The plaintiff’s lawyers — which include Milberg Weiss as well as Grant & Eisenhofer and Schiffrin Barroway — are asking a court to approve $460 million in fees, plus about $29 million in expenses. They say they spent 488,000 hours on the litigation, and you’d better not express any skepticism about that figure unless you were in the room watching or something. (WSJ law blog, Nov. 1).
Social host alcohol liability
A discussion by Judge Posner at the Becker-Posner blog (via Childs) provokes this on-point comment from reader “Phil”:
Perhaps one of the reasons social-host liability hasn’t caught on yet is that the “duty” one is expected to perform is onerous.
Should one of my guests insist on driving home drunk, I have two choices: either take his keys by force, or call the police and have him caught.
In the first case, I could get badly hurt — and, if my friend is only slightly over the legal limit, the combined physical harms to me and my friend are probably much higher than to the sum of the expected harms to all drivers on the road.
In the second case, my friend will lose his license, and perhaps his freedom. The penalty for getting caught driving drunk is much higher than the harms resulting from the individual infraction, as a deterrent, required because of the fact that so few drunk drivers are caught. So this is not something I would do to a friend. A stranger, perhaps, but not a friend.
The fact is that social hosts faced with an intoxicated friend who insists on driving have no reasonable recourse.
Criticizes BidZirk on his blog, and survives
Eric Goldman calls the case of BidZirk v. Smith, filed by a South Carolina eBay reseller against the blogger who’d criticized its services, “a flagship example of how a pernicious and misguided plaintiff with a thin skin can ruin a blogger’s life.” Maybe “ruin” is no longer the operative term, since a federal court has just thrown out the case. Among the court’s determinations: calling a company’s founder a “yes man” is opinion and not actionable as defamation (Oct. 28 and, before that, Nov. 21, 2006; decision (PDF)). More: Ron Coleman fingers as a culprit the “American Rule” (no shifting of fees) under which “there is for all practical purposes no downside to suing someone on the most preposterous of grounds and losing — hence making the bringing of meritless litigation a part of every large company’s toolkit for silencing criticism and destroying smaller competitors.”
FACTA’s billion-dollar problem
My latest Liability Outlook looks at the abusive litigation created by a statutory drafting oversight: a bill designed to protect against identity theft has instead become a mechanism for the entrepreneurial plaintiffs’ bar to attempt to bankrupt innocent businesses that haven’t harmed anyone.
Lawbloggers’ Halloween costume party
Harry Potter and Photoshop are involved. (Alan K. Henderson, Oct. 31).
The case for the telecom immunity bill
“Dragging phone companies through protracted litigation [over complying with NSA requests for surveillance help] would not only be unfair, but it would deter other companies and private citizens from responding in terrorist emergencies whenever there may be uncertainty or legal risk. … Without [the companies’ voluntary cooperation], our intelligence efforts will be gravely damaged. Whether the government has acted properly is a different question from whether a private person has acted properly in responding to the government’s call for help. … For hundreds of years our legal system has operated under the premise that, in a public emergency, we want private citizens to respond to the government’s call for help unless the citizen knows for sure that the government is acting illegally. If Congress does not act now, it would be basically saying that private citizens should only help when they are absolutely certain that all the government’s actions are legal.” (Benjamin Civiletti, Dick Thornburgh and William Webster, WSJ/OpinionJournal.com, Oct. 31). More here (fifth item) and here.
P.S. Commenters argue in response that the telecoms are sophisticated and had plenty of time to consult counsel, and point out that Qwest did in fact turn the government down. More: Bader, CEI (with arguments from Sen. Rockefeller).
Your Halloween mask
Is it legal? (Torie Bosch, “The Explainer”, Slate, Oct. 30).
Stick figure shooting stick figure with water gun
If the Cape May, N.J. school district was really going to punish a 7-year-old just for making a drawing of such a thing, with no actual water gun in sight, shouldn’t maybe the punishment have been to make him draw a stick figure of a little boy getting an overly-harsh suspension? (Zincavage, Oct. 21; Charles Sykes, “I Have Zero Tolerance for Zero Tolerance Policies”, American Thinker, Oct. 30).
Ordeal not over
Dwayne Dail spent 18 years in a North Carolina prison on false charges of rape. When he got out based on new DNA findings, his ex-girlfriend promptly sued him for child support. (Mandy Locke, “Dail, expecting $360,000, sued by ex-girlfriend”, Raleigh News & Observer, Oct. 24; “Wrongly Convicted Man Sued for Child Support”, WRAL, Oct. 23; “Prosecutor: Wrongful Conviction Is ‘Nightmare'”, WRAL, Aug. 29; “Dwayne Dail responds to lawsuit”, Goldsboro News-Argus, Oct. 28).
Guestblogger thanks
Thanks to Jason Barney, from the Seattle area, for filling in while I met a deadline. Remember, if you’re interested in guestblogging, that it’s fine to approach us well in advance; we’ll probably need some help before and during the holidays, for example.