The court said the conflicts between law firm Leeds Morelli and its clients’ interests in the employment case were so “enormous” that they could not be waived by the clients. Ethicist Stephen Gillers calls the ruling a “must read for the legal ethics crowd with jaw dropping allegations“. [ABA Journal, opinions, more documents, earlier coverage] More: Daniel Fisher, Forbes.
Archive for 2011
October 4 roundup
- Mass torts specialists vs. vendor: “Prominent Plaintiffs’ Attorneys Ordered to Pay Up After Losing Breach of Contract Trial” [Above the Law]
- “You’ll have to get it on the street” — NYC’s thriving black market in pesticides [NYT, more]
- Benjamin Barton on his new book, “The Lawyer-Judge Bias” [Truth on the Market, earlier here, etc.]
- Medicare will not press “secondary payer” liability clawback claims below $300 [Miller and Zois, PoL, NLJ]
- Class action roundup: “Sleeper” Supreme Court case raises question of whether class action certification requires consumer harm [Fisher/Forbes] Important Easterbrook opinion in Aqua Dots case puts curbs on class certification [PoL, Fisher/Forbes, Beck] Frey, Mortenson et al.: “The non-fiction class action” [Trask, OUP blog; earlier here, etc.]
- Free speech roundup: Canada proposal could criminalize linking to alleged hate speech [Hosting Industry Watch] More on Canadian denouncers of speechcrime [Ken at Popehat] You don’t say: “$60,000 Ruling Against Truthful Blogger Tests Limits of the First Amendment” [Citizen Media Law] What happens when a defamation plaintiff asks a court for a takedown order? [same] Argentina: subpoenas step up pressure on reporters, editors who report on economy [NYT via Walter Russell Mead]
- Should the law punish energy companies whose operations kill birds? Depends on whose osprey is being gored [Perry]
Just out: Cato Supreme Court Review, 2010-2011
It’s a modest $15 for the softcover and just $5.99 for the e-edition. As I said while singing its praises at Constitution Day recently, it’s distinguished from conventional law reviews not only by its Madisonian point of view, and by its extreme speediness (published only three or so months after the conclusion of the Court’s last term) but also by its unusual readability and style, pitched to intelligent readers whether or not they are specialists in the law. You can buy it here.
“I don’t feel good about it — lying to people”
A New Yorker writer sympathetically if uneasily profiles one of the many who choose to pursue legal immigrant status (with lawyers’ help) by petitioning for asylum on the basis of made-up atrocity stories. “‘I have never been raped,’ she admitted, giggling with embarrassment… ‘Telling that story makes me sad, because I know it’s true for someone.'” But not necessarily true for most of those in her position: “There’s one [a story] for each country,” explains a lawyer. “There’s the Colombian rape story — they all say they were raped by the FARC. There’s the Rwandan rape story, the Tibetan refugee story. The details for each are the same.” [Suketu Mehta, “The Asylum Seeker: For a chance at a better life, it helps to make your bad story worse,” New Yorker](& Legal Ethics Forum)
A right to refuse business trips?
A New Britain, Ct. police sergeant has failed to persuade a federal court that his employer violated his rights of “familial association” by requiring him to attend an out-of-state seminar [Daniel Schwartz] In a much-noted recent decision, U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska of the Southern District of New York found that the Bloomberg news organization’s alleged failure to accommodate employees’ wishes for work-life balance did not constitute a form of sex or other discrimination.
October 3 roundup
- Arizona officials say “accents were never the focus” of teacher fluency monitoring suspended at feds’ insistence [NYTNS, earlier] Reactions to my piece last week include columnist “Johnson” at The Economist (taking issue) and Hans Bader and Carrie Lukas (favorable);
- Another highlight of new “jobs” bill: financial institution customers would help pay for auto bailouts [John Berlau]
- Key New Orleans Police Department officer in charge of integrity of traffic-cam program accused of altering own plates [WWL] Red light cameras defended [Noah Kristula-Green, FrumForum] Why Massachusetts won’t raise the speed limit on Route 3 north of Burlington (NMA blog via @radleybalko)
- Eight bad reasons for going to law school [Campos] Law schools have demographic but not socioeconomic diversity [Richard Sander, Denver U. Law Review via Legal Ethics Forum] And besides my own contribution on law school reform at the recent Truth on the Market symposium, check out the contributions by Hans Bader and Larry Ribstein;
- Fellow federal agency FERC worried that EPA’s power-plant crackdown could lead to outages [WSJ] EPA’s plan to regulate dust from farmers’ fields led to public opinion blowback for President Obama [Diane Katz/Heritage, Environmental Legal Blogs, Radley Balko] Shutting down EPA isn’t likely under GOP reign, but reforming EPA might be [Adler, NYT “Room for Debate”]
- Left rallies around New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman [Ben Smith, Politico]
Cuba flirts with property ownership
Eduardo Penalver explains at PrawfsBlawg:
Cuban law has long permitted private homeownership…The most significant difference is that Cubans are not permitted to buy or sell their homes. Cuba’s blanket prohibition on sales leads to enormous problems. …The outcome of the 1980s experiment illustrates why Raul Castro’s housing reforms are likely to fail this time around as well. … What the Cuban government refuses to acknowledge is that Cuba’s housing problem is not really a housing problem. It’s a socialism problem.
Limits on teen drivers
The laws may have displaced, more than actually reduced, road fatalities, according to a new analysis: “While the number of fatal crashes among 16- and 17-year-old drivers has fallen, deadly accidents among 18-to-19-year-olds have risen by an almost equal amount. In effect, experts say, the programs that dole out driving privileges in stages, however well-intentioned, have merely shifted the ranks of inexperienced drivers from younger to older teens.” [LA Times]
New Jersey: will $650 recovery support $99,000 fee-shift?
The New Jersey Supreme Court is being asked to review a case against a car dealer in which the plaintiff’s lawyer obtained a $99,000 fee award; the client’s actual recovery was $650, and the underlying disputed charge was $51.50. In a companion case, a complaint over inadequate handicapped parking won a $2,500 payout for the complainant and $74,000 for her lawyer. The cases could determine whether New Jersey retreats from a relatively liberal formula in which courts enhance many fee awards to prevailing plaintiffs above market rates. [New Jersey Law Journal]
Crowdfunding new businesses
It might require — not that! — relaxing securities regulation. [Amy Cortese, New York Times]