Free Republic

There are many versions of the cliché that “a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged,” and Robert Bork has just given rise to another. A tort plaintiff, it turns out, is a critic of tort lawsuits who has slipped and fallen at the Yale Club. Mr. Bork, of course, is the former federal appeals court judge who was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1987 but not confirmed by the Senate. He has long been famous for his lack of sympathy for people who go to court with claims of race or sex discrimination, or other injustices. He...

The Bush administration is urging Congress to pass a law that would halt dozens of lawsuits charging phone companies with invading ordinary citizens' privacy through a post-Sept. 11 warrantless surveillance program. The measure is part of a legislative package drafted by the Justice Department to relax provisions in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that restrict the administration's ability to intercept electronic communications in the United States. If passed, the proposed changes would forestall efforts to compel disclosure of the program's details through Congress or the court system. The proposal states that "no action shall lie . . ....

I. Mr. Weinstein’s Cyst When historians of the future try to identify the moment that neuroscience began to transform the American legal system, they may point to a little-noticed case from the early 1990s. The case involved Herbert Weinstein, a 65-year-old ad executive who was charged with strangling his wife, Barbara, to death and then, in an effort to make the murder look like a suicide, throwing her body out the window of their 12th-floor apartment on East 72nd Street in Manhattan. Before the trial began, Weinstein’s lawyer suggested that his client should not be held responsible for his actions...

In sharp questioning, a three-judge panel yesterday challenged arguments by federal officials seeking dismissal of a Pakistani man’s suit charging that because of his religion, race or national origin, he, like others, was held for months after 9/11 in abusive solitary confinement before being cleared of links to terrorism and deported. In the mahogany and marble splendor of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Lower Manhattan, lawyers for former Attorney General John Ashcroft and other government officials argued that the officials were entitled to immunity from the lawsuit filed by the man, Javaid Iqbal, who had been known as...

Armoured suits are 'too goofy' say US troops By Francis Harris, in Washington (Filed: 09/05/2006) American troops have complained that a new armoured body suit designed to be worn in Iraq makes them look "goofy". The water-cooled "alien spacesuits" are being handed out to turret gunners in their notoriously vulnerable Humvee vehicles. The new suit is designed to protect against roadside bombs but has had mixed reviews from soldiers The protective suit, based on those worn by bomb disposal officers, was intended to cut spiralling casualties for one of the most dangerous jobs in modern warfare. But some troops have...

ALBANY, March 1 — The Justice Department sued New York State on Wednesday for failing to overhaul its election system and replace its aging voting machines. It is the first lawsuit the federal government has filed to force a state to comply with the voting guidelines enacted by Congress after the 2000 election debacle. The new federal guidelines were designed to prevent the kind of electoral chaos that marred the 2000 presidential election in Florida, and to make casting ballots easier for disabled voters. But New York State's efforts to modernize its election system have fallen far behind the rest...

Attacking what he called racial and ethnic segregation, the Phoenix district attorney filed a federal lawsuit yesterday against Arizona court programs set up to provide treatment for Spanish-speaking and Indian drunken-driving offenders. Andrew P. Thomas, the Maricopa County attorney, whose office serves the fourth-most-populous county in the nation, said the "race-based courts" violated the Constitution and federal laws barring discrimination on the basis of race or ethnicity. The programs are not technically courts. They are probation programs that steer people to therapy and other treatment in an effort to combat alcohol addiction, though a judge may impose jail or other...

NEW YORK (AP) - A federal judge upheld three lawsuits Friday accusing Jordan-based Arab Bank of promoting Palestinian suicide attacks by funneling Saudi money to bombers' families. U.S. District Judge Nina Gershon denied six of eight counts in Arab Bank's March motion to dismiss the litigation, allowing bombing survivors and victims' families to move forward with their lawsuits seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. The lawsuits claim that Arab Bank aided terrorism by acting as the administrator of an "insurance plan" by the Saudi Committee in Support of the Intifada Al Quds, which paid $5,300 to the families...

The gas-pressurized space suits used by astronauts for space walks and moon landings would never work on Mars. That's the consensus, at least among astrobiologists and simulation experts at the Eighth International Mars Society Convention, which took place 11-14 August in Boulder, Colorado. A solution, they say, may lie with an old idea. The Mechanical Counter Pressure (MCP) suit aims to use elasticity to provide pressure instead. Paul Webb, a physician from Yellow Springs, Ohio originally proposed this idea in 1968, as a safer and more flexible alternative to the bulky Apollo mission suits. His idea didn't take flight until...

A Texas appeals court has reinstated a lawsuit against several Houston strip clubs based on claims the clubs overcharged patrons for lap dances when the men paid using credit cards instead of cash. Paul Brian Meekey and Michael Fulmer brought the lawsuit after they were allegedly charged $25 for $20 lap dances because they paid with plastic. "Texas law is pretty clear that you cannot charge someone extra for using a credit card," said Sandra Krider, one of Meekey and Fulmer’s lawyers. "The fact that they are strip clubs shouldn’t mean they get away with it." But the ruling could...

For years the American Civil Liberties Union has pushed its agenda in terms of what the Constitution “really says,” and what freedom “really means” through judicial extortion. In 1978, the Supreme Court exempted the ACLU from the “ambulance chasing” prohibitions that apply to nearly every other lawyer in the country. Over the years this has enabled the ACLU’s legions of pro bono attorneys to target various organizations they feel are vulnerable to their lawsuits, to dredge the ranks of the “offended” until they can find someone who will agree to let the ACLU stick their name at the top of...

LOS ANGELES, May 24 -Hillary Rodham Clinton's former chief fund-raiser took the stand in his own defense here on Tuesday, saying that he never intended to understate the costs of a Hollywood concert and dinner during her 2000 Senate race. Indeed, the fund-raiser, David F. Rosen, 38, described himself as a diligent foot soldier in the campaign who deferred to his superiors and was himself misled about the event's expenses by its organizers. "These costs were hidden from me," he said. "These costs were concealed for whatever reason." But during cross-examination, Peter R. Zeidenberg, a prosecutor, sought to portray Mr....

Government orders to turn down the air conditioning to meet Kyoto targets have created a drastic rethink of menswearYOU see them every summer morning, in the packed commuter trains and offices of Central Tokyo: men dressed in wool and polyester, sweating in the 90F heat. These are the salarymen, the warriors of the Japanese economy, for whom summer is a season more to be endured than enjoyed. From June to September, a fug of humidity falls across Japan, tormenting office workers dressed in a uniform more appropriate for winter. But a salaryman in a T-shirt would be like a samurai...

In political circles, it is common knowledge that Democrats at all levels rely on generous financial support from plaintiffs’ lawyers. Indeed, during the last election, the American Association of Trial Lawyers (ATLA) gave more than $2.1 million to Democrats. And contributions to Democrats at all levels from individual members of the plaintiffs’ bar probably totaled more than $100 million. So when ATLA recently threatened to postpone and curtail its fundraising efforts for Democrats, it sent a clear and powerful signal: ATLA is scared to death. What has the nation’s leading assemblage of ambulance chasers quaking in their wing tips? It’s...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - A conservative legal foundation filed twin federal lawsuits Wednesday challenging federal protections for 42 species, 15 of which live only in shallow seasonal pools across much of California and in far southern Oregon. The Pacific Legal Foundation says the critical habitat designations that together cover 1.5 million acres in 42 counties drive up housing costs and taxes and harm private property rights without doing much to save species. The suits, filed simultaneously in Fresno and Sacramento federal courts on behalf of building and agriculture associations, also challenge critical habitat designations for 27 other species, 21 of which...

Speaking before hundreds of doctors and medical workers in a St. Louis suburb last month, President Bush called attention to a neurosurgeon on stage with him in the small auditorium. The doctor, the president said, was paying $265,000 a year in premiums for insurance against malpractice claims. Such high prices, "don't start in an examining room or an operating room," the president declared. "They start in a courtroom." Indeed, at many recent appearances, Mr. Bush has complained about the "skyrocketing" costs of "junk lawsuits" against doctors and hospitals. But for all the worry over higher medical expenses, legal costs do...

Congressional Democrats could use a spoonful of sugar this week to help swallow their medicine. With tort reform on top of the Bush administration's to-do list, a new poll suggests Americans are solidly in favor of capping jury awards against the health-care industry. The poll, done by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health, came the week after Presdient Bush gave speeches in Illinois to focus attention on the need for medical-malpractice reform. While only a quarter of those polled said lawsuits were their top health-care policy concern, 63 percent said they would support a law...

If told that Congress could pass a bill that would reduce health care costs by 9 percent, more than $100 billion a year, without canceling a single doctor's appointment, shutting one facility or cutting anyone actually working in the medical profession, most Americans would react with three rapid-fire questions: "What is it?" "What are they waiting for?" and "What gives?" The bill is medical malpractice reform. The House has twice passed reform, only to have it killed in the Senate by the powerful friends of the generous trial-lawyer lobby. And yet, under such reform the only thing Americans would give...

WASHINGTON - Republicans will try for quick action on a measure that would end asbestos lawsuits in exchange for a trust fund to compensate victims, the incoming chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee (news - web sites) said Tuesday, despite a two-year deadlock. "It is my hope to be able to present a bill through markup at a very, very early date," said Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa., who will become Judiciary chairman later this week. "Whether that can be done in late January or early February remains to be seen." Republicans say Democrats wouldn't let previous...

THE ACADEMIC CONNECTION Correction Appended Last December, medical school researchers went to a professional meeting in Puerto Rico with a sense of urgency. Federal drug regulators were reviewing unpublished data from their studies on the use of antidepressants in children and adolescents to see if the drugs increased suicide risks. The group included many of the researchers whose published positive findings had helped persuade doctors to prescribe antidepressants like Paxil, Zoloft and Prozac to young patients. Now, faced with growing safety questions, the researchers had been trying for months to gather all the test data about those and similar drugs...