Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Gordon Crovitz on “Peter Thiel’s Legal Smackdown”

The discovery that systematic lawsuit campaigns can be aimed at the press, and not just against every other institution, might be reason to rethink litigation-as-weapon [Gordon Crovitz, Wall Street Journal]:

Walter Olson, author of “The Litigation Explosion” (1991), explained in his Overlawyered.com blog that Mr. Thiel’s approach was predictable after maintenance “metamorphosed around the 1960s into what we now know as the public interest litigation model: foundation or wealthy individual A pays B to sue C. Since litigation during this period was being re-conceived as something socially productive and beneficial, what could be more philanthropic and public-spirited than to pay for there to be more of it?”

With maintenance decriminalized, Mr. Olson warns, “It will be used not just against the originally contemplated targets, such as large business or government defendants, but against a wide range of others—journalistic defendants included.”

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Labor roundup

  • Forget about event permits unless you hire union? Feds arrest Boston mayor’s tourism aide on extortion charges [Connor Wolf/Daily Caller, Boston Herald, indictment, WCVB (auto-plays)]
  • Georgia to feds: franchise law is state law, and you’re not free to tear up its terms to favor unions [International Franchise Association, Connor Wolf/Daily Caller]
  • Unique California farm-labor law binds growers to “contracts” they never signed. Is that even constitutional? [Ilya Shapiro, Cato] Upstate farmers furious over Gov. Cuomo’s move to unionize farm labor in New York [City and State]
  • NLRB strikes down innocuous handbook provision expecting employees to maintain “positive” workplace environment [Jon Hyman] “Is it time for a new NLRB rule on handbook policies?” [same]
  • “Funding Ideology, Not Research, at University of California ‘Labor Institutes'” [Steven Greenhut, Reason]
  • NLRB Philadelphia regional director, criticized over role in pro-union fund, suspended for 30 days [Law360, Labor Union Report]

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Judge Andrew Hanen vs. DoJ lawyers, cont’d

In the old days, when lawyers representing the U.S. Department of Justice were found to have lied, an Attorney General might have ended their service. We’re not in the old days any more [Michael Greve] As related in an earlier post, Judge Andrew Hanen of the Southern District of Texas federal court, after concluding that federal lawyers had chosen to hide relevant facts in litigation challenging President Obama’s DAPA immigration initiative, ordered them to take ethics classes in a scathing opinion; his order has variously been criticized for possibly exceeding his jurisdiction, and for being insufficiently stringent to deter future misconduct by the Department’s lawyers.

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“Mom sues Target over ‘hazardous’ giant red balls outside store”

“A New Jersey mom is hitting Target right where it hurts with a $1.6 million lawsuit that claims her son was seriously injured while playing on one of the large, red, concrete balls that are situated outside many of its stores.” [New York Post]

More from B. Hill, in comments: “And then someone will sue Target for removing the balls and not having devices in place to prevent cars from crashing through the front doors.”

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Medical roundup

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“Heap no abuse upon judges”

Ira Stoll recalls a verse from Exodus — translated in the New Berkeley Version of the Christian Bible as “Heap no abuse upon judges” — and notes that the temptation to excoriate judges over unwelcome rulings knows no place or era. Ken White at Popehat pens an explainer, “Is there anything unusual about Judge Curiel’s orders in the Trump University case?” Former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales kinda-sorta defends the propriety of litigants’ blasting judges, though in a left-handed way (“if I were a litigant who was concerned about the judge’s impartiality, I certainly would not deal with it in a public manner as Trump has, because it demeans the integrity of the judicial office and thus potentially undermines the independence of the judiciary, especially coming from a man who could be president by this time next year.”), drawing a response from Cassandra Robertson via Jonathan Adler. Eugene Volokh examines the no-not-even-close-on-current-evidence case for Curiel’s recusal. Earlier on the controversy here.

Meanwhile, journalists in Detroit have been recalling the story of the flamboyant, litigious, floppy-haired millionaire populist known for his willingness to insult judges and everyone else, who shoved aside the conventional pols to capture a major party nomination. Of course I’m referring to the 1998 run for governor of Michigan of attorney Geoffrey Fieger, a longtime Overlawyered favorite [Deadline Detroit, Zachary Gorchow/Gongwer]

And also relating to this year’s presidential race, I discussed the Libertarians’ ticket of Gary Johnson and Bill Weld and its attractions in an interview with Mona Charen for her Ricochet podcast “Need to Know” with Jay Nordlinger. More here.

P.S.: Where might a candidate have learned to rant against federal judges who don’t rule his way as “corrupt”? Maybe from New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.

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Council candidate menaced for using city’s logo on yard signs

“The city of Mesa, Arizona, has threatened suit against a local businessman, Jeremy Whittaker, who is running for city council in opposition to a longtime city employee who enjoys endorsements from several current elected city officials. His offense? His lawn signs and campaign literature include a single-color version of the city’s logo …as a handy way of identifying the office for which he is running.” It has demanded he surrender all his campaign materials bearing the logo, but he’s not planning to give in. [Paul Alan Levy, CL&P via Mike Masnick, TechDirt]

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California Senate shelves bill enabling lawsuits against climate “deniers” — for now

The California Senate has shelved, at least for now, a bill that would lay the groundwork for a campaign of lawsuits against so-called climate deniers. The California Climate Science Truth and Accountability Act of 2016 (Senate Bill 1161), which had passed two committee hurdles, would retrospectively lift what is now a four-year statute of limitations so as to allow unlimited lawsuits under the state’s notoriously pro-plaintiff Unfair Competition Law, or s. 17200, over advocacy related to climate change. While the deadline has now passed for the bill to be enacted on its own under ordinary legislative procedure, it could still pass this year under “gut-and-amend” procedures or a rules waiver. [Valerie Richardson/Washington Times and earlier, Andrew Stuttaford/National Review, Watts Up with That, thanks for quotes in all; earlier]

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