In the South, a wedding engagement gone sadly wrong leads to a compulsively readable opinion by Judge William Pryor for an Eleventh Circuit panel, complete with reference to the TV show The Dukes of Hazzard. [Myers v. Bowman, PDF; summary judgment affirmed against civil rights claim](bad link fixed now)
Posts Tagged ‘Georgia’
Medical roundup
- “It Didn’t Feel Like a ‘Win'” [“Birdstrike, M.D.”/White Coat]
- Federal ban on long shifts by hospital residents may have harmed safety, in part because it drove up number of patient handoffs [USA Today]
- N.J. bill would narrow chance for suits against first aid, ambulance and rescue squads [NJLRA]
- Bill in Georgia legislature aims to apply workers’-comp-like principles to med-mal [Florida Times-Union]
- I mostly agree that med-mal reform is for states to decide, but Ramesh Ponnuru may underrate Washington’s legitimate role in prescribing legal consequences when it pays for care [Bloomberg/syndicated]
- Shift burdens through price control: NJ assemblyman’s bill would prohibit insurers from considering docs’ claims experience except for cases that result in actual court findings [NJLRA]
- Someone’s hand stuck in the sharps box again? Sixth time this month [Throckmorton]
Police and prosecution roundup
- “Once your life is inside a federal investigation, there is no space outside of it.” [Quinn Norton, The Atlantic]
- “Cops Detain 6-year-old for Walking Around Neighborhood (And It Gets Worse)” [Free-Range Kids] “Stop Criminalizing Parents who Let Their Kids Wait in the Car” [same]
- Time to rethink the continued erosion of statutes of limitations [Joel Cohen, Law.com; our post the other day on Gabelli v. SEC]
- “Are big-bank prosecutions following in the troubled footsteps of FCPA enforcement?” [Isaac Gorodetski, PoL]
- The “‘professional’ press approach to the criminal justice system serves police and prosecutors very well. They favor reporters who hew to it.” [Ken at Popehat]
- Scott Greenfield dissents from some common prescriptions on overcriminalization [Simple Justice]
- Anti-catnip educational video might be a parody [YouTube via Radley Balko]
- “Too Many Restrictions on Sex Offenders, or Too Few?” [NYT “Room for Debate”]
- Kyle Graham on overcharging [Non Curat Lex] “The Policeman’s Legal Digest / A Walk Through the Penal Laws of New York (1934)” [Graham, ConcurOp]
- “D.C. Council Proposes Pretty Decent Asset Forfeiture Reform” [John Ross, Reason] And the Institute for Justice reports on forfeiture controversies in Minnesota and Georgia.
- Does prison privatization entrench a pro-incarceration lobby? [Sasha Volokh, more]
December 7 roundup
- Georgia: “Twiggs County Landgrabber Loses, Must Pay $100K in Fees” [Lowering the Bar]
- “Major California Rule Change For Depositions Takes Place In 2013” [Cal Biz Lit] Discovery cost control explored at IAALS conference [Prawfs]
- Gift idea! “Lego version of the Eighth Circle of Hell (where false counselors and perjurers suffered)” [John Steele, Legal Ethics Forum; Flavorwire]
- “Don’t Worry About the Voting Rights Act: If the Supreme Court strikes down part of it, black and Hispanic voters will be just fine.” [Eric Posner and Nicholas Stephanopoulos, Slate, via @andrewmgrossman]
- “Why did Congress hold hearings this week promoting crackpot [anti-vaccination] views? [Phil Plait, Slate]
- “Debunking a Progressive Constitutional Myth; or, How Corporations Became People, Too” [John Fabian Witt, Balkinization]
- “Federal ‘protection’ of American poker players turning into confiscation” [Point of Law]
Class action roundup
- Ted Frank on Whirlpool front-loading washer class action [PoL] $1.5 million for attorneys, $41,510 for class? Judge balks at Amex gift card settlement [same] EasySaver coupon settlement “conservatively” values coupons at 85% of face value [same]
- Cy pres: Roger Parloff on tech-defendant class-action cy pres [Fortune] Privacy groups nominated for cy pres windfall in Facebook settlement [Wired, PoL]
- “Class-Action Lawyers Face Triple Threat At Supreme Court” [Daniel Fisher at Forbes; related, Michael Bobelian]
- Georgia high court: company could be on hook for $456 million for sending junk faxes [UPI] Will unwanted text-message class actions be the sequel to junk-fax litigation? [Almeida, Sedgwick via WLF]
- “Class action summer camp” series from Andrew Trask includes refreshers on key concepts such as typicality, adequacy, etc.
- “Supreme Court Hears Arguments in Comcast” [Wajert, earlier]
- City of Des Moines class action: we owe it to ourselves [Iowa Appeals] For another case where there was high overlap between plaintiff class members and those expected to pay damages, see Sept. 2, 1999 [Milwaukee tainted municipal water system]
October 2 roundup
- CFPB hopes to fix regulation that has prevented stay-home moms from getting credit [Bloomberg Business Week, earlier]
- Uncertified class action: “Federal judge orders cost-shifting for fishing expedition” [PoL] Ted Frank objects to $10 million fee in “cosmetic” Johnson & Johnson settlement [Daniel Fisher, PoL]
- “Accused of Providing Blank Arrest Warrants to Police, Georgia Magistrate Resigns” [ABA Journal]
- Lester Brickman, Peter Schuck in new podcast on Brickman’s book Lawyer Barons [Federalist Society]
- “Wright and Ginsburg on Behavioral Law & Economics” [NW Law Review and SSRN via Adler]
- “17th injury claim in 12 years got Chicago cop her disability deal” [Sun-Times]
- “Injured while working for the Empire? Call Lando Calrissian.” Law firm ad parody [YouTube]
Property rights roundup
- “Property Rights Panel at the Cato Institute’s Constitution Day” [Ilya Somin] Related: “Sackett v. EPA and the Due Process Deficit in Environmental Law” [Jonathan Adler]
- Feds’ fishy forfeiture attack on Massachusetts scallopman [Ron Arnold, Examiner]
- California politicos seek crackdown on lenders’ supposed “retaliation” against municipalities considering seizing mortgages by eminent domain: “You Can’t Use Voluntary Action to Try to Stop Government Coercion” [Coyote; earlier here, here, here] Will Congress step in to shut down the grab? [Kevin Funnell]
- “The government of Honduras has signed a deal with private investors for the construction of three privately run cities with their own legal and tax systems.” [A Thousand Nations, Todd Zywicki, FedSoc Blog]
- A Philadelphia business owner decides to clean up and improve an adjacent, neglected city-owned lot, and soon has sad cause for regret [Philly Law Blog]
- Georgia claimant: “Hi, I own your land although I have no evidence of that” [Lowering the Bar, update]
- “Blight” condemnation could stymie hopes for historic preservation in Denver [Castle Coalition]
Torts roundup
- House Judiciary passes measure (FACT Act) promoting transparency of asbestos trusts, could preserve assets for honest claimants by curbing n-tuple dippers [Harold Kim/US Chamber, Ted Frank] “$48 million jackpot justice asbestos award for 86-year-old” [Frank]
- Canadian court: car crash caused chronic cough [Magraken]
- Push in Connecticut legislature to ease expert testimony threshold, thus enabling more med-mal suits [Zachary Janowski, Raising Hale]
- Georgia court: residents on notice of wild alligators, golf club not liable for elderly woman’s demise [Daily Report]
- “NYT is inconceivably shocked that NYC defends itself in lawsuits instead of blindly writing multimillion $ checks.” [@tedfrank]
- Arizona court declines Third Restatement’s invitation to gut duty prerequisite in tort law [David Oliver]
- Vintage insurance fraud: “The Slip-and-fall Queen” [Brendan Koerner via @petewarden]
- Relaxation of fault in auto cases: “Richard Nixon’s Torts Note” [Robinette, TortsProf] “Reforming the Reform: No-Fault Auto Insurance” [same]
“Woman chasing ex-husband loses slip-and-fall lawsuit”
Jonesboro, Ga.: the defense lawyer called it “a fun fact pattern” involving “quite a cast of characters,” while the plaintiff’s lawyer acknowledged taking the case to trial even while knowing “that there was a less than 10 percent chance of winning on liability. … I never turn down the chance to take a case to trial when there is a real injury involved, no matter how tough the liability picture.” Does that imply that he represents other clients whose injury isn’t as “real”? [Fulton County Daily Report]
By reader acclaim: cardiologist should have warned cop of sex spree
Covered it in a roundup a couple of weeks back, but as a reader favorite it may as well have its own post: “A jury has awarded a Georgia woman $3 million over her husband’s heart attack, finding that his doctor should have warned the Atlanta cop against strenuous activity like the three-way sex he was having at the time he died, WXIA-TV reports.” The deceased was not married to either of the other participants in the fatal motel-room encounter. [USA Today/Freep]