Overlawyered » oil industry

May 18 roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 18 May 2012 04:14:02 +0000

Very silly Common Cause suit against Senate filibuster [Adler, Doug Mataconis, Jack Shafer (Filibuster unconstitutional? "Yes, but only when the GOP has the majority.")]
More on football concussion lawsuits [Will Oremus, Slate; Gerard Magliocca, Concurring Opinions; earlier]
Phrase I’ve heard before: Niall Ferguson says U.S. beset by the “rule of lawyers” [Business Insider]
“I have filed over a hundred lawsuits and another one will be no sweat for me. On the other hand, it will cost you a lot of time and money[.]” One blogger’s prolonged legal ordeal ["Aaron Worthing," Allergic2Bull and summary version] Plus: Ken/Popehat;
Louisiana land-taint suits: “maybe I’m just going to contend the oil companies did it, not the salt domes” [Lachlan Markay, Heritage, earlier]
Kansas differs from SCOTUS on legality of resale price maintenance. Will it make policy for the other 49 states? [Ted Frank] New Federalist Society project on state courts and how they’re picked;
A lot of lobbying went into that government-prescribed “flame-resistant” furniture [Chicago Tribune]

Tags: antitrust, bloggers and the law, CPSC, fires, football, Kansas, Louisiana, oil industry, serial litigants, state high courts, The Rule of Lawyers

May 18 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

April 25 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 04:15:01 +0000

Eugene Volokh on civil liberties problems with the Violence Against Women Act reauthorization [first, second posts]
More coverage of the “N.C. vs. diet advice blogger” story we noted in February [Sara Burrows/Carolina Journal, Brian Doherty/Reason]
A case for an administrative alternative to asbestos litigation [Michael Hiltzik, L.A. Times] More on administered compensation funds [Adam Zimmerman, Prawfs]
Scuttle-the-boat insurance fraud scheme goes amusingly wrong [Lowering the Bar]
“To lower prices at the pump, abolish the boutique fuel regime” [Steven Hayward, Weekly Standard]
Supreme Court denies certiorari in NYC rent control case [Trevor Burrus, Cato; earlier here and here] But it does grant cert in Cato-backed property rights action [Ark. Fish & Game v. U.S.; Shapiro]
New Zealand’s innovative public policies: left, right or something else? [Eric Crampton] Let’s be more like the Scandinavian countries [Tim Worstall, UK] Don’t forget loser-pays…

Tags: asbestos, bloggers and the law, domestic violence, eat drink and be merry, insurance fraud, loser pays, New Zealand, North Carolina, oil industry, Supreme Court, Sweden, Victim Compensation Fund

April 25 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

April 3 roundup

Walter Olson — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 04:02:19 +0000

In time for Easter: egg prices soar in Europe under new hen-caging rules [AP]
For third time, the Environmental Protection Agency backtracks on claims of harm from gas “fracking” [Adler; U. Texas study on drinking water safety, CBS Dallas] Yes, there’s a plaintiff’s lawyer angle [David Oliver] Don Elliott, former EPA general counsel, on why his old agency needs cutting [Atlantic] Blow out your candles, coal industry, and so good-bye [Pat Michaels/Cato, Shikha Dalmia]
Following the mad logic wherever it leads: “State Legislators Propose Mandatory Drug Testing of Judges and Other State Officials” [ABA Journal]
Proposal: henceforth no law may run to greater length than Rep. Conyers’s copy of Playboy [Mark Steyn]
Creative American lawyers: “Carnival cruise ship briefly seized in Texas” [AP]
“Overlawyered” is the title of a new commentary in The New Yorker, not related to a certain website [Kelefa Sanneh]
Repressive Connecticut “cyber-harassment” bill [Volokh, Greenfield, Popehat] And now, not to be outdone, Arizona… [Volokh]

Tags: agriculture and farming, animal rights, Arizona, bullying, Connecticut, cruise ships, Environmental Protection Agency, harassment law, illegal drugs, oil industry

April 3 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

March 6 roundup

Walter Olson — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 05:11:54 +0000

D.C. Circuit’s Janice Rogers Brown: three-decade-long case over Iran dairy expropriation raises “harshest caricature of the American litigation system” [BLT]
Legal blogger Mark Bennett runs for Texas Court of Criminal Appeals as Libertarian [Defending People, Scott Greenfield] And Prof. Bill Childs, often linked in this space, is departing TortsProf (and legal academia) to join a private law practice in Texas;
Ambitious damage claims, more modest settlements abound in Louisiana oil-rig cleanup suits [ATLA's Judicial Hellholes, more, more, earlier]
Better no family at all: Lawprof Banzhaf jubilant over courts’ denial of adoption to smokers [his press release]
“The worst discovery request I’ve ever gotten” [Patrick at Popehat] And yours?
Concession to reality? Class action against theater over high cost of movie snacks seen as dud [Detroit Free Press]
FCPA is for pikers, K Street shows how real corruption gets done [Bill Frezza, Forbes] Dems threatening tax-bill retribution against clients whose lobbyists who back GOP candidates [Politico]

Tags: adoption, D.C. Circuit, discovery, environment, legal blogs, lobbyists, Louisiana, movies film and videos, oil industry, smoking bans, Texas

March 6 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

February 27 roundup

Walter Olson — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 05:08:07 +0000

Department of Transportation cracks down on distraction from cars’ onboard information and entertainment systems; Mike Masnick suspects the measure won’t work as intended, as appears to have been the case with early texting bans [Techdirt; earlier here, etc.] “Feds Push New York Toward Full Ban On Electronic Devices In Cars” [Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit; Truth About Cars]
Oh no: Scott Greenfield says he’s ceasing to post at his exemplary criminal defense blog after five years [Simple Justice, Dave Hoffman]
California not entitled to pursue its own foreign policy, at least when in conflict with rest of nation’s: unanimous “blockbuster” decision by en banc 9th Circuit strikes down law enabling insurance suits by Armenian victims [AP, Alford/OJ, Recorder, related, Frank/PoL]
Playboy model’s $1.2M award against Gotham cops is a great day for the tabloids [NYDN]
To hear a pitch for fracking-royalty suits, visit the American Association for Justice convention, or just read the New York Times [Wood, PoL]
What the mortgage settlement did [John Cochrane, earlier]
Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) of 1978 blows up an adoption: “She’s a 2-year-old girl who got shoved in a truck and driven to Oklahoma with strangers.” [Reuters, SaveVeronica.org]

Tags: AAJ, adoption, autos, California, Indian tribes, insurance, legal blogs, mortgages, oil industry, reparations

February 27 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

February 24 roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 05:07:47 +0000

Melissa Kite, columnist with Britain’s Spectator, writes about her low-speed car crash and its aftermath [first, second, third, fourth]
NYT’s Nocera lauds Keystone pipeline, gets called “global warming denier” [NYTimes] More about foundations’ campaign to throttle Alberta tar sands [Coyote] Regulations mandating insurance “disclosures” provide another way for climate change activists to stir the pot [Insurance and Technology]
“Cop spends weeks to trick an 18-year-old into possession and sale of a gram of pot” [Frauenfelder, BB]
Federal Circuit model order, pilot program could show way to rein in patent e-discovery [Inside Counsel, Corporate Counsel] December Congressional hearing on discovery costs [Lawyers for Civil Justice]
Trial lawyer group working with Senate campaigns in North Dakota, Nevada, Wisconsin, Hawaii [Rob Port via LNL] President of Houston Trial Lawyers Association makes U.S. Senate bid [Chron]
Panel selection: “Jury strikes matter” [Ron Miller, Maryland Injury]
Law-world summaries/Seventeen syllables long/@legal_haiku (& for a similar treatment of high court cases, check out @SupremeHaiku)

Tags: Canada, climate change, discovery, environment, global warming, Hawaii, humor, illegal drugs, jury selection, low-speed auto collisions, Nevada, North Dakota, oil industry, patent litigation, politics, Senate, United Kingdom, Wisconsin

February 24 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Fined for flunking impossible fuel mandate

Walter Olson — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 21:23:53 +0000

“When the companies that supply motor fuel close the books on 2011, they will pay about $6.8 million in penalties to the Treasury because they failed to mix a special type of biofuel into their gasoline and diesel as required by law. But there was none to be had. Outside a handful of laboratories and workshops, the ingredient, cellulosic biofuel, does not exist.” [Matthew L. Wald, New York Times; Kenneth Green, AEI]

Tags: oil industry, regulation and its reform

Fined for flunking impossible fuel mandate is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Environmental law roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 05:03:02 +0000

Peter Schweizer: “To RFK, Jr: I’m No Sock Puppet, But You Sir Are a Bootlegger” [Huffington Post; some background on America's Most Irresponsible Public Figure®]
Will legal campaign succeed in shutting down natural gas fracking? [WLF, David Oliver, CL&P, Abby Wisse Schachter/NYP]
Nice work if you can get it: key figure in dubious Chevron-Ecuador expert report slated for National Academy of Sciences reappointment [WizBang, earlier]
EPA’s move-cement-production-to-China plan runs into uncooperative judge [Josiah Neeley, Daily Caller]
Spare that tree? Environmentalists battle Montana underbrush clearance aimed at preventing catastrophic fires [William Perry Pendley, MSLF] More on trees and power outages in Connecticut [WSJ, related earlier]
New book on Endangered Species Act reform [James Burling, Federalist Society]
Rural property owners foot the bill for California green policies [Steven Greenhut]
“What are you in for?” “Backed-up toilets” [Shannen Coffin, NRO]

Tags: California, Chevron, Connecticut, endangered species, environment, Environmental Protection Agency, Montana, oil industry, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., trees

Environmental law roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

October 4 roundup

Walter Olson — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 05:45:14 +0000

Mass torts specialists vs. vendor: “Prominent Plaintiffs’ Attorneys Ordered to Pay Up After Losing Breach of Contract Trial” [Above the Law]
“You’ll have to get it on the street” — NYC’s thriving black market in pesticides [NYT, more]
Benjamin Barton on his new book, “The Lawyer-Judge Bias” [Truth on the Market, earlier here, etc.]
Medicare will not press “secondary payer” liability clawback claims below $300 [Miller and Zois, PoL, NLJ]
Class action roundup: “Sleeper” Supreme Court case raises question of whether class action certification requires consumer harm [Fisher/Forbes] Important Easterbrook opinion in Aqua Dots case puts curbs on class certification [PoL, Fisher/Forbes, Beck] Frey, Mortenson et al.: “The non-fiction class action” [Trask, OUP blog; earlier here, etc.]
Free speech roundup: Canada proposal could criminalize linking to alleged hate speech [Hosting Industry Watch] More on Canadian denouncers of speechcrime [Ken at Popehat] You don’t say: “$60,000 Ruling Against Truthful Blogger Tests Limits of the First Amendment” [Citizen Media Law] What happens when a defamation plaintiff asks a court for a takedown order? [same] Argentina: subpoenas step up pressure on reporters, editors who report on economy [NYT via Walter Russell Mead]
Should the law punish energy companies whose operations kill birds? Depends on whose osprey is being gored [Perry]

Tags: class actions, free speech, free speech in Canada, hate speech, Medicare, NYC, oil industry, online speech, pesticides

October 4 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

September 1 roundup

Walter Olson — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 05:54:31 +0000

“Massage Parlor Mistrial Declared After Masseuse Recognizes Defense Lawyer as Client” [ABA Journal]
Paying opposing expert to leave country? “Drug company lawyer taped trying to foil lawsuit” [AP]
What anti-business crusades have in common with the War on Drugs [David Henderson] Some of those “oil and gas subsidies” aren’t [Coyote]
Nocera on NLRB v. Boeing [NYT] A contrary view [Hirsch]
Science finds no link between WTC dust, cancer? Then science will just have to give [Jeff Stier, Reason; but see later study on firefighters at the scene]
Per Maureen Orth at Vanity Fair, the widow of designer Oleg Cassini has been in at least 15 lawsuits. Guess who’s named in number 16? [AW]
Stop competing with us! Lawyers claim online-legal-form provider LegalZoom is engaged in unauthorized practice of law [WSJ, Dan Fisher, ABA Journal]

Tags: junk science, labor unions, libel slander and defamation, oil industry

September 1 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system