Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Cops busted in probable cause sting

Police wouldn’t manufacture fictitious probable cause to obtain warrants for a drug raid, would they? Don’t be so sure:

KopBusters rented a house in Odessa, Texas and began growing two small Christmas trees under a grow light similar to those used for growing marijuana [grow lights are themselves lawful — ed.]. When faced with a suspected marijuana grow, the police usually use illegal FLIR cameras and/or lie on the search warrant affidavit claiming they have probable cause to raid the house. Instead of conducting a proper investigation which usually leads to no probable cause, the Kops lie on the affidavit claiming a confidential informant saw the plants and/or the police could smell marijuana coming from the suspected house.

The trap was set and less than 24 hours later, the Odessa narcotics unit raided the house only to find KopBuster’s attorney waiting under a system of complex gadgetry and spy cameras that streamed online to the KopBuster’s secret mobile office nearby.

(WindyPundit, Dec. 6; Balko, “Hit and Run”, Dec. 6; J.D. Tuccille, Dec. 7). A cautionary view: Greenfield. And Orin Kerr @ Volokh has likewise warns that we don’t know yet all of the circumstances about the engineering of the sting, raid and video; read the comments as well.

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Religious accommodation law

I expect to be blogging on that subject quite a bit at the new site I’ve helped launch, Secular Right. Today I’ve got a few thoughts up on the so-called Freedom of Choice Act and its potential impact on Catholic hospitals, so-called conscience laws entitling employees of clinics and drugstores to opt out of their job duties when asked to dispense contraceptives or assist in other reproductive services, the never-ending war over Christmas and tit-for-tat atheist displays, and more. (Dec. 7).

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Welcome Law.com readers

In an article for Law.com on legal blogging (“How to Build a Better Law Blog”, Dec. 8) C.C. Holland is kind enough to quote me and discuss this site:

…Walter Olson imagined that his Overlawyered blog would pull an audience of his friends and acquaintances and a cadre of legal policy wonks.

“But you don’t know who your audience really is until you start writing and find out,” he notes. “My readership has a large following among lawyers, but I’ve been surprised to find that a lot of doctors are reading it, as are a lot of people from other countries.” …

Olson, who has been writing Overlawyered since July 1, 1999, knows a thing or two about longevity. His blog is widely considered to be the oldest legal blog and is also one of the most popular, regularly surpassing 9,000 unique daily visitors.

“People who force themselves to blog, it’s a sad spectacle,” he says. “You can tell reading it that it’s painful to them.” The key is to find a topic that will sustain you. “You have to think, ‘Boy, there’s so much to write about I can’t imagine getting tired of it anytime soon,'” he says.

And I still can’t.

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“I have never, ever seen an attorney more rude and disrespectful on so many levels.”

The California state bar has charged San Francisco attorney Philip Kay, famed for sexual harassment lawsuits, “with turning two cases before three San Diego judges into three-ring circuses by repeatedly impugning court orders and caustically accusing the judges of misconduct in front of jurors. Prosecutors also claim Kay entered into an illegal fee-splitting agreement in his most high-profile case — a sexual harassment suit against mega-law firm Baker & McKenzie that in 1994 resulted in a $6.9 million San Francisco jury award for his client, former legal secretary Rena Weeks. (The judgment was later reduced to $3.5 million.)” The title quote is from San Diego judge Joan Weber, and refers to Kay’s conduct in a sexual harassment suit against Ralphs Grocery. (Mike McKee, “Famed Plaintiffs Lawyer Faces Bar Charges Over Conduct”, The Recorder, Dec. 5).

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NYT travel columnist comments on air crash, gets sued in Brazil

Joe Sharkey, a well-known travel columnist for the New York Times, was aboard an Embraer business jet in Brazil that collided with another plane but managed to land safely although all 157 aboard the other plane died. Sharkey later discussed the episode on one of his blogs, and was quite critical of Brazilian air traffic control and some others involved in the affair. Now, according to an Oct. 16 press release, the widow of one of those who died on the other plane is suing Sharkey for having “launched personal attacks against Brazil’s President, air traffic controllers and other notorious individuals and, repeatedly and piercingly, started offending Brazilians indiscriminately”. “Only amends will restore the widow’s dignity,” states Rosane Gutjhar’s lawyer, Oscar Fleischfresser, who may have one of the best lawyer surnames ever (Fleischfresser = carnivore)(Aero-News.net, Oct. 21; JREF Forum; O Estado de Sao Paolo/ATC Brasil). In a presumably unrelated sidelight, a federal court this summer turned down an attempt by Brazilian survivors to file injury claims for the crash in the U.S., ruling that they should instead be heard in Brazil, where the awards are likely to be much lower.

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ApartmentRatings.com commenters sued

ApartmentRatings.com is a site that invites users to post their opinions about good and bad experiences as renters with particular buildings, complexes and landlords. The owners of two Bay area apartment complexes, Parkmerced in San Francisco and Larkspur Shores in Larkspur, have now sued eighteen unnamed defendants over negative comments such as “Construction noise, poor management, tacky decor, and an indifferent staff”, “I do not think the new management is sincerely trying to improve anything”, “stay far away and never look back,”, “worst place I’ve ever lived”, and “a real dump”. The real estate firms, Parkmerced Investors Properties LLC and Stellar Larkspur Partners LLC, claim libel, tortious interference with contract, and perhaps most creatively violations of the federal Lanham Act (their basis for getting into federal court). The Lanham Act is more usually encountered in complaints of false advertising, but the plaintiffs say it applies here “because Defendants misrepresent the nature, characteristics and qualities of the Apartments”. (Sam Bayard, Citizen Media Law, Nov. 24). According to CalBizLit (Nov. 20):

The two plaintiffs allege that “on information and belief” the posting reviewers included persons who were not tenants, but were employees, agents, etc. of competing apartment house communities. “On information and belief.” That’s often lawyer language for “I got no idea whether it’s true or not, but let’s do some discovery and see what happens.”

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December 5 roundup

  • You are cordially invited to a fishing expedition for lawsuits over energy drink/alcohol mixes. RSVP: Center for Science in the Public Interest [Balko, Reason “Hit and Run”]
  • Recent Overlawyered guestblogger Victoria Pynchon mediates an ADA claim against a Long Beach motel owner. Extortion? Fair compromise? Both? Neither? [Settle It Now, scroll]
  • 19-year-old Ciara Sauro of Pittsburgh is disabled, in medical debt, and waiting for transplant, crowning touch is the $8,000 default judgment RIAA got against her for downloading 10 songs [Ambrogi]
  • “It does not take a graduate degree to understand that it is unacceptable to hide evidence and lie in a deposition” — Seventh Circuit sanctions Amtrak worker for dodgery in workplace-injury suit [Ohio Employers’ Law; Negrete v. Nat’l Railroad Pass, PDF]
  • New Richard Nixon tapes: “I can’t have a high-minded lawyer … I want a son-of-a-b—-.” [Althouse]
  • Aramark suit documents unsealed: girl paralyzed by drunk driver got $25 million in suit against New York Giants stadium beer vendor [AP/Vineland, N.J. Daily Journal, earlier]
  • New York high court bounces Alice Lawrence/Graubard Miller fee suit back to lower courts, says more info needed [NYLJ, earlier]
  • Couple claims retention of $1,075 rental security deposit was racially motivated, seeks $20 million [WV Record; Martinsburg, W.Va.]

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ABA Journal “Blawg 100” — go vote for us

I’m very pleased to announce that this year, as last, the American Bar Association’s ABA Journal has named Overlawyered as one of its “100 best Web sites by lawyers, for lawyers”, and I’m not going to quibble about that wording, even though I’m not a lawyer nor (I believe) are the majority of the site’s readers.

So much for the introductory pleasantries. Now for the main task at hand, which is to win.

Readers may remember that last year Overlawyered lost its run for first place in its category by only a handful of votes, perhaps because we were relatively shy and diffident about urging people to go vote for us. This year the ABA Journal has placed us among ten blogs in the “niche” category, where we face competition from some very high-quality blogs, but, with all due respect, not from any whose readership levels and outside recognition we think exceed ours.

If you go there to vote, you will notice that the popular patent-law blog Patently-O has evidently been whipping its supporters to go cast their votes immediately, and is, for the moment, far in the lead. The ABA Journal says that last time it checked, “Patently-O’s Facebook group had more than 800 members,” which is very nearly the number of votes that blog has received so far. The other possible reason for Patently-O’s huge overnight vote surge, of course, is that they’ve invented some sort of bot to stuff the ballot box by impersonating real voters. But that couldn’t be the right explanation. These are patent lawyers we’re talking about. No way could they invent something.

Anyway, go there and vote for Overlawyered and your favorites in the other categories.

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