- Chief exec of 1-800-ATTORNEY ended up needing one himself, pleading guilty to securities fraud charge [NYLJ, Lattman]
- Cost of providing liability insurance for Pennsylvania prison doctor greatly exceeds his pay [Shamokin, Pa. News-Item, Dr. Robert Hynick, Northumberland County Prison]
- “Scottish sociopaths sipping their single malt Glenlivet” — yep, Jack Thompson is suing Grand Theft Auto developers again [GameSpot]
- Anna Nicole Smith fee-ing frenzy: $4,265 for Bahamas cellphone roaming part of “fair and reasonable” lawyer’s bill [TMZ]
- Working in a prosecutors’ office? More about nailing ’em than making sure justice was done [Dean Barnett via MedPundit]
- Don’t forget imprisoned Egyptian blogger Abdelkareem Nabil Soliman [Palmer @ NRO, Doherty @ Reason]
- “Pretexting” to fish out adversaries’ secrets: yes, lawyers do it too, now that you mention it [Elefant]
- Which is more dangerous to kids, a house with a swimming pool or a house with a gun? Think carefully before answering [Stossel]
- For shame: Supreme Court of Canada gives go-ahead for British Columbia’s retroactive tobacco recoupment suit [Ottawa Citizen, CBC, Bader; earlier]
- Anti-biotech activists score, farmers squirm as judge halts sale of Roundup Ready alfalfa [Farmer-Stockman, Feedstuffs, Truth about Trade & Technology](more: Coyote)
- Soap opera actor sues after ABC writes his character out of the script [five years ago on Overlawyered]
Posts Tagged ‘roundups’
Roundup – April 9
- Dontdatehimgirl.com lawsuit suffers another setback. A court ruled today that the Pittsburgh-based lawyer-plaintiff can’t sue the Florida-based website in Pennsylvania. (Howard Bashman). The suit against the website is frivolous in any case; it is well-established that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act immunizes the website. (The suit against the posters, on the other hand, is a legitimate defamation claim.) Previously covered on Overlawyered: Jul. 2006, Jan. 2007.
- In Easton, Pennsylvania, a police officer accidentally shoots and kills another police officer after cleaning his gun; now the widow is filing a $20 million wrongful death lawsuit against the city, the mayor, city administrator, the police chief, the shooter, the head of the SWAT team of which the players were both members, a fellow officer who was standing nearby, and the retired former head of the SWAT team. I’m sure one of them has the money.
- Philadelphia city councilwoman — and some tourism officials — wants to require licensing of city tour guides, including history tests, so that they don’t provide inaccurate history to tourists.
- In 1999, a 19-year old college student named Richard Beers was killed while working construction over the summer. He had stopped the backhoe he was using on a hill, left the motor running, and walked behind it. It rolled down and ran him over. So his family blamed… Caterpillar, which had manufactured the backhoe, and sued for $25 million plus punitive damages. Last week, an Ohio jury found Caterpillar not liable — and it only took eight years (six years after the suit was filed) to resolve the matter.
April 8 roundup
- Coca-Cola’s sense of humor doesn’t extend to other artists’ parodies; shuts down movie release over single dream sequence showing Jesus drinking Coke. [Variety via BLT]
- Kevin MD on defensive medicine.
- Slip & fall case: “it would be unreasonable to expect the defendants to constantly clean the floors of their buses” during a snowstorm [McKenzie v. County of Westchester; Turkewitz]
- TV news and dumb lawsuit ideas series (earlier: Sep. 18), American Idol edition: Fox v. Vote for the Worst? [Above the Law]
- Shades of Myspace litigation (Feb. 15 and links therein): phone-chat dating service sued over rape of teenager [On Point]
- Updating Nov. 3 entry: Ninth Circuit vacates and will en banc review ludicrous Reinhardt decision in Smith v. Baldwin [Legal Pad]
Roundup
Follow-ups to some stories I’ve posted in the last few weeks:
- Last month we reported on the lawsuit against Cory Lidle, alleging that he piloted his plane into someone’s apartment building in the crash which killed him last October. Now Lidle’s widow is suing MetLife, baseball’s insurer, for denying her payment under its accidental death benefit coverage. The policy had an exclusion for accidents in which players are piloting airplanes; Lidle’s widow is denying that Lidle was the pilot. In case you’re counting, that’s at least three lawsuits over this accident, despite the fact that the NTSB still hasn’t made any final determinations about the crash. (And I assume that we’ll see more from other residents of the apartment building.)
- In February we discussed a ruling in the lawsuit against New York City over the Staten Island Ferry crash; at the time, the lawyers for the plaintiffs convinced a judge not to cap the damages the plaintiffs could recover from the city. The lead attorneys were so proud of their work that they felt they deserved a bonus; now they’re asking the court to cut other law firms’ fees so they can receive it. And they’re bickering over the request:
“They didn’t do anything to help us,” said Michael H. Bush of the New Dorp firm of Chelli & Bush. “They never updated us with anything. We never got a phone call. We never got e-mails. We settled all of our cases prior to the motion being settled, and they just did nothing to help.”
“They’re motivated by their own interests,” he continued. “They’re getting the publicity and they have their own million-dollar cases, too.”
And
Chelli & Bush didn’t attend any of “15 meetings” with the firms involved, nor did they show up for any of the court dates during the trial, Bisignano contended.
“They contributed nothing, and yet they claim there was no benefit to them,” Bisignano said. “No honorable law firm would deny our right to be compensated for the services we performed that benefited every law firm and every complainant in this case.”
Children, play nice.
- Findlaw columnist Julie Hilden discussing Carol Burnett’s chances in suing Family Guy.
April 4 roundup
All Point of Law edition:
- I discuss Professor Charles Silver’s latest foray on Bizarro-Overlawyered. Silver and his coauthors are doing legitimate empirical work, but I don’t understand why he keeps making public statements that the published versions of his papers can’t support, and I especially don’t understand why he does that at the same time he’s criticizing the entire reform movement for any given politician’s oversimplified sound-bite. [Point of Law]
- New Jersey Supreme Court limits benefits of forum shopping, with potentially fatal implications for pending $27 billion class action against Merck. [Point of Law; Beck/Herrmann]
- The PRI study’s $865B figure isn’t perfect, as I earlier noted in a post since interpreted to mean that I “loved it.” [Point of Law; Turkewitz]
- Plaintiffs’ bar attempts to smear next Wisconsin Supreme Court justice Annette Ziegler fail. [WSAW; Point of Law]
- Tax breaks for the plaintiffs’ bar. [Day on Torts; Point of Law]
- Don’t tell David Behar about this paper; it mentions “privity.” [Point of Law]
March 26 roundup
- More fen-phen scandals: Possible smoking-gun email in Kentucky case (see Walter’s post today) came from Chesley firm computer; Vicksburg lawyer first attorney convicted in Mississippi fen-phen scam. [Courier-Journal via Lattman; Clarion-Ledger (h/t S.B.)] (Updated with correct Courier-Journal link.)
- Allegheny College found not liable by jury for student’s suicide; school raised issue of student privacy concerns. Earlier on OL: May 30; Dec. 7, 2004. [WSJ]
- Update on the tempered glass versus laminated issue earlier discussed in Overlawyered (Feb. 15, 2006; May 16, 2005; May 13, 2005, etc.) [LA Times]
- Massachusetts court rejects quack sudden acceleration theory. (See also Dec. 20, Aug. 7, etc.) [Prince]
- California bill would bar carpenters from school campuses. [Overcriminalized]
- New book: Antitrust Consent Decrees in Theory and Practice [Richard Epstein @ AEI]
- To be fair, I went to school with “young Mr Sussman, the boyish charmer”, and I don’t know how to pronounce “calumnies” either—it’s one of those words I’ve only seen written, and never heard spoken [Steyn; MSNBC]
March 23 roundup
- French court acquits satirical weekly that printed Mohammed cartoons (see Feb. 7) [DW]
- Subprime panic: “Does no one remember what it was like to get a mortgage before they were so easily securitized?” [Coyote channeling Tabarrok, Kirkendall and our own Ted]
- Food safety regulators have their eye on Amish bakers at farmers’ markets [AP/Ledger-Enquirer]
- Attorney Harpreet Singh Brar, notorious for mass filings against small business (Jun. 4, 2006, etc.), ordered “inactive” by California bar [Calif. Wage and Hour Law]
- “The litigation was much thicker than the music”, hence the downfall of 60s girl-group The Shangri-Las (Remember, Leader of the Pack) [NY mag, Althouse]
- Our comments section hits the big time [Chicago-Sun Times quotes Richard Nieporent on South Park]
- Special-needs teen brutally murders fellow student in affluent Boston suburb; did school officials keen on “mainstreaming” him downplay signs of trouble? [Globe, more, AP]
- New Mexico is 49th state to ban cockfighting, sport beloved of early American presidents [Walker @ Reason, Zincavage]
- Rudy Giuliani still vividly remembers defending NYC hospital lawsuits [Point of Law]
- “[Plaintiff husband] denied that he had been abducted by aliens, but stated that his [plaintiff] wife had been” [Cernovich]
- Forced marriage: don’t assume it only happens a world away [Dalrymple, Spectator]
- Lawyers stage sham trial aimed at inculpating third party [five years ago on Overlawyered]
March 19 roundup
- More ADA filing mills: “Fuller, Fuller and Associates was once sanctioned when their client, who was alleged to be quadriplegic, walked into his own deposition.” [Childs @ MassTort]
- Professional expert witnesses as a publicly traded multimillion dollar industry. [WSJ]
- No accommodation needed for LSAT taker claiming ADHD. [Legal Intelligencer]
- Homeowner’s gripe on web draws lawsuit from contractor. [WaPo]
- Lawsuits of the future: Muslim cashier refuses to ring up bacon (if only I had thought of that when I was in high school) [Minn. Star-Tribune]
- Neighbors feud over driveway: “three civil lawsuits, a physical altercation, a criminal indictment, [and] a court hearing over a videotape” [St. Pete. Times]
- “Warning: Lawsuits Hazardous To Financial Health” [Forbes.com]
- Y’know, if a man wrote a ludicrous essay to the effect that every professional women has a Lisa Nowak inside of them on the verge of erupting, that’d be the last thing he ever wrote. [Legal Times]
March 14 roundup
- We’re among the “favorite recent discoveries” of blogging technology pioneer Dave Winer (Scripting News); his own recent brush with legal unpleasantness may have primed him for the subject (Update: and more);
- ER doc: “Her vocabulary was laced with too much plaintiffese” [Time mag via KevinMD]
- Is Spain really “overlawyered”, and if so, compared with what? [The Recorder]
- Debate kicks off between lawprofs David Wagner and Michael Krauss over Supreme Court’s recent Williams decision on punitive damages [Point of Law]
- A five year old? Doing motocross? And his parents are blaming the park? [Charlotte Observer]
- Lawyers leaking court documents to reporters from improper motives? Imagine that [Wasserman/Miami Herald]
- EU consumer law might ban sock-puppet blogs [Slashdot]
- Local paper prints full trial transcript in case of Connecticut teacher Julie Amero (Jan. 20, Feb. 15), convicted after her computer caught smutware bug [Norwich (Ct.) Bulletin via Pattis]
- Swedish woman sued by lawyer-neighbor for smoking in her own garden [UPI]
- American conservatism dead set against modernity, individual liberty, secularism? Let’s hope not [Sullivan blasts D’Souza @ New Republic]
- Car dealers didn’t warn of exhaust and oil fumes, so enterprising California lawyer wants $7500 from each of them, mostly payable to, well, guess. [Five years ago on Overlawyered]
March 13 roundup
- $47.5 million verdict in Vioxx retrial. [Point of Law]
- D.C. Circuit has big Second Amendment opinion striking down DC gun ban; Brady Center inconsistent about its view of democracy versus the constitution. [Bader; NRO symposium; 18 posts at Volokh]
- Alien Tort Statute: legal imperialism? [Point of Law]
- Michigan Justice Elizabeth Weaver continues to lose it [ATL; People v. Parsons]
- Update in Navarro $217 million verdict: Defendant doctors in lawsuit now suing their own attorneys [St. Pete Times (h/t F.R.)]
- “What did you say about my kiwi?” bill in California [Legal Pad]
- Yeah, that will resolve the housing crisis: group intervenes to protest plan for new apartment complex under fair housing laws because “only” 16 units out of 299 have three bedrooms. [Boston Globe (h/t A.I.)]
- Norm-shifting in the post-MySpace age. [Barnett @ Volokh v. Taylor]