- “Intellectual Easter egg hunt”: great Michael Kinsley column on Wyeth v. Levine and FDA drug preemption [Washington Post]
- Negligent for the Port Authority to let itself get bombed: “Jury Awards $5.46M to 1993 WTC Bomb Victim” [WINS, earlier]
- “How following hospital quality measures can kill patients” [KevinMD]
- Owner of Vancouver Sun suing over someone’s parody of the paper (though at least it drops the printer as a defendant) [Blog of Walker]
- Court dismisses some counts in Billy Wolfe bullying suit against Fayetteville, Ark. schools [NW Arkansas Times, court records, earlier here and here]
- Law bloggers were on this weeks ago, now Tenaha, Tex. cops’ use of forfeiture against motorists is developing into national story [Chicago Tribune, earlier here and here]
- Can hostile blog posts about a plaintiff’s case be the basis for venue change? [IBLS]
- Calls 911 because McDonald’s has run out of chicken nuggets [Lowering the Bar]
Tagged as:
bullying,
forfeiture,
free speech in Canada,
McDonald's,
parody,
Port Authority,
preemption,
terrorism
Another indication that British courts may be steering defamation law away from its highly pro-plaintiff posture of the past: “In a groundbreaking libel decision, the judge said that ‘irony’ and ‘teasing’ do not amount to defamation.” The entertainer Elton John had sued over a spoof “diary” that depicted his involvement in a major AIDS charity as insincere and self-serving.
“It’s significant,” said media law expert Mark Stephens of the ruling. “What [Mr. Justice] Tugendhat has done is move us closer to the US system where you can’t get damages for satire and humour, except in the most exceptional cases.”
(Duncan Campbell, The Guardian, Dec. 13).
Tagged as:
libel slander and defamation,
parody,
United Kingdom
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
- “Dog owners in Switzerland will have to pass a test to prove they can control and care for their animal, or risk losing it, the Swiss government said yesterday.” [Daily Telegraph]
- 72-year-old mom visits daughter’s Southport, Ct. home, falls down stairs searching for bathroom at night, sues daughter for lack of night light, law firm boasts of her $2.475 million win on its website [Casper & deToledo, scroll to "Jeremy C. Virgil"]
- Can’t possibly be right: “Every American enjoys a constitutional right to sue any other American in a West Virginia court” [W.V. Record]
- Video contest for best spoof personal injury attorney ads [Sick of Lawsuits; YouTube]
- Good profile of Kathleen Seidel, courageous blogger nemesis of autism/vaccine litigation [Concord Monitor*, Orac]. Plus: all three White House hopefuls now pander to anti-vaxers, Dems having matched McCain [Orac]
- One dollar for every defamed Chinese person amounts to a mighty big lawsuit demand against CNN anchor Jack Cafferty [NYDN link now dead; Independent (U.K.)]
- Hapless Ben Stein whipped up one side of the street [Salmon on financial regulation] and down the other [Derbyshire on creationism]
- If only Weimar Germany had Canada-style hate-speech laws to prevent the rise of — wait, you mean they did? [Steyn/Maclean's] Plus: unlawful in Alberta to expose a person to contempt based on his “source of income” [Levant quoting sec. 3 (1)(b) of Human Rights Law]
- Hey, these coupon settlements are giving all of us class action lawyers a bad name [Leviant/The Complex Litigator]
- Because patent law is bad enough all by itself? D.C. Circuit tosses out FTC’s antitrust ruling against Rambus [GrokLaw; earlier]
- “The fell attorney prowls for prey” — who wrote that line, and about which city? [four years ago on Overlawyered]
*Okay, one flaw in the profile: If Prof. Irving Gottesman compares Seidel to Erin Brockovich he probably doesn’t know much about Brockovich.
Tagged as:
antitrust,
asbestos,
autism,
Barack Obama,
Ben Stein,
coupon settlements,
Erin Brockovich,
forum shopping,
free speech in Canada,
Germany,
hate speech,
jackpot justice,
John McCain,
Kathleen Seidel subpoena,
libel slander and defamation,
Mark Steyn,
nanny state,
parody,
roundups,
Switzerland,
vaccines,
West Virginia
Updating our Mar. 29, 2006 post: “Computer store owner Charles Smith has won a two-year legal battle with Wal-Mart, which has demanded he stop making and selling T-shirts and other items with slogans such as ‘Wal-ocaust’ and ‘Wal-Qaeda.’ U.S. District Judge Timothy C. Batten Sr. found that Smith’s products qualified as protected noncommercial speech because his goal was to criticize Wal-Mart, not to make a profit from his products. The judge noted that Smith had sold only 62 T-shirts, including 15 to one of Wal-Mart’s outside law firms.” (Janet L. Conley, “Parody of Wal-Mart Trumps Its Trademark”, Fulton County Daily Report, Mar. 26; Likelihood of Confusion, Mar. 22; Randazza, Mar. 23).
Tagged as:
free speech,
parody,
trademarks,
Wal-Mart
Back in the actual calendar year 1984, for what it’s worth, the operation of copyright law was a lot gentler toward political satirists and other public commentators (Boing Boing, Mar. 28)(via Glenn Reynolds).
Tagged as:
copyright,
parody
The humor website Chickenhead publishes a parody of the famous Daily News headline “Ford to City: Drop Dead” and promptly receives a threatening letter from lawyers for the Gotham tabloid (Dec. 29; mild tastelessness).
Tagged as:
nastygrams,
newspapers,
parody
Lyons Partnership, which owns the rights to the children’s character Barney, has backed off its threats against the proprietor of a parody website that portrays the lumbering purple dinosaur as evil (see Sept. 6). (Dawn C. Chmielewski, “Happy ending? Suit over Barney parody is settled”, Los Angeles Times, Nov. 29).
Tagged as:
parody,
trademarks
For years lawyers representing the owners of the children’s-show character Barney have been firing off cease-and-desist letters to parodists who’ve portrayed various forms of violence being visited on the purple dinosaur (see, for example, Jun. 25, 2001). Now one such exchange has escalated, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation has sued Lyons Partnership, owner of Barney rights, seeking a court’s declaration that Stuart Frankel is not committing infringement by publishing a Barney parody site. (Robert Ambrogi, Legal Blog Watch, Aug. 24). Update Nov. 30: Lyons backs off.
Tagged as:
copyright,
nastygrams,
parody
Red Buttons died yesterday. He was an Oscar-winner and famous comedian, but we at Overlawyered will remember him for suing Conan O’Brien for mentioning him in a 1993 sketch. Portions of the opinion in Buttons v. National Broadcasting Co. Inc. (No. CV94-0354 (C.D. Cal.)) (via my brother) are after the jump:
[click to continue…]
Tagged as:
broadcasters,
libel slander and defamation,
parody
This isn’t the first time the Tonight Show’s “Headlines” feature, in which Leno uses real-life news photos as the basis for wisecracks and ridicule, has landed the network and comedian in court. However, a defense lawyer predicts the suit will go nowhere because the audience understood the material to be comedy. (Pam Smith, “Comedian Leno Sued for ‘Sperm Donor’ Joke”, The Recorder, Apr. 12). More “Tonight Show” litigation: Dec. 7, 1999 (flying t-shirt). (Update Jul. 9: court says it will dismiss suit).
Tagged as:
broadcasters,
parody
It’s blatantly a parody, coupled with social criticism of the world’s largest retailer, but Wal-Mart had its lawyers fire off nastygrams to computer store owner Charles Smith and, perhaps more effectively, to CafePress. Now things have proceeded to court. Smith’s website is here. (Abigail Goldman,”Wal-Mart Parodist Sues to Sell Products”, L.A. Times/Chicago Tribune, Mar. 7)(via Housing Panic).
Tagged as:
nastygrams,
parody,
Wal-Mart
The comedian’s attorneys have sent nastygrams demanding that “House of Cosby” be removed. (Lea Miller, “Cosby’s Lawyers See No Flattery in an Imitation”, New York Times, Mar. 6).
Tagged as:
nastygrams,
parody
On his popular HBO show, comedian Sacha Baron Cohen portrays various outrageous characters among them “Borat”, supposedly a TV personality from the (real) former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan. Now “Kazakhstan’s Foreign Ministry is threatening to sue him for portraying the central Asian state in a ‘derogatory way.’” (Buck Wolf, “Kazakhstan Not Laughing at ‘Ali G’”, ABCNews, Nov. 15).
Tagged as:
Borat,
broadcasters,
parody
