Tagged as:
ACORN,
Barack Obama,
class action settlements,
Florida,
land use and zoning,
libel slander and defamation,
Massachusetts,
newspapers,
privacy,
restaurants,
schools
- There’s money in lost personal data: “Counsel Could Rake in $5 Million from Veterans Settlement” [Weissmann/BLT]
- Commentaries on now-settled GateHouse v. NYTimes lawsuit (news organization grabs/aggregates rival’s reports) [Ardia and Lindenberger, Citizen Media Law; Nieman Journalism Lab]
- Funny and instantly recognizable: cop talk converted to human talk [Legal Antics]
- No need to worry about revival of Fairness Doctrine, they told us — uh-oh, here comes talk radio “accountability” [Patterico]
- Lenders whipped up one side of the street for too-easy credit standards, then down the other for tightening them [McArdle]
- Murder convictions for drunk drivers? Not so fast, a New York appeals court decision suggests [Greenfield]
- When no one writes a leniency letter at your sentencing, maybe problem is not so much that you’re a crooked lawyer as that you’re a powerless lawyer [YallPolitics on Tim Balducci, Mississippi]
- If lawyers strike everyone who’s griped about jury duty on Facebook “we’re going to run out of jurors really fast” [Anne Reed]
Tagged as:
Facebook,
juries,
newspapers,
online speech,
police,
Timothy Balducci
- Tons and tons of favorable reaction to my Forbes piece on CPSIA: commenters there, Etsy thread, sampling of blogs: Polka Dot Patch, Heartkeeper’s Common Room, Colby Lane Designs, Baby Gardner’s (aw), Tristan Benz (double aw). Others who’ve gotten into the act: Iain Murray/Open Market, Jeff Nolan, Patrick @ Popehat (SSFC). New: Superblogger Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit, John Schwenkler, Carter Wood at ShopFloor, Ramesh Ponnuru at National Review “Corner”.
- “California Lawmakers Rush to Rescue Good Samaritans in Wake of Court Ruling” [The Recorder, Calif. Civil Justice Blog, earlier]
- “America needs a tax code simple enough for the Treasury secretary to figure out” [Taranto, WSJ]
- “Federal judge might ax $2M legal fee in Seattle ‘pro bono’ case” [ABA Journal, earlier here and here]
- Indictment of Long Island attorney Felix Vinluan dismissed; charged for advising nurses it was okay to quit their jobs [Cernovich, Volokh, Greenfield, Mitchell Rubinstein]
- “Apartment owner sued for common area second hand smoke” [Womble Carlyle]
- “Tulsa World sues alt-weekly over circulation story” [Romenesko and more, Shafer, BatesLine with many links] Update: drops suit against publication, leaving suit against columnist [Romenesko]
- “No evidence of a causal link between restaurants and obesity”. Hey, that could derail some lawsuits [Pethokoukis, U.S. News, on Northwestern/Berkeley study]
Tagged as:
CPSIA,
Good Samaritan,
newspapers,
obesity,
tobacco
by SSFC on December 28, 2008
Daily Roundup sounds better than Microblog, if you ask me.
- I thought we already had a gas tax. Farmers protest EPA plans to tax greenhouse gas “emissions” from cattle (Via Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, who will probably have to come up with a new name in a few weeks);
- Another way to reduce discrimination against fat people: taxpayer funded stomach stapling;
- Navy settles anti-sonar environmental lawsuits filed by Natural Resources Defense Council. I can’t tell from reading this AP story precisely what good the settlement will do for the Navy, or for whales, porpoises, and dolphins, but it appears money is changing hands;
- This explains a lot: former attorney general John Ashcroft makes his best decisions “when I have a lot of morphine in my system” (Via Classical Values);
- A perfect season for the Detroit Lions;
- You’re a mean one Mr. Grinch: Alabama man sets own home ablaze in rage over not receiving Christmas presents;
- Newspapers are receiving and printing outsourced, slanted opinion pieces for free. Question: how does this differ from blogging? Answer: I’m wearing pajamas (well, a sweatshirt and sweatpants), as I write this, and I have a dog in my lap. Presumably the outsourced writers wear business casual in a fur-free environment;
- If you read the European libertarian blog Samizdata, send good wishes to Brian Micklethwait, one of their best writers, who has unfortunate news to report.
Tomorrow, I predict that somewhere, someone will be sued.
Tagged as:
attorneys general,
Christmas and other holidays,
environment,
Navy sonar,
newspapers,
United Kingdom
One reason of many it’s a bad idea:
[Illinois Gov. Rod] Blagojevich, Harris and others are also alleged [in the federal indictment] to have withheld state assistance to the Tribune Company in connection with the sale of Wrigley Field. The statement says this was done to induce the firing of Chicago Tribune editorial board members who were critical of Blagojevich.
More: Eugene Volokh. Similarly: Patterico.
P.S.: “When the Tribune-owned Chicago Cubs wanted permission to install lights at Wrigley Field, Ald. Ed Vrdolyak let it be known it would require an end to editorial criticism of him. An editorial responded that the Cubs would ‘be playing morning games on a sandlot in Gary first.’ Vrdolyak — this will surprise you — is now headed for prison, another victim of Fitzgerald.” (Steve Chapman, Reason, Dec. 11).
Tagged as:
Chicago,
First Amendment,
Illinois,
newspapers,
sports
- Anyone suing over anything dept.: Kansas City attorney Mary Kay Green sues McCain, Palin, for supposed hate speech against Obama [KC Star, Feral Child, Above the Law; related, my article the other day for City Journal]
- Got $331K from victim fund claiming severe injuries from Pentagon 9/11 attack, yet “kept playing basketball and lacrosse and ran [NYC] marathon in under four hours two months after the attacks” [Maryland Daily Record]
- Krugman claims Fannie/Freddie not big culprits in mortgage meltdown, but Calomiris and Wallison show him wrong [Stuart Taylor, Jr., National Journal; also note this Goldstein/Hall unlabeled opinion piece from McClatchy pushing the Krugman line]
- Government bailout of newspapers? Who’s trying to float this idea, anyway? [Bercovici/Portfolio via Romenesko] Update: maybe this?
- Colluded with chiropractor to generate bills for imaginary treatment, then pocketed clients’ insurance settlements without telling them [Quincy, Mass., Patriot-Ledger; Bruce Namenson sentenced to 5 years and "cannot practice law for at least 10 years after he gets out of jail"]
- Ontario: “Killer awarded $6K over wrong shoes in prison” [National Post]
- “Is there any doubt that Lucy grew up to be a lawyer?” [Above the Law on Doyle Reports, Judge Robertson ruling in patent case]
- Jury hits Jersey City, N.J. rheumatologist with $400K verdict (including $200K punitives) for not hiring sign language interpreter at his own expense for deaf patient [NJLJ, Krauss @ PoL]
Tagged as:
chiropractors,
disabled rights,
ethics,
hate speech,
Massachusetts,
medical,
mortgages,
newspapers,
September 11
His libel suit against the Boston Herald may have been a lucrative success, but the “fascinatingly repellent” letters he sent to the paper’s publisher drew the adverse attention of the state’s Commission on Judicial Conduct. [WSJ law blog, Aug. 21]. Full saga here.
More: Globe (Murphy, “who has said he suffers from post-traumatic stress because of his legal battle with the Boston Herald and the newspaper’s stories about him, has been on a paid leave of absence since July.”). The Herald’s coverage includes side stories on Murphy’s wish for a taxpayer-provided lawyer and the question of whether his cases will need to be reopened, as well as an unsparing Howie Carr column on the ins and outs of “involuntary disability” pensions for judges (”ask yourself this: If you or I wrote ‘allegedly threatening’ letters to somebody, would we get a disability pension, or a visit from the cops?”).
Tagged as:
Boston,
judges,
libel slander and defamation,
Massachusetts,
newspapers
Durham, N.C. lawyer Keith Hempstead says he’s dropping his suit against the Raleigh News & Observer (Jul. 14, Jul. 20), the one that charged that the paper’s quality had gone downhill because of staff cuts. Hempstead said his point had been made by the wide publicity accorded the lawsuit, during which he was interviewed by many major news organizations. (Leah Friedman, “Subscriber drops suit against The N&O”, N&O, Jul. 28). A nameless WSJ law blog commenter takes the view that announcing this rationale for dropping the suit sets up a “prima facie” counterclaim of abuse of process, should the newspaper choose to pursue one. Does it?
Tagged as:
newspapers,
North Carolina
So that this man can make his point, North Carolina taxpayers — and people with legitimate cases in that state’s courts — are just going to have to put up with a little extra burden:
A News & Observer subscriber is suing the newspaper for cutting staff and the size of the paper.
Keith Hempstead, a Durham lawyer, filed the suit last month in Wake Superior Court. He says he renewed his subscription in May just before the paper announced on June 16 the layoffs of 70 staff members and cuts in news pages.
The paper, he says, is now not worth what he signed up for and therefore the cuts breached the paper’s contract with him….
In a phone interview today, Hempstead, 42, said he could cancel his subscription but filed the suit to make a point.
Hempstead, a former reporter himself at a different paper who says he “loves” the N&O, has duly gotten a fair bit of publicity, certainly more than if he had just sent out a complaining press release or something. (Leah Friedman, “N&O subscriber sues the paper for cutting staff”, News & Observer, Jul. 10).
Tagged as:
newspapers,
North Carolina
Jonathan Rauch:
Unfortunately, however, it is probably illegal for newspapers to form a subscription consortium [enabling consumers to pay for web content through a one-stop subscription to hundreds of newspaper sites]. Antitrust law was written generations ago, when newspapers were local monopolies or duopolies. Today, of course, they compete with the whole Internet. The problem now is that they have too little market power, not too much.
Even so, antitrust law regards collective pricing as collusion. “There is a well-established tunnel vision in applying antitrust laws,” says Lee Simowitz, a media lawyer with Baker Hostetler in Washington. “Broader values don’t enter the equation.” Allowing newspapers to combine forces, he says, is “really up to Congress.” …
Sooner or later, newspapers will need to get their acts together — literally — and charge collectively for content, and it will be in the public’s interest to let them do so.
(”How to Save Newspapers–and Why”, National Journal, Jun. 14; will rotate off site).
Tagged as:
antitrust,
newspapers
Antitrust law trips up pillar-of-counterculture-journalism Village Voice Media, cont’d: “San Francisco Superior Court Judge Marla Miller raised the amount the Weekly [SF Weekly] must pay in damages to the Bay Guardian — from $6.3 million to $15.9 million — for undercutting its rival with below-cost ads.” (Meredith May, “Judge raises damages in case against SF Weekly”, San Francisco Chronicle, May 21; earlier; sample SF Weekly business-bashing piece, channeling plaintiff’s lawyers’ contentions in Parmalat case). “Predatory pricing — selling ads below cost with the goal of putting your competition out of business — is typically something alt weeklies cover, not something they get caught and fined for.” (Josh Feit, TheStranger.com (which competes with VVM’s Seattle Weekly), Mar. 5).
Tagged as:
advertising,
antitrust,
Bay Area,
competition through litigation,
newspapers
A hearing officer has recommended a reprimand for Boston judge and libel-suit winner Ernest B. Murphy over those “fascinatingly repellent” letters he sent to the publisher of the Boston Herald demanding a settlement of what proved a winning $2 million libel suit (Jessica Van Sack, “Public reprimand urged for Judge Murphy”, Boston Herald, Nov. 21; see Sept. 28, etc.). The operators of the Irish Pub & Inn in Atlantic City, New Jersey are suing the publishers of Philly magazine over their description of the tavern as a “dive bar”, and aren’t buying the magazine’s claim that the description was intended as complimentary. (Michael Klein, Philadelphia Inquirer “Inqlings”, Nov. 18). And a New York lower court judge has declined to order Google/Blogspot to divulge the identity of “Orthomom”, whom a Lawrence, N.Y. school board member had sought to sue on the theory that it was defamatory to have termed her a “bigot”. (Nicole Black, Nov. 18, with links to other blog coverage).
More: And Eugene Volokh (Nov. 27) posts today on a disturbing case from Canada in which a lawyer involved in the shutting down of “hate speech” websites proceeded to sue for defamation — successfully so far in the Ontario courts — over having been called (among other things) an “enemy of free speech”.
Tagged as:
free speech,
free speech in Canada,
libel slander and defamation,
New Jersey,
newspapers,
online speech,
Philadelphia,
restaurant critics
A month ago St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Bill McClellan wrote a less-than-respectful column reporting on the course of a controversial defamation suit filed by disbarred local attorney Amiel Cueto. Now Cueto has notified McClellan that he regards him as having acted as an “agent” of the defendant in the suit, the Madison-St. Clair Record, and he’s threatening him with compulsory process as a witness. McClellan, whom Overlawyered readers will remember as having been the target of appalling legal bullying from Metro-East plaintiff’s lawyers in the past, retains his cheerful tone in a new column. (Bill McClellan, “Amiel Cueto has a gift, or maybe he doesn’t”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Aug. 31; “Accusations, lawsuit make me nostalgic”, Sept. 30).
The underlying action arose from an item that ran in the U.S. Chamber-supported Madison-St. Clair Record on Jan. 30, 2006, alleging that Cueto, who served six years in prison on an obstruction of justice conviction, had been spied at a meeting of St. Clair County judges. “Once one of the most powerful lawyers in Southern Illinois, Cueto was said to have ‘owned’ fifteen of St. Clair County’s seventeen judges in the mid-1990s,” the column further asserted. Cueto sued the paper, in a hard-fought action currently in process. In other actions, as Ted noted Feb. 26, Cueto has sued the Illinois Civil Justice League and its political action committee over a campaign ad, and a local resident over a letter to the editor in the Belleville, Ill. News-Democrat (Malcolm Gay, “Power Broken”, Riverfront Times, Sept. 5; Ann Knef, “Amiel Cueto takes aim at ICJL”, Madison-St. Clair Record, Feb. 20; ICJL, Dec. 4, 2006).
Tagged as:
Bill McClellan,
Illinois,
libel slander and defamation,
Madison County,
newspapers,
watch what you say about lawyers
