With help from the folks at Verio and Movable Type, it looks as if we’ve managed to restore the site to full functionality, including TrackBack. Anyone who linked to posts made in the last couple of days should be advised that 1) recent posts were renumbered as part of the restoration of the site, which will break incoming links; 2) pings sent to us over that period were lost.
Every law-blog post an advertisement?
The Kentucky Bar is advancing the unreasonable position that when a lawyer operates a weblog, every post he or she puts up counts as an advertisement for legal services. Ben Cowgill is at the center of the controversy, and on the case are David Giacalone, Eugene Volokh, Larry Ribstein, Evan Schaeffer and John Steele, among others. More: Stephen Bainbridge enters a partial dissent.
Reparations: stirring up land claims
Some of us have been worried for years that the movement for black reparations, which henceforth has mostly concentrated on demands for money from large institutions, might develop in the direction of a movement to contest land titles in the South and elsewhere, with hugely destructive results. Now comes word of the “Reclamation Of Southern Assets, or ROSA, project“, funded in part by a Congressional Black Caucus initiative. Here’s a bulletin from Chicago:
From noon to 3 p.m. on June 11, six law students from DePaul and five from Southern universities will listen to stories from forgotten heirs. They will review documents and compile information needed to research claims. Over the next eight weeks, these future lawyers will arm themselves with deeds and titles….Besides helping Chicagoans sort through their land claims, the ROSA project allows law students to get a jump on their careers.
Ray Waters, an instructor at DePaul’s College of Law, “hopes the ROSA project will result in legislation that will make it easier for heirs in Chicago to bring suit in federal court against relatives in the South”. Wait a minute — suing relatives? Well, that’s a second and perhaps unexpected dimension to the story: although much of the political rhetoric concentrates on the misdeeds of white owners and businesses, it turns out that a large share of the land grudges that preoccupy displaced black Southerners are against their own kin. (Mary Mitchell, “Reclaiming land may be bigger than reparations”, Chicago Sun-Times, Jun. 5; “Shady down-South stuff”, Feb. 20).
Cold storage
Concerned citizens demand that it be stopped!
Site disruption
Around 24-36 hours ago Overlawyered suffered an unexplained failure in our posting software, arising from a breakdown in the system’s handling of TrackBack pings; the ill effects have included an inability to update our front page. I’ve been working with the people at Movable Type all day and following their suggestion have deactivated TrackBack pings for the moment, which seems to restore the site’s other features, including front-page posting, to normal operation. (Old incoming pings have not been lost, but are just not being displayed). I expect there will be quite a bit of further work needed in coming days to fix matters for the future including, I hope, restoring TrackBack functionality.
Incidentally, if at any time the site should show signs of having frozen up, it is always a good idea to check my other site, Point of Law, for updates.
Blawg Review #9
…is up at Jurispundit, and includes a link to Ted’s informal London-based hot beverage research.
“Nader’s House of Horrors”
“Ralph Nader says an architectural firm is now ‘putting final touches on the plans'” for his long-envisioned Museum of American Tort Law in his hometown of Winsted, Ct. “So far, says Nader, he’s raised half of the $4 million needed to open the museum — adding that he expects the rest to come from the trial-lawyer industry.” A New York Post editorial (Jun. 4) says all that needs to be said about the matter. See also John Leo’s 1998 column on the museum proposal, and our posts for Sept. 27, 1999 and May 16, 2000. P.S. Readers Troy Hinrichs and Walter E. Wallis write in to foretell the headaches the museum’s designers and groundskeepers will face as they try to prepare for opening day; the impending arrival of the world’s most litigious clientele will test to the limit their ability to anticipate slip-fall hazards, handicap compliance problems, potential injuries to burglars trying to sneak into the building after hours, and so forth.
Valedictorian suits
Graduation time is here. “My advice to other principals is, Whatever you do, do not name a valedictorian. Any principal who does is facing peril,” is the quote from one Florida high school principal in a New Yorker article on the subject. Subhead: “Students are suing their way to the top.” Valedictorian controversies have escalated into numerous lawsuits (which we’ve covered the last two seasons: 2004 and 2003 (also here)). (Margaret Talbot, “Best in Class”, Jun. 6).
$2M for marshmallow incident
A Glenview Elementary School teacher briefly left his sixth-grade class unattended, and the kids decided to play a game called “Chubby Bunny” to see how many marshmallows they could hold in their mouth at one time. Unfortunately, 12-year-old Catherine “Casey” Fish was a tad overambitious, and choked to death on the three or four marshmallows she had in her mouth, and her parents sued the teacher and the school district for not having a teacher physically present to deal with the consequences of their daughter’s actions. The school district decided to settle the case with insurance funds. As is inevitable, the family’s lawyer denied that money was at the center of the case, and the newspaper allows the fiction: “John and Therese Fish’s wrongful-death lawsuit involving their late daughter, Catherine, was never about money but was meant to publicize hazards of such ‘idiotic’ games, the couple’s attorney, Francis Patrick Murphy, said.” It’s not likely we’ll see follow-up on how much of the money the Fishes spend on anti-marshmallow-choking public service advertising. (Rummana Hussain, “Family of girl who choked to death gets $2 mil.”, Chicago Sun-Times, Jun. 3; Lisa Black, “Settlement reached in choking lawsuit”, Chicago Tribune, Jun. 2; Romenesko blog, Jun. 5).
Update: Brooklyn law-office-on-wheels
“It doesn’t chase ambulances. Honest.” Also quotes me (Margot Sanger-Katz, “Scenes: The Mobile Law Office”, Legal Affairs, Mar-Apr.)(see May 18, 2004).