Dru Stevenson, Professor of Law

A farmer spraying his rapeseed field in Germany with pesticides. Growers of rapeseed, one of the primary sources of cooking oil, have discovered their crop has a new calling at petrol stations. Heated to a high temperature, it becomes a biological form of diesel that emits only a fraction of the carbon dioxide. (AFP/DPA/File/Peter Foerster)

This is an interesting article about corporate executives being personally liable for wrongdoing by their corporations. It's an interesting development in our law; corporate liability was a necessary development to shield or protect investors, who before that were discouraged from investing in useful business activities because owners were held personally liable for its liabilities (mostly torts and contracts, back then). But the protection of owners from liability beyond their actual investment seems to create higher agency costs with wayward managers. When I was at the Attorney General's Office (in CT, before this position), one of the cutting-edge areas of environmental enforcement was "responsible officer/manager" liability. The corporations themselves often operate through a series of "shell" or holding companies, and the managers (often entrenched because of their holdings of corporate shares) had little incentive to avoid dumping and other environment...

This is a shame. I had a friend in college who had something similar happen to him; decent student, good grades, but they tried to keep him from graduating during his last year because a few powerful professors there disagreed with something he said in a philosophy paper. I cannot find any news articles where LeMoyne College responds to the accusation - if anyone does, please post it in the comments.

This week I read two books (one was short), and recommend them both. Thomas Friedman's Longitudes and Attitudes is very informative, insightful, and reflective about Middle East politics, globalism, and American foreign policy. He is a regular columnist for the New York Times, travels frequently around the Middle East, and has interesting things to say. His liberal vantagepoint comes through (which I don't mind, except when he briefly discusses religion and tries to tell me how various religions should modify their belief systems to be more ecumenical, a clear sign that he still doesn't "get" the possibility that some reasonable people could still believe in divine revelation), but the book was finished before we invaded Iraq - and it is really interesting to hear how a prominent liberal was talking back in 2002 about what we should be doing there. Open-minded conservatives may feel vindicated when they read it (close-minded people usually already feel vindicate...

Tort Reform Advocates are happy with the new legislation introduced in Congress to impose sanctions on lawyers for filing frivolous lawsuits. I generally disagree strongly with the tort reform folks (my most recent post discusses Judge Posner's comments, click here ), but from what I've read, this proposed bill is more moderate - it mostly limits attenuated forum selection (which is fine, I think - although it inconveniences plaintiffs who live near a big facility (read employer) of the defendant, and perhaps they should create a small exception for that case (except that voir dire allows the lawyers to nix jurors with family members who work for either party). And many states already have provisions for sanctions in cases of vexatious litigation. I'd rather see these types of limitations than "caps" on damages, which I view as unfortunate regulatory interference in a market, akin to rent control.

Click on the title to read the opinion, which is about plaintiff lawyers' contingency fees (not cases where fees are awarded on top of damages). I think both sides of the argument on this have merit; on the one hand, the funds are supposedly going striaght through to the attorney, so the plaintiff was not enriched by this amount; on the other hand, historically the entire award was considered income. Probably the strongest argument, though, is that Congress in 2004 modified the Internal Revenue Code to specify that these contingency fees are no longer part of the plaintiff's adjusted gross income, and the law was not retroactive (and these cases arose before the law was passed).

The Army is preparing to send 18 of these remote-controlled robotic warriors to fight in Iraq beginning in March or April. (AP Graphic)

Two federal appellate courts issued rulings today (Tuesday) pertaining to the rights of street preachers . (Thanks to How Appealing for noting them)... The Fourth Circuit decision , Moore v. City of Asheville, involved a North Carolina carpenter who travels around doing street preaching; in March and April 2003, he twice received tickets/fines for violating the city's noise ordinance. He paid the fines at the time (the first was $50 and the second $100, because he was a repeat offender), and then waiting a long time before going to court to protest this infringement on his free speech rights. He waited too long; the time had elapsed for state administrative review of his fines, so he went into federal court. The Circuit Court's opinion does not address his free speech rights, but rahter the procedural question of whether a federal court can entertain a case about state or local fines when the petitioner let the time elapse so he could no longer pursue them through th...

I picked this up off a RSS newfeed and thought it was interesting - it's a very "free market" way of legal thinking for China...

This is a request for input or collaboration, really. One of my current research projects (hopefully a forthcoming article) is focused on the role of bifurcation in both civil and criminal trials (where phases of the trial, like guilt/liability and damages/punishment, are done separately, usually to avoid prejudice or for strategic reasons). I am mostly interested in the developing area of reverse bifurcation , where the traditional order is reversed - that is, in a civil case, the judge has the jury decide the damages first before impanleing a second jury to assess liability, or in a criminal case, where the court determines the sentence first and then has a trial to determine actual guilt. There's very little - if any - serious scholarship published on the latter phenomenon, although there is evidence that courts are experimenting with it. I'm particularly interested in interdisciplinary discussion of these procedures (economics, psychology, decision theory, game theory, e...

OK, on certain days of the week I can be a real bleeding-heart, but this story seemed interesting to me. First, there's the "wish-more-of-our-homeless-wanted-to-go-back-to-school" thing; part of me gives the guy credit for sitting in classes, blending in, etc. instead of locking himself in the bathroom at McDonald's for hours at a time, or commandeering an entire bus stop for himself. Second, I wondered if this would have worked better if he would head for a major university campus instead, where there might be tens of thousands of people his age with whom he could blend (except that this must have been tried enough already for Universities to require ID cards for almost everything now). Third, this presents an interesting philosophical question about what "integration in society" really means. A man can be in the midst of a crowd, doing the same activities they do, attend class lectures, walk in the hallway between classes, use the gym locker room, dress l...

This is a turnabout: after years of the U.S. complaining that China does nothing to stop rampant piracy of U.S. media productions, China starts prosecuting Americans. Ironic. (thanks to Legal Reader for posting this first...) http://www.legalreader.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1284

I understand that it would be galling to jihadists for Israelis to be a major voting block (at least 75,000, but possibly much more) in Iraq's election, but I still think it is unreasonable to exclude them when people in all the other countries get to vote. Excluding them is a way of saying, "Jews are not real Iraqis," even though it appears there were over 130,000 Iraqi Jews who fled to Israel a generation ago. It is an inherent risk in a democratic election - especially one that allows voting from outside the borders, as most do - that some feared foreign interest could get a share in the vote and undermine the purported national interest. There was a risk (small, but still a risk) when our country was founded that "Tories" or loyalists could vote to turn America back over to its colonial rulers; or that millions of Muslim-American voters today could force a change in our foreign policy (like our support of Israel). The risk that Iraqi Israelis would engine...

This is a bizarre angle on the Iraqi elections, which I have not seen covered in the MSM here...(this is from the Jerusalem Post ). I had mixed reactions to this: I think it is great that Christians and Jews can officially vote in the Iraqi elections (a hopeful sign of progress), and that they are allowing remote voting around the world (I hadn't heard that! MSM only talks about the infeasibility of elections inside the country). I also did not know there were so many Israelis with ethnic ties to Iraq (I knew there were some, but I didn't know it was this many). But I think it is terrible that the Netherlands has a voting station and Jerusalem does not. It's hard to interpret this as anything but anti-Israel and antisemitic. Israel is the only established democracy in the Middle East, and the Iraqis living there should really have something to contribute to the establishment of a similar democracy in their original homeland. And it's fascinating to think that Isr...

I kind of enjoy lawyer jokes, but the media tried to make it sound like this was a case of egregious overlawyering. Notice at the end of the article that these guys complain they've been standing outside Long Island courthouses mocking lawyers " for years " without being arrested: "The pair said that for years they have stood outside courthouses on Long Island and mocked lawyers." Duh. You didn't expect one of those evil, assertive lawyers to get sick of it and complain at some point? As a practitioner, I didn't enjoy standing in line outside the courthouse in the freezing New England weather any more than the rest of the people - actually probably less, because most people appearing on charges seemed to bring friends and family with them to keep them company. These protestors really must not have enough to do! Get a job or something! If somebody finally decided he'd had enough, how was he supposed to know these guys were there that day fo...

This story is interesting - and encouraging. My initial reaction would be to suggest that the defendants would be judgment-proof, but the fact that they litigated it as much as they did - and have announced plans to appeal - indicates they have something to protect. Even if the charities claim they were not mere front organizations for terrorists, in this day and age it is a distinct possibility, and legitimate charities must be more watchful about where they channel funds.

Good news indeed....

When I read this I wondered if this new jurisdictional rule is entirely responsible for Mississippi's dsiplacement from AT RA 's list of "judicial hellholes..."