- “A 4-Page Playdate Waiver? Is This the New Normal?” [Lenore Skenazy, Free-Range Kids; our 2000 post on "Rise of the High-School Sleepover Disclaimer"]
- Spirit Airlines sets what it calls DOTUC fee, for “Dept. of Transportation Unintended Consequences” [Stoll]
- How fairly are fathers treated in family court? [Nina Shapiro, Seattle Weekly via Alkon]
- “‘Insider’ Trading by the Representative Plaintiff in Shareholder Litigation” [Bainbridge]
- “Donation controversy focuses attention on Madison County asbestos litigation” [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Chamber-backed LNL]
- Update: Appeals court reinstates Duluth doc’s defamation claims [DNT, earlier here, here, here; "bedside manner" criticism]
- U.K.: “‘Psychic’ Sally Morgan Sues Critics for £150,000 After Refusing $1 Million to Prove Her Powers” [D.J. Grothe, HuffPo] “She’ll be calling witnesses such as ‘an uncle, or father, or a man… with a b in his first name’.” [@thegagthief]
Tagged as:
airlines,
asbestos,
divorce,
family law,
libel slander and defamation,
Madison County,
recreation,
Seattle,
securities litigation,
United Kingdom
“Once profiled in The New York Times as a former Harvard student who had his own claim as being the true genius behind Facebook, [Aaron] Greenspan is now involved in a dispute with Columbia Pictures that alleges [among other counts] he was defamed by being left out of the award-winning film about Facebook’s origins ['The Social Network'].” [Hollywood Reporter]
Tagged as:
Facebook,
libel slander and defamation,
movies film and videos
It took three years of litigation, but Texas developer H. Walker Royall has finally ended his defamation suit against author Carla Main and publisher Encounter Books (which is also my publisher on Schools for Misrule). Main’s book Bulldozed had been critical of the use of eminent domain in land takeovers, and in particular of its use in a deal in Freeport, Texas. The case helped prompt the Texas legislature to enact stronger protections for defendants against so-called SLAPP suits, a development long overdue in some other states as well. [Roger Kimball, Houston Chronicle; Jacob Sullum; earlier]
Tagged as:
eminent domain,
libel slander and defamation
Max Mosley, former head of the Formula One racing organization, has been the subject of a number of lurid allegations in the European press. Now he is suing Google in France and Germany, and contemplating suit in California, “in an attempt to force the internet company to monitor and censor search results about” the allegations. “It is understood Google has removed hundreds of references to the defamatory claims after requests from Mosley’s solicitors. However, Mosley is attempting to force Google to monitor its search results so the material never appears” in the first place. [Guardian] More: Above the Law.
Tagged as:
Google,
libel slander and defamation,
search engines,
Streisand effect
- “Stamp Out Online Misogyny?” [Wendy Kaminer, Brendan O'Neill]
- Jacob Mchangama of Danish think tank CEPOS on blasphemy laws and Islam-critical speech [Nov. 4 FedSoc., PDF]
- Niall Ferguson to sue LRB scribe? “If he won’t apologise for calling me a racist, I will persecute him until he does” [Guardian; more, Atlantic Wire] New York judge quashes subpoena seeking to identify anonymous bloggers in rabbi-defamation suit [Paul Alan Levy]
- “If bullying has gone down, how can it be a pandemic?” By broadening its definition to include such behaviors as “eye-rolling” and pointed non-invitation [Hans Bader/Examiner, Neal McCluskey/Cato]
- “I strongly recommend an umbrella policy for all bloggers. Defending myself cost nearly $100,000, thankfully paid by insurance.” [@DianaHsieh]
- Federal crime under CFAA to lie on the internet? [Kerr, more, yet more, Balko]
- “Will Canada Repeal its Hate Speech Law?” [Peter Worthington, Frum Forum]
Tagged as:
bullying,
free speech,
free speech in Canada,
hate speech,
libel slander and defamation,
online speech
Reader Helene G. writes: “I recently joined our local mother’s club, and I received this message. It’s sad that we can’t use the mother’s club forum to report on experiences freely, without risk of being sued”
“Our forums are a great help to many in our moms community. However, we have a very specific guideline relating to negative comments about an individual, company or indeed health clubs.
Specifically, if you’ve had a negative experience with a vendor or individual, you need to use this format below. NO MATTER HOW BAD THE EXPERIENCE.
——-
Message Title: Negative Experience at
Message: I had a negative experience with . If you are thinking of hiring/using this vendor, please contact me.
——-
I’m sorry that in some instances we cannot have more relaxed guidelines, but we have to protect our group. Thanks for understanding.”
(& welcome Elie Mystal/Above the Law readers)
Tagged as:
libel slander and defamation,
online speech
- Large newspaper group drops RightHaven; “it was a dumb idea” [Kravets/Wired, more] Courtroom reverses for copyright aggregator assume a comic tone [BoingBoing, Slashdot, Corporate Counsel]
- Dan Snyder drops suit against Washington City Paper [WCP, Wolfman/CL&P, Adler, earlier here, here, etc.] More reactions to TSAer’s lawsuit threat against columnist/blogger Amy Alkon [Treacher, Balko, Bader]
- Jury declines to credit testimony about when victim took Children’s Motrin [Beck]
- Mississippi high court strikes down widely noted $7 million lead paint verdict in Sherwin-Williams vs. Gaines [AP, Freeland, LNL, opinion]
- “Is suing the bar a new drunk driving trend?” [NJLRA]
- Decline of chemistry sets tells a story of fear and liability [John Browning, SETR, earlier]
- “Expectedly pleasing,” that’s me [Katherine Mangu-Ward, Reason]
Tagged as:
chemistry sets,
dramshop statutes,
lead paint,
libel slander and defamation,
Mississippi,
pharmaceuticals,
RightHaven
- Truth through intimidation? U.K.: “Chronic fatigue syndrome researchers face death threats from militants” [Guardian] Nanotechnologists are target of Unabomber copycat [Chronicle of Higher Education]
- Blogger (and frequent Overlawyered commenter) Amy Alkon criticizes intrusive TSA agent by name, agent threatens $500K libel suit [Mike Masnick/TechDirt, Mark Bennett]
- NYT fans “pill mill” hysteria, heedless of the costs [Sullum]
- Patent litigant “pursued baseless infringement allegations in bad faith and for an improper purpose.” More loser-pays, please [NLJ, PoL]
- Great moments in link solicitation [Scott Greenfield] Quality bar at feminist lawprof blog may not be set terribly high [Popehat]
- “Wow, this photo got over 475 views from being reposted on Overlawyered” [Erik Magraken]
- “Popular Comic Strip Has Fun With Wacky Warnings” [Bob Dorigo Jones]
Tagged as:
bloggers and the law,
libel slander and defamation,
loser pays,
patent law,
pharmaceuticals,
science and scientists,
wacky warnings
Eugene Volokh predicts that a Minnesota jury’s award will not stand; not only are people “constitutionally entitled to speak the truth about others, even with the goal of trying to get them fired,” but the “First Amendment constrains the interference with business relations tort, just as it constrains the infliction of emotional distress and other torts.” [Volokh Conspiracy]
Tagged as:
First Amendment,
libel slander and defamation,
Minnesota
- “Massage Parlor Mistrial Declared After Masseuse Recognizes Defense Lawyer as Client” [ABA Journal]
- Paying opposing expert to leave country? “Drug company lawyer taped trying to foil lawsuit” [AP]
- What anti-business crusades have in common with the War on Drugs [David Henderson] Some of those “oil and gas subsidies” aren’t [Coyote]
- Nocera on NLRB v. Boeing [NYT] A contrary view [Hirsch]
- Science finds no link between WTC dust, cancer? Then science will just have to give [Jeff Stier, Reason; but see later study on firefighters at the scene]
- Per Maureen Orth at Vanity Fair, the widow of designer Oleg Cassini has been in at least 15 lawsuits. Guess who’s named in number 16? [AW]
- Stop competing with us! Lawyers claim online-legal-form provider LegalZoom is engaged in unauthorized practice of law [WSJ, Dan Fisher, ABA Journal]
Tagged as:
junk science,
labor unions,
libel slander and defamation,
oil industry
- Burning Man, risk, and self-reliance [Claire Gordon, related]
- Jacob Sullum challenges Mark “tax-the-snacks” Bittman [Reason; related, Rick Esenberg] “Fat tax” would be hard to target, hard to enforce, disliked by voters [David Gratzer]
- “CSX claims racketeering in Pittsburgh law firm’s legal tactics” [Post-Gazette; earlier here, here, here, etc.] A different view: Max Kennerly.
- Complaints over new class-action law in Canada [Reuters]
- Minnesota preacher sues Rachel Maddow [TVNewser, Mother Jones]
- Does the new Texas loser-pays bill go far enough? [Kyle Baum, WLF, earlier]
- Tell us about it: “Why the Right to Criticize Lawyers is Vital” [Hans Bader, CEI]
Tagged as:
asbestos,
Canada,
claims fraud,
class actions,
libel slander and defamation,
loser pays,
obesity,
Pittsburgh,
taxes,
Texas
My new post at Cato at Liberty celebrates investigative journalist Carla Main’s substantial victory at a Texas appeals court against a Dallas developer who didn’t like what she’d written about him in her critique of eminent domain, Bulldozed. Ted at Point of Law rounds up more links and reactions and points out that Texas is fortunate to have a relatively strong “anti-SLAPP” law protecting those who speak out on public issues from intimidation through litigation.
Unfortunately, as Ted writes, “there are dozens of other states where those who criticize the rich face tremendous risk of meritless libel suits to shut down their free speech rights.” For example, to its shame, the state of Pennsylvania has a desperately weak anti-SLAPP law which per Harvard’s Citizen Media Law Project “only applies to those petitioning the government over environmental issues.” It’s past time for lawmakers in Harrisburg and other state capitols to take needed legislative action to protect free speech from the silencing threat of litigation.
P.S. Jacob Sullum has this to say:
In our system of justice, rich people with thin skins don’t need any evidence to drag their critics into an expensive, time-consuming, anxiety-provoking legal process that lasts for years. For any journalist who has ever wondered whether he could be sued over something he wrote that reflected badly on someone (which some of us do several times a day), the answer is yes: You can be sued over anything. The suit may not be legally successful, but if the plaintiff’s goal is to punish you for the offense you caused him and make you (and everyone else) think twice before writing about him again, he wins whether or not he ultimately can prevail in court.
How very true.
Tagged as:
eminent domain,
free speech,
libel slander and defamation,
Pennsylvania
