Overlawyered » telecommunications

Disabled rights roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 23 May 2012 12:15:03 +0000

On party-line vote, Sacramento Dems turn down bill to curb ADA access shakedown suits [ATRF, KABC, Sacramento Bee (auto-plays video ad)]
Illinois sues local schools for not developing standards for disabled athletic competition [Chicago Tribune]
Open secret: criminals exploit federally mandated IP Relay disabled-phone system [Henderson]
Judge certifies nationwide ADA accessibility suit against Hollister over stepped entrances to its stores [Law Week Colorado via Disability Law]
In settlement, AMC movie chain agrees to install captioning, audio-description at Illinois theaters [ABC Chicago]
“Has the Expanded Definition of Disability under the ADAA Gone Too Far?” [Russell Cawyer]
“Fake handicaps a growing problem for disabled sports” [Der Spiegel]

Tags: ADA filing mills, disability & schools, disabled rights, Illinois, movies film and videos, sports, telecommunications

Disabled rights roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Comcast-NBC merger conditions

Walter Olson — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 23:22:39 +0000

Attaching strings to its permission gives the Federal Communications Commission a way to fund social programs Congress would never, ever pass [Stoll, Future of Capitalism] More: Josh Wright, TotM, Mickey Kaus (“backdoor bilingualism”).

Tags: telecommunications

Comcast-NBC merger conditions is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Boston cops arrest people who videotape their actions

Walter Olson — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 13:10:39 +0000

They’re invoking laws against wiretapping, which you might naively think were passed to protect the people from the authorities, not vice versa, [Boston Globe/Daniel Rowinski, New England Center for Investigative Reporting; Radley Balko, Reason "Hit and Run"] Now lawyer Simon Glik, who was arrested for recording an arrest, is suing three cops and the city [NLJ]

Tags: Boston, police, telecommunications

Boston cops arrest people who videotape their actions is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Telemarketing consumer site menaced by foreign suits

Walter Olson — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 14:09:32 +0000

Julia Forte of North Carolina

operates a pair of web sites — 800notes.com and whocallsme.com — that provide an interesting consumer service. These web sites include message boards that permit consumers who receive calls from telemarketers to comment on their experiences; other consumers who receive a call from a given telemarketer can take a look and make a decision about whether they want to take a particular call.

U.S. law protects her in this mission, but telemarketers who don’t like the critiques made available on her sites have begun suing, or threatening to sue her, in other countries where protections for online speech are less robust. [Paul Alan Levy, CL&P Blog]

Tags: libel slander and defamation, online speech, telecommunications

Telemarketing consumer site menaced by foreign suits is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Claim: access to cable Playboy Channel caused pain, anguish

Walter Olson — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 14:20:29 +0000

Marc Randazza (Dec. 12; source link he cites is NSFW):

A Rhode Island family filed a lawsuit in Kent Superior Court claiming that Verizon Communications caused “great pain, anxiety, nervousness and mental anguish,” by providing access to the Playboy Channel. Plaintiffs Robert Bourne, Denise Roy and daughters Elice Roy and Danielle Bourne are seeking compensation for “current and future medical bills.”

Tags: broadcasters, damage theories, Rhode Island, telecommunications

Claim: access to cable Playboy Channel caused pain, anguish is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Don’t you mention that tax

Walter Olson — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 19:36:04 +0000

The state of Kentucky enacted a new sales tax on the services of telecommunications companies. It also forbade the companies from breaking the tax out as a line item on customer’s bills — that might get people mad at the legislators, after all. The Sixth Circuit, Sutton, J., ruled that under the intermediate level of First Amendment scrutiny applied to limitations on commercial speech, the “no-stating-the-tax” provision was unconstitutional. (BellSouth v. Farris, Sept. 9).

Tags: Kentucky, Sixth Circuit, telecommunications

Don’t you mention that tax is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system