With Random House having agreed to pay off lawyers who sued over the bogus memoir, Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam is wondering what other ways there might be to shake the class-action money tree over whoppers in the publishing world (“A Million Little Lawsuits”, May 28). Earlier: May 21, etc.
Archive for June, 2007
CAFA: One plaintiff’s-side view
Victor M. Diaz, Jr., who has served as vice-chair of ATLA’s aviation section among other honors in representing the plaintiff’s bar, writes in Florida’s Daily Business Review taking issue with some of his colleagues’ doomsaying about the Class Action Fairness Act, which he says has proved “no calamity after all“:
More than two years after President Bush signed CAFA into law, these concerns are proving to be greatly exaggerated. CAFA should not be feared by the plaintiffs bar.
While the days of cases filed in remote, plaintiff-friendly state court venues may be over, CAFA has led to better representation of classes by plaintiffs attorneys and better outcomes for class members. On the whole, the potential shift of nearly all class actions to federal court has elevated the class action bar and meant better quality judicial review of corporate class-wide abuses.
As with Congress’s earlier reform of shareholder suits, the major effect seems to be not to choke off litigation, but to improve its average quality (cross-posted from Point of Law).
Germans hesitate to join nanny parade
The German government, like others around the world, is being pressed by public health specialists to get into the business of reshaping citizens’ diets and hectoring the populace over its indulgent eating habits. However, reports The Scotsman, there are some distinctive obstacles to this happening, even aside from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s fondness for baking a cake at home every weekend:
…the legacy of Germany’s Nazi past is forcing the Bundesregierung, or federal government, to forget TV adverts giving millions advice on avoiding fatty foods and taking exercise.
The government is banned from buying advertising space on TV by the country’s own constitution, which was framed in the wake of the Second World War. Those who drew up the laws remembered how the Nazis were masters of using the cinema for propaganda and feared giving any government the same kind of power. They were also nervous that governments might use advertising leverage to put pressure on broadcasters.
One insider quipped: “The last time we had a non-smoking vegetarian who wanted to tell us what to do, it wasn’t a happy experience.”
(Murdo MacLeod, “German fatties fear the wurst”, The Scotsman, May 13).
Scotts sues TerraCycle
According to litigation filed by giant gardening-supplies company Scotts Miracle-Gro, the 
package on the right infringes the “trade dress” of the package on the left. Comments reader/blogger Amy Alkon: “Terracycle’s package looks like Scotts’ like Betty White looks like Shaquille O’Neill.” TerraCycle has set up a website called SuedByScotts.com, and bad publicity for the larger firm has been ubiquitous. A sampling: Inc. magazine, Sustainable is Good, Consumerist, 10,000 Marshmallows.
eHarmony’s 29 Dimensions of… Litigation
The online dating service eHarmony promises to match its customers up based on 29 Dimensions of Compatibility. Apparently one dimension they didn’t think about was how litigation-happy some people might be. Now eHarmony is being sued for “sexual orientation discrimination” in California by a woman named Linda Carlson who claims she was “denied access” to eHarmony because she’s a lesbian. She’s seeking class action status plus unspecified damages, and wants the court to order eHarmony to change its policies.
Ronald Coleman of Likelihood of Success points out that the claim being made by the plaintiffs is not a traditional discrimination claim; the plaintiff is not claiming that eHarmony refused to accept her as a customer. Rather, her complaint is that the site simply doesn’t provide services that same sex couples want:
The plaintiffs here are actually arguing that eHarmony is obligated not just to open up its existing service to people of all sexual predilections. It is requiring eHarmony to actually provide new services that it claims neither an interest nor any degree of expertise in, and which may require an outlay of millions of dollars. Let’s not even get into the moral preferences of the owners and management, which are presumed irrelevant by laws which outlaw discrimination against homosexuals or, in this case, may mandate the provision of special services to them.
For what it’s worth, eHarmony’s founder claims that the reason they don’t provide these services is not because they want to discriminate, but because they have expertise in matching up men and women, but not same-sex couples. That’s okay; I’m sure that trial lawyers and a judge can figure out how to run the business.
Readers of Overlawyered may remember that this is not the first time eHarmony has been sued; in March 2006 we covered a suit filed in California by (who else) a lawyer, who was denied service by eHarmony because he was still married and claimed this was “marital status discrimination.”