Australia: “A bullied teenager will receive substantial damages and an income for life after a Supreme Court judge found NSW educational authorities failed in their duty of care to deal with playground assaults and bullying.” The court heard testimony that Benjamin Cox, now 18 years of age, was severely bullied at school by an older, disturbed pupil. ‘In her judgement, delivered today, Justice Carolyn Simpson commented that Mr Cox’s “adolescence has been all but destroyed; his adulthood will not be any better. He will never know the satisfaction of employment. He will suffer anxiety and depression, almost certainly, for the rest of his life'”. Cox’s mother said that because of the bad experience with classmates her son “didn’t like crowds, he didn’t like teachers, didn’t like the work,” and “just locks himself in his room playing PlayStation games”. The New South Wales state government may appeal the A$1 million verdict. (Leonie Lamont, Sydney Morning Herald, May 14; “Govt considers appeal on bullied boy”, AAP/Melbourne Age, May 22).
Posts Tagged ‘Australia’
Oz: Failed suicide try, sues health service
“A man who fell from a tree after an aborted suicide bid is suing a Sydney health service, claiming not enough was done to treat his depression ahead of the accident.” Timothy Walker decided to kill himself 11 days after his discharge from a psychiatric facility, but instead was left a quadriplegic. He “is suing the Wentworth Area Health Service for negligence, claiming not enough was done to care for him” and that he should have been given medication. (Lisa Allan and Kim Arlington, “Man sues over aborted suicide tree fall”, AAP/The Australian, Apr. 16)(via LegalJuice). Update Jun. 6: judge rejects case.
Oz: railway slip-fall blamed for rape
Reasonable foreseeability? “A woman has won nearly $240,000 compensation from RailCorp after a judge ruled she was raped because she had broken her ankle weeks earlier at a Sydney railway station. RailCorp was found responsible for the woman’s rape at a private home, because she could not escape with her leg in plaster, and for her subsequent depression.” (Geesche Jacobsen, “A fall, a rape – and $240,000”, Sydney Morning Herald, Apr. 26).
April 25 roundup
- More on that Edwardsville, Ill. Pizza Hut door-swing case and its attorney-complainant [Madison County Record; earlier]
- Workers at U.K. health and safety agency told not to move chairs in the office, they might hurt themselves [Daily Mail via Nobody’s Business]
- Lawyer who hoped for $25 million will appeal arbitrator’s ruling awarding him only a solitary buck ($1.00) for “redundant and unnecessary” work on San Diego pension crisis [Lattman]
- New at Point of Law: Ted on Sen. Fred Thompson, Oklahoma enacts liability reform, RFK Jr. as mass-tort tout, birthing balls, and much more;
- Title IX from outer space: now it’s Virginia’s James Madison U. axeing teams [USA Today; more]
- Westchester County, N.Y. dominatrix sues police dept., saying media frenzy dashed her hopes of Wall Street career [Journal-News; more on attorney Ravi Batra]
- Parodists, retire now: ex-N.J. governor McGreevey, disgraced after hiring unqualified paramour for key safety post, appointed to teach course on ethics [Orac]
- “School choice, but only for the most irritating parents” [Coyote on Supreme Court’s pending special-ed case; more]
- Will tainted-pet-food episode give lawyers their long-sought breakthrough on loss-of-companionship, other intangible damages for animal injury? [NLJ; earlier]
- Disgruntled former partner withdraws charge of impropriety over Oz breast implant fees [The Australian; Aust. Prof. Liab. Blog; earlier]
- Dr. who delivered Illinois Gov. Blagojevich’s daughter throws in the towel [three years ago on Overlawyered]
New low for Jack Thompson?
“In the wake of Monday’s horrific shootings at Virginia Tech, video game scourge Jack Thompson went on Fox News and argued that violent video games were probably to blame. … he went on TV to make the claims before anyone really knew anything about the shooter or his reason for doing what he did.” (Daniel Terdiman, Gaming Blog, Apr. 17; video clip; Brian Crecente, “Dissecting Jack’s Lies”, Kotaku, Apr. 17). More: Mike Musgrove, Post I.T., Washington Post.com; Geek.com; Palgn.com.au (Australian); Wired.com Game/Life blog (TV’s “Dr. Phil” takes same line).
“Sperm donor kids win estate”
Most memorable detail: the kids used “tweezers to pluck his eyebrows for DNA testing as he lay dead in a hospital morgue.” The fact pattern in this Australian case was not exactly typical, however: the donor had had a previous romantic relationship with the children’s mother, who subsequently used his donations to conceive three times without informing her lawful husband that the kids were not his. (Janet Fife-Yeomans, AAP/PerthNow, Mar. 16).
February 20 roundup
- Trucker-friendly Arizona legislature declines to ban naked lady mudflaps [NBC4.com; Houstonist]
- Crumb of approbation dept.: I’m “[not] as unreasonable as most of the tort-reform crowd” [Petit]
- Sponsors of large banquets in D.C. must pay to have a paramedic on hand even when the banquet crowd consists of doctors [ShopFloor]
- Homeowner’s insurance doesn’t cover homewrecking: umbrella policy doesn’t create duty to defend lawsuit claiming the insured broke up someone’s marriage (Pins v. State Farm (PDF), S. Dak., Mayerson via Elefant)
- New York mag on RFK Jr.: Is there some law saying all press profiles of America’s Most Irresponsible Public Figure® must be weirdly softball in nature and glide over his embarrassing book and rants, his Osama-pig farm lunacy, his anti-vaccine humbug, his trial-lawyer entanglements and even the wind farm flap?
- Australia court rules Muslim prison inmate suffered discrimination and deserves money for being served canned halal meat rather than fresh [The Australian]
- High medical costs and their causes: am I listening? [Coyote]
- Economists may puzzle their heads over the ultimate incidence of business taxes, but in Wisconsin it’s whatever Gov. Jim Doyle says it is [Krumm via Taranto]
- Feds may punish Red Sox pitcher Matsuzaka for doing a beer ad in Japan, where it’s perfectly legal for athletes to appear in such [To The People]
- Guns in company parking lots: still one of the rare issues where the ABA manages to be righter than the NRA [AP/CBSNews.com; see Apr. 6, 2006]
- Thanks, NYC taxpayers: Brooklyn jury awards $16 million against city in case where drugged-up motorist jumped sidewalk and ran over pedestrians, later blaming the accident on a city sanitation truck [seven years ago on Overlawyered]
February 12 roundup
- Divorcing Brooklyn couple has put up sheetrock wall dividing house into his and hers [L.A. Times, AP/Newsday]
- Boston Herald appeals $2 million libel award to Judge Ernest Murphy, whom the paper had portrayed as soft on criminals (earlier: Dec. 8 and Dec. 23, 2005) [Globe via Romenesko]
- Updating Jul. 8 story: Georgia man admits he put poison in his kids’ soup in hopes of getting money from Campbell Soup Co. [AP/AccessNorthGeorgia]
- Witness talks back to lawyer at deposition [YouTube via Bainbridge, %&*#)!* language]
- Prominent UK business figure says overprotective schools producing generation of “cotton wool kids” [Telegraph]
- State agents swoop down on Montana antique store and seize roulette wheel from 1880s among other “unlicensed gambling equipment” [AP/The Missoulian]
- “You, gentlemen, are no barristers. You are just two litigators. On Long Island.” [Lat and commenter]
- Some Dutch municipalities exclude dads from town-sponsored kids’ playgroups, so as not to offend devout Muslim moms [Crooked Timber]
- As mayor, Rudy Giuliani didn’t hesitate to stand up to the greens when he thought they were wrong [Berlau @ CEI]
- Australia: funeral homes, fearing back injury claims, now discouraging the tradition of family members and friends being pallbearers [Sydney Morning Herald]
- Asserting 200-year-old defect in title, Philly’s Cozen & O’Connor represents Indian tribe in failed lawsuit laying claim to land under Binney & Smith Crayola factory [three years ago on Overlawyered]
Reader feedback
A reader from Australia writes, apropos of no post in particular:
Guys, I broadly agree with your website — personal injury litigation is out of control.
As a lawyer though, I think you’re missing the other side of the coin: that the system for necessary cases, ie suing someone who owes you money, is too long, and too complex. In my view the inefficiency of the legal system is a far bigger problem. Perhaps you could highlight this in some stories?
After all, having a quick efficient legal system to enforce the law is crucial in a modern economy.
The always-reliable New York Times on tobacco
If you were ever so worried about the report by plaintiffs’ for-hire expert Robert Proctor’s NYT criticism of cigarettes for containing that trendy isotope, Polonium-210, Australian blogger C. Magee notes that a single banana is 9000 times more radioactive than a cigarette (via Hutchinson), concluding “There are plenty of sound reasons to discourage smoking; we don’t need to discard them for sensationalized scare tactics.”
Update: Walter beat me to this on POL last week, finding two other blogger refutations.