Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Archive for September, 2005

Katrina volunteer liability protection

By a voice vote, the House of Representatives yesterday approved H.R. 3736, legislation “providing legal protections for volunteers assisting in the Hurricane Katrina recovery effort”. Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), a sponsor, said in a press release (PDF):

“At the federal level, the Volunteer Protection Act [passed some years back] does not provide any protection to volunteers who aren’t working under the auspices of an official nonprofit organization, namely a 501(c)(3) organization, and it provides no protection at all to nonprofit organizations themselves….

According to recent press accounts, the Red Cross feels constrained in giving out the names of refugees to those who want to offer their homes to them for shelter because they have concerns about liability. The Red Cross has cited “liability issues” as a reason for people not to volunteer to take refugees into their homes, and complained generally that “There is so much liability involved.”…

The bill, Sensenbrenner said, would apply only to those who act without pay and without a prior duty to aid, and would not apply to those who “act in a willful, wanton, reckless, or criminal manner or violate a State or Federal civil rights law.” More: our Sept. 6 post, in which Ted calls attention to some of the same Red Cross complaints (coincidence?). And Glenn Reynolds’ list of Katrina relief outlets is here — please remember to give.

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A Yellow Pages warning joke?

Our friend Dave Boaz of the Cato Institute writes to say:

Our Verizon Superpages this year came with a reduced-size version labeled “SuperPages Companion Directory.” Just below the title it says:

A reduction in ad size may affect legibility.
Caution: Not for use while operating a moving vehicle.

Do you think that’s just a little joke by an Overlawyered reader at Verizon?

More: Reader Pete Madsen writes, “No, not a joke. My wife’s a Realtor, and I’ve seen too many of her colleagues’ cars with phone books in them.”

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Lawsuits on the levee

After reports (see Sept. 9) in National Review Online, the Los Angeles Times and elsewhere that Army Corps of Engineers levees and other flood-control measures in southern Louisiana were derailed by litigation over environmental impact statements, critics of the projects respond that the measures in question were badly planned, ineffective in addressing flood dangers, and were eventually let drop for good reasons. (G. Tracy Mehan III, “Dam It”, National Review Online, Sept. 12; press release by University of Texas lawprof Thomas A. McGarity of the left-wing Center for Progressive Reform, Sept. 9 (PDF)). Jonathan Adler comments on NRO “The Corner” here and here.

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Busybody Tennessee AG vs. Gretchen Wilson

Tennessee attorney general Paul Summers sent a warning letter (PDF) to country music star Gretchen Wilson (“Redneck Woman”) demanding that she stop pulling a can of Skoal smokeless tobacco out of her pocket on the concert stage; she’d been waving the can to illustrate a song about the “Skoal ring” outline in the back pocket of a pair of jeans. Summers’s letter invoked the 1998 multistate tobacco settlement, although neither Wilson nor her concert venues ever signed that agreement or could be in any way bound by it; it went on to insinuate that Skoal’s manufacturer had procured her “promotion” of the product, an insinuation that turned out to be quite false, the singer’s representative explaining that she had had no dealings with the company. Nonetheless, perhaps fearful of suffering the fate of the much-boycotted Dixie Chicks, Wilson capitulated instantly and promised not to display the tin on stage any more, whereupon Summers expressed satisfaction (PDF) and called her a “good citizen”. Had the object of suppression been something other than tobacco, do you think by now we might have heard any outcry about artistic freedom or musicians’ rights of expression? (“Country singer Gretchen Wilson asked to keep smokeless tobacco in back pocket”, AP/CourtTV, Aug. 29; Gail Kerr, “Wilson put quick stop to spat over Skoal”, Aug. 31; CommonsBlog, Aug. 27; Nick Gillespie and Jacob Sullum, Reason “Hit and Run”, Aug. 29.) More: Will Wilson comments at the AEI Federalism Project’s AG Watch (Aug. 29).

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EU shelves “tan ban”

Ducking a heated controversy, the European Parliament has declined to rule on “whether workers such as bare-chested builders should be required by their employers to cover up to avoid excessive sun.” The issue will now be left up to national legislatures. “MEPs found themselves under siege from angry business groups and German building workers, who staged a shirtless protest.” (David Rennie, “MEPs run for cover in ‘tan ban’ dilemma”, Daily Telegraph, Sept. 8). “Socialists and Greens argued EU legislation was vital to cut skin cancer rates among outdoor workers, but the right denounced it as an example of the nanny state running amok and over-burdening business.” (Aine Gallagher, “Builders and barmaids avoid EU tan ban”, Reuters/Swissinfo.com, Sept. 7). More: Jim Leitzel at Vice Squad has the dirndl angle (Sept. 11).

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Don’ts

More misconduct by lawyers which resulted in sanctions or other consequences, as reported on Law.com in August: Don’t seize on a typographical error made by your opponent as an excuse to ship documents to yourself and then argue that you complied with a subpoena (Glendale, Calif. lawyer Geoffrey Mousseau, hit with more than $12,000 in sanctions which were upheld on appeal)(Mike McKee, “Lawyer Sanctioned After Placing a Bad Bet on a Typo”, The Recorder, Aug. 24). Don’t keep filing lawsuits based on theories that the Third Circuit has previously rejected in your own cases (H. Francis deLone Jr. of Wayne, Pa., hit with federal Rule 11 sanctions arising from a civil rights suit he filed on behalf of a transit worker fired for testing positive for cocaine)(Shannon P. Duffy, “Lawyer Sanctioned — Again — for Losing Theory”, The Legal Intelligencer, Aug. 17). More don’ts: Aug. 3.

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Youth football league needn’t re-weigh 11-year-old

Suburban Detroit:

A Macomb County judge refused Thursday to order a Sterling Heights flag football league to reweigh or reinstate an 11-year-old boy who was too heavy at his official weigh-in to play for the league.

Circuit Judge Deborah A. Servitto said that Kyle St. Peter of Sterling Heights would not suffer irreparable harm if he is not allowed to play with the Sterling Football Club, which begins its season Sunday….

The league requires 11- and 12-year-olds to weigh 150 pounds or less on the day they pick up their equipment.

Kyle weighed 164 pounds Aug. 2, the day he received his helmet and flags, but the league’s commissioner gave him two more weigh-ins. On the last one, Aug. 14, he weighed 151 pounds on the league’s scale — 2 pounds more than he weighed at home that morning.

(Nate Trela, “Boy loses fight to play football”, Detroit Free Press, Sept. 9)(hat tip: Insider Online).

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