Tom Leykis’s highly successful Westwood One radio show is geared to reach men 25-34, an advertiser-coveted demographic. When Marty Ingels, a 67-year-old talent agent and former sitcom actor (1962’s I’m Dickens, He’s Fenster) called in to the show, he was eventually put on the air, but Leykis launched into a series of japes poking fun at his age. Ingels proceeded to sue under California’s super-broad Unruh civil rights act and its equally super-broad s. 17200 unfair competition law, but an appeals court has now agreed with the broadcaster’s request to throw out the suit as violative of the state’s SLAPP statute, which is aimed at restricting some lawsuits that threaten free speech. (Kenneth Ofgang, “C.A. Rejects Age Bias Suit Over Exclusion From Radio Talk Show”, Metropolitan News-Enterprise, May 31; Ingels v. Westwood One, opinion in PDF format courtesy FindLaw; Silicon Valley Media Law Blog, May 26).
Archive for June, 2005
Southwest’s zany safety announcements
…probably don’t raise much of a liability problem for the airline, according to commenters at Dissemination.org (Jun. 7). More: although the announcements may not pose a problem safety-wise, they did land Southwest in legal hot water a couple of years back in the famous “Eenie Meenie” brouhaha: see Jan. 22, 2004.
“Secret underground mushroom clubs”
Foreseen if authorities tighten regulation of the wild fungi business. (Kate Pickert, “Intelligencer: Mushrooming Anxiety”, New York, May 9).
Batch of reader letters
Another short stack of correspondence appears on our letters page. Among topics this time: wheelchair access to lifeguards’ towers; more on the arbitrariness of capital punishment; the high error rate of civil litigation; and Johnnie Cochran, Jr.’s most famous case.
Site restored
With help from the folks at Verio and Movable Type, it looks as if we’ve managed to restore the site to full functionality, including TrackBack. Anyone who linked to posts made in the last couple of days should be advised that 1) recent posts were renumbered as part of the restoration of the site, which will break incoming links; 2) pings sent to us over that period were lost.
Every law-blog post an advertisement?
The Kentucky Bar is advancing the unreasonable position that when a lawyer operates a weblog, every post he or she puts up counts as an advertisement for legal services. Ben Cowgill is at the center of the controversy, and on the case are David Giacalone, Eugene Volokh, Larry Ribstein, Evan Schaeffer and John Steele, among others. More: Stephen Bainbridge enters a partial dissent.
Reparations: stirring up land claims
Some of us have been worried for years that the movement for black reparations, which henceforth has mostly concentrated on demands for money from large institutions, might develop in the direction of a movement to contest land titles in the South and elsewhere, with hugely destructive results. Now comes word of the “Reclamation Of Southern Assets, or ROSA, project“, funded in part by a Congressional Black Caucus initiative. Here’s a bulletin from Chicago:
From noon to 3 p.m. on June 11, six law students from DePaul and five from Southern universities will listen to stories from forgotten heirs. They will review documents and compile information needed to research claims. Over the next eight weeks, these future lawyers will arm themselves with deeds and titles….Besides helping Chicagoans sort through their land claims, the ROSA project allows law students to get a jump on their careers.
Ray Waters, an instructor at DePaul’s College of Law, “hopes the ROSA project will result in legislation that will make it easier for heirs in Chicago to bring suit in federal court against relatives in the South”. Wait a minute — suing relatives? Well, that’s a second and perhaps unexpected dimension to the story: although much of the political rhetoric concentrates on the misdeeds of white owners and businesses, it turns out that a large share of the land grudges that preoccupy displaced black Southerners are against their own kin. (Mary Mitchell, “Reclaiming land may be bigger than reparations”, Chicago Sun-Times, Jun. 5; “Shady down-South stuff”, Feb. 20).
Cold storage
Concerned citizens demand that it be stopped!
Site disruption
Around 24-36 hours ago Overlawyered suffered an unexplained failure in our posting software, arising from a breakdown in the system’s handling of TrackBack pings; the ill effects have included an inability to update our front page. I’ve been working with the people at Movable Type all day and following their suggestion have deactivated TrackBack pings for the moment, which seems to restore the site’s other features, including front-page posting, to normal operation. (Old incoming pings have not been lost, but are just not being displayed). I expect there will be quite a bit of further work needed in coming days to fix matters for the future including, I hope, restoring TrackBack functionality.
Incidentally, if at any time the site should show signs of having frozen up, it is always a good idea to check my other site, Point of Law, for updates.
Blawg Review #9
…is up at Jurispundit, and includes a link to Ted’s informal London-based hot beverage research.