October 8 roundup

  • Karma in Carmichael: serial Sacramento-area filer of ADA suits Scott Johnson, often chronicled in this space, hit by sex-harass suit by four former female employees, with avert-your-eyes details [Sac Bee; News10, autoplays] One of Johnson’s suits, over a counter that was too high, recently helped close Ford’s Real Hamburgers, a 50-year-old establishment. [KTXL/The Blaze]
  • Fifth Circuit reverses decision holding Feds liable for Katrina flood damages [Reuters]
  • “Your right to resell your own stuff is in peril”: SCOTUS takes up first-sale doctrine in copyright law [Jennifer Waters, MarketWatch on Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons]
  • Rubber room redux: “New York Teacher Live-Streams $75,000 Do-Nothing Job” [Lachlan Markay, Heritage] Teacher charged with hiring hitman to kill colleague should have been fired decade ago [Mike Riggs]
  • “George Zimmerman sues NBC for editing 911 audio to make him sound racist” [Jim Treacher, Daily Caller]
  • Prof. Mark J. Perry has moved his indispensable Carpe Diem economics/policy blog in-house to AEI;
  • New York will require newly licensed lawyers to do pro bono [WSJ, Scott Greenfield, Legal Ethics Forum]

4 Comments

  • […] you may wish to add to our morning information scans a site called “Overlawyered” which includes a bunch of stories (growing) about how this “under law” stuff is […]

  • Tenting fingers:

    New NY lawyers are required to do pro bono, but nobody said what KIND of pro bono. Why not conservative and libertarian causes? The Federalist Society has a pro bono project, for instance.

    That would REALLY mess with their heads. I dare them to reject a pro bono case on grounds that it advances the “wrong” agenda: reverse discrimination, property taking, the free speech rights of right-wingers, etc.

  • Given the state of unemployment and underemployment among graduating law students, and the massive debt most of them have, compulsory provision of free legal services is adding insult to injury.

  • Unless I am mistaken, the NY requirement is for lawyers to perform pro bono service in order to receive a license. Doesn’t that mean that they are being required to practice law without a license, which is a crime?