Posts Tagged ‘Jim Hood’

Some election results

* As expected, Democrats took over both houses in the Virginia legislature, sweeping the D.C. and Richmond suburbs where they successfully nationalized the issues. Virginia has been a badly gerrymandered state, which figured as an issue in the campaign. Now that they are fully in charge of the process, Virginia Democrats will need to decide whether they actually believe in moving toward neutral and impartial redistricting methods that take the power of line-drawing out of the hands of interested parties.

* New York City voters overwhelmingly approved a proposal to adopt ranked choice voting (RCV) in primary and some other elections. While I know this isn’t a universally shared view, I see a lot of merit in ranked choice voting and look forward to seeing more large jurisdictions experiment with it.

* Jim Hood, whose doings as Mississippi Attorney General have long furnished grist for this blog, looks to have fallen short in his bid for Mississippi governor.

* The “crime victims’ rights” package known as Marsy’s Law was on the Pennsylvania ballot. My piece on why it’s a really, really bad idea.

Filed under: Jim Hood, Mississippi, NYC, Pennsylvania, redistricting reform, Virginia

Medical roundup

Whether or not California’s 1975 MICRA law limiting medical liability serves as a model for anything national, its results merit study by other states [H. Thomas Watson, Robert H. Wright, and S. Thomas Todd, WLF]
No, Kaiser Health News and Scientific American, a 1-in-3 rate of post-marketing drug safety alerts does not prove FDA too lax [“Scott Alexander,” Slate Star Codex]
Jim Hood Watch: “Mississippi AG, with the help of outside attorneys, sues pharma companies over allegedly unapproved drugs” [Jessica Karmasek, Legal Newsline]
When deconstruction met evidence-based medicine and denunciations of “microfascism” ensued [Dave Holmes et al., International Journal of Evidence-Based Healthcare, 2006 via Nicholas Christakis]
Sen. Joe Manchin’s “approve one opioid, yank another from market” bill to tie FDA hands is a bad idea [Jeffrey Singer, Huffington Post]
Death by a thousand clicks: what Boston doctors can’t stand about electronic medical records [John Levinson, Bruce Price and Vikas Saini, WBUR]

Filed under: FDA, Jim Hood, medical, medical malpractice, MICRA, pharmaceuticals

February 15 roundup

Federal judge Wolf mulls appointing special master to investigate possible fee fraud in class action against State Street Bank [Boston Globe]
Two lawyers start fighting on an airplane over a shared armrest, and it makes the papers [New York Post]
Philly proposes mandatory sensitivity training for owners, employees of 11 gay bars [Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations report via Heat Street]
Finally, some constraints on Mississippi Attorney General and longtime Overlawyered favorite Jim Hood? [Mississippi Business]
One view of emergent controversy: “The Case Against National Injunctions, No Matter Who Is President” [Samuel Bray, LawFare, more from same author]
“Court To Review Target’s $10M Customer Data Breach Settlement” [Consumerist; Minneapolis Star-Tribune; Ted Frank’s Center for Class Action Fairness is objecting]
In or near Kansas? I’m speaking next week in Topeka at a Washburn University School of Law conference on the future of employment law [Feb. 23, details]

Filed under: aviation, class action settlements, Jim Hood, Kansas, Philadelphia, procedure, restaurants, sexual orientation

Police and prosecution roundup

Mississippi AG Jim Hood, a longtime Overlawyered fave, finds way to snipe at opposing death penalty counsel [Radley Balko]
Police use forced catheterization to obtain urine samples from unwilling suspects. A constitutional issue? [Argus-Leader, South Dakota]
“Why Gary Johnson Opposes Hate-Crime Laws (and You Should Too)” [Elizabeth Nolan Brown]
Yes, the Baltimore aerial surveillance program should raise concerns [Matthew Feeney, Cato]
“The Citizen as ATM: A small Missouri city has become a legal testing ground for ticketing practices and court reform” [Carla Main, City Journal]
New Mexico, a leader on asset forfeiture reform, should now tackle mens rea reform [Paul Gessing]

Filed under: Baltimore, Fourth Amendment, hate crimes, Jim Hood, mens rea, Missouri, New Mexico, petty fines and fees, surveillance

July 27 roundup

It’s against the law to run a puppet show in a window, and other NYC laws that may have outlived their purpose [Dean Balsamini, New York Post]
L’Etat, c’est Maura Healey: Massachusetts Attorney General unilaterally rewrites state’s laws to ban more guns [Charles Cooke, National Review]
Appeal to Sen. Grassley: please don’t give up on Flake-Gardner-Lee venue proposal to curtail patent forum shopping [Electronic Frontier Foundation, Elliot Harmon]
Oil spill claims fraud trial: administrator Ken Feinberg raised eyebrows at news that Mikal Watts “was handling claims from 41,000 fishermen.” [Associated Press, earlier]
By 70-30 margin, voters in Arizona override court ruling that state constitution forbids reduction in not-yet-earned public-employee pension benefits [Sasha Volokh]
Google, Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood appear to have settled their bitter conflict [ArsTechnica, earlier]

Filed under: Arizona, attorneys general, Eastern District of Texas, forum shopping, Google, guns, Jim Hood, Mikal Watts, NYC, public employment

Mike Moore’s Mississippi multitasking

Overlooked tidbit from last month on the doings of former Mississippi attorney general Michael Moore, famed for his role in the great tobacco caper, who’s tight with longtime Mississippi AG and Overlawyered favorite Jim Hood [Jacob Gershman, WSJ Law Blog]:

In February, Google released discovery documents that the company said showed that the DCA [the Hollywood-linked “Digital Citizens Alliance”] paid former Mississippi attorney general Mike Moore’s law firm $180,000 for consulting services “at the very same time [Mike Moore Law Firm] was officially deputized to lead the Attorney General’s so-called investigation of Google.”

See also this 2014 post by Jay Caruso at Pocket Full of Liberty. More on Jim Hood’s role as a cat’s paw for Hollywood against Google here, here, here, and here. More on Hood and Moore here, etc.

Filed under: attorneys general, Google, Jim Hood

From the unsealed Mississippi allegations on AG-cozy law firms

We took note last month that a court was unsealing the allegations of a since-settled lawsuit alleging quid pro quo payments at a prominent class-action firm that has represented the state of Mississippi. Now Alan Lange at YallPolitics has more details. “I still maintain that if this case involved any other state officeholder other than Jim Hood that there would be above the fold headlines for days on end.”

Meanwhile, the Fifth Circuit has overturned a procedural win by Google that had halted an investigation by Mississippi AG Jim Hood into Google business practices in which Hood has more or less openly acted as the cat’s paw of Hollywood studios: “in some cases demand letters that came from Hood’s office were actually written by MPAA lawyers.” Google will still have the right to challenge the investigation at a later stage. [Joe Mullin/ArsTechnica, earlier]

Filed under: Google, Jim Hood, Mississippi, movies film and videos

Court unseals suit charging kickbacks in Mississippi state legal work

“A federal appeals court in New York has ordered a lawsuit by a former attorney with Bernstein Litowitz unsealed, saying the public has the right to see allegations the prominent class-action firm paid an attorney with connections to the Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood’s office more than $100,000 to help secure work with the state.” [Daniel Fisher/Forbes] “When he had protested the unnecessary project given to [assistant attorney general DeShun] Martin’s wife, [Bruce] Bernstein says he was told by a fellow partner, ‘Do you ever want us to work with Mississippi again?'” [John O’Brien/Legal NewsLine] The allegations in the lawsuit, which was later settled, were never tested in court and the law firm denies wrongdoing, saying the suit had made “sensational, unfounded accusations.” [Alison Frankel/Reuters]

Filed under: attorneys general, Jim Hood, Mississippi

Police and prosecution roundup

Mark your calendar: December 1 Cato hosts a policing conference in Washington, D.C.;
“Note: DOJ thinks flying from Chicago to Los Angeles is suspicious.” Well, no wonder they did a forfeiture then! [@bradheath]
Mississippi voters on Tuesday returned longtime Attorney General Jim Hood to office by 56-44 margin [Radley Balko; Jackson Clarion-Ledger; earlier Balko on Hood’s spotted record as prosecutor]
“No! Mine is more unconstitutional!” Police and council in Charlotte, N.C. mull “whether to create ‘public safety zones,’ city areas where people with past arrests would be prohibited from entering.”‘ [Charlotte Observer]
Harvard lawprof Jeannie Suk on the St. Paul’s sexual assault case and the rapidly changing definition of rape [Jeannie Suk, New Yorker]
Prison “pay to stay” charges can far exceed any reasonable ability to pay, and few outside the world of ex-offenders “even know it’s happening” [Scott Greenfield]
“Was it a turf war gone mad? Or a botched police response?” [Nathaniel Penn, GQ, on the Waco biker gang shoot-out, earlier here, here, here]

Filed under: forfeiture, Jim Hood, North Carolina, police, prisoners, sexual assault

Liability roundup

Mechanics of high-volume injury litigation: “A disgruntled former law firm employee spills secrets on a mass tort factory” [Paul Barrett, Business Week] More on chasing clients: new Chamber Institute for Legal Reform research finds 23 of top 25 Google key words linking ads to user searches are for personal injury law firms; TV advertising by lawyer is projected to reach $892 million in 2015, up 68% from 2008. Yet more: Daniel Fisher/Forbes (“San Antonio car wreck attorney” goes for $670 per click on Google), Tampa Bay Times (“Highly groomed attorney duo …shown moving in slow motion on courthouse steps to a hard rock beat”);
Flurry of other new papers by U.S. Chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform, many connected with its annual Legal Reform Summit, include one on how the trial bar has been successful at lobbying the Obama administration. Plus a new edition of “101 Ways to Improve State Legal Systems”;
In speech, Rudolph Giuliani recalls tort-law challenges he faced as NYC mayor [Corpus Christi Caller-Times]
A quarter century later, trial lawyers’ initiative to take revenge against insurer adversaries continues to harm California insurance customers [Ian Adams, “The troublesome legacy of Prop 103,” R Street Institute, paper in PDF, summary]
A story we’ve covered before: Mississippi attorney general Jim Hood and the flow of funds from and to private lawyers he hires [Steve Wilson/Mississippi Watchdog, quotes me]
Most New York counties have passed resolutions calling for reform of the state’s unique scaffold law [Lawsuit Reform Alliance of New York]
You’d think indictment of Mikal Watts, Texas law major-leaguer with friends in high D.C. places, would be playing bigger in the press [Tim Carney]

Filed under: California, chasing clients, insurance, Jim Hood, Mikal Watts, Rudolph Giuliani