Overlawyered » Ireland

Joyce copyright expires

Walter Olson — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 12:21:14 +0000

Will I raise a glass to toast the Irish author’s long-awaited return to the public domain? Yes I said yes I will yes [Gordon Bowker, Independent, earlier here, here, and here]

But note: The jubilation is over the entry of the author’s work into the public domain in the European Union; in the United States most of the author’s writings remain tied up for a long time to come. Details here (thanks commenter JWB).

Tags: copyright, Ireland

Joyce copyright expires is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Irish businessman awarded $13.6 m in “naked sleepwalking” libel trial

Walter Olson — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 14:29:20 +0000

Nocturnal ramblings of a less-than-conscious nature during a business trip to Africa were misportrayed by the company as sexual harassment or something else improper, argued the mining exec. A jury awarded him €10 million, by far a record for an Irish libel case. [Telegraph, Eichler/Atlantic Wire]

Tags: harassment law, Ireland, libel slander and defamation

Irish businessman awarded $13.6 m in “naked sleepwalking” libel trial is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Ireland: Annals of non sequiturs

Walter Olson — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 12:06:26 +0000

“Ahern may look at higher ATM fees after €300,000 robbery and kidnap” [Irish Times]

Tags: banks, Ireland

Ireland: Annals of non sequiturs is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Ireland: boy of 5 wins defamation suit

Walter Olson — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 17:58:12 +0000

The lad won 7,500 euros for being wrongly accused of stealing a bag of snacks in a store. The settlement also covered his claim of having been falsely imprisoned and assaulted when a shop worker grabbed his arm. [Irish Times]

Tags: Ireland, libel slander and defamation

Ireland: boy of 5 wins defamation suit is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

September 2 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 04:19:24 +0000

Cops in London borough “remove valuables from unlocked cars to teach the owners about safety” [UPI, Sullum/Reason "Hit and Run", Coyote]
“Trial starts for PI lawyer accused of paying bribes (to Texas insurance managers) for settlement” [ABA Journal]
Tort reform in Oklahoma takes effect Nov. 1, so law firm advises getting those lawsuits filed quickly [The Oklahoman]
Patent assembler Intellectual Ventures says it’s averse to suing. Its close partners, on the other hand… [Recorder, earlier]
Bill to assert U.S. control of waters whether “navigable” or not is major federal power grab [Kay Hutchison and Nolan Ryan, Dallas News]
California high court rules in Taster’s Choice photo-permission case [Lowering the Bar, WSJ Law Blog, earlier]
Civil libertarians, secularists protest as Ireland criminalizes blasphemy [Volokh, Irish Times (Dawkins), MWW and more]
He knows about big paychecks: “Obama’s ‘Pay Czar’ Made $5.76M Last Year as a Law Firm Partner” [ABA Journal]

Tags: Barack Obama, environment, free speech, insurance, Ireland, patent trolls, police, United Kingdom

September 2 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

October 24 roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 04:29:06 +0000

Chemerinsky, other critics should apologize to Second Circuit chief judge Dennis Jacobs over bogus “he doesn’t believe in pro bono!” outcry [Point of Law and update]
New York high court skeptical of ultra-high contingency fee in Alice Lawrence v. Graubard Miller case [NYLJ; earlier here and here]
Panel of legal journalists: press let itself be used in attack on Judge Kozinski [Above the Law]
Unfree campaign speech, cont’d: South Dakota anti-abortion group sues to suppress opponents’ ads as “patently false and misleading” [Feral Child]
Even if you’re tired of reading about Roy Pearson’s pants, you might still enjoy Carter Wood’s headlines on the case at ShopFloor ["Pandora's Zipper", "Suit Alors!"]
Rare grant of fees in patent dispute, company had inflicted $2.5 million in cost on competitors and retailers by asserting rights over nursing mother garb [NJLJ]
Time to be afraid? Sen. Bingaman (D-N.M.) keen on reintroducing talk-radio-squelching Fairness Doctrine [Radio Equalizer]
“Yours, in litigious anticipation” — Frank McCourt as child in Angela’s Ashes drafted a nastygram with true literary flourish [Miriam Cherry, Concurring Opinions]

Tags: Alex Kozinski, broadcasters, campaign regulation, contingent fee, Erwin Chemerinsky, Ireland, nastygrams, New York state, patent quality, pro bono, Roy Pearson, sanctions, Second Circuit, South Dakota

October 24 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

U.K.: A one-man bias-suit industry

Walter Olson — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 00:07:21 +0000

“For a decade [Suresh Deman] sued universities – usually claiming racial bias over failed job applications – as he collected nearly £200,000 in payouts and cost the taxpayer an estimated £1million”. After he had brought 40 actions he was declared a vexatious litigant and banned from further proceedings, but the ban did not cover Northern Ireland and he was soon there pursuing an 11-year-old claim against the Association of University Teachers and Officers (AUT). (Chris Brooke, “Race-claims lecturer beats legal ban to carry on suing after 40 discrimination claims”, Daily Mail (U.K.), Nov. 19; A Tangled Web, Nov. 19; “In the news: Suresh Deman”, Times Higher Education Supplement, Mar. 21, 2003).

Tags: Ireland, schools, United Kingdom, workplace

U.K.: A one-man bias-suit industry is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Lawsuits against restaurant critics

Walter Olson — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 00:48:13 +0000

New York Times legal correspondent Adam Liptak has a good article summing up the state of play on legal actions arising from unkind reviews of eateries, including several cases familiar to our readers (Feb. 27, Philadelphia; Feb. 10, Belfast; Jan. 3, 2006, Dallas)(“Serving You Tonight Will Be Our Lawyer”, Mar. 7). More: PhilaFoodie.

Tags: Dallas, Ireland, libel slander and defamation, newspapers, Philadelphia, restaurant critics

Lawsuits against restaurant critics is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Northern Ireland: jury awards £25K for bad restaurant review

Walter Olson — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 09:10:57 +0000

“The Irish News must pay £25,000 plus court costs to a west Belfast Italian restaurant owner after a jury found a food critic’s review to be defamatory.” (“£25K for food critic’s poison pen”, BBC, Feb. 8). Journalist Caroline Workman, in a review of Ciaran Convery’s restaurant Goodfellas, had “described his staff as unhelpful, his cola as flat, and his chicken marsala ‘so sweet as to be inedible’”. Guardian restaurant critic Matthew Norman described the jury verdict as “very worrying news”: “You really cannot overstate the imbecility of a libel jury: what we really need now is a sustained campaign against our ludicrous libel laws.” (Maev Kennedy, “Critics bite back after restaurant reviewer sued for calling chicken too sweet”, Guardian, Feb. 10).

Tags: Ireland, libel slander and defamation, newspapers, restaurant critics, United Kingdom

Northern Ireland: jury awards £25K for bad restaurant review is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Round-up

Ted Frank — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 12:58:34 +0000

Some quick links:

Michael Krauss reviews a Mississippi Court of Appeals decision on a bogus fender-bender claim. [Point of Law; Gilbert v. Ireland]
Yet another example of overbroad laws on sex offenders (see also Jul. 3, 2005). [Above the Law]
“As far as the law is concerned, those individuals whose pacemakers fail are the lucky ones.” [TortsProf Blog]
Emerson Electric sues NBC in St. Louis over a scene in an hourly drama where a cheerleader mangles her hand in a branded garbage disposal. [Hollywood Reporter, Esq.; Lattman; Defamer and Defamer update; St. Louis Post Dispatch]
A case that’s really not about the money: Man stiffs restaurant over $46 check, defends himself against misdemeanor charge with $500/lawyer. [St. Petersburg Times; Obscure Store]
Bill Childs catches yet another Justinian Lane misrepresentation. See also Sep. 26 and Sep. 17 (cf. related posts on Lane’s co-blogger Oct. 3 and Sep. 25), and we might just have to retire the category, since we can only hope to scratch the surface. Point of Law has the Gary Schwartz law review article discussed by Childs. [TortsProf Blog and ] Lane’s post also deliberately confuses non-economic damages caps with total damages caps: nothing stops someone with more than $250,000 in economic damages from recovering more than $250,000, even in a world with non-economic damages caps.
Update: Bill Childs in the comments-section to Lane:

“Of course, all of this gets pretty far afield from what I originally wrote and that you’ve conceded, which is that you (unintentionally but sloppily) misrepresented the facts of the Pinto memo, failed to research its background beyond what was apparently represented to you, and still haven’t (last time I checked, at 9:10 p.m.) updated your site to reflect your error. Nor have you approved the trackback I sent to the site. You’ve posted comments to that very entry and another entry has gone up on the site, but readers still see the plainly inaccurate statement that the memo excerpt you show was Ford evaluating tort liability for rearendings, when in fact it was Ford evaluating a regulatory proposal for rollovers using numbers from NHTSA.

Tags: Ford Pinto, Ireland, Justinian Lane, Mississippi, not about the money

Round-up is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system