Overlawyered » auto dealership protection laws http://overlawyered.com Chronicling the high cost of our legal system Tue, 14 Feb 2012 18:22:52 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 GM to reinstate 600+ unwanted dealerships http://overlawyered.com/2010/03/gm-to-reinstate-600-unwanted-dealerships/ http://overlawyered.com/2010/03/gm-to-reinstate-600-unwanted-dealerships/#comments Mon, 08 Mar 2010 05:08:49 +0000 Walter Olson http://overlawyered.com/?p=16387 Marc Hodak sees post-office-ization at work.

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]]> http://overlawyered.com/2010/03/gm-to-reinstate-600-unwanted-dealerships/feed/ 3 Because taxpayers and creditors haven’t given enough http://overlawyered.com/2009/12/because-taxpayers-and-creditors-havent-given-enough/ http://overlawyered.com/2009/12/because-taxpayers-and-creditors-havent-given-enough/#comments Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:31:57 +0000 Walter Olson http://overlawyered.com/?p=15127 “The House approved legislation on Thursday that would grant Chrysler and General Motors dealerships the right to challenge the companies’ decisions to close them in third-party arbitration.” The measure apparently has the support not only of Democratic leaders but of House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio). [NYT]

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]]> http://overlawyered.com/2009/12/because-taxpayers-and-creditors-havent-given-enough/feed/ 0 Auto dealerships and Congress http://overlawyered.com/2009/07/auto-dealerships-and-congress/ http://overlawyered.com/2009/07/auto-dealerships-and-congress/#comments Thu, 30 Jul 2009 04:09:05 +0000 Walter Olson http://overlawyered.com/?p=12605 The New York Times’s editorialists are making sense.

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]]> http://overlawyered.com/2009/07/auto-dealerships-and-congress/feed/ 1 “Majority of House supports bill to reverse dealer closings” http://overlawyered.com/2009/07/majority-of-house-supports-bill-to-reverse-dealer-closings/ http://overlawyered.com/2009/07/majority-of-house-supports-bill-to-reverse-dealer-closings/#comments Fri, 10 Jul 2009 13:11:53 +0000 Walter Olson http://overlawyered.com/?p=12234 The supposed “bankruptcy” process that winds up sparing politically influential constituencies keeps rolling along: let’s hope the Senate can say “no”. [Detroit News via Salmon, Drum, Manzi ("seems only fair, as the dealers paid good money for these politicians")]

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]]> http://overlawyered.com/2009/07/majority-of-house-supports-bill-to-reverse-dealer-closings/feed/ 7 May 16 roundup http://overlawyered.com/2009/05/may-16-roundup-2/ http://overlawyered.com/2009/05/may-16-roundup-2/#comments Sat, 16 May 2009 04:21:19 +0000 Walter Olson http://overlawyered.com/?p=11195
  • At Reason “Hit and Run”, Damon Root deems a certain website “indispensable” [accolades file]
  • Montgomery Blair Sibley, colorful lawyer for the “D.C. Madam” and a figure much covered on this site, has new book out [Doyle/McClatchy]
  • Although Indian tribal litigators attacked it as “disparaging”, the Washington Redskins football team can keep its trademark, for now at least. “My ancestors were both Vikings and Cowboys. Do I have a course of action?” [Volokh comments]
  • “Is Patent Infringement Litigation Up or Down?” [Frankel, The American Lawyer]
  • Maryland high court dismisses autism-mercury lawsuit [Seidel, Krauss @ Point of Law]
  • Chrysler dealers are lawyering up against the prospect of being cast off [WSJ Law Blog]
  • “Should doctors who follow evidence-based guidelines be offered liability protection?” [KevinMD]
  • Obama proposes $1.25 billion to settle black farmers’ long-running bias claims against the U.S. Department of Agriculture [AP/Yahoo]
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    ]]>     http://overlawyered.com/2009/05/may-16-roundup-2/feed/ 1     April 30 roundup http://overlawyered.com/2009/04/april-30-roundup/ http://overlawyered.com/2009/04/april-30-roundup/#comments Thu, 30 Apr 2009 13:19:40 +0000 Walter Olson http://overlawyered.com/?p=10865
  • “Sioux split on suit seeking money for Black Hills” [Associated Press]
  • More on nomination of Mothers Against Drunk Driving CEO to head highway safety agency [Balko, see also comments on earlier post]
  • Push by advocates in Congress to extend shakedown-enabling Community Reinvestment Act to all financial institutions [Victoria McGrane, Politico] And some numbers from Bank of America raise doubts about those oft-heard “CRA default rates lower than regular default rates” assertions [Weisenthal, Business Insider]
  • Illinois attorney general Madigan to Craigslist: purge vice ads or I’ll see you in court [L.A. Times]
  • Here and there, acknowledgments in the press of the damaging effects of laws entrenching auto dealers against termination [L.A. Times via Craig Newmark]
  • How many people get arrested for “contempt of cop”? [Coyote Blog] Blogosphere has helped spread awareness of police-abuse issues [Greenfield]
  • Virginia Postrel: I told you so on that light bulb ban story [earlier]
  • U.K. law reform panel: “charlatan” and “biased” expert witnesses put defendants at risk of wrongful conviction [Times Online]
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    ]]>     http://overlawyered.com/2009/04/april-30-roundup/feed/ 2     February 27 roundup http://overlawyered.com/2009/02/february-27-roundup-2/ http://overlawyered.com/2009/02/february-27-roundup-2/#comments Fri, 27 Feb 2009 14:04:58 +0000 Walter Olson http://overlawyered.com/?p=9429
  • Long Island man fails badly in bid to make his estranged wife compensate him for kidney he gave her [NYLJ, earlier]
  • McDonald’s denies negligence in case of nude photos on customer’s left-behind cellphone [Heller/OnPoint News, earlier]
  • Role of union corruption in NYC crane collapses. Best tidbit: strippers offered apprenticeships [New York Times]
  • Because the Big Three need another millstone around their necks: states moving to entrench auto dealers’ nontermination/buyout rights yet further [Detroit Free Press via Mataconis, background]
  • Microsoft claims former employee “applied for a job at the company under false pretenses and then used his role at Microsoft to gain access to confidential data related to patent litigation he is now waging” [Seattle P-I, Andrew Nusca/ZDNet]
  • Settlement ends lawsuit by Cooper Tire & Rubber Co. against Mississippi’s Farese law firm and Ocala, Fla. attorney Bruce Kaster arising from leak of disparaging employee affidavit to press [Patsy Brumfield, NEMDJ, ABA Journal]
  • Mule drivers at historic tourism park must register for antiterror biometrics as transportation workers [Ken @ Popehat]
  • Lawyers advise defendant on trial for murder to go off his antipsychotic medication so he’ll come off as madder to the jury [nine years ago on Overlawyered]
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    ]]>     http://overlawyered.com/2009/02/february-27-roundup-2/feed/ 3     July 15 roundup http://overlawyered.com/2008/07/july-15-roundup/ http://overlawyered.com/2008/07/july-15-roundup/#comments Tue, 15 Jul 2008 04:02:25 +0000 Walter Olson http://overlawyered.com/?p=7274
    • New York attorney suspended from practice after attempting as guardian to extract $853,000 payday from estate of Alzheimer’s victim [ABA Journal, Emani Taylor]

    • Bought a BB gun to fend off squirrels, now his 20-year-old son faces three years for bare possession [MyCentralJersey.com via Zincavage]

    • U.K.: “Sports clubs face being put out of business following a landmark court ruling forcing them to be liable for deliberate injuries caused by their player to an opponent.” [Telegraph]

    • Prosecutors in Norwich, Ct. still haven’t dropped their case against teacher Julie Amero in malware-popup smut case. Why not? [TalkLeft, earlier]

    • Dealership protection laws, deplored earlier in this space, work to make a GM bankruptcy both likelier and messier [The Deal]

    • Strange new respect for talk show host Joe Scarborough in quarters where conservatives are ordinarily disliked? Some of us saw that coming [NYMag]

    • Following Rhode Island rout of lawsuit against lead-paint makers, Columbus, Ohio drops its similar case [PoL, Akron Beacon Journal editorial]

    • In latest furor over free speech and religious sensitivity in Europe, Dutch authorities have arrested cartoonist “suspected of sketching offensive drawings of Muslims and other minorities” [WSJ; "Gregorius Nekschot"]

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    ]]>     http://overlawyered.com/2008/07/july-15-roundup/feed/ 3     Another burden for legacy automakers http://overlawyered.com/2008/05/another-burden-for-legacy-automakers/ http://overlawyered.com/2008/05/another-burden-for-legacy-automakers/#comments Sun, 11 May 2008 10:38:23 +0000 Walter Olson http://overlawyered.com/wpblog/?p=6210 State laws providing a kind of tenure protection for no-longer-needed car dealers are among the reasons it can be extremely expensive to close down a failing marque. General Motors, which closed Oldsmobile eight years ago, “spent more than five years battling dealer lawsuits” despite having set aside almost $1 billion to handle the transition, and Ford may face similar challenges if it tries to shutter its ailing Mercury line. (Martin Zimmerman, “Mercury may be coming to the end of the road”, Los Angeles Times, May 10). Earlier: Oct. 5, 2006. For more see this 2001 speech by FTC commissioner Thomas Leary, and this article by Missouri lawyer Gene Brockland on the federal Auto Dealers’ Day in Court Act, which is exceeded in stringency by some of its counterpart laws at the state level.

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    ]]>     http://overlawyered.com/2008/05/another-burden-for-legacy-automakers/feed/ 0     Tenure for auto dealers http://overlawyered.com/2006/10/tenure-for-auto-dealers/ http://overlawyered.com/2006/10/tenure-for-auto-dealers/#comments Thu, 05 Oct 2006 00:21:39 +0000 Walter Olson http://overlawyered.com/wpblog/?p=4021 Worsening Detroit’s agonies: special laws at both state and federal levels expose automakers to lawsuits from dealerships that they try to cut loose as superfluous. Does GM want to reduce the number of Chevy dealerships in, say, Buffalo, to reflect its declining market share there or falling population? Then it’ll have to come up with millions to induce dealers to accept buyouts. The laws don’t inflict a comparable burden on automakers whose fortunes are on the upswing, such as Toyota and Honda. (Joann Muller, “Dealer Surplus”, Forbes, Oct. 16).

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