Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Archive for 2013

Overlawyered: now a Cato Institute blog

I’m delighted to announce that Overlawyered, a freestanding blog since I founded it in 1999, has now affiliated itself with the Cato Institute, at whose Center for Constitutional Studies I’m a senior fellow. Cato already publishes several blogs and its prowess in technical support, marketing, and press outreach are certain to help the blog reach new readers, look sharper, keep more current with blog technology, and be even more a part of the conversation about law and legal reform.

As a trial run, Cato’s Ian Jacobson has already been helping out with the site’s Facebook presence in recent weeks, and Cato’s graphics team has devised an terrifically good-looking banner you can check out there, complete with shark fin. (We’re not losing the popular “shark and goldfish” emblem, though.) While you’re there, be sure to “Like” us and recommend us to friends, and also join nearly 7,000 others who follow us on Twitter.

In coming weeks you’ll notice design changes on our front page, as well as other new features. If you’re not familiar with Cato, the world’s leading libertarian think tank, this is a good time to check it out and learn more about its pursuit of individual liberties, free markets, and peace. In particular, let me recommend Cato’s group blog Cato at Liberty, where I and my colleagues blog on a variety of public policy issues.

Here’s the Cato announcement that went out this morning:

The Cato Institute is proud to announce its affiliation with one of the most respected law blogs around: Overlawyered.com. Founded and run by senior fellow Walter Olson, the blog explores an American legal system in dire need of reform, showing how litigation is used as a weapon against guilty and innocent alike, new laws erode individual responsibility, and law firms enrich themselves at the public’s expense.

Walter skewers American litigiousness with a careful eye and sharp wit. If you haven’t been following Overlawyered, here’s what you’ve been missing:

To learn the extent of the legal insanity, and how to fix it, visit Overlawyered.com and “like” its Facebook page.

Walter Olson founded and continues to run Overlawyered.com. He is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute’s Center for Constitutional Studies.

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“Going naked” in S.F.’s Summer of Love

We refer of course to the practice of dispensing with liability insurance [Sheila Weller, Vanity Fair]:

The Diggers broached the idea of a free clinic to two doctors, and Dr. David E. Smith, who had lived in the Haight for years, volunteered. He signed a $300-a-month lease for a suite at Haight and Ashbury, rounded up volunteers who utilized all the samples of penicillin, tranquilizers, and other supplies from the hospitals at which they interned, and started a clinic to treat patients suffering from bad acid trips or venereal disease —- all with no malpractice insurance, “which was totally insane,” says Smith today. On June 7, 1967, the Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic opened for business with “a line around the block,” according to Smith.

More on the free clinic, one of the counterculture’s more celebrated innovations at the time, here and here; more on the practice of dispensing with liability coverage here, here, here, and here.

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April 26 roundup

  • Police in city of Manchester, U.K. say they’ll record attacks on punks, Goths as hate crimes [AP]
  • If claiming severe permanent injuries from auto mishap, best not to place well in a marathon six months later [West Virginia Record]
  • “Altering or deleting a Facebook account during litigation may be … spoliation of evidence” [Paul Kostro, Brian Wassom, Jim Dedman]
  • Note to Trademark Office: “breastaurant” is not trademarkable [David Post; earlier here, here, and here]
  • Iowa Rep. Bruce Braley, a Litigation Lobby stalwart, seeks Senate seat of retiring Harkin [DMR, earlier]
  • Meta? Lawyer files suit over a suit [the Brooks Brothers kind] [Staci Zaretsky, Above the Law]
  • Judge Shadur: “the most egregious fraud on the court … encountered in [my] nearly 33 years on the bench.” [Courthouse News]
  • Do you enjoy reading Overlawyered? Check back later today, after 9 a.m. Eastern, for a major announcement about the site!

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“Math on Trial: How Numbers Get Used and Abused in the Courtroom”

As grist for expert witness testimony and forensics, mathematics sounds as if it should be more rigorous and amenable to consistent results than other disciplines — psychiatry, say. “However, mathematicians Leila Schneps and Coralie Colmez argue in Math on Trial that in at least 10 instances over the past century, innocent or wrongly accused defendants have been imprisoned or publicly harassed in part due to simple mathematical errors at trial, such as believing two events are independent (when they are not) or underappreciating the power of exponential growth.” [Bharath Parthasarathy, Washington Independent Review of Books]

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Criminal background checks… for dog owners?

North Carolinians should hold on to their long-established right to own whatever dog breed they prefer without having to petition the authorities for permission, argues Patrick at Popehat. The bill, filed by state Rep. Rodney Moore (D-Charlotte), would give police departments discretion to deny permits to would-be owners and would require that owners “submit to a criminal background check and enroll in a four hour course sponsored by the Humane Society on responsible ownership of pit bulls, rottweilers, mastiffs, chows, and similar ‘aggressive dog breeds.'” More: OhMiDog.

P.S. Flagged by GraniteGrok, a commenter at the News & Observer: “When are we going to close the dog show loophole?”

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Banking and finance roundup

  • “The Dodd-Frank Say-on-Pay Cases Are on the Brink of Death” [Kevin LaCroix]
  • Kevin Funnell of Bank Lawyers Blog interviewed [Crystal Gimesh via BLB]
  • How taxpayer lending props up business model of banks, fast-food franchisors [Dayton Daily News on SBA via Tad DeHaven]
  • Independent currency = money laundering? “How Bitcoin Dies” [Econ Policy Journal] Or death by trial lawyer? [Coyote, Andrew Sullivan]
  • Nose of the camel: Obama budget plans to limit IRAs to $3 million [Politico]
  • How Swiss bank secrecy protected freedom [Daniel Fisher]
  • Sure, what could go wrong? Obama push for more mortgage lending to borrowers with weaker credit [Gideon Kanner, Coyote] More: Arnold Kling testifies before Congress on housing finance, and feels a resulting “need to scream” [ASKBlog, more]
  • More: Per NYT’s expert, “Shareholders have been demanding” disclosure on corporate political spending. Well, 18% of shareholders anyway [Jim Copland]

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HUD, Westchester approach showdown

By a 12-4 vote, the board of legislators of the suburban New York county has approved going to court against the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development in the long-running dispute. HUD is still insisting that the county enact a “source of income discrimination” law barring private landlords from turning away Section 8 federally aided tenants, as well as critically reexamine zoning rules in its various towns. [Peter Applebome, NYT, Journal-News, Newsday] Earlier here, etc.

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Suing BP, that cozy Mississippi way

Following through on a deal announced a year ago, former Mississippi Attorney General Mike Moore, representing the state under an arrangement with current Attorney General Jim Hood, has now sued BP over damages from the giant Transocean Gulf oil spill. [WaPo, YallPolitics, Sid Salter/Jackson Clarion Ledger] The two figures have long been entwined with each other — and both with now-disgraced Gulf Coast attorney Dickie Scruggs — in litigations that leverage the power of the state to the advantage of private lawyers, including the Great Tobacco Robbery of the late 1990s and Katrina claims.

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