She’s departing as his blogger-in-chief (Memeorandum; Malkin). Earlier coverage here: Feb. 2, Feb. 4, Feb. 7, Feb. 8.
P.S. And check out Amanda Marcotte: The Rock Opera.
Archive for February, 2007
“When the courts gag parents”
“[A] wide range of parental speech has been prohibited by family courts, all in the name of the child’s best interests. … Even more courts have based custody decisions partly on parent-child speech and religious upbringing. In Michigan, for example, courts routinely favor the parent who takes the children to church more often. Other courts have denied parents custody based partly on the parents’ teaching their children the propriety of racism, polygamy or homosexuality….
“[F]ew courts have grappled with the question whether judges are allowed under the First Amendment to make such decisions. … Many people would trade all their free-speech rights for the right to teach their own children. And government power to constrain how parents teach their own children is dangerous. Restricting the spread of ideas from parent to child can help today’s majority, or today’s elite, entrench its views. Also, the power to suppress parents’ speech might spread beyond divorces to intact families, too.” (Eugene Volokh (UCLA Law), L.A. Times/Newsday, Feb. 12)(discussion at Volokh Conspiracy).
February 12 roundup
- Divorcing Brooklyn couple has put up sheetrock wall dividing house into his and hers [L.A. Times, AP/Newsday]
- Boston Herald appeals $2 million libel award to Judge Ernest Murphy, whom the paper had portrayed as soft on criminals (earlier: Dec. 8 and Dec. 23, 2005) [Globe via Romenesko]
- Updating Jul. 8 story: Georgia man admits he put poison in his kids’ soup in hopes of getting money from Campbell Soup Co. [AP/AccessNorthGeorgia]
- Witness talks back to lawyer at deposition [YouTube via Bainbridge, %&*#)!* language]
- Prominent UK business figure says overprotective schools producing generation of “cotton wool kids” [Telegraph]
- State agents swoop down on Montana antique store and seize roulette wheel from 1880s among other “unlicensed gambling equipment” [AP/The Missoulian]
- “You, gentlemen, are no barristers. You are just two litigators. On Long Island.” [Lat and commenter]
- Some Dutch municipalities exclude dads from town-sponsored kids’ playgroups, so as not to offend devout Muslim moms [Crooked Timber]
- As mayor, Rudy Giuliani didn’t hesitate to stand up to the greens when he thought they were wrong [Berlau @ CEI]
- Australia: funeral homes, fearing back injury claims, now discouraging the tradition of family members and friends being pallbearers [Sydney Morning Herald]
- Asserting 200-year-old defect in title, Philly’s Cozen & O’Connor represents Indian tribe in failed lawsuit laying claim to land under Binney & Smith Crayola factory [three years ago on Overlawyered]
Ladies’ Nights bans and other civil rights crusades
This priceless segment ran on Comedy Central’s Daily Show with Jon Stewart the other day (Feb. 9). John Oliver interviews a Colorado man who’s filed bias complaint over “Ladies’ Night” bar promotions, and who insists — like so many other unintentionally silly litigants — that his cause deserves to share the moral high ground of the civil rights movement (“Sexual Stealing”).
For more on complaints targeting “Ladies’ Nights”, see Aug. 4, 2003, May 11 and Aug. 19, 2006 (Calif.), Jun. 10, 2004 (N.J.), Feb. 9 (N.H. — complainant charged with extortion).
Update: disabled-access impresario Ted Omholt
Readers who follow the phenomenon of ADA filing mills (Dec. 7, etc.) may recall the case of West Coast attorney Theodore Omholt, who has filed hundreds of legal complaints against businesses for violations (trivial or otherwise) of disabled-access laws, which he then settles for cash. In Honolulu, according to one news report, Omholt filed 574 lawsuits. (Carolyn Said, “Controversial disability rights lawyer”, San Francisco Chronicle, Apr. 21, 2002.) Omholt then refocused his practice on California where he sent out the following letter, quoted in my article three years ago in City Journal:
I am the attorney (age 48) who for the past three years has had the privilege to represent a small action group of six wonderful individuals who use wheelchairs age 37 to 66. . . . Their shopping at inaccessible stores in San Francisco and then filing lawsuits as clients of mine against those inaccessible stores nets them each an income which makes them financially independent. For each of them, the lack of funds which used to limit them to life’s bare necessities and which plagues so many disabled individuals today has become only an unpleasant memory from the past. As a reward for implementing the law and making stores more accessible for other disabled shoppers, group members now use their stream of income to eat out at good restaurants when they want to, buy new clothes and computers and televisions and gifts for family members, travel and take vacations wherever and whenever they want to go, and live a lifestyle they could only imagine prior to joining the group. . . . The group has room for a small number of additional members. Once that small number of additional members has been selected, the group will again close to new members.
Alas, even the most thoughtfully devised business plans sometimes meet with a hitch. Reader W.R. alerts us to this copy of Supreme Court minutes (PDF) from San Francisco, dated May 10 of last year, which at page 51 reports the following:
S143253 OMHOLT ON RESIGNATION — The voluntary resignation of TED OMHOLT, State Bar No. 92979, as a member of the State Bar of California is accepted without prejudice to further proceedings in any disciplinary proceeding pending against respondent should he hereafter seek reinstatement. It is ordered that he comply with rule 955 of the California Rules of Court and that he perform the acts specified in subdivisions (a) and (c) of that rule within 30 and 40 days, respectively, after the date this order is filed.* Costs are awarded to the State Bar. *(See Bus. and Prof. Code, §6126, subd. (c).)
It’s too bad the minutes aren’t more informative about the circumstances surrounding Mr. Omholt’s voluntary resignation from the California bar. Readers familiar with the details are welcome to illuminate matters.
UPDATE: Omholt writes to dispute the accuracy of certain details in the Honolulu account; seeing no reason to doubt his word, we have revised the post to omit those details.
Wikiality and the media
Glenn Reynolds posts on problems with Wikipedia. The problem is worse than he imagines, because lazy mainstream media are now relying on the site. I won’t embarrass the reporter by name, but he did a story on the ATLA name change; in the course of the story, he quoted fictional statistics invented by the Center for Justice & Democracy as “evidence” of the failure of medical malpractice reform. I dropped him an email pointing out the error, and the response included the following:
“I have found that non-obscure entries in Wikipedia are usually policed carefully to prevent unfounded, unanswered spin.”
At which point, he quoted back to me a Wikipedia entry on the subject that consisted entirely of ATLA talking points and spin that had been refuted numerous times on this site and Point of Law. That Wikipedia is inaccurate on this topic is no surprise: as I’ve noted earlier, a handful of trial lawyer advocates have systematically made thousands of edits to sanitize Wikipedia of just about anything that opposes the official ATLA line or criticizes trial lawyers, even on such minor entries as Jim Shapiro (see OL June 2002) and contingent fee (not to mention more major ones like asbestos, asbestos and the law, and medical malpractice). (And welcome Instapundit readers.)
Northern Ireland: jury awards £25K for bad restaurant review
“The Irish News must pay £25,000 plus court costs to a west Belfast Italian restaurant owner after a jury found a food critic’s review to be defamatory.” (“£25K for food critic’s poison pen”, BBC, Feb. 8). Journalist Caroline Workman, in a review of Ciaran Convery’s restaurant Goodfellas, had “described his staff as unhelpful, his cola as flat, and his chicken marsala ‘so sweet as to be inedible'”. Guardian restaurant critic Matthew Norman described the jury verdict as “very worrying news”: “You really cannot overstate the imbecility of a libel jury: what we really need now is a sustained campaign against our ludicrous libel laws.” (Maev Kennedy, “Critics bite back after restaurant reviewer sued for calling chicken too sweet”, Guardian, Feb. 10).
“Lawyers Look Beyond Edwards”
In the last presidential election, John Edwards had the powerful support and deep pockets of the nation’s trial lawyers behind him. But when the lawyers gather for their winter conference today in Miami Beach, it will be Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) delivering the meeting’s keynote speech.
The Washington Post notes that trial lawyers are willing to shell out for Biden because of his efforts blocking tort reform. But Edwards is fighting back:
Four years ago, [Fred] Baron shuttled Edwards around the country on his private jet to introduce him to other lawyers. Now, Baron is working to reinforce Edwards’s standing with some of his backers from the last campaign.
(Matthew Mosk, WaPo, Feb. 10).
February 9 roundup
Multi-billion dollar (and down) extortion edition:
- Merrill Lynch and CSFB appeal extortionate Enron class-action certification. [Point of Law; AEI (Feb. 9); WLF brief]
- More on the extortionate and lawless $500 billion Wal-Mart class certification. [Point of Law]
- Mississippi Supreme Court rejects extortionate medical monitoring class actions. [Behrens @ WLF]
- Lawyer Daniel Hynes tries to extort $2000 from New Hampshire bar holding Ladies’ Night. [Foster’s Daily Democrat (h/t B.C.)]
- Colorado Civil Justice League stops legislative attempt at giveaway to local trial lawyers. [Point of Law]
- Wisconsin court: family can be sued for babysitter’s car accident when returning home from dropping off child. [AP/Insurance Journal]
- Fox seeks to dismiss Borat suit on anti-SLAPP grounds. [Hollywood Reporter Esq. via WSJ Law Blog]
- Passaic County jury: $28M for “wrongful birth.” [NorthJersey.com]
- Former AG (and Dem) Griffin Bell: “Judicial Leadership Emerging In Asbestos And Silica Mass Torts” [WLF]
- Utah legislature considering med-mal reform for ERs. “Neurosurgeons in this town have to pay over $90,000 a year just for the privilege of getting out of bed on a Friday night to drain the blood from the brain of a victim of a drunk driver crash. And they say, I’m not gonna do it. Because the patients are sicker. The procedures are sometimes more invasive and more risky with more complications. Why take that risk if they don’t have to?” [KCPW via Kevin MD; Provo Herald]
- A little-read blog promoting a soon-to-be-pulped fictional account of tort reform is really begging for a link from us, what with three out of the last five posts making amateurish (and often false) personal attacks on this site’s authors or soliciting others to also fling poo. No dice.
McDonald’s parking lot shooting
One day in November 2005 after classes had ended for the day at King High School in Tampa, Otis Lorenzo Neal got out of a van and fired into a group of fellow teenagers in the parking lot at a nearby McDonald’s, killing one and wounding three others. Now a lawyer for Alexander McKinnie, one of the wounded students, is suing the restaurant, saying it should have foreseen and prevented the shooting “‘because of regular fighting amongst teenagers, gang activity, thefts, robberies, assaults and other crimes’ that took place at the restaurant and in the vicinity”. (Rebecca Catalanello, “Man sues McDonald’s for negligence in a 2005 shooting near King High”, St. Petersburg Times, Feb. 6; Justin George, “Plea deal in student killing”, St. Petersburg Times, Jan. 31).