- Jury rejects Jamie Leigh Jones rape claim against Halliburton/KBR. Next, a round of apologies from naive commentators and some who used the case to advance anti-arbitration talking points? [WSJ; Ted Frank/PoL and more; WSJ Law Blog (plaintiff’s lawyers sought shoot-the-moon damages)]
- Time magazine vs. James Madison on constitutional law (spoiler: Madison wins) [Foster Friess via Ira Stoll]
- Andrew Trask reviews new Curtis Wilkie book on the Dickie Scruggs scandal;
- “Right to family life” evolution in human rights law deters UK authorities from deporting various bad actors [Telegraph]
- Paging Benjamin Barton: How discovery rules enrich the legal profession at the expense of the social good [PoL]
- USDA heeds politics, not science, on genetic crops [Henry Miller/Gregory Conko, PDF, Cato Institute Regulation]
- “Legal Questions Raised by Success of Monkey Photographer” [Lowering the Bar]
Posts Tagged ‘arbitration’
“Why The Times Is Wrong About the AT&T Class Action Case”
Contractually stipulated arbitration works less poorly than the NYT editorialists seem to think — and lawyer-driven class action litigation not nearly as well [Daniel Fisher, Forbes, more]
May 4 roundup
- “You Will Be Relieved to Know it is Now Harder To Discipline Bad Cops in Arizona” [Coyote]
- NYT runs Title IX “roster management” through a feminist echo chamber [Heather Mac Donald, Secular Right] Even with the slant, colleges’ willingness to contort their programs to comply with quotas tends to prove critics’ case [Althouse, Wendy Parker, College Sports Council, more]
- “AT&T v. Concepcion: ‘Consumers Win in Allegedly Anti-Consumer Supreme Court Ruling'” [PoL] Will Elizabeth Warren partly undo the outcome? [Fisher/Forbes] More on case: Trask, Karlsgodt;
- “[Entertainer] Prince Wants Laws Changed To Eliminate Song Covers” [Hollywood, Esq./THR]
- Consulting firm accused of racketeering in Chevron suit has U.S. gulf spill contract [ShopFloor]
- Point out flaws in DoJ’s legal case against you, and get branded “uncooperative” [Koehler/FCPA Professor]
- NYC might ban buying fake handbags [WSJ Law Blog] Bill sponsor’s curious political trajectory to city council [Rick Brookhiser, many years back in City Journal]
November 12 roundup
- By reader acclaim: “Rules in Chandler restrooms: Don’t drink from toilets” [Arizona Republic]
- Arbitration and class actions before the Supreme Court: “Misconceptions about Concepcion” [Andrew Trask]
- County commissioner candidate sues county employees, rival over election flyer [Whidbey Island, Wash. News-Times]
- Fannie’s Tammany: MacLean, Nocera on the politicized world of the mortgage GSEs [Tabarrok]
- $56 million obstetrics verdict against Westchester County, N.Y. hospital [Hochfelder]
- Legal Ethics Forum is looking for guest bloggers;
- New Federalist Society white papers on Ohio and North Carolina supreme courts;
- “When Art Imitates Life: Suing for Defamation in Fiction” [Jane Kleiner, Citizen Media Law]
November 9 roundup
- White House panel’s counsel: no evidence corner-cutting caused Gulf spill [NYT, Reuters] Furor ensues [WaPo]
- Report: grief counselors assigned to Democratic congressional staffers [Maggie Haberman, Politico]
- “Lawyer Sues for Humiliation and Lost Business Due to Misspelled Yellowbook Ad” [ABA Journal, South Dakota]
- Argument today in important Supreme Court case, AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion: will courts respect freedom of contract in consumer arbitration context, or yield Litigation Lobby the monopoly it seeks over dispute resolution? [Ted at PoL]
- No search warrant needed: armed deputies in Orlando storm unlicensed barbershops, handcuff barbers [Balko, Reason “Hit and Run”]
- After Colorado hit-run, banker allowed to plead down to misdemeanors lest his job be at risk [Greenfield]
- FDA to decide whether to ban menthol in cigarettes [CEI]
- Reshuffling blackjack decks is not “racketeering” [ten years ago on Overlawyered]
A liberal jurist defends arbitration
For a number of years organized trial lawyerdom has made it a top priority to attack contractual clauses providing for arbitration of employment, consumer and other disputes, arguing that only litigation — that is to say, their own services — can provide the needed fairness, deterrence and compensation. Such is the Litigation Lobby’s overreach in this matter that even a veteran liberal, former Ninth Circuit judge and Carter education secretary Shirley Hufstedler, is constrained (with co-author William Webster) to part company with bills introduced by Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold and others: “Astonishingly, such legislation would effectively abolish arbitration as a viable alternative for such disputes.” [National Law Journal]
September 20 roundup
- “Family sues for $25 million over death of Virginia Beach homeless man” [Pilot Online]
- New paper proposes voucherizing indigent criminal defense [Stephen Schulhofer and David Friedman, Cato Institute, more]
- “Why the Employee Free Choice Act Has, and Should, Fail” [Richard Epstein, SSRN]
- Free-market lawprofs file brief in class action arbitration case, Concepcion v. AT&T [PoL]
- Enactment of Dodd-Frank law results in flood of whistleblower-suit leads for plaintiff’s bar [Corporate Counsel, ABA Journal] “Will Whistle-Blowing Be Millions Well Spent?” [Perlis/Chais, Forbes]
- Sept. 28 in House: “Congressional Hearing on the Problems of Overcriminalization” [NACDL]
- Abusive-litigation angle seen in NYC mosque controversy [Painter, Legal Ethics Forum]
- Snark alert: Mr. Soros does something nice for Human Rights, and Human Rights does something nice for him [Stoll]
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.
June 16 roundup
- Shameless: House leadership exempts NRA lest it sink bill to regulate political speech [John Samples, Cato]
- Employment law: “Arbitration Showdown Looms Between Congress, Supreme Court” [Coyle, NLJ]
- “Wake Up, Fellow Law Professors, to the Casualties of Our Enterprise” [Tamanaha, Balkinization]
- Move to allow international war crimes trials over “aggression,” a notoriously slippery term [Anderson, Brett Schaefer/NRO “Corner” via Ku]
- Litigation slush funds: “Cy pres bill in Ohio House” [Ted Frank, CCAF]
- “Recent Michigan Prosecutions for ‘Seducing an Unmarried Woman’” [Volokh]
- Scalia: “…least analytically rigorous and hence most subjective of law-school subjects, legal ethics” [LEF]
- Silicosis settlement scandal update: “As 2 Insurance Execs Admit Bribes, PI Lawyer Says He Can’t Be Retried” [Houston Chronicle via ABA Journal, earlier]
New at Point of Law
Things you’re missing if you aren’t checking out my other site:
- Iowa federal judge hits EEOC with $4.5 million attorney fee award over “sue first, ask questions later” litigation strategy;
- Jim Copland continues his weeklong blogging of Trial Lawyers Inc.: K Street with posts on the plaintiff’s bar’s Washington, D.C. presence (with discussion of CPSIA, employment litigation, qui tam, and arbitration, among other topics); state lobbying; and public relations, including legal academics, the media, and consumer groups;
- Hmm: House committee conveniently subpoenas Toyota defense documents that plaintiffs had been seeking to unseal (and more on Toyota);
- Obama administration plans crackdown to make more employers reclassify independent contractors as employees;
- Trial bar stirs pot in Florida politics;
- Feds swoop down on 2003 settlement to demand that parties reimburse Medicare as provided by retroactive law.