Overlawyered » wrong right http://overlawyered.com Chronicling the high cost of our legal system Tue, 14 Feb 2012 16:11:47 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 June 20 roundup http://overlawyered.com/2011/06/june-20-roundup-3/ http://overlawyered.com/2011/06/june-20-roundup-3/#comments Mon, 20 Jun 2011 13:11:34 +0000 Walter Olson http://overlawyered.com/?p=23460 Politics edition:

  • Mother ship? White House staffers depart for Harvard Law School [Politico]
  • New York: “Lawmakers consider lawyer-friendly med-mal bills,” even as many key legislators moonlight at personal injury firms [Reuters]
  • David Brooks on explosive political potential of Fannie Mae scandal [NYTimes] After Kentucky bar panel’s vote to disbar Chesley, Ohio AG pulls him off Fannie Mae suit [Adler, Frank, Beth Musgrave/Lexington Herald-Leader]
  • Alabama legislature removes Jim Crow language from state constitution — but black lawmakers oppose the idea [Constitutional Daily]
  • AAJ lobbyist Andy Cochran works GOP turf, has convinced trial lawyers to sponsor Christian radio program [Mokhiber, "Seventh Amendment Advocate"]
  • Centers for Disease Control funnels grants to allies for political advocacy on favored public-health causes [Jeff Stier, Daily Caller]
  • Must have mistaken her for a jury: “John Edwards Sought Millions From Heiress” [ABC News] “One thing [worse than Edwards's] conduct is the government’s effort to put him in jail for it.” [Steve Chapman]
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]]> http://overlawyered.com/2011/06/june-20-roundup-3/feed/ 1 Birthers’ dubious boast http://overlawyered.com/2009/09/birthers-dubious-boast/ http://overlawyered.com/2009/09/birthers-dubious-boast/#comments Tue, 01 Sep 2009 05:42:42 +0000 Walter Olson http://overlawyered.com/?p=13416 Some believe the Obama camp has spent a fortune in lawyers’ fees responding to far-fetched “birther” lawsuits, but John Bringardner at Legal Blog Watch is skeptical about that claim. Speaking of which, don’t you wish more conservatives would keep their distance from the site WorldNetDaily? [Jon Henke]

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]]> http://overlawyered.com/2009/09/birthers-dubious-boast/feed/ 27 Texas Senate considers asbestos reform rollback http://overlawyered.com/2009/04/texas-senate-considers-asbestos-reform-rollback/ http://overlawyered.com/2009/04/texas-senate-considers-asbestos-reform-rollback/#comments Thu, 02 Apr 2009 20:55:43 +0000 Ted Frank http://overlawyered.com/?p=10212 In 2007, the Texas Supreme Court unanimously decided Borg-Warner v. Flores, holding that a defendant in an asbestos case was not liable unless its product was a “substantial factor” in causing injury.

But there are now bills in the Texas House and Senate, SB 1123 (recently reported out of Senate committee) and HB 1811, that seek to undo this by defining “substantial factor” to merely mean that a product “contributed to the [plaintiff’s] cumulative exposure”—whether or not other defendants’ products were far more responsible for a plaintiff’s injury. The effect of this rollback would be to return Texas to the role of asbestos magnet, since it could conceivably create indiscriminate liability for hundreds of innocent businesses in any given case. The effect will be very similar to the infamous Lipke rule in Madison County, Illinois that extracted billions of dollars from the innocent this decade.

Texans for Lawsuit Reform has a fact-sheet, as does the Texas Civil Justice League.

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]]> http://overlawyered.com/2009/04/texas-senate-considers-asbestos-reform-rollback/feed/ 2 Watch out, motel owners http://overlawyered.com/2009/03/watch-out-motel-owners/ http://overlawyered.com/2009/03/watch-out-motel-owners/#comments Wed, 11 Mar 2009 04:03:48 +0000 Walter Olson http://overlawyered.com/?p=9694 Social conservative Maggie Gallagher, with whose views we have been known to differ, suggests a tort of “facilitating” adultery that would apply to businesses that “that intentionally and explicitly attempt to profit from acts of adultery”. [NRO "Corner", first, second posts]

P.S. Eugene Volokh now has a more lengthy and serious treatment: “you can love marriage and hate adultery without thinking that more tort liability will make things better.”

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]]> http://overlawyered.com/2009/03/watch-out-motel-owners/feed/ 4 GWB as regulator: new opt-out “conscience” rules for health workers http://overlawyered.com/2008/12/gwb-as-regulator-new-opt-out-conscience-rules-for-health-workers/ http://overlawyered.com/2008/12/gwb-as-regulator-new-opt-out-conscience-rules-for-health-workers/#comments Fri, 19 Dec 2008 14:58:16 +0000 Walter Olson http://overlawyered.com/?p=8035 “The Bush administration, as expected, announced new protections on Thursday for health care providers who oppose abortion and other medical procedures on religious or moral grounds.” (NYT via GruntDoc). I briefly criticized this bad idea in a post last week at Secular Right, and there are hopes that the incoming Obama administration will rescind it. P.S. Longer post now up over there.

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]]> http://overlawyered.com/2008/12/gwb-as-regulator-new-opt-out-conscience-rules-for-health-workers/feed/ 6 Nativity-scene litigation http://overlawyered.com/2008/12/nativity-scene-litigation/ http://overlawyered.com/2008/12/nativity-scene-litigation/#comments Sat, 13 Dec 2008 18:05:03 +0000 Walter Olson http://overlawyered.com/?p=8001 [walks up to blackboard]

I will NOT take at face value anything Bill O’Reilly says regarding the supposed “War on Christmas”.

[repeats 99x]

(my post at Secular Right just now; earlier).

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]]> http://overlawyered.com/2008/12/nativity-scene-litigation/feed/ 2 “Change They Can Litigate” http://overlawyered.com/2008/12/change-they-can-litigate/ http://overlawyered.com/2008/12/change-they-can-litigate/#comments Mon, 08 Dec 2008 19:59:20 +0000 Walter Olson http://overlawyered.com/?p=7971 Occasionally a reader will ask why I’m averse to linking to the conservative publication WorldNetDaily. Reason #17,945: the birth certificate/citizenship trutherism by which WND promotes litigation aimed at keeping Barack Obama from being inaugurated President. (David Weigel, Slate, Dec. 4).

Update: Supreme Court turns down first of such cases (Doug Mataconis, Below the Beltway, Dec. 8).

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]]> http://overlawyered.com/2008/12/change-they-can-litigate/feed/ 14 SecularRight.org http://overlawyered.com/2008/11/secularrightorg/ http://overlawyered.com/2008/11/secularrightorg/#comments Wed, 26 Nov 2008 14:58:04 +0000 Walter Olson http://overlawyered.com/?p=7921 I’ve been taking a hand in a new blog project called Secular Right, which describes itself as follows:

We believe that conservative principles and policies need not be grounded in a specific set of supernatural claims. Rather, conservatism serves the ends of “Human Flourishing,” what the Greeks termed Eudaimonia. Secular conservatism takes the empirical world for what it is, and accepts that the making of it the best that it can be is only possible through our faculties of reason.

Recent writings by Heather Mac Donald and David Frum come in for attention. Amusingly, I’m the only one so far posting under his or her real name, although the identities of some of the others are not all that hard to guess under pseudonyms such as “Bradlaugh” and “David Hume”. It should also be apparent that there is a wide range of views represented, including some that are at quite a distance from my own, but that should help keep things interesting. The site has already drawn notice from Ann Althouse (and more), “Tapped”, Eve Tushnet, John Derbyshire/NRO “Corner”, and Gene Expression, among others.

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]]> http://overlawyered.com/2008/11/secularrightorg/feed/ 3 Microblog 2008-11-10 http://overlawyered.com/2008/11/microblog-2008-11-10/ http://overlawyered.com/2008/11/microblog-2008-11-10/#comments Tue, 11 Nov 2008 04:59:59 +0000 Walter Olson http://overlawyered.com/2008/11/microblog-2008-11-10/
  • Mark Lilla: pick either faux populism or intellectual conservatism, you can’t have both [WSJ] #
  • P.J. O’Rourke on where conservatives went wrong [Weekly Standard] #
  • And how exactly did those mountain goats get up there without wings? [Flickr "Roger 80" h/t @coolpics] #
  • Scotland authorities trawl social networking sites, then slap teen with £200 fine for posing with sword on Bebo [Massie] #
  • “Victims’ rights” sound like lovely idea but can undermine fairness and practicality of criminal justice system [Greenfield] #
  • Bizarre Czech case: driver hits, then tries to murder pedestrian, victim survives only to be sued by car’s owner [Feral Child] #
  • Auto bailout would leave Big 3 in interest-group coils, bankruptcy could cut the knots [Bainbridge h/t @erwiest] #
  • ACORN as the gang that couldn’t intimidate straight [PoL] #
  • “Talked about in CivPro” I hope favorably [@sqfreak] #
  • More public stirrings against traffic cameras [Jeff Nolan] #
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    ]]>     http://overlawyered.com/2008/11/microblog-2008-11-10/feed/ 2     Microblog 2008-10-22 http://overlawyered.com/2008/10/microblog-2008-10-22/ http://overlawyered.com/2008/10/microblog-2008-10-22/#comments Thu, 23 Oct 2008 03:59:59 +0000 Walter Olson http://overlawyered.com/2008/10/microblog-2008-10-22/
  • McCain hoist on his own campaign regulation petard [WSJ edit] #
  • Conservatives should hold a retreat to talk about why they’re being sent to the wilderness [Friedersdorf/Culture11] #
  • Disability activism and “anti-national sexual positions”: just another day in postmodern academia [Massie] #
  • Unionism on steroids: Employee Free Choice Act would be Thatcherism in reverse [Claire Berlinski, City Journal] #
  • Here’s a twist: a politician walking over his ambition to reach his grandmother #
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