Wherein we deny all robot-related activity

QuizLaw, down in the ABA Blawg vote, has resorted to negative campaigning, perhaps recognizing that the site proprietors are unlikely to sue for libel:

And here’s the God’s honest: Walter Olsen [sic] and Ted Frank, the purveyors of legal smut over on Overlawyered, are robots. Yes. You heard me right. Built by the IBM Corp. sometime in the late 90s and given fake, prestigious resumes (like a University of Chicago graduate would actually blog! ha!), Walter and Ted were programmed to spit out thoughtful, sometimes amusing legal analysis (and relevant links) about cases that actually matter in the world of law, which as we all know defies every tenet of the blogosphere.

We plead guilty to violating blogospheric tradition by knowing what we’re talking about, but we do deny that we’re robots, much less ones built by IBM. Of course, if we were robots, we’d probably be programmed to deny that we were, so such a denial only gets you so far. But, alas, such QuizLaw’s scurrilous lobbying has pulled them to within one vote in the ABA poll, so reader support is needed.

Stories that shouldn’t get away, part I

A guestblogger will be joining us momentarily, and I’ll be posting less over the holidays. Meanwhile, my pipeline is still backed up with items from the past year that deserve a more serious treatment than a hurried roundup mention permits. Here are four of them:

  • More docs moving to Texas? Watch out, they must be quacks! After the New York Times reported that doctors seemed to be showing fresh interest in practicing in Texas since its enactment of litigation reforms, our frequent sparring partner Eric Turkewitz of New York Personal Injury Law Blog quickly countered by noting that disciplinary actions in the state are way up, and — quite a jump here — concluded with a suggestion that the newly arriving docs must be causing quality problems. Among bloggers who took this idea and ran with it: Phillip Martin of Burnt Orange Report. Then Prof. Childs had to spoil the fun by asking whether the doctors being disciplined were in fact newcomers to the state and found that, to judge by an initial sampling, no, they’re not. And the medical blogs then knocked the remaining props out from under the reform-made-care-worse theory by linking to coverage documenting how the increase in disciplinary actions reflected the Texas medical board’s concerted recent effort to get tough on doctors — too tough, said many critics. In other words, the Texas medical profession was doing exactly what many skeptics demanded it do — submit to stricter oversight in exchange for liability reform — and now that very submission was being cited as if it proved that standards of care were slipping.
  • Uninjured car owners can sue GM over seatbacks. No class members claim to have been injured, but Maryland appeals court allows class action over cost of replacing allegedly weak seatbacks in GM cars. [DLA Piper; opinion, PDF; Maryland Courts Watcher]
  • The litigious stylings of Jonathan Lee Riches. We mostly ignore litigants who file handwritten pleadings from prison cells complaining of obviously hallucinated events, but there’s no getting around it: the South Carolina convict has become a pop culture phenomenon with his scores of lawsuits against sports figures, President Bush, Perez Hilton, William Lerach and Elvis Presley over a host of imagined legal injuries. Some of the coverage: The Smoking Gun, Dreadnaught, Deadspin, Justia, Above the Law. He even has several Facebook fan groups.
  • Taxpayers and vaccine-compensation lawyers. Under the federally enacted vaccine-compensation program, notes Kathleen Seidel, “a petitioner who brings a claim in good faith is entitled to reimbursement for reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs, regardless of whether the claim is successful.” (Forget about loser-pays; this ensures that taxpayer-defendants can win but pay the other side’s fees anyway.) What sorts of bills do you think attorneys file for reimbursement under those circumstances? Yep, very optimistic bills, in which they expect taxpayers to shell out for their attendance at “advocacy group meetings, and attendance at a conference of trial lawyers representing autism plaintiffs”. In this case, HHS successfully appealed (PDF) an order that it pay the fees. Seidel’s Neurodiversity blog offers a remarkable trove of insight into litigation relating to autism causation theories, vaccines and thimerosal, and this post is no exception. (Updated to include links.)
More stories that shouldn’t get away in another post to come.

“I Am Lawsuit Abuse”

The Institute for Legal Reform has a new website, I Am Lawsuit Abuse, with some really high-quality production values. At the moment, the site highlights four stories of lawsuit abuse (including the infamously unfortunate defendant Chung Dry Cleaners), with videos for each story, and a smattering of links to news articles about wacky lawsuits. No link to Overlawyered, though.

Judicial Hellholes 2007

ATRA’s remarkably successful annual Judicial Hellholes report highlighting the high and low points of several jurisdictions’ legal systems is out. (PDF) Regular readers will recognize many of the stories and jurisdictions (and an op-ed I wrote even gets a shout-out), but the report is a handy summary of the year in tort reform and lawsuit abuse. Lots of news coverage (AP/Fool.com; National Law Journal; the Examiner; others) and blog coverage (Lattman; Bader; Torts Prof; NAM; NAF; Murnane; Pharmalot).

Contracts no good in Utah: Rothstein v. Snowbird Corp.

In a 3-2 decision, the Utah Supreme Court has held a liability waiver unenforceable, and permitted a skier to sue a resort for his injuries in a skiing accident, notwithstanding his agreement to the contrary by disingenuously expanding a state assumption-of-the-risk statute for ski resorts to forbid any contractual modification of liability. When even Utah refuses to honor contracts, you know we’re in trouble.

Edited to add: For some reason, multiple commenters who haven’t read the opinion are claiming that the only thing the opinion does is require a signature. Not so: Rothstein explicitly signed a release, and the release only covered negligence (permitting Rothstein to sue for intentional torts). Rothstein realized the benefit of the bargain, by getting season tickets for a considerably cheaper price than he would have been able to if the resort knew he wasn’t going to honor his end of the bargain. The Utah Supreme Court (not an intermediate appellate court) rewrote the agreement retroactively. Consumers are hurt.

A reminder

Some commenters appear not to have seen this, so it is worth recounting in updated fashion:

For readers who haven’t figured this out on their own:

  • When we post on Overlawyered about a real or potential lawsuit, it doesn’t necessarily mean we think the case is without merit. We regularly discuss meritorious cases.
  • Not infrequently lawsuits we discuss are well founded on existing law, but that existing law is ill-conceived and deserves to be reconsidered. Or both law and lawsuit may make perfect sense, but the level of damages demanded may be excessive or implausible. Or the combatants on one side or both may pursue dubious tactics and theories. Or the media coverage of the case may have been credulous or one-sided. You get the idea.
  • Sometimes it’s not clear what if anything either side did wrong in pursuing a dispute, but the case still stands as a monument to the high cost of resolving things through legal process. A recurring example: the family feud over a legacy that ends by consuming the estate in litigation costs.
  • We also discuss a certain number of cases that are just plain interesting: they raise novel or non-obvious legal issues, or they shed light on human nature as it manifests itself in legal disputes. And, yes, it does happen on occasion that I take note of a case without being sure what I myself think of it.
  • Finally, Walter, Ted, and David are three different people and don’t always agree amongst themselves.

Sorry if this introduces complexity where people were expecting to find simplicity.

And another reminder: voting in the neck-and-neck race ends January 2.

Fifth grader brings steak knife with brown-bag lunch

Along with the piece of steak she’d brought to eat:

“She did not use it inappropriately. She did not threaten anyone with it. She didn’t pull it out and brandish it. Nothing of that nature,” explained Marion County [Ocala, Fla.] School Spokesman Kevin Christian.

The girl is now facing felony charges. (“Knife At Lunch Gets 10-Year-Old Girl Arrested At School”, WFTV, Dec. 14; Never Yet Melted, Dec. 18).

Eyesore preservation

The brutalist-modern Third Church of Christ Scientist is one of the most widely disliked buildings in Washington, D.C., not least by its own congregation, which groans at the impracticalities of maintaining the concrete monstrosity: “According to one church official, you’ve got to build scaffolding just to reach some of the [light] bulbs [to change them].” But Washington’s local architectural-preservation authorities forbid the congregants from replacing the building, which dates all the way back to 1971. (Charles Paul Freund, “A Brutalist Bargain”, American Spectator, Dec. 18).