The British government is apparently paying out money for the purpose of lobbying itself on tobacco issues. (The Debatable Land, Oct. 17).
Archive for 2008
Unsolicited-email plaintiff John Ferron
Eric Goldman (Oct. 7) discusses an Ohio case filed by John Ferron, “one of several ‘repeat’ plaintiffs around the country suing over unsolicited email (perhaps not coincidentally, he’s also an attorney)”. Goldman gives some particulars of the suit and then rather abruptly ends the post (or its current version) with the statement “[This post has been amended in response to emails from John Ferron alleging that my prior post was defamatory.]”
I suppose it is displaying too much curiosity to wonder what the amended material was. Perhaps its nature can be inferred from this Oct. 13 post on TechDirt on the Goldman post, or perhaps it’s something entirely different. At any rate, bloggers might wish to be careful in future in writing about “anti-spam litigation entrepreneurs” — a phrase that appears in quotation marks in TechDirt’s summary of Goldman’s original post, but now cannot be found in his amended post.
Update: Bloggers cleared in Virginia developer’s lawsuit
“The four bloggers named in a lawsuit brought forth by Christiansburg developer Roger Woody have been cleared of all charges by a Montgomery County Circuit Court judge.” The judge did not find it necessary to reach First Amendment issues but instead dismissed the case on demurrer; the four defendants had criticized Woody’s business practices.
Having invested a lot of time and energy into the issue, [defendant Terry Ellen] Carter said she was pleased with the judge’s decision and relieved after having gone through what she described as “the longest 10 and a half weeks ever.”
“We have a right to express our opinions without being hauled into court, and that right was upheld,” Carter said.
(Lerone Graham, “Bloggers cleared in lawsuit”, Roanoke Times, Oct. 15; earlier).
We’re all lawyers. We don’t have to answer questions.
Not like you manufacturing defendants who are going to have to hand over your hard disks’ contents to us because you’re mere non-lawyers. “If a company’s sole business is licensing and litigating patents, plus it’s run by lawyers, what isn’t protected by privilege?” A subsidiary of patent holding firm Acacia is appealing a judge’s ruling denying some of its broad privilege claims. (Zusha Elinson, “IP Case Tests Boundaries of Privilege”, The Recorder, Oct. 20).
Alcohol wholesaling laws
Laws in most states ordain an artificial niche for the business of beer and liquor wholesaling, and it gets worse:
Some states, for example, give wholesalers exclusive rights to distribute alcohol in a particular region, effectively creating government-enforced monopolies. Other states (including Arizona) have enacted “franchise termination laws,” which make it more difficult for retailers and/or producers to switch distributors once they’ve started doing business with one. Producers and/or retailers get locked in. If they feel their existing distributor is taking too much of a markup, isn’t offering a wide enough variety, or is otherwise performing poorly, there’s little they can do.
(Radley Balko, “How Your Beer Bought John McCain’s $500 Loafers”, Reason, Oct. 15). Cited in the article is an Independent Institute monograph by Glen Whitman, “Strange Brew: Alcohol and Government Monopoly“, which sounds like it’s worth reading on the subject.
Microblog 2008-10-17
- Hey, James Surowiecki has started blogging [New Yorker] #
- Why Canada’s bank and mortgage system isn’t broken [John Carney] #
- “Went to my ATM and it asked to borrow a twenty till the weekend”: jokes from the credit crisis [MargRev] #
October 17 roundup
- Anyone suing over anything dept.: Kansas City attorney Mary Kay Green sues McCain, Palin, for supposed hate speech against Obama [KC Star, Feral Child, Above the Law; related, my article the other day for City Journal]
- Got $331K from victim fund claiming severe injuries from Pentagon 9/11 attack, yet “kept playing basketball and lacrosse and ran [NYC] marathon in under four hours two months after the attacks” [Maryland Daily Record]
- Krugman claims Fannie/Freddie not big culprits in mortgage meltdown, but Calomiris and Wallison show him wrong [Stuart Taylor, Jr., National Journal; also note this Goldstein/Hall unlabeled opinion piece from McClatchy pushing the Krugman line]
- Government bailout of newspapers? Who’s trying to float this idea, anyway? [Bercovici/Portfolio via Romenesko] Update: maybe this?
- Colluded with chiropractor to generate bills for imaginary treatment, then pocketed clients’ insurance settlements without telling them [Quincy, Mass., Patriot-Ledger; Bruce Namenson sentenced to 5 years and “cannot practice law for at least 10 years after he gets out of jail”]
- Ontario: “Killer awarded $6K over wrong shoes in prison” [National Post]
- “Is there any doubt that Lucy grew up to be a lawyer?” [Above the Law on Doyle Reports, Judge Robertson ruling in patent case]
- Jury hits Jersey City, N.J. rheumatologist with $400K verdict (including $200K punitives) for not hiring sign language interpreter at his own expense for deaf patient [NJLJ, Krauss @ PoL]
$55 million in Marine helicopter crash
Curt Cutting at California Punitive Damages takes note of a jury’s very large verdict against San Diego Gas and Electric last month, including $40 million in punitive damages, after a helicopter fatally collided with a 130-foot utility tower located on the base at Camp Pendleton. “The plaintiffs claimed that SDG&E was negligent for not installing safety lights on the tower. SDG&E says the tower had been on the base for 25 years and they would have installed lights if the Marine Corps had asked. They contend the crash was the result of errors by the crew and they plan to appeal.” (Sept. 3; Tony Perry, “$55.6 million awarded in fatal Marine helicopter crash”, Los Angeles Times, Sept. 4). Bruce Nye at Cal Biz Lit calls the verdict a “stunner” (Sept. 8).
Microblog 2008-10-16
- Anonymous but mostly plausible Q & A of what went wrong on Wall Street [Rowley/Yahoo Finance] #
- Most PR people still approach bloggers in clueless way [Kevin O’Keefe; more background, PoL; also see Greenfield] #
- Glitnir and Kaupthing sound like Wagnerian trolls, but went on a scarier rampage as Icelandic banks [UK Independent] #
- Not a misprint & no zeros missing: median price of house or condo sold last month in Detroit was $9,250 [Detroit Free Press] #
Election-season YouTube takedowns
They seem now to be part of the accepted armament of campaign law. “Of course the McCain-Palin team could counter-notify, but the DMCA’s 10-14 business day waiting period makes that option next to useless, when ’10 days can be a lifetime in a political campaign.'” (Seltzer/Citizen Media Law, Levy/CL&P; but see Ron Coleman, Oct. 15: process need not be as slow as waiting period implies).
Related: Does trademark law allow candidates to suppress some types of opposition keyword advertising, as when candidates put up negative ads keyed to each others’ names? [Levy/CL&P]