Roy Pearson’s $55 million pants lawsuit has begun; the Washington Post’s Emil Steiner is liveblogging the trial. There is a series of about ten posts so far, starting with this 10:02 AM entry.
In case you were holding your breath waiting to find out: the case doesn’t sound as if it has gotten any less frivolous. (Apparently Pearson has found a few dry cleaning customers who were also dissastisfied with their service. Well, I’m sold. He also somehow managed to invoke Godwin’s Law.)
Like pretty much every big-city fire department, the one in Los Angeles has come under intense legal pressure to hire more female applicants, and in doing so to water down or eliminate whatever former prerequisites for hiring (such as physical tests calling for a show of upper-body strength) show “disparate impact” against women. And having been whipped up one side of the street on those grounds, it now gets whipped down the other side for having apparently responded in the most direct and practical way to the first set of legal pressures:
In the latest bizarre court case involving the Los Angeles Fire Department, a jury has awarded $3.75 million to a male fire captain who said he was retaliated against for not making training exercises easier for women.
Fire Capt. Frank Lima alleged in his lawsuit against the city that he was told by superiors that he shouldn’t hold women to the same standards as men. The reason: The Fire Department was under pressure from City Hall to increase the number of women within its ranks.
Thursday’s judgment in the 2 1/2 -week case in Los Angeles County Superior Court was notable because it involved $2.96 million in noneconomic damages — in other words, money for pain and suffering.
In his lawsuit, Lima alleged that he suffered heart problems and stress after the department tried to punish him and subsequently denied him certain assignments.
(Steve Hymon, “L.A. fire captain awarded $3.75 million”, Los Angeles Times, Jul. 9). For more on the legal pressures on fire departments to relax performance standards that women have trouble meeting, see Jan. 18. For a related set of sued-if-you-do, sued-if-you-don’t dilemmas for fire departments, see Mar. 24, 2005 (reverse discrimination suits by whites after Chicago altered rules to encourage black applicants). Finally, we covered (Dec. 5, 2006 and earlier posts) the saga of the $2.7 million settlement that the LAFD paid to a firefighter subjected to a prank in which he was tricked into eating dog food.
Amateur players seeking the chords for commonly played songs are out of luck these days, since the music publishers had a fit of intellectual-property-itis and sent takedown letters to a compilation site. That’s just one of the entries in a compilation by mashable.com, “Death by Lawyer: Ten Cool Sites We Miss“, which also answers the question of why the wonderful Pandora internet radio service is available only to U.S.-based computers (via Katherine Mangu-Ward, Reason “Hit and Run”).
Updating earlier stories:
If you’re going to try to make a regular income out of suing commercial emailers alleging violations of the anti-spam laws, you may wish to be careful about your methods. Last month a federal court “threw out anti-spammer and self-proclaimed serial litigator James S. Gordon’s lawsuit against e-mail marketer Virtumundo. … Just as significantly, the judge also ruled the defendants can recover attorney fees.” Judge John Coughenour of the Western District of Washington ruled that that headers and “from” lines on the emails in question were not unlawfully deceptive, as Gordon had argued; Gordon had sought more than $2.3 million in damages over tens of thousands of Virtumundo emails. (Ken Magill, “Judge Tosses Anti-Spam Suit Against Virtumundo”, DirectMag, May 15; Venkat Balasubramani, “Can-Spam put to the test”, News.com, May 22). According to Ken Magill of DirectMag:
Gordon opted in to receive the e-mails and failed to use the opt-out mechanisms supplied in the subsequent messages, according to court records.
Also, during the trial it came out that Gordon’s sole source of income is from commercial e-mail disputes and that he’s cutting his friends in on the gig….
Gordon has testified that in 2006 he received no income that was not the result of a settlement of a dispute. . …He also admitted that his “clients” — apparently people to whom he provides e-mail accounts — supply him with e-mails they deem are spam for him to use in his disputes and that they get an unspecified percentage of the settlements.
(“Man, Oh Man, What a Racket”, May 22).
Also last month, a different federal court (Central District of California) resolved another CAN-SPAM case in a manner favorable to the defendant, Vonage; the court ruled that the emails sent by Vonage were probably not illegal under California law and that in any case such law would be pre-empted by the federal spam statute. Representing the plaintiffs: Seattle class-action firm and frequent Overlawyered mentionee Hagens Berman. (“The Tide Continues: Court Shoots Down Spam Class Action”, SpamNotes, May 28). Earlier on CAN-SPAM and California anti-spam law here.
This list of “Five ways to avoid costly litigation”, from the British site Human Law Mediation, is not exactly earth-shattering, but I did want to flag Carolyn Elefant’s post linking to it at Law.com’s Legal Blog Watch, which begins:
Of course, some lawyers want to encourage, rather than avoid, costly litigation, because that’s how they boost their billables. But if your client can’t afford a costly fight, or would rather focus its energy on building its business rather than embroiled in disputes, then take a look at this tips…
Here’s a Hollywood-themed edition of our irregularly-scheduled roundups:
Now, Birkhead is suing Opri for conversion, fraud and malpractice. He claims that she took at least $650,000 of money owed to him for various appearance fees and has refused to return it; he also claims that Opri told him she was going to represent him for free in exchange for the publicity she’d receive, and then turned around and billed him hundreds of thousands of dollars. No, I’m sure this won’t turn into (yet another) media circus. (AP, TMZ.)
A few months in, Eckler says she’s worn out by the litigation. “Here’s what it comes down to: 1) Being a writer, especially a Canadian one, without access to an unlimited bank account, sucks. 2) Copyright infringement is highly technical and difficult to prove. 3) Universal/Apatow know they have resources I do not have, and that every time they simply do not return my lawyer’s phone call, it costs me money.
She also complains about her treatment at the hands of her first lawyer, who was referred to her by Apatow’s lawyer. (WSJ law blog; commentators at Volokh seem skeptical of the merits of her claims.)
Raise your hand if you had “two days” in the “How long before Avvo ran into legal difficulties?” pool. According to the Seattle Times’ blog, on June 7 — just two days after Avvo publicly launched as a lawyer rating service — a local criminal defense lawyer, John Henry Browne, threw the lawyer’s equivalent of a temper tantrum. An excerpt from his demand letter to Avvo:
I wanted to notify you that I have retained counsel and will be exploring a lawsuit against your corporation for the ridiculously low rating you gave my law practice and the practice of other well-known and competent attorneys. We have yet to determine whether it will be a class action lawsuit or not. However, your rating and the attendant publicity has damaged my law practice and will continue to do so. In an effort to limit damages, I request that you remove your profile of me from your website immediately.
You’ve got to love the claim that his law practice was damaged in a total of two days. It’s also questionable as to whether he has a cause of action in any case; Google regularly gets sued by those who want their websites rated higher, and regularly wins these suits (see, e.g., Mar. 1, Mar. 23, Nov. 2002.) These are likely constitutionally protected opinions, although it’s obviously early to judge the merits of a lawsuit we haven’t even seen about a website whose methods are unclear.
We first mentioned Avvo on June 8. In the comments, Ted noted some problems with his ratings under Avvo’s system — but surprisingly, did not threaten to file a lawsuit. (Full disclosure: Avvo apparently hasn’t yet figured out that I’m a lawyer. But I assure you that the state of New Jersey extracts annual dues from me right on schedule.)
The Connecticut substitute teacher was tried and convicted after her computer, probably owing to a malware bug, displayed smutty websites in students’ presence (Jan. 20, Feb. 15, Mar. 14). The original trial, notes Glenn Reynolds (Jun. 7), “seemed like a grotesque miscarriage of justice”; prosecutors did not oppose a defense motion for a new trial. (Nate Anderson, “Substitute teacher spared sentencing for porn pop-ups, gets new trial”, Ars Technica, Jun. 7).
The high-rolling Texas personal injury lawyer (Mar. 7, 2005; Feb. 16, 2006; May 13, 2005; Apr. 12-14, 2002; PoL Nov. 2, 2005 and various other posts) is considering challenging incumbent Republican John Cornyn for his seat in the U.S. Senate (Jaime Castillo, “Cornyn in for a fight in ’08, but Dems don’t have it sewn up”, San Antonio Express-News, Jun. 3).