- Yikes! Pressure builds to downgrade U.S. govt’s “AAA” rating [Reuters] #
- John Carney leaves DealBreaker for better offer [Salmon] #
- Man smoked pot on sly, now sues over rejection by pain management program [Overlawyered] #
- Lots of StumbleUpon traffic on blog all of a sudden. Does this relate to having joined Twitter? #
- Freakonomics on credit crisis, thanks @petewarden [Levitt, NY Times] #
- Other countries aren’t citing our Supreme Court as much? Good! [Paulsen, Balkinization] #
Archive for 2008
Feeds working again?
Many of our RSS feed subscribers lost their Overlawyered feeds when we switched platforms to WordPress this spring. I’ve just installed a plugin that should get things moving again, redirecting everyone to a single main feed for the site; those who want to follow comments can subscribe to this separate comments feed. If it doesn’t work for you, let me know.
Emotional value of lost pets, cont’d
A veterinary malpractice suit aims to overturn Georgia’s adherence to the traditional rule barring damage recovery for intangible pet companionship value. Not that it’s about you-know-what: “Money is not the object here,” says Kathryn Sutton about 13-year-old miniature Schnauzer Marshall. (D.L. Bennett, “Animal rights drive dog lawsuit”, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Sept. 15). Earlier here, here, here, here, here, etc.
Purge that data, cont’d
Geoffrey Fieger to run for Detroit mayor?
“Judge Who Scoffed at Dispute Between Former Law Partners Is Reversed”
“A trial judge had an obligation to hold a plenary hearing on disputed issues in a suit between two former law firm partners, even if he thought the matter petty and unworthy of the lawyers involved, an appeals court ruled last week. The panel reversed Monmouth County, N.J., Superior Court Judge Alexander Lehrer, who decided motions to enforce litigants’ rights based on conflicting certifications, after calling the dispute ‘the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen’ and questioning whether the amount at issue justified the cost of a hearing.” At one point the judge said, of a requested evidentiary hearing, “Let’s spend $60,000 in legal fees for me to determine whether or not one lawyer owes another lawyer $24,000.” (Mary Pat Gallagher, New Jersey Law Journal, Sept. 9).
W.V.: pot smoker sues over rejection by pain management center
As a condition of granting pain-management services, Family Care Health Center in Putnam County, West Virginia required patient Ronald Sprouse to sign an agreement stipulating that he would cooperate with unannounced urine and bodily fluid testing and that the presence of “unauthorized substances (legal or illegal) will result in discharge from the practice.” Kicked out of the program after testing positive for cannabinoids, Sprouse admits using them but is suing the health center and doctor anyway: “When he does not smoke marijuana, Sprouse claims he becomes violent toward his family and does not leave his house in fear of how he will react toward others in society.” He is representing himself. It’s too bad for his case that he doesn’t live in California, where lawmakers seem to be headed toward making medical marijuana smokers a legally protected class. (Kelly Holleran, “Pot smoker sues for getting dismissed from pain management center”, W.V. Record, Sept. 8)(& KevinMD, ER blog Crass-Pollination).
Lerach moved to medium-security facility
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.