Sweden

September 20 – Victory in Chicago. A judge last week threw out the city of Chicago’s lawsuit against the gun industry. “In granting the industry’s motion to dismiss, Judge Stephen A. Schiller of Cook County Circuit Court suggested that the city had not shown wrongdoing by the individual defendants. He said that the city’s arguments would be better handled in a legislature than in a courtroom.” However, a West Coast judge denied a defense motion to dismiss a group of cases filed by San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles city and county, and other plaintiffs. Pending appeal, judges have now dismissed the suits filed by Chicago, Cincinnati, Bridgeport, and Miami, while declining to dismiss suits filed by Detroit, Atlanta, Boston, New Orleans, Cleveland, and the California cities. (Pam Belluck, “Chicago Gun Suit Fails, but California’s Proceeds”, New York Times, Sept. 16 (reg); “Judge dismisses Chicago suit against gun industry”, Reuters/CNN, Sept. 15; reaction from Illinois State Rifle Association). Plus: John Derbyshire gets radicalized on the tort reform issue when he goes out trying to buy ammunition on Long Island, and discovers that the courtroom assault on the industry is choking the local firearms dealers into oblivion with no legislation needed, simply by causing their liability insurance to dry up. (“First thing we do…”, National Review Online, Sept. 12).

September 20 – Disbarred, with an asterisk. Most clients probably assume that a lawyer thrown out of the profession is gone for good, but the Boston Globe finds that for years bar authorities have been quietly readmitting practitioners, including some whose original offenses were grave. Some of this leniency has been misplaced, since a number of the readmitted lawyers have gone on to commit new offenses against clients. (David Armstrong, “Special Report: Disbarred Mass. lawyers skirt discipline system”, Sept. 17, and sidebars: “Reinstatement process favors lawyers“, “Victims often missing from equation“.

September 20 – “Regulating Privacy: At What Cost?” Free-marketeers finally start organizing to resist the steamroller movement toward online-privacy laws, reports Declan McCullagh. Among new initiatives are a symposium held yesterday on Capitol Hill by George Mason U.’s Mercatus Center, a book entitled The Future of Financial Privacy forthcoming from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and a privacy-issues website called Privacilla.org. (Wired.com, Sept. 19). And Reason Express a while back alerted us to a website by Jacob Palme in Sweden which recounts some of the less pleasant consequences of that nation’s pioneering (1973) law preventing the electronic gathering or dissemination of information about individuals without their consent. Palme says the law mostly went unenforced as regards web publishing, which is a good thing since if enforced literally it could have rendered unlawful much of the web in Sweden. The few instances that led to enforcement action, as related by Palme, suggest that unpopular and dissident opinions were among the most likely to draw complaints under the law. One man put up a webpage critical of a large Swedish bank, naming individual directors whom he believed had behaved in ethically irresponsible ways; he was prosecuted and fined for violating their privacy. In another case, an animal rights group was subject to legal action for posting a list of fur producers. In a third, a church volunteer was prosecuted for stating on a web page that one named church member had broken a leg and another was a member of the Social Democratic Party; health status and political affiliations are considered especially sensitive under the law. In a fourth case, dissident dog lovers got in privacy-law trouble for criticizing leading members of a dog society by name. The privacy laws were revised in 1998 and again in 1999, following much criticism, and as of June 2000, when Palme’s page was last revised, the highest Swedish court had not yet given its interpretation of the law (“Freedom of Speech, The EU Data Protection Directive and the Swedish Personal Data Act“; “The Swedish Personal Register Law“; “Swedish Attempts to Regulate the Internet“; official Data Inspection Board). (DURABLE LINK)

September 19 – Hollywood under fire: nose of the Camel? In what may take the prize for worst idea of the month, South Carolina Attorney General Charles Condon has proposed filing coordinated state lawsuits to make Hollywood the next tobacco. “Clearly we have here a virtual replay of what the tobacco industry did to our children. Instead of Joe Camel, Hollywood uses Eminem, South Park, Doom and Steven Segal [sic] to seduce children,” Condon wrote in a letter to the National Association of Attorneys General (Condon press release, Sept. 13; David Shuster, “South Carolina AG Threatens Suit Against Entertainment Industry”, Fox News, Sept. 15). It’s time the entertainment business cleaned up its act, writes Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune, but that doesn’t mean Sens. McCain and Lieberman are right to “justify [an] end run around the 1st Amendment with a public-health argument like that which justifies the regulation of tobacco or liquor.” (“A World Apart: Eminem and Me”, Sept. 17). Owens Corning and Met Life use cartoon characters (the Pink Panther and Snoopy respectively) as advertising mascots, and you might jump to the conclusion that they were committing that dire sin, “marketing to children”, if you didn’t know that fiberglass insulation and insurance are products bought by adults, observes Illinois law prof Ronald Rotunda (“The FTC Report on Hollywood Entertainment“, Federalist Society, Free Speech and Election Law Working Group; FTC report; “Lieberman: Entertainment must police itself”, AP/Miami Herald, Sept. 13). Filmmaker John Waters doesn’t think much of the crusade: “The future CEOs of America are all sneaking into R-rated movies” (Rick Lyman, “Writers, Directors Fear Censorship, Tell Anger Over Violence Hearings”, New York Times Service/Chicago Tribune, Sept. 18). And plaintiff’s lawyers suing entertainment companies over school shootings, who’ve already gotten plenty of favorable ink in the conservative press (see July 22, 1999), are hoping the new report will invigorate their legal cause (Frank Murray, “FTC adds ammo to lawsuits for deaths”, Washington Times, Sept. 13).

September 19 –WSJ‘s Bartley on decline of American law. The establishment of the rule of law, replacing the whim of powerful rulers, was perhaps the supreme achievement of the West in the millennium just past, but the United States has grown careless about its legal inheritance, with systematic injustices mounting in both criminal and civil courtrooms. Last week’s call-sheet scandal illustrates the way “audacious and powerful interests” who have found ways to use the legal system to make their fortunes “have allied themselves with government and politicians.” (Robert Bartley, “The Law and Civilization’s Future”, Opinion Journal (Wall Street Journal), Sept. 18). “Justice Department investigators and prosecutors want to know if there were, in fact, any quid pro quos for the trial lawyers’ extraordinary generosity,” editorializes the San Diego Union-Tribune about the scandal. “With trial lawyers contributing almost 10 percent of all funds raised by the Gore-Lieberman campaign, that remains an urgent question. Voters have a right to some answers before Nov. 7.” (“Veto for sale?”, Sept. 16).

September 19 – Punitive damages for hatemongering? Washington Post‘s editorial page “is gutsy enough to have qualms about Morris Dees’ strategy of bankrupting hate groups with punitive tort damages,” observes Mickey Kaus at Kausfiles (“The Aryan Nations Verdict” (editorial), Washington Post, Sept. 16). “Many advocacy groups that engage in direct actions potentially expose themselves to tort liability…. That danger is compounded by the abusive system of punitive damages, which gives juries wide discretion to ruin people or companies financially in a fashion untethered to the scope of the harm they have done in the specific case at issue,” the Post comments. “That could not have happened to a more deserving bunch than Mr. [Richard] Butler and the Aryan Nations. But it’s worth pausing for a moment to wonder who’s next.”

September 18 – Scruggs v. Ritalin. Latest target for zillionaire tobacco lawyer and recent Time profilee Richard Scruggs: Novartis Pharmaceutical Corp., makers of the drug Ritalin, and the American Psychiatric Association. Scruggs’s firm accuses the two of conspiring to promote an overly broad diagnosis of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), with the result that the drug is given to too many youngsters. “Novartis and the APA deny the allegations. In a statement, Novartis says the charges are ‘unfounded and preposterous.’” Some lawyers from the Castano consortium, which pursued tobacco litigation separate from Scruggs’s, are also joining him in the action. (“Lawsuits Accuse Ritalin Makers, APA”, AP/Yahoo, Sept. 15; Excite/Dow Jones; Toni Locy, “Fight over Ritalin is heading to court”, USA Today, Sept. 15) (see also Sept. 22-24 and April 13, 2001).

September 18 – White House pastry chef harassment suit. White House assistant pastry chef Franette McCulloch, 53, is suing her boss Roland Mesnier, claiming he “became hostile and rude when she spurned his advances, ‘screaming’ at her for refusing to have sex, excluding her from designing desserts and once assigning her to peel eight crates of kiwi.” Her suit also alleges that Bill Clinton, as the head of the White House, failed to establish a proper method for employees to bring harassment complaints, and demands $1 million each from Mesnier and Clinton. (AP/CNN, Sept. 13; Ellen Nakashima, “White House Chef Accuses Boss of Sexual Harassment”, Washington Post, Sept. 14). In 1997, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled against a discriminatory-firing claim by an employee of the White House chef’s office, but said he had been improperly retaliated against for filing his complaint. A former executive chef testified in a sworn deposition that year that the Clintons had paid him $37,000 to quit his post “because of my accent and the fact that I’m overweight.” (more).

September 18 – The teetery inkbottle. “Whenever the law and the facts were against him, Mr. Homans was not one to pound on the table. Instead, he would resort to what he called his ‘trial pen’, a big, old-fashioned device that he would pull out at a critical moment in a trial. On the stand would be the state’s star witness testifying that he had seen with his own eyes as Mr. Homans’s client pulled out a gun and pointed it directly at the bank teller’s head. But the jurors’ eyes would be on Mr. Homans, who, with trembling hand, would be filling the pen from a bottle of India ink perched so precariously, half over the edge of the defense table, that the jury would be caught up in the suspense of when it would fall.” — from an obituary, “William Homans, 75, Dies; Boston Civil Rights Lawyer”, by the late Robert McG. Thomas, Jr., New York Times, February 13, 1997 (fee-based archives, search on “William Homans”).

September 18 – That’ll be $2 trillion, please. A former resident has filed three lawsuits against the town of Rocky River, Ohio, “claiming everything from false arrest to injury of reputation,” and demanding $2 trillion. The town isn’t amused and is countersuing her, saying it’s had to expend money to defend itself. (Sarah Treffinger, “Rocky River sues woman who sued for trillions”, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Sept. 13).

September 15-17 – Day Two of Vetogate. George W. Bush in a California speech says the new call-sheet revelations are evidence that Gore “may have crossed a serious line … The appearance is really disturbing”, Janet Reno refuses to talk about the status of the investigation, the New York Times Washington bureau frets about being (just barely) webscooped by Time.com on the story, and Gore campaign spokesman Chris Lehane curiously describes the sensational disclosures as “recycled”, though no one in the press remembers seeing them before now (CNN; Drudge special; Yahoo/Reuters; Wash. Times).

September 15-17 – Who caught the tire problem? “Who provided the information that instigated the current recall? Who acted to protect the consumer? None other than ‘greedy’, profit-seeking State Farm Insurance Company. Eager to earn ever higher profits by reducing injury claims and lawsuits, State Farm’s statistical bureau noticed an increase in claims related to Firestone tires and passed the information along to the NHTSA which had been asleep at the switch. [See Devon Spurgeon, "State Farm researcher’s sleuthing helped prompt Firestone recall', Wall Street Journal , Sept. 1]. The profit seeking of a big, bad, private insurance company may help save hundreds of lives.” (James Ostrowski, “The Tire Fiasco”, Ludwig von Mises Institute, Sept. 8).

In the New York Times Sept. 11, Keith Bradsher reports that by the end of 1998 trial lawyers “had already sued Firestone, and sometimes Ford as well, in cases involving 22 deaths and 69 serious injuries”. However, few of these cases had come to the attention of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration; until recently NHTSA had received very few complaints, and none of fatalities. In fact, Bradsher reports, trial lawyers were pursuing a conscious policy of not reporting tire incidents to the agency, apparently because of tactical concerns — if the agency learned about such cases too early and in too small a number, it might do a perfunctory investigation and miss the pattern of defectiveness, and then the lawyers would have more trouble winning their cases. This strikes us as a fairly damning indictment to be leveling against the trial lawyers — they flout the public interest in learning crucial safety information, just in order to angle for monetary advantage? Isn’t that what Firestone is accused of doing? — but Bradsher quotes Ralph Hoar, a well-known plaintiff’s-side consultant in auto-design cases who provided the numerical tabulation cited at the beginning of this paragraph, as cheerily portraying the lawyers as just doin’ their job, saying they have to concern themselves with their clients’ best interests, not anyone else’s.

Meanwhile, Ford Motor had been named in a few suits but “paid little attention, because automakers routinely face thousands of lawsuits after crashes.” In other words, the background level of litigation against a company of that size is so high that it’s hard to notice patterns that do turn out to be meaningful (Keith Bradsher, “Documents Portray Tire Debacle as a Story of Lost Opportunities”, New York Times, Sept. 11 (reg)). (DURABLE LINK)

September 15-17 – Ciresi bested in Senate bid. Michael Ciresi, the trial lawyer who sought to parlay his representation of the state of Minnesota in the tobacco litigation into a seat in the U.S. Senate, has lost the Democratic nomination to department store heir Mark Dayton by a margin of 41 to 23 percent, with other candidates dividing the rest. (Dan Bernard, “Dayton Grabs DFL Nomination”, WCCO/Channel 4000, Sept. 13; St. Paul Pioneer Press; Minneapolis Star-Tribune).

September 15-17 – Cash return sought by murder-for-hire convict. “A criminal defense attorney who paid an undercover agent $11,000 in a failed murder-for-hire plot is asking the government to return the money. Frederick Ford, 48, who is serving an eight-year prison term for planning to kill two former clients he thought could implicate him in a kidnap plot, is seeking the return of the money he admitted he gave to a U.S. Department of Labor agent last year.” (“Convicted attorney seeks return of murder-for-hire retainer”, AP/CNN, Sept. 13; Shelley Murphy, “Hit man hirer wants money back”, Boston Globe, Sept. 13).

September 14 – “I know [you] will give $100K when the president vetoes tort reform, but we really need it now.” The New York Times reports in today’s editions that Justice Department campaign finance investigators have launched a preliminary probe into documents that have surfaced from the Clinton/Gore 1996 fundraising operation, including a “call sheet” prepared for Vice President Gore regarding Beaumont, Texas lawyer Walter Umphrey, a major Democratic benefactor who shared in Texas’s $3.3 billion tobacco contingency fee and is well known to readers of this space. The sheet describes Umphrey as “closely following tort reform” and suggests asking him for $100,000 to finance Democratic Party TV commercials. The White House claims that Gore did not make the call, but two weeks later a staffer for then-Democratic National Committee chairman Donald Fowler prepared a call sheet reading as follows: “Sorry you missed the vice president. I know [sic] will give $100K whn [sic] the president vetos [sic] tort reform, but we really need it now. Please send ASAP if possible.” DNC officials propose that the “missed” might have referred to the two men not connecting at an in-person event; Fowler disclaims any memory of talking with Umphrey about campaign donations and says he would never have used the language on the call sheet. According to the Times, “Trevor Potter, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, called the call sheet’s language ‘extraordinarily ill-advised,’ saying prosecutors would probably be investigating whether the solicitation violated either a bribery statute or a law prohibiting ‘illegal gratuities,’ a ‘gift’ given after an elected official takes a public action.”

The Washington Post reports that Umphrey says he doesn’t recall “any of that” and otherwise declines comment, while Payne was talking to the Times only through her lawyer. And attorney Michael Tigar, who represents Umphrey and the rest of the Big Five Texas tobacco lawyers, issued this small gem of legalistically worded denial: “Tying campaign contributions to legislative or executive action has never been illegal in the United States unless there is proof that the public official extorts the money by threatening to give or withhold action based on the contributions,” he said; moreover, his clients, including Mr. Umphrey, “have repeatedly been asked in many forums whether they have ever given money to a candidate or officials as a quid-pro-quo for official action, and they have repeatedly said under oath that they have never done so.” The Times account adds considerable background on the epic pace of Clinton/Gore fundraising among Texas plaintiff’s lawyers of late, including a little-reported fundraiser thrown for Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Senate campaign by Big Five stalwart John Eddie Williams of Houston. (Don Van Natta Jr. with Richard A. Oppel Jr., “Memo Linking Political Donation and Veto Spurs Federal Inquiry”, New York Times, Sept. 14 (reg); Susan Schmidt, “1995 Documents Appear To Link Lawyer’s Contribution To Veto”, Washington Post, Sept. 14; more on Umphrey and the Big Five: Sept. 1, May 22; more on trial lawyers’ political clout). More breaking coverage (via Drudge): Time, Fox News, AP. (DURABLE LINK)

September 13-14 – “Violent media is good for kids”. Good kids, as well as bad ones, are naturally fascinated with violence, catastrophe and retribution, and letting them explore these matters in the relatively safe territory of the printed page and popular entertainment is part of the process by which they learn how to fit themselves into a frightening world, argues cartoonist Gerard Jones, in an excerpt from a book due out next year from Basic with co-author Melanie Moore (“Reality Check”, Mother Jones, June 28; Reason magazine, “The Kids Are All Right“, “Breaking Issues”; Christopher Stern, “Violent Material Marketed To Youth”, Washington Post, Aug. 27; Mike Allen and Ellen Nakashima, “Clinton, Gore Hit Hollywood Marketing”, Washington Post, Sept. 12).

September 13-14 – Gregoire’s home front. Washington state attorney general Christine Gregoire gained a high national profile jetting around the country to take a leading role in the tobacco-Medicaid affair and other big-case AG litigation, and followed up by assuming the presidency of the National Association of Attorneys General (see July 17). Now it may be time to wonder whether she was keeping enough of an eye back home on the unglamorous routine of the AG’s office, which plays a vital role in protecting the state’s legal interests. In March a Pierce County jury awarded the largest verdict ever against the state, $17.8 million, on behalf of three developmentally disabled men whose families said they were abused in a state-supported home. Gregoire’s office announced plans to appeal but, embarrassingly, proceeded to lose the state’s right to do so by missing a filing deadline. With interest, the total bill has now mounted to $18.7 million. (Eric Nalder and Mike Carter, “State won’t give up bid to appeal $17.8 million verdict”, Seattle Times, Sept. 12; Eric Nalder, “No excuse for missed appeal, court says”, Seattle Times, Aug. 22; see also update Nov. 30). The Capital Research Center has issued a new report critical of recent attorney general activism, by Ron Nehring of Americans for Tax Reform (“National Association of Attorneys General: Opening the Door to a New Era of Regulation Through Litigation”, Organization Trends (CRC), Sept.)

September 13-14 – Prescription: 24-7 monitoring. Adding to Evergreen State taxpayers’ legal woes, a Pierce County, Wash. jury Sept. 1 ordered the state government to pay $22 million to survivors of a driver killed in an auto accident by a man who was at the time serving the community-supervision portion of a sentence for third-degree assault. The verdict broke an earlier $17.8 million record for lawsuits against the state, set in March by the same plaintiff’s attorney, Jack Connelly (see above item). Gov. Gary Locke vowed to appeal the verdict, saying if upheld it could make the entire enterprise of community supervision unworkable. “This man was convicted of … third-degree assault connected with a domestic dispute,” he said. “Imposing liability for his involvement in an auto accident extends public liability too far.” A Locke aide questioned whether the state could monitor the 55,000 persons on community supervision adequately to prevent any of them from being a menace on the highway. One of the alternatives to risking failure-to-supervise liability — keeping the 55,000 locked up — would apparently be okay with lawyer Connelly, who said, “If you’re not even going to try to do your job, then don’t put these guys on community supervision. Put them in jail.” (Eli Sanders, “Family awarded $22.4 million in wrongful death lawsuit against state”, Seattle Times, Sept. 2). See also Chris Solomon, “Cities leery of new probation rules”, Seattle Times, July 11 (local governments fear being financially wiped out by Washington Supreme Court ruling allowing negligence lawsuits against municipalities over crimes committed by probationers).

September 13-14 – More bank spying? Despite strongly negative public reaction to withdrawn “Know Your Customer” regulations that would have accelerated banks’ sharing of customer “profiles” with law enforcement, legislators like Rep. James Leach (R-Iowa) are back with proposals that raise similar civil liberties concerns (Scott C. Rayder, “The Counter-Money Laundering Act: An Attack on Privacy and Civil Liberties”, Heritage Foundation Executive Memorandum, Aug. 31; our take on the last round).

September 13-14 – Judges’ words, copyrighted. Officials in the California judiciary would like to revamp the instructions that judges give juries before trial deliberations, in hopes of making them clearer and more understandable, but have run into an unexpected problem. The Los Angeles County courts turn out to hold copyright in the most widely used current instructions and collect royalties when other California courts use them, which have generated $2.5 million for the county’s use over the past decade. “‘When we first began this effort three years ago, all of us just assumed that we would take [Los Angeles instructions] and improve on them,’ said Associate Justice James D. Ward of the state Court of Appeal in Riverside, vice chairman of the task force. ‘Then they announced to us that they owned them.’” The L.A. courts have held back from cooperating in the statewide revision efforts, which if successful would result in a set of instructions that courts could use for free. (Caitlin Liu, “Say What, Your Honor?”, Los Angeles Times, Sept. 7).

September 12 – Goodbye to gaming volunteers? Online multiplayer gaming has grown to be a big Internet institution in no small part because large numbers of unpaid enthusiasts join in on a volunteer basis to suggest and beta-test new features, run discussion boards and perform countless other services. “But maybe not for long. On Monday, August 28 … Origin Systems Inc. (OSI) [makers of Ultima Online, one of the leading fantasy role-playing games], announced the termination of free game account privileges for hundreds of community volunteers…. While company representatives have not said so outright, it appears the move to eliminate what amounted to a $10 a month gratuity for volunteers is related to a recent New York class action lawsuit, brought by former volunteers at America Online (AOL)” (see Sept. 7, 1999). The class action lawyers in that case are charging that because AOL benefits from the content devised by its volunteers, and has given them at least nominal compensation in the form of free services and the like, it is therefore obliged to keep track of how much time they put into volunteering and pay them at least the minimum wage. If the lawyers succeed in their efforts, online community providers could find themselves facing large retroactive wage bills. “Origin is just the first game company to move to protect itself legally by removing any perks that could be seen as differentiating its volunteers from all the other players. The major subscription-based role-playing services may soon follow suit. While the short-term effects may be limited (some volunteers may quit, but could be replaced), the long-term future of volunteer work on online releases seems doubtful all of a sudden.” (Bruce Rolston, “The End of the Smurfs?”, Adrenaline Vault, Sept. 1).

September 12 – Curious feature of lawyer’s retainer. Texas trial lawyers are in a flutter over a Waco case in which an appeals court ruled that a client family in an industrial accident case was within its rights to withdraw from a contingent-fee legal contract it had signed. The agreement the lawyer had gotten the family to sign included a curious feature: a provision entitling him to settle the case without their consent. Such a provision, the court ruled, “clearly violates” the Texas professional code for lawyers, making the entire contract voidable. The lawyer, J.W. Stringer, plans motions for rehearing and appeal. (Jenny Burg, “Opinion Has Lawyers Reviewing Contingent-Fee Contracts”, Texas Lawyer, Aug. 21).

September 12 – This little piggy got taken to court. More pig farmers are facing legal action as outlying towns change “from rural, mind-your- own-business farm communities to residential, what’s-that-smell, suburban neighborhoods,” according to a Cleveland Plain Dealer report. Five residents of Medina County, Ohio, including a truck driver and two auto mechanics, have been sent to jail this summer for refusing to clean up pig living arrangements on their properties (Stephen Hudak, “Proud Pig Man’s smelly pork farm lands him in poke”, Sept. 7) (via Romenesko’s Obscure Store) And a Marlin County, Florida pig farmer sued by an adjoining golf course has put up a website which solicits moral support and legal defense contributions, as well as purchases of the squiggle-tailed offenders (Pigfarmer.com) (more on pig litigation: Oct. 4, 1999).

September 11 — “Feeding Frenzy Over Firestone”. “Lawyers all over the country see opportunity in the escalating legal, commercial and public relations disaster for Ford and Firestone.” (Bob Van Voris and Matt Fleischer, National Law Journal, Sept. 5; Yahoo Full Coverage).

September 11 – Harassment law roundup. At an Alcoa plant in North Carolina, one of the black complainants in a race discrimination suit went out to the parking lot, made a list of all the workers’ vehicles with Confederate flag stickers on them, and filed this as evidence of “hostile racial environment” in the case. The company promptly banned employees from having such stickers on their cars, a ban it insists had absolutely nothing to do with the lawsuit (Steve Chapman, “Trouble in Mind: Is the First Amendment Void in the Workplace?” Chicago Tribune, Aug. 24). In an excerpt from his book The Unwanted Gaze: The Destruction of Privacy in America, New Republic legal correspondent Jeff Rosen urges courts to reconsider the “hostile environment” analysis that has become an accepted part of harassment law: “A jurisprudence originally designed to protect privacy and dignity is inadvertently invading privacy and dignity” (“Fall of Private Man”,New Republic, June 12; more on book). Clarence Thomas, alone among the nine Justices of the Supreme Court, wanted to tackle the “troubling First Amendment issues” raised by a court’s injunction against workers’ use of racial epithets on the job at an Avis Rent-a-Car franchise; a California court had ordered the drawing up of a list of words that employees were to be forbidden to use in conversation with each other, whether anyone present found the words objectionable or not (Tony Mauro, Freedom Forum, May 23). And early this year it was reported that an “affirmative action officer in Falmouth, Massachusetts — whose job it was to enforce the town’s sexual harassment policy — has been fired for sexually harassing a town employee. The official, Jayme Dias, was in charge of promoting and enforcing fairness in hiring and employment practices.” (Monster.com, “Week in Work”, Jan. 31).

September 11 — “Mother sues over lack of ice time for goalie son”. In Rimouski, Quebec, “Hélène Canuel is seeking $1,000 in damages from the Rimouski Minor Hockey Association because her son, David, was denied the right to play in a critical game during a hockey tournament last December.” David is 14 years old. (Arpon Basu, Montreal Gazette/National Post, Aug. 24).

Tagged as: animal rights, Atlanta, attorneys general, Beaumont, Cincinnati, Cleveland, contingent fee, copyright, Detroit, Ford Motor, free speech, Houston, Illinois, Iowa, Janet Reno, Long Island, Massachusetts, Michael Ciresi, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Provost Umphrey, San Diego, Seattle, South Carolina, State Farm, Sweden, tobacco, Washington state

{ 0 comments }