Overlawyered » Fifth Circuit

April 16 roundup

Walter Olson — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 04:07:53 +0000

Although I’m known as a foe of everything John Edwards stands for, I hope he beats this campaign finance rap [Atlantic Wire]
Michael Bloomberg launches demagogic new campaign against Stand Your Ground laws, calling to mind the recent critique of the NYC mayor’s paternalist dark side by Conor Friedersdorf in the Atlantic;
Jerry Brown frees grandmother dubiously jailed in shaken-baby death [Slate, earlier]
As Scruggs (Dickey not Earl) still pursues vindication, Alan Lange looks back on Mississippi scandals [YallPolitics]
Deservedly favorable profile of Fifth Circuit judge Jerry Smith [NOLA]
In which I tell off Bill Donohue’s Catholic League for its double insult last week to gays and to adoptive parents [IGF]
“The Ninth Circuit was, believe it or not, correct” [Ilya Shapiro and Trevor Burrus, Cato, on administrative law case arising from NLRB rules change on drug rep overtime]

Tags: adoption, campaign regulation, Dickie Scruggs, Fifth Circuit, Jerry Brown, John Edwards, Michael Bloomberg, Ninth Circuit, self-defense, wrong right

April 16 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

January 26 roundup

Walter Olson — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 05:01:35 +0000

Judge Edith Jones rules: 5th Circuit spanks judge who overturned result of anti-traffic-cam vote [The Newspaper, background]
“UK Nanny State: Let’s Send Gamers To Rehab” [Nick Sibilla, Reason] “If Poker Is a Public Health Issue, What Isn’t?” [Jacob Sullum]
Struggle Resolutely Against Misleaders of the People In Weather Broadcasts Everywhere! [TP; reactions from Tony Hake/Examiner, Geoff Fox, Andrew Revkin, Watts Up With That]
Jury awards $178 million in bariatric-surgery case against Jacksonville hospital, sum greater than GDP of several small island nations [Florida Times-Union]
Sikh sues Jay Leno over comparison of Romney vacation home to Golden Temple of Amritsar [Daily Mail]
Redevelopment without prerequisite “blight” akin to Hittite sack of Babylon [Gideon Kanner]
Convinced hospital broke naming promise, jury tells it to pay $1 million to country singer Garth Brooks [AP]
“Dean of law bloggers” — why, thank you, sir [Hans Bader, CEI]

Tags: accolades, climate change, eminent domain, Fifth Circuit, global warming, hospitals, India, red light cameras, videogames

January 26 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“A petty squabble, masquerading as a civil rights matter…”

Walter Olson — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 05:47:58 +0000

People are talking about the Fifth Circuit’s opinion (written by Judge Jerry Smith) in the “disgruntled cheerleader mom” case:

Reduced to its essentials, this is nothing more than a dispute, fueled by a disgruntled cheerleader mom, over whether her daughter should have made the squad. It is a petty squabble, masquerading as a civil rights matter, that has no place in federal court or any other court. We find no error and affirm.

Tags: cheerleading, Fifth Circuit

“A petty squabble, masquerading as a civil rights matter…” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Left assails Fifth Circuit judges based on clients they repped decades ago

Walter Olson — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 10:43:59 +0000

Hello? Guantanamo? It’s not as if you’d expect any sort of consistent policy on these matters from the imaginatively named Alliance for Justice. But it’s still strange that they’d open the door to future attacks on their own favored judicial nominees based on clients they represented long before reaching the bench. [Joel Cohen and Katherine Helm/Law.com, NLJ] More: John Steele at Legal Ethics Forum takes a different view, and I comment.

Tags: Fifth Circuit, judicial nominations, recusals

Left assails Fifth Circuit judges based on clients they repped decades ago is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Obama nominates Judge James Graves, Jr. to Fifth Circuit

Walter Olson — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 14:07:13 +0000

I can’t say I’ve made a study of Judge Graves’ overall career as a jurist in the Mississippi state courts, but if his record presiding over the notorious O’Keefe v. Loewen trial is at all typical, his wouldn’t exactly be a name high on my list. [AP/Law.com]

Tags: Fifth Circuit, judges, Mississippi

Obama nominates Judge James Graves, Jr. to Fifth Circuit is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

June 1 roundup

Walter Olson — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 12:00:00 +0000

Some California attorneys hoping to restart lucrative construction-defect litigation [Frith, Cal Civil Justice]
Jury awards Seattle bus passenger $1.3 million for stair mishap [KOMO, Seattle Times]
“Louisiana Bill Would Outlaw Insulting an Under-17-Year-Old By E-Mail” [Volokh, earlier] Update: bill watered down before passage, but still bad news for speech;
“Attorney Fee Fight Gets Ugly in World Trade Center Litigation” [Turkewitz and more]
Preventive detention law shows why we need to confine Congress [Sullum, Greenfield]
Mass Fifth Circuit recusals in Comer v. Murphy Oil global warming case [Wood/PoL, Jackson] More: Shapiro, Cato, Wood/ShopFloor (a strategy to provoke recusals?)
“By some estimates, circa 40 percent of cases in the Central African court system are witchcraft prosecutions” [Graeme Wood, The Atlantic]
Lawyers who sued Facebook over “Beacon” to get $2.3 million in fees, class $0.00 [Balasubramani, SpamNotes]

Tags: California, child protection, class action settlements, construction defect, Facebook, Fifth Circuit, global warming, Louisiana, recusals, Seattle

June 1 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“Lawsuits put global warming on more dockets”

Walter Olson — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 05:33:39 +0000

USA Today on the Fifth Circuit’s recent ruling on a Katrina case, Comer v. Murphy Oil. More on the case at Point of Law here, here, and here.

Tags: climate change, Fifth Circuit, global warming, Katrina

“Lawsuits put global warming on more dockets” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Prisoners’ first-amendment rights

Ted Frank — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 16:39:13 +0000

Protect “a letter to [a] girlfriend [stating] that a prison officer had sex with a cat” but do not protect mailing a prosecutor “a note written on toilet paper” saying “Dear Susan, Please use this to wipe your ass, that argument was a bunch of shit! You[rs] Truly, George Morgan.” (Morgan v. Quarterman (5th Cir. 2009)). W.C., sending us the case, comments, perhaps only semi-facetiously:

(i) He said “very truly yours.” Maybe he was trying to help her. He was at least sincere.

(ii) I wouldn’t mind doing a similar stunt to opposing in a case I have currently. I too would do so from a helpful perspective. Is that so wrong?

Tags: Fifth Circuit, free speech, prisoners

Prisoners’ first-amendment rights is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system