Peabody Energy, by way of St. Louis law firm Senniger Powers, has sent a nastygram (PDF) demanding the takedown of an enviro-activist website that critically mimics the “Consortium for ‘Clean Coal’ Utilization,” of which Peabody is a part. Along with trademark infringement claims, the letter advances a congeries of other legal theories (defamation, tortious interference with contracts) and insists on the total removal of the site. [Citizen Media Law, EFF, Riverfront Times]
Tagged as:
nastygrams,
parody,
trademarks
Photographer Anthony Citrano:
On Tuesday night, I received an aggressive and threatening letter from Martin Singer, Demi Moore’s attorney. It is marked “Confidential Legal Notice – Publication or Dissemination is Prohibited”. However, since Mr. Singer and I have no confidentiality agreement, and it provides essential context to the matter at hand, I have decided to publish it.
Citrano’s original post on Boing Boing discussed evidence that a Vanity Fair cover photo of the actress had been retouched. Now Boing Boing reports that it too, as well as other blogs such as Jezebel, have received nastygrams from Singer, and responds with new evidence on the retouching question. And it adds:
Yes, the discussion at hand is only about an image of a celebrity on the cover of a fashion magazine. But the ability to freely discuss the provenance and technical history of a photo, including those with more crucial news value — say, images of detainee abuse, or Iranian missiles — is a freedom we believe should be preserved.
On the Lavely & Singer firm’s “don’t you dare print this nastygram” demands, see, e.g., this earlier post. More: Scott Greenfield.
Tagged as:
art and artists,
nastygrams
- On the medicalization of nearly everything: “Bitterness, Compulsive Shopping, and Internet Addiction” [Christopher Lane, Slate]
- Lawyer representing Sarah Palin to blogger: do you want to be served with our defamation suit at the kindergarten where you help out? [Alaska Report via Rachel Weiner, HuffPo]
- “The 7 Most Baffling Criminal Defenses (That Sort of Worked)” [Cracked via Popehat]
- Canada: crash victim gets C$2M, sues deceased lawyer for omitting a defendant who’d have chipped in another C$1.3 million [Calgary Sun]
- Privacy breach notifications mostly a costly waste of time but do keep lawyers busy [Lee Gomes, Forbes]
- “News Websites in Texas and Kentucky Invoke Shield Laws for Online Commenters” [Citizen Media Law]
- North Carolina suit against TVA “a sweet gig for the state’s attorneys” [Wood, Point of Law]
- Blawg Review #223 is at Scott Greenfield’s [Simple Justice] with another part hosted at the Blawg Review home site itself.
Tagged as:
bloggers and the law,
Canada,
crime and punishment,
libel slander and defamation,
nastygrams,
North Carolina,
online speech,
privacy,
Sarah Palin
- Hospital can be sued for releasing mental patient who killed his wife ten days later [ABA Journal, Michigan]
- Pet-sitter draws probation on animal cruelty charges after letting pig overeat and get too fat [AP/Austin, Minn. Post-Bulletin]
- The government pressured states to raise drinking age to 21. So why didn’t the move save lives? [Miron/Tetelbaum, Forbes]
- “Goldman Sachs Tries To Bully Blogger” [Marc Randazza, Cit Media Law and Legal Satyricon; Ron Coleman, Likelihood of Confusion; Brian Baxter, American Lawyer; Martin Schwimmer, Trademark Blog ("I Don't Think It's The Dumbest Trademark Demand Letter I've Ever Seen")]
- Dangers in using Title IX to go after sex imbalances in science and engineering, as Obama is said to want to do [Christina Hoff Sommers, Washington Post]
- Thomas Mundy and his attorney, frequent Overlawyered mentionee Morse Mehrban, have filed more than 200 ADA lawsuits against California merchants and other businesses, settling them for an income that opponents estimate as in excess of $300,000 a year each [L.A. Times back in January, California Civil Justice] But an Orange County jury took 18 minutes to dismiss Mundy’s suit against Del Taco [OC Register, MoreLaw, Ken @ Popehat and his followup] Noni Gotti’s 45-day spree of 41 lawsuits against 111 businesses and landlords in Santa Ana area [Jan Norman, OC Register; more on ADA filing mills]
- Police payouts up but hospital payouts down: “[New York] City Paid Out $568 Million for Lawsuits Last Year” [NY Politics; Ted yesterday]
- Another lawyer disclaimer with a sense of humor [Nicole Black/Legal Antics citing Kelly Phillips Erb/TaxGirl; earlier]
Tagged as:
ADA filing mills,
alcohol,
animals,
colleges and universities,
Morse Mehrban,
nastygrams,
NYC,
psychiatry,
Title IX,
trademarks
- Find me someone who speaks Mixtecan, fast: under new California law health insurers must provide patients with certified language interpreters [Ventura County Star]
- “Law Prof’s Article on His Jury Experience Leads to Overturned Verdict” [ABA Journal]
- Quick, lock up the Internet: Harvard Law’s John Palfrey wants to unleash child-endangerment suits against online providers [Citizen Media Law]
- “Another Lesbian Visitation Case has Liberty Counsel Spouting Nonsense” [Ed Brayton; earlier Miller-Jenkins case]
- “Jury awards need to be fair, not lucrative” [Jackie Bueno Sousa, Miami Herald]
- Aussie strip club disagrees with exotic dancer on whether faulty pole caused her injury [Brisbane Courier-Mail]
- Hasbro nastygram over “Little Mr. Monopoly” use [Bob Ambrogi, Ron Coleman]
- No, “crash of ‘09″ doesn’t refute “capitalist system”, any more than “car wreck” refutes “auto-based travel”.
Tagged as:
Australia,
California,
Crisis of 2008,
Italy,
juries,
language bias,
Miller-Jenkins case,
nastygrams,
strippers and exotic dancers
- Nastygrams fly at Christmas time over display and festival use of “Jingle Bells”, Grinch, etc. [Elefant]
- Claims that smoking ban led to instantaneous plunge in cardiac deaths in Scotland turns out to be as fishy as similar claims elsewhere [Siegel on tobacco via Sullum, Reason "Hit and Run"]
- Myths about the costs and consequences of an automaker Chapter 11 filing [Andrew Grossman, Heritage; Boudreaux, WSJ] Drowning in mandates and Congress throws them an anchor [Jenkins, WSJ]
- Mikal Watts may be the most generous of the trial lawyers bankrolling the Texas Democratic Party’s recent comeback [Texas Watchdog via Pero]
- Disney settles ADA suit demanding Segway access at Florida theme parks “by agreeing to provide disabled guests with at least 15 newly-designed four-wheeled vehicles.” [OnPoint News, earlier]
- Update on Scientology efforts to prevent resale of its “e-meter” devices on eBay [Coleman]
- Scary: business-bashing lawprof Frank Pasquale wants the federal government to regulate Google’s search algorithm [Concurring Opinions, SSRN]
- Kind of an endowment all by itself: “Princeton is providing $40 million to pay the legal fees of the Robertson family” (after charges of endowment misuse) [MindingTheCampus]
Tagged as:
colleges and universities,
disabled rights,
Disney,
eBay,
feeing frenzy,
Google,
Mikal Watts,
nastygrams,
Scientology,
smoking bans,
Texas
Back in April we had occasion to note the aggressive intellectual property stance of a company called Monster Cable, which had drawn a memorably tart riposte from the recipient of one of its nastygrams. We didn’t catch a wider aspect of the story, noted by Engadget in May, which is that Monster Cable goes around demanding that a wide range of businesses stop using the word “monster” in contexts far removed from its own line of work (audio/video cables); it reportedly has demanded cash from such businesses in exchange for calling off its lawyers. One of its targets, a miniature golf operation called Monster Mini Golf, is now trying to bring the story to public attention (TechDirt, Dec. 3).
Tagged as:
miniature golf,
nastygrams,
trademarks
- Chemerinsky, other critics should apologize to Second Circuit chief judge Dennis Jacobs over bogus “he doesn’t believe in pro bono!” outcry [Point of Law and update]
- New York high court skeptical of ultra-high contingency fee in Alice Lawrence v. Graubard Miller case [NYLJ; earlier here and here]
- Panel of legal journalists: press let itself be used in attack on Judge Kozinski [Above the Law]
- Unfree campaign speech, cont’d: South Dakota anti-abortion group sues to suppress opponents’ ads as “patently false and misleading” [Feral Child]
- Even if you’re tired of reading about Roy Pearson’s pants, you might still enjoy Carter Wood’s headlines on the case at ShopFloor ["Pandora's Zipper", "Suit Alors!"]
- Rare grant of fees in patent dispute, company had inflicted $2.5 million in cost on competitors and retailers by asserting rights over nursing mother garb [NJLJ]
- Time to be afraid? Sen. Bingaman (D-N.M.) keen on reintroducing talk-radio-squelching Fairness Doctrine [Radio Equalizer]
- “Yours, in litigious anticipation” — Frank McCourt as child in Angela’s Ashes drafted a nastygram with true literary flourish [Miriam Cherry, Concurring Opinions]
Tagged as:
Alex Kozinski,
broadcasters,
campaign regulation,
contingent fee,
Erwin Chemerinsky,
Ireland,
nastygrams,
New York state,
patent quality,
pro bono,
Roy Pearson,
sanctions,
Second Circuit,
South Dakota
If only we could all resolve threatening letters from lawyers as neatly as the editors at MAD magazine were once able to do:
The book [MAD About Star Wars] is liberally sprinkled with sidebar anecdotes telling stories of MAD and Lucas’s relationship to each other (for example, the Lucasfilm legal department sent a threatening letter to MAD about one of their parodies; the same parody generated a personal fan-letter from George Lucas — MAD simply sent copies of each letter to the other sender and the problem went away)…
(Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing, Sept. 5; & welcome readers of Blawg Review #179, at Securing Innovation).
Tagged as:
nastygrams,
parody
Selling a dozen or two t-shirts and onesies with that slogan was enough to get Alaska artist Barbara Holmes a cease and desist letter from the milk marketing people (the supermarket cow kind of milk). Holmes explains that the commodities underlying the two slogans are unlikely to be confused with each other in the marketplace: “They’re two different kind of jugs.” (Elefant, Legal Blog Watch, Jul. 25; Roger Shuy, Language Log, Jul. 28). More: David Giacalone, who also has some very kind words for us toward the end.
Tagged as:
accolades,
Alaska,
nastygrams,
trademarks
- Significant if true: Ninth Circuit may have finally decided that judges should stop micromanaging Forest Service timber sales [Lands Council v. McNair, Adler @ Volokh]
- GMU lawprof/former Specter aide whose law review output grabbed big chunks of others’ work without attribution doesn’t belong on the federal bench, though he may have a future at Harvard Law [Liptak, NYT; WSJ law blog]
- Update on gift card class actions (earlier) filed by Madison County, Ill.’s mother-daughter team of Armettia Peach and Ashley Peach [MC Record; more background here and here]
- If you regard demand letters from attorneys as menacing and aggressive, maybe you’re one of those “lawyer-haters” with cockamamie notions of loser-pays [Greenfield, and again]
- Just wait till Public Citizen goes after those “charities” that spend more on telemarketing than they raise by it — oh, wait a minute [LA Times via Postrel]
- U.K.: nursery schools urged to report as “racist” incidents in which pre-schoolers say “yuk” about spicy foreign foods [BBC, Telegraph, Taranto; the author speaks, via Michael Winter, USA Today]
- Blawg Review #167 creatively assigns each of 50+ blog posts to its own “state”, though it took some doing to associate us with “Maryland” [Jonathan Frieden, E-Commerce Law]
- I will NOT go around saying Miami-Dade judges are being paid off… I will NOT go around saying Miami-Dade judges are being paid off… [Daily Business Review, earlier]
- “‘I’m thinking of getting disability.’ … This individual figured that [it] was tantamount to a career choice”. [physician blogger Edwin Leap]
Tagged as:
environment,
Florida,
Harvard,
law schools,
Madison County,
nastygrams,
Ninth Circuit,
political correctness,
Public Citizen,
United Kingdom
Point of Law