- Details emerge on new demonstration grants for patient safety and medical liability [Point of Law, NLJ] GOP underwhelmed by Obama gestures [Fox News and earlier, Salt Lake Tribune, Washington Times, Examiner and more]
- Trial lawyer charity effort donates Wii sets to rehab hospitals [Daily Business News Detroit] Wait a minute – what about those lawsuits contending Wii was a defective product?
- No, John Edwards didn’t invent trial tactic of “channeling” thoughts of deceased. And is inflaming jury passion and prejudice “what good closing argument for a good trial lawyer is about”? [ABAJournal, Hochfelder/PoL, earlier]
- “It took Arizona state police months to realize the same driver was involved” in monkey-mask speed-cam evasions [MargRev, LtB]
- Connecticut lawyer’s complaints allege that business structure of Total Attorney service amounts to improper fee division [LegalBlogWatch]
- “Want to Complain About a Cop? Better Bring Your I.D. — And Maybe A Toothbrush” [Ken at Popehat]
- Tenth Circuit, McConnell writing, reinstates SCO suit against Novell over Linux [WSJ Law Blog]
- New York employment law could bite Human Rights Watch in memorabilia controversy [Volokh]
Tagged as:
attorneys' fees,
patent litigation,
red light cameras,
workplace
- “Plaintiffs’ Attorneys to Get $800,000 in Preliminary Settlement, Class Members Receive Zero” [Calif. Civil Justice covering Bluetooth settlement in which Ted was objector; earlier here and here]
- “Lawyer Jailed for Contempt Is Freed After 14 Years” [Lowering the Bar, earlier]
- Money makes the signals go ’round: another probe of red-light cameras yields few surprises [Chicago Tribune, Chicago Bungalow, Bainbridge on Washington, D.C.]
- Previously little-known company surfaces in E.D. Tex. to claim Apple, many other companies violate its patent for touchpads [AppleInsider via @JohnLobert]
- Child endangerment saga of mom who left kids at Montana mall is now a national story [ABC News; earlier post with many comments; Free Range Kids and more]
- Meet Obama Administration “special adviser on ‘green’ jobs” Van Jones ["Dunphy", McCarthy at NRO "Corner"]
- Irrationality of furloughs at University of Wisconsin should provide yet another ground to question New Deal-era Fair Labor Standards Act [Coyote]
- Australia’s internet blacklist is so secret you can’t even find out what sites are on it [Popehat - language] Oz to block online video games unsuitable for those under 15 [BoingBoing]
Tagged as:
Apple,
Australia,
class action settlements,
contempt,
Eastern District of Texas,
online speech,
patent litigation,
red light cameras,
wage and hour suits
- Free class-action swag if you bought department store cosmetics between 1994 and 2003; not that they’re giving away the very best stuff or anything [Tompkins/Poynter, California Civil Justice, WSJ Law Blog, settlement site] We’ve been covering the story for quite some time;
- Law school “can be a financial disaster” for unwary students [Law and More] Law schools not immune from economic downturn [Above the Law]
- Bruce Bawer on Dutch prosecution of Islam-criticizer Geert Wilders [City Journal]
- More on possible passenger suits after the miracle Hudson-landing USAir Flight #1549 [USA Today, earlier] Update: NY Post, NY Mag.
- Bad news for patients and other living things: Sidney Wolfe of Public Citizen somehow got named to a key FDA panel during the late Bush administration [Point of Law, Postrel, Bernstein/Volokh, Hooper & Henderson/Forbes]
- “Friends weren’t really trying to reach me!” class action against Reunion.com encounters another setback [Spam Notes]
- Stand and deliver it back: “Minnesota: $2.6 Million in Red Light Camera Tickets Refunded” [The Newspaper]
- Gary, Indiana’s is the last standing of what were once thirty “gun sales = nuisance” suits filed by cities; now Indiana high court says it can go to trial [Point of Law]
Tagged as:
airlines,
class action settlements,
FDA,
free speech,
Indiana,
law schools,
Minnesota,
Netherlands,
Public Citizen,
red light cameras
The traffic camera automatically recorded the license plate of the vehicle going too fast, so the owner (in Plettenberg Bay, South Africa) was automatically mailed a ticket. The only problem: the vehicle was being towed by a tow truck at the time. (Stumblng Tumblr, Aug. 5).
More from commenter Cathy Gellis: “I know someone who canceled her Fastrak/EZ Pass automatic toll account and was charged when the device passed through a toll while being mailed back.”
Tagged as:
red light cameras,
South Africa
“A new high-tech aerial photography system that can spot an illegal porch from 5,000 feet is being marketed to tax assessors as a way to grow revenue.” Backers say the system can help assessors spot not only unauthorized building additions but also cases in which taxpayers claim farmstead exemptions but aren’t farming enough of their land to qualify. (Richard Degener, “Taxes could get sky-high with aerial technology”, Press of Atlantic City, Sept. 29).
Tagged as:
agriculture and farming,
New Jersey,
red light cameras,
taxes
- One for your “firefighter’s rule” file: firefighter perishes in blaze, his widow sues security alarm company [SF Chron, San Pablo, Calif.]
- And another: Nassau County, N.Y. cop injured by drunk driver while on duty is suing the county over Long Island Expressway design and signage [Newsday; Kenneth Baribault]
- Stop fighting over the $60 million in fees, judge tells feuding lawyers, your lawsuit has been over for four years now [Legal Intelligencer, corrugated paper antitrust class action]
- Public-health prof: red-light cameras “don’t work” and instead “increase crashes and injuries as drivers attempt to abruptly stop” [Bruce Schneier via Instapundit]
- Criminal prosecution of political attack ads? Time to rethink campaign finance law [Bainbridge]
- Teenagers send each other racy cellphone videos, and then their legal nightmare begins [Des Moines Register]
- Sounds interesting but haven’t seen a copy: “How To Get Sued: An Instructional Guide” by well-known blawger J. Craig Williams [Giacalone, Ambrogi]
- Mississippi AG Hood goes after MillerCoors over caffeinated alcohol drinks, but Anheuser-Busch hired Mike Moore and sprung big for DAGA, hmmm [Alan Lange, YallPolitics]/li>
Tagged as:
alcohol,
Anheuser-Busch,
campaign regulation,
child protection,
feeing frenzy,
firefighters rule,
Jim Hood,
legal blogs,
Long Island,
Mississippi,
red light cameras
Turns out their economic appeal for municipalities isn’t so closely related to whether drivers are plowing through cross traffic against the stop light: “In Los Angeles, officials estimate that 80% of red light camera tickets go not to those running through intersections but to drivers making rolling right turns”. (L.A. Times via Bainbridge and Drum).
Tagged as:
red light cameras,
traffic laws
- Ninth Circuit, Kozinski, J., rules 8-3 that Roommates.com can be found to have violated fair housing law by asking users to sort themselves according to their wish to room with males or other protected groups; the court distinguished the Craigslist cases [L.A. Times, Volokh, Drum]
- Class-action claim: Apple says its 20-inch iMac displays millions of colors but the true number is a mere 262,144, the others being simulated [WaPo]
- U.K.: compulsive gambler loses $2 million suit against his bookmakers, who are awarded hefty costs under loser-pays rule [BBC first, second, third, fourth stories]
- Pittsburgh couple sue Google saying its Street Views invades their privacy by including pics of their house [The Smoking Gun via WSJ law blog]
- U.S. labor unions keep going to International Labour Organization trying to get current federal ground rules on union organizing declared in violation of international law [PoL]
- Illinois Supreme Court reverses $2 million jury award to woman who sued her fiance’s parents for not warning her he had AIDS [Chicago Tribune]
- Italian family “preparing to sue the previous owners of their house for not telling them it was haunted”; perhaps most famous such case was in Nyack, N.Y. [Ananova, Cleverly]
- Per their hired expert, Kentucky lawyers charged with fen-phen settlement fraud “relied heavily on the advice of famed trial lawyer Stan Chesley in the handling of” the $200 million deal [Lexington Herald-Leader]
- Actor Hal Holbrook of Mark Twain fame doesn’t think much of those local anti-tobacco ordinances that ban smoking on stage even when needed for dramatic effect [Bruce Ramsey, Seattle Times]
- Six U.S. cities so far have been caught “shortening the amber cycles below what is allowed by law on intersections equipped with cameras meant to catch red-light runners.” [Left Lane via Virtuous Republic and Asymmetrical Information]
Tagged as:
AIDS,
Alex Kozinski,
compulsive gambling,
Craigslist,
fair housing,
fen-phen,
Google,
haunted house,
Illinois,
international law,
Italy,
Kentucky,
Kentucky fen-phen settlement fraud,
Ninth Circuit,
Pittsburgh,
red light cameras,
roundups,
Seattle,
Stan Chesley,
tobacco
- Raising ticket revenue seems more important to NYC authorities than actually recovering stolen cars [Arnold Diaz/MyFoxNY video via Coyote]
- Subpoena your Facebook page? They just might [Beck/Herrmann]
- Rhode Island nightclub fire deep pockets, cont’d: concert sponsor Clear Channel agrees to pay Station victims $22 million, adding to other big settlements [ProJo; earlier]
- Manhattan federal judge says “madness” of hard-fought commercial suit “presents a cautionary tale about the potential for advocates to obscure the issues and impose needless burdens on busy courts” [NYLJ]
- Wooing Edwards and his voters? Hillary and Obama both tacking left on economics [Reuters/WaPo, WSJ, Chapman/Reason, WaPo editorial]
- Sad: if you tell your employer that you’re away for 144 days on jury duty, you actually need to be, like, away on jury duty [ABA Journal]
- New at Point of Law: Florida “three-strikes” keeps the doctor away; court dismisses alien-hiring RICO suit against Tyson (and more); Novak on telecom FISA immunity; fortunes in asbestos law; Ted on Avandia and Vioxx litigation; new Levy/Mellor book nominates Supreme Court’s twelve worst decisions; and much more;
- U.K.: “Lawyers forced to repay millions taken from sick miners’ compensation” [Times Online]
- Outside law firm defends Seattle against police-misconduct claims: is critics’ beef that they bill a lot, or that they’re pretty good at beating suits? [Post-Intelligencer]
- Cincinnati NAACP is campaigning against red-light cameras [Enquirer]
- Omit a peripheral defendant, get sued for legal malpractice [six years ago on Overlawyered]
Tagged as:
asbestos,
Avandia,
Barack Obama,
Cincinnati,
Clear Channel,
deep pocket,
Facebook,
FISA,
NYC,
red light cameras,
Rhode Island,
Rhode Island Station nightclub fire,
roundups,
Seattle,
telecom immunity,
Vioxx
