“Pharmaceutical company Biopure Corp.’s defamation and trade libel case against a National Institutes of Health official for his statements in an article co-authored for the Journal of the American Medical Association raises concerns about the litigation risks of scientific discourse.” (Sheri Qualters, “Suit Against Scientific Journal Raises Litigation Issues”, National Law Journal, Oct. 31; MassHighTech; Pharmalot).
Archive for 2008
Rahm Emanuel and compulsory universal service
We said something relatively nice yesterday about the president-elect’s incoming chief of staff, but there’s no way to sugar-coat one of the less appealing items on the Illinois congressman’s record: his vocal advocacy of mandatory national service. From his 2006 book The Plan: Big Ideas for America, co-authored with Bruce Reed, currently the #1 selling book in several political categories at Amazon and #91 overall:
It’s time for a real Patriot Act that brings out the patriot in all of us. We propose universal civilian service for every young American. Under this plan, All Americans between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five will be asked to serve their country by going through three months of basic training, civil defense preparation and community service.
(J.D. Tuccille, “Obama’s chief of staff choice favors compulsory universal service”, Examiner, Nov. 6).
Some think we’re being alarmist in wanting to know more about the episode late last week (blogged here, here, and here) in which the Obama transition site posted (and soon thereafter silently retracted by alteration) a policy statement indicating that its plan would require participation in community service. After all, pointed out one correspondent, the issue had come up repeatedly before the election, and the Obama campaign had given assurances then its plan wasn’t going to be compulsory. What were the odds it would introduce a major policy change so quickly and stealthily after winning? Unfortunately, that doesn’t put an end to the issue. As everyone knows, all winning candidates pay concessionary lip service during campaigns to views that their key people may not share in private (cf. Goolsbee and NAFTA). Those discrepancies often foreshadow later deviations of policy from the line taken during the campaign. We may hope last week’s web posting reflected nothing more than a staff mix-up, quickly corrected, as opposed to some staffer’s relaying in all innocence a view of the issue formed by listening to internal campaign discussions. But wouldn’t it be better if the transition itself went public with such a reassurance?
Batman — a city in Turkey — to sue Dark Knight director
Turns out there’s a city in southeastern Turkey by the name of Batman. And its mayor wants royalties. “‘The royalty of the name “Batman” belongs to us … 
Microblog 2008-11-10
- Mark Lilla: pick either faux populism or intellectual conservatism, you can’t have both [WSJ] #
- P.J. O’Rourke on where conservatives went wrong [Weekly Standard] #
- And how exactly did those mountain goats get up there without wings? [Flickr “Roger 80” h/t @coolpics] #
- Scotland authorities trawl social networking sites, then slap teen with £200 fine for posing with sword on Bebo [Massie] #
- “Victims’ rights” sound like lovely idea but can undermine fairness and practicality of criminal justice system [Greenfield] #
- Bizarre Czech case: driver hits, then tries to murder pedestrian, victim survives only to be sued by car’s owner [Feral Child] #
- Auto bailout would leave Big 3 in interest-group coils, bankruptcy could cut the knots [Bainbridge h/t @erwiest] #
- ACORN as the gang that couldn’t intimidate straight [PoL] #
- “Talked about in CivPro” I hope favorably [@sqfreak] #
- More public stirrings against traffic cameras [Jeff Nolan] #
“Lawyer Seeks Patent on Form of Patent Trolling”
Sometimes a headline, and the story behind it, just makes our day. (Elefant channeling Patently-O). Given that the “inventor Clive D. Menezes is a Halliburton patent attorney”, and Halliburton as a big industrial company has presumably gotten shaken down by patent trolls many times in the past, it seems to have taken some of the commenters at Patently-O a while to catch on as to possible satirical intent.
Update: Or maybe not precisely satirical intent: Halliburton has issued a statement saying that it “has no intention of applying the technique offensively. Rather, Halliburton intends to use any patent that may issue from this application defensively to discourage entities that engage in such tactics.” (AmLaw Daily).
National service: Ben Smith (Politico) misses the story
He’s oh-so-dismissive of John Derbyshire for overreacting to an Obama national service plan that (in Smith’s words) “is, whatever its merits, voluntary”. His commenters pile on. Meanwhile, Smith completely misses the actual news of the day on the subject, namely that the Obama transition team’s Change.gov website flatly endorsed a mandatory, not voluntary plan, and then silently edited (and later yanked) its language when bloggers noticed. How misleading is it to describe Derbyshire as reacting to a voluntary plan when he was quite patently reacting to the sudden prospect of a mandatory one? And Andrew Sullivan was unfair and misleading in the same way.
Ben Smith writes for one of the hottest news operations around, which means he’s well situated to start digging for questions you’d think almost any reporter would want to ask about this episode: who drafted or approved the first version, the one that got edited before being yanked? Was it some staffer misinformed about the genuine thinking of the Obama team, which would make the later editing a relatively conventional (if covert) effort to correct a mistake? Or did the language reflect actual thinking that the Obama team has not yet seen fit to share with the public? I certainly hope it was the former and am by no means ready to jump to the latter conclusion. But wouldn’t it be nice if our press corps took an interest in shedding light on such questions? (& welcome Coyote readers).
“Rahm Emanuel, tort reformer”?
Carter Wood notes that the incoming White House chief of staff cast votes in Congress in support of some legal reform measures (and against some others). (Point of Law, Nov. 9).
November 10 roundup
- Time for another aspirin: Harvard Law’s Charles Ogletree, key backer of lawsuits for slave reparations, mentioned as possible Attorney General [CBS News, BostonChannel WCVB, Newsweek; earlier speculation about post as civil rights chief]
- Calif. law requires supervisors to attend sexual harassment prevention training, a/k/a sensitivity training, but UC Irvine biologist Alexander McPherson says he’ll face suspension rather than submit [AP/FoxNews.com, On the Record (UCI), Morrissey, Inside Higher Ed, OC Register; ScienceBlogs’ Thus Spake Zuska flays him]
- Fan “not entitled to a permanent injunction requiring American Idol singer Clay Aiken to endorse her unauthorized biography” [Feral Child]
- Local authority in U.K. orders employees not to use Latin phrases such as bona fide, e.g., ad lib, et cetera, i.e., inter alia, per se, quid pro quo, vice versa “and even via” [via — uh-oh — Zincavage and Feral Child]
- Participants in 10th annual Boulder, Colo. Naked Pumpkin Run may have to register as sex offenders [Daily Camera, Obscure Store]
- Joins drunk in car as his passenger, then after crash collects $5 million from restaurant where he drank [AP/WBZ Boston, 99 Restaurant chain]
- Election may be over, but candidates’ defamation lawsuits against each other over linger on [Above the Law, NLJ]
- School nutrition regs endanger bake sales, but they’ll let you have “Healthy Hallowe’en Vegetable Platter” instead [NY Times]
WWII-era Mexican braceros settlement
The government of Mexico has agreed to pay about $14.5 million to settle claims on behalf of its citizens who came north as guest workers between 1942 and 1946. Ten percent of the workers’ pay was deducted and sent back to the Mexican government, which was supposed to apply much of it to their benefit, but (according to advocates) substantial sums were never claimed or paid out. Many years later the Mexican government opened a compensation program for the elderly braceros and their survivors, but some of those resident in the U.S. found it too hard to use and a Chicago class-action lawyer sued.
The lawsuit was dismissed twice, as courts considered whether too much time had passed and whether a lawsuit against the Mexican government could have standing in the United States. The American government and Wells Fargo Bank, initially named as defendants, were dismissed from the case.
(Pam Belluck, “Settlement Will Allow Thousands of Mexican Laborers in U.S. to Collect Back Pay”, New York Times, Oct. 15; “Mexican ministry OK with braceros deal”, AP/BakersfieldNow, Oct. 17).
Shot in Kosovo, collects £2.4m from British defense ministry
“A Kosovan man shot in the jaw by a British soldier has been awarded £2.4 million compensation after suing the Ministry of Defence. The sum is more than eight times the maximum damages available to UK troops seriously injured abroad, and has been criticised by the relatives of disabled veterans.” Muhamet Bici had been “in a car with other men who were firing weapons into the air to celebrate a national holiday” in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo; a Military Police probe cleared British soldiers who shot at the car of charges of wrongdoing, saying they reasonably if erroneously believed themselves in danger. (Matthew Moore, “MoD pays out £2.4m to Kosovan shot in the jaw”, Daily Telegraph, Nov. 6).