Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

“Is fan fiction legal? Fans are understandably nervous.”

…many commentators, and indeed, many fans themselves, operate on the rueful assumption that fan fiction does in fact infringe copyright.

Undaunted by this, Rebecca Tushnet, a professor of law at Georgetown University, and a keen fan fiction writer herself, wants to take fan fiction out of the legal shadows where it has operated, more or less at sufferance, for decades, and carve out a legal place for it within the US doctrine of fair use. She has recently helped found the Organization for Transformative Use, with the mandate to establish fan fiction within the parameters of legal, non-infringing use.

(Grace Westcott, “Friction over Fan Fiction”, Literary Review of Canada, Jul./Aug., via A&L Daily; our posts on fans as infringers).

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“Cancel his subscription” wasn’t enough

So that this man can make his point, North Carolina taxpayers — and people with legitimate cases in that state’s courts — are just going to have to put up with a little extra burden:

A News & Observer subscriber is suing the newspaper for cutting staff and the size of the paper.

Keith Hempstead, a Durham lawyer, filed the suit last month in Wake Superior Court. He says he renewed his subscription in May just before the paper announced on June 16 the layoffs of 70 staff members and cuts in news pages.

The paper, he says, is now not worth what he signed up for and therefore the cuts breached the paper’s contract with him….

In a phone interview today, Hempstead, 42, said he could cancel his subscription but filed the suit to make a point.

Hempstead, a former reporter himself at a different paper who says he “loves” the N&O, has duly gotten a fair bit of publicity, certainly more than if he had just sent out a complaining press release or something. (Leah Friedman, “N&O subscriber sues the paper for cutting staff”, News & Observer, Jul. 10).

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July 13 roundup

  • Nothing new about lawyers stealing money from estates, but embarrassing when they used to head the bar association [Eagle-Tribune; Lawrence, Mass., Arthur Khoury]

  • Unusual “reverse quota” case: black job applicant wins $30K after showing beauty supply company turned her down because it had a quota of whites to hire [SE Texas Record]

  • Who knew? Per class action allegations, pet food contains ingredients “unfit for human consumption” [Daily Business Review]

  • U.K.: “A divorcee who won a £1.4million payout from her multi-millionaire husband is suing her lawyers because she claims she should have got twice that amount.” [Telegraph]

  • UW freshman falls from fourth-floor dorm window after drinking at “Trashed Tuesday”, now wants $ from Delta Upsilon International as well as construction firm that put in windows [Seattle P-I, KOMO]

  • After giant $103 million payday, current and former partners at Minneapolis law firm are torn by feuds and dissension — wasn’t there a John Steinbeck novella about that? [ABA Journal and again, Heins Mills]

  • Small firm that used to make Wal-Mart in-house videos sets up shop at AAJ/ATLA convention hawking those videos for use in suits against the retailer [Arkansas Democrat Gazette, earlier]

  • When the judge’s kid gets busted [Eric Berlin; Alabama]

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Update: Virginia beer-sicles

A year ago (Jun. 26, 2007) guestblogger Christian Schneider reported on the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control’s suppression of a “frozen beer pop” specialty offered by the Alexandria restaurant Rustico. Now the state legislature has enacted a bill sponsored by Del. Adam Ebbin and Sen. Patsy Ticer (both D-Alexandria) re-legalizing the cooling treats, which went back on sale July 1 in such flavors as framboise, cherry kriek, cassis, plum, and chocolate stout. (Erin Zimmer, SeriousEats.com, Jun. 25; Gillian Gaynair, “Rustico brings back beer pops for summer”, Washington Business Journal, Jun. 20)(& welcome The Agitator and Reason “Hit and Run”, Belgian ladmag ZV, Christian Schneider/WPRI readers).

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The Jack Thompson report

In a 169-page report (PDF at GamePolitics, courtesy Escapist), Judge Dava Tunis has explained her recommendation that anti-videogame crusader Jack Thompson, a regular on this site for many years, be permanently disbarred with no chance of reinstatement. Thompson’s personal abusiveness, Tunis found, is part of a “pattern of conduct to strike out harshly, extensively, repeatedly and willfully to simply try to bring as much difficulty, distraction and anguish to those he considers in opposition to his causes.” (Escapist, Daily Business Review, Kotaku; related, GamePolitics (opposing lawyer found Thompson’s personal attacks the “emotional equivalent of stalking”)).

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Update: Cohen & Grigsby immigration video

Last year (Jun. 25, 2007) a furor broke out when a YouTube video revealed lawyers from the firm speaking frankly about skirting provisions of immigration law that require that a qualified domestic applicant be sought before hiring certain foreign workers. Now the U.S. Department of Labor has “announced that it has begun placing pending permanent labor certification applications filed by [the Pittsburgh-based law firm] into department-supervised recruitment. Supervised recruitment requires the employer to receive advance approval from the labor department for all recruitment efforts to ensure that U.S. workers are fully considered for available positions.” The move will undoubtedly make it harder for the law firm to compete for employer business in the immigration field. (“Recruitment filings by Pittsburgh law firm under U.S. Labor scrutiny”, Pittsburgh Business Times, Jul. 8; ABA Journal links to DoL press release).

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Great moments in Continuing Legal Education

They instruct the people who are supposed to instruct the rest of us how to comply with the law, but they can’t figure it out themselves:

New Jersey’s biggest purveyor of legal education has notified 15,000 customers that they may owe years of back taxes.

The Institute of Continuing Legal Education recently learned it should have been charging sales tax on the books, CDs, videotapes and audiotapes it sells and is working with the state to try to collect the money. …

[ICLE Executive Director Lawrence] Maron says ICLE was operating on the basis of a legal opinion, which turned out to be wrong, that, as a nonprofit entity, it did not have to collect sales tax. …

[New Brunswick, N.J. solo attorney Ann] Kiernan says she particularly resents that ICLE plans to turn over a list of who bought what to the state but has not offered to give lawyers information about their own past purchases.

(Mary Pat Gallagher, “CLE Customers Told They Have to Pay Back Taxes on Products”, New Jersey Law Journal, Jul. 11).

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