- “A 4-Page Playdate Waiver? Is This the New Normal?” [Lenore Skenazy, Free-Range Kids; our 2000 post on "Rise of the High-School Sleepover Disclaimer"]
- Spirit Airlines sets what it calls DOTUC fee, for “Dept. of Transportation Unintended Consequences” [Stoll]
- How fairly are fathers treated in family court? [Nina Shapiro, Seattle Weekly via Alkon]
- “‘Insider’ Trading by the Representative Plaintiff in Shareholder Litigation” [Bainbridge]
- “Donation controversy focuses attention on Madison County asbestos litigation” [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Chamber-backed LNL]
- Update: Appeals court reinstates Duluth doc’s defamation claims [DNT, earlier here, here, here; "bedside manner" criticism]
- U.K.: “‘Psychic’ Sally Morgan Sues Critics for £150,000 After Refusing $1 Million to Prove Her Powers” [D.J. Grothe, HuffPo] “She’ll be calling witnesses such as ‘an uncle, or father, or a man… with a b in his first name’.” [@thegagthief]
Tagged as:
airlines,
asbestos,
divorce,
family law,
libel slander and defamation,
Madison County,
recreation,
Seattle,
securities litigation,
United Kingdom
“After racking up more than $20 million in legal bills, the owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers has reportedly reached a $130 million settlement in his divorce case.” [Martha Neil, ABA Journal]
Tagged as:
divorce
“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.]
Tagged as:
alcohol,
Bay Area,
divorce
“Despite claims that she couldn’t work, rarely left home and rarely socialized because of injuries from a 1996 car accident, Dorothy McGurk, 43, was belly-dancing at home and in Manhattan for hours a day — and then spending several more hours a day blogging about [it].” Asked by a Facebook acquaintance why she wasn’t posting pictures of her dance adventures, McGurk said her ex, from whom she was demanding lifetime maintenance, “would love to fry me with that.” Her words sufficed, and Justice Catherine DiDomenico denied most of her maintenance claim as well as awarding the husband “60 percent from the sale of their house and thousands in legal fees for her ‘dilatory tactics.’” [Dareh Gregorian, New York Post]
Tagged as:
divorce,
fraud
- Notables including Alan Morrison, Richard Epstein, Kathleen Sullivan sign amicus brief urging court review of multistate tobacco settlement [Daniel Fisher/Forbes, Christine Hall/CEI, Todd Zywicki]
- “Congress rediscovers the Constitution” [Roger Pilon, WSJ]
- Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. profiled [Roger Parloff, Fortune]
- When outside investors stake divorce litigants: yes, there are legal ethics angles [Christine Hurt]
- Mexico, long noted for strict gun control laws, has only one legal gun store [WaPo]
- Judge throws out “parasitic” lawsuit piggybacking on Wisconsin drug-pricing settlement [Madison.com]
- Erin Brockovich sequel: Talking back to the Environmental Working Group on dangers of chromium-6 in drinking water [Oliver, Logomasini/CEI]
- “Little white lies” to protect the bar’s image [five years ago on Overlawyered]
Tagged as:
constitutional law,
divorce,
Erin Brockovich,
guns,
John Roberts,
litigation finance,
Mexico,
pharmaceuticals,
tobacco settlement
“It is hoped that the new mediation stage will reduce legal aid costs by up to £100 million, while fewer expert witnesses would be required to testify before the courts. … Judges would also be able to advise parents early into legal proceedings what the likely outcome would be, in an effort to force through an agreement and avoid long and expensive cases. ” [Telegraph]
Tagged as:
ADR,
divorce,
United Kingdom
Glenn C. Lewis, a divorce lawyer who “boasts that he is the most expensive lawyer in the [Washington, D.C.] region,” sued a former client “for an additional $500,000 in fees and interest, although he’d already been paid $378,000.” Lewis says the case was a demanding one and that he earned the money fair and square, but things did not go particularly well for his cause before judges in suburban Fairfax County. [Washington Post via Above the Law]
Tagged as:
attorneys' fees,
divorce,
Virginia,
Washington D.C.
A federal judge has dismissed the airline’s suit against pilots seeking to reclaim pension outlays arising from what it said were paper divorces followed by remarriages to the same spouse. Still pending are the pilots’ suits against Continental for wrongful dismissal and invasion of privacy stemming from the airline’s investigation of the episode. [ABA Journal; earlier here and here]
Tagged as:
airlines,
divorce,
taxes,
workplace
Most creative of his dodges? Entering into a sham child support agreement. [Las Vegas Sun]
Not entirely unrelatedly, Richard Bales at Workplace Law Blog has more on that scheme by some Continental Airlines pilots to nab lump-sum distribution pension payouts by staging bogus divorces [earlier coverage].
Tagged as:
child support,
divorce,
taxes
The Bay State’s law is seriously hostile to breadwinners, but also exceedingly vague, giving ex-spouses reason to contest and appeal every issue. Reform in the state legislature is perennially getting derailed by lack of lawyer support:
Guy Ferro, the Connecticut family law attorney, says they won’t [work against their own financial interest]. Indeed, when a committee of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers tried to draft alimony guidelines, other attorneys successfully pushed to spike that initiative. Ferro says the thinking was: “If a person can go to guidelines and plug in a number to show what they have to pay in alimony and for how long, what do they need lawyers for?”
[Boston Magazine via Above the Law]
Tagged as:
divorce,
Massachusetts
