More fun from The Namby Pamby (language). More: Legal Blog Watch (“slip and fall complaint Mad Libs”).
Criminal libel charge over academic book review, cont’d
More on the Karin Calvo-Goller/Joseph Weiler criminal libel case in France, in a Chronicle of Higher Education link that will remain free only briefly. Earlier here.
CCAF files Bluetooth appeal brief
Ted’s Center for Class Action Fairness has been contesting a class action settlement as overly generous toward lawyers’ interests. The underlying lawsuit claims failure to warn of hearing loss from high-volume headset use. [CCAF, Bader/Open Market] More: California Civil Justice, Aetherczar.
Jerman v. Carlisle
Reader John B. alerts us: “If you haven’t already seen it, there’s excellent Overlawyered-type rhetoric from Justice Kennedy in Monday’s Supreme Court opinion on debt collectors’ liability under federal statutory law. Unfortunately it’s in the dissent (PDF).”
Wrote Kennedy:
[The Court’s decision today] aligns the judicial system with those who would use litigation to enrich themselves at the expense of attorneys who strictly follow and adhere to professional and ethical standards.
When the law is used to punish good-faith mistakes; when adopting reasonable safeguards is not enough to avoid liability; when the costs of discovery and litigation are used to force settlement even absent fault or injury; when class-action suits transform technical legal violations into windfalls for plaintiffs or their attorneys, the Court, by failing to adopt a reasonable interpretation to counter these excesses, risks compromising its own institutional responsibility to ensure a workable and just litigation system.
Supreme Court to consider violent-videogame law
Ann Althouse wisecracks: “Who could have imagined that one day the Supreme Court would take a case called Schwarzenegger… and Schwarzenegger would be arguing for preventing young people from viewing graphic depictions of violence? That day has come.” More: Sullum, SCOTUSblog.
“Collaboration not Litigation Ale”
Two craft brewers “found themselves on the brink of a product name dispute. Rather than calling in the lawyers, however, they drew upon their brewing talents to concoct a unique solution.” [95 Years]
Suit: no warning that 10,000-lb. safe was risky to move
Trying to move the contents of his Duval Street store to another location, a jeweler in Key West, Fla. was killed when the enormously heavy object fell on him; his widow’s suit “claims that Mutual Safe Co. and Harwood’s Miami Safe Co. failed to warn her husband of the life-threatening risks involved in moving the 10,000-pound, refrigerator-sized safe, according to the lawsuit filed in Monroe County circuit court Tuesday.” [Adam Linhardt, Key West Citizen; & welcome Lowering the Bar readers]
Facebook page critical of towing company
T & J Towing of Kalamazoo, Mich. has filed a lawsuit demanding $750,000 from the Western Michigan University student who started the Facebook page “Kalamazoo Residents Against T&J Towing“. [WOOD and Consumerist via Switched; Kalamazoo Gazette (Facebook group reaches 10,000 members); & welcome Kashmir Hill/Above the Law readers]
Bad new idea dept.: privacy takedowns
Jim Harper at Cato at Liberty says a proposed “Cyber Privacy Act” introduced by Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.) would “regulate every Internet site that has a comment section. He thinks it’s going to protect privacy, but he’s sorely mistaken. Its passage would undermine privacy and limit free speech.”
Lawyer conceals client’s death from opponent
Only after the settlement was in hand did a Minnesota lawyer let slip the rather material fact that his client had some time back departed this earthly frame. [Minneapolis Star-Tribune “The Whistleblower” via ABA Journal] Ironically, the lawyer was suing over a credit report that had mistakenly reported his client as dead (back when he was alive). The lawyer, who had been disciplined seven other times, has now been barred from working for a year.
More: Discussion in comments at Legal Ethics Forum, including Prof. Monroe Freedman: “I disagree with [this kind of] result.”