Attorney John Dozier has already made a couple of memorable appearances in this space, first when he asserted in a cease and desist letter that it would violate copyright law for his target to post the text of that cease and desist letter in part or in full on the web, and shortly thereafter when one of the clients of his Dozier Internet Law firm, an outfit known as Inventor-Net, purported to “strictly prohibit any links and or other unauthorized references to our web site without our permission”; Dozier’s own site had a user agreement which purported to ban linking to the site, using the firm’s name “in any manner” without permission, or even looking at the site’s source code.

Now the Virginia-based attorney is attracting attention with a new legal battle against Ronald J. Riley, a Michigan inventor and patent-law activist who has harshly criticized Dozier (and many others) in online posts and comments. Among other tactics, Riley has set up “sucks” websites that vilify Dozier and his law firm and turn up in search results on Dozier’s name. Dozier’s lawsuit against Riley invokes not defamation law, as might have been expected, but trademark law, and its most curious provision is #25, which complains that it is a trademark violation for Riley’s site to base a hyperlink on the phrase “Dozier Internet Law” and have it lead to Riley’s own attacks on the Dozier firm rather than to the Dozier firm’s site. Of course it’s long been common in online commentary to link on someone’s name and have the link point somewhere scathingly critical of them (e.g., “Erin Brockovich“). Dozier claims, perhaps implausibly, that potential clients will suffer confusion between Riley’s services and his own.

Paul Alan Levy at Public Citizen’s Consumer Law & Policy Blog writes (Oct. 2):

Although Dozier filed his lawsuit, he does not seem to have served it on Riley. Instead, he has used the making of a claim for trademark infringement to warn the hosts of Riley’s web site that if they do not take the web site down they risk a further display of Dozier’s wrath, directed at them. See here, here, and here. And his invocation of trademark law was very crafty, because although the Communications Decency Act immunizes ISP’s from liability for most claims based on the content of web sites that they host, that immunity does not extend to trademark claims.

Public Citizen has now sued for a declaratory judgment that Riley is not liable to Dozier on trademark grounds. The conflict has even aroused sympathy for Riley on TechDirt, among whose editors he had been anything but popular before.

Shadow home secretary Dominic Grieve said if the Conservatives return to power they will amend the Health and Safety at Work Act of 1974, sections of which have applied to police work since 1997. The much-criticized results have included refusals to allow police officers to venture into potentially dangerous crime scenes and rescue situations. The party also pledges to curtail a trend toward the filing of official charges against citizens who intervene in efforts to stop crimes. (James Kirkup, “Tory conference: Dominic Grieve promises to scrap police health and safety laws”, Telegraph, Sept. 30). See also Jun. 30, 2003 (police not warned that climbing on roofs was dangerous).

The office of New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo “said it planned to file a lawsuit this week against Arbitron, the company that compiles the data, because of concerns that minority listeners were not being adequately represented. … Recruiting and retaining enough respondents from these demographic groups [blacks and Hispanics] has proved difficult for Arbitron, leading some stations that cater to urban and ethnic audiences to claim that they are not being sufficiently counted.” (Brian Stelter, “Cuomo to Sue Radio Ratings Company, Claiming Minorities Are Underrepresented”, New York Times, Oct. 7).

They quote Ted twice.

Houston lawyer Jeff Murphrey apologizes (or doesn’t really) in a deposition scheduling dispute with a Dallas lawyer (Nicole Black, Legal Antics, Oct. 6).

All-blog edition:

• Judges overheard chatting in coffee shop about sweetheart class settlement [WageLaw via Paul Karlsgodt's weekly class action blog roundup]
• More attempts to sue/uncover anonymous blog commenters: “I was subpoenaed for a discovery deposition about one of my posts on this blog.” [Medblogger Dr. Wes]
• Thoughts prompted by the latest (NYC) round of litigation over “ladies’ nights” at drinking establishments [David Giacalone, f/k/a]
• Head of state (Bolivia’s Morales) to his lawyer: “If it’s illegal, go ahead and make it legal. That’s what you went to school for.’” [Cato at Liberty]
• Everybody run! Perennial Overlawyered mentionee Steve Berman has a blog [Class Action Law Today via his P.R. guy in Kevin O'Keefe comments]
• When infamous NYC lawyer Burt Pugach calls, hang up [Greenfield]
• Colleague described as “a soap opera doctor” elects to spend more time in the courtroom than in the operating room [Throckmorton]
• Dear Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee: “Please resist the efforts of vaccine-injury plaintiffs’ advocates to define themselves as representatives of ‘the autism community.’” [Kathleen Seidel, Neurodiversity]

“Ontario vowed to overhaul its pediatric forensic pathology system yesterday following a highly critical report citing the ‘woefully inadequate’ training of pathologist Dr. Charles Smith and the inaction of his supervisors in the coroner’s office who ‘actively protected’ him despite ‘warning signs’ about errors he made that led to wrongful prosecutions.” A 1,000-page report by Justice Stephen Goudge found that Smith’s testimony blaming child deaths on family members resulted in numerous wrongful prosecutions and erroneous convictions, including that of William Mullins-Johnson of Sault Ste. Marie, who “spent 12 years in prison after he was convicted of murdering his four-year-old niece. The conviction was quashed last year after the expert evidence was dismissed as unreliable.” (Jordana Huber, “Inquiry blasts Ontario pathologist”, Ottawa Citizen, Oct. 2; CBC; ABA Journal; Goudge inquiry website and report).

• Are Citi-Wachovia-Wells Fargo doomed to relive Texaco-Getty-Pennzoil in court? [Ethan Leib, Prawfsblawg; more here, here] #
• GOP petrified at prospect of filibuster-proof Democratic Senate [Politico] #
• Iceland’s once high-flying banks: will bailout needs overwhelm small nation’s govt? [Salmon] #
• Splog rips off Blawg Review #175 in its entirety from rightful author J. Spencer. Will Blogspot do anything? [don't give 'em a direct link] #
• A peek at a revamped Amazon Kindle due out for Xmas? [Carnoy, CNet "Crave"] #
• Courtesy Kevin O’Keefe, “Beer for Bloggers” event in Manhattan Monday evening [see you there?] #
• Good article on pressures on Fannie Mae to plunge into risky lending 2005-08 [Kudos to NYT] #

This was the week that Congress passed and the President signed a new law requiring that most health insurers (if they cover mental health treatment at all) pay for lots and lots of talk therapy and addiction rehab the same way they pay for lots of angioplasties or appendectomies, in the name of “parity” and “nondiscrimination”. Very optimistically — it won’t be Congress writing the checks — the ten-year cost is projected at only $3.4 billion. (Judith Graham, “Triage”/Chicago Tribune, Oct. 3). Next week lawmakers will go back to complaining that health insurance has become prohibitively expensive and that much of the population is priced out of buying it altogether. Mickey Kaus remembers where we’ve seen this sort of feel-good short-circuiting of underwriting standards before (Oct. 2).

The traffic camera automatically recorded the license plate of the vehicle going too fast, so the owner (in Plettenberg Bay, South Africa) was automatically mailed a ticket. The only problem: the vehicle was being towed by a tow truck at the time. (Stumblng Tumblr, Aug. 5).

More from commenter Cathy Gellis: “I know someone who canceled her Fastrak/EZ Pass automatic toll account and was charged when the device passed through a toll while being mailed back.”

In the past two years Tyrone Hurt has filed more than seventy appeals with the D.C. Circuit, whose judges observe (PDF):

In just the last couple of years, Hurt has sued the Declaration of Independence, Black’s Law Dictionary, the United Nations, agencies of the District of Columbia and the Federal Government, and various courts and their officers. Hurt has . . . demanded the deportation of a Spanish-speaking government employee.

Finding that Hurt has abused the privilege of having filing fees waived for indigence (”in forma pauperis”) the court dismissed his forty-four pending cases and decreed that he will have to pay ordinary filing fees if he wishes to bring any more pro se actions in that court. Hurt’s various failed lawsuits have demanded “sums of money dwarfing the size of the Federal Government’s annual budget”. (WSJ law blog, Oct. 3).

• Game-geek nostalgia: the “Play Generated Map and Document Archive” [Feral Child] #
• “A lawyer charging extra for stamps and copies is like a car wash charging extra for water.” [Matt Homann, The (Non)-Billable Hour] #
• Aside to attorney Stephen Otto, who asked about a mail- and copy-intensive bankruptcy case: I guess that might be the exception, like the desert car wash that you can understand might for water use by the gallon #
• Some reasons why Washington Mutual failure and rescue was a big deal [Kevin LaCroix, D&O Diary] #
• Analysis of bailout’s “excessive executive compensation” provisions [Hodak Value] #
• Roundup of credit crisis links [Point of Law] #

Two Milwaukee-based law firms, Hupy & Abraham and the McNally Law Offices, have been gathering up vehicle-crash police reports in the famously litigation-friendly Illinois counties east of St. Louis, and then soliciting persons named in the reports to file injury claims. “Some local police departments, including Belleville, Edwardsville, O’Fallon and the Madison County Sheriff’s Department,” have resisted the demands, based on worries about citizen privacy and identity theft, or have sought to charge for per-report access, which would discourage mass scooping up of names. The McNally firm, however, “sends a copy of a letter from Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s office, which states the police have to allow viewing of the reports, at no charge.” (Brian Bruegemann, “Ambulance chasing? Lawyers zero in on metro-east clients”, Belleville News-Democrat, Sept. 28). Ron Miller at Maryland Injury Lawyer says the practice contributes toward giving the plaintiff’s bar a bad name, and corresponds with attorney Michael Hupy whose firm figures in the story. We covered the phenomenon earlier here and here.

We’ve already aired much dissent from the medical profession about whether or not top-notch hospital care can in fact prevent all instances of patient falls, decubitus pressure ulcers (bedsores), hypoglycemia, deep vein thrombosis, delirium, suicide attempts, c. difficile infection, or iatrogenic pneumothorax. Nonetheless, Medicare has adopted its proposal to deny hospitals reimbursement for the cost of treating such events and complications, with likely consequences both for hospital behavior (refusal to admit some patients at high risk of never events), for private insurer behavior and for the climate of medical malpractice litigation. (Kevin Sack, “Medicare Won’t Pay for Medical Errors”, New York Times, Sept. 30). White Coat Rants, who has blogged extensively on the issue in past months, has some predictions (Oct. 1) of things we can now expect to see more of: more patient transfers between hospitals (since Medicare will not punish the second hospital for the first’s “never event”; underdiagnosis of certain conditions and overdiagnosis of others; and, more remotely but no less alarmingly, pressure on some families to serve as ultimate bearers of risk for supposed never events affecting the frailest and most elderly:

Say hello to the Advance Beneficiary Notices. Medicare won’t cover preventative care, so you are going to have to pay for it out of your pocket. If you’re prone to falls or bedsores, you’ll have to pay for a personal nurse to wait on you hand and foot so you don’t develop these never events. If you don’t pay for a personal nurse 24 hours around the clock to keep a never event from happening, you’re personally responsible for paying the costs of treatment if the “never events” occur. You had the opportunity to prevent the events but you were just too cheap to pay for it. I think that ABNs are less likely to catch on, but eventually I think they will become commonplace.

In bedsores; hospitals; Medicare; never events; suicide

Ways (successful ways!) of wheedling oneself out of a contempt of court rap (Feral Child, Sept. 25; Tim Blair, Daily Telegraph (Australia), Sept. 25; Prothonotary of the Supreme Court of New South Wales v Hall, Australia, 2008).

“In the war on piracy, consumer privacy is often the first casualty. But on Monday, a federal court imposed some limits on the collateral damage content owners can inflict, blocking a satellite TV provider’s effort to subpoena the names and personal information of thousands of people who purchased ‘free-to-air’ satellite receivers that can be hacked to decrypt signals meant for paid subscribers.” A brief from EFF had argued that “Echostar’s [parent company of Dish Network's] subpoenas were ‘especially troubling in light of past litigation’ where another satellite TV provider, DirecTV, had similarly obtained customer information in the course of a civil suit against a device manufacturer. The company then sent out 170,000 letters pressuring customers to agree to a $3,500 ’settlement’ or face litigation.” (Julian Sanchez, Ars Technica, Oct. 1). On the earlier DirecTV litigation campaign, see posts here, here, here, and (reader letter) here.

Wheeling, W.V.: the West Virginia Supreme Court has annulled the law license of Mark Blevins, an attorney and candidate for county prosecutor who was accused in disciplinary complants of having solicited a convicted felon to procure a “throwaway” gun and to help him collect money from clients. (AP/Law.com; Wheeling News-Register). Our earlier post drew protests from readers who didn’t think it relevant whether the other party to the discussion was a felon or not.

• Cameras in the Neiman Marcus “loss security” (anti-theft operations) room? So unfair when they catch two employees making whoopee [Chicago Tribune via Feral Child]
• Flipping their wigs: after three centuries judges in British civil and family courts today end tradition of horsehair wigs [Times Online]
• The right number? $28 million to Boston victim of negligent Big Dig construction [Globe]
• White collar advice: “Always commit crimes with people more important than you are, so you can turn them in” [Dershowitz, Forbes]
• Injured while skylarking on freight trains, now want Oz taxpayers to pay for their injuries [The Australian]
• That’ll spoil the fun: New Jersey high court bars judges from discussing future employment with lawyers who have pending cases before them [NJLJ]
• Compromise on Capitol Hill lets Pandora survive a little longer to negotiate with music rights owners [ReadWriteWeb; earlier here, here]
• Rapists with leverage over the adoption of a resultant child? [four years ago on Overlawyered]