Whether or not you reside in the U.K., the range of reading material available to you regarding the tangled banking relationships of the Middle East is being shaped and constrained by the London libel courts. (Gary Shapiro, “Libel Suit Leads to Destruction of Books”, New York Sun, Aug. 2; Mark Steyn, “The vanishing jihad exposés”, syndicated/Orange County Register, Aug. 5; earlier here and here).
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Mark Steyn
In McMinnville, Ore., it may consist of fanny-patting in school hallways by seventh graders. Following a public outcry, Yamhill County D.A. Bradley Berry has now dropped the felony counts — the resulting status as registered sex offenders might have followed the youngsters through life — but he still wants to have Cory Mashburn and Ryan Cornelison at least given probation on misdemeanor counts. (Scott Michels, “Boys Face Sex Trial for Slapping Girls’ Posteriors”, ABCNews.com, Jul. 24; Mark Steyn, “Swat somebody’s butt, and yours belongs to the D.A.”, Orange County Register, Jul. 28; Jeanine Stice, “Gene’s right about The McMinnville Two”, Salem Statesman-Journal, Jul. 24). Update Aug. 22: charges dropped.
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One of the best white-collar-crime bloggers around, Tom Kirkendall, has a roundup of links on the Black trial, including to this Mark Steyn column. I’m staying out of this one: I have colleagues who know Black personally, my old law firm represents clients adverse to Black in civil litigation, and my law-school roommate is the lead prosecutor on the case. I will note, however, that if I were Conrad Black, I’d be awfully concerned about the number of potential jurors who assume someone is guilty just because they made a lot of money, especially given the prosecution’s inclination to introduce prejudicial evidence of expenditures. [New York Times; Globe and Mail]
Separately, this Economist commentary piece not only mentions the Black trial, but Larry Ribstein’s “Apple rule.” (cross-posted at Point of Law)
John Edwards’ selection as his blogger-in-chief of Pandagon‘s Amanda Marcotte has mushroomed into what National Journal “Beltway Blogroll” terms “the first blog scandal of campaign 2008,” made more piquant by Marcotte’s quick move (documented in our Friday post) to delete her bizarrely abusive rantings about the Duke case once they began to attract attention. I should note that in our very active comments thread, Ted takes a different view than I do of the affair, and I explain in turn (in a comment kindly quoted by K.C. Johnson) why I think the episode does reflect poorly on Edwards’ campaign:
John Edwards’s life in the law and experience with the justice system is his major resume item dating back beyond the past few years, as well as the major reason this site has given his career extensive coverage. Moreover, the Duke case, which looks ever more like the Scottsboro Boys case of our era, has been convulsing his own state of North Carolina for month after month. Edwards’ dodging of the case — his apparently successful stifling of any urge to speak out at the plight of the falsely accused — might on its own stand as merely cowardly. Marcotte’s hiring, on the other hand, throws an even less attractive light on it, rather as if, in Scottsboro Boys days, an on-the-sidelines Southern senator took on as a major spokesperson someone who’d been yelling the Boys’ guilt from the rooftops in the most crudely prejudicial language.
On Marcotte’s quick removal of her Duke comments, Dale Franks at Q and O makes the legitimate point that there’s nothing intrinsically improper in bloggers’ going back to amend or delete past posts that they now realize are mistaken or which no longer reflect their evolving views. And Ted cautions, also quite fairly, against evaluating a blogger’s fitness for a real-world post by pointing to the most inflammatory of his or her thousands of past posts.
Part of what lends the Marcotte episode such a comic aspect, however, is the timing and nature of her post and later revision. Her vitriolic rant asserting the lacrosse players’ guilt was posted a mere two weeks ago, almost certainly at a point after (as the Atlanta airport reference indicates) she had already entered talks with the Edwards campaign and thus had reason to know that she might soon come under the heightened scrutiny accorded to an official spokesperson. These were not the impulsive utterances of a Net Newbie. Moreover, the temperate-sounding new “official stance” with which she replaced the scrubbed post is ludicrously different in both tone and content from the rant it replaced; at a quick reading, one might even take it for a defense of the lacrosse players. A closer examination of its dodgy language, however, reveals that she does not actually take anything back; there is no indication that she has reconsidered her view of Jan. 21 or sees it as being in need of actual correction.
As for whether Marcotte was just having a bad day and slipped into an abusiveness that is unrepresentative of her usual tone, even a cursory glance through her output at Pandagon makes clear that there is much more embarrassment for the Edwards campaign to come: a few examples are collected at LieStoppers (scroll to “Earlier Comments”), Michelle Malkin, and Creative Destruction.
Some further commentary: Common Sense Political Thought, Protein Wisdom, Mark Steyn @ NRO (“There are two Americas: one in which John Edwards gives bland speeches of soporific niceness, the other in which his campaign blogger unleashes foaming rants of stereotypically obsessive derangement.”), Patterico (& welcome Michelle Malkin readers).
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Well after the revelation of the undisclosed DNA results, the ATM, taxi and dorm alibis, the umpteen times the stripper has changed her story, Amanda Marcotte still is willing to blast the Duke Lacrosse Three as guilty, guilty, guilty; and what do you know, the John-Edwards-for-President campaign has just saluted Marcotte’s acuity by naming her its blogger-in-chief (Pandagon, Jan. 21, foul language galore; Edwards blog, Jan. 30; Blogger News Network, Jan. 30, via Taranto; LieStoppers, Feb. 1). It’s enough to distract attention from all the comic joshing over the Friend of the Downtrodden’s gigantic new residence, or “Suing-’em Palace” as Mark Steyn calls it (NRO “The Corner”, Jan. 30; Dean Barnett, Jan. 30).
Update: Marcotte has now (1 p.m. Friday) yanked down her original post of Jan. 21, and appears also to have deleted several comments, but GoogleCache still has it for the moment. Here is its text, in the spirit of Fair-Use-ery:
Naturally, my flight out of Atlanta has been delayed. Let’s hope it takes off when they say it will so I don’t miss my connecting flight home.
In the meantime, I’ve been sort of casually listening to CNN blaring throughout the waiting area and good f**king god is that channel pure evil. For awhile, I had to listen to how the poor dear lacrosse players at Duke are being persecuted just because they held someone down and f**ked her against her will—not rape, of course, because the charges have been thrown out. Can’t a few white boys sexually assault a black woman anymore without people getting all wound up about it? So unfair.
111 Responses to “Stuck at the airport again…..”
Further update (1:20 p.m. Friday): Here are two comments that Marcotte appears to have deleted from the original thread. The “In her part of the country” comment had already drawn criticism from readers on the LieStoppers site:
Amanda Marcotte Jan 21st, 2007 at 12:54 pm
Yes, how dare a rape victim act confused and bewildered like she was raped or something.
# Amanda Marcotte Jan 21st, 2007 at 2:03 pm
Natalia, do you know the details of the case? If so, why do you think a women enthusiastically jumped into a sexual situation with men making slavery jokes at her? Furthermore, what is your theory on why she supposedly looooooved having sex with guys holding her facedown on the bathroom floor? There’s no “if” they behaved in a disrespectful manner. We have conclusive evidence that happened.
This is about race and class and gender in every way, and there’s basically no way this woman was going to see justice. In her part of the country, both women and black people are seen as subhuman objects to be used and abused by white men.
Plus: I see that K.C. Johnson (“Durham in Wonderland“) is on the case in typically thorough and powerful fashion. Marcotte also provides this further comment reacting to her critics (“if I see the words ‘Duke’ or ‘lacrosse’ in an email that has the whiff of accusatory tone, I’m deleting it and simply not going to reply to it”).
And again (11:30 p.m. Friday): In a further post, K.C. Johnson cites chapter and verse about how Marcotte’s hiring won much praise for the Edwards folks as a shrewd way of reaching out to progressive netroots forces. More discussion: TalkLeft forums, Betsy Newmark, Jeff Taylor at Reason “Hit and Run” (R-rated), Outside the Beltway, Patrick Ruffini, South of Heaven, Little Miss Attila, Brainster; & welcome Glenn Reynolds, Kevin O’Keefe and Michelle Malkin readers.
Further updates: see Feb. 4, Feb. 7, Feb. 8, Feb. 12 (Marcotte quits Edwards post), Feb. 16.
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“Novelty pig calendars and toys have been banned from a council office — in case they offend Muslim staff. Workers in the benefits department at Dudley Council, West Midlands, were told to remove or cover up all pig-related items, including toys, porcelain figures, calendars and even a tissue box featuring Winnie the Pooh and Piglet.” (“Muslims win toy pigs ban”, The Sun, recent undated; Mark Steyn, “Making a pig’s ear of defending democracy”, DailyTelegraph, Oct. 4; Bookworm Room, Oct. 4). And: “Prison staff have been told to stop wearing Cross of St George tiepins because they could be ‘misinterpreted” as a racist symbol. Anne Owers, the Chief Inspector of Prisons, was ‘concerned” to see a number of officers at Wakefield jail in Yorkshire wearing the tiepins, apparently in support of a cancer charity.” The Cross of St. George is the English national flag. (Philip Johnston, “Prison bans Cross of St George tiepins”, Daily Telegraph, Oct. 4).
Mark Steyn in the Telegraph:
These days, even as he or she is being clobbered, the more thoughtful British subject is usually keeping an eye (the one that hasn’t been poked out) on potential liability. Four years ago, Shirley Best, proprietor of the Rolander Fashion emporium, whose clients include Zara Phillips, was ironing some clothes when the proverbial two youths showed up. They pressed the hot iron into her flesh, burning her badly, and then stole her watch. “I was frightened to defend myself,” said Miss Best. “I thought if I did anything I would be arrested.” There speaks the modern British crime victim….The right to protect your family does not derive from any home secretary or chief constable.
(“An Englishman’s Home Is His Dungeon”, Dec. 7). (& letter to the editor, Mar. 15).
In Great Britain, where there is no First Amendment to protect free expression, Home Secretary David Blunkett has proposed a law banning so-called hate speech directed against religion, apparently in a gesture toward Muslim clerics offended by vigorous criticisms of their preachings. David G. Green, Director of Civitas: the Institute for the Study of Civil Society, warns that such a step would endanger Britain’s history of intellectual liberty — Hume, for one, might have been open to prosecution given the rude things he said about priests — and would act as a protective charter for religious extremism by giving its adherents a way to persecute scoffers by dragging them through the courts. (“Background Briefing”, Civitas, undated). Iain Murray comments as does Mark Steyn (“Blunkett’s ban will fan the flames”, Daily Telegraph, Jul. 13)(via AtlanticBlog). More: Mick Hume, “Don’t you just hate the Illiberati?”, The Times/Spiked-Online, Jul. 12. For earlier proposals along the same lines, see Oct. 19-21, 2001.
The province of Nova Scotia “is offering cash prizes to people who spot ‘offensive’ language in newspaper and magazine articles related to mental health and suicide. Readers who pick out inappropriate language will be entered into a draw for prizes worth up to $2,000. Included on the list of are such words and phrases as ‘basket-case, cracked-up, crazed, demented, fruitcake, kooky, loony, lost their marbles, lunatic, madman, maniac, nutcase, and schizo.’” (“Nova Scotia urges media to watch its language”, CTV, Mar. 7; “Are these guys nuts?” (editorial), National Post, Mar. 4; “Here’s an idea that really is nuts” (editorial), Montreal Gazette, Mar. 5; Mark Steyn, “Beware of the fruitcakes in government”, Daily Telegraph, Mar. 9)(via Tongue Tied).
“[H]is stump speech often sounds less like a political platform and more like a laundry list of class-action suits he’d like to get a piece of ?- we need to act against credit card companies that charge excessive interest etc.” (“Knowns, unknowns and the Ketchup Kid”, Daily Telegraph (UK), Jan. 27). The cash register continues to ring for Edwards with his friends in the Texas bar: “At the end of the fall filing period for campaign contributions, Texans had given more to John Edwards than to all of the other Democratic candidates combined, almost $2 million.” (Shelley Kofler, “Texas money a major part of Edwards’ NH campaign”, WFAA-TV (Dallas-Fort Worth), Jan. 27). On the other hand, Dave Barry thinks the photogenic Senator may be losing the bowlers’ vote (“Senator who? We’re trying to bowl here!!”, Miami Herald, Jan. 26; Julian Borger, “Edwards bowls along, with Dean still at a loss”, The Guardian (UK), Jan. 26)(via Command Post). See also Rich Lowry, “The Trial Lawyer?s Shtick”, syndicated/National Review Online, Jan. 27.
“‘Father files suit after son fails to make MVP award’” (hockey, New Brunswick), Nov. 8-10, 2002.
“‘Sorry, Slimbo, you’re in my seats’“, June 7, 2001 (& updates Dec. 15-16, 2001, Oct. 25-27, 2002); “Obese fliers“, Dec. 20, 2000; “Welcome Toronto Star readers” (Jason Brooks column, disabled rights), Sept. 27-28, 2000.
Personal responsibility, 2002: “Skating first, instructions later” (Edmonton), Sept. 25-26; “‘Woman freezes; sues city, cabbie’” (Winnipeg), Sept. 18-19; Personal responsibility roundup” (social host alcohol liability), Sept. 12; “Paroled prisoner: pay for not supervising me“, Jan. 4-6. 2001: “Don’t rock the Coke machine“, July 20-22; “‘Gambling addiction’ class action” (Loto-Quebec), June 20 (& update May 20-21, 2002; “‘Woman who drove drunk gets $300,000′” (Barrie, Ont.), Feb. 7-8; “By reader acclaim” (sues alleged crack dealers over own addiction), Jan. 11. 2000: “Not my fault, I” (woman who murdered daughter sues psychiatrists), May 17; “Blue-ribbon excuse syndromes” (Metis Indian defendant allowed to cite cultural oppression as defense to stabbing charge), Feb. 12-13.
“Cash demanded for drug users and panhandlers inconvenienced by film crews” (Vancouver), Aug. 23-25, 2002.
“Activist judges north of the border“, May 31-Jun. 2, 2002 (& letter to the editor, Jun. 14).
“Flowers, perfume in airline cabins not OK?“, May 17-19, 2002; “Scented hair gel, deodorant could mean jail time for Canadian youth“, Apr. 24, 2000.
“‘Unharmed woman awarded $104,000′” (Manitoba chemical exposure), May 6, 2002.
“‘Targeting “big food”‘” (Lemieux, National Post), Apr. 29-30, 2002.
“Pharmaceutical roundup” (silicone implants popular), Apr. 16-17, 2002.
“Web speech roundup” (flag logo on website), Mar. 25-26, 2002.
“Tribulations of the light prison sleeper“, Mar. 25-26, 2002; “Prison litigation: ‘Kittens and Rainbows Suites’” (cellmate’s smoking violates rights), Jan. 11-13; “Paroled prisoner: pay for not supervising me“, Jan. 4-6, 2002.
“Couldn’t order 7-Up in French” (suing Air Canada for $525,000), Mar. 18, 2002; “Gotta regulate ‘em all” (Quebec official upset that Pok?n cards not in French), Dec. 16, 1999.
“Stop, they said” (Manitoba: stop sign too vague?), Feb. 4-5, 2002.
“Planners tie up land for twenty years” (plus B.C. land use story), Jan. 18-20, 2002.
Family law, 2002: “‘Avoiding court is best defence’” (Dave Brown), Jan. 14-15. 2001: “‘Crying wolf’” (Christie Blatchford on sexual abuse charges), Oct. 30; “Why she’s quitting law practice” (Karen Selick), Aug. 13-14; “Canadian court: divorce settlements never final“, May 15; “‘Victim is sued for support’“, Feb. 9-11; “Solomon’s child” (Donna LaFramboise), Jan. 26-28. 2000: “Pilloried, broke, alone” (LaFramboise on “deadbeat dads”), April 10. 1999: “Down repressed-memory lane: distracted when she signed” (Ont. judge voids separation agreement), Dec. 29-30.
“Front-row spectator sues ‘reckless’ exotic dancer” (B.C.), Jan. 7-8, 2002; “Embarrassing Lawsuit Hall of Fame” (injured by exotic dancer in Ottawa), Aug. 14, 2000; “‘Toronto Torch’ age-bias suit” (stripper in Brantford), May 23, 2000.
“Overlawyered schools roundup” (challenge to Ontario standards), Dec. 7-9, 2001.
“Columnist-fest” (asylum policies), Nov. 27, 2001; “Opponents of profiling, still in the driver’s seat” (Air Canada), Nov. 2-4; “Security holes: to the North…” (anti-terrorism security), Sept. 14-16, 2001.
“‘Hate speech’ law invoked against anti-American diatribe“, Oct. 17-18, 2001; “Most unsettling thing we’ve heard about Canada in a while” (hate speech laws), Dec. 17-19, 1999.
“‘Hama to sue bridge owners over her daughter’s fall’” (Capilano Suspension Bridge, Vancouver), Oct. 8, 2001.
“Fear of losing welfare benefits deemed coercive” (N.S.), Oct. 3-4, 2001.
Zero tolerance, etc.: “John Leo on Overlawyered.com” (Halifax: snowball-like gestures banned), Aug. 15, 2001; “Fateful fiction” (Cornwall, Ont.), Jan. 30, 2001; “Hug protest in Halifax” (school’s no-physical-contact policy), March 2, 2000; “Zero tolerance roundup” (Windsor: 11-year-old’s fictional school essay), Dec. 27-28, 1999.
“Why she’s quitting law practice” (Karen Selick), Aug. 13-14, 2001.
“Welcome Bourque.org readers“, June 26, 2001.
“‘Dead teen’s family sues Take Our Kids To Work’“, May 31, 2001.
“Holiday special” (misconduct by N.B. lawyer), May 28, 2001.
“‘Insect lawyer ad creates buzz’” (Torys, Toronto), May 23, 2001; “‘Not-a-Lawyer’” (Vancouverite’s business card), Feb. 10-11, 2000.
“Columnist-fest” (Mark Steyn on Indian residential schools), May 1, 2001; “Bankrupting Canadian churches?“, Aug. 23-24, 2000.
“Canada’s secret legal aid“, April 10, 2001.
“Putting the ‘special’ in special sauce” (alleged rat in Big Mac”, March 29, 2001.
“Saves her friend’s life, then sues her“, Jan. 3, 2001.
“Canada reins in expert witnesses“, Nov. 22-23, 2000.
“Malpractice outlays on rise in Canada“, Oct. 2, 2000.
“‘Mother sues over lack of ice time for goalie son’” (Quebec), Sept. 11, 2000.
“‘Mugging victim “stupid”, judge says’” (Winnipeg case), Aug. 2, 2000.
“‘Skydivers don’t sue’“, May 26, 2000 (update July 6: Canadian diver prevails in suit against teammate).
“Cash for trash, and worse” (“Vancouver solution” for Microsoft?), June 26, 2000.
“Welcome Montreal Gazette readers” (columnist Doug Camilli cites this website), June 7, 2000; “Trop d’avocats.com” (we are recommended by the Gazette), Oct. 18, 1999.
“‘More lawyers than we really need?’” (aftermath of Walkerton, Ont. E. Coli outbreak: columnist cites this website), June 2-4, 2000.
“Less suing = less suffering” (Sasketchewan no-fault auto study), April 24, 2000 (& update June 26).
“Swissair crash aftermath” (Peggy’s Cove disaster in U.S. courts), March 14, 2000; “Montreal Gazette ‘Lawsuit of the Year’” (bagpipers sue Swissair for lost income), Jan. 17, 2000.
“‘Girl puts head under guillotine; sues when hurt’“, March 8, 2000.
“Ontario judge okays hockey-fan lawsuit“, Jan. 12, 2000; “Spreading to Canada?” (hockey fan sues Alexei Yashin), Oct. 20, 1999.
“Update: toilet of terror” (Canadian tourist visits Starbucks in NYC, sues), Dec. 8, 1999; “Starbucks toilet lawsuit“, Dec. 1, 1999.
“Mounties vs. your dish” (satellite regulations), Nov. 1, 1999.
“Sensitivity in cow-naming“, Oct. 21, 1999; “Weekend reading” (Bugs Bunny television complaint), Aug. 21-22, 1999. “You may already not be a winner” (prisoner suit over sweepstakes entry), Aug. 23, 1999.
For a discussion of the loser-pays principle, which Canada has retained to a considerable extent in its courts, see our loser-pays page
October 30-31 – “Give It Back to the Indians?” Just out: our editor has an article in the new issue of City Journal (Autumn) on how the sad history of Indian land claim litigation in the Northeast — in which, over the past 25 years, the courts have allowed tribes to revive territorial claims thought to have been resolved as long ago as the presidency of George Washington — may prefigure the misery in store if our legal system gives the go-ahead to lawsuits over slavery reparations. (DURABLE LINK)
October 30-31 – Deflating Spitzer’s crusade. Long but incisive article by Michael Lewis challenging the much-bruited notion that Wall Street skullduggery was mainly responsible for the boom and bust in tech stocks, and specifically deflating the pretensions of New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who’s positioned himself at the forefront of the resulting legal crusade. Among Lewis’s key points: 1) the boom was no mere artifact of Wall Street hype, big firms like Merrill Lynch having mostly followed the investing public into tech mania rather than leading them there; 2) the line between visionary rethinking of current business practice and hallucinatory speculation was nowhere near as clear at the time as it seems in hindsight; 3) the supposedly occult conflict of interest between research and underwriting was hidden in such plain sight that anyone paying half-attention to the Street should have been aware of it; 4) the boom — even given its bust — did a great deal of social good; 5) the quest to clean up the stock-touting process obscures from the public the real lesson it would do well to absorb, which is that stock-picking advice from brokerages is generally useless whether sincere or not; 6) it’s not hard to read emails as establishing guilt if you let lawyers cherry-pick a few of them out of thousands while dropping their context. (Michael Lewis, “In Defense of the Boom”, New York Times Magazine, Oct. 27). For a contrasting view, calling Lewis’s article “nonsense”, see Peter Eavis, “The Billboard: Boom Boom”, New York Press, Oct. 28. On how Spitzer came into possession of the Merrill Lynch emails that enabled him to stage-manage much of this summer’s news flow, see Nicholas Varchaver, “Lawyers Target More Than Merrill”, Fortune, Jun. 10 (a plaintiffs’ lawyer evidently sent them over after settling a suit with the brokerage; the resulting Spitzer-driven publicity brought a bonanza of new cases to the lawyer’s door). (DURABLE LINK)
October 30-31 – Mistrial in Providence lead-paint case. “The six-member jury sent a note to the judge shortly after 2 p.m. that it could not reach a unanimous decision on whether the paints constituted a public nuisance.” (“Mistrial declared in landmark lead paint trial”, Providence Journal, Oct. 29; AP/Law.com, Oct. 30). “Four jurors [on the six-person panel] sided with the paint companies and two voted for the state. … About one minute after the mistrial became public, the stock prices of several defendants began shooting up …. The Sherwin-Williams Co. alone increased in value by nearly half a billion dollars.” (Peter B. Lord, “Trailblazing lead paint trial ends in deadlock”, Providence Journal, Oct. 30). So it’s back to surface-prep work for the closely watched effort to cover the world with litigation (see Oct. 28), and trial lawyers can’t be happy about the fact that their chief ally in the matter, Rhode Island attorney general Sheldon Whitehouse, will be departing office shortly. Have they painted themselves into a corner? Whitehouse for his part blames the paint companies for being “litigious”, recalling the famous French saying: “It is a very vicious animal. When attacked, it defends itself.” Update: see also “The Hand of Providence” (editorial), Wall Street Journal, Oct 31, reprinted at Texans for Lawsuit Reform site. (DURABLE LINK)
October 30-31 – “Nannies to sue for racial bias”. Great Britain: “Familes who hire nannies, cleaners and gardeners in their own homes face being sued for racial discrimination under a major shake-up of race relations laws. … Under plans to be published by the Home Office in the next fortnight, the Race Relations Act is expected to be tightened to include private householders as part of sweeping changes expected to trigger a flood of new tribunal cases. Householders could be taken to tribunals if they behave in a racist manner towards domestic help, for example, by refusing to hire a black carer for children. … The only exemption would be if they can show a ‘genuine occupational requirement’ to hire someone of a particular racial group — such as an elderly Muslim woman who wanted a home help who was also a Muslim. Critics will argue that the change could cause a legal nightmare for ordinary families, who could face bills for damages running into thousands of pounds unless they read up on the intricacies of employment law.”
Initial opposition to the new proposals appears to be tepid at best: thus the Conservative party’s shadow industry minister merely voices doubts about whether the measure is “likely to be effective,” while a spokesman for the Confederation of British Industry “said it would broadly welcome the changes,” though the CBI did express misgivings about another of the proposals in the antibias package, under which “for the first time the burden of proof in all employment tribunals would …be shifted so that it is effectively up to employers to prove they are not racist, rather than workers to prove that there was discrimination, so long as there is a prima facie case to answer.” (Gaby Hinsliff, The Observer (U.K.), Oct. 20). (DURABLE LINK)
October 30-31 – Monday: 13,555 pages served on Overlawyered.com. October 28 was one of our busiest days yet on the site, with traffic boosted by reader interest in our link roundups on the Moscow hostage episode (especially the WSJ‘s “Best of the Web” mention) on top of the 4,000-6,000 pages that we’re accustomed to serve on a more ordinary weekday. Thanks for your support!
P.S. Oops! Our unfamiliarity with our new statistics program led us to overcount: the Oct. 28 figure should have instead been 9,800 pages served, and the “regular” range 3,500-5,000. Still pretty good. (DURABLE LINK)
October 28-29 – Welcome WSJ Best of the Web readers. Readers looking for our earlier coverage of the Moscow theater siege will find it here and here.
MORE COVERAGE: Among accounts of the theater storming based on firsthand interviews are Alice Lagnado, “As dawn neared, a light mist suddenly came down”, Times (U.K.), Oct. 28, and Mark MacKinnon, “‘All they had to do was push the button’”, Globe and Mail (Canada), Oct. 28. The Bush White House declined to blame the Russian authorities for the hostage toll, saying responsibility rests with the captors: “The Russian government and the Russian people are victims of this tragedy, and the tragedy was caused as a result of the terrorists who took hostages and booby-trapped the building and created dire circumstances,” said spokesman Ari Fleischer. ( “White House: Blame Lies With Captors”, AP/Yahoo, Oct. 27). Other commentaries: Kieran Healy (Oct. 27), Mark Kleiman (Oct. 27); Mark Riebling reader comments. (DURABLE LINK)
October 28-29 – Ambulances, paramedics sued more. “A growing ambulance industry is learning that malpractice suits are not just for doctors anymore. … [one defense lawyer] says there’s a tough lesson to be learned in all ambulance cases. ‘You can do everything right, and you can still get sued.’” Includes a revealing quote from a Boston plaintiff’s lawyer about how he tries to get jurors so upset at alleged bumbling by ambulance operators that they “make short work” of the crucial question of whether that conduct was actually responsible for the patient’s injury. (Tresa Baldas, “Mean Streets”, National Law Journal, Oct. 23). (DURABLE LINK)
October 28-29 – Anticipatory law enforcement. Following the lead of some other jurisdictions, the city of Cincinnati has adopted new ordinances targeting men who patronize prostitutes (“johns”) by allowing the city to seize their cars. The ordinances don’t take effect until next month, which hasn’t kept the city police department’s vice unit from carrying out a significant number of car impoundments already, 13 in one week. “Even though the ordinances haven’t gone into effect yet, [Lt. John] Gallespie said the cars were impounded ‘for safekeeping.’” (Craig Garretson, “Police seize ‘johns’ cars”, Cincinnati Post, Oct. 21). (DURABLE LINK)
October 28-29 – R.I. lead paint case goes to jury. Rhode Island’s lawsuit against the lead paint industry, a concoction of ambitious trial lawyers and the politicians they love, has now gone to a jury after a two-month trial that’s been curiously underpublicized considering the case’s implications for American industry (“Jury deliberates for second day in lead paint case”, AP/CNN, Oct. 25). The state “is pursuing the novel claim that the defendant manufacturers and distributors of lead paint or lead created a public nuisance and should be held responsible for cleaning up what’s remaining in thousands of buildings in the state. The first phase of the trial will consider only one question — whether the presence of lead paint in Rhode Island buildings constitutes a public nuisance.” If the jury votes in favor of that theory, later phases of trial will consider such issues as fault and damages. (Margaret Cronin Fisk, “Rhode Island to Try First State Suit Over Lead Paint”, National Law Journal, Aug. 19).
Perhaps the best journalistic treatment we’ve seen of this travesty is found in a Forbes cover story from last year that is available now in fee-based archives (Michael Freedman, “Turning Lead Into Gold”, Forbes, May 14, 2001). The article explores how the nation’s richest tort law firm, Charleston, S.C.-based tobacco-asbestos powerhouse Ness Motley, moved into Rhode Island and quickly made itself the state’s largest political contributor, around the same time as it was picking up a contingency fee contract from state attorney general Sheldon Whitehouse to represent the state in the lead paint litigation. (Whitehouse proceeded to run for governor this year, but lost narrowly in the Democratic primary). To date, while trial lawyers have recruited numerous cities, counties and school districts around the country to sue paint makers, they have not persuaded any other states to join Rhode Island in its action (see our commentary of Jun. 7, 2001). At the same time, there are plenty of reasons to mistrust the contention that a “lead poisoning epidemic” can somehow be blamed for educational failure and crime among young people in inner-city neighborhoods like South Providence, R.I. Levels of lead exposure once typical of American children have now been retrospectively redefined as “poisoning”, thus ensuring the sense of a continuing crisis (see our commentary of Jun. 8-10, 2001). See also Steven Malanga, “Lead Paint Scam”, New York Post, Jun. 24. Update Oct. 30-31: judge declares mistrial after jury deadlock. (DURABLE LINK)
October 28-29 – Looking back on EEOC v. Sears. Among the most monumental and hard-fought discrimination lawsuits ever was the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s years-long courtroom crusade against Sears, Roebuck during the 1980s over the statistical “underrepresentation” of women in some of its employment categories, such as hardware and commission sales. (Sears won, and the case became one of the Commission’s most humiliating defeats.) In one of the controversies spawned by the case, Barnard College historian Rosalind Rosenberg was attacked by many colleagues in the field of women’s studies for supposedly betraying women’s equality by allowing her scholarship to be used in the retailer’s defense. Now John Rosenberg, who was formerly married to Rosalind Rosenberg and who also worked in the Sears defense, offers a partial memoir of the episode (Oct. 25) on a new weblog titled Discriminations in which his focus will be “on the theory and practice of discrimination, and how it is reported and analyzed.” (The piece begins with an introductory riff concerning UC Irvine history professor Jon Weiner, one of those assailing Rosalind Rosenberg in the mid-1980s controversy; Weiner recently caused many a jaw to drop by stepping forward in the Nation to defend disgraced Arming America author Michael Bellesiles.) (via InstaPundit). (DURABLE LINK)
October 28-29 – Satirical-disclaimer Hall of Fame. Lawyer-driven warning labels and disclaimer notices are easy to play for laughs, and readers often bring funny satires to our attention (like Dave Barry’s). Few are worked out in as much detail, however, as this splash page on the website of The Chaser, an Australian humor magazine (scroll down): “Maintain good posture at all times while reading … may cause paper cuts … Please avoid mixing The Chaser with water and glue, which could … cause some readers to be caught in a papier mache death trap. … The Chaser is flammable. Do not set fire to your copy of The Chaser, whether with a match, cigarette lighter … [or] shining a magnifying glass on a particular little spot. … Do not shred The Chaser and use it as confetti. … We make no guarantees as to the longevity of any marital unions formed whilst using The Chaser in any part of the ceremony …”. And a whole lot more — give it a look. (DURABLE LINK)
October 26-27 – Moscow hostage crisis, updated. According to Russian authorities, at least 118 hostages were killed and more than 700 were freed after security forces stormed the theater; most of the 50 terrorist captors were also killed and all or nearly all of the rest captured. After the terrorists started executing hostages, the crowd of captives had begun to flee in panic; security forces had also pumped a kind of sleeping gas into the theater. (“Moscow Hostage Death Toll Up to 118″, AP/ABC News, Oct. 27; “Russian forces storm siege theatre”, BBC, Oct. 26; Moscow Times). Contradicting earlier accounts from authorities, “Moscow’s chief physician said Sunday that all but one of the 117 hostages who died … were killed by the effects of gas used to subdue their captors.” (AP/Washington Post, Oct. 27). “If the theatre had not been stormed, all hostages would have been killed, the Interfax journalist who was among the hostages, Olga Chernyak, said.” (Interfax/Moscow Times, Oct. 26, and scroll for more entries). More links: AP/ABC News, Oct. 26; Washington Post, Oct. 27; BBC, Oct. 27; Damian Penny. Dilacerator offers a commentary (Oct. 26), as does Natalie Solent (Oct. 27). Thanks to InstaPundit and Eugene Volokh for their links to our extensive coverage below.
More: London’s Telegraph reports that it “has learned that a number of Arab fighters, believed to be of Saudi Arabian and Yemeni origin, were among the group that seized control of the theatre. ‘There were definitely Arab terrorists in the building with links to al-Qa’eda,’ said a senior Western diplomat. … Russian officials said that the hostage-takers had made several calls to the United Arab Emirates during the siege.” (Christina Lamb and Ben Aris, “Russians probe al-Qa’eda link as Moscow siege ends with 150 dead”, Sunday Telegraph (UK), Oct. 27). Although the Moscow terrorists (like those who carried out the hijacking of United Flight 93) had magnified public terror by allowing their captives to use cell phones to call their families, the tactic once again backfired, because the resulting exchange of information made it easier to thwart the terror plans: see Preston Mendenhall, “Cell phones were rebels’ downfall”, MS/NBC, Oct. 26. And Russia’s Gazeta reports that: “A 27-year-old resident of Chechnya has been detained by Moscow law enforcers on suspicion of having carried out the October 19 car bomb attack on a McDonald’s restaurant” in which one was killed and seven injured. Authorities had previously sought to blame the bombing on gangland rivalries, but “in the light of the recent events in Moscow, the prosecutor’s office does not rule out that the explosion may have been a terrorist attack.” (“Suspect detained in McDonald’s blast inquiry”, Gazeta.ru, Oct. 25). (DURABLE LINK)
October 25-27 – Updates. New developments in cases we’ve followed:
* “Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Charles E. Ramos on Tuesday froze further payments on a $625 million arbitration award to the six law firms that represented New York state in its litigation against the tobacco industry until he finishes reviewing the reasonableness of the sum.” (Daniel Wise, “Judge Freezes $625M Tobacco Award to Law Firms”, New York Law Journal, Oct. 23) (see Jul. 30-31).
* “The Canadian Transportation Agency has dismissed the complaint of an obese Calgary woman who argued her size was a disability and that airlines shouldn’t make her pay extra for a larger seat. ‘Being unable to fit in a seat should not be enough evidence of the existence of a disability as many people experience discomfort in the seat,’ the agency said in a decision released Wednesday. Calgary law professor Linda McKay-Panos, who described herself in documents as ‘morbidly obese,’ launched the process in 1997 after having to pay Air Canada for 1.5 seats because of her size.” (Judy Monchuk, “Federal board nixes Calgary woman’s bid for seat-price break for obese flyers”, Canadian Press, Oct. 23)(see Dec. 20, 2000). And in the United Kingdom, a “woman injured while squeezed next to an obese passenger on a trans-Atlantic flight has been given £13,000 ($20,000)” by Virgin Atlantic Airways. (“Woman squashed by plane passenger”, CNN, Oct. 22).
* In Paris, a panel of three judges has declared French writer Michel Houellebecq not guilty of inciting racial hatred after he was sued by four Muslim groups for delivering remarks contemptuous of Islam (“French author cleared of race hate”, BBC, Oct. 22)(see Aug. 23-25, Sept. 18-19).
* “A three-judge panel of the Michigan Court of Appeals has tossed a $29.2 million civil court judgment against The Jenny Jones Show, after deciding the syndicated chatfest should not be held liable for protecting a guest who was gunned down after revealing he had a crush on another man.” (Josh Grossberg, “‘Jenny Jones’ Vindicated”, E! Online, Oct. 23). The case is another setback for controversial Michigan attorney Geoffrey Fieger, who promptly launched a characteristically intemperate attack on the appeals judges (Stephen W. Huber, “Court tosses $29M award against ‘Jenny Jones Show’”, Oakland (Mich.) Press, Oct. 24) (see May 31, 2001). More: Michigan’s LitiGator (Oct. 25).
* “Voting 2-1, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority’s (SEPTA) physical fitness test for job applicants of its transit police force is perfectly legal — even though it has a ‘disparate impact’ on women — because it serves as a true measure of ‘the minimum qualifications necessary for the successful performance of the job.’ …the plaintiffs claimed that the test discriminates against women because it requires all applicants for the SEPTA police force to run 1.5 miles in 12 minutes.” (Shannon P. Duffy, “3rd Circuit Rules Fitness Test for Police Force Applicants Legal”, The Legal Intelligencer, Oct. 16) (see Sept. 15, 1999, Oct. 5-7, 2001). “Interestingly, two female appellate judges joined in the opinion rejecting this claim of sex discrimination, while a male appellate judge dissented,” notes Howard Bashman (Oct. 15).
* In Australia, a judge has ruled against the Pentecostal worshiper who sued claiming a “church had been negligent by not providing someone to catch her when she was ‘slain in the spirit’” during a 1996 service, causing her to fall down and strike her head on a carpeted concrete floor. (Kelly Burke, “Church not liable for Lord’s early fallers”, Sydney Morning Herald, Oct. 19)(see Oct. 1-2). (DURABLE LINK)
October 24 – Pa. statehouse race: either way, Big Law wins. “In a race that will easily break Pennsylvania gubernatorial spending records, the top givers are lawyers, by far. … [Republican Mike] Fisher has received $125,000 since June from two law firms he named, as attorney general, to handle a state lawsuit against tobacco companies.” (see Jan. 10, 2000). “But the firms, which split $50 million in legal fees, have hedged their bets by also donating $107,000 to [Democrat Ed] Rendell.” And the Pennsylvania Trial Lawyers Association has endorsed Rendell, who is considered less likely than Fisher to support curbs on medical malpractice lawsuits. (Tom Infield and Rose Ciotta, “Lawyers top givers to Fisher, Rendell”, Philadelphia Inquirer, Oct. 22). As mayor of Philadelphia, Rendell also made himself a booster of the abusive campaign of municipal litigation against gun manufacturers, though he held back from filing an actual suit given the unpopularity of such a move with the non-urban voters needed to win a statewide race in Pennsylvania (see Dec. 22, 2000). (DURABLE LINK)
October 24 – Suit: schoolkids shouldn’t attend rodeo. Two animal rights groups have filed suit “asking a San Francisco Superior Court judge to keep Bay Area schoolchildren from going to the free Grand National Rodeo day for students, which will be held at the Cow Palace on Thursday and may be repeated next year.” As many as 9,000 students are expected to attend the event. “Gina Snow, a spokeswoman for the San Francisco Unified School District, said children are only allowed to attend with parental permission, and that the decisions to participate are made by individual teachers.” Attorney David Blatte of Berkeley “focuses all his work on ‘animal law’”. (Dan Reed, “Suit: Rodeo bad for kids”, San Jose Mercury News, Oct. 23). And Matthew Scully’s new book Dominion, a conservative’s defense of animal welfare, “asks all the right questions about animal rights, even if it doesn’t canvass all the possible answers”, according to the summary of a review by Christopher Hitchens in The Atlantic (“Political Animals”, Nov.) (DURABLE LINK)
October 24 – “California Court Upholds $290 Million Injury Jury Award Against Ford”. “The California Supreme Court let stand on Wednesday a $290 million personal injury jury award levied against Ford Motor Co. stemming from a Bronco rollover accident in 1993. The justices, without publicly commenting, decided at their private weekly conference to uphold what Ford, in court briefs, called the nation’s largest personal injury award ever affirmed by an appellate court.” (Quicken/AP, Oct. 23; Mike McKee, “California Justices Let Stand $290M Award Against Ford”, The Recorder, Oct. 24). When the original trial verdict was reported, we looked in some detail (Aug. 24 and Sept. 17-19, 1999; see also Aug. 27, 2002) at the very curious influences that held sway during the jury’s deliberations, including one juror’s lurid dream revealing Ford’s guilt, and another’s misrecollection of a “60 Minutes” episode which purportedly proved the company’s bad faith. (DURABLE LINK)
October 24 – Russia’s fight, and ours. “Gunmen identifying themselves as Chechens took more than 700 people hostage inside a Moscow theater Wednesday night, threatening to kill some of the hostages and telling police they had mined portions of the building.” (“Chechen gunmen seize Moscow theater”, CNN, Oct. 23; Michael Wines, “Chechens Seize Moscow Theater, Taking as Many as 600 Hostages”, New York Times, Oct. 24 (reg); AP/ABC, “Rebels Take Moscow Audience Hostage”, Oct. 23). “Local media said children, Muslims and foreigners who could show their passports were allowed to leave the building. The reports could not be confirmed.” (Natalia Yefimova, Torrey Clark and Lyuba Pronina, “Armed Chechens Seize Moscow Theater”, Moscow Times, Oct. 24). Chechen militants have repeatedly seized civilian hostages in groups of hundreds and even thousands, as well as claiming credit for railway-station bombings in Russia (“Chechen rebels’ hostage history”, BBC, Oct. 24; “Chechen rebels hold at least 1,000 hostages in hospital”, CNN, Jan. 9, 1996; Adnan Malik, “Hijackers Free Women and Kids”, AP, Mar. 15, 2001; “Separatists’ history of hostages and horror”, Sydney Morning Herald, Oct. 24). Since 9/11 U.S. officials have been less inclined to dispute “Russia’s long-standing claim that the Chechen rebellion, which spills over into neighboring Caucasus republics, is not just a local independence movement, but has become a full-blown subsidiary of the global Islamic terror network headed by [Osama] bin Laden.” (Fred Weir, “A new terror-war front: the Caucasus”, Christian Science Monitor, Feb. 26). Also see, on the al-Qaeda-Chechnya connection, Mark Riebling and R. P. Eddy, “Jihad@Work”, National Review Online, Oct. 24, and BBC, Oct. 23. The Moscow Times has a list of the names of the Westerners who are being held hostage, who include three Americans, two Britons, two Australians, and a Canadian, as well as various others (Kevin O’Flynn, “Europeans, Americans Inside Theater”, Oct. 25). Asparagirl (Oct. 23) wouldn’t be surprised if it happened here.
More: In “footage aired by Qatar’s al-Jazeera satellite TV”, a chador-clad woman who said she was one of the Chechen hostage-takers said: “We have chosen to die in Moscow and we will kill hundreds of infidels.” (“We’ll kill hundreds of infidels: Hostage-taker”, AFP/Times of India, Oct. 24). “‘I swear by God we are more keen on dying than you are keen on living,’ a black-clad male said in the broadcast believed to have been recorded on Wednesday.” Another hostage-taker, while denying that the terrorists were operating as part of al-Qaeda, told the BBC: “We have come to die. …we want to be in paradise.” (BBC, “Hostage-takers ‘ready to die’”, Oct. 25). The Russian press is treating the unfolding events as “Russia’s Sept. 11″. (BBC, Oct. 25). In an echo that Americans will find familiar, “Many channels have broadcast chilling messages from the hostages themselves, calling from their mobile phones.” (“Distant war comes to Moscow”, BBC, Oct. 24).
According to London’s Evening Standard, the terrorists are disinclined to release any more of their foreign hostages because they suspect that international interest in the episode might wane if they did so. (“Britons still held in Moscow siege”, Oct. 25). Reportedly one of the American hostages, Sandy Alan Booker, 49, who was vacationing in Moscow, hails from Oklahoma City, Okla. (“Chechen Gunmen Threaten to Begin Killing Hostages at Dawn”, AP/FoxNews, Oct. 25). Update: Russian security forces storm theater, ending siege, with more than 100 hostages killed along with most of the captors: see Oct. 26.
FURTHER: Some London, Broadway and European theater owners have stepped up security, but Andre Ptaszynski, chief executive of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s chain of 14 London theaters, virtually boasts of not taking such threats seriously, explaining that an outrage by the Irish Republican Army against the West End is considered unlikely; apparently Ptaszynski is unable to think of any other groups that might harbor terrorist designs on London. (Matt Wolf, “Some Theaters on Alert After Siege”, AP/Yahoo, Oct. 25; “London theatres increase security”, BBC, Oct. 25 (via Jen Taliaferro). Riebling and Eddy, in NRO, note: “the tactics of Chechen jihadists are regarded by the FBI as a possible indicator of al Qaeda methods in the U.S.” (DURABLE LINK)
October 23 – Batch of reader letters. We’ve been remiss in keeping up with the inbox, but here are eight letters on subjects that include lawyers’ penchant for doing things expensively, a sane damage award in Ireland, Enron’s lawyers, lawsuits over avocados and anchovies, suitable targets of gamblers’ suits, George W. Bush’s record on tort reform, whether free speech should have a racism exception, and Western wildfires. More letters are on deck for later, too. (DURABLE LINK)
October 23 – Artificial hearts experimental? Who knew? “The widow of artificial-heart recipient James Quinn yesterday sued the maker of the device, the hospital where it was implanted, and the patient advocate who helped Quinn decide to have the surgery.” The 51-year-old man survived more than eight months after receiving the mechanical heart last November, but his “initially remarkable recovery was followed by months in the hospital.” The suit says Quinn had “no quality of life and his essential human dignity had been taken from him.” “Irene Quinn said yesterday that she and her husband did not know what they were getting into when they joined the clinical trial. They thought the machine would save his life, she said. She said they should have been told more about what earlier patients had experienced and that it should have been made more clear just how experimental the device was.” (Stacey Burling, “Widow sues artificial-heart maker”, Philadelphia Inquirer, Oct. 17; “Lawsuit over artificial heart”, CBS News, Oct. 17; MedRants, Oct. 18). (DURABLE LINK)
October 22 – “Judge: Disabilities Act doesn’t cover Web”. An important ruling, but one that’s unlikely to be the last word, on a controversy we’ve covered extensively in the past: “A federal judge ruled Friday that Southwest Airlines does not have to revamp its Web site to make it more accessible to the blind. In the first case of its kind, U.S. District Judge Patricia Seitz said the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) applies only to physical spaces, such as restaurants and movie theaters, and not to the Internet.” Quotes our editor who mentions the possible headaches the ADA could pose even to a modest site like this one, if it turns out to apply to the web. (Declan McCullagh, CNet/News.com, Oct. 21)(opinion). More: Matthew Haggman, “Judge Tosses Suit That Said ADA Applies to Business Web Sites”, Miami Daily Business Review, Oct. 25. (DURABLE LINK)
October 22 – “Nanny Bloomberg”. This site’s editor also has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today on the New York mayor’s crusade against smoking in bars. It’s available only to online subscribers of the Journal, unfortunately. (DURABLE LINK)
October 22 – “‘Penney’s prevails in shopper suit”. A Tennessee Court of Appeals judge has upheld a lower court’s rejection of a $600,000 lawsuit by Carolyn and Robert L. Wells against the retailer J.C. Penney. Mrs. Wells had told the court that she had been shopping for collectible crystal figurines on sale at a Penney store in Shelby County when an ill-mannered fellow shopper wrested two crystal bears from her hands, inflicting injuries on her shoulder, neck and back. However, Judge Holly K. Lillard said that the confrontation, which “demonstrates the dangers of the cutthroat arena of after-Christmas bargain shopping,” was one whose particulars the store could not have foreseen. (Tom Sharp, AP/GoMemphis.com, Oct. 12). (DURABLE LINK)
October 21 – Rethinking grandparent visitation. Among the litigation-encouraging developments in family law in recent years has been the rise of laws enabling grandparents to sue demanding rights to visit their grandchildren even against the wishes of a fit parent. But both courts and lawmakers are growing disenchanted with such laws. One Seattle attorney charges that grandparents with time on their hands engage in “recreational litigation”. (Annie Hsia, “About Grandma’s Visits …”, National Law Journal, Oct. 14). (DURABLE LINK)
October 21 – “Judicial Hellholes”. After surveying its members, the American Tort Reform Association presents a report describing the most frequently identified “Judicial Hellholes”, localities in which litigation abuse is common and civil defendants find it hard to get a fair trial. On the list are Alameda, Los Angeles and San Francisco counties, California; notorious counties in Mississippi, Illinois, and Texas; and others. Is your hometown court on the list? (“Bringing Justice to Judicial Hellholes 2002″, report in PDF format). (DURABLE LINK)
October 21 – “Our friends are at war, too”. “The first soldier to die in combat in Afghanistan was an Australian. … We’re not just fellow infidels, but brothers on a field of battle that stretches from Manhattan to Bali. If the American media don’t understand that, then the American president needs to remind them.” (Mark Steyn, “Our friends are at war, too”, Chicago Sun-Times, Oct. 20). See Oct. 14; also Tom Allard and Mark Baker, “PM’s vow: we’ll get the bastards”, Sydney Morning Herald, Oct. 21; Tim Blair, “Killing terrorists wipes out terror”, The Australian, Oct. 17; Virginia Postrel (scroll to Oct. 17 and Oct. 16 posts). (DURABLE LINK)
October 21 – “Demand for more ugly people on TV”. “Lecturer Trond Andresen of the Norwegian Institute of Technology in Trondheim accuses the media of discriminating against the ugly and emphasizing beautiful people whenever possible. Andresen wants higher ugly quotas on television. ‘Ugly people should be spotlighted in the media in the same way that the media wishes to emphasize persons from ethnic minorities,’ Andresen, a lecture at the Department of Engineering Cybernetics, said to newspaper Bergens Tidende.” (Aftenposten, Oct. 17). (DURABLE LINK)
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August 5-15 – On hiatus. We’ll be taking a break for the next week and a half or so. While we’re away, check out the world’s funniest police log (Arcata, Calif.); the Manhattan Institute (with which our editor is associated), whose email announcement list you really ought to be on, and whose Center for Legal Policy has been publishing a series of important papers on such topics as asbestos litigation, class actions, and forum-shopping; and of course this site’s very own archives, which date back to July 1999, and which you can search. See you (more likely than not) on Friday, Aug. 16. (DURABLE LINK)
August 2-4 – Lawyer’s suit against airline: my seatmate was too fat. “A pretrial hearing is scheduled in an Ashland attorney’s civil lawsuit against an airline that sold him a seat next to an obese man. Philip Shafer will meet representatives from Delta Air Lines Inc. in Ashland Municipal Court at 3:30 p.m. Sept. 19. Shafer seeks $9,500 from Delta. The suit stems from a two-hour November flight from New Orleans to Cincinnati. Shafer claims Delta breached its contract to provide him with a full seat and reasonable comfort because the obese man crowded onto his seat.” (Mark Caudill, “Ashland attorney sues over ‘jet jam’”, Mansfield, Ohio News Journal, Aug. 1) (see Dec. 20, 2000). (DURABLE LINK)
August 2-4 – Dense yet sieve-like. “The INS has no real idea who’s within America’s borders. One reason they have no idea is because it takes them a decade to process a routine green-card application by a highly-employable, high-earning, law-abiding citizen of America’s closest ally.” (Mark Steyn, National Post (Canada), Aug. 1). (DURABLE LINK)
August 2-4 – Welcome Fox News viewers/ readers. We suggested on Tuesday that the media should take a closer look at the tobacco-fee saga unfolding in the Manhattan courtroom of Justice Charles Ramos, and Fox News Channel wasted no time stepping into the breach; its news coverage gave this site’s editor generous time on screen to describe the case’s significance. However, none of the lawyers requesting the $13,000/hour fees were willing to go on camera to defend those fees — funny about that. (“Tobacco Settlement a Windfall for Lawyers”, Fox News, Aug. 1). And as if that weren’t enough publicity for one week, our editor is also interviewed on camera in a Fox News segment on school lawsuits (Liza Porteus, “Flunking Out of School? Get a Lawyer”, Fox News, Aug. 2) (DURABLE LINK)
August 2-4 – LexisOne “Site of the Month”. We’re one of the picks for the month of August at the major legal research service’s Legal Web Site Directory. (DURABLE LINK)
August 1 – You mean I’m suing that nice doctor? When Hazel Norton of Rolling Fork, Mississippi, read that the drug Propulsid might cause harm, she stopped taking it and signed up for a lawsuit. “‘Actually, I didn’t get hurt by Propulsid,’ Norton, who had the drug prescribed for her heartburn, said. But because she had taken the drug, she said she thought she could join a class-action lawsuit ‘and I might get a couple of thousand dollars.’
“The last thing she intended, Norton said, was for Kooyer to be sued. [Dr. Kirk Kooyer, who "arrived in the Mississippi Delta in 1994 to serve the poor."] ‘He’s really a good doctor, very intelligent,’ said Norton, who’s been Kooyer’s patient since 1994. ‘He makes you feel so comfortable.’
“She said she intended for the drug company to be sued, but that lawyers told her it would be better for her case to sue Kooyer in order to keep the case in Mississippi. After finding out Kooyer had been sued, she said she wrote a letter to her attorneys, objecting. ‘I’m kind of upset. I do not want him leaving because of all the suits,’ she said. ‘If we run off all the doctors, what are the people gonna do?’ Kooyer was eventually dropped from the litigation but not before he made up his mind to leave Mississippi.” (Jerry Mitchell, “Tort reform: just what the doctor ordered?”, Jackson Clarion-Ledger, Jul. 29 — many other good details)(more on Propulsid suits: Oct. 1, 2001; FindLaw). (DURABLE LINK)
August 1 – Sic ‘em on Segway. As the Los Angeles Times reported July 23 (registration process too frustrating to give them a link), one law firm is already announcing plans to organize lawsuits against Segway (also known as “It” or “Ginger”), the smart scooter whose backers think it could revolutionize urban transportation (see Dec. 13, 2001). “We believe that the Segway HT is potentially a legal nightmare and will be the basis for many lawsuits, both from the corporate and consumer side,” explains the website, which sports the tastefully restrained name of Sue-It.com and was put up by a “successful corporate law firm” calling itself the “USA Immigration Law Center”.
Wait a minute. Immigration? Well, that might shed light on why the “successful corporate law firm” argues its case in language that sometimes reads as if it has been inexactly translated into English from a foreign tongue. “We are successful corporate law firm with offices in Washington, DC and Baltimore named the USAILC. We are planning to further specialize in new areas associated with suing It [Segway]. … [W]e view the potential onslaught of cases against It as more than just a basis for strong financial profits. … Get ready to Sue-It!” A bunch of wild and crazy guys, no? As for the website USAILC puts up to promote its major line of practice, among its first sentences is the following: “The United States of America Immigration Law Center is the official online home for US Immigration Legal Matters and Issues” — which brought us up short since we had always imagined that “the official” site was this one. (DURABLE LINK)
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May 31-June 2 – Welcome Fox News viewers/readers. Our editor is interviewed on air and quoted in print in this piece on the quest to make casinos and lottery operators the next Big Tobacco (Alisyn Camerota, “Trial Lawyers Target Gambling”, Fox News, May 31) (see May 20-21). (DURABLE LINK)
May 31-June 2 – “After stabbing son, mom sues doctors”. Pennsylvania: “Janice Taylor, who stabbed her 4-year-old son two dozen times outside their Lake Ariel home in 2000, is suing her doctors for not adequately responding to her psychosis as she neared the end of a pregnancy.” (Scranton Times Tribune, May 29). (via WSJ OpinionJournal “Best of the Web“, May 30). (DURABLE LINK)
May 31-June 2 – Activist judges north of the border. In the United States judicial activism has been falling into gradual disrepute for a quarter century, but in Canada many highly placed jurists seem eager to boogie like it’s 1975: the Ontario Court of Appeal has just struck down as unconstitutional one of the central planks in welfare reform, the principle that recipients with live-in boyfriends should not draw benefits accorded to single mothers. It’s only the latest in a long string of decisions in which judges seem to be writing their own preferences into law, according to columnist Christina Blizzard. Earlier this year the Supreme Court of Canada struck down as unconstitutional a Conservative government’s repeal of a law authorizing unionization of workers on family farms, although the effect of the repeal would only have been to revert to the state of the law as of a couple of years previously. Next up: a challenge to another plank of welfare reform, a lifetime ban on payment of benefits to persons caught cheating the system. Paging Mickey Kaus — they need you up there! (Christina Blizzard, “Disorder in the court”, Toronto Sun/Canoe, May 18). On U.S. judicial activism, see John Leo, “Running away with the law”, U.S. News/Jewish World Report, May 13. (& see letter to the editor, Jun. 14). (DURABLE LINK)
May 31-June 2 – Folk medicine meets child abuse reporting. The Vietnamese and Hmong folk remedy cao gio, or coining, “involves the rubbing of warm oils or gels across a person’s skin with a coin, spoon or other flat object. It leaves bright red marks or bruises, but many Asian families believe the marks represent bad blood rising out of the body and allow improved circulation and healing.” The lesions are typically not of medical significance, according to many Western medical observers, but they sometimes lead school and social service workers to report suspected child abuse, in part owing to the influence of laws mandating that possible instances of abuse be reported even if borderline. In Omaha, following such reports, police swooped down and removed ten children from their parents; following an outcry, charges against the parents were dropped and the children were returned to their homes. (Omaha World-Herald coverage including Joe Dejka, “Asian couples work to get children back”, May 3; Jeremy Olson, “Asian remedy raises few alarms elsewhere”, May 3; Joseph Morton, “2nd coining case dropped; Asian family expresses relief”, May 14; Karyn Spencer and Angie Brunkow, “Officials not sanctioning all ‘coining’”, May 17). (DURABLE LINK)
May 30 – “Oxy Morons”. “Last fall,” reports Forbes, North Carolina law firm Lutzel & Associates “sent a letter soliciting users of [time-release pain medication] Oxycontin and several other drugs. Claiming that the Food & Drug Administration had ‘banned’ the medications, the letter advised them to ‘stop using’ the drugs immediately.” But in fact Oxycontin was neither banned nor threatened with removal, and for a patient suffering pain suddenly to discontinue its use without a doctor’s recommendation can result in medically serious consequences as well as needless agony. (Ian Zack, “Oxy Morons”, Forbes.com, Apr. 29). Despite vigorous efforts by some plaintiff’s lawyers to stoke mass tort litigation over the drug (see Apr. 10 and links from there), the National Law Journal reports that drugmaker Purdue Pharma has “had a string of confidence-building victories in early litigation.” (Bob Van Voris, “OxyContin Maker Not Yet Feeling Much Pain”, National Law Journal, April 30). (DURABLE LINK)
May 30 – “Privileged chambers”. Earlier this year the Albany Times Union ran a five-day editorial series (“Unequal Justice” — scroll down to find it) on judicial misconduct in New York state. It concluded that discipline is generally lax when Empire State judges behave badly and that it can take years to remove a jurist from the bench even after charges of serious misconduct (“Privileged chambers”, Feb. 3; “Justice denied”, Feb. 4; “Conduct unbecoming”, Feb. 5; “Starving the watchdog”, Feb. 6; “The need for reform”, Feb. 7). (DURABLE LINK)
May 29 – Our editor interviewed. John Hawkins at Right Wing News interviewed our editor by email about this site and our ideas on legal reform, and publishes the results this morning (“An Interview with Walter Olson“). Earlier interviewees in the series include Glenn Reynolds of InstaPundit, Wendy McElroy of iFeminists and FoxNews.com, and Australian journalist Tim Blair. Update: nice things said about this by Protein Wisdom, VodkaPundit, and Eve Tushnet.
May 28-29 – The scandal of the Phoenix memo. It warned FBI higher-ups that Islamic radicals including followers of Osama bin Laden were training at American flight schools. So why wasn’t it followed up? FBI director Robert Mueller told Senators May 8 that it would have been a “monumental undertaking” to investigate the 20,000 or so students at domestic flight schools. “What a load of nonsense,” writes Christopher Caldwell. “Any small-town newspaper reporter could have narrowed down that 20,000 to under a hundred in an afternoon, just by focusing on names like … oh, I don’t know … try Mohamed, Walid, Marwan, and Hamza. Couldn’t the entire FBI have done the same?
“As it turns out, no. And the reason is, whoever got Williams’s memo would understand that there is one commonsensical way to implement it: Look for Arabs. And given congressional pressure on racial profiling and the president’s own outrageous pandering on the subject during the 2000 election campaign, Williams’s lead was something no agent with an instinct for self-preservation would want to touch with a barge pole.” (Christopher Caldwell, “Low Profile”, Weekly Standard, May 24) (via WSJ Best of the Web, May 24). See also John Fund, “Willful Ignorance”, WSJ OpinionJournal.com, May 22; “Key Lawmaker: Probe of FBI Warrant Will Look at ‘Racial Profiling’ Concerns”, AP/Fox News, May 26). Update: perfect Mark Steyn column (“Stop frisking crippled nuns”, The Spectator, May 25). (DURABLE LINK)
May 28-29 – “Rocketing liability rates squeeze medical schools”. “The University of Nevada School of Medicine in Reno could be forced to close if it can’t find affordable liability insurance by June 30. In West Virginia, Marshall University’s Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine in Huntington has cut its pathology program and is trimming resident class size. Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine in Hershey is cutting faculty salaries, which will make it hard to land top researchers. ‘The sudden, very large increase in expenses that were not anticipated or budgeted is creating a great deal of anxiety,’ says Jordan J. Cohen, MD, president of the Assn. of American Medical Colleges.” (Myrle Croasdale, American Medical News, May 20). (DURABLE LINK)
May 28-29 – “Barbed wire might hurt burglars, pensioner warned”. In Northampton, England, 94-year-old Ruby Barber has finally gotten permission from the borough council to put barbed wire on her garden walls after suffering four break-ins to her bungalow over the past year and a half. The council granted permission “as long as she uses warning signs and agrees to take full responsibility if a would-be intruder is injured“. Her son Burt, who lives nearby, said: “It is bordering on the ridiculous to say that if they hurt themselves getting in here I am responsible. The Queen has got it all around Buckingham Palace and if it is good enough for her it is good enough for my mother. She is the Queen to me.” (Ananova, May 24). (DURABLE LINK)
May 28-29 – Must-know-Spanish rules defended. Recently it was reported that a Miami social services agency was requiring an Anglo worker to learn Spanish on pain of losing her job. Some commentators were upset, but Eugene Volokh, of the Volokhii, argues that “speaking a foreign language is a valuable skill, and … employers may legally discriminate against employees who lack this skill”. (Volokh blog, May 8, May 11; Jim Boulet Jr., “Mandatory Spanish”, National Review Online, May 10, and running commentary by Boulet at English First site). And the factual background of the case turns out to be considerably less simple than first reports indicated; not only does the county deny that failure to learn Spanish was the reason for the worker’s firing, but it seems she held herself out as having “proficiency” in that language when she accepted the job (Jay Weaver, “Poor work, not language barrier, got employee fired, court says”, Miami Herald, May 11). (DURABLE LINK)
May 28-29 – Goodbye, Wendell Barry. Eve Tushnet administers a well-deserved thrashing to the overrated localist (“Hayseeds and Straw Men”, Eve Tushnet blog, May 27) (DURABLE LINK)
May 27 – McArdle on food as next-tobacco. “If you can’t be held responsible for what you put in your mouth, what are you responsible for?” (Megan McArdle, “Can We Sue Our Own Fat Asses Off?”, Salon, May 24). See also Duncan Campbell, “Junk food firms fear being eaten alive by fat litigants”, The Guardian, May 24; Jacob Sullum, “Food Fight”, Reason Online, May 10 (& see Jun. 3-4). (DURABLE LINK)
May 27 – “Lawsuit stifles Internet critics”. The Richmond Times-Dispatch and Long Island Business News have new stories out on the PetsWarehouse case (in which a pet store owner has sued aquatic plants hobbyists on charges of online defamation based on their postings on mailing lists and websites — see Aug. 6, 2001 & May 22, 2002). Both interview several parties, including defendant Dan Resler (a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University), plaintiff Robert Novak, and (in the Richmond paper) free-speech law commentator Rodney Smolla. A key factor working to defendants’ disadvantage: liberal jurisdictional rules which allow a plaintiff to file an Internet libel case in his local court (in this case the Eastern District of New York) and force defendants who live in distant states to shoulder the cost of litigating there from a distance. (Gordon Hickey, “Online speech not free”, Richmond Times-Dispatch, May 26). In Long Island Business News, owner Novak is quoted as being aware of this cost asymmetry: “‘It’s only five miles for me,’ he said. ‘All these people have to come here at their own expense.’” (Ken Schachter, Long Island Business News, “PetsWarehouse.com founder dries out aquarists in courts”, May 24-30). More on Internet jurisdiction: Carl S. Kaplan, “A Libel Suit May Establish E-Jurisdiction”, New York Times, May 27 (reg). Update Oct. 4-6: Novak sues Google and other defendants. Further update: Oct. 5, 2003. (DURABLE LINK)
May 24-26 – Nader credibility watch. In France, the litigation advocate called fast-food restaurants “weapons of mass destruction”. (“Ralph Nader met en garde les Français contre les ‘fast food’”, Yahoo/AFP, May 17; via Matt Welch, May 18; see comments at Tim Blair blog, May 26). More on Nader’s credibility or lack thereof: Matt Welch, “Speaking Lies To Power”, Reason, May; Thomas Oliphant, Boston Globe, Apr. 21. (DURABLE LINK)
May 24-26 – “Counseling center may face closure”. Chickasha, Okla.: “The largest civil verdict in Grady County history may mean the county’s largest mental health center will have to close for financial reasons, officials said Wednesday. A $1.5 million jury verdict awarded last week against Chisholm Trail Counseling Service was a bittersweet victory for the family of James Phillips, who committed suicide a few hours after being interviewed and released by one of the agency’s counselors.” (Penny Owen, The Oklahoman, May 23). (DURABLE LINK)
May 24-26 – Australia’s litigation debate. “Some of Australia’s most famous beaches face closure after a huge damages award to a man paralysed while swimming at Bondi Beach, local authorities have warned.” (BBC, “Closure ‘threat’ to Australia’s beaches”, May 14). Former chief justice of the High Court of Australia Harry Gibbs “said the culture of litigation had been fostered by some lawyers, while some judges seemed to strive to find a reason for finding in favour of an injured plaintiff and award damages in cases where a reasonable and informed person would not have thought the defendant was at fault. He said the deficiencies of the law of negligence had now become apparent. ‘It favours generosity to the plaintiff at the expense (in many cases) of justice to the defendant’.” Gibbs suggested that Australia might want to consider emulating the New Zealand model under which most negligence actions are replaced with a system of no-fault compensation. (“Lawyers blamed for crisis” (editorial), Queensland Courier-Mail, May 16). See Susanna Lobez, “Snails, Consumer Power and the Law”, ABC national radio transcripts, The Law Report, June 1, 1999)
“The latest figures available from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show that as of June 30, 1999, there were 10,819 barrister and solicitor practices in Australia, an increase of 11 per cent over three years, and these practices generated an income of $7.04 billion, a robust 27 per cent increase over three years. Income from personal injury cases grew still faster, by 31 per cent.” What strikes us as remarkable about these figures is not just the rapid growth in sums redistributed, but that the figures are obtainable at all. Virtually no data is available, reliable or otherwise, on how much money American lawyers receive in the aggregate from personal injury cases. Why not? If the answer that occurs to you is “because our legal profession doesn’t want it to be collected”, you may be on to something. (Paul Sheehan, “Laws made by lawyers — well they would like that, wouldn’t they?”, Sydney Morning Herald, May 6). (DURABLE LINK)
May 22-23 – Convicted hospital rapist sues hospital. “A Sandusky man serving a 10-year sentence for raping a patient at the former Providence Hospital is suing both the hospital and his former attorney for negligence, according to Erie County Common Pleas Court records. Edward Brewer filed suit Monday against Providence Hospital, now part of Firelands Regional Medical Center, for ‘inadequate security in protecting visitors as well as their patients’ which caused him pain and suffering, according to court documents. Brewer, 47, was found guilty in October of raping a 44-year-old acquaintance in her hospital bed in June 1998. … Brewer claims negligence by the hospital, including a poorly trained nursing staff, negatively affected his criminal case, according to the suit.” The suit, which Brewer filed on his own behalf, asks for $2 million in damages; separately, Brewer is suing his former criminal attorney. (Emily S. Achenbaum, “Convicted rapist sues hospital”, Sandusky [Ohio] Register, May 21). Update: court dismisses case, see Mar. 5-7, 2003. (DURABLE LINK)
May 22-23 – Reparations suits “pure hooey”. The “slave-reparation plaintiffs have articulated neither standing nor a cognizable claim. In the final analysis, these cases are not really about pushing the envelope and making new law. Rather, they are part of a strategy to inflict public relations damage in order to coerce political and economic concessions. The federal courts should stand firm against this gathering storm, dismiss the lawsuits and leave the complex issues of social policy they raise to the political process.” (Steven P. Benenson, “Reparations Suits Are Too Little, Too Late”, National Law Journal, May 20). “Any judge not assessing sanctions for the filing of frivolous litigation should be ashamed. … So much for laches, the statute of limitations and all the other legal devices that assure that disputes are resolved in a timely manner. No wonder the world laughs at our love of litigation.” (Norm Pattis, “The Color of Money: It’s Red for Reparations”, Connecticut Law Tribune, Apr. 15).
“The villain Calvera said, ‘Generosity, that was my first mistake,’ as he peered ominously from beneath his mega-sombrero at the gringo gunman in the classic scene from the 1960 film The Magnificent Seven. … Honchos at Aetna Inc., the insurance company named in a recent lawsuit seeking reparations for slavery, must be remembering that quote right about now.” (Gregory Kane, “Generosity goes unnoticed in slavery reparations lawsuit”, Baltimore Sun, Apr. 20). Kane says Aetna has responded to the suit with “infuriating wussiness” and says “what Aetna bigwigs should tell [plaintiff-activist Deadria] Farmer-Paellmann and her lawyers [is]: ‘Get a life!’” (DURABLE LINK)
May 22-23 – PetsWarehouse.com defamation suit, cont’d. Last year we reported on the ongoing litigation filed by Robert Novak, founder and owner of PetsWarehouse.com, against members of an internet discussion list that he said had defamed him and his company (see Aug. 6, 2001; letter to editor from Novak, Aug. 10). Many aquarium enthusiasts, alarmed by the legal action, have at various times posted information on their sites about the suit, sometimes posting banners that solicit donations on the defendants’ behalf. (“$15,000,000 lawsuits suck the life out of online discussions. Please support the APD Defense Fund,” reads one.) According to Katharine Mieszkowski, writing last month in Salon, a number of these site operators have been given reason to regret that they ever took such rash steps. In particular, according to Mieszkowski, Novak has proceeded to add more defendants to the suit, including supporters of the APD Defense Fund who put up its banner solicitations, and the webmaster of a site that had posted information on the case, charging them with violating his PetsWarehouse copyright and engaging in a conspiracy against him. Among evidence of copyright infringement offered in his suit was webmasters’ use of Pets Warehouse as a “metatag”, that is to say, a keyword directed at search engines but not normally seen by ordinary users (more on metatag litigation: Sept. 25, 1999).
A number of defendants have settled out of the case, including a Colorado webmaster who says she spent thousands on her defense and who turned over the rights to her domain to Novak as part of the settlement, having shut it down after being sued. “Other defendants had to run banners on their sites promoting Pets Warehouse.” “According to [defendant Dan] Resler, at one point, the money in the defense fund ran out, and when the defendants had to start paying out of their own funds, they got scared. (Novak is representing himself ‘pro se’ in the case.)” Resler himself agreed to pay $4,150. “Beyond the lawsuit itself, other supporters of the case say they have received cease-and-desist letters for using the words ‘Pets Warehouse’ on their sites.” Among them: the webmaster of a site that “features a banner advertisement that mentions the case with this headline: ‘Pets Warehouse Sues Hobbyists’ and links to the aquarists’ site about the case. ‘I’m just literally reporting that the case exists and linking to another site,’ he says.” (Katharine Mieszkowski, “Free speech and the Internet; a fish story”, Salon, Apr. 4). (DURABLE LINK)
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