Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Latest issue of Class Action Watch

The latest issue of the Federalist Society’s Class Action Watch has many articles of interest to Overlawyered readers:

  • William E. Thomson & Kahn A. Scolnick on the Exxon Shipping case;
  • Jimmy Cline on Arkansas’s disregard for class action certification standards;
  • Jim Copland on the “Colossus” class action;
  • Laurel Harbour on the New Jersey Supreme Court decision on medical monitoring class actions;
  • Lyle Roberts on lead-counsel selection in securities class actions;
  • Mark A. Behrens & Frank Cruz-Alvarez on the lead paint public nuisance decision by the Rhode Island Supreme Court; and
  • Andrew Grossman, extensively citing to Overlawyered and my brief in discussing the Grand Theft Auto class action settlement rejection.

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Complaint “forces eHarmony to offer gay dating service”

“Online dating service eHarmony has agreed to create a new website for gays and lesbians as part of a settlement with a gay man in New Jersey, the New Jersey Office of the Attorney General said on Wednesday.” (Reuters, Nov. 19, FoxNews.com)(via Friedersdorf, see also Mataconis, Sullum, Balko). Earlier coverage: Jun. 1 and Jun. 8, 2007; Mar. 26, 2006 (married man wants listing). More: lawyer in parallel California suit against eHarmony says it isn’t moot despite policy change because they still want money.

Note: headline changed 11/21 to reflect commenter’s observation that despite the usage in the news articles, the civil rights proceedings in question had not reached the formal status of a lawsuit.

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Daschle to HHS

Sorry, docs: former South Dakota Senator Tom Daschle, reported as Obama’s HHS pick and indeed a “health czar” charged with pushing comprehensive health care reform through Congress, was known as a particularly close ally of the trial lawyers as Majority Leader, and drew on them as his most important donors in his final (2004) race. In 2004 he won an award from the New York Trial Lawyers Association for his work in blocking liability reform at the national level. (CNN, Patterico, American Prospect).

More from Carter Wood who notes the NAM vote tabulation: “On the identified 10 votes [between 1999 and 2004], Sen. Daschle voted against the tort-reform position 10 times. (Included were four health-care, medical liability-related votes.)” (& Dr. Wes).

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Microblog 2008-11-19

  • Some backers of big national service plan say better roll it out now before the crisis atmosphere passes [Welch, Reason “Hit and Run”]
  • Sorry ma’am, if hubby’s policy excludes coverage for injury to family members, you can’t blame him as “uninsured motorist” [The Briefcase, Ohio]
  • Much-cited “$70/hr” figure for GM labor costs misleading: covers army of retirees, not just current workers [Salmon; but see McArdle]
  • Thoughts on alleged inability of GM to get debtor-in-possession financing for a Chapter 11 bankruptcy [Oman, ConcurOp]
  • Texas p.i. atty Mark Lanier famous for Xmas parties headlined by top stars, this year it’s Miley Cyrus a/k/a Hannah Montana [ABA Journal]
  • “I Want Angry Jurors With Low Self-Esteem” [Bennett, Defending People]
  • “We just really wanted to shatter the cupcake-pizza dichotomy. It’s just existed for too long.” [Seth Gitter via Tyler Cowen]

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Technical disruptions continue

1) Email to me and to this site has been hit with big delays and disruptions today and is still not working well. If you sent me something important, consider re-sending it.

2) One effect of the disruptions is that the “microblog” (Twitter) plugin has stopped working, hence no scroll of new Twitter posts in the right column. I’ll try to restore it, and in the mean time may try a “homemade” microblog post of highlights.

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No N.Y. forum for Egypt terror plaintiffs

“Israeli and Russian victims of a 2004 terror attack on an Egyptian Hilton cannot sue the hotel in the United States, in part because a judge believed they were seeking a higher recovery from a New York jury sitting blocks from the World Trade Center site. Southern District Judge Peter Leisure found that the plaintiffs, none of whom were Americans, may have been engaging in forum shopping in Niv v. Hilton Hotels Corp., 06 Civ. 7839, and he dismissed the case under the doctrine of forum non conveniens.” (Mark Hamblett, “N.Y. Forum Denied for Suit Over Terror Attack in Egypt”, New York Law Journal, Nov. 19).

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“Man sues for libel after being called a D-bag”

Clark County, Nevada: “A man claims Simon & Schuster defamed him in the book “Hot Chicks with Douchebags.” The man says his photo was taken without proper consent, and that he is not, in fact, a you-know-what. (Courthouse News, Nov. 18 via Justin Levine, Patterico; The Smoking Gun). Earlier here (different suit) and, relatedly, here. More: On Point News (protected “opinion”?)

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