown Morning Call, on problem and possible solutions] A contrary view: Ron Miller.
- “Card check is dead … long live card check” [Hyman]
- “Canada: Deported Russian spy sues for readmittance” [four years ago on Overlawyered] A role model for some in the spy ring recently deported from the U.S.?
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