August 11 roundup

  • General Mills sends lawyers after local “My Dough Girl” Bakery [Consumerist via Amy Alkon]
  • But he can reapply in five years: “Lawyer Takes Plea in Case Over His Hardball Litigation Tactics, Will Be Disbarred” [ABA Journal, California]
  • “Shame on Elie Wiesel” for threatening a lawsuit over his fictionalization in a stage play [Terry Teachout]
  • State AGs dive into HIPAA and health privacy enforcement [Nicastro, Health Leaders Media]
  • More highlights from Daniel Okrent book on Prohibition [Tabarrok]
  • Denver school board investment fiasco [Popehat]
  • Russell Jackson on the Yoo-Hoo chocolate beverage class action [Consumer Class Actions and Mass Torts, earlier]
  • California court rules state’s Moscone (“little Norris-LaGuardia”) Act unconstitutional [Workplace Prof]

Offering to trade legal services for sexual favors

Over dissents from two justices, the New Jersey Supreme Court has declined to disbar an attorney who made “repeated, demeaning and offensive suggestions to his clients” in “an effort to barter his professional services for sexual favors.” The punishment instead: suspension for a year and required sensitivity training. Solangel Maldonado at Concurring Opinions thinks the court was too lenient, arguing that an employer charged with similar conduct toward an employee would have faced extensive liability under sexual harassment law.

August 10 roundup

A reminder: anti-arbitration is anti-consumer

The Center for Class Action Fairness filed an amicus brief yesterday on behalf of consumers in the Supreme Court case of AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion; Public Citizen brought a suit successfully striking an arbitration provision in a cell-phone contract as “unconscionable” because it did not provide for bringing class actions—even though consumers as a whole would be better off with the generous arbitration provision than with opportunity for the class action. Of course, then trial lawyers lose out. More at Point of Law; and Public Citizen’s page on the case has other briefs and links to (generally pro-trial-lawyer) blog commentary.

On trial for vehicular homicide, sues family she killed

Citing text messages she sent her boyfriend shortly before the incident, Montana prosecutors contend that Justine Winter’s crash at 85 mph into an oncoming vehicle was a deliberate suicide attempt. Winter, who faces trial on homicide charges in the deaths of Erin Thompson, the woman she ran into, and Thompson’s 13-year-old son, has now sued Thompson’s estate as well as the construction company that built the interstate overpass where the accident occurred. [Daily Inter Lake, Siouxsie Law]