-- I just found out that the FAA keeps up-to-the-minute accident data posted here. I think I'll end up checking it frequently. As of today, it looks like those little Cessnas crash a lot!
-- There's something mind-boggling about cases like this. This guy may have made up with upwards of $100k per year in his practice. That is a phenomenally large amount of money, and it highlights the utter greed. I mean, if he were doing fairly well settling these cases, and if he was on contingency for most of it, then he had to be doing moderately well. There's no excuse for what he did, and the only reason is greed. It absolutely incenses me. (Link from Legal Ethics Forum.)
-- Mr. Conrad at jurygeek frames the tort reform debate in a non-standard way: as jury nullification. I've not heard that argument before, and it's quite fascinating. Additionally, he says a few things that are bound to wind up some conservatives:
What the tort reformers, who are by and large conservatives, fail to realize is that tort reform is socialist. We limit the individual responsibility of tortfeasors in the name of "public good," while forcing their victims to bear the costs of the injuries the tortfeasors caused, because society thinks it is too expensive to give them justice.
I've never heard it framed that way, but it makes more sense the more I think about it. I actually think that one of the largest problems with the civil system is that there are not enough awards. Particularly with the contingency system, there's a strong motivation for lawyers not to take small cases. We should somehow make it so lawyers never have to say, "sure, you'd win, but it would cost more than paying your hospital bills yourself."
-- This article really irritates me. The voyeurism of celebrity-watching is bad enough, but it is the height of presumption to tell someone who dissolved a marriage five months ago that she needs to "move on." Don't these people have something better to do?
-- I don't know if it was me or if the outage was temporary, but a number of blogs have restored their full feeds. Rock On!!
