“A Rockland County family filed suit against the New York Archdiocese after a Catholic preschool wouldn’t accept their child because she has not been fully vaccinated, according to the Post. The couple — who filed the suit anonymously — claim they are the victims of religious discrimination and are seeking a court order so their 4-year-old can attend the St. Margaret School in Pearl River after the preschool rejected their request for a religious exemption.” [Gothamist]
Tagged as:
New York,
religious discrimination,
vaccines
- Federal judge throws out wrongful-termination suit filed by pants suit judge Roy Pearson, he’ll probably appeal [D.C. Examiner] More: Lowering the Bar.
- Sebelius signs documents providing lawsuit immunity for swine flu vaccine developers [Orato]
- How Sacha Baron Cohen keeps from getting sued, part umpteen [The Frisky]
- More on British Chiropractic Association’s defamation suit against skeptic Singh [Citizen Media Law, Orac/Respectful Insolence; earlier here, here, and here]
- Next round of lawsuits against Dov Charney’s American Apparel may allege “looks discrimination”, though that’s probably not actually a relevant legal category [Gawker, Business Insider, earlier here, etc.]
- Demand that Chicago set aside municipal contracts for gay-owned businesses [Sun-Times]
- “Grandstanding anti-Craigslist politicians still not satisfied” [TechDirt, TG Daily]
- Judge Kozinski: this is America, behaving disrespectfully toward a cop isn’t a crime [Greenfield]
Tagged as:
Alex Kozinski,
Borat,
Chicago,
Craigslist,
Roy Pearson,
vaccines
- Judge in Van Buren County, Michigan won’t approve adoptions unless one parent promises to stay home [Ken at Popehat]
- Critical view of proposed Performance Rights Act, under which radio would pay new fees to artists and copyright owners [Jesse Walker, Reason]
- Student threatens to sue school district: “You can say she was an exotic dancer and she was 18, but it was not an equal relationship.” [Boston Herald, columnist Margery Eagan, Worcester Telegram]
- More attention for U.S. Chamber’s movie trailers promoting awareness of lawsuit abuse [NY Times]
- Train didn’t actually strike her car at dicey RR crossing after gate closed behind her, but New York woman’s suing Metro-North anyway for the bad scare [Westchester, N.Y. Journal-News]
- Uh-oh: Defamation-and-privacy section of American Association of Law Schools keeps electing as leaders feminist lawprofs known for speech-restrictionist views [Greenfield, earlier]
- Cows and vows don’t mix: Oregon county says weddings may not be held on farm-zoned land [KTVZ]
- Paul Offit, author of noteworthy book Autism’s False Prophets, sued by anti-vaccine blogger [Confutata (scroll), Alyric, link to complaint (PDF) at Courthouse News]
Tagged as:
broadcasters,
family law,
free speech,
land use and zoning,
law schools,
libel slander and defamation,
music and musicians,
schools,
strippers and exotic dancers,
train,
vaccines
- Souter’s middle-of-the-road views on litigation didn’t fit conventional patterns [Copland, PoL]
- Champerty and maintenance watch: new fund invests in commercial litigation for a share of the payouts [Fortune mag via Zywicki]
- Report: distributor of “Religulous” film “has served a written settlement proposal” to preacher depicted onscreen [OnPoint News, earlier]
- U.K.: “Homeowner Suit May Stop Village Cricket” [Telegraph via Never Yet Melted]
- Overlawyered sparks a discussion across usual lines on EMTALA, the federal law on emergency medicine [Kennerly]
- Federal Circuit: think twice before proceeding with frivolous appeals [David Bennett, Law.com]
- Father-son duo who have served as key expert witnesses in litigation alleging autism-vaccine link push risky and questionable therapy for the condition [Chicago Tribune and second article and PDF graphic via Orac; Kathleen Seidel]. Waste and harm that go on in the name of treating autism should give pause to many sides in health care debate [Tyler Cowen]
- One “deadbeat dad’s” story [Amy Alkon]. Forthcoming Lifetime reality show sounds like it will showcase harassment of fathers in child support arrears [Fathers and Families via Instapundit]
Tagged as:
autism,
champerty,
child support,
EMTALA,
fathers,
movies film and videos,
United Kingdom,
vaccines
- At Reason “Hit and Run”, Damon Root deems a certain website “indispensable” [accolades file]
- Montgomery Blair Sibley, colorful lawyer for the “D.C. Madam” and a figure much covered on this site, has new book out [Doyle/McClatchy]
- Although Indian tribal litigators attacked it as “disparaging”, the Washington Redskins football team can keep its trademark, for now at least. “My ancestors were both Vikings and Cowboys. Do I have a course of action?” [Volokh comments]
- “Is Patent Infringement Litigation Up or Down?” [Frankel, The American Lawyer]
- Maryland high court dismisses autism-mercury lawsuit [Seidel, Krauss @ Point of Law]
- Chrysler dealers are lawyering up against the prospect of being cast off [WSJ Law Blog]
- “Should doctors who follow evidence-based guidelines be offered liability protection?” [KevinMD]
- Obama proposes $1.25 billion to settle black farmers’ long-running bias claims against the U.S. Department of Agriculture [AP/Yahoo]
Tagged as:
accolades,
agriculture and farming,
autism,
auto dealership protection laws,
Chrysler,
Montgomery Blair Sibley,
patent litigation,
patent trolls,
vaccines
- Teacher’s aide in Queens, N.Y., sues 11 year old, saying he was dashing for ice cream and ran into her (this happened when he was eight) [WPIX; Rosanna Tomack, Joseph Cicak]
- Extraterritoriality, or exit fees? Stiff taxes these days on Americans who renounce their citizenship [Coyote Blog]
- Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell hires Bailey, Perrin & Bailey, big campaign-donor law firm for anti-drugmaker suit [WSJ, Point of Law, ShopFloor, Adler @ Volokh]
- Injured in wrestling fall, will get $15 million from school district [Seattle Times]
- Feds seized Petri dishes at Buffalo professor’s home and word spread of major bioterror bust. Oops [Andrew Grossman, Heritage]
- Toward “public control over the media”: Creepy ideological origins of Nichols/McChesney scheme to subsidize newspapers [Adam Thierer, City Journal]
- Thanks to expensive modern medicine Virginia Postrel has been doing well in her fight against breast cancer, story might not have been so happy in some countries [The Atlantic, second essay responding to letters]
- Jury awards $22.5 million against vaccine maker to man who says he caught polio from daughter’s shot [Staten Island Advance]
Tagged as:
extraterritoriality,
newspapers,
Pennsylvania,
schools,
Seattle,
sports,
vaccines
- The wages of addiction: former basketball star Roy Tarpley settles his $6.5 million ADA lawsuit against NBA and Dallas Mavericks [Randy Galloway, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Sports Law Blog]
- One result of litigation-fed “vaccines cause autism” scare: parents turn to dangerous quack treatments [Arthur Allen, Slate; in-depth coverage at Kathleen Seidel's and Orac's sites]
- Julie Hilden on First Circuit “true statements can be defamatory” ruling [FindLaw, earlier here and here]
- More coverage of conviction of Kentucky lawyers for grabbing much of fen-phen settlement [Louisville Courier-Journal, earlier]
- Judge dismisses most counts in lawsuit against Richard Laminack of Texas’s O’Quinn law firm [Texas Lawyer, earlier; FLSA overtime claims remain]
- All but three of the outstanding 9/11 airline suits due to settle for $500 million [AP/NorthJersey.com]
- One needn’t make the Community Reinvestment Act a scapegoat for unrelated credit woes to recognize it as an ill-conceived law [Bank Lawyer's Blog]
- U.K.: Woman who plays classical music to soothe horses told she must pay for public performance license [Telegraph]
Tagged as:
autism,
aviation,
banks,
copyright,
Dallas,
disabled rights,
Kentucky fen-phen settlement fraud,
September 11,
sports,
vaccines
My Manhattan Institute colleagues James Copland and Paul Howard are the authors of a just-released paper which proposes comprehensive federal preemption of state product liability drug litigation, combined with a new administrative compensation program for persons injured by unforeseen drug side effects, modeled on the existing vaccine injury compensation program. Their paper is here, and the section on administered compensation begins here. A summary, and early reaction: Medical News Today, Legal NewsLine, their Washington Times op-ed, AmLaw Daily (“makes for interesting reading”), Drug and Device Law (cross-posted from Point of Law).
Tagged as:
pharmaceuticals,
vaccines
- M.D.s and J.D.s in cahoots: when neuroradiologists over-read MRIs in search of “disc herniations” and “cord compression” [ER Stories]
- Lawyer burns his Harvard law diploma, and stop with that joking in the back row about whether there’s some way to burn all of them [ABA Journal]
- Latest lawsuit arising from fad for photos of “Hot Chicks with Dorky Men” (that’s a paraphrase) [TMZ, QuizLaw, earlier]
- Kid draws scary Hallowe’en mask, and next thing you know the police are called [Savannah Morning News]
- Great moments in international human rights: “Modern European navies are now so mindful of the legal loopholes they face in tackling pirates that they often instruct commanders to simply let them go.” [Telegraph; earlier here, here]
- China has four times the number of people we have in the U.S., while we have seven times the number of lawyers [Elefant]
- “Vaccine injury” lawyer Clifford Shoemaker fails in effort to curtail public access to fee information, so we get to learn more about his $211,663.37 bill to the government [Seidel, Neurodiversity; related here and here]
- More about that Milberg basketball team and its 6′ 8″ ringer [Supreme Dicta]
Tagged as:
Harvard,
international human rights,
medical,
Milberg Weiss,
vaccines,
zero tolerance
All-free-speech edition:
- Christiansburg, Va. land developer Roger Woody sues local bloggers and two other critics for more than $10 million for speaking ill of big dirt pile on one of his properties [Roanoke Times, editorial; more on Woody's dealings]
- Lots of developments on free speech in Canada: trial begins in Vancouver in complaint against Mark Steyn and Maclean’s over book excerpt critical of Islam [his site]; after defending speech-restricting network of human rights tribunals, Conservative government in Ottawa now says it will take another look [Ezra Levant, with much other coverage including favorable nods from Toronto literati]; Alberta tribunal orders conservative pastor to “cease publishing in newspapers, by email, on the radio, in public speeches, or on the Internet, in future, disparaging remarks about gays and homosexuals.” [Levant; Calgary Herald; Gilles Marchildon, Egale.ca] (more, Eugene Volokh)
- Brief filed for Kathleen Seidel in her resistance of abusive subpoena, with assistance of Public Citizen [her site, theirs, and our comment section]; Seidel is among autism bloggers profiled in NY mag [w/pic]; profile of thriving Boston “vaccine injury” law firm” Conway Homer & Chin-Caplan [NLJ; Seidel's critical comments on that firm]
- Views critical of religion unlawful unless expressed in respectful and non-scoffing way? Lots of precedent for that approach, unfortunately [Volokh on Comstock]
- Score one for fair use: judge denies Yoko Ono preliminary injunction against creationist film’s use of 15 seconds of John Lennon’s “Imagine” in context implicitly criticizing song’s point of view [Hollywood Reporter, WSJ law blog, Timothy Lee/Ars Technica]
Tagged as:
bloggers and the law,
bullying businesses,
copyright,
free speech,
free speech in Canada,
hate speech,
Kathleen Seidel subpoena,
Mark Steyn,
music and musicians,
vaccines,
Virginia
Attorney Clifford Shoemaker has now filed a memorandum in support of his harassing subpoena of blogger Kathleen Seidel. The memorandum, signed by attorneys John F. McHugh and Brian T. Stern, is every bit as absurd and internally-self-refuting as one might have dared hope. Seidel skillfully marks it up with links on key phrases, some providing substantive background on the controversy, other ironically commenting on the apparent belief of Shoemaker & Co. that a court will agree to construe as “a series of intentional torts” a blogger’s investigative journalism based on publicly available sources. Earlier posts here. More: Orac.
Tagged as:
bloggers and the law,
Kathleen Seidel subpoena,
online speech,
vaccines
As a judge considers whether to impose sanctions on attorney Clifford Shoemaker for hitting investigative blogger Kathleen Seidel with an intimidating subpoena, one of Shoemaker’s attorneys asks the court for more time “to gather the material I would need to show the Court the justification for the Subpoena and its scope,” which prompts Eric Turkewitz to wonder (May 6): “Why is it necessary to look for justification for the subpoena after it was issued?” And: “Other than talking to Shoemaker, who must have already had justification before the subpoena was issued, why would it be necessary to interview any other witness? It’s only Shoemaker’s rationale that matters to the sanctions motion.”
In another indication that heavy-handed pursuit of a blogger might not have worked out very well as a legal strategy, Shoemaker’s own clients, the Sykes family, have now voluntarily dropped their vaccine-autism suit against Bayer, which was the basis for the subpoena (Seidel, Orac).
Perhaps-ominous sequel: Seidel points out in a new post that Shoemaker’s legal papers accuse her of arguably tortious conduct in her comments on autism litigation, including interfering with “witnesses’ professions, professional relationships, and economic opportunities”, and that the witnesses in question in the Sykes suit, Dr. Mark Geier and David Geier, have previously pursued long and costly litigation against four scientists and the American Academy of Pediatrics over an article in Pediatrics which disputed the Geiers’ findings. The suit — which was eventually dismissed without prejudice as to the scientists, and dismissed with prejudice as to AAP — contended that damages were owing because the article in question had cut into the Geiers’ potential income as expert witnesses.
Tagged as:
bloggers and the law,
expert witnesses,
Kathleen Seidel subpoena,
online speech,
vaccines
- “Dog owners in Switzerland will have to pass a test to prove they can control and care for their animal, or risk losing it, the Swiss government said yesterday.” [Daily Telegraph]
- 72-year-old mom visits daughter’s Southport, Ct. home, falls down stairs searching for bathroom at night, sues daughter for lack of night light, law firm boasts of her $2.475 million win on its website [Casper & deToledo, scroll to "Jeremy C. Virgil"]
- Can’t possibly be right: “Every American enjoys a constitutional right to sue any other American in a West Virginia court” [W.V. Record]
- Video contest for best spoof personal injury attorney ads [Sick of Lawsuits; YouTube]
- Good profile of Kathleen Seidel, courageous blogger nemesis of autism/vaccine litigation [Concord Monitor*, Orac]. Plus: all three White House hopefuls now pander to anti-vaxers, Dems having matched McCain [Orac]
- One dollar for every defamed Chinese person amounts to a mighty big lawsuit demand against CNN anchor Jack Cafferty [NYDN link now dead; Independent (U.K.)]
- Hapless Ben Stein whipped up one side of the street [Salmon on financial regulation] and down the other [Derbyshire on creationism]
- If only Weimar Germany had Canada-style hate-speech laws to prevent the rise of — wait, you mean they did? [Steyn/Maclean's] Plus: unlawful in Alberta to expose a person to contempt based on his “source of income” [Levant quoting sec. 3 (1)(b) of Human Rights Law]
- Hey, these coupon settlements are giving all of us class action lawyers a bad name [Leviant/The Complex Litigator]
- Because patent law is bad enough all by itself? D.C. Circuit tosses out FTC’s antitrust ruling against Rambus [GrokLaw; earlier]
- “The fell attorney prowls for prey” — who wrote that line, and about which city? [four years ago on Overlawyered]
*Okay, one flaw in the profile: If Prof. Irving Gottesman compares Seidel to Erin Brockovich he probably doesn’t know much about Brockovich.
Tagged as:
antitrust,
asbestos,
autism,
Barack Obama,
Ben Stein,
coupon settlements,
Erin Brockovich,
forum shopping,
free speech in Canada,
Germany,
hate speech,
jackpot justice,
John McCain,
Kathleen Seidel subpoena,
libel slander and defamation,
Mark Steyn,
nanny state,
parody,
roundups,
Switzerland,
vaccines,
West Virginia
[Bumped on breaking news: A federal court in New Hampshire has quashed the subpoena and ordered attorney Clifford Shoemaker to show cause why he should not be subjected to sanctions. Also: Orac. Earlier Monday post follows:]
Autism blogger Kathleen Seidel reports that the online free speech project at Public Citizen has agreed to provide her with legal assistance in responding to vaccine lawyer Clifford Shoemaker’s subpoena (see earlier coverage here, here, and here). One way to read this is as a fairly devastating commentary on just how weak Shoemaker’s position is, since there is ordinarily no more potent public presence on behalf of the plaintiff’s side in pharmaceutical litigation than Public Citizen. Seidel also has discovered that as a Shoemaker target she is in distinguished company:
I learned that on March 26, 2008 — the same afternoon that I was greeted at my doorstep with a demand for access to virtually the entire documentary record of my intellectual and financial life over the past four years — Dr. Marie McCormick, Sumner and Esther Feldberg Professor of Maternal and Child Health at the Harvard School of Public Health, and Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, was subjected to a similar experience at her Massachusetts home.
From 2001 to 2004, Dr. McCormick chaired the Immunization Safety Review Committee of the Institute of Medicine (IOM), charged with analyzing and reporting on data regarding the safety of vaccination practices. …As a result of her voluntary work on the committee, Dr. McCormick has found herself a frequent target of suspicion by plaintiffs, their attorneys and advocates, and opponents of vaccines, who disagree with its conclusions, and whose legal and political positions are not supported by its reports.
McCormick’s lawyers are likewise seeking to quash the subpoena. Much more here (& Beck & Herrmann, Orac, Pharmalot).
Tagged as:
bloggers and the law,
free speech,
Kathleen Seidel subpoena,
Massachusetts,
New Hampshire,
online speech,
Public Citizen,
vaccines
After much discussion in the blogosphere this story would seem more than ready to cross over into mainstream-press coverage; here’s a local columnist who says he left three messages with attorney Clifford Shoemaker but got no response (Dave Brooks, “What a Web of actional links we can weave”, Nashua Telegraph, Apr. 9)(via Liz Ditz/I Speak of Dreams’ ongoing list monitoring coverage).
Update 5:30 p.m.: Here’s James Taranto at WSJ Best of the Web, giving just the shove the story may need:
It might behoove the ACLU, or some organization devoted to civil liberties, to devote some resources to figuring out how to defend speech that is inconvenient to plaintiffs lawyers.
Tagged as:
ACLU,
bloggers and the law,
Kathleen Seidel subpoena,
online speech,
vaccines
We’ve updated our post below, but it’s worth noting separately that some of the biggest guns in the blogging world, such as Glenn Reynolds, P.Z. Myers/Pharyngula (where we get attacked by a couple of commenters), and Orac/Respectful Insolence, have weighed in over the last 24 hours on the punishingly broad subpoena that vaccine lawyer Clifford Shoemaker has aimed at autism blogger Kathleen Seidel of Neurodiversity. Others: PalMD, Pure Pedantry, I Speak of Dreams, Law and More, Open Records, Matt Johnston, and my own cross-post at Point of Law. And: Family Voyage, Jack’s NewsWatch, Autism Street, Eric Turkewitz/New York Personal Injury Law Blog, Elf M. Sternberg, PopeHat, PooFlingers, Women’s Bioethics Blog, Asperger Square 8, Rettdevil’s Rants, and longer list at Liz Ditz/I Speak of Dreams. Plus: Carolyn Elefant @ Legal Blog Watch.
P.S. One lawyer friend wrote to say “I dunno, it’s only a subpoena”, to which I replied that I was reminded of my gun-enthusiast friends who say things like, “it’s only a semi-automatic”.
P.P.S. More press coverage here.
Tagged as:
bloggers and the law,
Kathleen Seidel subpoena,
vaccines
