For being the first Overlawyered blogger to have a post cited in a federal case. In Taylor v. XM Satellite Radio, Inc., 533 F.Supp.2d 1151 (N.D. Ala. 2007), XM argued that the class action demanding a refund for a 24-hour outage was moot because they offered refunds well before the class certification motion was made. Plaintiffs disputed this, arguing they did not know about the refund offer until after they moved for class certification. One questions the relevance of the time of the certification motion (and, indeed, the court found this factual claim irrelevant) given that the refund offer was to the entire class rather than just to the named plaintiffs, but one reason that the court expressed skepticism at the attorneys’ claims was the existence of an Overlawyered post by David discussing the refunds and the ludicrousness of the suit. Case dismissed for mootness, though the court also noted that XM had no contractual obligation to provide continuous uninterrupted service.
Posts Tagged ‘about the site’
Welcome UPI readers
The news service picks up on a report from the Chamber-backed Legal NewsLine, whose reporter Chris Rizo had called me up for a reaction to the new website SueEasy.com (on which see earlier post). Other blog reactions to the same site include Steel Turman (“like a carpool for ambulance chasers”), Everett White, Just Average American.
Worst places to get sued, cont’d
William Pentland’s Forbes article (see yesterday’s post) has sparked a fair bit of coverage, including: NAM “Shop Floor”, Mark Obbie’s LawBeat, Law and More, the Baton Rouge Advocate, Philadelphia personal injury firm Pomerantz Perlberger & Lewis LLP (proud of their city’s reputation as bad news for libel defendants), and KGBT (Harlingen, Tex.).
“The Worst Places To Get Sued in America”
Forbes compiles its list and is kind enough to quote me at some length. Scariest of the scary? Los Angeles (ADA filing mills); Miami (med-mal); Atlantic County, N.J. (pharmaceutical); Starr County, Tex. (personal injury); Cook County, Ill. (product liability; I’m quoted on the Cook premium for otherwise routine injury cases); Mississippi (class actions; more properly, group and other mass actions, given the state’s peculiar way of handling such claims); Clark County, Nev. (construction litigation); West Virginia (environmental lawsuits); Philadelphia (I’m quoted on the city’s tradition of libel suits by public officials); (William Pentland, Forbes, Apr. 7; slideshow).
Calm and collected
That’s the kind of blog we try to run around here:
Created by OnePlusYou
House Judiciary Committee hearing on 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund
The hearing is now on-line (I’m at the 55:18 mark; Maxine Waters is at the 2:10:20 mark), as is my written testimony.
Things I should’ve said: that a dictator did a good job in the past hardly means that a dictatorship is a good idea, even if you can reappoint the same dictator. But one can be dumbfounded by the stupidity of some questions.
10,000 comments
According to our software, we passed that milestone today.
BlogAds: one reader’s comment
General readers are undoubtedly aware that the appearance of a BlogAd in our right-hand column in no way implies that we agree with its content, and sharp-eyed readers may have noticed that we’ve in fact run more than one with views that run counter to our own. With that in mind, here’s a letter from New York reader Jason Abrams:
I’m still a huge fan of your site, but I’m disappointed by the appearance of an advertisement for NumbersUSA on the right-hand side as a BlogAd. I understand that sometimes blog owners have no initial control over the content of the ads, but there must be a way to exercise some restrictions on the types of organizations that can run ads on your site. Based on what I have gathered to be the leanings of your editors and contributors, I wouldn’t imagine your site to be much of a recruiting ground for this borderline hate group.
It may be worth pointing out one aspect of the way BlogAds works: the blog owner approves an ad based on an initial submission of the “creative” (picture and text), but then the advertiser can freely change the creative as the week or month or quarter goes on. Sometimes later versions of an ad are more arresting or abrasive than the first version, or differ in other material ways. I don’t know how precisely this affects the overall run/not run calculus, but it seems like an interesting weakness in the process.
Pro bono as profit center III: Skadden and Chinatown restaurant case
Another instance of the decidedly Pickwickian sense in which some in the legal profession use the term pro bono:
Last year, a federal judge awarded nearly $1 million in attorney fees, costs and prejudgment interest to Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in a case involving workers at a restaurant in New York’s Chinatown. Chan v. Triple 8 Palace, No. 1:03-cv-06048 (S.D.N.Y.). The New York firm took the case pro bono in an attempt to collect unpaid tips on behalf of the workers.
The firm succeeded. But its request for attorney fees turned heads, especially since the workers received about $700,000.
“And you also had a large law firm telling everybody that they’re doing the case pro bono,” said Daniel A. Hochheiser, a partner at New York’s Hochheiser Hochheiser & Inwood, which represented the restaurant.
“The general understanding of pro bono is that you’re volunteering your time and effort without compensation, or without expectation of compensation,” Hochheiser said.
The case is being compared in several quarters to the Seattle school-suit fee request discussed in this space Sept. 7 and Sept. 23. (Amanda Bronstad, National Law Journal, Feb. 8; Elefant; Cal Blog of Appeal (to whom we’re happy to send the traffic). We briefly noted the Skadden fee ruling last summer.
P.S. Commenters point out — and it’s appropriate to note here as well — that Skadden, unlike Davis Wright Tremaine, says it’s giving away the fee award.
America’s Health Care at Risk, April 16-17, Orlando
I’m scheduled to speak about medical malpractice reform at the America’s Health Care at Risk conference in Orlando, Florida, April 16-17. More details when they become available.