Chronicling the high cost of our legal system
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Lawyers representing a White Lake, Mich. woman say that whether or not Ally Financial was within its rights to repossess her 2006 Pontiac, it was not entitled to the half-tank of gas it carried. They are asking class-action status on behalf of Michigan customers and seek $5 million. [Detroit News]
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A proposed Michigan law would apply legal scrutiny to men’s motives for walking out of relationships. [Fathers and Families via Amy Alkon]
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“A single woman who was denied treatment by a west Michigan in vitro fertilization clinic can proceed with a lawsuit claiming unlawful discrimination, the state Court of Appeals ruled in a decision released today. The case against Grand Rapids Fertility and IVF was filed after a doctor there told Allison Moon that his clinic could not provide the service out of concern that Michigan paternity law is so vague that a child conceived by IVF and born to a single mother could successfully sue the clinic for child support.” [Dawson Bell, Detroit Free Press] The appeals court said Michigan’s Elliot-Larsen Civil Rights Act, which prohibits services of public accommodation from discriminating on the basis of marital status among other grounds, extinguishes doctors’ common law right to decide with whom to undertake a physician-patient relationship. [Michigan Health Law Link]
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“Macomb County Probate Court officials can’t explain how a man falsely claiming to be a medical doctor was allowed to decide whether people were mentally competent to handle their own estates and whether jail inmates needed mental health care.” [Detroit News]
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Sarah Deming has sued the distributor of the critically acclaimed Ryan Gosling thriller DRIVE under Michigan’s Consumer Protection Act, saying it was promoted “as very similar to the Fast and Furious, or similar, series of movies” but “bore very little similarity to a chase, or race action film…having very little driving in the motion picture.” The suit aims for class-action status. [Lawyerist, Guardian]
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Which is good advice for many other touchy sorts of plaintiffs too, not just for the Thomas M. Cooley Law School of Lansing, Michigan [Mike Masnick, TechDirt, earlier]
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Watch what you say about lawyers — and now it seems about law schools as well, specifically Michigan’s Thomas M. Cooley Law School. [TaxProf, Above the Law]
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New Michigan rules allow juries to ask questions and judges to summarize evidence for their benefit. Michigan Chief Justice (and Overlawyered favorite) Robert Young Jr. “says jurors will no longer be treated like kindergarteners” under the new rules. [ABA Journal; my take back when]
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Julie Mack, Kalamazoo Gazette (via Mark Hemingway, Examiner):
In 1993, Chelsea High School teacher Stephen Leith shot to death his superintendent and wounded his principal and another teacher during a confrontation at the school. Leith was convicted of homicide and given a life sentence; from prison, he continued to pursue an appeal of his firing from Chelsea Public Schools, blaming his actions on medication.
“He murdered his superintendent. It’s crazy,” said Tom White, associate director of labor relations for [the] Michigan School Board Association.
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“Former justice Elizabeth Weaver, who retired this year after 16 years on the Michigan Supreme Court, evidently made secret recordings of internal court deliberations and has released transcripts of some of the meetings.” Most of Weaver’s former colleagues on the court have signed a letter condemning her resort to secret taping, saying they were unaware of it and would never have consented to it or to her revelation of court deliberations generally. Weaver came to the bench as a Republican but was long at odds with the other GOP members of the court. [WSJ Law Blog, Knake/Legal Ethics Blog]
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Election edition:
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One of the most highly regarded right-of-center state court jurists is up for re-election this year in my native state, and drawing some of the slimiest attacks from Democratic strategists. A sample: they’re hyping still photos of Young with his eyes closed on the bench, supposedly “sleeping,” when videotape context from moments before and after reveals the Justice to be simply blinking or glancing down. Instance #87,231, I’d say, of why it’s dubious to go to the mat in principle for the notion of selecting judges by partisan contested election. More: Tim Skubick/Oakland Press, The Blog Prof.
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A woman “posted an advertisement for a Christian roommate on her local church’s bulletin board.” Someone who saw it denounced her anonymously to the Fair Housing Center of West Michigan which proceeded to file a civil rights complaint against her to the Michigan Department of Civil Rights. Nancy Haynes, executive director of the housing center, calls the woman’s notice “a clear violation on its face;” while the Fair Housing Act does not subject actual choice of roommates to penalties, it forbids advertisements expressing a preference.
The Fair Housing Center of West Michigan might ask for an initial reimbursement of $300 for time spent on the issue and training for the woman, in addition to pulling down the ad, Haynes said.
“Our interest really lies in her getting some training so that this doesn’t happen again,” she said.
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Individual liberty, free markets, and peace: the world's premier libertarian think tank. Publishes Cato at Liberty, where I blog on contemporary policy issues.
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