Overlawyered » attorneys general

Disagree with your AG? Sue him.

Walter Olson — Fri, 04 May 2012 04:18:10 +0000

Rob McKenna, attorney general of the state of Washington, is among many state AGs who has joined in courtroom challenges to ObamaCare. Now a local “public interest” law firm, Smith & Lowney, has sued McKenna on behalf of a group of residents who disagree with that decision, saying he is breaching his duty to represent the state’s citizenry by taking a view contrary to theirs. [KOMO]

Tags: attorneys general, politics, Washington state

Disagree with your AG? Sue him. is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

March 13 roundup

Walter Olson — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 05:06:52 +0000

“Are Courts Dragging Out the Housing Crisis?” [Mark Calabria, Cato] “Boom-Era Property Speculators to Get Foreclosure Aid” [Bloomberg News via Bader, CEI] Community organizing groups expect to cash in on state AGs’ robosigning settlement [Neil Munro, Daily Caller, earlier] As does NAAG itself [Daniel Fisher] More: Kevin Funnell.
“Non-standard explanation offered for bugging wife’s bedroom” [Lowering the Bar]
Chris DeMuth on James Q. Wilson [Weekly Standard, earlier] I wrote about Wilson’s work on at least two occasions: the Baltimore Sun had me review a book of his on “abuse excuses” and other difficulties of psychiatric testimony in court, a good book if a mere foothill in the mountain range of his overall scholarship; on another occasion in Reason I challenged his uncharacteristic backing of a “family policy” proposal ripe with potential for unintended consequences;
Boston city councilor: make valet kid at restaurant responsible if patron drives off drunk [NPR via Alkon]
“Texas is being stiff armed by the EPA at every turn” [Munro/DC quoting Texas attorney general Greg Abbott] NYT’s “modest” offshore drilling restrictions: “I hate to think what immodest restrictions would look like” [John Steele Gordon]
“The Southern Poverty Law Center Is Now Writing About Pickup Artists as Hate Groups” [Mike Riggs]
SFO rental car garage offers a whiff of Prop 65 absurdity [Stoll]

Tags: attorneys general, Boston, dramshop statutes, Environmental Protection Agency, hate speech, mortgages, Prop 65, Texas

March 13 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

February 9 roundup

Walter Olson — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 05:07:43 +0000

Ninth Circuit panel strikes down California’s Prop 8 [Volokh, Kerr, Magliocca, Lithwick, Steve Chapman]
Judge dismisses PETA “killer whales enslaved” case [Caroline May/Daily Caller, CNN, earlier]
“Patent Troll Claims Ownership of Interactive Web – And Might Win” [Joe Mullin/Wired, earlier; more on testimony by Web father Tim Berners-Lee] Update: Ding Dong! Jury rejects claim;
“Further Analysis of the Bottle-Rocket Case” [Lowering the Bar, earlier]
As patients suffer: “The War Over Prescription Painkillers,” start of a Radley Balko series [HuffPo parts one, two so far]
Richard Epstein on federal fiat and Yale disciplinary procedure [Defining Ideas] Under new-style rules at Yale, will a professor even be aware he’s been accused and henceforth is to be “monitored”? [KC Johnson]
Jim Copland testimony on abuses in government contingent-fee litigation [Manhattan Institute, PDF] “Parens patriae” proposal to replace class actions with state attorney general suits, but with private entrepreneurial bar still in saddle [Adam Zimmerman/Prawfs on Myriam Gilles/Gary Friedman, SSRN]

Tags: animal rights, attorneys general, class actions, colleges and universities, Ninth Circuit, patent trolls, pharmaceuticals, same-sex marriage, Yale

February 9 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

November 11 roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 11:56:20 +0000

Manhattan Institute’s “Trial Lawyers Inc.” series looks at cozy relations between state attorneys general and plaintiff’s bar [report, related featured discussion, Copland, Examiner] Report comes down hard on Ohio’s Richard Cordray, nominee to head CFPB [Copland, Gorodetski/PoL] Judge tosses Cordray suit against credit rating agencies [O'Brien/LNL, Krauss/American Thinker] Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller denounces report [IowaPolitics.com]
“The Tort of Internet Mobbing Is Perfect For Suing The Internet” [Popehat]
Canada faces challenge to hate speech law [Arthur Bright, Citizen Media Law] Do not put a frog down Her Majesty’s back at the county fair [Lowering the Bar]
“Markopolos eyes a fortune from BNY whistleblowing” [Felix Salmon] “Bounty hunters in Korea” and closer to home [Alex Tabarrok] “Developments in Whistleblower Laws: Advantage Whistleblower” [Larry Wood & Richard William Diaz, Federalist Society "Engage"]
As third party liability for crime anecdotes go, the case of Bonilla v. Motel 6 is on the lurid side [Point of Law]
Prospect of cyberwar: official U.S. response is commando lawyering [Stewart Baker, Foreign Policy]
Why it’s hard to stimulate manufacturing through product liability reform in one state [Rick Esenberg]

Tags: attorneys general, free speech in Canada, Iowa, Manhattan Institute, Ohio, product liability, third party liability for crime, whistleblowers

November 11 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

October 3 roundup

Walter Olson — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 05:13:55 +0000

Arizona officials say “accents were never the focus” of teacher fluency monitoring suspended at feds’ insistence [NYTNS, earlier] Reactions to my piece last week include columnist “Johnson” at The Economist (taking issue) and Hans Bader and Carrie Lukas (favorable);
Another highlight of new “jobs” bill: financial institution customers would help pay for auto bailouts [John Berlau]
Key New Orleans Police Department officer in charge of integrity of traffic-cam program accused of altering own plates [WWL] Red light cameras defended [Noah Kristula-Green, FrumForum] Why Massachusetts won’t raise the speed limit on Route 3 north of Burlington (NMA blog via @radleybalko)
Eight bad reasons for going to law school [Campos] Law schools have demographic but not socioeconomic diversity [Richard Sander, Denver U. Law Review via Legal Ethics Forum] And besides my own contribution on law school reform at the recent Truth on the Market symposium, check out the contributions by Hans Bader and Larry Ribstein;
Fellow federal agency FERC worried that EPA’s power-plant crackdown could lead to outages [WSJ] EPA’s plan to regulate dust from farmers’ fields led to public opinion blowback for President Obama [Diane Katz/Heritage, Environmental Legal Blogs, Radley Balko] Shutting down EPA isn’t likely under GOP reign, but reforming EPA might be [Adler, NYT "Room for Debate"]
Left rallies around New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman [Ben Smith, Politico]

Tags: agriculture and farming, attorneys general, Environmental Protection Agency, language bias, New Orleans, New York, red light cameras

October 3 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“Free” help from securities class action lawyers

Walter Olson — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 05:07:24 +0000

Following murmurs about pay-to-play, South Carolina has turned down offers from local powerhouse Motley Rice and from Labaton Sucharow, whose attorneys had donated $12,000 to Attorney General Alan Wilson. [The State]

Tags: attorneys general, class actions, Labaton Sucharow, Motley Rice, securities litigation, South Carolina

“Free” help from securities class action lawyers is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“Devil’s Bargain: Wall Street and the Martin Act”

Walter Olson — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 11:15:11 +0000

My new op-ed at the New York Post looks at the history of Spitzer-to-Cuomo-to-Eric Schneiderman prosecutorial overreach and asks: how exactly did the New York Attorney General come to have so much power with so little constraint? (& welcome Instapundit, Real Clear Markets, Timothy Carney/Examiner, CEI readers)

More: I and others have written about the act here and at Point of Law.

Tags: Andrew Cuomo, attorneys general, Bernard Madoff, Eliot Spitzer, New York, prosecution, securities litigation

“Devil’s Bargain: Wall Street and the Martin Act” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Attorney general slush funds, cont’d

Walter Olson — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 12:07:59 +0000

It’s surprising there isn’t more controversy over state AGs’ frequent practice of using moneys from lawsuit settlements for their own favored causes (as opposed to, say, handing it over to the state treasury). Now Arkansas AG Dustin McDaniel is drawing criticism for his funneling of cy pres funds to politically advantageous causes that don’t happen to have been voted appropriations by the state legislature [John Brummett, Arkansas News; Dan Greenberg, The Arkansas Project, and followup]

P.S. Related on cy pres in private class actions: Dan Popeo, WLF (Google Buzz settlement); Michael Tremoglie, LNL; Ted Frank.

Tags: Arkansas, attorneys general, cy pres

Attorney general slush funds, cont’d is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

December 13 roundup

Walter Olson — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 05:18:38 +0000

Minneapolis police arrest author-blogger-gun rights activist Joel Rosenberg [Popehat, Mark Bennett, Scott Greenfield]
In Wal-Mart v. Dukes, Justice Ginsburg’s instincts as a proceduralist might come in tension with her instincts as a feminist [Alexandra Lahav, Mass Tort Lit]
“Cease this shouting!” cried Grinch, “From all Yule din desist!” But he’d Moved To The Nuisance and so, case dismissed [Art Carden, Forbes]
“San Francisco Sues to Close Down Immigration Law Firm, Claims ‘Exorbitant’ Fees” [ABA Journal]
New ATRA report blasts overly cozy state attorneys general cooperation with plaintiff’s bar ["Beyond Reproach? Fostering Integrity and Public Trust in the Offices of State Attorneys General," PDF]
Nathan Myrhvold’s patent aggregator Intellectual Ventures, which said it was disinclined to sue, begins suing [The Recorder, Salmon]
Privacy = when I choose to conceal my life data, secrecy = when you conceal yours [Kelly Young via Dave Boaz, Cato at Liberty]
One doc’s memoir: litigation crisis as morality crisis [seven years ago on Overlawyered]

Tags: attorneys general, Christmas and other holidays, guns, immigration law, Minnesota, patent trolls, privacy, Wal-Mart v. Dukes

December 13 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Seems to be contagious

Walter Olson — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 05:05:22 +0000

Now it’s California Attorney General Jerry Brown who’s gone and sued his own client. [Steele, Legal Ethics Forum; earlier here, here, etc.]

Tags: attorneys general, Jerry Brown

Seems to be contagious is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system