- Souter’s middle-of-the-road views on litigation didn’t fit conventional patterns [Copland, PoL]
- Champerty and maintenance watch: new fund invests in commercial litigation for a share of the payouts [Fortune mag via Zywicki]
- Report: distributor of “Religulous” film “has served a written settlement proposal” to preacher depicted onscreen [OnPoint News, earlier]
- U.K.: “Homeowner Suit May Stop Village Cricket” [Telegraph via Never Yet Melted]
- Overlawyered sparks a discussion across usual lines on EMTALA, the federal law on emergency medicine [Kennerly]
- Federal Circuit: think twice before proceeding with frivolous appeals [David Bennett, Law.com]
- Father-son duo who have served as key expert witnesses in litigation alleging autism-vaccine link push risky and questionable therapy for the condition [Chicago Tribune and second article and PDF graphic via Orac; Kathleen Seidel]. Waste and harm that go on in the name of treating autism should give pause to many sides in health care debate [Tyler Cowen]
- One “deadbeat dad’s” story [Amy Alkon]. Forthcoming Lifetime reality show sounds like it will showcase harassment of fathers in child support arrears [Fathers and Families via Instapundit]
Posts Tagged ‘vaccines’
May 16 roundup
- At “Hit and Run”, Damon Root deems a certain website “indispensable” [Reason; accolades file]
- Montgomery Blair Sibley, colorful lawyer for the “D.C. Madam” and a figure much covered on this site, has new book out [Doyle/McClatchy]
- Although Indian tribal litigators attacked it as “disparaging”, the Washington Redskins football team can keep its trademark, for now at least. “My ancestors were both Vikings and Cowboys. Do I have a course of action?” [Volokh comments]
- “Is Patent Infringement Litigation Up or Down?” [Frankel, The American Lawyer]
- Maryland high court dismisses autism-mercury lawsuit [Seidel, Krauss @ Point of Law]
- Chrysler dealers are lawyering up against the prospect of being cast off [WSJ Law Blog]
- “Should doctors who follow evidence-based guidelines be offered liability protection?” [KevinMD]
- Obama proposes $1.25 billion to settle black farmers’ long-running bias claims against the U.S. Department of Agriculture [AP/Yahoo]
“Why Does the Vaccine/Autism Controversy Live On?”
A major article in the new Discover. We’ve been covering Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (and his ties to the mass-tort litigation business) for a long time.
April 9 roundup
- Teacher’s aide in Queens, N.Y., sues 11 year old, saying he was dashing for ice cream and ran into her (this happened when he was eight) [WPIX; Rosanna Tomack, Joseph Cicak]
- Extraterritoriality, or exit fees? Stiff taxes these days on Americans who renounce their citizenship [Coyote Blog]
- Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell hires Bailey, Perrin & Bailey, big campaign-donor law firm for anti-drugmaker suit [WSJ, Point of Law, ShopFloor, Adler @ Volokh]
- Injured in wrestling fall, will get $15 million from school district [Seattle Times]
- Feds seized Petri dishes at Buffalo professor’s home and word spread of major bioterror bust. Oops [Andrew Grossman, Heritage]
- Toward “public control over the media”: Creepy ideological origins of Nichols/McChesney scheme to subsidize newspapers [Adam Thierer, City Journal]
- Thanks to expensive modern medicine Virginia Postrel has been doing well in her fight against breast cancer, story might not have been so happy in some countries [The Atlantic, second essay responding to letters]
- Jury awards $22.5 million against vaccine maker to man who says he caught polio from daughter’s shot [Staten Island Advance]
April 4 roundup
- The wages of addiction: former basketball star Roy Tarpley settles his $6.5 million ADA lawsuit against NBA and Dallas Mavericks [Randy Galloway, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Sports Law Blog]
- One result of litigation-fed “vaccines cause autism” scare: parents turn to dangerous quack treatments [Arthur Allen, Slate; in-depth coverage at Kathleen Seidel’s and Orac’s sites]
- Julie Hilden on First Circuit “true statements can be defamatory” ruling [FindLaw, earlier here and here]
- More coverage of conviction of Kentucky lawyers for grabbing much of fen-phen settlement [Louisville Courier-Journal, earlier]
- Judge dismisses most counts in lawsuit against Richard Laminack of Texas’s O’Quinn law firm [Texas Lawyer, earlier; FLSA overtime claims remain]
- All but three of the outstanding 9/11 airline suits due to settle for $500 million [AP/NorthJersey.com]
- One needn’t make the Community Reinvestment Act a scapegoat for unrelated credit woes to recognize it as an ill-conceived law [Bank Lawyer’s Blog]
- U.K.: Woman who plays classical music to soothe horses told she must pay for public performance license [Telegraph]
Copland and Howard: a proposal for drug-injury administrative compensation
My Manhattan Institute colleagues James Copland and Paul Howard are the authors of a just-released paper which proposes comprehensive federal preemption of state product liability drug litigation, combined with a new administrative compensation program for persons injured by unforeseen drug side effects, modeled on the existing vaccine injury compensation program. Their paper is here, and the section on administered compensation begins here. A summary, and early reaction: Medical News Today, Legal NewsLine, their Washington Times op-ed, AmLaw Daily (“makes for interesting reading”), Drug and Device Law (cross-posted from Point of Law).
November 3 roundup
- M.D.s and J.D.s in cahoots: when neuroradiologists over-read MRIs in search of “disc herniations” and “cord compression” [ER Stories]
- Lawyer burns his Harvard law diploma, and stop with that joking in the back row about whether there’s some way to burn all of them [ABA Journal]
- Latest lawsuit arising from fad for photos of “Hot Chicks with Dorky Men” (that’s a paraphrase) [TMZ, QuizLaw, earlier]
- Kid draws scary Hallowe’en mask, and next thing you know the police are called [Savannah Morning News]
- Great moments in international human rights: “Modern European navies are now so mindful of the legal loopholes they face in tackling pirates that they often instruct commanders to simply let them go.” [Telegraph; earlier here, here]
- China has four times the number of people we have in the U.S., while we have seven times the number of lawyers [Elefant]
- “Vaccine injury” lawyer Clifford Shoemaker fails in effort to curtail public access to fee information, so we get to learn more about his $211,663.37 bill to the government [Seidel, Neurodiversity; related here and here]
- More about that Milberg basketball team and its 6′ 8″ ringer [Supreme Dicta]
October 6 roundup
All-blog edition:
- Judges overheard chatting in coffee shop about sweetheart class settlement [WageLaw via Paul Karlsgodt’s weekly class action blog roundup]
- More attempts to sue/uncover anonymous blog commenters: “I was subpoenaed for a discovery deposition about one of my posts on this blog.” [Medblogger Dr. Wes]
- Thoughts prompted by the latest (NYC) round of litigation over “ladies’ nights” at drinking establishments [David Giacalone, f/k/a]
- Head of state (Bolivia’s Morales) to his lawyer: “If it’s illegal, go ahead and make it legal. That’s what you went to school for.'” [Cato at Liberty]
- Everybody run! Perennial Overlawyered mentionee Steve Berman has a blog [Class Action Law Today via his P.R. guy in Kevin O’Keefe comments]
- When infamous NYC lawyer Burt Pugach calls, hang up [Greenfield]
- Colleague described as “a soap opera doctor” elects to spend more time in the courtroom than in the operating room [Throckmorton]
- Dear Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee: “Please resist the efforts of vaccine-injury plaintiffs’ advocates to define themselves as representatives of ‘the autism community.'” [Kathleen Seidel, Neurodiversity]
June 10 roundup
All-free-speech edition:
- Christiansburg, Va. land developer Roger Woody sues local bloggers and two other critics for more than $10 million for speaking ill of big dirt pile on one of his properties [Roanoke Times, editorial; more on Woody’s dealings]
- Lots of developments on free speech in Canada: trial begins in Vancouver in complaint against Mark Steyn and Maclean’s over book excerpt critical of Islam [his site]; after defending speech-restricting network of human rights tribunals, Conservative government in Ottawa now says it will take another look [Ezra Levant, with much other coverage including favorable nods from Toronto literati]; Alberta tribunal orders conservative pastor to “cease publishing in newspapers, by email, on the radio, in public speeches, or on the Internet, in future, disparaging remarks about gays and homosexuals.” [Levant; Calgary Herald; Gilles Marchildon, Egale.ca] (more, Eugene Volokh)
- Brief filed for Kathleen Seidel in her resistance of abusive subpoena, with assistance of Public Citizen [her site, theirs, and our comment section]; Seidel is among autism bloggers profiled in NY mag [w/pic]; profile of thriving Boston “vaccine injury” law firm” Conway Homer & Chin-Caplan [NLJ; Seidel’s critical comments on that firm]
- Views critical of religion unlawful unless expressed in respectful and non-scoffing way? Lots of precedent for that approach, unfortunately [Volokh on Comstock]
- Score one for fair use: judge denies Yoko Ono preliminary injunction against creationist film’s use of 15 seconds of John Lennon’s “Imagine” in context implicitly criticizing song’s point of view [Hollywood Reporter, WSJ law blog, Timothy Lee/Ars Technica]
Shoemaker’s lawyers respond to Seidel
Attorney Clifford Shoemaker has now filed a memorandum in support of his harassing subpoena of blogger Kathleen Seidel. The memorandum, signed by attorneys John F. McHugh and Brian T. Stern, is every bit as absurd and internally-self-refuting as one might have dared hope. Seidel skillfully marks it up with links on key phrases, some providing substantive background on the controversy, other ironically commenting on the apparent belief of Shoemaker & Co. that a court will agree to construe as “a series of intentional torts” a blogger’s investigative journalism based on publicly available sources. Earlier posts here. More: Orac.