The Las Vegas Sun has details. Meanwhile, the copyright troll has sued six more website operators.
“My Web Designer Goes to Jail”
In some states, the penalties for transporting one’s own firearms can be dire. [Jeffrey Miron; Brian D. Aitken website; David Codrea/Examiner]
Saturday Night Live parody of Gloria Allred
You can watch it on Hulu courtesy Abnormal Use.
Update: Judge upholds $13 M award for Seattle firefighter
Updating our August 12 item: “A King County Superior Court judge refused Monday to vacate a nearly $13 million award to a Seattle firefighter who was injured at a fire station in 2003. The city of Seattle appealed the award after an investigator it hired captured Mark Jones on surveillance video dancing, chopping wood, playing horseshoes and bocce ball this past spring.” Judge Susan Craighead said the city should have developed its evidence earlier and that the standard for demonstrating fraud is an extremely high one in cases of this kind. [KOMO]
Bugs might fly in
So goodbye to the open-air restaurants of suburban Bethesda, Maryland, now put on notice by the Montgomery County health department. [TBD]
October 21 roundup
- “Japanese landlords sue families of suicide victims” [Telegraph via Tyler Cowen]
- Best candidate you’ve never heard of: lawprof Jim Huffman runs for a U.S. Senate seat in Oregon [Weekly Standard]
- “Freedom of culinary expression: Chefs speak out on behalf of salt” [“My Food, My Choice” via Ponnuru, NRO]
- “In-House Counsel Expect More Regulatory Litigation, Survey Finds” [NLJ]
- “Oladiran’s ‘Motion of the Year’ Earns Him Sanctions” [AtL]
- Resisting a music-delivery-system claim: “Patent Trolls and Public Goods” [Julian Sanchez]
- More transparency for New Jersey lawyer/lawmakers? [Philly.com]
- “Ninth Circuit: marine mammals don’t have standing…yet” [six years ago on Overlawyered]
Timeless mysteries of rights-assertion: images of Stonehenge
“English Heritage claims it owns every single image of Stonehenge, ever” [Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing, TechDirt]
New York chief judge rallies “Civil Gideon” campaign
But Ted Frank explains why creating a new entitlement to taxpayer-paid civil lawyers is a bad idea [New York Daily News, PoL]:
As any economist would tell you, if you lower the price of something, you get more demand for it. If it becomes completely costless to bring suit, we will see many more meritless suits.
That’s no small problem in New York, where courts are already overloaded.
If a dispute over shelter entitles a cantankerous tenant to a free attorney on the government’s dime, it will be much easier for people to fight evictions when they violate a lease in ways that threaten other tenants or intentionally refuse to pay rent. Landlords, in turn, will have to hire their own attorneys and raise rents and costs for their honest tenants.
Not unrelated: U.S. is granting asylum requests far more often than formerly. Why might that be? [Ted’s answer]
A story that can’t be true
We know it can’t, because Mayor Bloomberg has assured us that smoking bans don’t cut into restaurants’ business. [Saginaw News via Fountain; Vassar, Mich.]
Poppy seed bagels and false positive drug tests
If you thought such happenings were just an urban legend, the “Kafkaesque” experience of this Florida woman might make you think again. [John Pacenti, Daily Business Review via Radley Balko]