Hollywood Paws offers basic behavior training, and advanced training to respond to cameras. The trainers warn that training is not a sure route to television stardom, but they’re still facing a Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit from a dozen pet-owners complaining of broken dreams. What sort of stardom plaintiffs think they were legally entitled to is uncertain; for example, one of the plaintiffs’ dogs, Goliath the Rottweiler, had a scene on the Tyra Banks Show that was cut, and is now making $100/day on a low-budget movie. (Jessica Garrison, “No Bows, No Wows for Pooches Pursuing Fame”, Los Angeles Times, Oct. 3 (h/t F.R.).)
Archive for October, 2006
‘Tis better to have loft and lost…
Via Volokh (where commenters have a lot to say, and are about to start arguing about coffee), humorist and California judge William Bedsworth comments on the New Jersey college-student-falls-out-of-bed-loft case we covered August 16:
Tragically, “There were no warning labels on the bed, and it had never ‘cross[ed his] mind’ or ‘occurred to’ plaintiff that he could fall or that the bed was dangerous in any way. He testified that had he seen a warning, he would have been ‘aware of the hazard that was present’ and slept closer to the wall, as he had done after the accident.” Honest. Says so right in the opinion.
And he had an expert, George Widas, who testified that industry standards in the bed-making industry require that the manufacturer affix a warning “that says make sure that you protect yourself from this fall hazard.” According to Widas, the warning label should have had “black letters on an orange background” and included a warning that both identified the hazard and explained how to avoid it.
So the label should have said — in Day-Glo green letters on a phosphorescent-pink background -— “THIS IS A BED. USE ONLY WHILE AWAKE.” Or perhaps “IF YOUR IQ IS NOT THIS TALL, YOU CANNOT RIDE ON THIS BED.” Or how about an arrow pointing downward, with the legend “FALLING IN THIS DIRECTION COULD BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH. FALL ONLY UPWARD OR TO THE SIDE.” …
Oz: “Law firm’s brawl over $1m bonus”
Australia: “Leading plaintiff lawyer Peter Gordon from the firm Slater & Gordon was paid a $1 million bonus he was not entitled to from the profits of a massive class action over faulty breast implants. A disgruntled former partner has alleged the $1 million bonus was paid directly to Mr Gordon despite having been earmarked by the firm as ‘post-settlement expenses’.” The allegations filed in court by the former partner, Paul Mulvany, offer “a rare insight into the inner workings of Australia’s best known no-win, no-fee law firm”. However, the insight-window appears to have snapped shut with great rapidity: “one day after Slater & Gordon was informed The Australian had obtained the court documents, the matter was settled with neither side commenting on the sudden resolution of their dispute.” (Katherine Towers and Dan Box, The Australian, Sept. 15). P.S. Not all will agree with the opinion of the contestants in the brawl that the silicone implants at issue were “faulty”.
Lying with statistics: Public Citizen edition
Businesses “More Likely to Sue Frivolously” trumpets Bizarro-Overlawyered and Greedy Trial Lawyer, quoting a Public Citizen report. Except not even the Public Citizen report supports this claim, and no mathematically-literate person reading the report could think so.
Picking a jury
At the new “Trial Lawyer Resource Center” blog (which claims that it will have Tom Kline (e.g., Nov. 24, 2004) blogging), there’s a revealing post about the use of focus groups to manipulate jury selection and settlement discussions.
“BlackBerry addiction”: the hype continues
Update: Judge reduces FedEx harassment award
Updating our Jun. 5 post: noting that the conduct sued over “was mostly just offensive name-calling,” a judge in Alameda County, Calif. last month reduced the damages in two Lebanese-American men’s harassment-on-the-job lawsuit against Federal Express from an eye-popping $61 million to a mere $12.4 million. The latter number is presumably not as unreasonable even if it, too, might give off an air of having been pulled from a hat (Matthew Hirsch, “Calif. Judge Slashes $61 Million FedEx Verdict”, The Recorder, Sept. 14).
YouTube: “They are going to be toasted”
George Will on Carlson-Wilbur case
Judicial elections and the New York Times
For decades, plaintiffs’ attorneys and labor unions have worked together to elect judges favorable to their interests, and for decades, these elected judges have systematically moved American law in a direction unrecognizable and ridiculed in the rest of the world to create a tort system that takes up a share of the economy more than twice as large as any other Western nation. In response, the business community started supporting judges who had track records of actually following the law; the electorate tended to support these judicial candidates over the plaintiffs’ bar’s candidates. Because these judges aren’t in the pockets of the plaintiffs’ bar, they don’t reflexively vote for the meritless positions taken by the litigation lobby—and now the New York Times and the press suddenly finds it interesting that judges face elections where they fund-raise, and that campaign funds are more likely to be donated to candidates who are sympathetic to the funder’s view of the law. (Adam Liptak and Janet Roberts, “Campaign Cash Mirrors a High Court’s Rulings”, New York Times, Oct. 1).