- “Cleveland police union plans to sue toy gun makers“;
- They all did it: “Families of San Bernardino Shooting Sue Facebook, Google, Twitter”;
- “Recruiting on campus might be an age discrimination violation“;
- “N.J.: “Drunken driver hurt in crash sues bars for serving him alcohol“;
- California memorabilia law could tank small bookstores;
- Eleventh Circuit: employee caught vacationing while on medical leave can sue over firing;
- Before bringing a monkey into the courthouse in your purse, read this;
- Federal judge orders UPS delivery giant to pay nearly $247 million for not asking questions about bulk shipments from Indian reservations (they contained untaxed cigarettes).
Posts Tagged ‘best of’
Best of Overlawyered — April 2017
- “Miami may target Airbnb hosts who spoke at City Hall”;
- USA Today investigates ADA drive-by lawsuits;
- Third Circuit: neighbors who criticized condo residents over emotional support dogs must face civil rights suit;
- “It’s like open carry, but for Coppertone” in Spokane schools;
- Surveillance videos of flash-mob robbery of Oakland BART station will not be made public because people committing crimes appear to be minors;
- “Oregon man fined $500 for calling himself engineer in email to state” (and he eventually won)
- Judge in Ireland rules on playground fall: an old-fashioned accident, no cash to be had.
Best of Overlawyered — March 2017
- “Woman Gets a Ticket for Parking Two Seconds Early”
- Fifth Circuit’s Jerry Smith drop-kicks “dispute, fueled by a disgruntled cheerleader mom, over whether her daughter should have made the squad“;
- Clichés come to life: lawyer’s pants catch fire during final argument
- “NJ public works employee with phobia of public places gets $400K in lawsuit”
- Too good to check: debunking various press outlets’ claim that White House budget was going to zero out Meals on Wheels;
- Just as ADA-rattled Berkeley was going to take down online course materials, some clever souls archived and mirrored the content;
- Advocates seek tighter state reins on homeschooling;
- Dial O for opportunism: professional junk-call plaintiffs;
- “Seattle: We’ll pick a union for Uber drivers”
Best of Overlawyered — February 2017
- Sixth Circuit: IRS, unlike Caligula, cannot punish under unpublished law;
- “College bro blames school for his drunken punching rampage”
- Judge greenlights ADA suit by blind man not allowed to walk up to McDonald’s drive-through window after regular store hours;
- “Cheating Frenchman sues Uber for unmasking his mistress”
- “Former crime boss wants $10 million over prison ping-pong slip-fall“
- In suit against Metropolitian Museum of Art over suggested admission charge, big winner is plaintiff’s lawyer;
- Omaha restaurauteur publicizes police sting, hit with charges of obstructing a government operation, jury finds not guilty;
- “So-called judge.”
Best of Overlawyered — January 2017
- “Federal judge rules it’s against state law to dock strippers’ pay if they remove their clothes too slowly”;
- Orange County argument: our government workers were not on clear notice not to lie in court, falsify evidence;
- “Engineer who fell asleep sues Metro-North over derailment”
- EPA cracks down on household wood-burning in Alaska, in winter;
- After professor’s denunciation, police in United Kingdom record as reported “hate incident” a cabinet minister’s speech to a Conservative Party conference;
- “Mnuchin’s bank foreclosed on widow over 27 cents” tale wouldn’t have held up to four minutes of fact-checking;
- Hit show “Hamilton” sued over lack of audio descriptive services for blind patrons;
- Honda calls car owners to warn of defective airbags, gets sued by class action lawyer under federal junk-call law TCPA.
Guestblogger archive week: V
Daniel Schwartz, of the law firm of Shipman and Goodwin, writes the Connecticut Employment Law Blog, long on my reading list. Some highlights of his visit: “After setting fires, firefighter wants job back” (Erie, Pa.); man jumps from train, then sues (“If you guessed that alcohol would somehow be involved, you are correct”); and recurring arguments of the durably demagogic “pay equity” debate. [archive / Twitter]
Jason Barney, a claims investigator and insurance professional in the Northwest, has guestblogged for us several times, some high points being a case of drunken equestrianism; aide to politician fails to secure Pennsylvania workers’ comp benefits after panel rules that “media criticism of him did not constitute ‘abnormal working conditions'”; man sues 1-800-FLOWERS after it sends him a thank you note for buying flowers for his mistress, which note wound up in the hands of his wife [archive]
Peter Morin, Boston-area land use lawyer, joined us over two stints to discuss an ethics complaint by a Rhode Island woman against two lawyers she said sidled up to her and pitched her services as she was standing at her dead son’s casket; whether an offer to send text messages to the NBC game show “Deal or No Deal” in hopes of winning a prize was an unlawful lottery for which participants should be permitted to seek damages; and a classic Massachusetts judicial opinion about liability for “a fish bone lurking in fish chowder.” [archive]
* * *
I’ve worked my way less than halfway through the list and have missed many superb talents as well as many of my best friends, so there’s room for me to come back another time should I repeat this idea. Those I missed include guestbloggers Hans Bader, James Copland, Steven Erickson, Andrew Grossman, Keymonk, Kip Esquire, Steven Hantler, Dave Kopel, Jim Leitzel, Jeff Lewis, Leah Lorber, Warren Meyer, Skip Oliva, Victoria Pynchon, Gerald Russello, Greg Skidmore, SSFC, and Kevin Underhill. Participant-blogger Ted Frank, a lawyer of many interests best known these days for his efforts on class action reform, contributed between 2003 and 2010; his posts are archived here. I’m not sure why anyone would want to check out my own archives, but if you do, they’re here.
Guestblogger archive week: IV
I highly recommend subscribing to Dan Lewis’s daily Now I Know email, a labor of love, compendium of neat stories, and marvel of the Internet. Dan guestblogged for us in the early days as a first-year law student on stories, often sports-related, that included a National League umpire who sued after quitting his job and not being taken back, Deion Sanders’s face-off with the car repair guy, and shop owners criminally charged in Canada for fighting off a burglar. [archive / NowIKnow and personal Twitter]
Guestbloggers have sometimes brought a scholarly and research perspective, as with Michael DeBow, a law professor at Cumberland School of Law at Samford University in Birmingham, Ala. He wrote (presciently!) about a Massachusetts attorney general’s ventures into outsourced enforcement and how it wound up sluicing money to some ideologically engaged private outfits; the importance in comparative international development of secure property rights; and Alabama’s fitful progress toward being less of a “judicial hellhole” for defendant corporations than it once was. [archive]
James Maxeiner teaches at the University of Baltimore School of Law and has practiced and written extensively in legal matters in both American and German courts. The German system of civil litigation, which includes the loser-pays principle, is often compared favorably with our own. His insight into the comparative performance of the two systems of law helped inform posts on what foreign clients say about American law, how Germany does civil legal aid, and some mild puffery from the German justice ministry about the advantage of its version of continental law. [archive]
Guestblogger archive week: III
Caleb Brown is now the director of multimedia at the Cato Institute, where he hosts the extremely popular Cato Daily Podcast and Cato Audio. When he first joined us as a guestblogger, however, he was doing radio in Louisville, Kentucky. He’s blogged on a short-lived suit by a man who suffered emotional distress after seeing participants consume pureed rat on NBC’s “Fear Factor,” a mini-wave of suits against law schools (back before the more recent, bigger wave), and a criminal complaint in France against a man who spotted a hole in computer security and published about it. [archive first, second / Twitter]
When blogs rose to popularity in the early 2000s there was a flowering of medical blogs written by practicing physicians. Among its highlights was an Ohio family physician’s MedPundit. Although she quit blogging around 2006 that was not before she had dropped by Overlawyered to talk about shotgun defendant selection and the plaintiff attorney’s “standard of care”; a long-shot failure-to-diagnose case; and what it means that malpractice insurance rates vary so sharply within individual states, as between Cleveland and Columbus in Ohio. [archive]
Donald Boudreaux, founder of Cafe Hayek and professor of economics at George Mason U., has few contemporary peers as an exponent of sound economics for the intelligent reader. He joined us to write about (timely!) Hillary Clinton’s proposal for a restored national maximum speed limit of 55 miles per hour, popular misunderstanding of the concept of the “trade deficit” (timely again!), and where if anywhere the federal government might draw the constitutional authority to regulate the treatment of pets. [archive]
Don’t forget: we’re inviting volunteers (and of course repeat volunteers) to propose yourself for a weeklong guestblog stint in this space some time this summer or fall. Email editor – (at) – overlawyered – (dot) – com.
Guestblogger archive week: II
When New York area attorney David Nieporent did a guestblogging gig for us in February 2007 it turned into a nine-month engagement with David providing sharp analysis of dozens of legal cases, ranging from whether it’s discriminatory to test cops for proficiency in English, to the search for deep pockets in a Baltimore car-crash lawsuit, to a lawyer’s request for $150,000 in fees on a case worth $11,000. His archive is here (Twitter).
Wisconsin political writer Christian Schneider is now a regular contributor to USA Today as well as the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, and has been having fun writing up this year’s campaign. He wrote for us on an Ontario court’s order that a 24 year old man not have a girlfriend for three years, whether tattoo-edness should place you in a protected category in employment law, and the legal barriers to frozen beer on a stick. [archive/Twitter]
Baylen Linnekin, expert on food law and policy, has a new book coming out in September called Biting the Hands That Feed Us: How Fewer, Smarter Laws Would Make Our Food System More Sustainable. His topics for us included CSPI’s war on caffeinated alcohol beverages, odd doings in England after a Jack Russell terrier “allegedly bit off the tip of the leafleteer’s finger as he pushed election paraphernalia through a front-door letterbox,” and an Illinois couple’s nonmarital “agreement for an exclusive relationship.” (archive/Twitter).
Guestblogger archive week: I
Over the years about thirty friends and acquaintances have contributed their talents as guestbloggers at Overlawyered, typically posting over the span of a week while I’m away from my duties. I’d like to use this week to tell what some of them are doing now, highlight a few of their contributions, and I hope at least mention the names and link the author archives of all of them.
Ron Coleman, an IP and media law attorney attorney in greater New York, writes the excellent and longstanding Likelihood of Confusion blog on trademarks, copyrights, Internet law and free speech, from which I’ve learned a lot over the years. He’s guestblogged for us twice, covering such issues as a New York male attorney’s discrimination suit against ladies’ night discounts at bars; a suit in Romania by a prison inmate purportedly against God Himself (“He has some issues, only not justiciable ones, it seems”); and a lawsuit by NBA players over depictions of their lady interests on a VH1 show called “Basketball Wives.” His full archive is here (law-oriented and personal Twitter).
When he guestblogged for us, Will Baude was a student at the University of Chicago Law School. He’s now on its faculty, teaching federal courts and constitutional law, after doing things like clerking for appellate judge Michael McConnell and Chief Justice John Roberts. Last week he was a guestblogger at Volokh Conspiracy about his work on the law of interpretation, statutory and otherwise; sample posts here and here. During his guest week at Overlawyered he covered a dispute over whether a California city should sue over a reference to its citizens as “white trash” on a popular TV show, “The O.C.”, and wrote on popular schemes (popular in philosophical circles, at least) “to extend the right to vote to children of any age.” Full archive here (Twitter).
Pasadena attorney George M. Wallace wrote the excellent insurance law blog Declarations and Exclusions through 2013, and continues to blog on non-legal subjects at A Fool in the Forest. In his time with us he covered an advisory in the L.A. city attorney’s office on “how they should recognize a newsworthy legal case. Public safety? Important public issue at stake? Nah, this is L.A. Number one is any case involving a celebrity — ‘no matter how minor’ — followed closely by a politician. Death, mutilation, child molestation or animal cruelty are also sure bets.” And he wrote — this nearly ten years ago — about the legal showdown between TV personality Rosie O’Donnell and Donald Trump. Full archive here (Twitter).
Because I’m expecting some down time in my own blogging in coming months, I invite volunteers (and of course repeat volunteers) who might like to guestblog in this space this summer and fall. Email editor – (at) – overlawyered – (dot) – com.