The suit mentioned earlier does raise the question: under California’s stringent anti-discrimination Unruh Act, does the entertainer really count as a “business establishment”?
Posts Tagged ‘California’
February 16 roundup
- “Texas Judge Orders 178 Anonymous ‘John Does’ Who Posted on Topix Be Revealed” [Citizen Media Law]
- $4 billion lawsuit over racially insensitive Miley Cyrus eye gestures [Michelle Malkin, TMZ.com]
- Update: “Tulsa World drops lawsuit after writer apologizes” [Romenesko/Tulsa World, earlier]
- Also update: “Seventh Circuit Affirms Dismissal of John Lott’s Libel Lawsuit Against Steven Levitt” [Volokh, earlier]
- “M-I-C — Cease and desist! K-E-Y — Why? Because we caught you! M-O-U-S-E” [Ron Coleman]
- California: “Another Step Toward Shielding Good Samaritans From Civil Damages” [Calif. Civil Justice Blog, more]
- Montana lawmakers consider bill saying hazardous recreation goes on at your own risk [PoL]
- Senior writer at Wired decides to go work for Wal-Mart, what he found departed from the Barbara Ehrenreich formula [BoingBoing]
Judges order California to slash prison population
The release of 25 percent of the state’s prison inmates might prove a tad controversial. [Kerr, Volokh]
Burned-out taillight?
California is reaching for revenue by steeply hiking the fine you’ll pay when a patrolman writes a “fix-it” ticket over some minor repair needed on your car (via Amy Alkon).
Burning Man Festival gets sued
The famous West Coast festival has obtained a summary judgment against the lawsuit filed by attendee Anthony Beninati, who says he was — you have probably guessed the nature of the injury — burned “when he stumbled and fell into the Burning Man’s ashes trying to ignite a photo of a late friend” (California Civil Justice Blog; Anthony Beninati v. Black Rock City, LLC).
Update: Passalaqua v. Kaiser Foundation Hospitals
I got an email asking me what happened to the case in the following post:
While his wife, Jeanette Passalaqua, was giving birth, Steven fainted in the delivery room, fracturing his skull and dying two days later. This is, says the family, the fault of Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and Southern California Permanente Medical Group Inc. “‘This avoidable tragedy was a direct result of Kaiser’s ordinary negligence in failing to exercise reasonable care to prevent foreseeable injuries to Steven,’ according to the suit, which was filed last week in San Bernardino County Superior Court.” So if your maternity ward is rubber-padded next time you go there, you know why.
So I looked it up in the San Bernardino County Superior Court docket database: the case settled almost immediately. The docket does not report the amount of the settlement, which could conceivably have been for a token amount, but one can infer that there was some substantial money involved, because the settlement required proof of the purchase of annuities for the two plaintiff minors, which normally wouldn’t be worth the transactions costs if the sums were tiny. But that inference may be incorrect. If ever I find myself in San Bernardino, maybe I’ll check the paper record to see if there’s more public detail.
Microblog 2008-12-19
- Newest “Trial Lawyers Inc.” report is on Louisiana [Manhattan Institute, Point of Law]
- Mel Weiss disbarred automatically w/strong language from judges [Matter of Weiss h/t @erwiest]
- Pro se claimant: I wrote down cure for cancer and then the darn hospital stole it! [Above the Law]
- “California Supreme Court Ruling May Deter Good Samaritans” [The Recorder; SF Chronicle with copious reader comments, GruntDoc, our coverage last year]
- Due diligence on dodgy funds? Sometimes it seems everyone’s relying on someone else to do that [Bronte Capital] Madoff fraud may date to 1970s, maybe “recent laxity” angle has been overdone [Securities Docket] “Ponzi crawl” = pub crawl whereby new person is added at each location and has to buy a round [Re Risk]
- Radley Balko on Julie Amero malware-prosecution story [Reason, earlier]
- Join Paul Ehrlich in some of the world’s most famously refuted predictions, and you too may get to be Obama’s science adviser [John Tierney/NYT, John Holdren]
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WisconsinMinnesota pig-sitter trial set for March, claim is that defendant let star porker overfeed and gain a hundred pounds [LaCrosse Tribune h/t @kevinokeefe] - More on the Patent and Trademark Office “acceptable error” employment case [Venture Chronicles, Jeff Nolan; earlier]
- Procter & Gamble “Satanism” case finally settles, soap giant got $19 million verdict against four Amway distributors who spread rumor [OnPoint News]
- Once filing of a suit severs the channels of communication, attorneys and clients alike begin to make up “what really happened” narratives [Settle It Now]
- Sometimes lawyers need to be formal. Don’t IM “Court denied your appeal u will b executed saturday thx” [Beck & Herrmann]
- Bangladesh hoping to build replica of Taj Mahal despite copyright claims [Times Online h/t @mglickman]
- Midnight regulations? “OMB Watch” vigilant (and with reason) during this R-2-D transition but sang different tune in 2000’s D-2-R [Gillespie, Reason]
Starbucks job-application suit fails
Starbucks’s job application asked prospective baristas if they’d been convicted of a crime in the past seven years and added for “CALIFORNIA APPLICANTS ONLY”, at the end, that minor marijuana possession convictions more than two years old didn’t have to be disclosed, in accord with a state law along those lines. Entrepreneurial lawyers then tried to steam-press $26 million or so out of the coffee chain on the following theory: that the clarification was placed too far down the application after the original question; that Starbucks had therefore violated the California Labor Code; and that each and every Starbucks job applicant in California since June 2004, perhaps 135,000 persons, was owed $200 in statutory damages regardless of whether they had suffered any harm. Per John Sullivan of the Civil Justice Association of California, the lawyers also took the position that “it didn’t matter that two of the three job applicants who signed on as named plaintiffs testified in court that they read the entire application and knew they didn’t have to mention a marijuana conviction (which neither had anyway!)” The court refused to certify the class and made the following observations (courtesy CJAC blog):
* “There are better ways to filter out impermissible question on job applications than allowing ‘lawyer bounty hunter’ lawsuits brought on behalf of tens of thousands of unaffected job applicants. Plaintiffs’ strained efforts to use the marijuana reform legislation to recover millions of dollars from Starbucks gives a bizarre new dimension to the every day expressions ‘coffee joint’ and ‘coffee pot.'”
* “Enhancing the prospects for obtaining a settlement on a basis other than the merits is hardly a worthy legislative objective.”
* “Given the size of the class, the potential exposure is so large that the pressure to settle may become irresistible. …’This is a valid concern: Many corporate executives are unwilling to bet their company that they are in the right in in big-stakes litigation, and a grant of class status can propel the stakes of a case into the stratosphere …This interaction of procedure with the merits justifies an earlier appellate look. By the end of the case it will be too late — if indeed the case has an ending that is subject to appellate review.'”
* “The civil justice system is not well-served by turning Starbucks into a Daddy Warbucks.”
More coverage: Aaron Morris, Metropolitan News-Enterprise, and Carlton DiSante & Freudenberger. One of the plaintiff’s lawyers in the case, H. Scott Leviant, is known for his blog The Complex Litigator.
“Another ‘successful’ DUI roadblock”
Bakersfield, California: 3000 drivers stopped, no drunk drivers apprehended. “By the way, the Supreme Court carved out an exception to the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment for roadblocks — but only for apprehending drunk drivers,” not for other purposes such as catching drivers with lapsed licenses. (DUIBlog, Dec. 9 via LexMonitor).
November 23 roundup
- In unpublished opinion, California appeals court upholds dismissal of Unruh Act challenge to baseball Angels’ Mothers Day tote giveaway [Lex Icon, earlier]. More: CalBizLit.
- Securities class-action firm Bernstein, Liebhard & Lifshitz perhaps a less credible tribune of fiscal rectitude now that name partner Mel Lifshitz has copped felony plea to lying on federal taxes [NY Post, NYLJ, WSJ law blog] And what’s this about Lifshitz funding one of his firm’s clients? [The Street] P.S. He’s now departed the Bernstein firm, but maybe there’s an opening for him as chairman of House Ways and Means.
- Per one lawyer, “would be a stretch” for website operator to be held liable for teen’s overdose suicide with webcam running [AP]
- Carter Wood finishes up weeklong series of posts looking back on the great 1998 tobacco settlement [ShopFloor links to PoL]
- Eric Holder not a reassuring Attorney General choice for gun rights [Kopel @ Volokh]
- Law bloggers on Twitter: Anne Reed explains what the fuss is about [Deliberations; related, Michelle Golden]
- Compulsory chapel? UC Irvine Prof. Alexander McPherson, who quit supervising students rather than submit to state-mandated sexual harassment training, explains his stand [L.A. Times] Lefty blogs once again empty a bucket over his head [Feministe, Lemieux]
- Presumably unrelated: “Law Grad Accused of Faking E-Mail to Implicate Prof in Harassment” [ABA Journal, Florida Coastal]