June 5 roundup

  • See you in court, ma: “Man awarded $115K after suing mom for lost pinky finger” [Obscure Store, Bergen County (N.J.) Record]
  • Please reassure us Canada’s not going to follow U.S. down abusive road of asset seizure in law enforcement [Moin Yahya and Janet Neilson, Western Standard]
  • What sorts of intellectual property norms prevail in the world of stand-up comedy? [ConcurOp]
  • “Marc Dreier’s Son Sues College Roommate for $1M” [ABA Journal]
  • Intersection of state divorce law with peripatetic military life can lead to harsh results [Bader, CEI]
  • Grape-Nuts contain neither grapes nor nuts! Cap’n Crunch isn’t a real captain! It’s not fair! [comments on our popular “Crunchberries” item]
  • “Lawyer’s ‘Contentious’ Claims Against Landlord Are Rejected” [NYLJ]
  • “Adult” won’t cut it any more, we need a new legal category, more responsible, of “grownup” [Ken at Popehat]

Update: lawyers paid in gift cards

A belated update: Earlier this year (Feb. 5, Feb. 10) we brought word of a Los Angeles case in which a judge ruled that a class action lawyer who had obtained gift cards but not cash for the client class (in a suit against Windsor Fashions) should himself be paid his fee in gift cards. Turns out that didn’t last long: Per the L.A. Times, “Another judge overturned the order in February and awarded Yorba Linda lawyer Neil B. Fineman $125,000 in fees instead of gift cards.”

Sotomayor and the ADA/bar-exam case

As I mentioned last week at Point of Law:

The one case of [Sotomayor’s] of which I’ve been most sharply critical over the years is Bartlett v. Bar Examiners, the famously long-drawn-out disabled-rights case in which Judge Sotomayor ruled that a seriously learning-disabled bar applicant who’d already failed the bar exam several times with extensive accommodations was legally entitled to yet further chances and accommodations. I wrote up the case here and here, among other places; Jim Dwyer of the Times has an account that is much more sympathetic to Bartlett’s cause.

Now a post by Anthony Dick at NRO “Bench Memos” gives a quick summary of why the case is so controversial:

you might think that, since reading ability is an important part of practicing law, and the bar exam is designed to ensure minimal competence among lawyers, papering over a test-taker’s lack of reading ability would somewhat defeat the purpose. It would seem clear to most people that, in the language of the ADA, compromising the standards of the test regarding a basic legal skill would not qualify as a “reasonable accommodation.” But that would be a decidedly unempathetic point of view. Such an attitude is in fact “invidious,” according to Sotomayor’s opinion.

It is far from clear that any of this will constitute so much as a speed bump on the path to Senate confirmation for Sotomayor, since lawmakers on the Hill have shown little or no interest in reining in adventurous interpretations of the Americans with Disabilities Act — indeed, when the Supreme Court moved on its own to rein some of them in, Congress responded with legislation to overturn the decisions and re-liberalize rights to sue under the law (cross-posted at Point of Law). A different view: Larry Ribstein.

FERPA and university secrecy

The Columbus Dispatch (national, local angles; via WSJ Law Blog) claims universities are using the federal student-privacy law, FERPA, to evade disclosure of information about league violations and other embarrassments in college sports programs. Others say given the law’s incentives it’s natural for administrators to err on the side of not sharing information of possible benefit to the public, as notoriously happened in the case of student/mass murderer Seung-Hui Cho.

A CPSIA future?

“My fear is that the offerings of toys will finally be whittled down to the top 40 manufacturers, and everyone from Wal-Mart to FAO Schwarz will have to source the same things from the same places, manufactured as cheaply as possible.” [Linda Hays (Hopscotch Toys, McMinnville, Ore.), ToyDirectory.com] More views from toyland: Handmade Toy Alliance and Cecilia Leibovitz; Rick Woldenberg in Roll Call and at Lenore Skenazy’s Free Range Kids.

Bluetooth Headset Settlement Update

Readers may recall our discussion of the Bluetooth Headset class action settlement, which remarkably granted zero to the class while asking for substantial attorneys’ fees. I asked if anyone was interested in objecting, and the response was overwhelming. Today I’ve filed an objection on behalf of seven clients.

There were more objectors out there than I could feasibly represent. If you wanted to object, but I was unable to represent you, you can still join this objection. Follow the instructions for notifying the court and attorneys of your objection, and simply state, in addition to your name and address and phone number, that you join the objection of William J. Brennan et al., docket number 107. I won’t be your attorney, but you can have the pleasure of “voting” for the objection I wrote.

And anyone in Los Angeles July 6 who wants to watch the hearing, please join in the fun. I’ve got my plane ticket.

Amphibious-tour operators in S.F. battle over “quacking devices”

Ride the Ducks says it has been inviting customers to toot on kazoos for a decade as part of its water-land tours in various cities. Now it is suing competitor Bay Quackers, which pioneered the duck tour concept in San Francisco (and was more recently joined there as a competitor by Ride the Ducks) for infringing its “sound mark”, an “auditory equivalent of a trademark”. [New York Times] [Corrected 2:30 p.m. after reader Kim S. pointed out that I hadn’t correctly conveyed the details of which company operated where and when.]