• Businesswoman takes to her blog to criticize the business practices of a video-production firm, and then the lawsuit arrives [Inc. magazine via MediaBloggers; Vision Media Television v. Leslie Richard/Oko Box]
• Litigious Minneapolis strip club owner “sued a one-time housemate for, among other things, not returning some pillows and a coat rack.” [Star-Tribune via Obscure Store]
• Really now, says judge to Coughlin Stoia class-actioneers, $1,365.95/night in travel expenses is a bit rich in this Coke settlement [Krauss, PoL]
• L.A. attorney Terry Christensen sentenced to three years in Pellicano wiretap scandal [AP/Variety] Did L.A. Times skew coverage toward Pellicano defense? [Patterico, more]
• New Louisiana lawyer-ad rules: would they restrain lawyers from blogging or posting on Facebook/Twitter? [Coleman, Ribstein vs. O'Keefe vs. Greenfield]
• Electing public defenders is bad idea to start with, and things get particularly dicey when the local cops throw their support to one candidate [Balko, Reason "Hit and Run"; Jacksonville, Fla.]
• Online carpooling service? Great idea until the bus authorities get you closed down [Save PickUpPal in Ontario via Coyote; Canada]
• Horizon Blue Cross agrees to settle suit over coverage of eating disorders, will pay $1.18 million to some policyholders to cover extended bulimia and anorexia treatments, and $2.45 million to class action lawyers led by Bruce Nagel of Roseland, N.J. [NJLJ]

• Why real estate agents make you sign 1,000 silly forms [Christopher Fountain] Michigan requires acknowledgment that nearby farms “may generate noise, dust, odors” [Land Division Act h/t Sean Fosmire]
• Albuquerque police take out want ad seeking snitches [AP]
• “A prez must know S of S has no agenda other than his own” Chris Hitchens flays the Hillary pick [Slate]
• Not all British nannies are charming: U.K. regulators may ban “happy hour” in bars [AP h/t Jeff Nolan]
• As Georgia “sex offender” horror stories go, Wendy Whitaker case may outdo Genarlow Wilson’s [Below the Beltway; more on Wilson case]
• U.K. juror polls her Facebook friends to help decide on case [AllFacebook h/t @lilyhill and @Rex7; Greenfield]
• Looking for political conservatives on Twitter? Here’s a long list [Duane Lester, All American Blogger; and I have a comment on ways to use Twitter]
• New page of auto-feeds from leading Canada & U.S. law & politics blogs [Wise Law Reader]
• Bailout’s a lot bigger than you think, try $7.8 trillion with a “t” [John Carney]. Claim: with $ sunk since ‘80, GM and Ford could have closed own plants and bought all shares of Honda, Toyota, Nissan and VW [David Yermack, WSJ via Cowen]. What if Citi gives up Mets naming rights? Gary’s Bail Bonds Stadium just doesn’t quite have the same ring to it [Ray Lehmann]
• Australian class action could derail because overseas funders didn’t register as investment managers [The Australian h/t @SecuritiesD]

When your litigation opponent subpoenas your Facebook, Amazon, MySpace, Flickr, LinkedIn and (locked) Twitter pages (& Likelihood of Confusion).

If you’re on Facebook, we’ve already pestered you to sign up as a “Fan” of Overlawyered. If you’re also on the BlogNetworks application, we’d like to pester you to take an additional step: visit the Overlawyered page there, become a reader, and confirm that I am indeed the owner/proprietor. Once a relatively small number of readers do these things, the system will pick us up and we’ll have a new avenue of distribution.

A revived Fairness Doctrine might just do it (Brian Anderson & Adam Thierer, New Criterion, Sept.)(h/t Erin C. on Facebook).

• “Law school is not such a leap” for licensed Nevada prostitute’s next career move — hey, we didn’t say that, Robert Ambrogi at Law.com did [Legal Blog Watch, Bitter Lawyer]
• Today’s representative class-action plaintiff: “For five years, her diet consisted almost exclusively of Chicken-of-the-Sea tuna…” [PoL]
• Prolific California disabled-access filer Jarek Molski ordered to pay fees for “scorched-earth” tactics in one case, but wins a second [Metropolitan News-Enterprise via Bashman]
• Another sperm donor surprised by legal obligation to pay child support [Santa Fe, N.M. Reporter; earlier]
• “Lawyer Fees Jumped 50% After Bankruptcy Law Change” [ABA Journal]
• “Whatever it takes to win a case”, and checking out jurors’ Facebook profiles is the least of it [NLJ]
• High-profile U.K. attorney Nick Freeman registers his nickname “Mr. Loophole” [Times Online a while back]
• When can a plaintiff claiming sexual assault sue anonymously? Courts will apply mushy balancing test [NYLJ]
• Hold on to your hats, looks like Geoffrey Fieger is online [Fieger Time]

Shortly after we set up the old Overlawyered.com group there, Facebook began its program of “Pages” for websites and organizations for which users could sign up as “Fans”. This has a number of advantages over the old group format, so if you’re on Facebook (or have been thinking of getting on), please do consider enlisting as a Fan at our new Overlawyered page there.

*Blogroll, cont’d*

Other sites by our authors: Point of Law (Ted Frank, Walter Olson and others) / Ted Frank’s AEI Legal Center / Walter Olson home page / Our Facebook group

Law:

BlawgRev / Brennan Center / Briefcase (Ohio) / CalBizLit / ConsLw&Pol / Day / Decs & Exs / EvilHRLady / Genova / Goldman / ILR / LawBeat (Obbie) / Legal Ethics Forum / LexMonitor / Lexis Nexis Torts / Likel’d of Succ’s / MassTortLit / Miller, Maryland Injury / Nordberg / O’Keefe / OnPointNews / Perlmutter Schuelke / Prawfs / Scruggs scandal in Mississippi: Folo, YallPolitics as well as Rossmiller / Sui Generis (NY) / TortDeform / WorkplaceProf

And more law: AdamSmithEsq / ACSBlog / AJP / AGWatch / ArmsLaw / Bay / BLT / Bluestone / Cal Wage & Hr / Comm for Just / Complex Lit / Concur Op / Conglom / Counterfeit Chic / EmpirLS / Ernie the Atty / Friable Thts / Greedy TL / Justia / KipEsq / Kranenburg / LawSites / LegalJuice / Legal Rdr / Legal Scholarship / Low’g the Bar / NAM / Ninomania / Ohio Employment / Opinio Juris / Petit / Pop Tort / Proof & Hrsy / QuizLaw / Sports Law / StonePosts / TrollTracker (now underground) / WAC?

Med: Cut to Cure / Dr. Wes / GruntDoc / HIPAA blog / MedProgToday / MedPundit (RIP) / MedRants / Orac / Pipeline / RangelMD / Seidel / SymTym / Throckmorton

General interest:

Beam / Discr’ns / Empire Center / Gawker / Gordon / Jay P. Greene / Haspel / Housing Bubble / IRB / Dan Kennedy / Manh Inst / David Nieporent’s Jumping to Conclusions and Likelihood of Success / MindingCampus / NYObserver / NYT Board, Freak’cs, Lede, Opin’tor, Tierney / Pratie Place / Rauch / SalonBlogRep / Siegel on tobacco / Truth on the Mkt / Tushnet

Right:

Betsy’s / Bookwm Room / City Jrnal / Contentions / Flash Report (Calif.) / Kopel / Lileks / McLaughlin / Marria Deb / Massie / Moldbug / Patterico / PowerLine / RightCoast / RightRbw / Steyn / Zincavage

Left:

Bogdanski / Drum / Edroso / Effect Measure / Lambert / LG&M / Mencimer / Mother Jones / Pump Handle / ReformNY / SadlyNo / Tobias / Wolcott

Libertarian:

Antipl’r / Brayton / Cafe Hayek / Cato-at-Lib’y / Chapman / Henley / Palmer / Pos’ve Lib / Sanchez / Stossel / Vice Sq / Wilk’n / Young

Odd:

Fark / News of the Weird / Our 404 / Lawyer jokes (About.com) / Spurious “Stella Awards”

Science/skepticism:

Hoax / Snopes / LarkFarm / Myers / Unoff Dawkins / Free Inq / Rowe / Lehmann / Fumento / Honeyguide / Quackwatch / Skept Inqr / Skeptic.com

This site’s reprinted articles library, with articles by authors Michael Fumento, Peter Huber, Walter Olson, and Jonathan Rauch.

The new website aspires to match would-be litigants with the right class action and lawyer for them, but Michael Arrington likely is a great deal too flattering in terming it a “Shangri-La for ambulance chasers” (TechCrunch, Apr. 12), since it remains to be seen whether such a mechanism will be able to attract either litigants or lawyers of the highest caliber. To Luke Gilman (Apr. 13) it calls to mind “a hairball generator…. Looks like a race to the bottom on both sides to me.” Writes TechCrunch commenter “Joey”: “I hope they make a Facebook app: ‘6 of your friends joined this class action lawsuit! Click here to join!’” P.S. Much more from Eric Turkewitz, & welcome visitors from Legal NewsLine and United Press International.

Last month the New York Times ran a front-page story about the plight of a Fayetteville, Ark. high school student named Billy Wolfe, who had been “a target of bullies for years”, physically and verbally brutalized by fellow students despite his family’s repeated pleas to a seemingly heedless school district for his protection. (Dan Barry, “A Boy the Bullies Love to Beat Up, Repeatedly”, Mar. 24). Billy’s parents had sued teens they said had harassed their son, and were also considering legal action against the school district.

The article generated a big reaction, especially after young Wolfe himself appeared on the Today show to discuss his plight. Most observers seemed to agree that the harrowing tale lent credence to the whole idea of using lawsuits as a way of responding to bullying in schoolyards, Facebook, etc. — an idea that, coincidentally or otherwise, is the subject of an increasingly visible campaign these days. Even as level-headed an educational observer as Joanne Jacobs wrote on her blog, “Normally, I’m anti-lawsuit, but this may be the only way to bully the bullies and the principal to crack down.” Huffington Post writer Jonathan Fast cited the article as evidence that schools should adopt “zero tolerance” policies on bullying. Some of the many other blog reactions are assembled here (e.g.: Marcotte, Greenfield, DadTalk, The Common Room).

Could there be another side of the story, you may wonder? Well, as a matter of fact, there is. To find it you need to consult the local paper, the Northwest Arkansas Times (Scott F. Davis and Dustin Tracy, “Who’s the bully?: Police, school records raise questions about claims made by Fayetteville High student”, Apr. 3)(via Childs). One may argue about whether Wolfe’s own alleged exploits in victimizing other kids, as catalogued in the NWAT article, will or should affect the disposition of his family’s legal claims. What seems beyond dispute is that the NYT’s story would have been very different in the emotional reactions it evoked — and much less effective in promoting the particular “cause” it was advancing — had it included that other side of the story.

More/updates: Word Around the Net, Val’s Bien, Pennywit @ Likelihood of Success, Joanne Jacobs, Crime & Consequences, Kierkegaard Lives. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette notes that Arkansas already has an unusually strong anti-”cyberbullying” law which “requires school districts to adopt discipline policies banning harmful and disruptive online behavior”, despite misgivings from civil libertarians about official penalties based on students’ out-of-school speech: Evie Blad, “School bullies move online; rules tricky to write, enforce”, Apr. 6. And Scott Greenfield minces no words:

…what is the New York Times thinking? To have its knees cut off by its Northwest Arkansas namesake is humiliating, but to be shown up as deceptive fundamentally undermines its credibility. Without credibility, the Times is just a dog-trainers best friend and a tree’s worst nightmare. …

The failure of the New York Times to present a full and accurate account of the Billy Wolfe story is disgraceful and unacceptable. … If you’re going to put an article on the front page with a big picture, don’t blow it. The Times did. They should be ashamed.

And in our comments section, Ole Miss lawprof Paul Secunda provides the Wolfe family’s response to the NWAT coverage. Update Apr. 24: Jay Greene weighs in.

An advisory about a few continuing issues arising from our Movable Type upgrade a week ago and the site redesign that it’s triggered:

* We’re experiencing a surge in comment spam which we’re trying to fix. In the past these attacks have sometimes forced us to close comments briefly or have even brought down the whole site.

* Relatedly, we’re suffering email disruptions which are affecting email addresses @ this domain name and at my personal domain walterolson dot com. If you have sent mail to me or Ted through these sites in the past week, it may not have gotten to us. Editor - at - pointoflaw - dot - com should reach me and is unaffected by the disruptions. Using comments on posts as a substitute for messaging is best saved for a last resort. Facebook messaging is another alternative to consider.

* A couple of readers have reported disruptions to Overlawyered’s RSS feeds. If this is happening to you, too, feel free to point it out in comments to this post. I don’t use feeds and rely on readers to let me know when they malfunction.

* I’m slowly moving up the learning curve on customizing display styles on things like font size and white space. The gavel icon is back on the front page address line. Don’t assume that this design is final as I’m by no means done tweaking it — I might even go back to the pink color scheme.

P.S. Prof. Bainbridge likes the new design. But does Ron Coleman? And QuizLaw favors the distinctive pink.

• Easterbrook: “One who misuses litigation to obtain money to which he is not entitled is hardly in a position to insist that the court now proceed to address his legitimate claims, if any there are…. Plaintiffs have behaved like a pack of weasels and can’t expect any part of their tale be believed.” [Ridge Chrysler v. Daimler Chrysler via Decision of the Day]
• Retail stores and their lawyers find sending scare letters with implausible threats of litigation against accused shoplifters mildly profitable. [WSJ]
• Kentucky exploring ways to reform mass-tort litigation in wake of fen-phen scandal. [Mass Tort Prof; Torts Prof; AP/Herald-Dispatch; earlier: Frank @ American]
• After Posner opinion, expert should be looking for other lines of work. [Kirkendall; Emerald Investments v. Allmerica Financial Life Insurance & Annuity]
• Judge reduces jury verdict in Premarin & Prempro case to “only” $58 million. And I still haven’t seen anyone explain why it makes sense for a judge to decide damages awards were “the result of passion and prejudice,” but uphold a liability finding from the same impassioned and prejudiced jury. Wyeth will appeal. [W$J via Burch; AP/Business Week]
• Judge lets lawyers get to private MySpace and Facebook postings. [OnPoint; also Feb. 19]
• Nanny staters’ implausible case for regulating salt. [Sara Wexler @ American; earlier: Nov. 2002]
• Doctor: usually it’s cheaper to pay than to go to court. [GNIF BrainBlogger]
• Trial lawyers in Colorado move to eviscerate non-economic damages cap in malpractice cases [Rocky Mountain News]
• Bonin: don’t regulate free speech on the Internet in the name of “campaign finance” [Philadelphia Inquirer]
• “Executives face greater risks—but investors are no safer.” [City Journal]
• Professors discuss adverse ripple effects from law school affirmative action without mentioning affirmative action. Paging Richard Sander. Note also the absence of “disparate impact” from the discussion. [PrawfsBlawg; Blackprof]
• ATL commenters debate my American piece on Edwards. [Above the Law]

• Raising ticket revenue seems more important to NYC authorities than actually recovering stolen cars [Arnold Diaz/MyFoxNY video via Coyote]
• Subpoena your Facebook page? They just might [Beck/Herrmann]
• Rhode Island nightclub fire deep pockets, cont’d: concert sponsor Clear Channel agrees to pay Station victims $22 million, adding to other big settlements [ProJo; earlier]
• Manhattan federal judge says “madness” of hard-fought commercial suit “presents a cautionary tale about the potential for advocates to obscure the issues and impose needless burdens on busy courts” [NYLJ]
• Wooing Edwards and his voters? Hillary and Obama both tacking left on economics [Reuters/WaPo, WSJ, Chapman/Reason, WaPo editorial]
• Sad: if you tell your employer that you’re away for 144 days on jury duty, you actually need to be, like, away on jury duty [ABA Journal]
• New at Point of Law: Florida “three-strikes” keeps the doctor away; court dismisses alien-hiring RICO suit against Tyson (and more); Novak on telecom FISA immunity; fortunes in asbestos law; Ted on Avandia and Vioxx litigation; new Levy/Mellor book nominates Supreme Court’s twelve worst decisions; and much more;
• U.K.: “Lawyers forced to repay millions taken from sick miners’ compensation” [Times Online]
• Outside law firm defends Seattle against police-misconduct claims: is critics’ beef that they bill a lot, or that they’re pretty good at beating suits? [Post-Intelligencer]
• Cincinnati NAACP is campaigning against red-light cameras [Enquirer]
• Omit a peripheral defendant, get sued for legal malpractice [six years ago on Overlawyered]

A guestblogger will be joining us momentarily, and I’ll be posting less over the holidays. Meanwhile, my pipeline is still backed up with items from the past year that deserve a more serious treatment than a hurried roundup mention permits. Here are four of them:

• More docs moving to Texas? Watch out, they must be quacks! After the New York Times reported that doctors seemed to be showing fresh interest in practicing in Texas since its enactment of litigation reforms, our frequent sparring partner Eric Turkewitz of New York Personal Injury Law Blog quickly countered by noting that disciplinary actions in the state are way up, and — quite a jump here — concluded with a suggestion that the newly arriving docs must be causing quality problems. Among bloggers who took this idea and ran with it: Phillip Martin of Burnt Orange Report. Then Prof. Childs had to spoil the fun by asking whether the doctors being disciplined were in fact newcomers to the state and found that, to judge by an initial sampling, no, they’re not. And the medical blogs then knocked the remaining props out from under the reform-made-care-worse theory by linking to coverage documenting how the increase in disciplinary actions reflected the Texas medical board’s concerted recent effort to get tough on doctors — too tough, said many critics. In other words, the Texas medical profession was doing exactly what many skeptics demanded it do — submit to stricter oversight in exchange for liability reform — and now that very submission was being cited as if it proved that standards of care were slipping.
• Uninjured car owners can sue GM over seatbacks. No class members claim to have been injured, but Maryland appeals court allows class action over cost of replacing allegedly weak seatbacks in GM cars. [DLA Piper; opinion, PDF; Maryland Courts Watcher]
• The litigious stylings of Jonathan Lee Riches. We mostly ignore litigants who file handwritten pleadings from prison cells complaining of obviously hallucinated events, but there’s no getting around it: the South Carolina convict has become a pop culture phenomenon with his scores of lawsuits against sports figures, President Bush, Perez Hilton, William Lerach and Elvis Presley over a host of imagined legal injuries. Some of the coverage: The Smoking Gun, Dreadnaught, Deadspin, Justia, Above the Law. He even has several Facebook fan groups.
• Taxpayers and vaccine-compensation lawyers. Under the federally enacted vaccine-compensation program, notes Kathleen Seidel, “a petitioner who brings a claim in good faith is entitled to reimbursement for reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs, regardless of whether the claim is successful.” (Forget about loser-pays; this ensures that taxpayer-defendants can win but pay the other side’s fees anyway.) What sorts of bills do you think attorneys file for reimbursement under those circumstances? Yep, very optimistic bills, in which they expect taxpayers to shell out for their attendance at “advocacy group meetings, and attendance at a conference of trial lawyers representing autism plaintiffs”. In this case, HHS successfully appealed (PDF) an order that it pay the fees. Seidel’s Neurodiversity blog offers a remarkable trove of insight into litigation relating to autism causation theories, vaccines and thimerosal, and this post is no exception. (Updated to include links.)

• “Of all the body parts to Xerox!” Another round of stories on efforts to reduce liabilities from office holiday parties [ABA Journal, Above the Law, and relatedly Megan McArdle]
• New edition of Tillinghast/Towers Perrin study on insurance costs of liability system finds they went down last year, which doesn’t happen often [2007 update, PDF]
• Vermont student sues Burger King over indelicate object found in his sandwich; one wonders whether he’s ruled out it being a latex finger cot, sometimes used by bakery workers [AP/FoxNews.com]
• Good discussions of “human rights commission” complaints against columnist Mark Steyn in Canada [Volokh, David Warren and again @ RCP, Dan Gardner; for a contrasting view, see Wise Law Blog]
• Having trousered $60-odd million in fees suing Microsoft in Minnesota and Iowa antitrust cases, Zelle Hofmann now upset after judge says $4 million in fees should suffice for Wisconsin me-too action [Star-Tribune, PheistyBlog]
• Australian rail operator will appeal order to pay $A600,000 to man who illegally jumped tracks, spat at ticket inspectors, hurt himself fleeing when detained [Herald Sun]
• Lawyers’ fees in Kia brake class action (Oct. 29, Oct. 30) defended by judge who assails honesty of chief defense witness [Legal Intelligencer]
• Who deserves credit for founding Facebook? Question is headed for court [02138 mag]
• Yes, jury verdicts do sometimes bankrupt defendants, as did this $8 million class action award against a Kansas City car dealer [KC Star, KC Business Journal]
• Dispute over Burt Neuborne’s Holocaust fees is finally over, he’ll get $3.1 million [NY Sun]
• So long as we’re only fifty votes behind in the race for this “best general legal blog” honor, we’re going to keep nagging you to vote for Overlawyered [if you haven't already]

• Ethical questions for Vioxx lawyers [WSJ law blog] And who’s going to make what? [same; more from Ted at PoL]
• American lawyers shouldn’t get all self-congratulatory about the courage shown by their Pakistani counterparts [Giacalone; more]
• Just another of those harmless questionnaires from school, this time about kindergartners’ at-home computer use. Or maybe there’s more to it [Nicole Black]
• Probe of personal injury “runners” bribing Gotham hospital staff to chase business nets another conviction, this one of a lawyer who stole $148,000 from clients [NYLJ; earlier]
• Facebook sometimes sends text messages to obsolete cellphone numbers relinquished by its users, so let’s sue it [IndyStar]
• Series on defensive medicine at docblog White Coat Rants [first, second, third]
• Arm broken by bully, student wins $4 million verdict against Tampa private school; bully himself not sued [St. Petersburg Times]
• Washington, D.C. reportedly doing away with right to contest a traffic parking ticket in person [The Newspaper, on "the politics of driving"]
• “Walking headline factory” Scruggs to be arraigned November 20 [Rossmiller]
• More on whether government’s refusal to alter paper currency discriminates against the blind [Waldeck, ConcurOp via Bader; earlier]
• Eric Turkewitz hosts a truly marathon Blawg Review #134 [NY Pers Inj Law Blog]

Father’s Day at the Georgetown pool:

“So let me get this straight,” I said. “If she was wearing a swimsuit with no floaties in it, that would be okay. But this suit, which is safer, is not okay.” …

“That’s right,” the manager said. “This is a government pool and that’s the D.C. government.”

(Tony Rosenberger, BLT, Jun. 18; h/t Ted on our Facebook group).

• Shocker- Washington state trial lawyers lie in ad promoting litigation windfall referendum. [The Olympian; Reject R-67]
• Mississippi AG Jim Hood rewards his out-of-state trial-lawyer campaign donors. [Hattiesburg American]
• Update: Illinois Justice Robert R. Thomas settles his libel case; sued reporter is unrepentant. [Law.com]
• Update: Cop withdraws slip-and-fall lawsuit; department placed her on paid leave and is investigating [South Florida Sun-Sentinel]

• Update: 1-800-Flowers suit dismissed on technicality; plaintiff adulterer vows to refile in New York. [On Point]
• Update: Court reverses injunction in whales v. US Navy sonar lawsuit, but lawyers vow to keep trying. [Bashman roundup]

• Wrongful sermon a cause of action? [On Point]
• Don’t expect your rapist to be convicted by a Philadelphia jury. [Philly Magazine]
• Facebook as treasure-mine for litigation evidence. [Law.com]
• Dry-cleaners can bring frivolous lawsuits, too. [New York Post]