Must be the remains of two lawyers who crossed a Mississippi judge. Background: a casino owner’s resistance to discovery in a bus-crash suit [Freeland, court order]
Archive for 2010
May 24 roundup
- Pennsylvania attorney general subpoenas Twitter in search of critics’ identities, then backs down [Volokh and more, Levy/CL&P, Romenesko, Wired “Threat Level”]
- Letting kids have unsupervised time in NYC park not actually against the law [Free-Range Kids on “Take Your Kids to the Park, and Leave Them There Day”] Related from Lenore Skenazy: Spiked Online and Salon, “The War on Children’s Playgrounds”
- Uh-oh: New York chief judge Jonathan Lippman endorses massive new Civil Gideon legal-aid entitlement [ABA Journal, and the NYT cheers]
- “Novartis Hit With $250 Million in Punitives in Gender Bias Case” [NYLJ, WSJ Law Blog (blaming bad defense trial strategy) and more, ABA Journal, Hyman]
- Med-mal law has done very well for two attorney brothers in Georgia [Atlanta Journal-Constitution via Pero]
- Kagan’s Oxford thesis revealed: judges shouldn’t make it up as they go along in quest of social justice. Sensation ensues! [WSJ Law Blog, related on political-branch deference] And were the SG’s judicial-restraint principles activated by Graham v. Florida? [Stuart Taylor, Jr., National Journal]
- Federal Elections Commission as net regulator: “How the DISCLOSE Act will restrict free speech” [Brad Smith/Jeff Patch, Reason]
- “Law Professor Confesses ‘I’m a Criminal’” [Tim Lynch, Cato]
- Argentina: “Parts of Anti-Plagiarism Bill Lifted from Wikipedia” [Lowering the Bar, TechDirt]
Rand Paul, the ADA, and the gotcha narrative
I’ve got some thoughts up at Cato at Liberty about the latest controversy to embroil the GOP Kentucky Senate candidate, including comments on an AP story in which I’m quoted.
You found your lawyer _how_?
There are answers even more humiliating than, “from a billboard”. [Turkewitz]
Those Texas curriculum standards
Has the Washington Post paraphrased them fairly? Ann Althouse suggests not; Jonathan Adler at first agrees, then finds reason to alter his view. (Updated/corrected to reflect Adler’s findings). More: Greenfield.
RIAA’s conception of infringement damages
Under which the cost of improper song downloads from a single site exceeds all the money on the planet many times over. [Cracked.com]
“He said he does not believe the accident was intentional…”
“… but Jesus Christ has hired a lawyer anyway.”
May 22 roundup
- No answer at 911? “Florida Verdict May Threaten EMS Availability” [White Coat]
- New Orleans politico Steve Theriot drops suit seeking identities of online critics [Times-Picayune and more, NYT “Media Decoder”, Slabbed, earlier]
- On a vial of anesthetic: “One patient use only.” Nevada jury finds that warning inadequate to prevent multiple patient use and awards $500 million in punitives [Carter at Point of Law, Abnormal Use] More: Ted at PoL.
- Floodgates to litigation? “Parent Can Sue Ex for Turning Children Against Him” [NJLJ]
- Lawyer who isn’t honest is a threat to the social order: noted Allentown, Pa. attorney gets 6 1/2 years for fraud [Legal Intelligencer, earlier]
- “Another European Prosecution for Insulting Religion” [Volokh; pop star Dorota Rabczewska, Poland]
- A lawyer’s advice: try to get those Rand Paul types off your jury [Turkewitz]
- If SEIU craves respectability, maybe it shouldn’t send mobs to besiege bank execs at their homes [Nina Easton, Fortune, cross-posted from Cato at Liberty; related from PoL last year; more from Big Journalism including role of D.C. police, but note denials on last point]
WSJ: “The other Blumenthal scandal”
An editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal (paywall) quotes me on the subject:
The AG has challenged the verdict, but the Kolb case [Gina Kolb, formerly Gina Malapanis] fits a pattern that the Cato Institute’s Walter Olson calls “bullying, legally ill-founded ventures into litigation.” From his leading role in the tobacco lawsuits of the 1990s to trying to repossess bonuses to AIG executives, Mr. Blumenthal has cultivated a reputation as the Eliot Spitzer of Connecticut.
For more on some of the cases that have brought Blumenthal his reputation as a bully and grandstander, start here, here, and here. And William Saletan at Slate is out with the piece I wish I’d written comparing Blumenthal’s repeated misstatements on his service record with the sorts of misrepresentations for which he’s gone after marketers and other businesses over the years.
For some light on how Blumenthal happened to obtain a photo opportunity in a VFW hall to denounce his critics, check out this post by Ronald Winter.
Whatever happened to Cass Sunstein?
Some were expecting the prominent law professor to make more of a public splash as the Obama administration’s regulatory czar. Tim Mak at FrumForum looks into why that hasn’t happened, and one of the observers whose opinions he quotes is me.