It’s being litigated contentiously in a Florida courtroom. After the lad got a D in an Honors algebra class and his family filed extensive protests, the school transferred him to an easier class. That generated a new grievance in turn: “He’s just not being challenged,” the “mathlete”‘s lawyer-father says now. [Orlando Sentinel]
The Great Tobacco Robbery, 15 years later
Fifteen years after the $246 billion tobacco settlement, an ingenuous National Public Radio retrospective wonders where all the money went, if not to smoking-reduction programs and Medicaid. Absent from the piece, as indications where some of the money went, are phrases like “lawyers’ pockets” or “political contributions,” or names like “Dickie Scruggs.” Speaking of the latter, the Supreme Court has refused to hear the disbarred Mississippi attorney’s appeal of his corruption conviction. AP, reporting this development, calls Scruggs “the architect of the multibillion dollar tobacco lawsuits of the 1990s.”
At Canisius College October 30
I’m honored to announce that I’ll be giving a talk in the Frank G. Raichle Lecture Series, part of the pre-law program at Canisius College in western New York. Details here in a press release from the college. Previous speakers in this lecture series include an extraordinary list of legal notables including Chief Justice Rehnquist, Justices O’Connor, Scalia, Ginsburg, and White, among many others such as Alex Kozinski, Harry Edwards, John Langbein, and Randall Kennedy.
Earlier on the same day (October 30) I’ll be addressing the Buffalo Lawyers’ Chapter of the Federalist Society.
Jury acquits Mark Cuban
“A federal jury in Dallas yesterday rejected SEC claims that [Dallas Mavericks owner] Cuban engaged in insider trading when he sold his stake in a Canadian Internet company nine years ago to avoid a $750,000 loss. Jurors found the information Cuban acted on wasn’t confidential and that he hadn’t promised not to trade on it.” [Bloomberg Business Week, Bainbridge] Bonus: Jonathan Macey (Yale) on inside trading [video at Bainbridge, discusses Cuban case]
Libel and defamation roundup
- Golden Age of libel tourism in UK coming to an end? [Media Law Prof]
- Tactical use of defamation suits not just a US/UK concern [Bangkok Post, Thailand]
- “So you’ve been threatened with a defamation suit” [Ken at Popehat]
- Federal judge tosses casino magnate Sheldon Adelson’s libel suit against National Jewish Democratic Council [JTA, Las Vegas Review-Journal; earlier on Adelson]
- “‘Federal Verification Company’ Seeks to Shut Down Online Criticism” [Paul Alan Levy] Defending rights of anonymous reviewers in Virginia Yelp case [Public Citizen]
Connecticut: judges can review fee waivers
Pro se (lawyerless) litigants in Connecticut with low income have been allowed to sue without paying the ordinary $350 filing fee, and some have made the most of the situation by filing scads of suits. In May, following publicity about the high cost and hassle imposed on targets, the state adopted a law which “allows judges to review the details of a lawsuit before granting a plaintiff… a waiver from filing fees.” A former courthouse employee who testified in favor of the bill was himself named in a subsequent lawsuit by a litigants whose activities he had mentioned, along with various other defendants including the New London Day and one of its reporters. [WFSB via @SickofLawsuits]
According to research by Yale law professor Donald Elliott, early American civil practice empowered judges to review the details of a lawsuit for adequacy at its outset, and before a target was faced with major costs of response. That practice — dropped later during the purported modernization of our legal system — would come in handy in screening out ill-founded or tactical suits, and not just regarding in forma pauperis (indigent-filed) cases.
SEC proposes CEO pay ratio reporting
“U.S. corporations will need to disclose how the paychecks of their chief executive officers compare with those of their workers under a new proposal released [in September] by a sharply divided U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.” [Reuters] The measure, pushed by labor advocates, was prescribed as part of the maximalist-regulation Dodd-Frank law, but opponents say the SEC majority is requiring needlessly costly compliance methods: “Proponents have acknowledged the sole objective of the pay ratio is to shame CEOs, but the shame from this rule should not be put on CEOS- it should be put on the five of us,” said Republican commissioner Michael Piwowar. “Shame on us for putting special interests ahead of investors.” [Towers Watson/MarketWatch] Because of the high expected cost of compliance, “we are almost certain to see quite a few companies paying more than they actually pay their CEO to figure out how much more their CEO makes than their median worker. If this rule was really being implemented for the benefit of the shareholders, then Congress could have let each company’s shareholders opt in or opt out of this disclosure regime. Clearly, the people pushing this ratio had no interest in giving actual shareholders a veto over this racket.” [Marc Hodak] More: Prof. Bainbridge, Keith Paul Bishop, Michael Greve, Jeffrey Miron on FBN. The agency is taking public comments through December 2.
Schools roundup
- Opponents, including U.S. Department of Justice, go after school choice programs in court [Jason Bedrick, more]
- Study finds bullying programs may have opposite from intended effect. Why, next they’ll tell us D.A.R.E. is a flop at curbing drug use. Oh wait [CBS Dallas]
- National Association of the Deaf files lawsuit against Maryland, seeking captioning at sporting events [WaPo]
- “NYC will spend $29 million on salaries, benefits of educators it can’t fire” [NY Daily News] [NY Times]
- Gotta-cover-yourself incident and accident reports clog the classroom day with paper [Ted Frank, Point of Law]
- “IRBs and mission creep” [Dave Hoffman, Prawfs, earlier]
- Boy who drew cartoonish bomb at home suspended, reinstated [Fox Carolina, Free-Range Kids]
“This is what proponents of affirmative action think but aren’t supposed to say at the Supreme Court.”
Josh Blackman on yesterday’s oral argument in Schuette v. Coalition To Defend Affirmative Action.
State AGs vs. patent trolls: whoops
A buzzed-about scheme for state AGs (of all people) to wade into the patent troll controversy might have hit a snag in Nebraska. [John Steele/Legal Ethics Forum, earlier]