George Leef at The Freeman newly reviews my book on the abuse of mass litigation from a few years back. “Well-researched and deliciously written” — thanks!
Posts tagged as:
accolades
More kind comments on my move from Ramesh Ponnuru at NRO “Corner” and David Lat and Elie Mystal at Above the Law (earlier). And I’m very grateful for Chris Rizo’s full-length treatment at Legal NewsLine, even if it’s hard for me to imagine anyone calling me a “godfather” of anything.
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As unconstitutional (PDF). Incidentally, this may mark the first time Overlawyered (as distinct from my other writing) has been cited in the HLR — see footnotes 25 and 28. But I’m not really sure.
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Premier criminal defense blogger Norm Pattis takes a look at my 2003 book on mass litigation and agrees with much of what I have to say, while still winding up with a feeling of “ambivalence.” A sample:
I end where I started. Lawyers have too much power. We play with the lives of others with impunity. I think Olson’s on to something.
I await his next book, and encourage him to take a look at the lives or ordinary lawyers. Not all of us own jets. I’m thrilled with first class on the few times I’ve tried it. Most often I fly coach.
Whole thing here.
Late-night fast food at a Virginia gas station McDonald’s proves fateful, if not fatal. [Kevin Couch at new, South Carolina-based Abnormal Use: An Unreasonably Dangerous Product Liability Blog]
P.S.: Jim Dedman of the Gallivan firm writes in email: “Walter, we’re big fans of Overlawyered here at our firm in South Carolina, and I myself have been reading it since I was a law student. We started our blog on the first business day of 2010, partially inspired by having read your site for years. Thanks again, and we look forward to being a part of the blogosphere with you.” Inspiring others to jump in is one of the true psychological rewards of blogging.
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Massachusetts’s highest court thought it a bit much that fees and costs would eat up $800,000 from an estate valued at $1.2 million, or two-thirds of the value at stake. [Robert Ambrogi, Legal Blog Watch; Above the Law]
Incidentally, Robert Ambrogi is hanging up his keyboard after an impressive four-year tenure at Law.com’s Legal Blog Watch, but he’ll continue to maintain his other sites. He has kind words for this site as one to “follow religiously”, too.
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- Pa. cash-for-kids judge allegedly came up with number of months for length of sentence based on how many birds could be seen out his office window [Legal Ethics Forum, with notes on ornithomancy or bird divination through history]; “The Pa. Judicial Scandal: A Closer Look at the Victims” [WSJ Law Blog on Philadelphia Inquirer report]; feds charge third county judge with fraud [Legal Intelligencer, more]; state high court overturns convictions of 6,500 kids who appeared before Ciavarella and Conahan [Greenfield]; judge orders new trial in Ciavarella’s eyebrow-raising $3.5 million defamation verdict against Citizens’ Voice newspaper in Wilkes-Barre; some web resources on scandal [Sullum, scroll to end]
- Says drinking was part of her job: “Stripper’s DUI Case Survives Club’s Latest Attack” [OnPoint News, earlier]
- Hundreds of lawyers rally to protest Sheriff Arpaio, DA Thomas [Coyote, Greenfield, ABA Journal, Mark Bennett interview with Phoenix attorney Jim Belanger, earlier here, here, and here]. In deposition, Arpaio says he hasn’t read book he co-authored in 2008 on immigration [Balko, Coyote] And as I mentioned a while back, Maricopa D.A. Andrew Thomas turns out to be the very same person as the Andrew Peyton Thomas toward whom I was uncharitable in this Reason piece quite a while back.
- Ted Roberts, of the famous sex-extortion case, begins serving five-year term [AP/Dallas News, KENS]
- New Hampshire lawsuit over leak of documents to mortgage gadfly site raises First Amendment issues [Volokh, earlier here and here]
- Did someone say paid witness? Judge tosses decade-old animal rights case vs. Ringling circus [Orlando Sentinel, Zincavage] Bonus: Ron Coleman, Likelihood of Confusion, on PETA and Michelle Obama;
- How’d foreclosure tax get into Connecticut budget when both parties claimed to oppose it? [Ct. News Junkie]
- Best-legal-blog picks of Ryan Perlin, who writes “Generation J.D.” for the Maryland Daily Record, include one that’s “humorous though sometimes disheartening”, while La Roxy at Daily Asker salutes a certain website as “Lurid, i.e. satisfying”. Thanks!
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The new holiday decoration in the town of Poole, Dorset,
has no trunk so it won’t blow over, no branches to break off and land on someone’s head, no pine needles to poke a passer-by in the eye, no decorations for drunken teenagers to steal and no angel, presumably because it would need a dangerously long ladder to place it at the top.
One onlooker describes it as “horrible”. [Times Online via Free-Range Kids; & welcome Damon Root/Reason "Hit and Run" (calling us "the indispensable Overlawyered.com", Coyote, Ed Driscoll, Musing Minds readers]
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That nice Ronald Coleman of Likelihood of Confusion nominates us for a 2009 Weblog Award.
More background reading on the Draconian consumer product safety law:
- Fear of losing even more high-quality German toy suppliers [Kathy + Matt Take Milwaukee]
- Mattel will pay $13 million to 20 plaintiff’s firms
to resolve class action over toy recalls; claimed value of settlement to class (vouchers, etc.) is something like $37 million [National Law Journal, Coughlin Stoia release; earlier] Note also Rick Woldenberg’s March analysis of one recall (recall of 436,000 units premised on two cans of bad paint). - New law “has added several new tasks [to the CPSC], many of which most charitably can be described as marginal in the overall pursuit of product safety that will divert staff and financial resources from more important safety issues.” [attorney Michael Brown, quoted at Handmade Toy Alliance Blog]
- Alarmist reporting on Boston’s WBZ affords a glimpse of
“the scary people behind the law” [Woldenberg] - Effort to help move blogger Kevin Drum up the CPSIA learning curve [Coyote]
- “The “Resale Round-up,” launched by the CPSC, finally limits the power of these merchants of death who recklessly barter second-hand toys to unsuspecting civilians at low prices…. The only question now is how did any of us survive this long?” [David Harsanyi, Denver Post]
- Among its other effects, the statute “will boost opportunities for mass-tort suits” [Crain's Chicago Business]
- Law’s “continuing disaster for small business” illustrates
difference between crony capitalism and the real kind [James DeLong, The American, with kind words for a certain "indispensable" website that's covered the law]
PUBLIC DOMAIN IMAGES from Ethel Everett, illustrator, Nursery Rhymes (1900), courtesy ChildrensLibrary.org.
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Publishers sometimes send me books in hopes I’ll review or at least mention them. I occasionally attend free advance screenings of new movies (typically law-related documentaries) that filmmakers hope I’ll write about. This site has an Amazon affiliate store which has from time to time provided me with commissions after readers click links and proceed to purchase items, though it’s been almost entirely inactive for years. I get invited to attend the odd institutional banquet whose hosts sometimes give away a free book or paperweight along with the hotel meal. I’ve been sent “cause” T-shirts and law firm/support service provider promotional kits over the years, pretty much a waste of effort since I don’t much care for wearing such T-shirts and am not exactly famed for posts that sing the praises of law firms or their service providers.
Under new Federal Trade Commission guidelines in the works for some time, I could apparently get in trouble for not disclosing these and similarly exciting things. In addition, the commission’s scrutiny will extend to areas less relevant to this site, such as targeted Google advertising and results-not-typical testimonials.
Robert Ambrogi at Legal Blog Watch finds it hard to see why the blogosphere has raised such a big fuss about these rules. After all, the rules (to be precise, “guidelines” backed by government lawyers with relevant enforcement powers) make clear that nondisclosure of a single minor freebie will not in itself suffice to trigger liability but instead will be counted “among several factors to be weighed” in evaluating the continuum of behavior by individuals engaging in social media (it seems the rules also apply to Twitter, Facebook, and guest appearances on talk shows, to name a few). FTC enforcers will engage in their own fact-specific, and inevitably subjective, balancing before deciding whether to press for fines or other penalties: in other words, instead of knowing whether you’re legally vulnerable or not, you get to guess.
Like most authors I know, I wind up donating most review copies I receive to local library sales or other charities. (As Ann Althouse and Cory Doctorow both hint, the accumulation of review copies for disposal quickly becomes more of a burden than otherwise, which is why I spend much more time trying politely to talk publishers out of sending me copies than trying to talk them into it.) But in an extraordinary interview that should be read in its entirety, the FTC’s point man on the rules, Richard Cleland, surreally suggests bloggers should instead return review copies to the publishers — who don’t want them back! — after taking a look.
Among interesting disclosure posts by well-known bloggers: Tyler Cowen/Marginal Revolution, Virginia Postrel/DeepGlamour, Martin Schwimmer/Trademark Blog. Other notable reactions: Jack Shafer, Slate (“The FTC’s mad power grab. … preposterous … The guidelines have to be read to be believed.” ); Patrick at Popehat (“Next on the FTC agenda: fines for hotlinking and failure to hat tip … Yes, I believe in the slippery slope.”); Jeff Jarvis, Amy Alkon, Dan Gillmor (“you get the sense of a government-gone-wild travesty…unworkable in practice”), HIPAA Blog (“unconstitutional”), Washington Examiner (editorial: “No self-respecting journalists should lend their endorsement to [the FTC's planned Dec. 1-2 workshop on journalism], and neither should any professional journalism organization.”)
Finally, for the last word, Ann Althouse:
The most absurd part of it is the way the FTC is trying to make it okay by assuring us that they will be selective in deciding which writers on the internet to pursue. That is, they’ve deliberately made a grotesquely overbroad rule, enough to sweep so many of us into technical violations, but we’re supposed to feel soothed by the knowledge that government agents will decide who among us gets fined. No, no, no. Overbreadth itself is a problem. And so is selective enforcement.
(& welcome readers from Instapundit, Ron Coleman (who points out that he was on this issue earlier than any of us), ShopFloor, Dave Zincavage, Jonathan Adler/Volokh, Megan MacArdle/The Atlantic, Darleen Click/Protein Wisdom, Declan McCullagh/CBS (with some very kind words), Mickey Kaus (scroll to P.S. “I’d link to…”)). And (10/21): Jason Kottke’s Kottke.org, K2/DaddyTypes.
[Followup posts here and here.]
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Sarasota: “A former deputy, fired because of his problems with alcohol, is suing the Sarasota sheriff because he claims the office discriminated against him because of his alcoholism disability.” The former deputy says he doesn’t remember the sexual harassment incident at an Applebee’s that preceded his termination, but that could have been because of his “propensity to blackout.” [WTSP] [& welcome readers from Reason "Hit and Run", where Damon Root generously credits a certain "great" site]
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As readers may have noticed, I’m a big booster of Lenore Skenazy’s wonderful Free-Range Kids website (subtitle: “Giving our kids the freedom we had without going nuts with worry”), and yesterday she returned the favor with some more than kind words about this site (“great, nay mindblowing”) and a discussion of our recent post about a Staten Island mother’s suit against Little League and volunteer coaches. Interesting reader discussions ensue. (Also, more on her book here.)
While on the topic of that Little League suit, Rick Reilly of ESPN Magazine has a new column that a lot of people are talking about: “A tale of two Little Leaguers”
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Connecticut Post: “Attorneys representing the Stamford Marriott Hotel & Spa and other firms being sued by a woman raped in their parking garage in 2006 withdrew special defenses Monday that claimed the woman was negligent and careless and that she and her children failed to ‘mitigate their damages.’” [via Christopher Fountain and followup] More: John Bratt, Baltimore Injury Law (with kind words for this site).
James Glassman at The American takes a look at the attempt to slip through a massive expansion of industrywide tort liability as part of the House health-care-reform bill a couple of weeks ago, a story that seems to have been broken for the first time in this space.
Following two posts by Jonathan Adler, readers there are discussing CPSIA’s effects on vintage kids’ books and on rhinestones and crystals. More: Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit (with link to Adler), Megan McArdle (linking to my City Journal piece). And Joseph Bottum at First Things has generous words for our coverage of the story.
Forbes is just up with a new, improved version of my piece on the amazing trial lawyer bonanza that someone quietly tucked into last week’s draft of the health care bill. An earlier version of the piece ran at Overlawyered on Friday. The Forbes version takes note of the names of the House members who were pushing for and against the idea on the Ways & Means panel. Michelle Malkin gives it a recommendation here.
P.S. Some kind words, as well as a link, from Ashby Jones at the WSJ Law Blog (calling us “the granddaddy of legal blogs”). Plus: Don Surber, Charleston (W.V.) Daily Mail, Bainbridge, Wood/ShopFloor, Riehl World View, Bader/CEI “Open Market”.
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Ten years ago — July 1, 1999 — I put up the first post in this space. You can read the first fifteen days’ worth of posts here.
Thanks for the congratulations and kind words that have been coming in:
- Patrick, Popehat: “Here’s to ten more years for Overlawyered. And may your name never be featured there.”
- Scott Greenfield, Simple Justice: “That’s 10 years of holding lawyers’ feet to the fire. Thank you!” [Twitter]
- Social-media champion Kevin O’Keefe, of the LexBlog empire: “Don’t always agree, but inspired me to blog.” [Twitter]
- Eric Turkewitz of New York Personal Injury Law Blog has an exceedingly generous post that notes my interest in linking to views from across the conventional divide. I hope I succeed in living up to his high praise.
- Carter Wood, NAM “ShopFloor”: “the Web’s single most effective puncher-of-holes in the excesses of the litigation industry”.
- Ron Miller, Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog: “You always feel like you are getting his thoughtful views as opposed to a knee jerk ‘party platform’ opinion.”
- David Bernstein, Volokh Conspiracy: “I think it was the first legal blog, and I know it’s still one of the best.”
- Cathy Gellis (Statements of Interest): “Blog so old he used to post with typewriter and carbon paper
” - Robert Ambrogi, Law.com “Legal Blog Watch”: “That is a full decade of chronicling the abuses and excesses of the litigation system, of commentary that is consistently cutting and wry. I may not always agree with Walter Olson, but I sure as heck always read him.”
- Mickey Kaus, Slate “Kausfiles”: “The high process costs of litigation are what lawyers — for obvious reasons — habitually leave out of their let’s-have-notice-and-a-hearing-for-everything reasoning. One thing Olson does is to put them back in.”
- And more: Doctor Wes of the eponymous blog [Twitter], Steven Cohen’s LibraryStuff, Spada (U.K.) Swordplay, Wise Law Blog (Toronto), Milwaukee Federalists, Ron Coleman/Likelihood of Confusion, and Christopher Robinette at TortsProf.
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