- Woman “discreetly” leaning over to use cellphone during movie says armrest smacked her on head, sues theater [Chicago Breaking News, Sun-Times] Plus: more links at ChicagoNow;
- For a really cogent analysis of the effects of lawsuits over independent contractor classification, ask someone whose livelihood is at stake, like this Massachusetts stripper [Daily Caller]
- Menaced by lawsuit, WordPress.com yanks a blog attacking a cancer therapist, then restores it [MWW]
- Baby slings, cont’d: a CPSC recall, and already Sokolove and Lieff Cabraser are advertising [Stoll, more, earlier]
- Law student’s suit demanding pass/fail grading in legal writing class results in “fail” [ABA Journal]
- More details on new federal mandate for restaurant and vending machine calorie counts [update to earlier post]
- “As suits pile up, plaintiff labeled ‘vexatious litigant'” [Virginian-Pilot]
- Tweet a summary of your favorite Supreme Court case (& cc in comments below if you like) [Daniel Schwartz, hashtag #cbftech, what others have done]
Archive for 2010
“Interest in Toyotas Starts to Revive”
According to Kelley’s Blue Book, consumers are trending back toward the Japanese maker in their buying plans. [New York Times “Bucks” blog] That’s despite the menace of rays from outer space, as denounced by one anonymous informant to NHTSA. [Detroit Free Press, which has a PDF of the submission from “A Concerned Scientist”]
More: On a more serious note, Holman Jenkins has a good column today [WSJ, sub-only] tracing the key role of bandwagon effects in sudden acceleration consciousness (which is one reason waves of complaints tend to occur in clumps, by carmaker and otherwise). Excerpt:
…In 2001, at least four papers were presented at the annual meeting of the Trial Lawyers Association urging a revival of sudden unintended acceleration litigation, insisting that such cases could prevail in absence of evidence of a defect, and even amid evidence of driver error, simply by harping in front of a jury on a record of “Other Similar Incidents” (OSI).
That’s the roadmap being followed now, as lawyer Randy Roberts told CNBC this week: “Toyota is very good at taking one consumer complaint about sudden unintended acceleration and dissecting it and convincing you that it may have been a floor mat or driver error or a sticky pedal. But when you put all those complaints out on the table, then you can see the big picture. That’s how you connect the dots.”
Huh? The logic here is ridiculous. To wit: 15 examples of X causing Y are proof that something other than X must cause Y.
More on “Circle of Greed”
More reviews of the new Lerach book (earlier). Kevin LaCroix:
…The authors explain in their Prologue that initially, Dillon had intended to co-author a book with Lerach, but that project got waylaid when it became clear that Lerach’s legal difficulties were serious. …
Lerach’s skill and his excesses emerged in his first successful case in San Diego, in which he represented a group of retirees against the Methodist Church. Lerach’s legal performance was by all accounts brilliant, and produced a great result for his clients. But, the authors note, “along with the good came the other things: the hubris, the taunting, the acrimony with the opposing side, the hyperpartisanship borne of the Manichean world view.” …
The authors also methodically show how so much of Lerach’s crusading activities depending on his firm’s corrupt system for procuring plaintiffs on whose behalf to bring the suit, as well as on the testimony of a corrupt expert witness.
…Bill Lerach did not invent the criminal conspiracy; he joined it in progress. His “full cooperation” fails to name names and take numbers. … Lerach knows, but he isn’t telling, because the statute of limitations has not yet run for all of his crimes. …
Nevertheless, “Circle of Greed” is a must-read for lawyers and judges because even a “limited hang-out” by Bill Lerach reveals far more than he intended.
An excerpt from the book is at Politics Daily. LaCroix also interviews the authors (who note that while Lerach encouraged stories about a supposed conspiracy to get him, the Milberg prosecution “was managed by a dedicated civil servant in the Los Angeles U.S. attorney’s office named Richard Robinson who is not only a career prosecutor, but a Democrat.”) And San Diego public broadcasting outlet KPBS runs its Dillon-and-Lerach interview under the gag-worthy headline, “The Story Of Bill Lerach’s Fighting For Consumers.”
More: Seth Hettena, Voice of San Diego, profile and interview.
$10K to be had “just by rattling the saber of age discrimination”
The prospective plaintiff could really use the money, but is ethically troubled by the lawyer’s approach. [Knight Kiplinger, Kiplinger.com via California Civil Justice]
California prison guards union
Has its power peaked? If so, there might be less lobbying pressure “for ‘three strikes, your out’ and other senseless sentencing policies that provide jobs for [its] members.” [Rick Hills, Prawfsblawg, The Economist, earlier]
“Legal secretary claims firm fired her for failure to meet unrealistic workload”
Legal secretary Nancy Topolski acknowledges that she couldn’t handle the workload assigned to her by law firm Davis Wright Tremaine, and that she suffered panic attacks as a result that prevented her from doing the work. But, she says, this just means that the law firm violated discrimination laws when it fired her. (Karen Sloan, National Law Journal, Mar. 24).
Canada’s Coulter climate
“I was hoping for a fruit basket, not a threat to prosecute,” says controversialist Ann Coulter about the menacing letter she got from the provost of the University of Ottawa. [Big Government, Popehat, Legal Blog Watch, WSJ Law Blog] Part of Coulter’s Canadian tour was subsequently called off after security officials said they could not guarantee her safety from protesters. [Moynihan/Reason “Hit and Run”] More: Mark Steyn, Binks. The somewhat attenuated nature of Canada’s rights of free speech is a topic familiar to our readers.
When defendants resist
A company takes the counteroffensive, verbally at least, against a class action suit [Karlsgodt] Unfortunately, the blog post is now down, apparently on advice of counsel.
Diversity training’s triumph
It’s swept corporate America. Too bad it doesn’t seem to work [Drake Bennett, Boston Globe via Arts and Letters Daily] More: The Briefcase (Ohio) is reminded of continuing legal education (CLE).
March 24 roundup
- Jury orders Dutchess County, N.Y. school district to pay $1.25 million for not adequately addressing classmate harassment of “very dark skinned” half-Latino student; district protests that it had extensively pursued diversity/sensitivity programs [Poughkeepsie Journal]
- More unwisdom: “Oklahoma House of Representatives Proposes Ban on Use of Foreign Law in Oklahoma Courts” [Volokh, earlier on Arizona bill]
- Update: California environment czars won’t ban black cars, but watch out for what reflective-layer window mandates might do to cellphones and tollgate transponders [ShopFloor, earlier]
- “Firm Sanctioned for ‘Perfect Storm’ of Improper Practices in Debt Collection” [NYLJ]
- Critic of lie detector technology says U.K. libel law has silenced him [Times Online] Science journalist Simon Singh says fighting chiropractors’ libel suit is so draining that he’s quitting his column for the Guardian [Guardian, Citizen Media Law]
- Florida: father who lost wife, son in murder/suicide at gun range drops lawsuit against the store [Orlando Sentinel]
- Appeals court declines to overturn Mary Roberts sextortion conviction [MySanAntonio.com, opinion, related, earlier]
- Corporation for Public Newspapering? Stimulus bucks go to “public-interest investigative journalism” [SFWeekly]