- Compensation awards to soldiers in the UK: £161,000 for losing leg and arm, but £186,896 for sex harassment? [Telegraph]
- Judge in banana pesticide fraud case says threats have been made against her and against witnesses [AP, L.A. Times]
- Teacher plans to sue religious school that fired her for having premarital sex [Orlando Sentinel]
- Now sprung from hoosegow, class-actioneer Lerach on progressive lecture circuit and “living in luxury” [Stoll, Carter Wood at PoL and ShopFloor (Campaign for America’s Future conference), San Diego Reader via Pero]
- Connecticut law banning “racial ridicule” has palpable constitutional problems, you’d think, but has resulted in many prosecutions and some convictions [Volokh, Gideon]
- Gone with the readers: newsmagazines, metro newspapers facing fewer libel suits [NY Observer] More: Lyrissa Lidsky, Prawfs.
- Having Connecticut press comfortably in his pocket helped Blumenthal turn the tables against NY Times [Stein/HuffPo] Must not extend to the New Britain Herald News, though;
- Interview with editor Brian Anderson of City Journal [Friedersdorf, Atlantic] I well remember being there as part of the first issue twenty years ago.
Posts Tagged ‘Richard Blumenthal’
WSJ: “The other Blumenthal scandal”
An editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal (paywall) quotes me on the subject:
The AG has challenged the verdict, but the Kolb case [Gina Kolb, formerly Gina Malapanis] fits a pattern that the Cato Institute’s Walter Olson calls “bullying, legally ill-founded ventures into litigation.” From his leading role in the tobacco lawsuits of the 1990s to trying to repossess bonuses to AIG executives, Mr. Blumenthal has cultivated a reputation as the Eliot Spitzer of Connecticut.
For more on some of the cases that have brought Blumenthal his reputation as a bully and grandstander, start here, here, and here. And William Saletan at Slate is out with the piece I wish I’d written comparing Blumenthal’s repeated misstatements on his service record with the sorts of misrepresentations for which he’s gone after marketers and other businesses over the years.
For some light on how Blumenthal happened to obtain a photo opportunity in a VFW hall to denounce his critics, check out this post by Ronald Winter.
May 18 roundup
- Upside-down logic of Supreme Court’s Comstock, Graham cases: imprison youthful offenders for life only if they haven’t had protections of formal trial [Popehat, Pilon, Shapiro, Volokh, Pattis] Kennedy returns to use of international “consensus” as guide in constitutional interpretation [Shapiro, Bader]
- Connecticut AG Richard Blumenthal, noted scourge of misleading ad promotion (as in the Sony ghost blurber case), falsely claimed Vietnam service [Raymond Hernandez, NY Times] Cf. the curious “Harvard swim captain” claims investigated by Chris Fountain. More: AllahPundit.
- Louisiana politico Theriot: my suit against online critics is meant not to shut anyone up but to pick up useful tips on governance [Times-Picayune, Jefferson Report, Volokh, NY Times]
- South Carolina juries not allowed to hear evidence about seat belt use in car crashes [Pero]
- More links on “Lady KaGa” Supreme Court nomination [Cato at Liberty, Ted at PoL]
- Risk of “minor” injuries may result in end to Naval Academy tradition of stunt climb [John J. Miller, NRO]
- “Art of the Steal,” documentary on epic battle over donor intent in case of suburban Philadelphia Barnes collection [Kauffmann/TNR, L.A. Times, CultureGrrl/ArtsJournal]
- “Why Good Intentions are Often Not Enough: The Potential for Ethical Blindness in Legal Decision-Making” [Kath Hall (Australian National University), SSRN via Andrew Perlman, Legal Ethics Forum]
May 5 roundup
- Jury rules for Disney in case of man who said Tower of Terror theme park ride caused him to have stroke [Orlando Sentinel]
- The most dangerous place on earth is getting caught between Dick Blumenthal and a television camera.” Craigslist snipes back against demagogic Connecticut AG [Craigslist blog, Antle/American Spectator, earlier]
- U.K.: prisoner falls from bunk bed, wins £4.7m [Times Online]
- New York Times jealously guards its own sources’ right to speak with anonymity, doesn’t feel quite that way about others’ [Stoll]
- SUNY Buffalo mathematician/HuffPo blogger: why’d they let that awful Eugene Volokh into the country? [Volokh vs. Jonathan David Farley, Greenfield, background]
- College journalist won’t face criminal trespass charges after all in showdown over photographing escaped cows [Romenesko and update]
- Regulating “the American palate” — by what authority? [Healy, Examiner] More links on FDA salt regulation [Compton/CEI, ShopFloor (on CSPI), earlier here, here, etc.]
- Why one putative beneficiary decided not to file $2 claim after settlement of AT&T class action [Chidem Kurdas, Christian Science Monitor]
Richard Blumenthal vs. Craigslist
The “grandstanding” Connecticut attorney general, notes Mike Masnick at TechDirt, is now publicly decrying Craigslist for turning a profit from sex ads. Why is it turning a profit? Well, the ads used to be free, but Craigslist started charging fees after Blumenthal himself (with fellow AGs) demanded that it do so, the idea being that a credit card trail would scare off some illegal users and make it easier for police to crack down on others.
Blumenthal, a longstanding bete noire of this site, is now running for the U.S. Senate seat held by the departing Chris Dodd. More: New York Times on his Senate bid (rough start, “Martha Coakley in pants”).
March 4 roundup
- “Toyota Recall: Scandal, Media Circus, and Stupid Drivers” [Dushane, Car & Driver via Prof. Bainbridge] Some parallels with Audi sudden-acceleration panic [Michael Fumento, who also questions recent numbers] More: Mike Allen, Popular Mechanics via Instapundit (“why widespread theories about electrical throttle problems and electromagnetic interference are misguided”); and Fumento on braking capacity.
- Overly hot sandwich caused $2 million worth of damages, he says, though it’s true he didn’t seek immediate medical attention [Lowering the Bar, earlier]
- Rick Esenberg on judicial recusal wars in Wisconsin and nationally [Point of Law first and second posts] In Circle of Greed, lawyer/felon Lerach flings recusal issue against late father of Carly Fiorina [Gerstein, Politico; our earlier Lerach coverage]
- And more: Notwithstanding earlier denials, Lerach did lobby President Clinton to veto securities litigation reform act [Gerstein, Politico]
- Claim by Connecticut AG and Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal: lawsuits he files “actually create jobs” [Wood, PoL]
- Setback for prolific patent litigant Bender [Zura via Joe Mullin, related]
- Following complaints by traditional video store competitors, prosecutor threatens criminal charges unless DVD rental kiosks remove R- and even PG-rated films [Indianapolis Star via Indiana Law Blog]
- Lawyers send clients to chiropractor, he sends clients to lawyers, circle of life continues [Louisville Courier-Journal via Legal Blog Watch]
Connecticut jury: Blumenthal wrongly ruined business
At Point of Law I’ve got a post up about a significant embarrassment — $18 million worth — for veteran Connecticut Attorney General (and now Senate candidate) Richard Blumenthal.
Richard Blumenthal: guns, tobacco, and grandstanding AGs
I was a guest this morning on Ray Dunaway’s show on WTIC 1080 (Hartford) to discuss Democrat Richard Blumenthal’s bid to replace Chris Dodd in the U.S. Senate. I’ve been covering the Connecticut attorney general’s legal record for years here at Overlawyered as well as at my other site, Point of Law. For details on his bullying, legally ill-founded ventures into litigation against gun makers and dealers, check here, here, here, here, etc., while for the aromatic tobacco-fee angles, you can start here and here. For the time he sued his own state client, see this 2002 post (& welcome Instapundit, New York Post readers).
Dodd Senate vacancy
Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, a perennial bete noire around here, is considered likely to announce for the seat.
P.S. More on Blumenthal’s record here, and welcome Professor Bainbridge readers.
New at Point of Law
Stories you may be missing if you’re not following our sister site:
- Administration now seeks to take credit for med-mal reform as part of health care plan. How believably? (related here, here, here, here, etc.)
- Also related, if less closely: health care bill packed with goodies for labor;
- Trial lawyers continue push in Congress to restore minimally demanding notice pleading standard by overturning Supreme Court’s Iqbal, Twombly decisions;
- Imprisoned exec of Union Bank of Switzerland wants billions as whistleblowing bounty for assisting federal tax investigators;
- “Right and Left Join Forces on Criminal Justice” — the NYT coverage;
- “New Connecticut Law Tries to Trip Up ‘Runners’ and the Lawyers Who Hire Them”; Connecticut AG Blumenthal to push mandatory hospital error disclosure;
- Third-party litigation finance is getting more controversial;
- “The ethics counsel to the New York state senate told senators to hand-deliver ethics filings, rather than mailing them, to avoid coverage under the federal mail fraud statute.”
- More on public pension funds, securities class-action lawyers, and campaign contributions.