- New, much-anticipated documentary Can We Take a Joke? When Outrage and Comedy Collide [on demand, Greg Lukianoff] More on the fining of comedian Mike Ward by the Quebec Human Rights Tribunal [Guardian, earlier]
- “It is not ‘freedom of the press’ when newspapers and others are allowed to say and write whatever they want even if it is completely false!” [@donaldjtrump Sunday on Twitter] 25 years ago in my stump speech on lawsuit reform I criticized Trump for his use of legal threats to silence critics. More reportage on that history, a familiar topic around here [Frances S. Sellers, Washington Post, earlier here, etc.]
- Eighth Circuit: Nebraska regulators improperly retaliated against financial adviser over (inter alia) his criticism of Obama [Eugene Volokh]
- Nine senators (Boxer, Durbin, Franken, Markey, Reid, Sanders, Schumer, Warren, Whitehouse): we demand 22 right-of-center think tanks open their donation records to us [Carolina Journal]
- “Copyright infringer issues bogus DMCA over someone calling him out. Then denies all of it” [Mike Masnick, TechDirt]
- Lawsuit demanding R ratings on films with “tobacco imagery” deserves to be hit with SLAPP sanctions; “suing the MPAA to force censorship raises the stakes.” [WSJ Law Blog, Scott Greenfield]
Archive for 2016
“Hamilton” and progressive constitutionalism
Will the runaway Broadway success “Hamilton,” by repositioning our nation’s origin story, reinvigorate progressive originalism in constitutional law? [David Post, Volokh Conspiracy]
Bonus: Alexander Hamilton’s role in the development of truth as a defense in libel law [Eugene Volokh]
Privacy laws and client-chasing attorneys
Ohio’s FOIA/public records law guards the privacy of workers comp claimants, but with an exception for journalists. Lawyers hire journalist to dredge names. Legal? [John O’Brien, Legal NewsLine/Forbes] Lawyers have sued for direct access to the lists [ABA Journal]
“The passenger had all the proper paperwork to have the [emotional support] monkey on the plane with him.”
So, Madam, please stop staring. [Las Vegas Review-Journal]
Guestblogger archive week: V
Daniel Schwartz, of the law firm of Shipman and Goodwin, writes the Connecticut Employment Law Blog, long on my reading list. Some highlights of his visit: “After setting fires, firefighter wants job back” (Erie, Pa.); man jumps from train, then sues (“If you guessed that alcohol would somehow be involved, you are correct”); and recurring arguments of the durably demagogic “pay equity” debate. [archive / Twitter]
Jason Barney, a claims investigator and insurance professional in the Northwest, has guestblogged for us several times, some high points being a case of drunken equestrianism; aide to politician fails to secure Pennsylvania workers’ comp benefits after panel rules that “media criticism of him did not constitute ‘abnormal working conditions'”; man sues 1-800-FLOWERS after it sends him a thank you note for buying flowers for his mistress, which note wound up in the hands of his wife [archive]
Peter Morin, Boston-area land use lawyer, joined us over two stints to discuss an ethics complaint by a Rhode Island woman against two lawyers she said sidled up to her and pitched her services as she was standing at her dead son’s casket; whether an offer to send text messages to the NBC game show “Deal or No Deal” in hopes of winning a prize was an unlawful lottery for which participants should be permitted to seek damages; and a classic Massachusetts judicial opinion about liability for “a fish bone lurking in fish chowder.” [archive]
* * *
I’ve worked my way less than halfway through the list and have missed many superb talents as well as many of my best friends, so there’s room for me to come back another time should I repeat this idea. Those I missed include guestbloggers Hans Bader, James Copland, Steven Erickson, Andrew Grossman, Keymonk, Kip Esquire, Steven Hantler, Dave Kopel, Jim Leitzel, Jeff Lewis, Leah Lorber, Warren Meyer, Skip Oliva, Victoria Pynchon, Gerald Russello, Greg Skidmore, SSFC, and Kevin Underhill. Participant-blogger Ted Frank, a lawyer of many interests best known these days for his efforts on class action reform, contributed between 2003 and 2010; his posts are archived here. I’m not sure why anyone would want to check out my own archives, but if you do, they’re here.
Greenwich, Ct.: lawyer allegedly robs bank
If the allegations prove true, it wouldn’t be the first time a lawyer had robbed a bank (more on that Louisiana case). But anyway, if so, she really should have known better. This is not how lawyers do it. [Greenwich Time]
Guestblogger archive week: IV
I highly recommend subscribing to Dan Lewis’s daily Now I Know email, a labor of love, compendium of neat stories, and marvel of the Internet. Dan guestblogged for us in the early days as a first-year law student on stories, often sports-related, that included a National League umpire who sued after quitting his job and not being taken back, Deion Sanders’s face-off with the car repair guy, and shop owners criminally charged in Canada for fighting off a burglar. [archive / NowIKnow and personal Twitter]
Guestbloggers have sometimes brought a scholarly and research perspective, as with Michael DeBow, a law professor at Cumberland School of Law at Samford University in Birmingham, Ala. He wrote (presciently!) about a Massachusetts attorney general’s ventures into outsourced enforcement and how it wound up sluicing money to some ideologically engaged private outfits; the importance in comparative international development of secure property rights; and Alabama’s fitful progress toward being less of a “judicial hellhole” for defendant corporations than it once was. [archive]
James Maxeiner teaches at the University of Baltimore School of Law and has practiced and written extensively in legal matters in both American and German courts. The German system of civil litigation, which includes the loser-pays principle, is often compared favorably with our own. His insight into the comparative performance of the two systems of law helped inform posts on what foreign clients say about American law, how Germany does civil legal aid, and some mild puffery from the German justice ministry about the advantage of its version of continental law. [archive]
Louisiana sheriff raids home in hopes of exposing identity of critical blogger
“One week after Terrebonne Parish Sheriff Jerry Larpenter seized the computers and phones of a suspected online critic, angry residents came to the parish council to defend free speech rights and to question Parish President Gordon Dove for hiring an insurance agent who is at the heart of the controversy.” [David Hammer, WWL] Louisiana has a criminal libel law on the books and although its continued constitutionality is doubtful given a state supreme court ruling, it served as the basis for a judge to approve a search warrant for the raid on the home and electronic equipment of Houma police officer Wayne Anderson, suspected of being the pseudonymous author of the gadfly Esposedat blog, which has criticized Larpenter and other officials. “When Larpenter was asked whether there is a conflict in him investigating an alleged crime involving himself, he replied, ‘If you’re gonna lie about me and make it under a fictitious name, I’m gonna come after you.'” [WWL, first, second, third, fourth posts]
Guestblogger archive week: III
Caleb Brown is now the director of multimedia at the Cato Institute, where he hosts the extremely popular Cato Daily Podcast and Cato Audio. When he first joined us as a guestblogger, however, he was doing radio in Louisville, Kentucky. He’s blogged on a short-lived suit by a man who suffered emotional distress after seeing participants consume pureed rat on NBC’s “Fear Factor,” a mini-wave of suits against law schools (back before the more recent, bigger wave), and a criminal complaint in France against a man who spotted a hole in computer security and published about it. [archive first, second / Twitter]
When blogs rose to popularity in the early 2000s there was a flowering of medical blogs written by practicing physicians. Among its highlights was an Ohio family physician’s MedPundit. Although she quit blogging around 2006 that was not before she had dropped by Overlawyered to talk about shotgun defendant selection and the plaintiff attorney’s “standard of care”; a long-shot failure-to-diagnose case; and what it means that malpractice insurance rates vary so sharply within individual states, as between Cleveland and Columbus in Ohio. [archive]
Donald Boudreaux, founder of Cafe Hayek and professor of economics at George Mason U., has few contemporary peers as an exponent of sound economics for the intelligent reader. He joined us to write about (timely!) Hillary Clinton’s proposal for a restored national maximum speed limit of 55 miles per hour, popular misunderstanding of the concept of the “trade deficit” (timely again!), and where if anywhere the federal government might draw the constitutional authority to regulate the treatment of pets. [archive]
Don’t forget: we’re inviting volunteers (and of course repeat volunteers) to propose yourself for a weeklong guestblog stint in this space some time this summer or fall. Email editor – (at) – overlawyered – (dot) – com.
Appeals court: $18 billion Chevron Ecuador verdict a fraud, can’t be enforced
Just published: my new Storify on the ignoble demise of what had been billed as one of the world’s biggest human rights lawsuits, the so-called Lago Agrio case against Chevron over pollution in Ecuador. We’ve covered it for years, before and after the tainted $18 billion verdict obtained by attorney Steven Donziger, and the Storify feature links to many of our key posts. Big-name environmental groups like the Sierra Club, 350.org, and EarthJustice promoted Donziger’s case long after they had reason to know better.