- Could AIG really have been THAT stupid in risk analysis? [Carney, more, Salmon] #
- Unexpected: NY Gov. Paterson appears before Congress and quotes Ayn Rand [Damon Root, Reason “Hit and Run”] #
- “I don’t know what Prop 3 is, but I’m voting against it because there were kids in that ad.” [@daveweigel quoting another] #
- Operatic: Terry Teachout and Leontyne Price among the Supreme Court justices [About Last Night] #
- Already a good blog out there on your topic? Don’t let that stop you [O’Keefe] #
- Obama Warns He May Cease To Exist Unless America Believes In Him [The Onion] #
- “The majesty of our jury system: remember, she made it past 2 sides’ voir dire” [@tedfrank on Anchorage Daily News coverage of Stevens trial juror] #
“South again leads nation in nasty, expensive judicial races”
Alabama, Mississippi and Texas all host hotly fought races with a strong plaintiff-vs.-defendant dimension tomorrow: Democrat Deborah Bell Paseur vs. Republican Greg Shaw in Alabama, three challengers vs. three incumbents on the Mississippi Supreme Court, and Democratic challengers Jim Jordan, Linda Yanez and Sam Houston in races for the Texas Supreme Court. (Tom Baxter, Southern Political Report, Nov. 3).
RFK, Jr. to Interior?
Someone in the Obama campaign seems to be floating the name of America’s Most Irresponsible Public Figure® as a possible Secretary of the Interior. (Mike Allen, “Dems sketch Obama staff, cabinet”, Politico, Oct. 31). More: Stuttaford, NRO; and a new Politico piece quotes “Democratic officials” as saying the president-Elect is “strongly considering” the wayward scion to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
P.S. And now it seems by running this item I’ve killed the whole election buzz for Orac. Sorry!
“Sue Magazine, for women in litigation”
We didn’t make this up. Really, we didn’t. Well-known Loyola lawprof Laurie Levenson is listed among those involved. (via Above the Law).
More: AmLaw Litigation Daily suggests some spinoffs, including “Pat: For Women in Sexual Harassment Litigation.”
New at Point of Law
If you’re not visiting my other site — or subscribing to it in your RSS reader, or following its Twitter feed — here’s some of what you may have missed lately:
- Sen. Obama’s “I voted for tort reform” talk: maybe not so serious;
- Assaults on arbitration and pre-emption are just the start of the Litigation Lobby’s big plans for next year;
- A new featured column by Richard Epstein on the peculiarly named Employee Free Choice Act;
- Manhattan Institute’s Trial Lawyers, Inc. project is out with a new report on West Virginia;
- U.S. Department of Commerce: foreign investors fear our litigation climate;
- Albany plaintiff’s firm Powers & Santola ladles out campaign money to judges it practices before;
- Through the wringer? Judge Posner is quite severe on a clothes-dryer class action.
Voters in Arizona
Coyote’s recommendations.
Welcome New York Post readers
I’m quoted in a sidebar about colorful or long-shot employment litigation, and mention the Rachael Ray anorexic employee suit and the Milwaukee cop who got disability for the stress of being fired over roughing up a suspect. On the latter case, by the way, rather than saying that the cop’s disability payments continue “to this day”, I should have used a phrase like “at last report”. (Brian Moore, “Tort Stories”, New York Post, Nov. 3; revised slightly to clarify final point).
November 3 roundup
- M.D.s and J.D.s in cahoots: when neuroradiologists over-read MRIs in search of “disc herniations” and “cord compression” [ER Stories]
- Lawyer burns his Harvard law diploma, and stop with that joking in the back row about whether there’s some way to burn all of them [ABA Journal]
- Latest lawsuit arising from fad for photos of “Hot Chicks with Dorky Men” (that’s a paraphrase) [TMZ, QuizLaw, earlier]
- Kid draws scary Hallowe’en mask, and next thing you know the police are called [Savannah Morning News]
- Great moments in international human rights: “Modern European navies are now so mindful of the legal loopholes they face in tackling pirates that they often instruct commanders to simply let them go.” [Telegraph; earlier here, here]
- China has four times the number of people we have in the U.S., while we have seven times the number of lawyers [Elefant]
- “Vaccine injury” lawyer Clifford Shoemaker fails in effort to curtail public access to fee information, so we get to learn more about his $211,663.37 bill to the government [Seidel, Neurodiversity; related here and here]
- More about that Milberg basketball team and its 6′ 8″ ringer [Supreme Dicta]
Microblog 2008-11-02
- Leading California conservative blogger explains why he’s voting no on 8 [Patterico] #
- A text message arrives on your cellphone while you’re at a polling place. Illegal “electioneering”? [Doherty, Reason “Hit and Run”] #
- Humorless academic denounces bawdy un-PC hit comedy Little Britain [Feral Child] #
- Agree or disagree, it’s hard to find a more eloquent McCain endorsement than David Frum’s [NRO] #
- Audio of Ted’s talk at U. Chicago [Federalist Society chapter]
Cantrell v. Target: $200 medical bill = $3.1 million verdict
Let us stipulate: when Rita Cantrell tried to pay for her goods with a thirty-year-old $100 bill, Target employees were foolish in being unable to recognize the old currency, and mistakenly identified it as a possible counterfeit. Cantrell fled the store when Target asked if she had another means of paying, raising suspicions, so Target security staff passed along a photo of Cantrell to 70 other local stores participating in a loss-prevention consortium to notify them of the incident. One of the stores recognized Cantrell as one of its employees and called in the Secret Service, which investigated, and found that the bill was real; Target passed along a new notice clearing Cantrell of any wrongdoing.
Cantrell, shaken and embarrassed by the involvement of the Secret Service and her employer, incurred $200 of medical expenses–and sued. Cantrell acknowledged that Target had a right to notify other stores of the incident, but complained that the manager could have worded his e-mail differently, and, besides, some of the members of the loss-prevention consortium did not have retail operations and thus did not need to know about the incident. Notwithstanding Target’s motion for summary judgment, the court let the case proceed to a jury, which happily proposed that Cantrell be made a millionaire for the inconvenience–$100,000 in “compensatory” damages, and a 30-1 punitive damages ratio. Magistrate Judge Bruce Howe Hendricks entered judgment without touching the figure or waiting for post-trial briefing, and Target says it will appeal, so we’ll see what the Fourth Circuit does with this next year. (Cantrell v. Target Corp., No. 6:06-cv-02723-BHH (D.S.C. 2008); Eric Connor, “Jury set $3.1 milion award in Target case, lawyer says”, Greenville News, Oct. 28).