Yes, America’s Most Irresponsible Public Figure® is at it again. [Orac, Respectful Insolence] For good measure, the celebrity environmentalist/wayward scion, speaking in Chicago at a conference called Autism One, is quoted as saying of Dr. Paul Offit and other vaccine scientists, “They should be in jail and the key should be thrown away.” [Age of Autism]
Update: As of Tues. June 3 in the afternoon, the AoA blog post has been taken down. [h/t Justin Miller]
Tagged as:
autism,
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,
vaccines,
voices of moderation
- Georgia: “Twiggs County Landgrabber Loses, Must Pay $100K in Fees” [Lowering the Bar]
- “Major California Rule Change For Depositions Takes Place In 2013″ [Cal Biz Lit] Discovery cost control explored at IAALS conference [Prawfs]
- Gift idea! “Lego version of the Eighth Circle of Hell (where false counselors and perjurers suffered)” [John Steele, Legal Ethics Forum; Flavorwire]
- “Don’t Worry About the Voting Rights Act: If the Supreme Court strikes down part of it, black and Hispanic voters will be just fine.” [Eric Posner and Nicholas Stephanopoulos, Slate, via @andrewmgrossman]
- “Why did Congress hold hearings this week promoting crackpot [anti-vaccination] views? [Phil Plait, Slate]
- “Debunking a Progressive Constitutional Myth; or, How Corporations Became People, Too” [John Fabian Witt, Balkinization]
- “Federal ‘protection’ of American poker players turning into confiscation” [Point of Law]
Tagged as:
constitutional law,
discovery,
forfeiture,
gambling,
Georgia,
property law,
vaccines,
Voting Rights Act
- Refuting a law review’s vaccine-autism claims [Orac, Respectful Insolence, more, Fair Warning]
- Should sue-the-cops fliers have used Suffolk U. law school logo? [Boston Herald via Wood, Chronicle]
- “There’s a saying that ‘the law you learned in law school is the law’” [Bill Araiza, Prawfs]
- Annals of legal scholarship: law review article on “planetarian identity formation” [SSRN] Larry Ribstein on the trouble with law reviews [TotM, earlier]
- Enough with the “balance” talk, says organizer of Hastings Law conference on Palestine rights [SFGate]
- “The entire law school industry … a significant profit center for universities — is a giant bubble” [The New Republic] “Mind-boggling” tuition increases hard to explain other than as product of market distortions [Hans Bader]
- Liberty Law exam question on notorious kidnapping case raises eyebrows [Sarah Posner, Religion Dispatches; background]
- “It’s Deja Vu for Louisiana Economy as Law School Clinic, Activists Challenge Air Permit” [WLF]
Tagged as:
law schools,
Miller-Jenkins case,
vaccines
- New Yorker suing boss for $2M because working in New Jersey caused him “anguish” [Biz Insider]
- British lawyer’s libel threats impede UK publication of Paul Offit vaccine book [Respectful Insolence]
- Lawsuit settlement leads to Florida push to curb tobacco discounter [WSJ; background, Jeremy Bulow]
- Allegation: attorneys made personal use of cy pres fund in Armenian genocide settlement [PoL]
- “Telecommuting employees raise special wage and hour issues” [Hyman]
- UK bias cops wonder whether to ban gay-preferred along with gay-not-preferred guesthouses [Ed West, U.K. Telegraph]
- Copyright mills: “Local law firm wants to defend people sued by local law firm” [TBD] Related: [Citizen Media Law, Coleman]
- “Top 10 Reasons to Not Open a Bar or Restaurant in NYC” [NY Enterprise Report]
Tagged as:
cy pres,
fair housing,
libel slander and defamation,
New Jersey,
NYC,
restaurants,
RightHaven,
tobacco settlement,
vaccines,
wage and hour suits
- Artist Jeff Koons drops his lawsuit against maker of resin balloon dogs [Legal Blog Watch, BoingBoing, earlier]
- The car pile-up happened fast, the come-ons from lawyers and chiropractors were almost as speedy [Adler/Volokh]
- Andrew Thomas update: former Maricopa County Attorney intends to sue former bar president and ethics investigators [ABA Journal, Coyote]
- Litigation finance: “Poker Magnate, London Firm Bankroll Chevron Plaintiffs” [Dan Fisher, Forbes] Case for champerty pleaded before ethics commission [Podgers, ABA Journal] The experience in Australia [Karlsgodt]
- Judge: Kansas City stadium mascot hot dog toss suit can go to trial [OnPoint News, earlier]
- How National Enquirer matched wits with John Edwards to expose scandal [David Perel, HuffPo] More: Justice Department building a case? [AW]
- “The Whooping Cough’s Unnecessary Return” [Paul Howard/Jim Copland, City Journal] Theodore Dalrymple reviews new Paul Offit vaccine book [same]
- Many trial lawyers yank funding from Ralph Nader operations in pique over his role in depriving Al Gore of White House victory [ten years ago on Overlawyered]
Tagged as:
Arizona,
art and artists,
baseball,
champerty,
Chevron,
John Edwards,
litigation finance,
vaccines
- New York State Sen. Jim Alesi drops much-criticized suit against constituent couple in whose house he was injured while trespassing [WHEC, Techdirt]
- “Distracted moving”: campaign heats up for laws prohibiting pedestrians from texting [Alkon, Greenfield, Popehat]
- “Good News: Tort Costs Eased in 2009. Bad News: They Still Totaled $248 Billion.” [CJAC, Insurance Journal, Towers Perrin report (PDF)]
- As Wisconsin moves to limit tort suits, lawyers race to file cases before deadline [Journal-Sentinel, NAM, NJLRA]
- Settling scientific and scholarly quarrels in France by way of defamation actions? Criminal libel complaints? [Ron Bailey] Update on Joseph Weiler criminal libel case [Heller, Opinio Juris, earlier here, etc.]
- NPR interview with Seth Mnookin on vaccine book [via TortsProf, earlier; plus, New York Observer]
- “HP Tries a Coupon Settlement” [PoL]
- “Strange but true” role of former Republican Senator Fred Thompson lobbying for Tennessee trial lawyers will not particularly surprise Overlawyered readers [WSJ Law Blog; background here, here, etc.]
Tagged as:
coupon settlements,
France,
libel slander and defamation,
tort reform,
traffic laws,
vaccines,
Wisconsin
A British Medical Journal editorial confirms that scientific misconduct by then-Dr. Andrew Wakefield was even worse than previously assumed. The resulting media-fueled panic led parents to refuse vaccination in large numbers, and childhood scourges such as measles soared as a result, with disability and even death resulting. Wakefield was being financed by lawyers hoping to sue the vaccine industry. [Respectful Insolence, CNN, AP, Adler]
Tagged as:
autism,
junk science,
vaccines
- Report: dead woman’s name robo-signed onto thousands of collection documents [Business Insider] Or was it? [comment, Fredrickson/Collections and Credit Risk (alleging that living daughter shares name of deceased mother)] “Are faked attorney signatures the ‘next huge issue’ in the foreclosure scandal?” [Renee Knake, Legal Ethics Forum]
- “Major Verdict Threatens to Bankrupt Maker of Exercise Equipment” [Laura Simons, Abnormal Use]
- Decline in competitiveness of U.S. capital markets owes much to legal and regulatory developments [Bainbridge, related]
- Deadly Choices, The Panic Virus: Dr. Paul Offit and Seth Mnookin have new books out on vaccine controversy [Orac]
- “No one’s trying to get rich off this,” says lawyer planning suit on behalf of A train subway riders stranded during NYC blizzard [NY Daily News]
- Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna continues to seek solutions to state’s uniquely exposed litigation position, including fix of joint and several liability [Seattle Times, background here and here]
- ABA Blawg 100 picks — and a critique;
- Alabama bar orders lawyer’s law license suspended, but in the mean time he’s been elected judge [four years ago on Overlawyered]
Tagged as:
debtor-creditor law,
legal blogs,
mortgages,
not about the money,
NYC,
product liability,
recreation,
sovereign immunity,
transit,
vaccines,
Washington state
- Supreme Court case: “Family’s vaccine claim is not sustainable” [Washington Post editorial, earlier] More: John Calfee, The American.
- GAO: HHS acted in “unusual” way when it muzzled health plans on ObamaCare costs [Cannon/Cato-at-Liberty, earlier]
- “Trial Opens for Adoption Attorney Accused of Stealing From Clients” [NYLJ]
- U.K.: A “human right” to have someone prosecuted? [Greenfield]
- “Dodd-Frank, Bubble Laws, and Quack Corporate Governance” [Bainbridge]
- Child overprotection: “Pack away the cotton wool” [Sydney Morning Herald editorial, scroll]
- Here comes another SCOTUS case in the Twombly-Iqbal series? [WLF] Update: Apparently not [Ted at PoL] Why Iqbal and Twombly were rightly decided [Beck]
- Don’t link, criticize, use our name, refer to us, view our source code… [three years ago on Overlawyered]
Tagged as:
international human rights,
pleading,
vaccines
- Gulf spill fund flooded with dubious claims [Fred Smith, CEI]
- If these cases go forward, it will make it economically unfeasible for anyone to make vaccines in this country” [NYT quoting Beck on Bruesewitz v. Wyeth preemption case now before SCOTUS]
- Barney Frank’s evolving views on Fannie/Freddie oversight [Mankiw, Globe]
- $5.2 million legal bills to Michael Jackson estate [TMZ]
- Frederick, Maryland pizzeria owner asked to pay $200K for unsolicited faxes [Gazette; my WSJ take four years ago]
- UK: “Migration Watch” may sue critic [David Allen Green via Richard Wilson, more]
- Parody of cheesy law firm promotes TV series “Breaking Bad” ["Better Call Saul", autoplays video/audio]
- N.J.: “Drowns while fleeing cops, family sues for $50M” [five years ago on Overlawyered]
Tagged as:
Barney Frank,
BP Transocean oil spill,
libel slander and defamation,
mortgages,
preemption,
restaurants,
United Kingdom,
vaccines
Such at least is one reading of the federal government’s unusual decision to settle the Hannah Poling vaccine compensation claim [Michael Krauss at PoL]
Tagged as:
autism,
vaccines
Respectful Insolence, last month:
Well, that didn’t take long.
Remember when the grande dame of the anti-vaccine movement, Barbara Loe Fisher, decided that she would try to harass, intimidate, and silence Paul Offit through the filing of a frivolous libel suit against Dr. Offit, Amy Wallace (the journalist who interviewed Offit for an excellent article last year), and Condé Nast, the publisher of WIRED, which ran the article? Well, the judge has ruled, and that ruling is…dismissed.
More: VLW (Virginia Lawyers Weekly) Blog, Volokh.
Tagged as:
libel slander and defamation,
vaccines
