Jonathan G. Stein, a personal injury attorney with an office in Elk Grove, California, has offered free help to victims of the San Diego fires now ravaging the area.

In a blog posting earlier today, Stein said:

As much as we would all like to help, most of us are not trained in fire suppression. So, I am going to make an offer to the residents of San Diego: if you are a fire victim and you are not getting a response from your insurance company or they are low-balling you, call me. I will help you pro bono. (Yes, that means free.) Heck, if you just have a question and need a quick answer, call me or email me. I hope my fellow attorneys will step up to the plate as well.

J. Craig Williams at May It Please the Court discusses the dangers to his own home, and how media helicopters are interfering with firefighting efforts.

Update: Insurance Tactics and San Diego Fire Victims (Tort Burger – Hold the Reform)

One of my favorite Saturday Night Live commercial spoofs was for Shimmer. (It’s a dessert topping! No, It’s a floor wax!)

Well, now the law seems to have its own version. Mister Thorne over at his blog on legal writing, Set in Style, has discovered that the San Francisco firm of Wineberg Simmonds & Narita is offering both legal services and hair replacement.

Check with Mister Throne as to how he found it. If anyone knows of a more bizarre combo, I’d love to hear it.

No word yet on discounts for bald litigants who need both services.

New York is building new bike lanes, but not the usual kind. And that is why it is of interest to personal injury attorneys, since those in the field are accustomed to looking at an accident, and asking why something wasn’t safer.

The video at this link runs for only two minutes, and shows the recent change to Ninth Avenue in Manhattan, and the new separation between drivers and bikers, with a lane of parked cars between the two. It shows something every city should be doing to enhance safety (among other benefits).

It should be notable when things change for the better. New York’s Mayor Mike Bloomberg apparently “gets it.” The bike lane is currently only seven blocks long, but the Department of Transportation is calling it the street of the future.

Between 1996 and 2003 there were 225 fatalities and 3,500 injuries to bikers.

It’s easy to complain when things go wrong from a safety standpoint. In fact, that is much of what attorneys do. And applauding when things are done right often falls by the wayside. Well, I see something being done right, and New York deserves the acclaim.

Addendum: Now that I figured out how to add the video clip, here it is:

This deserves a bit more publicity: The First Annual Golden Gobbledygook Award, presented by The Party of the First Part.

Everything you hate about the way (some) lawyers write, and more.

Cryptic and pretentious legal writing, I think I can safely say, is devoid of plaintiff/defendant or conservative/liberal biases. It just sucks. Why anyone would want their reader to work hard to understand something is beyond me.

If I were to give one piece of advice to a legal writer it would be this: Assume the document will be read by someone sitting on a train, plane or perhaps a beach. Which Justice John Paul Stevens revealed he has done. Perhaps it will be read inside some ornate chamber by an individual with all the time in the world to parse the run-on sentences and ancient Latin phrases. But don’t count on it.

Two weeks ago I wrote that my kid brother was a finalist in a screenwriting competition.

Today, he took the gold prize in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy category of the PAGE International Screenwriting Awards for Tranquility Base, beating 281 other entrants in his category. Not too shabby.

So when I wrote last time that he needed an agent, I wasn’t kidding.
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About the script:
Tranquility Base is the story of astronauts stranded in space in 2040. The action moves between the International Space Station, a Space Transport Plane, and a Moon Base Biosphere, as 15 astronauts struggle to secure the six available spots in the self-sustaining environment of the Moon Base. A combination of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Survivor, Tranquility Base examines the challenges man faces when his desire to help others conflicts with his instinct for survival.