December 14th, 2007

Random Notes

Random Notes is for subjects I want to blog about or rebroadcast, but just don’t have the time to do well:

A doctor is accused of sexual assault on his patient, and in order to get the benefit of his insurance coverage, claims it was treatment. The insurance carrier is not amused. (New York Legal Update);

A judge pays off bet with beer (Sentencing Law and Policy);

Blawg Review #139 celebrates Human Rights Day at De Novo;

Health Wonk Review is up at HealthBlawg;

In Massachusetts, the duty of a doctor has now been extended beyond the patient, to those the patient might injure while on the drugs prescribed by the doctor (TortsProf);

Hospital systems should be designed to anticipate human error (NY Emergency Medicine);

The Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial gets analyzed by the Ninth Circuit (Deliberations)

There’s a new kid on the block…a brand, spanking new blog from the defense side: Medical Devices: Law, Trends and Oddities

 

December 13th, 2007

Personal Injury Lawyer, Ryan Bradley, Using Blog for Blatant Solicitation

I’ve avoided doing a post like this for many months, but figured this is the time as one lawyer seems to have stepped over a line from using his blog for commentary or even advertising and gone to outright solicitation of a particular individual.

Kevin O’Keefe first reported on St. Louis attorney Ryan Bradley discussing a local accident and using the name of the injured person in the post heading, in a rather blatant hope that the injured person, family member or friend would Google the accident to see if anything was written about it, find the post, and call him.

Now he has done it a second time in a week, with this post here **

There are, it seems, four types of blogs, though I am using the word “blog” very loosely here since I don’t think it truly applies in either #3 or #4:

1. The pseudonymous blogger. Without a real name and contact information, the blogger writes for pure enjoyment and without any business desire.

2. Blogs that comment on the law and recent events the same way as the pseudonymous blogger, but with a name and contact information. Such a blog might have a beneficial marketing side in making the blogger more prominent in the community and be used as a form of legal networking, though I think most that stick with it do it for the pure enjoyment of writing. This is similar in concept to publishing an article in a legal trade, though it is of course much easier to do and isn’t peer reviewed. This represents most of the legal blogosphere to date.

3. Blogs that are advertising. These blogs discuss some general matter of the lawyer’s practice, or more likely a local accident, and then scream, “call me!” The personal injury sites have many of these, and the “call me!” works to destroy any actual content that might have been posted.

4. Outright solicitation: I don’t know what the Missouri ethics rules are on solicitation, but Ryan Bradley’s blog postings clearly fit into the solicitation category. He puts the name of the injured person in the heading and the body, and looked up the accident report and insurance information to post that online also. Thus, he goes beyond the mere advertising, and into outright solicitation of an individual. Even if he is ethically secure on First Amendment grounds, what he has done certainly appears scummy and is a close cousin to sending a solicitation in the mail to the house. Or picking up the phone and calling. Or sending a person to the house. Or the hospital. You know where I’m gong with this. Solicitation is but one step removed from actual ambulance chasing.

I don’t have the type of site that awards a “worst lawyer of the day,” that is more of an Above the Law type of thing, but if I did, Bradley would surely get it.

The irony in all this is that when folks now Google Ryan Bradley of Missouri in the event they do stumble over his “blog” they will also find out what other lawyers think of his solicitations.

Addendum 12/17/07: Attorney Solicitation 2.0 — Is It Ethical?

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** This link is via TinyUrl, which will redirect to the blog posting, but due to the masking created by redirection, will not add any Google pagerank to the blog. More on TinyUrl at Wikipedia.

Links to this post:

great moments in client-chasing
injury law firms in st. louis and seattle run promotional blogs for which they’ve been generating content as follows: a post summarizes (presumably from police or news reports) a recent local road fatality or injury naming the victim …
posted by Walter Olson @ December 16, 2007 12:02 AM

 

December 12th, 2007

The Worst Courthouse in America?

I’ve had the misfortune of appearing in the Bronx County Family Court a few times in the past. And I’ve almost blogged about my experiences because they were so horrible.

And by horrible, I mean that the people who appear for family disputes and custody hearings can’t even get into the courthouse and to the hearing rooms because of broken elevators. It can easily take two hours just to get to the hearing room. Then the hearings get adjourned until another date because everyone isn’t present.

Today, the New York Times has a piece on this very problem, front page of the Metro section, above the fold.

Many law blogs discuss great principles of the law. But principles mean nothing if you can’t get in the door to argue your case.

British Prime Minister William Goldstone once said, “Justice delayed, is justice denied.” And nowhere is that more true than in the Bronx Family Court.

 

December 11th, 2007

Best Buy Sends Out Nastygram To Blog Reporting On Parody

Best Buy clearly doesn’t like being the butt of a joke. We know this because a group called Improv Everywhere sent about 80 people into one of their New York stores wearing blue polo shirts to stand around. They did not claim to be employees. They just stood around dressed like them. For yucks. Now the lawyer letters are flying.

According to an extensive write up of the escapade, “The reaction from the employees was pretty typical as far as our missions go. The lower level employees laughed and got a kick out of it while the managers and security guards freaked out.”

Then, when the stunt was over, they sold shirts. With a parody of the Best Buy logo, seen here above right. So Best Buy sent their first cease and desist letter.

Then someone else blogged about it, at a site called Laughing Squid. And then they got a cease and desist letter for reporting the story, claiming trademark and copyright infringement, which letter they have conveniently put up at their site. And just for the record, the one they got was much fancier than the one that Avis sent to me for using their logo.

Someone ought to direct those folks to that little thing called the First Amendment.

(And to save the Best Buy legal department some time, let me say that I don’t sell the shirts, I’m just reporting the story for the other attorneys in the blawgosphere that are interested.)

(hat tip: The Consumerist)

Addendum 12/12/07 — Best Buy has apologized for the cease and desist letter to Laughing Squid.