What sorts of things will people file medical lawsuits over, when it costs only $10 to do so? Well, there’s failure to take care of a complaint of being 7 1/2 years pregnant. “After the plaintiff’s dismissal, she attempted to sue the judge.” (SymTym, Sept. 29).
Microblog 2008-09-30
- Good bank/bad bank snipouts preferable to having taxpayers overpay for junky assets [John Hussman] #
- AEI’s Peter Wallison: don’t blame deregulation for credit crisis [Bloomberg.com] #
- Paulson’s been driving hard bargains, not bailouts, in rescues so far, sez Kevin Drum [MotherJones.com (!)] #
- More on Fannie and Freddie’s very special relationship to Congress [Wallison/Calomiris, AEI Financial Services Outlook]
- Gorgeous photos of “most alien-looking place on earth”, Yemen’s Socotra Island [Dark Roasted Blend]
Locked-out Overlawyered readers, in Australia and elsewhere
For quite a while I’ve been getting complaints that readers in other countries — Australia, in particular — are locked out of Overlawyered with a “403 — you don’t have permission to access the server” error message. (Similarly, see these bulletin board discussions from New Zealand and Germany). Reader Stephen Mepham from Australia wrote to alert me when he encountered this problem on switching to a new cable provider, and helpfully included his IP number (the 777.77.7.777 thing). That allowed me to track down what had happened: in response to a series of spam and denial-of-service attacks, our hosting providers over the years have taken aggressive measures to exclude various large blocks of IP numbers (as well as country domains associated with spam and DOS attacks). I’ve now taken a few gingerly steps to relax these controls, which I hope should let more Australian readers access the site in particular. Should the attacks resume, of course, we’ll need to go back to tougher blocking.
If you’re a reader who’s encountered this problem or knows someone who has, give it a try again, and feel free to email me with a message along the lines of “Yes, now it works again” or “No, I still get blocked” — and try to include your IP address if convenient, which you can identify here.
September 30 roundup
- Trips over firefighter’s bag at rescue scene, now wants cash from city [Salem, Mass., News]
- Oh, my: “Bidens owe SimmonsCooper [huge mass tort firm in Madison County, Ill.] $1 million in hedge fund deal” [MC Record, earlier] Update: plenty more in a Wednesday WSJ editorial.
- Florida Supreme Court rejects latest attempt by attorney Montgomery Blair Sibley to resist discipline [North Country Gazette]
- “Women’s advocacy groups have persuaded Congress to begin intensive Title IX equity reviews of science programs.” Bad news for American academic science [Sommers, AEI/Teachers College Record]
- You may have run into everyone’s favorite fashion law blog. But did you know there’s also a furniture law blog? [Womble Carlyle; via Blawg Review #179 at Securing Innovation]
- Eavesdrop on jury deliberations, get wind of defense verdict, move quick to settle case? That would be a very naughty thing for a lawyer to do [American Justice Partnership]
- Myrhvold the last straw: “Up until now I have been criticized in many corners for taking the side of so-called patent trolls. …No tax policy could ever do as much damage to an economy.” [Gene Quinn, PatentFools.com, also via above]
- Okay, towns, build sidewalks or else [four years ago on Overlawyered]
Ladies’ Nights: a win for NYC clubs
Although lawsuits against “Ladies’ Nights” discounts have prevailed in California and Colorado, a New York judge has thrown out Roy Den Hollander’s much-publicized suit seeking class action status on behalf of men not offered discounts at China Club and other Manhattan nightclubs. (AP/CBS News, Sept. 29; earlier here, here, here, and other posts at our tag). More: Hollander was advancing the relatively unusual argument that the discounts were unconstitutional, which failed when the judge declined to find that they constituted state action; earlier lawsuits against the discounts have generally been based on anti-discrimination statutes, and the case might have come out very differently had those theories been relied on.
Microblog 2008-09-29
- Kodachrome photos from New Deal era [via Susan Cartier Liebel] #
- “Bailout Watch” site [CEI] #
- Be very alarmed on credit panic [Nouriel Roubini] #
- Knew there was trouble when the toaster salesman offered a free bank. #
- Word of the day, “bageling”: when a stock goes to zero, i.e. “O” [ClusterStock] #
- “The GOP’s Wall Street friends”? Think again [David Frum] (& followups here and here) #
Kernel of sense
New York City: Judge Matthew Cooper has dismissed a suit for dental repairs by a moviegoer who said he broke his tooth on an unpopped kernel of popcorn at Manhattan’s AMC-Lincoln Square Cinema, ruling that plaintiff Steve Kaplan “could not reasonably expect every kernel to be popped”. (“N.Y. Judge: Broken-Tooth Popcorn Suit’s a Dud”, AP/1010 WINS, Sept. 29).
More: “Anyone who has ever made fresh popcorn … soon learns the bitter truth that the final product is almost always marred by the presence of unpopped, partially popped or burnt kernels,” wrote Judge Cooper. “Until such time as the same bio-engineers who brought us seedless watermelon are able to develop a new strain of popping corn where every kernel is guaranteed to pop, we will just have to accept partially popped popcorn as part and parcel of the popcorn popping process.” The judge suggested that the dentally risk-averse consumer stick to Raisinets or Milk Duds in future, although, he conceded, Milk Duds do have a reputation for pulling out your fillings. (NYLJ).
September 29 roundup
- Watch where you click: “Kentucky (secretly) commandeers world’s most popular gambling sites” [The Register/OUT-LAW]
- Erin Brockovich enlists as pitchwoman for NYC tort firm Weitz & Luxenberg [PoL roundup]
- U.K.: “Millionaire Claims Ghosts Caused Him to Flee His Mortgage, I Mean Mansion” [Lowering the Bar]
- Prosecution of Lori Drew (MySpace imposture followed by victim’s suicide) a “case study in overcriminalization” [Andrew Grossman, Heritage; earlier; some other resources on overcriminalization here, here, and here]
- Exonerated Marine plans to sue Rep. John Murtha for defamation [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]
- Snooping on jurors’ online profiles? “Everything is fair game” since “this is war”, says one jury consultant [L.A. Times; earlier]
- Allentown, Pa. attorney John Karoly, known for police-brutality suits, indicted on charges of forging will to obtain large chunk of his brother’s estate; “Charged with the same offenses are J.P. Karoly, 28, who is John Karoly’s son, and John J. Shane, 72, who has served as an expert medical witness in some of John Karoly’s cases.” [Express-Times, AP, Legal Intelligencer]
- School safety: “What do the teachers think they might do with the Hula-Hoop, choke on it?” [Betsy Hart, Chicago Sun-Times/Common Good]
Guestblogger thanks
Thanks to Baylen Linnekin for his guestblogging contributions last week. Be sure to check out his handsomely executed “irreverent food blog”, Crispy on the Outside, whose recent topics include bacon thefts in Lancashire, a new California menu-labeling law, and Quebec’s recent legalization of yellow margarine; of particular interest are his food law and banned categories.
Videos critical of Church of Scientology
YouTube received a flurry of takedown notices, but “quickly realized something was fishy, and began investigating.” It “rapidly became clear” that the entities filing the takedown demands “did not hold the copyrights to the materials they claimed to be infringed, including footage from a Clearwater City Commission meeting and a man-on-the-street interview. In addition, many of these videos were obvious fair uses, such as independent news reports.” (Eva Galperin, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Sept. 25)(via Ardia).