For your own good, of course — and so that they can make more arrests. [Radley Balko]
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Posts tagged as:
North Carolina
Should the North Carolina tax department really behave as if it regards them as that? [Patrick at Popehat]
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The defendant wasn’t at trial and didn’t have a lawyer, and plans to appeal; the judgment might as well be for $73 gazillion, as the ex-husband is already in contempt of court for failure to pay spousal support. (Greensboro News-Record March 18 and March 17 via Volokh). We’ve been covering the issue for years, as a click on the tags will reveal.
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I’ll be speaking at Duke Law Monday about the Grand Theft Auto and other class action settlements. Come say hi.
A North Carolina Business Court judge has cut a proposed fee award in an investor class action arising from the Wells Fargo/Wachovia merger “because he thought lawyers had charged too much per hour and spent too much time working on the case.” [Triangle Business Journal]
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Per ABC News, Andrew Young says that Elizabeth Edwards has threatened him with a lawsuit under North Carolina’s law permitting lawsuits against third parties — not limited to paramours — who helped break up a marriage. We’ve been covering the workings of this law for years at Overlawyered, and Ted may have been the first to spot its possible application to the Sen. Edwards squalor-ama. Much more at Death by 1000 Papercuts. (Rewritten somewhat for clarity 1 p.m. Eastern; & welcome Mickey Kaus readers)
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Departing assistant sets up email autoanswer taking revenge on lawyer boss. [Above the Law]
- 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.
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North Carolina’s alienation of affection law strikes again. [WRAL via Lawyers USA; earlier]
More from commenter “spudbeach”: “I am _sooo_ glad that I live in Wisconsin. Not only are alienation of affection lawsuits not allowed, it is actually illegal to even threaten one! Wisc. Stats. 768.03 makes it illegal to threaten, and 768.07 sets the penalty to $10,000 fine and/or 9 months in jail.” And XRLQ observes that these laws (still on the books in Hawaii, Illinois, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New Mexico, South Dakota, and Utah, as well as North Carolina) could impose liability not just on paramours, but on plain old friends or acquaintances who’d encouraged an unhappy spouse to leave a marriage. Yet more: Robinette, 2007 (via); The Briefcase.
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No, discarding 500 once-loved stuffed animals doesn’t really amount to much of a story amid scenes of billion-dollar disruptions caused by this law elsewhere around the country. But if you’re one of the people who run the Second Fling consignment shop in Goldsboro, N.C., it might still seem kind of sad.
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Six years ago America’s Most Irresponsible Public Figure®, celebrity environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. made himself a laughingstock by announcing that large hog farms were more of a danger to America than Osama bin Laden. Asked about it yesterday while testifying to a House Judiciary subcommittee, Kennedy responded as follows, according to Ralph Hallow in the Washington Times:
“I don’t know if that [quotation] is accurate, but I believe it and I support it,” said Mr. Kennedy, who has been involved in a vigorous legal effort against the meat industry for some years, arguing that manure and other products associated with large livestock producers emit toxic wastes that threaten the environment.
Mr. Kennedy also has said that a single hog consignment can put out more pollution than a city of a million people.
He has also said that every public official in North Carolina has been corrupted by the pork industry. He cited as evidence an editorial in a Raleigh newspaper, although he also said there may be some exceptions. …
Mr. Kennedy has said that he plans to go after all large farms in the country, not just pork producers. He has also said that the “right” lawsuit against livestock producers could bring damage awards of up to $13 billion.
Kennedy is deeply involved with contingency-fee private lawyers running the lawsuits against agricultural producers, a fact that only infrequently surfaces in news accounts about the hothead scion, who’s been the subject of regular coverage at this site since its beginning nearly ten years ago. More: Gateway Pundit.
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While I don’t plan to promote my own blog here, because there’s not much to promote, this is a story that I think needs wider circulation. Police and prosecutorial abuse is a problem that’s gotten more attention in the past year thanks to a certain District Attorney, but it hasn’t gotten enough to suit me.
Suppose we have a jailhouse lawyer, who sues the local sheriff and district attorney for alleged civil rights violations. Suppose, just after filing that suit, the jailhouse lawyer gets into a fight with deputy sheriff jailers, and comes out on the losing end. As in, “a trip to the hospital for broken bones” losing end. Then suppose he’s charged as a felon for assaulting his jailers, and, in the office of the District Attorney who charged him, the same District Attorney he sued, a poster appears with photos of the inmate’s face before and after the trip to the emergency room, along the lines of a certain well known anti-drug commercial involving a frying egg.
Suppose the inmate’s attorney requests the poster as Brady material, but the poster somehow vanishes: This Is Your Face After Inconveniencing The Stanly County District Attorney. Any Questions?
North Carolina: “The town of Marshall agreed to pay $275,000 for banning [Rebecca] Willis from a community dance hall on allegations her moves were too risqué.” (Jon Ostendorff, “Woman walks with $275k in dance hall case”, Asheville Citizen-Times, Nov. 14 and Nov. 13; Jonathan Austin, “Lawyer says ‘dirty dancing’ case finally settled”, News-Record and Sentinel, Nov. 13).
A reminder to readers in the Raleigh-Durham area that I’ll be speaking at lunchtime today to the Federalist Society chapter at the law school in Chapel Hill, room 4082.
While on the subject of North Carolina, it seems the state’s most famous current politician has started his PR rehab with a talk at Indiana U..
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I’ll be giving a noontime talk at the University of North Carolina chapter of the Federalist Society.
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I haven’t been doing much traveling to speak over the past few years because of responsibilities close to home, but I’m planning a trip to the University of North Carolina on Wed., Nov. 12 to speak to the law school’s Federalist Society chapter. I might be able to combine it with another event the day before or after, presumably at some town or campus with direct flights to/from Raleigh/Durham. If you’re interested in hosting, let me know at editor – at – [this domain name] – dot – com.
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- Lawyers’ contingency fee is temptation to ethical corner-cutting in consumer debt collection, too [Miami Daily Business Review, Popehat; Orlando's Palmer Reifler & Associates, mass mailing of demand letters to accused shoplifters]
- Discussion continues on loser-pays with me and many others at NewTalk, and note comment from Ontario lawyer [through today]
- Age bias suit by Hollywood writers gains traction. Next, actors? [Ink Slingers via Class Action Blawg weekly review]
- Class action against Quebec lottery on behalf of problem gamblers finally set for trial [CP/Yahoo, Lee Distad via Class Action Blawg, earlier]
- Should we and other commentators avoid mentioning litigants’ real names so as not to intrude on their Google legacy? [comments at Ron Miller/Md. Injury]
- California lawmakers OK feel-good “Donda West Law” but it won’t do much to keep impulsive clients from rushing into plastic surgery [GruntDoc, Cameron Turner/EURWeb, Truth in Cosmetic Surgery Blog]
- Probably not a swift career move for lawyer to tell bar disciplinary panel “Go to hell.” [ABA Journal]
- Class action forces HUD to allocate more to some Indian recipients, so it cuts other programs, bad news for North Carolina’s Lumbee tribe [Fayetteville, N.C. Observer courtesy US Chamber]
- Environmental authorities won’t press charges against man who shot protected rattlesnake that had just attacked and bitten him [eight years ago on Overlawyered]
