Dan Levine at CalLaw’s Legal Pad says it’s “safe to assume” the step was taken because of Lerach’s offer to a guard of the use of his season Chargers tickets. (Sept. 16; earlier)
Archive for September, 2008
Blogging the credit crisis
Here are the ones I’m reading.
Nathan Myrhvold’s trollery?
The Wall Street Journal takes a critical look (Amol Sharma and Don Clark, “Tech Guru Riles the Industry By Seeking Huge Patent Fees”, Sept. 17). Via Felix Salmon who adds,
Intellectual Ventures and its ilk are arguably the single biggest risk to America’s continued leadership in technology and innovation. As dsquared elegantly put it in a comment here in May, the company might do a bit of R, but it doesn’t do any D. Instead, it acts as a brake on any company wanting to do substantive R&D of its own, since there’s a good chance Intellectual Ventures will have got there first, patented the idea, and then just decided to sit on it until somebody dares to violate it.
September 17 roundup
- Jones Day catching more flak over heavy-handed trademark lawsuit against BlockShopper real estate news service [Levy/CL&P, Ambrogi/Legal Blog Watch, earlier; more, EFF, Plain Dealer]
- California state bar ethics complaint against serial ADA lawyer Thomas Frankovich, mostly over Jarek Molski cases [ABA Journal]
- When suing your community college professor, it’s not a good idea to include death threats [KSAT, Strange in San Antonio]
- Australia: school bans cartwheels, handstands on playground [Oz-ABC via Common Good]
- Myron Levin, whose L.A. Times journalism was known to induce hair-pulling at this site, turns up among plaintiffs in Joe Cotchett lawsuit seeking to eject Chicago meanie Sam Zell from paper’s ownership; and did you know co-plaintiff Henry Weinstein’s a founding faculty member of Chemerinsky’s new ideologically charged UC Irvine law school? [Editor & Publisher Fitz and Jen, Portfolio, PaidContent.org via Class Action Blawg; Forbes]
- Well-known Manhattan criminal defense lawyer arrested on charges of trying to “eliminate” and “neutralize” witnesses against drug dealer client [NYLJ, Greenfield]
- More coverage of Pearson pants appeal [Legal Times “BLT”]
- Swiping Nicole Black’s content and running it without credit on a splog is an ill-advised way to boost NYC services of attorney Michael Rehm [Sui Generis, Greenfield, viaTweet @nikiblack]
- Update on Barnstable harbor dredging blogger defamation suit [Cape Cod Today, earlier]
- “Ten things your lawyer won’t tell you” [five years ago on Overlawyered]
Blog-comment speechcrimes in Canada
“Anyone who runs an online message board, from the lowliest vanity blogger to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, can be charged under federal human rights law if visitors to their site post hateful comments, according to the Canadian Human Rights Commission. … ‘If a message board owner can’t manage to ensure the content of the message board is complying with Canadian law, then the message board should not be operating,’ [CHRC lawyer Margot Blight] said.” (National Post via Western Standard Shotgun blog; more; StageLeft.info via Reynolds).
Using Twitter to scare up class action plaintiffs
Perennial Overlawyered favorite Hagens Berman seems to be doing that to promote a Verizon late fee suit (Kevin O’Keefe, Sept. 16, via @kevinokeefe — yes, our first Twitter-derived post). Update: Tweet retracted.
Subprime mortgage catastrophe
Radio silence? Suit against conservative talk show hosts
Los Angeles: “David Birke and his attorney Johnny Birke filed a complaint Aug. 27 against seven talk show hosts of KRLA-AM (870), Salem Communications Corporation and its owner Edward Atsinger III, alleging that they use the public airwaves to push Republican beliefs. David and Johnny Birke would not say whether they were related, citing attorney-client privilege. … Radio hosts Laura Ingraham, Dennis Prager, Michael Medved, Hugh Hewitt, Dennis Miller, Mike Gallagher and Kevin James are named as defendants in the suit.” The various defendants have defrauded the public and violated FCC obligations “by using their radio license to discuss only Republican issues, Johnny Birke said Monday.” (Veronica Rocha, “KRLA sued over content”, Glendale News-Press, Sept. 8). Radio Equalizer (Sept. 9) notes one presumed irony: “KRLA has in the past featured a show on the subject of lawsuit abuse.”
Jockey sues track owner over fall
Maryland jockey Christopher Martin was thrown from his horse during a 2005 race and filed suit three years later claiming permanent disability, contending “the irregular shape and poor maintenance of the racetrack caused his thoroughbred, ‘Miner Distraction,’ to collide with another horse and stumble.” (Bill Childs, TortsProf, Sept. 15).
Better head over to the ER
Problem: many patients go to hospital emergency rooms “when what they really need is to see or talk to their primary-care doctors”, with resulting high expense and interference with genuine emergency cases. As usual, the legal system’s role is a helpful and constructive one:
Assume a patient calls his doctor about a new symptom. Ideally, after listening on the phone and deciding that it’s probably nothing serious, the doctor arranges an office visit for the next day, offers reassurance, and averts an unnecessary late-night E.R. visit. But doctors don’t get reimbursed for that call. And what if they tell a patient to wait and something bad happens? Then malpractice lawyers have a field day.
(Zachary F. Meisel and Jesse M. Pines, “Medical Examiner: The Allure of the One-Stop Shop”, Slate, Sept. 12).