May 2 roundup

  • In suit over weird, elaborate online hoax, court allows fraudulent-misrepresentation claim despite lack of motive of tangible gain [Chi Trib]
  • Service animal rodeo: “A trained rat probably would have had a good case in California” [AP/Statesman-Journal] Broward County, Fla. backs lonely widow’s right to keep “prescription Chihuahua” against rules of condo board [AOL, Sun-Sentinel] Oklahoma: “Depressed Woman Fights to Keep Therapy Kangaroo” [Newser] Earlier on recent change in federal rules;
  • DahliaCrateLabel

  • Should lawmakers screen bills for constitutionality? Ms. Lithwick has trouble sticking to a position [AEternitatis]
  • Human-relations complaint leads to arrest of U.K. man for singing “Kung Fu Fighting” [MSNBC]
  • Barney Frank: Yes, let’s talk about med-mal reform [The Hill] Ringing the bell: Roundups of more big med-mal verdicts [White Coat, more]
  • “Expert Witnesses Stripped Of Immunity From Negligence Suits In The UK” [Erik Magraken]
  • “Sustainability”: an empty idea? Or perhaps actively wrongheaded? [David Friedman via David Henderson]

Anti-speech “superinjunctions” in the U.K.

The so-called superinjunction is a gag order that “prevents the media from even reporting that an injunction was obtained,” and runs against the public generally rather than merely organizations named in the legal action. In Britain, which lacks a tradition equivalent to our First Amendment, courts regularly hand down these orders on the grounds of protecting litigants’ privacy, and controversy is mounting as a result. [Guardian and editorial, Kampfner/Independent, Katya Wachtel/Business Insider (on RBS executive case)]

“Served: How law schools completely misrepresent their job numbers”

If law schools were viewed in the same light as for-profit vocational training schools, there’d probably be a big movement to shut them down:

Many law schools all but explicitly promise that, within a few months of graduation, practically all their graduates will obtain jobs as lawyers, by trumpeting employment figures of 95 percent, 97 percent, and even 99.8 percent. The truth is that less than half will.

Schools use a variety of shabby dodges to undercount jobless graduates while straining to count others as employed, all of which serves little public purpose beyond “the defense of a professional cartel from which law professors benefit more than almost anyone else.” [law professor Paul Campos at the University of Colorado, in the new issue of New Republic] When I spoke recently at Colorado on Schools for Misrule, Prof. Campos was kind enough to be the commenter, and I agreed with pretty much everything he had to say then and afterward.

P.S.: More generally from Alex Eichler, Atlantic Wire. And law school “merit scholarships” aren’t always quite as attractive as they seem.

“Plaintiff seeks phantom damages 6 times greater than actual costs”

According to the Colorado Civil Justice League, the decision by the state’s high court last fall in Volunteers of America v. Gardenswartz prohibits juries from learning the amounts actually paid, as opposed to “billed,” for medical services whose reimbursement is demanded in accident cases. The distinction is important because those who cover medical bills in practice (e.g., health insurers with their bulk buying clout) often pay much lower sums than the “rack rates” that hospitals and others officially charge (more on HB 1106, which would restore the evidence of paid as well as billed amounts).

P.S. As Jack Leyhane notes, the Colorado controversy is related to, though not identical with, the longstanding controversy over the “collateral source” rule, which provides that payments by third parties to a plaintiff over an injury will not reduce or offset the liability of a tortfeasor. “It is the lien or subrogation rights of third parties — [which] vary widely from state to state — that make sweeping generalities about the collateral source rule difficult to formulate.”

N.C.: “Orange County Rescue Squad suit tossed”

The director of Orange County, N.C. emergency services had terminated the squad following complaints of unprofessionalism from other emergency responders, and it proceeded to sue. “The lawsuit, filed in federal court, claimed to be a class-action lawsuit for all the citizens of Orange County and those who transit through Orange County, but U.S. District Judge William J. Osteen Jr. wrote in his opinion that the rescue squad lacked standing to bring a class action lawsuit.” [Herald-Sun; background, Daily Tar Heel]