March 4 roundup

Eugene Volokh on Reason.tv


Great interview with the prolific and influential UCLA law professor (and founder of the Volokh Conspiracy blog) in which he talks about the Bill of Rights, the “hostile environment” menace to free speech, why we should not necessarily expect judges to strike down bad laws, concealed carry and the gun control issue, and the nannyism potential in tort law (& welcome Erin Miller, SCOTUSBlog readers).

More leads in Luzerne County, Pa. judicial scandal

Before the sensational revelations of corruption in juvenile justice sentencing, investigators had been tipped off about suspicious judicial handling of car-crash arbitrations and suits filed by attorneys in the Pennsylvania county. Those are rumored to be among the focus points of ongoing probes directed at attorneys as well as judges and those in other branches of government. [Legal Intelligencer]

Unlawful for hardware store to give customers free coffee and doughnuts

So says the health department in Ventura County, Calif., rebuffing the B & B Do It Center of Camarillo. [Ventura County Star]

More: In a followup story (h/t gitarcarver), county officials say they were drawn into enforcement action because the store had been demonstrating barbecue makers using actual meat, and then proceeded to add the edict barring coffee and doughnuts.

New book on Bill Lerach, “Circle of Greed”

Kim Strassel reviews it in the Wall Street Journal:

Much of the riveting detail in “Circle of Greed” comes from Mr. Lerach, who cooperated fully with the authors. They seem to buy his line that his actions were motivated by his desire to protect innocent shareholders from greedy corporations. The book’s overall argument—as the title suggests—is that it was corporate greed that created Mr. Lerach and provided a model for his ethical failings. That claim is unfair to the many honest companies who were Lerach victims and implausible in any case, thanks to the authors’ own vivid evidence of Mr. Lerach’s outsize criminal behavior.

More: At New York Times “DealBook” (via Pero), Peter Henning reviewing the same book traces Lerach’s downfall in part to the nature of his famous “I have no clients” practice:

Clients are an important constraint on lawyers, the restriction on their desire to push as hard as possible for every little victory in a case. …

When your opponent is your enemy, and you can say whatever you want because there is no client there to restrain your baser instincts, then at some point you will step over the line and perhaps eventually pay a price.

Henning also recounts Lerach’s famous vendetta against scholar/consultant Daniel Fischel (“I will destroy you”), which put the world on notice of the class actioneer’s character years before the main scandal hit.