- Picture of farmer with goose appears on greeting card, he wants $7.5 million [Roanoke Times; earlier]
- More class actions filed over Apple iPhone [Ars Technica on roaming and battery claims, O’Grady’s PowerPage, iPhoneWorld; earlier]
- L.A. Times quotes attorney Stephen Yagman on prison overcrowding, but forgets to mention that he was lately convicted of thirteen felonies [Patterico]
- Bad idea watch: compulsory national service [Somin @ Volokh]
- Doing well representing the little guy: Gerry Spence lists his Wyoming residence for sale at $35 million [WSJ/Chicago Daily Herald]
- “Appropriate”, not “perfect”, justice needed: “We simply have to stop killing litigants with kindness,” says chief judge of Australia’s largest state [The Australian]
- Toddler killed after wandering into heavy traffic, trucker should have been more on guard against such a thing happening [Salt Lake Tribune]
- Pennsylvania pro se litigant sues Google, says it spells his social security number upside down [Ambrogi] More: Coyote says “Up next, the owner of Social Security number 71077345 sues Shell Oil for the same reason.”
- Once billed as “King of Torts”, Miami asbestos lawyer faces fifteen years behind bars for stealing $13 million from clients [Sun-Sentinel]
- Groom sues bride, saying she took the ring and presents and never got the wedding paperwork straightened out leaving them legally unmarried [ClickOnDetroit]
- Surgical resident on the hook for $23 million in Wisconsin case; she was the only one of the docs involved not covered by damage limits [Journal Sentinel via KevinMD]
Posts Tagged ‘Australia’
July 23 roundup
- Not sure you’ve got probable cause for your motorist stop? Why not just fabricate it? [Grits for Breakfast]
- California Attorney General Jerry Brown cracks down on a prolific filer of Prop 65 (toxic warning) cases, New Canaan, Ct.-based Clifford Chanler [The Recorder]
- Man mounts San Francisco rooftop with apparent “self-destructive” intent, rescue effort by firefighters fails, now family’s suing the city [SF Chronicle]
- Why Mort Zuckerman says the law is the opposite of sex [Lattman, from offline New Yorker mag]
- Who’s stirring the pot on client litigation against big law firm Hogan & Hartson? [Lat] Update: it’s a former client [Turkewitz]
- Some top judges in Australia embarrassed after confessing activist leanings to an American academic who was writing it all down [The Australian]
- Cost of defending against a white-collar crime prosecution: seven figures if you’re lucky [Lattman via Lat]
- New at Point of Law: chiding Supreme Court Chicken Littles, more on Canadian sovereignty and the Conrad Black trial, reasonable degrees of expert witness certainty, making litigation instead of steel, Michael Krauss criticizes Virginia Tech compensation fund;
- If you can’t do something about the falling petals, maybe your flower shop shouldn’t be in the train station [U.K. Telegraph]
- Illinois tells lawyers to hire a doctor to certify merit of med-mal claim, but permits that doctor to remain anonymous [three years ago on Overlawyered]
July 20 roundup
- Despite seeming majority support in both houses, conference committee on the Hill drops protection against lawsuits for “John Does” who report suspicious security behavior to authorities [PowerLine, Malkin; see May 11, etc.]
- U.K. town advises holders of allotment gardens: you could be liable if trespasser gets hurt vandalizing your trellises [Gloucestershire Echo; Cheltenham, Prestbury, etc.]
- School groundskeeper fired for illiteracy sues under ADA; suit’s future may depend on whether he can allege underlying predisposition such as dyslexia [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, StLRecruiting]
- Large Pakistan bank should pay for my husband’s murder, says Mariane Pearl in lawsuit [NYSun]
- Tell it to the EEOC, bud: Pennsylvania survey of law firm “diversity” finds plaintiff’s firms lag well behind their business/defense counterparts when it comes to hiring minorities [Legal Intelligencer first and second pieces]
- Spare a tear for Gov. Spitzer, never realized public life would be such a rough and tumble affair [Kirkendall]
- Trail of bogus auto accidents and “runners” leads to West Orange, N.J. lawyer and his law firm, say prosecutors [NJLJ; related New Jersey report on insurance fraud, PDF]
- I’m interviewed re: the Giuliani announcement [Paul Mirengoff @ PowerLine] and publicity in National Journal is nice too [Blog-O-Meter]
- Two Australian grave owners sue for damages over loss of feng shui [Melbourne Age]
- You have to let me use your bathroom, I’ve got a note from my doctor [Robert Guest on Texas legislation]
- New at Point of Law: University of Alberta lawprof Moin Yahya is guestblogging this week on Conrad Black trial, extraterritoriality, antitrust, etc.
- Quadriplegic sues Florida strip club under ADA because its lap dance room not wheelchair accessible [five years ago on Overlawyered]
July 9 roundup
- Judge Ramos disallows settlement of Citigroup directors derivative suit: deal had met defendants’ needs, plaintiff’s lawyers’ too, but not shareholders’ [PDF of decision courtesy NY Lawyer]
- Drove a golf cart into the path of his car as it was being repossessed, jury decides he deserves $56,837 [MC Record]
- Per ACOG, 92 percent of NY ob/gyns say they’ve been sued at least once [NY Post edit; more]
- New British online-gambling law could trip up some virtual-world/massively multiplayer online games [GamesIndustry.biz]
- Good news for bloggers: Iowa-based site can’t be sued in New York just because it answered questions from NY reader and accepted NY donations [Best Van Lines v. Walker, Second Circuit; McLaughlin]
- Another great idea from Public Citizen: let’s not use new drugs till they’ve been on the market for seven years [Pharmalot via KevinMD]
- After conviction of Mississippi trial lawyer Paul Minor in judicial corruption scandal, squabbling drags on over sentencing [Jackson Clarion-Ledger]
- Conservative public interest law firms “can win some big cases [but] are notorious for lacking follow-through” [Tushnet, L.A. Times]
- Contestants in Australian business dispute probably wound up spending more on the litigation than had been at stake in the first place [Sydney Morning Herald]
- New at Point of Law: New Hampshire governor vetoes trial lawyers’ bill; global warming litigation to be bigger than tobacco?; the Times notices HIPAA;
- It’s my emotional-support dog, and my lawyer says you have to let it into your store [eight years ago on Overlawyered, before these stories started getting common]
Large Payment Awarded After 30 Years of Divorce
British businessman Dennis North’s wife Jean left him 30 years ago after she began seeing another man. Their split became official in 1981, when they signed an agreement that granted Jean their house and income from rents on their various properties.
North went on to be a wildly successful businessman, while his ex-wife never worked. However, a judge has just ordered North to pay Jean a large lump-sum payment because she has “fallen on hard times” due to a number of money-losing investments:
Mr North, 70, has been ordered by a court to hand her another £202,000.
The order follows a series of big-money divorce cases which have swung the law against husbands and resulted in huge payments to ex-wives even after short childless marriages. The North case now threatens to make husbands pay large sums even decades after a split.
…
Existing English law gives ex-spouses who are receiving maintenance payments the ability to request a lump-sum payment instead. Jean’s attorneys believe she is entitled to this money, and state their case by responding to the odd “cherry” reference:
But Deborah Bangay, QC, for Mrs North, said: “This was not a second bite at the cherry but it is what are her reasonable needs. The court was entitled to take into account the obvious wealth of the former husband.”
She said it was not Mrs North’s fault that her investments had gone wrong. The district judge’s award had been at the “bottom end of the spectrum”.
So, to recap: This woman destroys her marriage, never gets a job, lives well beyond her means, loses a ton of money in bad investments, then gets a large cash payment for her trouble? Think there’s a line of people willing to be her investment advisor?
June 21 roundup
- Okla. AG says scam artists are sending out bogus “you’ve won a class action settlement” notices that could hook unwary recipients [Consumer Affairs]
- Rough on marriages, jobs, and tempers: life as a juror on a thirteen-month trial [Times Online]
- “In some ways, that story represented everything about America: sex, money, and litigation.” [Tina Brown on Anna Nicole saga]
- Baby steps toward consumer protection? When lawyers “go bare” without professional liability insurance, some in Calif. bar think clients should be told [The Recorder]
- Norwalk, Ct. cop who won reinstatement after snatching body part (Jan. 23) is back in the news, and not in a favorable way [Jeff Hall; Advocate, Citizen-News]
- Why RIAA probably needn’t worry that its scattershot suit-filing will expose it to RICO liability [Ars Technica]
- Come to think of it, maybe shooting your husband is worse than serving beer to 16-year-olds [Bader @ WashPost; earlier]
- Michigan woman “slain in the Spirit” at Pentecostal religious service wins suit alleging church was negligent and broke promise by not providing usher to catch her as she fell; defamation claims also figured in suit [Lansing State Journal, Lawyers’ Weekly; compare this case from Australia]
- “Backlash Forms Against ‘Zero Tolerance‘” — well, we can hope [Associated Press]
- New at Point of Law: State Farm moves to disqualify Scruggs in Katrina litigation; honest expert witness spotted?; proposed federal habitat regulation might dwarf current wetlands and species laws; and much more;
- Auctioning off the right to handle a civil case… on eBay? [Five years ago on Overlawyered]
Oz: “Gambler loses, sues casino”
Behrouz Foroughi, 43, says he volunteered for the exclusion list at the Star City casino and was told he would be denied entry, but was admitted anyway and lost large sums due to his gambling compulsion. (Gemma Jones, Daily Telegraph, Jun. 19). Similar claims have been tried a number of times in the U.S. but without much success: see Apr. 28, 2004, Apr. 19, 2005, Nov. 22, 2005 (France), etc.
Oz high court: restaurant review was defamatory
Now it’s Australia where food writers are getting nervous: the country’s High Court decided that Sydney Morning Herald critic Matthew Evans had defamed the Coco Roco restaurant in 2003 in a review:
The flavours of the limoncello oysters “jangled like a car crash”, he wrote, while the sherry-scented apricot white sauce on a steak was a “wretched garnish”.
Overall, he concluded that “more than half the dishes I’ve tried at Coco Roco are simply unpalatable”.
The ruling does not however preclude the defendants from offering defenses as proceedings continue in the case. (Deborah Cameron and Helen Westerman, “Ruling leaves sour taste for food critics”, Melbourne Age, Jun. 15; Barbara McMahon, “Review of meal that ‘jangled like a car crash’ deemed defamatory”, The Guardian, Jun. 16). Eoin O’Dell at the Irish law site Cearta.ie has assembled a substantial links list on this and earlier restaurant-review lawsuits from various countries (Jun. 16). Previously at this site: Mar. 10, etc.
Update: Australian’s failed suicide try
A 19-year-old Australian who fell from a tree and was left quadriplegic after a failed suicide attempt has failed in his effort to lay legal blame on a mental hospital that had discharged him eleven days earlier. Timothy Walker “sued the Sydney West Health Service for negligence, claiming not enough was done to care for him prior to the accident. He claimed the hospital should have prescribed him anti-depressant or anti-psychotic medication, counselled him and detained him as an involuntary patient for at least two weeks for assessment.” However, a judge found that the health service had not rendered substandard care, that it properly declined to prescribe antidepressants because Walker would not promise to stay off liquor, and that it had followed up with home visits after Walker’s discharge, during which he reported feeling better. Walker will, at least notionally, be liable for the hospital’s legal expenses under the rule that costs follow the event (sometimes known as the “everywhere-but-America rule”). (Alyssa Braithwaite, “Would-be suicider fails in hospital sue bid”, AAP/Daily Telegraph, May 25). Earlier: May 9.
May 30 roundup
- Both sides agree to drop litigation in Islamic Society of Boston mosque-building controversy (Herald, Globe; earlier here, etc.)
- Australia’s Slater & Gordon becomes world’s first law firm to list itself on stock exchange (SMH, Ribstein; Regan/MacEwen/Ribstein; more)
- Colo. bar-restitution fund strained after lawyer who “hoped to save the world” plunders $5 million from clients to fuel strip-club-enhanced lifestyle (Rocky Mountain News)
- A trend? Another restaurant sues over negative review (Delmonico Grill in Port St. Lucie, Fla. against Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers and reviewer Patricia Smith; Hometown News)(earlier)
- Ontario appeals court deems bite of West Nile-infected mosquito to be “accident” triggering insurance coverage [Harikari]
- Nanny may I? Chicago bans actors on stage from smoking as part of theatrical performance (Lambert); Vancouver condo owner faces suit for smoking on her own patio (AHN, Vancouver Sun); Montgomery County, Md. becomes first county to vote to ban trans fats (Gillespie)
- Nevada bench colleagues intervene with Judge Elizabeth Halverson: it’s just not done to call your clerk “The Antichrist” or ask court staff to give you foot rubs (Morrison, LVRJ). More: Above the Law;
- Midwifery in crisis: one D.C. birthing center’s struggle to keep its doors open (WaPo)
- Some advice: if you’re claiming disability benefit, you might not want to enter and win a strongman competition in which you lift the front end of a car (Telegraph, U.K.)
- Judge rejects Utah lawyer’s claim that CBS should pay him $5,000 for exposing him to Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction (three years ago on Overlawyered)