• Bulgarians employ “decoy lawyers” to get around corruption in official bureaus [Cowen, MargRev]
• Forum-shopping vol. MMMCCXII: Taiwan company claims Apple broke California unfair-practices law so of course it sues in Texarkana [AppleInsider]
• “U.S. produces far too many lawyers for society to absorb” and one reason is that law schools want warm seats on chairs [Greenfield]
• Second Circuit: lawyers can’t buy their way out of sanctions for filing meritless lawsuit [Krauss, PoL]
• Some reasons furor over free speech in Canada is relevant this side of the border [Bernstein @ Volokh]
• We’re quoted on the subject of those websites that offer “point-and-click access to trial lawyers” [Business First of Columbus]
• Tight lid kept on study of disposable diapers’ environmental impact since findings were … inconvenient [Times Online (U.K.) via Stuttaford]
• Judge backs Kentucky’s bid to seize domains of online gambling sites, implications for everyone else [Balko, "Hit and Run"; earlier here and here]

• Appeals court upholds Ted Roberts “sextortion” conviction [Bashman with lots of links, San Antonio Express-News]
• Alito incredulous at FTC: you guys have failed to raise a peep about bogus tar & nicotine numbers for how long? [PoL]
• Please, Mr. Pandit, do the country a favor and don’t litigate Citigroup’s rights to the utmost in the Wachovia-Wells Fargo affair [Jenkins, WSJ]
• Docblogger Westby Fisher, hit with expensive subpoena over contents of his comments section, wonders whether it’s worth it to go on blogging [Dr. Wes, earlier]
• “Title IX and Athletics: A Primer”, critical study for Independent Women’s Forum [Kasic/Schuld, PDF; my two cents]
• Case of whale-bothering Navy sonar, often covered in this space, argued before high court [FoxNews.com]
• More on Kentucky’s efforts to seize Internet domain names of online gambling providers [WaPo, earlier]
• Exposure to pigeon droppings at Iraq ammo warehouse doesn’t seem to have affected worker’s health, but it was disgusting and she’s filed a False Claims Act lawsuit against private contractor for big bucks [St. Petersburg Times, Patricia Howard, USA Environmental; but see comment taking issue]

• Watch where you click: “Kentucky (secretly) commandeers world’s most popular gambling sites” [The Register/OUT-LAW]
• Erin Brockovich enlists as pitchwoman for NYC tort firm Weitz & Luxenberg [PoL roundup]
• U.K.: “Millionaire Claims Ghosts Caused Him to Flee His Mortgage, I Mean Mansion” [Lowering the Bar]
• Prosecution of Lori Drew (MySpace imposture followed by victim’s suicide) a “case study in overcriminalization” [Andrew Grossman, Heritage; earlier; some other resources on overcriminalization here, here, and here]
• Exonerated Marine plans to sue Rep. John Murtha for defamation [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]
• Snooping on jurors’ online profiles? “Everything is fair game” since “this is war”, says one jury consultant [L.A. Times; earlier]
• Allentown, Pa. attorney John Karoly, known for police-brutality suits, indicted on charges of forging will to obtain large chunk of his brother’s estate; “Charged with the same offenses are J.P. Karoly, 28, who is John Karoly’s son, and John J. Shane, 72, who has served as an expert medical witness in some of John Karoly’s cases.” [Express-Times, AP, Legal Intelligencer]
• School safety: “What do the teachers think they might do with the Hula-Hoop, choke on it?” [Betsy Hart, Chicago Sun-Times/Common Good]

• To hold a party in the public parks of Bergenfield, N.J., you’ll need homeowner’s or renter’s insurance to throw on the line [Bergen Record]
• More on suits against Victoria’s Secret over allegedly hazardous bras, thongs, and undergarments, including an aspiring class action over contact rashes [Heller/On Point News]
• Supreme Court will review Navy sonar controversy, which we’ve long covered in this space [Adler @ Volokh]
• Hope of legalized online gambling fades, and you can blame Republicans on Capitol Hill for that [Stuttaford, NRO "Corner"]
• Disney said to be behind bad proposal to soak foreign tourists to fund visit-America promotions [Crooked Timber]
• “Squishier than most”: Nocera on A.M.D.’s predatory-pricing antitrust suit against Intel [NYT]
• Process serving company lied about delivering SEC witness subpoena and falsified later document, judge rules, awarding victim $3 million [Boston Globe]
• Revisiting the false-accusation ordeal of Dr. Patrick Griffin, and how it relates to pressure to have needless chaperones at medical procedures [Buckeye Surgeon, Dorothy Rabinowitz Pulitzer piece]
• Overlawyered turns nine years old tomorrow (more). Commenters: how long have you been reading the site? Any of you go back to its first year?

Updating a Feb. 28 post:

The Supreme Court of Georgia has said “no deal” to a team of Columbus lawyers representing a proposed class of people seeking to recover money they spent participating in a feature of the NBC hit show “Deal or No Deal.”

The suit filed in federal court had contended that the Lucky Case Game — in which viewers, like the contestants on “Deal or No Deal,” try to pick a lucky suitcase — ran afoul of Georgia law because participants were charged 99 cents to play through their cell phones. The plaintiffs based their suit on a colonial-era Georgia statute that allows gamblers to recover their losses through lawsuits.

(Alyson M. Palmer, “Luck Runs Dry for ‘Deal’ Plaintiffs in Lawsuit Against NBC”, Fulton County Daily Report, Apr. 22).

This morning I was a guest on WTKK’s “Michael Graham Show” out of Boston to discuss the Spitzer scandal. I was also the guest of Mike Rosen on Denver’s KOA for a discussion of the case of the New York lawyer who’s suing casinos for $20 million after her out-of-control gambling ruined her career.

• Update: Jarek Molski’s appeal of his “vexatious litigant” status [On Point]
• Watch what you say dept.: Beaumont plaintiffs’ lawyers subpoena newspaper. [Beaumont Enterprise; Southeast Texas Record; Houston Chronicle]
• “New York’s Most Obnoxious Lawyer.” If anything, the profile is soft. [Village Voice via ATL; see Apr. 16]
• Class action phishing [Oklahoma Attorney General]
• Tales of a Dallas poker raid [Balko]
• “If I was going to go into the newspaper business all over again, I’d be the lawyer who advises the paper to fire me and free up more money for legal fees.” {Steyn]
• “If you really want to understand inequality today you must first understand Harry Potter.” [MargRev]

• Divorcing Brooklyn couple has put up sheetrock wall dividing house into his and hers [L.A. Times, AP/Newsday]


• Boston Herald appeals $2 million libel award to Judge Ernest Murphy, whom the paper had portrayed as soft on criminals (earlier: Dec. 8 and Dec. 23, 2005) [Globe via Romenesko]


• Updating Jul. 8 story: Georgia man admits he put poison in his kids’ soup in hopes of getting money from Campbell Soup Co. [AP/AccessNorthGeorgia]


• Witness talks back to lawyer at deposition [YouTube via Bainbridge, %&*#)!* language]


• Prominent UK business figure says overprotective schools producing generation of “cotton wool kids” [Telegraph]


• State agents swoop down on Montana antique store and seize roulette wheel from 1880s among other “unlicensed gambling equipment” [AP/The Missoulian]


• “You, gentlemen, are no barristers. You are just two litigators. On Long Island.” [Lat and commenter]


• Some Dutch municipalities exclude dads from town-sponsored kids’ playgroups, so as not to offend devout Muslim moms [Crooked Timber]


• As mayor, Rudy Giuliani didn’t hesitate to stand up to the greens when he thought they were wrong [Berlau @ CEI]


• Australia: funeral homes, fearing back injury claims, now discouraging the tradition of family members and friends being pallbearers [Sydney Morning Herald]


• Asserting 200-year-old defect in title, Philly’s Cozen & O’Connor represents Indian tribe in failed lawsuit laying claim to land under Binney & Smith Crayola factory [three years ago on Overlawyered]

The Denver Post and National Law Journal have more on that lawsuit by Lakewood, Colorado lawyer Charles Humphrey and New Jersey’s Gardy & Notis (Aug. 2) claiming that CBS, ESPN and other media outlets are abetting unlawful gambling by sponsoring fantasy sports games, and seeking diversion of millions in resulting revenues into the plaintiff’s own fisc. Mississippi College School of Law sports law prof Michael McCann says Humphrey’s suit lacks “moral weight”. (Joel Grostephan, “Lawyer cites 1710 law in suit”, Denver Post, Aug. 15 (via Suz at Large); Tresa Baldas, “Fantasy Sports League or Real-Life Gambling?”, National Law Journal, Aug. 21)

The arrest of company CEO David Carruthers while changing planes in Dallas, writes Jacob Sullum, “is part of a larger attempt by the U.S. government to impose its brand of repressive paternalism on countries with more tolerant policies.” (syndicated/Reason.com, Jul. 26)(earlier coverage, Jul. 20 here and here). More on online gambling, and bans on promoting it: Steve Chapman, “Who’s Afraid of Online Gambling?”, Chicago Tribune/Real Clear Politics, Jul. 23; Walter Williams, “Truly disgusting”, syndicated/Jewish World Review, Jul. 26.

It could be dangerous to publish them in the state of Washington, which has passed a new statute barring the use of the Internet to transmit “gambling information”. “”My suggestion to you is to remove from your paper any advice about online gambling and any links to illegal sites,” state gambling commission director Rick Day told a Seattle Times columnist. (Danny Westneat, “This column may be illegal”, Seattle Times, Jun. 15)(via Balko). Related: Apr. 21 and Aug. 9, 2004; Nov. 18, 2005.

An Internet site has begun offering “sports-ticket options.” I’ll let Brad Humphreys’s “Sports Economist” blog explain: “For example, I could currently purchase the option to a ticket to the Final Four to see my alma mater, West Virginia University, for $27. If the Mountaineers make the final four, I would pay the face value of the ticket ($140, according to the web site), plus my $27 option.” Over the course of the season, the market for the option fluctuates, and one can sell or buy it. Here’s the catch: “If the Mountaineers didn’t make the Final Four, my option would be worthless and I would be out $27.” Tom Kirkendall and Tyler Cowen, an exceptionally intelligent lawyer and economist respectively, also comment, as does Wired Magazine.

And, yet, somehow, all three bloggers miss a large point of the exercise: to try to get around the anti-gambling laws. Despite the site’s claim to be merely a market-clearing place, there’s no option available for one to actually offer to sell one’s tickets. So where are the tickets coming from? (In case of the Rose Bowl, from the event itself.) Or going to?: the Wired story never interviews anyone who actually ends up with a ticket. Not to suggest that the site is actually ripping people off—with a 17% commission on every transaction and with the vast majority of options expiring worthless, the site makes more per ticket than any scalper does. A recent Forbes story covers a smaller competitor.

For you securities-law geeks out there, here’s the SEC’s no-action letter. I leave to others whether the site is accurately describing its activities. And, of course, the fact that one agency promises no action with respect to the securities laws is no guarantee that the aggressive Department of Justice will take no action with the gambling laws.

Now they’ve reached France:

A ruined French gambler yesterday sued a casino for failing to prevent him losing his money. Jean-Philippe Bryk, 44, claimed the Grand Cafe casino in the spa town of Vichy owed him a duty of “information, advice and loyalty”….

A spokesman for the casino said the “idea of gambling is that one runs the risk of losing”.

(Jon Henley, “Gambler sues casino that let him lose £500,000″, The Guardian (U.K.), Nov. 15; Lucy Mangan, “Bad gamblers rejoice - the casino’s to blame”, The Guardian, Nov. 16). See Apr. 19, etc.

Because of a misprinted number in a New York Daily News circulation-boosting game called Scratch n’ Match, hundreds of people thought they’d won the top $100,000 prize. The rules printed on the back of each ticket specify that there is to be no liability “in the event of printing, production or other error”, but Queens attorney Steven Gildin says the News can’t “cower behind fine print”: “Thousands of people thought they had their shot at the American dream”. And now, to give them that shot, he and other lawyers are preparing lawsuits. “A lot of people keep their hopes alive on these lotteries,” said one of Gildin’s law partners referring, it would seem from context, to the scratch-off tickets rather than the courtroom filings. (Clyde Haberman, “American Dreaming? Take a Number”, New York Times, Apr. 1).

“Lerach Coughlin Stoia & Robbins …filed a class action against Yahoo Inc., Google Inc. and 10 other Internet search engines that claims they have been promoting illegal gambling on their Web sites and requests that they fork over the ad revenue. The complaint, filed Tuesday in San Francisco Superior Court, requests that the search engines put revenue from advertising Internet gambling into a fund that would provide restitution to California Indian Tribes or other licensed gambling businesses in California. The complaint says money in the fund would also go to the spouses of gamblers who have had community property taken away as a result of illegal gambling and to the state treasury.” (Brenda Sandburg, “Casino Come-Ons Return Bad Result for Search Sites”, The Recorder, Aug. 5; David Legard, “Gambling lawsuit filed against top Web content sites”, IDG/Computerworld, Aug. 4). For questions about the legality of accepting advertising from offshore casinos, see Apr. 21. Earlier lawsuits have gone after credit card companies for facilitating offshore gambling transactions (see Dec. 7, 1999), but a Lerach attorney said this was the first suit against search engines.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, running an ad for an offshore Internet casino may amount to “aiding and abetting” illegal gambling, a felony punishable by up to two years in prison. Rendering banking, computer-security or public-relations services to such a website — or maybe even mentioning its name — might constitute a violation as well, and it matters not that the site may be entirely lawful in the country from which it operates. Although it is far from clear that U.S. prosecutors could actually obtain convictions that would stand up on such charges, both Google and Yahoo have capitulated and agreed to stop running such ads, which “illustrates the chilling effect of vague laws in the hands of ambitious prosecutors,” writes Jacob Sullum. (”Abetting betting”, syndicated/Reason, Apr. 9). Update Aug. 9: and here come the class action suits.

“Two problem gamblers have filed a potential class-action lawsuit alleging that Detroit’s three casinos have failed to enforce a state program designed to permanently bar gambling addicts from their properties. … Virginia Ormanian of Wyandotte and Norma Astourian of Taylor asked to be barred from the casinos in the summer of 2002. But they couldn’t stay away.” They are now suing the establishments for not doing enough to enforce the program, under which “gamblers who sign up for the program and return to the casino are subject to up to a year in prison, a fine of up to $1,000 or both.” (Becky Yerak and Kim Kozlowski, “Gamblers sue Detroit casinos for not barring them”, Detroit News, Nov. 5). For earlier you-didn’t-exclude-us cases, see Sept. 7, Aug. 1 (Canada).

Although hope springs eternal among some trial lawyers and foes of legalized gambling that casinos might be made legally responsible for the losses of problem gamblers they negligently failed to eject from their premises, courts are still unwilling to see it that way, with three cases early this year all resulting in strong pro-casino opinions. (I. Nelson Rose, “Compulsive Gamblers Lose Again, In Court”, Jun. 2). Among them was the widely publicized case (see Sept. 12, 2002) of David Williams, who sued the Aztar casino for failing to exclude him although it had reason to know he was violating an order to stay away. U.S. District Judge John Tinder wrote that the case was barred by applicable precedent and added: “Whether this case is viewed as a claim for just compensation… or an effort to hit the jackpot in litigation that he couldn’t achieve on the river boat casino… through this lawsuit and a plethora of federal and state law theories, Williams seeks a determination that the gambling industry owed him a duty to protect him from himself. Despite his counsel’s creative efforts, and regardless of Williams’ sympathetic plight, neither federal nor Indiana law provides him any refuge or reward.” (”Compulsive gambler loses lawsuit against Casino Aztar”, Louisville Courier-Journal, reprinted CasinoMan, Mar. 7; “Problem gambler asks court to reverse ruling”, Las Vegas Review-Journal, May 14).