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May 10 -- Another
billion, snuffed. You don't have to be a Microsoft
shareholder to wonder whether antitrust law has become a destabilizing
influence on the business world. In late March a Paducah, Ky. federal
jury ordered U.S. Tobacco, the number one maker of snuff and chewing tobacco,
to pay a staggering $1.05 billion to its smaller competitor Conwood in
an antitrust dispute. UST, whose annual sales are $1.5 billion --
meaning that the verdict equals the entire gross revenue it takes in over
eight months of a year -- makes such brands as Skoal and Copenhagen, while
Conwood manufactures the Kodiak brand. The finding of $350 million
in damages will be automatically trebled under antitrust law if not overturned.
"Both companies accused each other of removing display racks from stores,
making under-the-table cash rebates to win retailers and holding strategy
sessions to plot out how to eliminate the other from the lucrative retail-checkout
market." (No! Not strategy sessions!) In addition, "Conwood
attorneys accused U.S. Tobacco of spreading rumors that Conwood's snuff
contained stems and was stale." ("U.S. Tobacco Co. Faces $1.05B Payout",
AP/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, March
29; Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, "US tobacco group faces possible $1bn
payout", Financial Times, March
30)
May 10 -- Court
okays suit against "flagging" of test conditions. In San
Francisco, federal judge William Orrick Jr. has rejected a motion to dismiss
a case in which Oakland-based Disability
Rights Advocates is suing the Educational Testing Service, charging
that it's discriminatory for ETS to "flag" test scores taken under special
conditions. "Accommodations" such as extra or unlimited time, the
right to have questions explained, and the right to use calculators have
become common in recent years following the aggressive use of disabled-rights
law by test-takers; in a majority of cases the operative diagnosis
is not a traditional disability such as blindness or paraplegia, but one
such as learning disability or attention deficit disorder. If the
lawsuit succeeds in banishing the loathed asterisk, test-takers will win
the right to conceal from downstream institutions, such as medical schools
and employers, the fact that a particular result was achieved with extra
time or other assistance. (Michael Breen, "ETS Discrimination Case
Goes Forward", The Recorder/CalLaw, April
14).
DRA director of litigation Sid Wolinsky is also representing parents
in a challenge to the state of Oregon's refusal to allow test-takers to
use automatic spell-check on statewide exams. "I see an enormous
amount of potential litigation" ahead on such issues, he says. In
Woburn, Mass., some special-needs students
are given the whole day to complete a writing exam normally administered
in ninety minutes, another indication that "two national movements [are]
on a collision course: disability rights and educational standards."
(Daniel Golden, "Meet Edith, 16; She Plans to Spell-Check Her State Writing
Test", Wall Street Journal, Jan. 21 (fee-based
archive)).
May 10 -- This
side of parodies. Infant wins one-billionth-litigant prize
as America adopts as new motto "It's not my fault" (Paul Campos, "Everyone
suits up for latest litigation", Rocky Mountain News, May
2). Grim news you always feared about "gateway sodas": ("Mountain
Dew Users May Go On To Use Harder Beverages", The Onion, April
26). And the colorless, odorless, tasteless industrial solvent
and prominent component in acid rain that kills thousands of people each
year, most through inhalation but also from withdrawal symptoms given its
evident addictiveness. Contamination
is reaching epidemic levels -- the horror must be stopped! ("Ban
dihydrogen monoxide!", Donald Simanek site, undated
-- stored
Google search).
May 9 -- Mother's
Day special: Arizona unwanted-birth trial. At a trial
under way in Phoenix, Ruth Ann Burns is suing her family physician
and obstetrician for failing to diagnose her pregnancy as early as
they should have. She says she'd have aborted her two-year-old toddler
Nicholas had she known in time that he was on the way, though he is perfectly
healthy and she claims to dote on him now. The doctors say Burns
herself didn't think she was pregnant when she first sought medical attention
and say when the pregnancy was discovered she still had time to pursue
an abortion, but chose not to. (Senta Scarborough, "Doctors sued
for unwanted pregnancy", Arizona Republic, May
4). A columnist for the Arizona Republic wonders what
the boy will think when he grows up and learns that his mother swore out
oaths as to his unwanted, impositional nature (E.J. Montini, "Unwanted
boy blooms in the future", May 7).
May 9 -- Not with
our lives you don't. More evidence that rank-and-file
police aren't happy about Clintonites' scheme to skew city gun procurement
to punish manufacturers that don't capitulate to lawsuits
(see April 14-16). Many cities
presently allow officers a choice of which gun to carry, and Smith &
Wesson hasn't been a popular choice in recent years. "Local officials
acknowledge they are reluctant to risk hurting morale by ending officers'
ability to choose their weapon," the news-side Wall Street Journal
reports -- "morale" being a bit of a dodge here, since the risks at issue
go beyond the merely psychological. In Flint, Mich., the mayor has
asked the police department to buy S&Ws, "but the chief's firearm experts
have rated the Sig Sauer as more durable and accurate, and the police rank-and-file
prefer the better-known and easier-to-shoot Glock." Miami-Dade is
"considering offering a $100 rebate for selecting a Smith & Wesson",
in effect establishing the kind of experiment of which cost-benefit analysts
are so fond, measuring people's willingness to accept cash payment in exchange
for giving up a degree of perceived personal safety. A second obstacle
to the scheme is that most jurisdictions have open-bidding laws aimed precisely
at keeping politicos from pitching public business to favored contractors
on a basis other than price and quality, but Sen. Charles Schumer (Democrat,
New York) helpfully plans to introduce legislation to allow bypass of such
laws. (Vanessa O'Connell, "Plan to Pressure Gun Makers Hits Some
Snags", Wall Street Journal, April 11, subscription
site).
Plus: The gun lawsuits have become an issue in the presidential
contest, with Vice President Al Gore, one of their ardent supporters, assailing
Texas Governor George W. Bush for not pledging to veto legislation that
would curtail them ("Bush, Gore camp trade questions on guns, credibility",
AP/FindLaw, May
5). And: this weekend's pro-gun-control "Million Mom March"
in Washington, D.C. has picked up endorsements ranging from President Bill
Clinton to plaintiff's class-action firm Bernstein,
Litowitz, Berger & Grossmann LLP and the Association of Trial Lawyers
of America -- if that's much of a range, politically speaking (March sponsors
list, link now dead; ATLA
endorsement; Terence Hunt, "Clinton Endorses Million Mom March", AP/Yahoo,
May 8, no longer online).
May 9 -- In Michigan,
important judicial races. Eyes of knowledgeable litigation
reformers this fall will be on Michigan where three Supreme Court justices
appointed by Republican Gov. John Engler -- Clifford Taylor, Robert Young
and Stephen Markman -- are up for election (see Jan.
31). The trio enjoy a growing reputation as thoughtful jurists
who share a skepticism toward expansive new liability doctrines; the state's
trial bar is expected to pour almost limitless funds into its attempt to
defeat them. "The head of the Michigan Trial Lawyers' Association
has said privately that individual law firms have pledged as much as $500,000
each for the effort". (Abigail Thernstrom, "Rule of Law: Trial Lawyers
Target Three Michigan Judges Up for Election", Wall Street Journal,
May
8, reprinted at MI site).
May 8 -- No more
Fenway peanut-throwing? For nineteen years Rob Barry has
worked in the stands at Boston's Fenway Park, tossing bags of peanuts to
hungry Red Sox fans. Grown-ups gasp and children cheer at his sure
aim in lobbing the bags across intervening rows of spectators, but now
he's in trouble with management: "Aramark, the company that provides remarkably
mediocre hot dogs and $4.50 cups of beer, has a rule, and that rule prohibits
vendors from throwing food in the stadium." Although admittedly "there
are no recorded cases of catastrophic injury caused by a bag of peanuts,"
you can never be too safe: before long some other food vendor might follow
his example, "and soon you'll have a cotton candy spear sticking through
some young fan's eye and a cash settlement that could cost the Red Sox
Nomar Garciaparra." Barry says he's thinking of just retiring if
he can no longer practice the peanut-tosser's art: his father worked at
Fenway for 45 years, while two beer-serving sisters have put in a combined
44 years. (Brian McCrory, "Vendor tossed from the game", Boston Globe,
May 5, link now dead).
May 8 -- "Lilly's
legal strategy disarmed Prozac lawyers". Little-noted
story of how drugmaker Eli Lilly &
Co. has managed so far to fight off a wave of lawsuits over its antidepressant
Prozac, quietly settling some stronger cases while maneuvering aggressively
to win a favorable jury ruling in the relatively weak one arising from
the Wesbecker (Standard Gravure) shooting-spree in Louisville. (Jeff
Swiatek, Indianapolis Star, April
22).
May 8 -- Trial
lawyers' political clout. "Invited Speaker: President
William Jefferson Clinton" -- highlight of the brochure in last week's
mail promoting the Association of Trial Lawyers of America's 2000 annual
convention in Chicago. (Does not currently appear in online
version (PDF)).
Among other scheduled speakers: Sens. Richard Durbin (D-Illinois) and Max
Cleland (D-Georgia). "Who will be the most influential political
player making independent expenditures in this year’s presidential election?"
asks Wall Street Journal editorialist John Fund. The AFL-CIO,
the religious right, the NRA? More likely lawyers flush with new
tobacco fees: "a comprehensive study by Citizens Against Lawsuit
Abuse found that trial lawyers gave 78 percent of all contributions to
the Texas Democratic Party in the 1998 election cycle, when Bush was running
for re-election." ("Invasion of the Party Snatchers", MSNBC, May
2). Last year by a 4-3 majority, the Ohio Supreme Court tossed
out a 3-year-old tort reform package. Per Ohio Citizens against Lawsuit
Abuse, "since 1992 the four justices in the majority received $1,528,054
from personal injury attorneys", compared with $70,704 for the three dissenting
justices. Doug Bandow, "Buying Justice: Plaintiffs' Lawyers Reap
Huge Dividends by Investing in Judges and Politicians", syndicated column,
Dec. 16, 1999, reprinted in Cato Daily Commentary, Dec.
28, 1999.
May 8 -- Atlantic
City mulls bond issuance to finance lawsuit payouts. The
New Jersey resort city is so frequently sued, especially in employment
and police cases, that it's considering issuing special bonds to cover
a possible $12.3 million exposure from 23 lawsuits. (Henry Gottlieb,
"Suit City, Here We Come", New Jersey Law Journal, April
4).
May 5-7 -- Pro
malo publico. Elite law firms endlessly congratulate
themselves on the pro bono publico work they perform, seeing it
as the "penance they pay for serving a capitalist system", in Judge Laurence
Silberman's words. Too bad so much supposedly public-interest litigation
is in reality actively harmful to the public interest as well as to the
persons and institutions on its receiving end, argues Heather Mac Donald.
Despite its reputation for being done gratis, pro bono work often
brings in very rich court-ordered fee awards from opposing parties, and
it also helps shape the legal profession's continuing impulse to use the
courtrooms for feats of social engineering. Homeless advocate Robert
Hayes, who has fought for a new right of shelter-on-demand for the homeless,
was asked why he litigated rather than taking his case to the legislature.
"Personally, I don't like politics," he replied. "It's really hard."
(Heather Mac Donald, "What Good Is Pro Bono?", City Journal, Spring).
May 5-7 -- Lion's
share. Tangled class action
litigation against commodities brokerage, now the subject of a petition
for review before the Supreme Court, in which plaintiffs' lawyers were
accorded $13 million in fees, twice the $6.5 million that their clients
wound up getting. "The system stinks," says Paul Dodyk of Cravath
Swaine and Moore. "The class gets screwed." Also mentions this
website (Bernard Condon, "Conspiracy of Silence", Forbes, May
1).
May 5-7 -- Comment
of the day. Accepting an award for general excellence
at the National Magazine Awards on Wednesday, William L. Allen, editor
in chief of National Geographic, said: "I would hug my staff, but
our legal department has advised me not to." (Alex Kuczynski, "Levity
Prevails as Awards Are Handed to Magazines", New York Times, May
4, no longer online).
May 5-7 -- Liked
your car so much we kept it. Last year New York City seized
Pavel Grinberg's 1988 Acura, Joe Bonilla's brand-new Ford Expedition, and
Robert Morris's 1989 Grand Prix, on suspicion of their owners' drunken
driving. However, all three men were cleared of the charges in a
court of law. So of course the city gave them their cars back, right?
Don't be naive.... (Gersh Kuntzman, "Rudy Driven To Excess in His DWI Crackdown",
New York Post, Feb.
7).
May 4 -- Sports
lawsuits proliferate. "More and more, the sports section
looks like the rest of the newspaper. First commerce swallowed chunks and
now the law has come along to take a bite. In the last few days, we've
read stories about coaches suing players, fans suing players and now another
player preparing to sue his league." Toronto coach Butch Carter has
now dropped his suit against Knick forward Marcus Camby (see April
25-26), but it's still "getting tougher by the minute for pro sports
leagues to call their own shots.... The chain of command in sports is being
yanked at every opportunity, from all sides, often with the aid of the
court system." (Jim Litke, AP/Excite, April
27; "Raptors' coach doesn't get apology", AP/ESPN, undated).
May 4 -- Splash
of reality. A judge has imposed sanctions
of $10,000 each against New Rochelle, N.Y. attorney Gordon Locke and client
Kenneth Lariviere "for bringing a frivolous breach-of-contract action against
members of a board that refused to authenticate a work the two men claimed
was painted by Jackson Pollock. Justice Emily Jane Goodman dismissed
the action as a 'laughable and clumsy attempt at fraud, by an individual
who, like everyone familiar with the artist's work, wishes he owned a Jackson
Pollock painting.'" Cerisse Anderson, "Lawyer Fined for Frivolous
Suit Over Artwork", New York Law Journal, April
12).
May 4 -- Harassment-law
roundup. "The Internet
start-up community is going to be a major target for sexual
harassment litigation," says management-side attorney Gregory I. Rasin
of Jackson Lewis Schnitzler & Krupman, though the progress of such
legal action is for the moment impeded by a job market so robust that would-be
plaintiffs are "getting six job offers on the way to their lawyers' offices,"
as his colleague Garry Mathiason puts it. (Melinda Ligos, "Harassment
Suits Hit the Dot-Coms", New York Times, April
12). The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has been filing
enforcement actions to back up its position that employers violate the
law if they fail to move quickly enough in cleaning up sexually and racially
offensive graffiti in employee restrooms and preventing recurrence ("Chicago
EEOC Makes Second Move Against On-the-Job Racist Graffiti", Employment
Law Weekly, Jan.
20). The case of Boston bar owner Tom English, subject to charges
of "hostile public accommodations environment" by the Massachusetts Commission
Against Discrimination for putting up allegedly insensitive seasonal bar
decorations, calls attention to a troubling collision between bias law
and free speech, writes UCLA First Amendment
specialist Eugene Volokh ("Watch What You Say, Or Be Ready to Pay", Jewish
World Review, April
13; Federalist Society Free Speech and Election Law Newsletter,
sixth March item).
And a jury has awarded Staten Island cop Susan Techky $50,000 after she
"testified that male officers wouldn't talk to her, left pornographic magazines
in the co-ed bathroom and watched sex videos in her presence in their quarters,"
as well as keeping nude pin-ups in their locker area, which she had to
walk through to get to hers. "Island cop wins discrimination suit",
Staten Island Advance, April
21).
May 3 -- Ministry
of love-discouragement. Complete bans on dating among
office-mates are "unrealistic and difficult to enforce," according to an
attorney's advice column on how lawyers representing management can ward
off possible harassment-law liability
for their firms. "More practical is to prohibit dating between management
and nonmanagement personnel and to discourage, but not completely prohibit,
romantic relationships between co-workers. This may require co-workers
to disclose immediately any relationship to their immediate supervisor."
To reduce the likelihood of later invasion-of-privacy claims against the
employer, such policies "should put employees on notice that the company
reserves the right to inquire into employees' personal lives if necessary
to determine whether a relationship exists.... [A]n employer may want to
include in its nonfraternization policy a statement indicating that in
the event of an office relationship, the company may request that employees
execute an agreement attesting to the voluntary nature of their relationship"
-- this to forestall the pattern now becoming familiar in which "an employee
may decide, after an unpleasant breakup, that the relationship was not
consensual after all." (Nicole C. Rivas, "Employment law: 'love contracts'",
National Law Journal, Feb. 7, not online).
May 3 -- eBay yanks
e-meter auctions. "E-meters" are electrical devices employed
by practitioners of the Church of Scientology in counseling church adherents.
Although previously used devices have been resold by private owners for
years and were apparently not the subject of licensing agreements that
would limit resale, the Church now asserts a copyright interest in the
objects that would allow it to legally restrict their distribution, and
eBay has recently begun pulling auctions of e-meters to avoid a legal run-in
with the church, known in the past for frequent court clashes with its
opponents. Critics say it's another example of how the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act encourages online providers to err on the side of timidity
when presented with copyright assertions. ("eBay E-Meter Auctions
Yanked", Slashdot, April
28).
May 3 -- Fee shrinkage.
The Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has upheld a federal court's ruling
that two class-action firms representing
plaintiffs burned in the Drexel Burnham Lambert fiasco of the 1980s should
receive $2.1 million in fees, less than 20 percent of the $13.5 million
they sought. The two law firms -- Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes &
Lerach and Abbey, Gardy & Squitieri -- had argued that it was appropriate
to apply a "multiplier" of six to the otherwise going rate for legal fees
because a fee recovery of 25 percent was a "benchmark" in the practice
of class action law (the recovery for the class was $54 million).
However, the appeals panel upheld Judge Shirley Wohl Kram's reasoning that
the case was a promising one with almost certain prospects of a large recovery,
so that enhancing rates "would likely result in [counsel's] overcompensation."
(Mark Hamblett, "Cut in Drexel Case Attorneys' Fees OK'd", New York Law
Journal, March
31).
May 3 -- Little
League lawsuits. No, they're not just figments of tort
reformers' imaginations. In Waynesboro, N.C., Nicolas and Alina Rothenberg
are suing the national and local Little League, along with local game officials,
over an incident where their son was hit in the mouth with a ball, losing
two teeth and experiencing "extreme pain and suffering" and emotional distress.
"It was an accident," said Tammy Meissner, the wife of defendant Michael
Meissner. "My husband was hitting the ball just like he's been hitting
the ball for years and years and years." ("Accident prompts Little
League lawsuit", AP/Winston-Salem Journal, April 23, no longer online).
Another clip from mid-1998, datelined Naugatuck, Ct., describes how two
teammates, both 8 years old at the time of the incident, wound up in court
after Michael Albert swung his bat in the dugout and hit Brittany Gauvin
in the head. ("Little League lawsuit pits 10-year-olds against each other",
AP/Danbury News-Times, June
8, 1998).
May 2 -- "Access
excess". Our editor's May Reason column explores
the dangers posed by the Americans with
Disabilities Act to the freedom of the Net: countless private websites
are currently considered "inaccessible" and will apparently be obliged
to undergo systematic redesign, an expensive and cumbersome process that
will go far to stifle creative freedom in HTML design (see earlier
commentaries). This column has already drawn one of the biggest
reader reactions of anything we've published in a long time -- in future
updates we'll try to share highlights from some of the many thoughtful
letters that have come in. (Walter Olson, "Access Excess", Reason,
May; also reprinted
at Jim Glassman's Tech Central
Station).
May 2 -- North
Carolina (& Kentucky & Tennessee) tobacco fees.
The three leaf-growing states were among the last of the fifty to sign
onto the Medicaid reimbursement lawsuits against cigarette
companies, and by necessity did little of the heavy lifting in developing
the case. North Carolina attorney general Mike Easley picked private
lawyer John McArthur to handle the state's grower-advocacy role in the
tobacco negotiations, a task McArthur also performed for the other two
states; conveniently, he happened at the time to be coming off a stint
as counsel to Easley himself. Now he's rumored to be in line for
$1.5 million in fees, concededly far lower than the take of lawyers who
represented other states. Why aren't more precise figures public?
McArthur says it's because of lawyer-client confidentiality. Easley
is favored for the state's gubernatorial nomination in today's Democratic
primary, and a spokesman for his primary rival, Lt. Gov. Dennis Wicker,
has called for more light to be shed on the fee details: "Certainly the
people have a right to know if the attorney general's office is North Carolina's
version of 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire'". Reporter David Rice
of the Winston-Salem Journal writes that "Easley has repeatedly
talked about his role in the tobacco settlement, but reporters and others
always got the impression that the state hired no outside lawyers in the
case"; now Easley says his earlier statements indicating that no outside
lawyers had been hired were mischaracterized. (David Rice, "Wicker
aide calls for the disclosure of attorney's fee", Winston-Salem Journal,
April 25; Ben White, "Primary Season Resumes in N.C., Ind.", Washington
Post, May 1, links now dead).
May 2 -- IRS drops
penny-collection efforts. "The Internal Revenue Service
has stopped collection procedures against a Roswell[, N.M.] businessman
who inadvertently came up 1 penny short on his tax return. Ernest
Spence, owner of Valley Glass Co., had been required to pay $286.50 in
penalties and interest for the mistake." Mr. Spence says the error
was unintended and resulted from not carrying the fractional penny while
doing the arithmetic on the return. ("IRS backs off man's penalty
for 1-cent mistake", AP/Dallas Morning News, April
30).
May 2 -- Columnist-fest.
More to catch up on:
* "It’s not about money, most of the plaintiffs or their lawyers will
say, it’s about the healing process. Baloney." Anne Roiphe on the
prospect of Columbine litigation
("Feeling Tired? Blue? Cranky? Just Sue!", New York Observer, May
1, link now dead).
* George Will invokes the many sound arguments against the Victim's
Rights Amendment to the Constitution ("Tinkering Again", Washington Post,
April
23). Will has been on a roll recently with columns on death
row innocents, campaign
regulation and the First Amendment, the
Boy Scouts case, and campaign
regulation again.
* Jacob Sullum on S&W's hapless
attempt at a "clarification" of its HUD-brokered settlement: "Perhaps it
is dawning on Smith & Wesson’s executives that it can be dangerous
to show weakness in the face of statist demands. Too bad they didn’t pay
closer attention to the fate of the tobacco companies, whose efforts at
appeasement have only whetted their opponents’ appetites." (syndicated
column, April 19).
May 1 -- Tort city,
USA. Other cities face a handful of slip-fall cases
each year, but New York City gets 3,500, paying out $57 million plus large
legal defense costs. When all types of injury litigation are included,
the total reaches a staggering $420 million plus defense costs. What
makes the political climate in New York so hostile to the city's interest
as a lawsuit defendant? One reason is the number of powerful Gotham
politicians with ties to tort practice, such as Bronx Republican state
senator Guy Velella, whose law firm's successful cases against New York
City include two separate injury suits on behalf of his parents.
Or Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who rents office space from well-connected
tort firm Schneider, Kleinick, Weitz, Damashek & Shoot. Or Brooklyn
Democrat Helene Weinstein, who chairs the state assembly's Judiciary committee
and "is of counsel to her father's personal-injury firm ... It's rather
like having a Microsoft lawyer in charge of the Congressional committee
overseeing antitrust policy." A jury recently took just an hour to
reject a $10 million suit against the city by assemblyman John Brian Murtaugh,
who had slipped on ice in a city park while walking his dog and broke his
wrist. (John Tierney, "In Tort City, Falling Down Can Pay Off", New
York Times, April
15).
May 1 -- "Jury
flipped coin to convict man of murder". You think
this sort of thing doesn't really happen, but it did happen last week in
Louisville: "A jury unable to decide on a verdict tossed a coin last
week to convict a man of murder, prompting a judge to declare a mistrial
... The Jefferson County Circuit Court jury of five men and seven women
deliberated about nine hours over two days last week before finding Phillip
J. Givens II guilty of murder for killing his girlfriend, Monica Briggs,
29, last May." Givens faced life in prison on the murder rap, but
Judge Kenneth Conliffe declared a mistrial after word reached him of the
method the jury had used to break its deadlock: one of the jurors told
someone, who told a court employee, who told the judge. (Kim Wessel,
Louisville Courier-Journal, April
25).
May 1 -- Funny
hats and creative drawing. As part of a discrimination
settlement, employees of Detroit Edison now have been given an in-house
"Learning Zone" where they can "map out their careers, create personal
Web sites and even work on their resumes." A reporter notes that
the room "looks like a preschool for adults," with "puzzles, funny hats,
puppets and wall-mounted drawing boards." One of the plaintiffs in
the lawsuit, who has now been installed as "facilitator" of the zone, says
that it makes "people feel safe, warm and creative ... It's about the employees."
(Brenda Rios, "Building Careers", Detroit Free Press, April
27).
May 1 -- In praise
of bugs. "[Computers] should just work, all the
time", opines one popular tech columnist, and many others (including advocates
of more stringent bug liability)
likewise promote the view that "defects are a moral failing, and a complete
absence of defects must be assured, whatever achieving this goal does to
the cost and the schedule. But is achieving bug-free software always
in the customer’s best interest?" (Gene Callahan, "Those Damned Bugs!",
Dr. Dobb's Journal, Dec.
3, 1999, adapted as "In Praise of Bugs", Mises Institute, March
27).
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