- Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s firm suing Apple, Google and many others over common web features [Atlantic Wire, Groklaw ("Allen v. World and Dog"]
- Probably not a good idea to give local authorities cash incentive to snatch kids from homes [Bader, CEI]
- Hyperlink liability case: “If I lose there won’t BE an Internet in Canada” [Ars Technica]
- Shooting spree at Denny’s results in suit charging eatery with negligent security [PNWLocalNews.com]
- More links: “Do securities lawsuits help shareholders?” [Point of Law, Bainbridge]
- Fourth Circuit revives CSX fraud suit against asbestos lawyers [Dan Fisher, Forbes] “Asbestos defendants want automatic access to info in bankruptcy trusts” [Chamber-backed LNL]
- Creation of noncompliant consumer financial product is a criminal offense under Dodd-Frank [Josh Wright, TotM]
- Man sues over seeing contestants eat rats on NBC reality show “Fear Factor” [six years ago on Overlawyered]
Tagged as:
asbestos,
Canada,
Child Protective Services,
libel slander and defamation,
online speech,
patent trolls,
restaurants,
securities litigation,
third party liability for crime,
Washington state
- Judge Kozinski blasts prosecution of McAfee exec Probhat Goyal [Ribstein, Greenfield; related on federal overcriminalization, Rittgers/Cato]
- “If only laws were like sausages” [Robert Pear, NY Times]
- “Public Radio Looks at California ADA Lawsuits” [Frith, CJAC on "This American Life," Thomas Mundy and Morse Mehrban]
- Guitar maker described as “litigation-addled”: “Gibson continues its IP-based business plan” [Coleman]
- Judge who heard Madison County, Ill. asbestos docket retires, is picked by lawyers as trustee of asbestos bankruptcy trust [Chamber-backed MC Record]
- Ted Frank’s Center for Class Action Fairness objects to Classmates.com class action settlement [CCAF, more, yet more]
- New Labor Department regs could chill management speech to workforce [Russ Brown, Open Market]
- Too bad there weren’t legal blogs around in 2000, some light might have been shed on Bush v Gore [Legal Blog Watch, Ann Althouse] Hey wait a minute [ten years ago on Overlawyered]
Tagged as:
ADA filing mills,
Alex Kozinski,
asbestos,
class action settlements,
labor unions,
Madison County,
music and musicians,
prosecution
- “Appeals court dismisses Oneida Indians’ 40-year-old land claim” [Syracuse Post-Standard; Howard Bashman links to more coverage including opinion; much more on the case in my forthcoming book]
- When blogging, careful about using the sort of hypotheticals common in law school discussion [Kerr]
- Beacon, N.Y.: Retro Arcade Museum falls victim to retro town ordinance banning pinball [NYT]
- Prosecutor suspended from law practice over misconduct, which almost never happens [Greenfield]
- George Mason U. Law & Econ Center unveils new website;
- On Polinsky and Shavell’s “The Uneasy Case for Product Liability” [Beck, Drug & Device Law]
- What did other defendants pay? “Company wants look at asbestos bankruptcy trust payments” [LNL, Maryland]
- Measuring tape? The many items you’re not allowed to bring into Detroit’s City Hall [Amy Alkon]
Tagged as:
asbestos,
Detroit,
Indian tribes,
New York,
product liability,
prosecution
- “Father demands $7.5 million because school officials read daughter’s text message” [KDAF via CALA Houston]
- How many different defendants can injured spectator sue in Shea Stadium broken-bat case? [Melprophet]
- Prominent trial lawyer Russell Budd of Baron & Budd hosts Obama at Texas fundraiser [PoL]
- DNA be damned: when actual nonpaternity doesn’t suffice to get out from under a child support order [Alkon, more]
- “Sean Coffey, a plaintiffs’ lawyer-turned-candidate for New York Attorney General, made more than $150,000 in state-level campaign contributions nationwide over 10 years.” [WSJ Law Blog] “Days before announcing a shareholder lawsuit against Bank of America, state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli accepted $14,000 in campaign donations from a law firm hired to help litigate the case.” [WSJ]
- Big new RAND Corp. study on asbestos bankruptcy trusts may spur reform [Lloyd Dixon, Geoffrey McGovern & Amy Coombe, PDF, via Hartley, more, Daniel Fisher/Forbes, background here and here] Update: Stier.
- Public contingency suits? Of course the elected officials are in control (wink, wink) [The Recorder via Cal Civil Justice]
- Copyright enforcement mill appears to have copied its competitor’s website [TechDirt via Eric Goldman]
Tagged as:
asbestos,
bankruptcy,
Barack Obama,
baseball,
baseball bats,
child support,
contingent fee,
copyright,
Fred Baron,
New York,
politics,
privacy,
schools,
shotgun defendant selection
- Emerging newspaper business model: copyright lawsuits against bloggers? [Kravets, Wired, Ron Coleman, TechDirt, PoL]
- Five NYC hospitals to use “health courts” to seek agreements before medical malpractice cases go to trial [WSJ]
- Serpentine asbestos politics behind “California state rock” fracas [Cal Civil Justice, more, PoL, Bailey, earlier here and here]
- From Andrew Grossman: “Feinberg: ‘priests, mayors or even sheriffs could vouch for [BP trust fund] claims of local businesses.’ Has he ever been to Miss, La.?!”
- Va. lawyer, real estate agent sanctioned for “frivolous claims supported by wild speculation” [ABA Journal]
- An injury lawyer reads and reacts to my first book, The Litigation Explosion [Alan Crede]
- Le Corbusier’s writing made him sound like certain pro se litigants [Johnson, PrawfsBlawg]
- “Tip: Photoshopping Self Into Charity Photos Not Likely to Reduce Sentence” [Lowering the Bar, more]
Tagged as:
asbestos,
bloggers and the law,
BP Transocean oil spill,
copyright,
crime and punishment,
health courts,
newspapers,
RightHaven,
sanctions,
The Litigation Explosion
- San Francisco considers, then tables, ban on pet sales at stores [Amy Alkon]
- Florida: we’ll pull you into our courts as an online-defamation defendant even if you’ve never set foot here [CBS4.com]
- Bratz case: “Alex Kozinski gives Barbie a spanking” [AtL]
- GEICO launches counterattack against crash fraud in New York [PoL]
- When a lawyer sues the wrong doctor: hey, isn’t everyone entitled to mistakes now and then? [American Medical News, sanctions affirmed in Virginia case]
- “[Congressman Alan] Grayson’s shakedown lawsuit threatens D.C. business” [LaFetra, PLF/Examiner]
- Asbestos: Do component makers have a duty to warn about other manufacturers’ hazardous products? [Cal Biz Lit and two followups on California decisions, NAM and Levy Phillips & Konigsberg on a since-settled New York case against Foster Wheeler]
- Subsidies for durum wheat flowed in happy circle for everyone but taxpayer and consumer [Mark Perry]
Tagged as:
Alex Kozinski,
animal rights,
asbestos,
Florida,
insurance fraud,
libel slander and defamation,
San Francisco,
sanctions
- More outcry over report of big new Treasury tax break for injury lawyers [Chris Moody, Daily Caller, Wood/ShopFloor]
- Geologists’ annoyance over bill to oust asbestos-containing serpentine as California state rock makes NYT front page [yesterday; Dan Walters, Facebook group, Calif. Civil Justice, Bailey via Adler, earlier]
- Great moments in international human rights: “Known al-Qaeda Operative Could Not Be Deported [from UK]” [Foster, NRO]
- “Is the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act a Government Cash Cow?” [Koehler, FCPA Professor]
- Franklin Mint case cont’d: “Manatt Tries to Beat Back Malicious Prosecution Lawsuit” [Baxter/American Lawyer, earlier]
- “Washington’s parasites take aim at Apple” [David Boaz, Philadelphia Inquirer]
- Gubernatorial bid by Rhode Island attorney general Patrick Lynch seems to have fizzled [Jessica Taylor, Politico via Law and More]
- Go explicit or go home: Georgia abolishes implied private rights of action [PoL, my Reason take years ago]
Tagged as:
AAJ,
Apple,
asbestos,
attorneys general,
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act,
international human rights,
Rhode Island,
sanctions,
taxes,
terrorism
- “Sources: Trial lawyers expect tax break from Treasury Department” [Legal NewsLine, PoL, earlier; measure would reportedly replicate contents of bill that didn't pass Congress]
- No doubt totally unrelated: eight Dem Senate candidates journey to Vancouver for AAJ fundraiser [The Hill, David Freddoso, ShopFloor, more]
- Report: elderly man jailed after making “bomb” joke about carry-on at airport [NBCNewYork]
- New York debt collection law firm files 80,000 actions a year, critics say errors and lack of documentation inevitable [NYT]
- Kimberly-Clark: quit letting asbestos plaintiffs forum-shop against us [SE Texas Record] How a new asbestos defendant can get “passed around” among claimants [Global Tort, scroll] Prosperity of one Cleveland asbestos law firm I’d never heard of [Briefcase]
- North Carolina court of appeals: employee rushing to bathroom after getting off work not acting within scope of employment [Matthews v. Food Lion, PDF]
- “Curse of the greedy copyright holders” [Woodlief, WSJ, via de Rugy, NRO; TechDirt]
- Update: “Ninth Circuit suspends Walter Lack, reprimands Thomas Girardi” [famed California lawyers tripped up in Dole suit; Legal Ethics Forum, PoL, earlier]
Tagged as:
AAJ,
asbestos,
banana pesticide litigation fraud,
copyright,
debtor-creditor law,
forum shopping,
Harry Reid,
taxes,
terrorism,
Thomas Girardi
- I’ve got a new post at Cato at Liberty tying together prosecutors’ demands for business forfeiture for immigration violations with proposals to criminalize employee misclassification;
- I can’t believe it’s not a lawsuit: margarine class action melts away [Cal Biz Lit]
- Guess what, your asbestos trial is scheduled in 11 days [Korris, MC Record]
- “This website has to be removed”: mayor of Bordentown, N.J. wants to shut down online critic [Citizen Media Law]
- What is a think tank and what does it do? I and others contribute answers at Allen McDuffee’s Think Tanked blog;
- No surprise here: Insurer offers policy to cover things that go wrong in medical tourism, but won’t cover USA residents or facilities [Treatment Abroad via White Coat]
- Pennsylvania law curbing med-mal forum-shopping disappoints lawyers who used to head for Philly or Wilkes-Barre [Sunbury, Pa. Daily Item via, again, White Coat]
- New Haven pizzeria busted: owners let their kids work at restaurant [Amy Alkon]
Tagged as:
asbestos,
forfeiture,
forum shopping,
medical malpractice,
Pennsylvania,
restaurants,
WO writings,
workplace
The sleaziest asbestos-suit-marketing practice yet? You decide. In what is unfortunately not an April Fool’s joke, Roger Parloff at Fortune exposes a network of client recruitment sites that would fool many casual visitors into thinking they are sponsored by the federal government’s Veteran’s Administration, under headings like “VA Medical Center Palo Alto” and corresponding domain names. A founding partner of well-known New York plaintiff’s firm Seeger Weiss expressed regret about his firm’s listing as a sponsor of the site. The full story is here (& welcome Legal Blog Watch readers).
Tagged as:
asbestos,
chasing clients,
ethics,
Seeger Weiss
- Are you a member of Tyson chicken or H&R Block Express IRA class action settlements?
- Jim Copland on Harry Reid and the trial bar. [NRO]
- Jim Copland on the Ground Zero settlement, which may pay lawyers $200 million—but the judge plans fee scrutiny. [NY Post; NY Daily News]
- Kevin LaCroix interviews the Circle of Greed authors. [D&O Diary]
- Judgeships: Rhode Island lead paint trial lawyer in despite mediocre rating, but Sri Srinivasan out because of his clients—not Al Qaeda, but, heaven forfend, eeeevil corporations like Hertz.
- There’s no evidence that workers on automotive brakes (which sometimes contain asbestos) get mesothelioma at a greater rate than the rest of the population, but auto companies still get sued over it. Ford fought one in Madison County, rather than settle, and won. [Madison County Record]
- Overview of defensive medicine at work. [AP]
- Pantsless Rielle Hunter on John Edwards: “He’s very honest and truthful.” [GQ]
Tagged as:
asbestos,
Bill Lerach,
class action settlements,
defensive medicine,
Ford Motor,
Ground Zero dust lawsuits,
Harry Reid,
judicial nominations,
Madison County,
politics,
Rhode Island,
Rielle Hunter
73-year-old Gillian Chapman has made headlines by saying “she does not want compensation from the NHS [National Health Service] over the death of her husband, a GP who contracted cancer after working in a hospital that was built using asbestos.” Notes Telegraph columnist Jemima Lewis: “The cult of compensation has had no obvious improvement on [NHS] services.”
Tagged as:
asbestos,
hospitals,
United Kingdom
- Yielding to pressure from state AGs, Craigslist will close “erotic services” section and replace with more highly moderated “adult services”; New York’s Cuomo is furious the site took unilateral action “in the middle of the night” rather than negotiating with him [NY Times, Hartford Courant, office of Connecticut AG (and longtime Overlawyered bete noire) Richard Blumenthal, Citizen Media Law, Above the Law] More: Ambrogi.
- Or they could absorb it and move on: “Bounty sues Brawny in paper towel tilt” [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]
- Was granting patents relating to diagnostic analysis of human genes a mistake? Should courts undo it? Via constitutional law? Three different questions there [Ars Technica, Doc Gurley/San Francisco Chronicle]
- Canadian Human Rights Commission wants new ban on discrimination based on “social condition” (with concomitant penalties for hurtful speech premised on such condition) [Ken at Popehat]
- Luxury-goods makers’ suits against eBay over sale of counterfeits may be petering out [Frankel, American Lawyer]
- Today must be exotic-dancer-litigation day at Overlawyered: Trademark Trial and Appeal Board denies trademark protection for “Cuffs and Collar Mark” of Chippendales male exotic dancers [TTA Blog via Lowering the Bar, Ron Coleman, opinion in PDF]
- Allegations fail to stick: “Judge drops class-action suit on Teflon cookware” [AP/Des Moines Register, WSJ, American Lawyer; earlier here and here]
- Asbestos litigation ramps up against Detroit automakers after bankruptcy of many earlier defendants [five years ago on Overlawyered; up-to-the-minute report from Kirk Hartley]
Tagged as:
asbestos,
attorneys general,
autos,
bankruptcy,
Chrysler,
competition through litigation,
constitutional law,
Craigslist,
discrimination law,
eBay,
EEOC,
free speech in Canada,
patent law,
Richard Blumenthal,
strippers and exotic dancers,
trademarks
If you’re not reading my other legal site, Point of Law, here’s some of what you’re missing:
Tagged as:
asbestos,
attorneys general,
California,
forum shopping,
international human rights,
international law,
labor unions,
New Mexico,
Pennsylvania,
politics,
prosecution,
whistleblowers
In 2007, the Texas Supreme Court unanimously decided Borg-Warner v. Flores, holding that a defendant in an asbestos case was not liable unless its product was a “substantial factor” in causing injury.
But there are now bills in the Texas House and Senate, SB 1123 (recently reported out of Senate committee) and HB 1811, that seek to undo this by defining “substantial factor” to merely mean that a product “contributed to the [plaintiff’s] cumulative exposure”—whether or not other defendants’ products were far more responsible for a plaintiff’s injury. The effect of this rollback would be to return Texas to the role of asbestos magnet, since it could conceivably create indiscriminate liability for hundreds of innocent businesses in any given case. The effect will be very similar to the infamous Lipke rule in Madison County, Illinois that extracted billions of dollars from the innocent this decade.
Texans for Lawsuit Reform has a fact-sheet, as does the Texas Civil Justice League.
Tagged as:
asbestos,
politics,
Texas,
tort reform,
wrong right
