Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘libel slander and defamation’

Amanda Marcotte, as accurate as ever

Friend of Overlawyered Amber Taylor writes:

Pandagon:

I have my suspicions that when the Republicans talk up “tort reform” to stop “nuisance lawsuits”, they’re not exactly talking about stuff like this. [Short version: scientist posts negative reviews of a book on his blog, criticizing its new theory of developmental biology as having no basis in reality; the word “crackpot” was used. The author, a critic of “Darwinian orthodoxy,” sues.]

Right. That would be why the tort reform proponents at Overlawyered covered the story days before Marcotte got around to it. That coverage was even noted at the website Marcotte quoted. But why acknowledge facts when inaccurate smears are available?

Just so. Earlier Marcotte: Feb. 16, Feb. 2 and links therein.

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August 22 roundup

  • Criminal charges dropped against Oregon 13-year-olds over fanny-swatting in school corridors [CBSNews.com, Malkin, KGW.com and AP; earlier]

  • Elasticity of “medical error” concept: Medicare will stop paying hospitals for treatment of “reasonably preventable” injuries that happen in hospitals, such as patient falls — we all know those are preventable given enough duct tape [NCPA, Right Side of the Rainbow; and before assuming that bed sores invariably result from negligent care, read this](more: Turkewitz)

  • Yale University Press beats back libel suit in California court by Muslim charity over allegations in book scrutinizing terrorist group Hamas [Zincavage]

  • Law firms, including Philadelphia’s senatorially connected Kline & Specter, already advertising for clients following Mattel toy recall [Childs]

  • First class action against RIAA over its scattershot anticopying suit campaign [P2PNet]

  • Four Oklahoma inmates claim copyright to their own names, demand millions from warden for using those names without permission, then things really start getting wild [UK Telegraph and TechDirt via Coleman]

  • UCLA’s Lynn LoPucki, scourge of corporate bankruptcy bar, has another study out documenting soaring fees [WSJ Law Blog]

  • Man who knifed school headmaster to death is expected to win right to remain in Britain on grounds deporting him would violate his human rights [Telegraph]

  • Among targets of zero tolerance bans: jingle of ice cream trucks in NYC, screaming on Sacramento rollercoasters [ABCNews.com]

  • Does California antidiscrimination law require doctors to provide artificial insemination to lesbian client against religious scruples? [The Recorder]

  • Alabama tobacco farmers got $500,000 from national tobacco settlement, though fewer than 300 acres of tobacco are grown in Alabama [five years ago on Overlawyered]

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Blogger sued for book review

PZ Myers wrote two posts tearing to shreds Stuart Pivar’s book, LifeCode: The Theory of Biological Self Organization as factually inaccurate. Now he reports on Boing-Boing that Pivar is suing him. (Boing Boing says that Pivar is suing for assault, but this isn’t true: for whatever reason, the district court groups “assault, libel, and slander” in the same category when classifying complaints, and the complaint is just for libel.)

The complaint focuses on Myers’s language calling Pivar “a classic crackpot.” And we all know that the way to prove that one is not a classic crackpot is to sue a blogger for $15 million over a bad book review in a complaint that misspells “its” and the defendant’s name and brags about the plaintiff’s affiliation with Andy Warhol and Prince Charles. Pivar’s attorney is Michael J. Little of New York.

Here is the complaint for your perusal.

Update: Jim Lippard comments, and also has a copy of the complaint. Also: Scientific American notes that Pivar has been a plaintiff 25 times in New York state court; Wired Science also comments.

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Judge Murphy libel suit update

Via Rossmiller, more on Judge Murphy’s libel suit:

Though [Judge] Murphy won his case against the Herald, he has not emerged unscathed. The Commission on Judicial Conduct filed charges last month with the Supreme Judicial Court alleging that Murphy sent letters to the Herald that constitute “willful misconduct which brings the judicial office into disrepute.”

Murphy sent the letters to Purcell after the verdict, requesting a private meeting to discuss getting more money from the tabloid, according to the commission.

“You will bring to that meeting a cashiers check, payable to me, in the sum of $3,260,000,” wrote Murphy in a handwritten letter on Superior Court stationery. “No check no meeting. You will give me that check and I shall put it in my pocket.”

In another letter, Murphy wrote, “It would be a mistake, Pat, to show this letter to anyone other than the gentleman whose authorized signature will be affixed to the check in question. In fact, a BIG mistake.” A date has not yet been set for Murphy’s hearing on the misconduct charges.

Earlier this month, Governor Deval Patrick rejected an appeal by Murphy to retire early with a lucrative disability pension based on his contention that he has post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the defamation case.

Murphy, not satisfied with his $3.41 million collection from the Boston Herald, has sued the Herald’s insurance carrier for $6.8 million for alleged bad faith. (Shelley Murphy, “Judge seeks $6.8m from Herald’s insurer”, Boston Globe, Aug. 18). Earlier: Jul. 15, May 11, Dec. 23, 2005, etc.

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Imus in the Courtroom, Update

In April, Don Imus infamously called the Rutgers Unversity women’s basketball team “nappy-headed hos.” After a week of controversy, criticism, and grovelling apologies, he was fired from his job by CBS radio. Imus threatened a lawsuit, and yesterday he settled with CBS. That should have been the end of the story. But of course, if it were, then how would the poor trial lawyers feed their families? Now that Imus’s settlement is final, he has money to burn. So, just a few hours after the settlement was announced, the first Rutgers player rushed to the courthouse to file suit against Imus and the other deep pockets:

“Imus lost four months of employment and gained $20 million and a new platform. But what about these young women? How does Imus’ big payday affect their self-esteem?” said Vaughn’s lawyer Richard Ancowitz.

The suit, which also named CBS, MSNBC and Imus sidekick Bernard McGuirk, did not ask for a dollar amount. There was no immediate comment from the defendants.

“The kind of sexist and bigoted attack these young women and Kia in particular suffered demands more than lip service,” Ancowitz said. “She wants the court to recognize that Imus slandered her.”

I haven’t seen a copy of the complaint yet, but it’s hard to imagine that it is anything other than utterly frivolous. Imus’s comments might have been nasty and uncalled for, but calling someone a “nappy headed ho” is not defamatory unless it is interpreted as an actual accusation that the person is a prostitute. No reasonable person could interpret it that way. That’s without even getting to the issue of lack of actual damages.

Update: AP provides the money quote from the complaint, and unless there’s a lot more they failed to mention, it’s exactly as frivolous as I expected:

The Vaughn suit claims that the comments were made in the context of a news or sports report and therefore Imus had certain standards to abide by but ignored them. The suit reprints the script from the “Imus in the Morning” show on which the comments were made.

“The … false, defamatory, sexually denigrating and slanderous statements and comments against the women athletes of said basketball team were heard, believed and understood by millions of listeners … as factual pronouncements concerning the character, chastity and reputation of the plaintiff,” the lawsuit says.

I’d tell you what I think of a lawyer that actually tries to make such a claim with a straight face, but I’m afraid he’d sue me for challenging his character, chastity, and reputation.

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Criticizing Saudi financiers

Whether or not you reside in the U.K., the range of reading material available to you regarding the tangled banking relationships of the Middle East is being shaped and constrained by the London libel courts. (Gary Shapiro, “Libel Suit Leads to Destruction of Books”, New York Sun, Aug. 2; Mark Steyn, “The vanishing jihad exposés”, syndicated/Orange County Register, Aug. 5; earlier here and here).

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What took so long?

I was wondering when former class members represented by Milberg Weiss would take a speculative flyer to convince a court that Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b) does not preclude relief and sue the law firm over its kickback scandal and Peter Lattman reports that that has happened. Alas for schadenfreude, I am utterly unpersuaded by the complaint, which makes no attempt to jump that procedural hurdle: Fed. R. Civ. Proc. 60(b) prohibits reopening even judgments procured by fraud more than a year after they close, and I’m unaware of courts permitting end-arounds of the rule through collateral lawsuits. But perhaps the plaintiffs have an undisclosed legal trick up their sleeve for when the motion to dismiss comes.

Lattman’s blog posts on Milberg Weiss always attract an interesting flood of anonymous comments defending the firm, and this one is no different: one such comment suggests, perhaps libelously, that the suing law firm has its own history of kickbacks.

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July 31 roundup

  • Can’t possibly be true: Tampa man sentenced to 25 years for possession of pills for which he had a legal prescription [Balko, Hit and Run]

  • Plaintiff’s lawyers “viewed [Sen. Fred Thompson] as someone we could work with” and gave to his campaigns, but they can’t be pleased by his kind words for Texas malpractice-suit curbs [Washington Post, Lattman; disclaimer]

  • Pace U. student arrested on hate crime charges after desecrating Koran stolen from college [Newsday; Volokh, more; Hitchens]

  • Little-used Rhode Island law allows married person to act as spouse’s attorney, which certainly has brought complications to the divorce of Daniel and Denise Chaput from Pawtucket [Providence Journal]

  • Lott v. Levitt defamation suit kinda-sorta settles, it looks like [Adler @ Volokh]

  • Trial lawyer Mikal Watts not bowling ’em over yet in expected challenge to Texas Sen. Cornyn [Rothenberg, Roll Call, sub-only via Lopez @ NRO]

  • Frankly collusive: after Minnesota car crash, parents arrange to have their injured son sue them for negligence [OnPoint News]

  • Canadian bar hot and bothered over Maclean’s cover story slamming profession’s ethics [Macleans blog]

  • Five Democratic candidates (Clinton, Obama, Edwards, Biden, Richardson) auditioned at the trial lawyers’ convention earlier this month in Chicago [NYSun]

  • Donald Boudreaux’s theory as to why Prohibition ended when it did [Pittsburgh Trib-Rev via Murray @ NRO]

  • Speaker of Alaska house discusses recent strengthening of that state’s longstanding loser-pays law [new at Point of Law]

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A Climate of Greed Never Changes

Among the nightmare scenarios of global warming, there’s one only now coming into view – and it’s definitely manmade: As predictable as the rising seas, we can expect a flood of class-action lawsuits trying to cash in on the issue.

Climate change promises to be “a lucrative new field” for the tort bar reports the Newark Star-Ledger. A Rutgers law professor predicts that global warming will make for “one of the biggest legal practices in the next 20 years.” (The Star-Ledger, 7/8/07)

The opinion is shared by the president of the World Resources Institute: “Companies that generate significant carbon emissions,” he warns, “face the threat of lawsuits similar to those common in the tobacco, pharmaceutical and asbestos industries.” (The Toronto Star, 4/29/07)

And if you thought asbestos and tobacco litigation were profitable, try to imagine all the “mass tort” cases that global warming will inspire. Energy companies, coal mines, any firm at all that generates carbon dioxide – these industries and many more can expect to find themselves accused of causing climate change.

Some law firms already have “climate-change groups” studying the possibilities. Another hint of things to come was a class action suit was filed on behalf of Mississippi residents against oil and coal companies after Hurricane Katrina – arguing that company emissions caused the climate change that caused the hurricane. (Star-Ledger, 7/8/07).

In Alaska, the Inuits claim that their island is sinking because of global warming. The aggrieved islanders haven’t decided who to sue yet – but they’ve got a Houston trial lawyer working on it. (Star-Ledger, 7/8/07)

All of which proves nothing at all about the actual causes or dangers of global warming. It’s just more evidence of a climate of greed and opportunism in the trial bar. And that’s one climate that never changes.

Steve Hantler

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