Overlawyered.com

Walter Russell Mead notes a reformist initiative on teacher certification with perhaps an unexpected sponsor, the Democratic governor of Connecticut. [The American Interest; CTNewsJunkie.com]

P.S. On the ultimate frontier of teacher reform — the firing of bad teachers — see new reports from Troy Senik [Public Sector Inc.] and Marcus Winters [NY Post].

• Archived schools items, pre-July 2003 (0)
• Update: “Milwaukee teachers drop Viagra suit” (6)
• Turning down the school lunch (6)
• Teacher tenure: “Failure gets a pass” (0)
• Tales from NYC’s “rubber room” (2)

“This January, the justices stopped [attorney James] Wylder’s argument dead in its tracks once again, concluding that the McLean County Circuit Court should have dismissed his three negligence suits against Illinois Central Railroad. Wylder had argued that Illinois Central was responsible for the alleged asbestos-related injuries of workers at an asbestos plant because the asbestos had arrived there by rail.” [Chamber's Madison County Record, more; background on "asbestos conspiracy" line of Illinois cases, LNL]

• More Madison County forum shopping follies (1)
• Update: “Victims and Families United” (0)
• September 2000 archives, part 3 (0)
• October 1999 archives, part 1 (0)
• November 29 roundup (1)

• “A 4-Page Playdate Waiver? Is This the New Normal?” [Lenore Skenazy, Free-Range Kids; our 2000 post on "Rise of the High-School Sleepover Disclaimer"]
• Spirit Airlines sets what it calls DOTUC fee, for “Dept. of Transportation Unintended Consequences” [Stoll]
• How fairly are fathers treated in family court? [Nina Shapiro, Seattle Weekly via Alkon]
• “‘Insider’ Trading by the Representative Plaintiff in Shareholder Litigation” [Bainbridge]
• “Donation controversy focuses attention on Madison County asbestos litigation” [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Chamber-backed LNL]
• Update: Appeals court reinstates Duluth doc’s defamation claims [DNT, earlier here, here, here; "bedside manner" criticism]
• U.K.: “‘Psychic’ Sally Morgan Sues Critics for £150,000 After Refusing $1 Million to Prove Her Powers” [D.J. Grothe, HuffPo] “She’ll be calling witnesses such as ‘an uncle, or father, or a man… with a b in his first name’.” [@thegagthief]

• November 1999 archives, part 1 (1)
• March 2000 archives, part 2 (1)
• June 2003 archives, part 2 (1)
• July 2000 archives, part 2 (2)
• February 11 roundup (1)

Members of an L.A. group devoted to darts, the bar sport, are among those plunged into litigation by a fellow enthusiast. “Says one well-known bar owner who did not wish to be identified for fear of retribution, ‘I’m weary of being involved with this guy because he’s just been firing off lawsuits. Some of us wanted to fight, but these things can be very expensive.’” [L.A. Weekly]

• “I, on the other hand, will not let people push me around” (4)
• Wildfires and land management litigation (5)
• Wanted to hire: one Wikipedia writer (1)
• Update: Erin Brockovich vs. Beverly Hills High School (5)
• Update: Brockovich Beverly Hills case (0)

Is life at the university fairer under the new sex-complaint procedures mandated by the federal Department of Education? Don’t ask the New York Times [Peter Berkowitz via Ann Althouse] More: Kathleen Parker, WaPo; Brisbane/NYT via Romenesko.

• Yale adopts submissive posture in Title-IX-vs.-speech case (2)
• Behind a Yale fraternity’s suspension (9)
• Harassment and sex-bias charges on campus (0)
• Back to the campus speech code wars? (1)
• “Due Process Stops at the Campus Gates?” (4)

Deposed press lord Conrad Black is taking a public stand against the law enforcement and corporate-governance authorities that put him behind bars. [Andrew McCarthy/The New Criterion, earlier]

• Prosecution roundup (2)
• Prison for unauthorized use of “Smokey Bear” image (13)
• On overcriminalization (2)
• October 12 roundup (4)
• Obstruction-of-justice charges (0)

The case is from West Virginia, and Lowering the Bar and Rob Beschizza/BoingBoing have the details.

• When obtaining medico-legal diagnoses… (0)
• West Virginia Supreme Court benchslap (1)
• West Virginia M.D.s (0)
• West Virginia Attorney General Involved in Medicaid Fraud? (1)
• Welcome to West Virginia: Joe Meadows v. Go-Mart (6)

At Cato at Liberty, I find that uncannily reminiscent of a famous Bastiat parody.

More from Coyote: “left unsaid is how they would jack up their prices when at least two other companies (Bing, Mapquest) also provide mapping services online for free.” But note that the French case arose not from Google’s furnishing of its free map service to individual end customers, but from its furnishing of its map API to businesses that typically adapt it for use in their own sites; as commenters at BoingBoing and Reddit as well as news reports point out, Google has indeed introduced fees for its largest business users of this type (which has caused some of them to adapt by switching from Google’s API to OpenStreetMap, a free wiki-based map service).

• Will California regulate social networking? (0)
• Update: alt-weekly predatory pricing case (1)
• September 2000 archives, part 3 (0)
• Punishing Google’s success (3)
• October 1999 archives, part 1 (0)

“In non-Western countries, demons and witchcraft are still sometimes blamed for outbreaks of fainting and fits [PDF]. Pollution, poisoning, chemical weapons, and other environmental concerns are dominant in the West (a fact that makes Brockovich something of a mass hysteria machine). Some bloggers are now claiming that the upstate New York girls fell ill because of the HPV vaccine or fracking.” [Ruth Graham, Slate]

• Hinkley, Calif. cancer rates (1)
• Erin Brockovich in Florida (5)
• Below-average cancer rates found in town of Brockovich fame (1)
• Updates (1)
• Update: Schenectady BBS defamation (0)

A 17-year-old born without hands is disappointed at being excluded from Sea World’s “Kraken,” but “Katie Champagne’s misery is the result of a litigious society, not heartless theme parks.” [Beth Kassab, Orlando Sentinel; error corrected on name of theme park operator, thanks commenter P. McC.]

• Welcome Above the Law readers (Sea World killer whale lawsuit?) (14)
• U.K.: hyperactive kids given queue-jump passes (0)
• U.K.: “Butlins bans bumping on the bumper cars” (6)
• SeaWorld lawsuit: seeing orca attack traumatized our kid (9)
• Quasi-off-topic musing (6)

• Judge blocks California budget cuts re: in-home services for disabled [Mercury News]
• Media exploited her daughter for titillation, claims suit by mother of “Toddlers & Tiaras” star [Above the Law]
• Narrower definition of autism ahead? [Althouse]
• “Police Charge Canadian Blogger With Criminal Libel for Criticizing the Police” [Sullum, Popehat]
• Prince George’s County, Maryland, wants to ban liquor deliveries; no harm linked to them, but you can’t be too sure [Ben Giles, Washington Examiner] Centers for Disease Control’s curious definition of “binge” drinking [Sullum]
• The law of authors’ liability for inaccurate memoirs [Mark Fowler, Rights Of Writers; earlier here, etc.]
• “Diagnosing Liability: The Legal History of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder” [Deirdre M. Smith, SSRN via TortsProf]

• Sobering New Year’s thought (0)
• September 2000 archives, part 3 (0)
• October 1999 archives, part 2 (2)
• November 2002 archives, part 1 (1)
• November 1999 archives, part 1 (1)

On the trademark-assertiveness front, as readers of this site know, they’ve been no strangers to controversy. Perhaps as a gesture of goodwill toward critics they’d consider calling off the lawsuit threats against other legitimate charities that attempt to use the color pink?

• “Collaboration not Litigation Ale” (2)
• Zwebner lawsuits on Internet posts (2)
• When you hear “monster”, they want you to think of them (6)
• Web disputes of the future two weeks (3)
• Washington Redskins nickname deemed offensive (0)

“The Village Voice is giving up on a scheme to force rivals to pay for permission to use the phrase ‘best of.’” [Paid Content]

• Update: Fox gets skinned (0)
• MTA vs. freelance publishers (2)
• “One-Question Interview: Tom Perrotta” (0)
• “As so often, aggressive IP lawyers trumped smart business strategy” (2)
• “Collaboration not Litigation Ale” (2)

A park-bench ad — and really, what better way to select a lawyer for an important matter? — advertises “Injury Law Group, LLC — Successful, Greedy, Attorneys — We Won’t Let You Settle Cheap.” [@mattniemi] The sponsors appear to be this Pittsburgh-based lawyer network.

• “1-800-I-GOT-HIT” (0)
• “I’ve always thought people would be very concerned if they knew what we were doing” (0)
• YouTube lawyer ads (3)
• You found your lawyer _how_? (1)
• Willie Gary marketing tactics (2)

Defenders of the government’s aggressive prosecutions under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act are finding more and more to be defensive about. The latest in the string of setbacks for the Department of Justice came Monday, when a jury acquitted two defendants in the Justice Department’s 2009 Gabon “sting” operation and the case against three others ended in a mistrial. Alison Frankel: “So far, the Justice Department has not managed to convict a single Gabon sting defendant who contested its charges.” [WaPo, WSJ blog and related, earlier]

• The Justice Department’s FCPA fiasco (2)
• Peter Henning on SEC whistleblowing (2)
• July 15 roundup (1)
• January 28 roundup (0)
• Forbes: “The Bribery Racket” (0)

Some scientists at the University of California, San Francisco want the government to get much more deeply involved in deciding what you eat and drink, and the magazine Nature is providing a platform for their views. [San Francisco Chronicle] More: American Council on Science and Health, Andrew Stuttaford/NRO.

• UK: menace of ice-cream vans (5)
• The “pie chart that doesn’t want you to eat pie.” (4)
• Stossel on the food police (3)
• September 24 roundup (2)
• Regulating fast food (4)

“Once profiled in The New York Times as a former Harvard student who had his own claim as being the true genius behind Facebook, [Aaron] Greenspan is now involved in a dispute with Columbia Pictures that alleges [among other counts] he was defamed by being left out of the award-winning film about Facebook’s origins ['The Social Network'].” [Hollywood Reporter]

• Trademark claims to silence critics? (6)
• Stallone sued over Rocky movies (1)
• Slumdog Millionaire (0)
• September 7 roundup (8)
• October 13 roundup (3)

• Overseas press excoriates new FATCA tax-Americans’-foreign-earnings law; some foreign banks now turn away American customers [Dan Mitchell, Cato, Reason] “The Fatca story is really kind of insane.” [Caplin & Drysdale's H. David Rosenbloom, NYT via TaxProf] Will Congress back down? [Peter Spiro/OJ, more]
• Important new book from James Maxeiner (University of Baltimore) and co-authors Gyooho Lee and Armin Weber on what the U.S. can learn from legal procedure overseas: “Failures of American Civil Justice in International Perspective” [TortsProf]
• Don’t do it: British administration mulls further move away from loser-pays rule in search of — what exactly, a yet more Americanized litigation culture? [Guardian, Law Society]
• Apparently in Norway it’s possible to lose one’s kids by feeding them by hand [Shikha Dalmia, Reason]
• Financial transaction tax? Ask the Swedes how that worked out [Mike "Mish" Shedlock, Business Insider]
• Notes from conference on globalization of class actions [Karlsgodt] Related: Adam Zimmerman;
• “Another conviction in Europe for insulting religion” [Volokh; Polish pop star] Campus secularists’ speech under fire in the U.K. as “Jesus and Mo” controversy spreads to LSE [Popehat] British speech prosecution of soccer star [Suneal Bedi and William Marra, NRO]

• Why they aren’t running the cartoons (4)
• Update: U.K. Commons revolt on bill curbing religious speech (2)
• UK religious insult bill (0)
• UK free speech, cont’d (4)
• Theo van Gogh’s “Submission” (0)

“A man accused of firebombing three New Jersey synagogues may have been influenced by violent Xbox video games that aggravated his mental issues, his attorney said Tuesday. … [Anthony] Graziano’s attorney, Robert Kalisch, speaking outside court after the hearing Tuesday morning, described Graziano as a young man with mental health issues who had few friends and played violent games on his Xbox.” [MSNBC, Patrick Scott Patterson/Examiner](& Elie Mystal, Above the Law)

• You mean it’s not the videogames? (0)
• Wrist straps on Wiimotes (9)
• Wii class action claim: controller keeps flying out of our hands (7)
• Video games (0)
• Utah, Louisiana: censorship via private lawsuit? (0)

It’s being pursued by the obscure nonprofit African Diaspora Maritime Corp. from landlocked Raleigh, North Carolina, with help from major law firm McDermott Will & Emery. Ellison himself has pursued extensive litigation over the yachting event. [News & Observer]

• “It’s not like I sue him every day” (1)
• Youth football league needn’t re-weigh 11-year-old (0)
• Yosemite rock-climber’s survivors sue (0)
• Yogi Berra v. “Sex In the City” (0)
• Wrestlers Slam WWE and Claim: We’re Not Independent Contractors (4)