Overlawyered » attorneys general

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

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

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

“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

“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

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

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

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

New York Attorney General race

Walter Olson — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 12:47:36 +0000

Suddenly it’s tight: a late surge has brought Staten Island district attorney and Republican Dan Donovan even in the polls with left-wing Manhattan state senator Eric Schneiderman in the race to succeed Andrew Cuomo. [NYLJ, NYDN]

Tags: attorneys general, New York

November 1 roundup

Walter Olson — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 11:58:30 +0000

Election edition:

On Oklahoma ballot: grossly overbroad measure to ban use of foreign law [Atlantic Wire, Transplanted Lawyer, earlier Volokh]
Michigan race: “Dems cross the line with bigoted Supreme Court ad” [Stephen Henderson, Freep; earlier on attacks on Justice Robert Young]
Jacob Sullum is another non-fan of Andrew Cuomo’s record;
What was the exact nature of that Vancouver fundraiser so many Senate hopefuls attended? Carter Wood wishes he could add a footnote to an already strong column by George Will on the Linda McMahon-Richard Blumenthal Senate race in Connecticut;
Speaking of which, Will’s latest election roundup column is just out, while Nate Silver at the NYT’s Five Thirty Eight blog offers an outstanding hour-by-hour election-night guide;
Iowa poll shows former AAJ/ATLA president Roxanne Conlin, of SomePeopleJustNeedToBeSued.com fame, trailing far behind in bid to unseat Sen. Chuck Grassley [WHO-TV via Carter Wood's PoL election roundup;
Trial lawyers pour cash into California insurance commissioner race [CJAC]
Latest effort by New York Times to lionize activist AGs as “next Eliot Spitzers” recalls earlier Times pieces written to same formula, in the most amusing of which it lionized as the next Spitzer Ohio’s since-disgraced Marc Dann. Yet (the shaky electoral performance of such Times favorites as Massachusetts’ Martha Coakley aside) there’s reason to suspect voters this year will return a roster of AGs that’s less inclined toward business-bashing, not more [Jack Fowler at NRO].
Government a threat to liberty? Doesn’t just depend on whether “our” team’s in charge [Gene Healy, Examiner]

Tags: Andrew Cuomo, attorneys general, California, Connecticut, Iowa, judicial elections, Michigan, Oklahoma, politics

Overlawyered » attorneys general

February 9 roundup

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November 11 roundup

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October 3 roundup

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“Free” help from securities class action lawyers

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

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Attorney general slush funds, cont’d

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December 13 roundup

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Seems to be contagious

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New York Attorney General race

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November 1 roundup

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