- American Federation of Teachers backs off earlier aggressive trademark stance against critical website [AFT Exposed via Ron Coleman, earlier]
- Unintended but ever-so-predictable consequence of cash-for-clunkers: cheap used cars now a lot less cheap [Coyote]
- Strange that Pat Robertson doesn’t seem to know hate-crime laws cover crimes motivated by religious bias [Neiwert]
- Court rules against New York law firm’s debt collection practices [ABA Journal]
- Trouble amid the Lamborghinis: rumors swirl of financial defalcations at prominent south Florida law firm [WSJ Law Blog and more] Plus: Rothstein’s huge bipartisan political donations [DBR]
- Ohio: “Man dressed as a Breathalyzer for Halloween is arrested for DUI” [Obscure Store]
- Blawg star Mark Herrmann (Drug & Device Law) writes a brief in Supreme Court case on (unrelated) topic of prosecutorial immunity for misconduct [Scott Greenfield]
- Administration’s task force on medical liability reform meets amid signs it won’t accomplish much [Wood, ShopFloor; related, Stanley Goldfarb/Weekly Standard]
Tagged as:
debtor-creditor law,
medical malpractice,
trademarks
- Greenwich, Connecticut real estate board may discipline member whose blog (often linked in this space) regularly pokes fun at overpriced houses. Antitrust/First Amendment problem? [Chris Fountain, For What It's Worth]
- “Religious group sued for allegedly inciting harm through prayers” [USA Today]
- Legally driven waste of water in parched California should reopen Endangered Species Act debate [Max Schulz, American Spectator] “More Unintended Consequences — Endangered Species Edition” [Ronald Bailey, Reason; related AEI panel]
- “Apple v Woolworth re Apple Logos In Australia” [Trademark Blog]
- Speaking of Australia, Consumers Union’s Consumerist site publishes fake “Aussie McDonald’s fraud plot” memo as real — revises post later, but without mentioning it was taken in by hoax [HardArticle]
- Pennsylvania couple learns about squatter’s-rights law the hard way [Hazleton Standard Speaker]
- Maybe Saratoga Springs, N.Y. will let middle schoolers bike — or even walk! — to school [Albany Times-Union, Lenore Skenazy/Free Range Kids, Patrick at Popehat, Doug Mataconis/Liberty Papers]
- Milberg, the disgraced class action firm of Mel Weiss and Bill Lerach fame, is hot again [NLJ]
Tagged as:
Apple,
Australia,
Bill Lerach,
California,
churches,
Connecticut,
endangered species,
McDonald's,
Melvyn Weiss,
Milberg Weiss,
Pennsylvania,
real estate,
schools,
trademarks,
urban legends about lawsuits
“Electronic Arts is asking the United States to cancel five trademarks held by Tim Langdell’s Edge Games, saying the marks have been effectively abandoned.” [Kotaku] Earlier: Aug. 21.
Tagged as:
trademarks,
videogames
T-shirts tweaking San Francisco transit? “Like so many things, it’s all fun and games, until you get sued” — in this case, a threat of suit from New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority. [SF Weekly] And the MTA has dropped its claims against Greenwich, Ct. blogger Chris Schoenfeld (”Station Stops“), who puts out an iPhone app providing train schedule information [Greenwich Time]
Tagged as:
copyright,
NYC,
publishers,
San Francisco,
trademarks
- Federal judge rejects lenient plea deal for two judges in Luzerne County, Pa. judicial scandal [ABA Journal, Scott Greenfield] More: allegations of extensive abuses including “rampant case-fixing and payoffs” [Hank Grezlak and Leo Strupczewski, Legal Intelligencer] Charges of impropriety in handling defamation case handed down against Wilkes-Barre newspaper [Strupczewski, same] Improprieties in that libel case denied [ABA Journal] Should juvenile convictions by Judge Mark Ciavarella Jr. be vacated? [ABA Journal]
- Law and a banana: Page-one Wall Street Journal treatment of fruit pesticide litigation fraud [yesterday's paper, PoL] Further: Cal. Civil Justice (”trained like a parrot”, “super lawyer”), L.A. Times and more, earlier.
- “Can it be true that some Girl Scout camps FORBID climbing trees?” [Skenazy, Free Range Kids]
- Katy Perry (U.S. pop singer) vs. Katie Perry (Australian fashion designer) trademark lawsuit [Bryan Quigley, Institute for Legal Reform] Suit has now been dropped [Katie Perry website, h/t @lenejohansen]
- Emergency room blogger White Coat wraps up his malpractice-suit saga [collected posts]
- “Automated shakedown racket sends legal threats, demands cash” [BoingBoing; copyright infringement demand letters]
- More coverage of New Mexico baseball-hit-into-stands liability ruling [Hochfelder/PoL, Stossel, earlier]
- Do not anger Texas criminal defense law blogger Mark Bennett. Just don’t [Popehat]
Tagged as:
banana pesticide litigation fraud,
baseball,
copyright,
Luzerne County judicial scandal,
medical malpractice,
New Mexico,
Pennsylvania,
Texas,
trademarks,
trees
Ride the Ducks says it has been inviting customers to toot on kazoos for a decade as part of its water-land tours in various cities. Now it is suing competitor Bay Quackers, which pioneered the duck tour concept in San Francisco (and was more recently joined there as a competitor by Ride the Ducks) for infringing its “sound mark”, an “auditory equivalent of a trademark”. [New York Times] [Corrected 2:30 p.m. after reader Kim S. pointed out that I hadn't correctly conveyed the details of which company operated where and when.]
Tagged as:
competition through litigation,
San Francisco,
trademarks
- Yielding to pressure from state AGs, Craigslist will close “erotic services” section and replace with more highly moderated “adult services”; New York’s Cuomo is furious the site took unilateral action “in the middle of the night” rather than negotiating with him [NY Times, Hartford Courant, office of Connecticut AG (and longtime Overlawyered bete noire) Richard Blumenthal, Citizen Media Law, Above the Law] More: Ambrogi.
- Or they could absorb it and move on: “Bounty sues Brawny in paper towel tilt” [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]
- Was granting patents relating to diagnostic analysis of human genes a mistake? Should courts undo it? Via constitutional law? Three different questions there [Ars Technica, Doc Gurley/San Francisco Chronicle]
- Canadian Human Rights Commission wants new ban on discrimination based on “social condition” (with concomitant penalties for hurtful speech premised on such condition) [Ken at Popehat]
- Luxury-goods makers’ suits against eBay over sale of counterfeits may be petering out [Frankel, American Lawyer]
- Today must be exotic-dancer-litigation day at Overlawyered: Trademark Trial and Appeal Board denies trademark protection for “Cuffs and Collar Mark” of Chippendales male exotic dancers [TTA Blog via Lowering the Bar, Ron Coleman, opinion in PDF]
- Allegations fail to stick: “Judge drops class-action suit on Teflon cookware” [AP/Des Moines Register, WSJ, American Lawyer; earlier here and here]
- Asbestos litigation ramps up against Detroit automakers after bankruptcy of many earlier defendants [five years ago on Overlawyered; up-to-the-minute report from Kirk Hartley]
Tagged as:
asbestos,
attorneys general,
autos,
bankruptcy,
Chrysler,
competition through litigation,
constitutional law,
Craigslist,
discrimination law,
eBay,
EEOC,
free speech in Canada,
patent law,
Richard Blumenthal,
strippers and exotic dancers,
trademarks
