I’m reasonably sure that Katherine Mangu-Ward’s new Reason blog post on CPSIA is the only instance in which anyone has ever called me a “rock star”.
Posts Tagged ‘accolades’
Mandatory employee breaks, cont’d
Evil HR Lady has more thoughts on the United Airlines incident, along with some kind words for this website.
“A Tidal Wave of Regulations to Hit IT Shores”
If enterprise IT departments and data managers thought the compliance burdens of Sarbanes-Oxley were tough, they’d better brace themselves for an even bigger wave of regulation to come, brought on as part of Washington’s reaction to the financial crisis. [Paul Rubens, ServerWatch] More: Jeff Nolan, Venture Chronicles, to whom thanks also for the kind words.
Ezra Levant on Overlawyered
The high-profile Canadian free speech advocate (and target himself of the atrocious attentions of Canada’s speech tribunals) has this to say:
Overlawyered.com is a great U.S. website about the American affliction of too many lawsuits. Canada has a simple rule that America lacks, that has made us far less litigious: in Canadian civil courts, the loser has to pay a portion of the winner’s legal fees. That means nuisance suits are far less common.
Which is why human rights commissions are so bad — they remove that damper on frivolous suits, inviting the worst bullies and harassers to abuse the system….
Background:
Legal blogs: keeping lawyers more honest?
Venkat Balasubramani of the blog Spam Notes has a highly interesting guest column at AvvoBlog arguing that blog coverage has emerged as a new check on lawyers’ tendency to pursue their cases in an overzealous or hardball fashion. In the BlockShopper, Nordstrom/Beckons, and Kentucky domain-name seizure affairs, as well as numerous gripe-site and reputational-claim actions where the Streisand effect came into play, blogs have helped call national attention to the weakness of a litigant’s position, the danger that a disputant without major resources will be bulldozed by the cost of litigation, or both.
Balasubramani is kind enough to single out three bloggers in particular and to include me among their number:
…Walter Olson: who blogs at Overlawyered is another blogger who frequently flags unreasonable positions taken by lawyers. While he monitors litigation excess generally, absurd tort lawsuits are his specialty, and many a plaintiff’s lawyer has graced the pages of his blog in shame.
And he concludes:
Increased scrutiny of legal decisions and lawsuits by blogs and internet commentators will have undoubtedly have an overall beneficial effect. … Lawyers these days live in fear that one of their lawsuits will be highlighted on the pages of sites such as Overlawyered, the Legal Satyricon, or the Volokh Conspiracy. I know I sometimes do.
Whole thing here.
CPSIA on the radio: WTIC “Morning Show with Ray Dunaway”
I’m scheduled to be a guest on Ray Dunaway’s Morning Show (WTIC 1080 AM, Hartford) circa 7:20 a.m. to discuss CPSIA. For a quick introduction to the law, follow our links for the problems with thrift stores, motorbikes, libraries and books, kids’ garments, and general problems with the law.
P.S. WTIC, the news/talk Connecticut station, has been great on crediting Overlawyered over the years, and host Ray Dunaway said on the air that he gets a lot of story ideas for the show from this site. Thanks!
February 19 roundup
- Surprising origins of federal corruption probe that tripped up Luzerne County, Pa. judges who were getting kickbacks on juvenile detention referrals: insurers had noted local pattern of high car-crash arbitration sums and sniffed collusion between judges and plaintiff’s counsel [Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, Legal Intelligencer] Court administrator pleads to theft [Times Leader] Judge Ciavarella had secret probation parole program [PAHomepage]
- We get accolades: “Overlawyered.com has a new look. Great new format, same good stuff,” writes ex-securities lawyer Christopher Fountain, whose real estate blog I’m always recommending to people even if they live nowhere near his turf of Greenwich, Ct. [For What It’s Worth]
- “Fla. Jury Awards $8M to Family of Dead Smoker in Philip Morris Case” [ABA Journal; for more on the complicated background of the Engle case, which renders Florida a unique environment for tobacco litigation, start here]
- Scott Greenfield vs. Ann Bartow vs. Marc Randazza on the AutoAdmit online-bathroom-scrawl litigation, all in turn playing off a David Margolick piece in Portfolio;
- Eric Turkewitz continues his investigations of online solicitation by lawyers following the Buffalo crash of Continental Flight #3407 [NY Personal Injury Law Blog, Mon. and Tues. posts; earlier]
- One vital element of trial management: keep track of how many jurors there are [Anne Reed, Deliberations]
- Public Citizen vs. public health: Sidney Wolfe may succeed in getting the FDA to ban Darvon, and the bone marrow transplant nurse isn’t happy about that [Dr. Wes, KevinMD, more on Wolfe here]
- “Baseball Star’s [uninfected] Ex Seeks $15M for Fear of AIDS” [OnPoint News, WaPo, New York Mets star Roberto Alomar]
Thanks, voters
Thanks to our readers for the more than respectable showing Overlawyered made in the “Best Law Blog” section of the 2008 WeblogAwards. The winner was the very deserving Volokh Conspiracy.
Also while we’re on popularity, my piece yesterday at Forbes on the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) is #6 top rated among the magazine’s articles at the moment. Thanks!
Overlawyered nominated in 2008 Weblog Awards
We’re among the ten nominees in the Best Law Blog category in these widely recognized awards. In fact, without even having tried to scare up votes yet, Overlawyered is not doing too badly (Volokh Conspiracy at the moment is way in the lead, but we’ll fix their wagon). In contrast to the ABA Journal blog contest just concluded, in which you were supposed to vote only once, you can vote in this one every 24 hours. So do that please! And you can vote in all the other categories from this page.
Guestblogger thanks; best-blog contests
Many thanks to SSFC for his reader-applauded (and marathon-length) stint guest blogging while I finished a deadline over the holidays. Be sure to check out his blogging at Social Services for Feral Children, where he’s written a nice post on his experience here. I have a feeling we’ll be seeing him back in this space before too long.
On a different note, today is the last day of voting in the ABA Journal’s annual best law blog contest, so it’s the last occasion for us to pester you on it. We’ve run up a very decent vote but two other sites put on a big effort to win the “Niche” category this year and we’ll probably lose to one of them (unless Michelle Malkin tells her readers to vote for us or something). Whether or not we win, a strong showing brings visibility to this site, so thanks again for voting. And I’m happy to learn that Overlawyered has now made it to the finalist list for the first time at a second and quite well-known blog award competition. That one hasn’t started yet, so I’ll wait on giving it a proper announcement until Monday when voting begins, but you can see a preview here.