Chronicling the high cost of our legal system
Posts tagged as:
“The parents of a Peninsula high school sophomore are suing the school district for kicking the teenager out of an honors class because he cheated.” Jack Berghouse and his wife do not dispute that their son committed plagiarism, but their lawsuit claims “the school’s policies regarding punishment for cheating are vague and contradictory and shouldn’t be enforced.” [KCBS, KGO, San Jose Mercury News]
{ 8 comments }
“A whistle-blower tells how a private detective arranged for men to be arrested for drunk driving at the behest of their ex-wives and their lawyers — and that entrapment using decoys was only one of many alleged misdeeds.” [L.A. Times; Contra Costa County (Bay Area), Calif.]
The Bay Area town of Larkspur plans to forbid most apartment and condominium tenants from smoking in their own units. [Marin Independent Journal; related]
{ 2 comments }
I’m scheduled to be a guest on two of the nation’s leading radio programs, both California-based: Dennis Prager’s today (Tuesday) (broadcast times vary; find a station), and Ronn Owens at San Francisco’s KGO AM 810 tomorrow (Wednesday) at 11 a.m. Pacific. Tune in and listen!
P.S. Both shows were a pleasure; host Prager generously singled out the book as “so devastating” and “mandatory reading,” and said it was “difficult to overstate the importance of this book.”
{ 1 comment }
The complainants never established what the restaurant did wrong, or how it breached a legal duty, in the unfortunate episode of squirting garlic butter. [Marin Independent Journal, earlier]
{ 3 comments }
The little-known dangers of snails as a menu item: it seems the interior can be under pressure and squirt hot garlic butter. [Marin County, Calif. Independent Journal]
More: Legal Blog Watch (citing “no less robust a source than Overlawyered”); Cal Biz Lit (with proposed “Danger: Snails May Explode” warning)
{ 6 comments }
“A drug suspect who was shot and critically wounded after he crashed his car into another vehicle and struck a police officer at the end of a chase in East Oakland is suing the city for $1.5 million.” [Henry K. Lee, San Francisco Chronicle]
{ 3 comments }
“For several years, [defendant Susana] Chung ‘acted as the conduit’ of fraudulent insurance claims filed in connection with staged crashes in Northern California, said Larry Blazer, an Alameda County assistant district attorney.” Nearly 100 persons, mostly “victims” of bogus accidents but also including three chiropractors, have been found guilty in the scheme. [San Francisco Chronicle, Oakland Tribune via ABA Journal]
{ 3 comments }
A Bay Area crackdown nets 47 holiday violators of the fireplace ban [Contra Costa Times via David Freddoso, Examiner] Earlier here, here, etc.
{ 11 comments }
The issue generated a five-page legal memo from the City Attorney before being resolved in March. [Matier & Ross, SF Chronicle via Lowering the Bar, California Beat CBS5 with link to City Attorney opinion]
{ 1 comment }
ApartmentRatings.com is a site that invites users to post their opinions about good and bad experiences as renters with particular buildings, complexes and landlords. The owners of two Bay area apartment complexes, Parkmerced in San Francisco and Larkspur Shores in Larkspur, have now sued eighteen unnamed defendants over negative comments such as “Construction noise, poor management, tacky decor, and an indifferent staff”, “I do not think the new management is sincerely trying to improve anything”, “stay far away and never look back,”, “worst place I’ve ever lived”, and “a real dump”. The real estate firms, Parkmerced Investors Properties LLC and Stellar Larkspur Partners LLC, claim libel, tortious interference with contract, and perhaps most creatively violations of the federal Lanham Act (their basis for getting into federal court). The Lanham Act is more usually encountered in complaints of false advertising, but the plaintiffs say it applies here “because Defendants misrepresent the nature, characteristics and qualities of the Apartments”. (Sam Bayard, Citizen Media Law, Nov. 24). According to CalBizLit (Nov. 20):
The two plaintiffs allege that “on information and belief” the posting reviewers included persons who were not tenants, but were employees, agents, etc. of competing apartment house communities. “On information and belief.” That’s often lawyer language for “I got no idea whether it’s true or not, but let’s do some discovery and see what happens.”
Antitrust law trips up pillar-of-counterculture-journalism Village Voice Media, cont’d: “San Francisco Superior Court Judge Marla Miller raised the amount the Weekly [SF Weekly] must pay in damages to the Bay Guardian — from $6.3 million to $15.9 million — for undercutting its rival with below-cost ads.” (Meredith May, “Judge raises damages in case against SF Weekly”, San Francisco Chronicle, May 21; earlier; sample SF Weekly business-bashing piece, channeling plaintiff’s lawyers’ contentions in Parmalat case). “Predatory pricing — selling ads below cost with the goal of putting your competition out of business — is typically something alt weeklies cover, not something they get caught and fined for.” (Josh Feit, TheStranger.com (which competes with VVM’s Seattle Weekly), Mar. 5).
{ 1 comment }
John Leo has some further thoughts on the lawsuit discussed in this space Jan. 20, in which m-to-f San Franciscan Charlene Hastings is suing the Catholic hospital that (unlike many other hospitals in the Bay Area) declines to perform a breast augmentation on a patient born male (“Orwell Lives”, City Journal, Feb. 4).
{ 1 comment }
{ 4 comments }
In order to enhance diversity, it was necessary to suppress it dept.: “She feels as if she’s been treated as if she has no rights,” said the attorney for m-to-f transgender San Francisco resident Charlene Hastings, who’s suing Daughters of Charity/Seton in Daly City alleging harassment and discrimination because it’s not among the many Bay Area hospitals that would be happy to assist in Hastings’s breast augmentation procedure. (Melissa Underwood, “Transgender Woman Sues Catholic Hospital for Refusing Breast Augmentation Surgery”, FoxNews.com, Jan. 18; Barbara Feder Ostrov, “Transgender woman sues Seton hospital”, San Mateo County Times/InsideBayArea.com, Jan. 6). [Title edited after commenter pointed out inaccuracy]
{ 19 comments }
The Dhaliwal brothers prefer to have attorney Mark Geragos do the talking, greatly frustrating investigators trying to reconstruct what happened in the zoo mauling. (Jaxon Van Derbeken, “In ambulance, survivors of S.F. tiger attack made pact of silence”, San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 5; “San Francisco Authorities Seek to Inspect Tiger Attack Victims’ Cell Phones”, AP/FoxNews.com, Jan. 5; Patricia Yollin, Tanya Schevitz, Kevin Fagan, “S.F. Zoo visitor saw 2 victims of tiger attack teasing lions”, San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 3; Jacob Sullum, “The Buck Keeps Moving”, syndicated/Reason, Jan. 2). Earlier: Jan. 3.
{ 17 comments }
“Half Moon Bay is wrestling with unpleasant options for responding to a court ruling that officials say threatens the ‘very existence of our city government’ – a $36.8 million judgment against the city for turning a proposed housing development site into wetlands.” The town’s annual budget is $10 million. The property in question had become unbuildable when protected wetlands appeared on it, as a result, the owner contended, of negligent town policies affecting water flow and retention. The plaintiff had bought the property in 1993 for $1 million. “Under the worst-case scenario, officials say, Half Moon Bay would become the first Bay Area city forced to dissolve, and the coastal town’s land would become an unincorporated part of San Mateo County.” (John Coté, San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 18).
{ 4 comments }
Individual liberty, free markets, and peace: the world's premier libertarian think tank. Publishes Cato at Liberty, where I blog on contemporary policy issues.
Get your copy today! My new book tackles the question of why so many bad ideas come from the law schools. "Cutting-edge commentary, hard-hitting, witty, astute." -- Publisher's Weekly. "Excellent... A fine dissection of these strangely powerful institutions" -- Wall Street Journal.