Misleading investigators about the circumstances of your hit-run won’t do it, apparently. The lawyer in question has served as a traffic court judge. [Legal Profession Blog, ABA Journal, Randazza]
Archive for 2011
Annals of litigation science
“The amount of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico from the Deepwater Horizon rig blowout will be determined by protracted court proceedings rather than purely scientific calculations, the nation’s top environmental enforcement officer said Thursday.” [Houston Chronicle]
January 14 roundup
- When naming a new law, please, no acronyms, no victim names, and no assumptions about what it will accomplish [WSJ Law Blog on Brian Christopher Jones’s recommendations] More: Wood.
- America’s Most Irresponsible Public Figure® — that would be RFK Jr. — sounds off on Tucson massacre [Hemingway, Examiner]
- More press attention for CPSC’s dubious consumer complaint database [Washington Post; my take last month]
- An appellate win for Internet anonymity in Pennsylvania [Levy, CL&P]
- Santa Clara lead paint case: Supreme Court won’t review government misuse of contingency lawyers [Wood, ShopFloor]
- DC cops’ “post and forfeit” policy deserves scrutiny [Greenfield]
- “Philosophy Explains How Legal Ethics Turn Lawyers Into Liars” [Kennerly]
- “Marshall, Texas: Patent Central” [six years ago on Overlawyered]
Life after the Florida governorship
Former Florida Governor Charles Crist has signed on with the big Orlando personal injury firm of Morgan & Morgan, “run by one of his longtime political supporters, Democrat John Morgan.” [St. Petersburg Times] More: Timothy Carney, Examiner.
A law school for Alaska?
Don’t Do It Dept.: Alaska is the only remaining state without a law school, so (it’s argued) it must need one. Right? [ABA Journal] Because of the absence of a law school in the Last Frontier, the Alaska Law Review has been published at academic institutions in the Lower 48, first UCLA and more recently Duke.
Canada: Lawsuit blames province for car-moose collisions
A class action named plaintiff revolts
Mutiny of the figurehead? One of the two lead plaintiffs in a computer-printer class action says he wasn’t adequately told what he was agreeing to, and is now objecting to the settlement. Class counsel in the settlement counter that the objector has been influenced by a lawyer pressing a rival class action. [Ted at PoL]
Kinder Surprise chocolate-covered toys
We’ve reported before (related) on the federal government’s ban on Kinder Surprise chocolate-wrapped toys, considered innocuous in many other countries but deemed an illicit choking hazard here. They’re back in the news [Lenore Skenazy, Katherine Mangu-Ward] with the key paragraph in the CBC’s report indicating how very frequently the candies are seized from bewildered travelers:
The U.S. takes catching illegal Kinder candy seriously, judging by the number of them they’ve confiscated in the last year. Officials said they’ve seized more than 25,000 of the treats in 2,000 separate seizures.
High Court declines to hear Gulf Coast-climate change case
Having agreed to hear a different global warming case this term, the Supreme Court has declined to review the dismissal of a case blaming thirty energy companies (via greenhouse gas emissions) for Hurricane Katrina damage. [NOLA.com, earlier here and here] The case had reached a curious procedural posture following the recusal of half the judges on the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. My Cato colleague Ilya Shapiro has details on that and other cases that notably won’t be appearing on the Supreme Court’s docket this term.
Jilted bride sues ex-groom
Should the damages be confined to the unrecoverable costs of the planned wedding, or extend beyond that? [Today Show]