- 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]
Tagged as:
bloggers and the law,
gambling,
Kentucky,
Navy sonar,
Roberts sextortion,
Supreme Court,
Title IX,
tobacco,
whistleblowers
- 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]
Tagged as:
Erin Brockovich,
gambling,
jury selection,
Kentucky,
lawyering vs. privacy,
libel slander and defamation,
MySpace,
Pennsylvania,
schools,
wills and trusts
- 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?
Tagged as:
antitrust,
Disney,
gambling,
insurance,
Navy sonar,
New Jersey,
Victoria's Secret,
wrong right
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).
Tagged as:
broadcasters,
class actions,
Deal or No Deal,
gambling,
Georgia
- 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]
Tagged as:
Australia,
chasing clients,
child protection,
divorce,
finger in the chili,
gambling,
Indian tribes,
libel slander and defamation,
Long Island,
Montana,
Netherlands
It wasn’t just bad policy; it was also dumb politically (Amy Calistri, “Online Gambling Bill Co-sponsors Are Vulnerable for Re-election”, PokerNews, Nov. 6; Radley Balko, “The Green Felt Revolution?”, Reason “Hit and Run”, Nov. 6).
Tagged as:
gambling
Charles Murray and David Post add their voices (“The G.O.P.’s Bad Bet”, New York Times, Oct. 19; Volokh Conspiracy, Oct. 19). Earlier: Oct. 10, Oct. 12, etc. More: George Will, “Prohibition II: Good Grief”, Newsweek, Oct. 23.
Tagged as:
gambling
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)
Tagged as:
broadcasters,
Colorado,
gambling,
sports
“If American criminal law applies to servers in Costa Rica, might authorities in other countries not try to impose their law on servers based in Texas? You might almost bet that will happen, were it legal to bet.” Walter has a good piece in the London Times on the David Carruthers arrest (Jul. 27, Jul. 20).
Tagged as:
gambling
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.
Tagged as:
gambling,
United Kingdom
Via R.J. Lehmann (Mar. 27), here are some figures indicating that the sum total of the alleged costs of other people’s bad behavior may well exceed the total sum of money in existence. To be more specific: start by adding up the claimed health expenses, productivity losses and other social costs of such indulgences as alcohol ($185 billion a year, it’s said with spurious precision), overeating ($115 billion), gambling ($54 billion), and so forth. Then throw in categories such as the costs of crime, time wasted by employees visiting web sites and watching sports events, and so forth. By the time you’re done, Lehmann says, you can “come up with a grand total of $7.39 trillion – well in excess of the $6.70 trillion that actually exists” — at least if you’re willing to include a few dodgy entries in the catalog, such as taxes. (Thomas C. Greene, The Register (UK), Mar. 16).
It’s not hard to see the relevance of this line of logic to themes often dealt with in this space. In the utopia of the litigators we would succeed in charging the social costs of our overeating to the food business, the costs of our gambling to the casinos and lotteries that led us on, the costs of 9/11 to assorted banks, airlines, building owners and Saudi nabobs, the costs of street crime to deep-pocketed entities guilty of negligent security, and so on and so forth for the costs of auto accidents, pharmaceutical side effects, failure to learn in school, domestic violence, etc. It would not be surprising if the sum total of all the different injuries, insults and indignities dealt out to the human race, if monetized at the rates prescribed by advocates, handily exceeded the sum total of wealth on hand to pay, even were the whole wealth of the world placed at the courts’ disposal.
Tagged as:
alcohol,
domestic violence,
gambling,
obesity,
third party liability for crime
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.
Tagged as:
bloggers and the law,
gambling,
online speech,
Washington state
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.
Tagged as:
gambling,
sports
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.
Tagged as:
compulsive gambling,
France,
gambling
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).
Tagged as:
gambling,
newspapers
