Paul Levy, Consumer Law and Policy:
The Freehold School Board has subpoenaed New Jersey Online to identify several citizens who chimed in to discuss stories published in the Newark Star Ledger and New Jersey Online about several high administrators who got fake degrees from an online diploma mill, and hence received higher pay. After New Jersey Online notified its subscribers of the subpoena, the ACLU of New Jersey and Freehold attorney Stuart J. Moskovitz stepped in to represent various anonymous posters, and NJ.com has refused to furnish identifying information about the posters.
Asbury Park Press:
Howell representative William Bruno on the school board said he was in favor of the Aug. 31 subpoena.
“If they have nothing to hide, what’s the problem?” Bruno said.
Tagged as:
New Jersey,
online speech,
schools
- Online game purveyor Evony threatens to sue UK critic in Australian court [GameSetWatch, Ken at Popehat, Patrick at Popehat]
- 106: number of (counted) cases filed since 2005 that blame errant grapes for slip-fall injuries [ABA Journal]
- Bayonne, N.J.: “Connolly suing county for $1M over job switch” [Jersey Journal; background (city councilman took six months off from job as coordinator of 9/11 emergency call center; "doctors won't let him go back because it's too stressful.")]
- “Lessons from Andrew Sullivan’s pot bust” [Sullum, Reason] More: Patrick at Popehat.
- “The Appraisal Debacle: How Not to Regulate” [Jack Guttentag, Yahoo Finance, via Fountain]
- Bizarre: “Paralegal Guilty in Fake-Libel-Suit Scam That Briefly Won $3M” [ABA Journal]
- Idea for immigration reform: “Let the smart people in”. [Farhad Manjoo, Slate, via Alkon] More: “Free the H-1Bs, free the economy” [Vivek Wadhwa, TechCrunch]
- Academic finds that depending on whom you ask, “It’s not about the money” or maybe it is [Relis, SSRN/Pittsburgh 2007, via Burch, Mass Tort Lit]
Tagged as:
Australia,
food safety,
forum shopping,
immigration law,
libel slander and defamation,
mortgages,
New Jersey,
not about the money,
public employment,
slip and fall,
videogames
- San Jose man says PlayStation online game network is public forum and sues Sony pro se for kicking him off it [Popehat] More: Ambrogi, Legal Blog Watch.
- “Teacher lets kids climb hill, cops come calling” [Santa Barbara, Calif.; Free Range Kids]
- Tip for journalists covering trials: stalk the rest rooms [Genova]
- Lake Erie villages turn off street lights in summer to avoid attracting mayflies, town now sued over driver-jogger collision [Columbus Dispatch]
- Some lawyers anticipate “astronomical” municipal liability from West Portal train collision in San Francisco [SF Weekly]
- Radical notion: before filing lawsuit charging consumer fraud, maybe plaintiff should notify merchant and ask to have problem fixed [New Jersey Lawsuit Reform Watch]
- No jurisdiction: Eleventh Circuit overturns contempt finding against Scruggs in Rigsby case [Freeland]
- Successful trial lawyer campaign against arbitration is throwing credit card business into turmoil [ABA Journal, Wood @ Point of Law, Ambrogi/Legal Blog Watch (conflict of interests at one large arbitration supplier)]
Tagged as:
arbitration,
child protection,
Dickie Scruggs,
New Jersey,
roads and streets,
San Francisco,
train,
videogames
Newark Star-Ledger:
The mother of an East Orange man killed when Denver Nuggets guard J.R. Smith ran a stop sign in Millstone told authorities she didn’t want the NBA player to be prosecuted because she wants closure for her family.
But [she] is continuing a civil suit against the basketball star because Smith has not reformed his dangerous driving habits, which she contends caused the death of her 21-year-old son, Andre Bell, on June 9, 2007, her attorney said. …
Tagged as:
New Jersey,
sports
Maybe we need to create some “super-Don’t” label for when a story like this comes along: “A defense attorney and former federal prosecutor whose clients have included rap stars and a soldier at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq was charged Wednesday with arranging the killing of one witness and trying to hire a hit man to kill another.” [AP/1010WINS]
Tagged as:
defense lawyers,
don't,
New Jersey,
Paul Bergrin
- Eeeeuw! Missouri woman’s suit says she was groped by Chuck E. Cheese mascot [Heller/OnPoint News] Parade of other bad things that can happen at theme enterprises and amusement parks [Lemondrop.com]
- “The Doctor Will Sue You Now”: why chapter about scientist-turned-vitamin salesman and his relations with African-leader “AIDS dissidents” is missing from book by British writer Ben Goldacre [BoingBoing]
- Just trying to make an honest living? “A former federal prosecutor who became one of New Jersey’s brashest and best-known criminal defense lawyers pleaded guilty today to helping run an exclusive Manhattan call-girl ring.” [Newark Star-Ledger via ABA Journal]
- “Perez Hilton Sends DMCA Takedown Over Anti-Gay-Marriage Ad” [Citizen Media Law]
- How not to get excused from jury service [Lowering the Bar; Montana, via Smoking Gun, etc.]
- Multiplied vexation: “Stopping a serial suer” [SE Texas Record]
- If exhortation does any good: “Judge Exhorts Class Action Lawyers to Forestall Feeding Frenzy Over Fees” [Henry Gottlieb, NJLJ]
- More on bodega raids by rogue Philadelphia narcotics unit [Radley Balko, earlier here and here]
Tagged as:
amusement parks,
don't,
feeing frenzy,
New Jersey,
Philadelphia,
police
By tortuous steps, the dispute continues to advance in a New Jersey courtroom over whether, as part of a settlement of discrimination claims by some of its employees, Prudential made a side payment to the law firm representing the workers, and if so whether that was proper. Both the giant insurer and the law firm, Leeds Morelli & Brown, have disputed the clients’ accounts and denied wrongdoing. [Newark Star-Ledger via ABA Journal, earlier]
Tagged as:
ethics,
New Jersey,
settlement
- No back-alley bikini lines: New Jersey consumer affairs director rejects proposed ban on Brazilian waxing [Asbury Park Press, JammieWearingFool, Jaira Lima and protest site, Popehat, News12 video] Florida, however, won’t let you get a fish-nibble pedicure [WWSB]
- Kids doing well in homeschool but divorcing dad disapproves, judge says they must be sent to public [WRAL, Volokh]
- Al Franken comes out for loser-pays in litigation (well, in this case at least) [MSNBC "First Read"]
- U.K.: “A man who tried to kill himself has won £90,000 in damages from the hospital which saved his life but hurt his arm in the process” [Telegraph]
- Life in places without the First Amendment: “Australia’s Vast, Scattershot Censorship Blacklist Revealed” [Slashdot, Volokh, Popehat]; British Telecom passes all internet traffic through “‘Cleanfeed” filters to identify (inter alia) racist content [Glasgow Herald]
- More on that suit by expelled student against Miss Porter’s School; “Oprichniki” said to be not identical to Keepers of Tradition [NYTimes; our December coverage]
- “Why We Need Cop Cameras” [Steve Chapman, Chicago Tribune] Shopkeepers terrorized in Philadelphia: “The thugs had badges.” [Ken at Popehat]
- Counting former lobbyists in Obama Administration? Don’t forget Kathleen Sebelius [Jeff Emanuel, RedState]
- Wisconsin: “$50,000 claim filed over girl’s time-out in school” [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]
Tagged as:
Al Franken,
Australia,
First Amendment,
Kathleen Sebelius,
lobbyists,
loser pays,
Milwaukee,
nanny state,
New Jersey,
online speech,
Philadelphia,
police,
school discipline,
United Kingdom
“The [New Jersey appellate] panel declined to adopt a best-interests-of-the-pet standard as urged by amici in the case.” Judge Jane Grall wrote that in the absence of legally cognizable abuse or neglect to an animal, there might not be “judicially discoverable and manageable standards for resolving questions of possession from the perspective of a pet”. [New Jersey Law Journal]
Tagged as:
animal rights,
family law,
New Jersey
Reading from the weekend:
- At the American Spectator, Quin Hillyer says his co-thinkers “need to really get up
in arms about” changing the law, and has kind words for a certain website that is “the single best place to track all its devastation”. At The New Criterion, Roger Kimball finds that the threat to vintage children’s books provides a good instance of the dangers of “safety”. And commentator Hugh Hewitt is back with another column, “The Congress Should Fix CPSIA Now“.
- Numerous disparaging things have been said of the “mommy bloggers” who’ve done so much to raise alarms about this law. Because, as one of Deputy Headmistress’s commenters points out, it’s already been decided that this law is needed to “protect the children”, and it’s not as if mere mothers might have anything special to contribute about that.
- Plenty of continuing coverage out there on the minibike/ATV debacle, including Brian O’Neill, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (office of local Congressman Mike Doyle, D-Pa., says most members think, dubiously, that ban “can be fixed without new legislation”); Lebanon, Pa. (”Ridiculous… It’s closed an entire market for us”), Waterbury, Ct. (“The
government does stupid things sometimes without thinking”), and, slightly less recent, Atlantic City, N.J. (”I would’ve had three sales this weekend, so they stomped us”). Some background: Off-Road (agency guidance in mid-February told dealers to get youth models “off their showfloors and back into holding areas”); Motorcycle USA (”With right-size models being unavailable to families, we may see more kids out on adult ATVs and we know that this leads to crashes”). To which illustrator Meredith Dillman on Twitter adds: “Just wait until someone gets hurt riding a broken bike they couldn’t get replacement parts for.”
- One result of CPSIA is that a much wider range of goods are apt to be subject to recalls, but not to worry, because the CPSC recall process is so easy and straightforward.
Tagged as:
Connecticut,
CPSC,
CPSC Act,
CPSIA,
CPSIA and minibikes,
New Jersey,
Pennsylvania,
Pittsburgh
- Court declines to dismiss stripper’s suit blaming her DUI crash on club that made her drink with customers [Heller/OnPoint News, earlier]
- Served 23 years in Wisconsin prison, then cleared by DNA evidence [Innocence Project]
- Headlines we didn’t make up: “Grad Student Threatens to Sue Over Destruction of Rare Lizard Dung” [ABA Journal, U.K. case]
- Wisconsin middle school suspends teacher Betsy Ramsdale because her Facebook photo shows her with gun [Never Yet Melted] http://is.gd/iQaj
- David Ogden, now up for a high Department of Justice post, assisted in Clinton-Reno era’s ghastly RICO suit against tobacco companies (maybe on-orders-from-superiors, given the extent to which the whole thing was wired by hotshot outside lawyers suing the industry) [Carrie Johnson, WaPo]
- You’d think they’d learn: appliance energy-use mandates led to lousy clothes-washer and dishwasher designs, but more of the same on the horizon [Kazman, CEI "Open Market"]
- Walks out of psychiatric hospital and kills himself, state of New Jersey ordered to pay $600K to survivors [Newark Star-Ledger]
- Why there was a market for burned out light bulbs in the former Soviet Union [Tyler Cowen]
Tagged as:
Facebook,
guns,
Innocence Project,
New Jersey,
psychiatry,
strippers and exotic dancers,
Wisconsin,
zero tolerance
You might think Doris Sexton’s main problem is the chronic lung condition she’s got from smoking a pack a day for 43 years. The smell of the co-worker’s perfume, however, she argues, exacerbated that ailment. A New Jersey court has allowed her workers’ compensation lawsuit to go forward. [Insurance Journal] For ADA lawsuits involving perfume, follow links from here.
Tagged as:
New Jersey,
workers' compensation
The 
