"Things that I never imagined people would care about are now being plastered all over blog sites..."

"... including pictures of me from when I was 17 and tweets that have been taken completely out of context. I tweeted once (it was reported that I said it twice) that 'I wonder what my boyfriend @RepWeiner is up to.'"

ADDED: Imagine if Anthony Weiner were a Republican. (I know, it's such a hackneyed visualization, but it's important here.) The liberal/lefty blogs would be shredding him mercilessly. I'm not saying Weiner's not getting his hair mussed. But if he were a Republican, the feeding frenzy would be of a different magnitude entirely.

IN THE COMMENTS: Freeman Hunt writes:

So the media is just accepting this absurd assertion that all his accounts were hacked? They were all hacked for the purpose of sending a boner photo to some woman in Seattle? And he hasn't bothered to contact law enforcement?

Right.

Must be nice to be a Democratic politician.

Nevadabob writes:

1) Weiner hasn't reported the alleged hack to the FBI.

2) Facebook hasn't announced any investigation of Mr. Wiener's allegedly hacked account.

3) Twitter (the company) knows the IP address of the computer that really sent the tweet. However, Twitter hasn't announced any investigation. They also haven't released the IP address of the person who actually sent the tweet so we can see if that IP address belongs to the Democrat Rep. Wiener

yfrog knows the IP address of the person that actually uploaded the obscene photograph Mr. Wiener's yfrog account. Thusfar, yfrog has not released that IP address so that we can track down the nefarious hacker who did that. Also, Mr. Wiener could request that they release that IP address to the public so we could help him track down the hacker. But he hasn't.

Mr. Wiener so far refuses to tell us what his own IP address is. And, he is refusing to answer detailed questions that would allow us to determine if the IP address which sent the tweet is at his home in New York.

It's trivially easy to determine if his accounts have REALLY been hacked. Is the FBI investigating? He is, after all, a sitting member of Congress and it is a felony to impersonate a member of Congress. It's also a felony to hack people's Facebook and Twitter accounts.

I'm left to wonder why hasn't Mr. Wiener reported this breach of Homeland Security to the proper authorities? Is it because falsely reporting this would itself be a felony?

ADDED: Is it news if a politician is unfaithful to his wife? It's not important (unless there's some big hypocrisy involved, as there is with politicians who have made their careers spouting "family values"). But I think it is news when a politician mishandles his internet communications. Minor news, but worth noting.

And it's really news — serious news — if either: 1. the internet accounts of a politician have been hacked in an effort to destroy the man, or 2. the politician makes the false statement that he has been victimized by a crime. One or the other has occurred in this case (unless I'm failing to see some other option).

Should we all be closing our Twitter accounts lest some devious prankster destroy our reputation? Or has Weiner —  for his own purposes — maligned Twitter's business and undermined the Twitter-user's sense of security? I want to know!

AND: If Weiner is lying about his accounts getting hacked, he could be sued by Twitter (and the other companies) for defamation.

ALSO: NBC News reports "Lewd Photo Sent Over Rep. Weiner's Hacked Twitter Account... his Twitter account was hacked." Not that Weiner makes that claim, but an outright assertion that his account was hacked. Twitter is getting slimed here. Does it deserve it?

"The family of an 11-year-old boy killed by a bear in Utah in 2007 was awarded nearly $2 million in damages...."

"Judge Dale Kimball... ruled that the federal government was 65 percent responsible for Samuel's death, the state government 25 percent responsible, and the boy's family 10 percent responsible."

The iPhone app that lets you find open parking spaces in a city that has embedded sensors at 1,000s of spaces.

What a great fact pattern for a torts exam!

“It could be really distracting,” said Daniel Simons, a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois, where he studies the science of attention. And, he said, it could also be dangerous: “Most people are looking for parking spaces in places that have a lot of traffic and a lot of pedestrians.”

City officials acknowledge the potential problem. They are urging drivers to pull over before they pull up the city’s iPhone app, or to do so before they leave home. 

Before they leave home! But the sensor sends out its signal seconds after the space opens up in an area where drivers are circling looking for spots to pounce on before the next car snags it. That's why installing the sensors seemed to make sense in the first place.

Nathaniel Ford, executive director of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, said safety could actually improve if drivers quickly found a spot instead of circling and getting frustrated. “I get you off the streets as quickly as possible,” he said.

San Francisco spent $20 million on this system, not counting the money they will spend on struck-pedestrian law suits. One way to get a person "off the streets as quickly as possible" is to... ugh! Sorry to go morbid on you. Technology is cool. San Francisco is cutting edge... cutting down traffic... and hopefully not pedestrians.

"On Wisconsin! On Wisconsin!/Champion of the Right!/'Forward!' our motto/God will give thee might!"

At the Capitol today, does anyone have a good voice? Can anyone get the national anthem started? And if everyone sings the national anthem, will anyone sing the state song?



There's some nice camaraderie in this video, a flashback to a slip-and-fall, and a discussion of the morality of capitalism. It begins with "Power to the Peaceful" and a man in the middle of leading a prayer for peace in all the countries in the world. He prayed for each, separately, by name, in alphabetical order, and — before that — for each of the states, by name, in alphabetical order. Edited down, appropriately, I hope, by me. Video by Meade.

(Presumably, now, anyone who ever wants to stand in the middle of the rotunda and lead a long prayer, will be completely free to do so.)

AND: The "he" that talked about commerce and morality was Gandhi.

The Westboro Baptist Church wins in the Supreme Court in the case about protesting at a soldier's funeral.

"The First Amendment shields Westboro from tort liability for its picketing in this case."

Chief Justice Roberts writes the opinion, with only Justice Alito dissenting. Justice Breyer has a concurring opinion. From the Roberts opinion:

The picketing was conducted under police supervision some 1,000 feet from the church, out of the sight of those at the church. The protest was not unruly; there was no shouting, profanity, or violence....

Given that Westboro’s speech was at a public place on a matter of public concern, that speech is entitled to “special protection” under the First Amendment. Such speech cannot be restricted simply because it is upsetting or arouses contempt. “If there is a bedrock principle underly- ing the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.” Texas v. Johnson, 491 U. S. 397, 414 (1989). Indeed, “the point of all speech protection . . . is to shield just those choices of content that in someone’s eyes are misguided, or even hurtful.” Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston, Inc., 515 U. S. 557, 574 (1995)....

Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and—as it did here— inflict great pain. On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker. As a Nation we have chosen a different course—to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate. That choice requires that we shield West- boro from tort liability for its picketing in this case.

Clearly, this is the right outcome.

AND: Alito, the lone dissenter, stresses the value of the tort called "intentional infliction of emotional distress":

Respondents’ outrageous conduct caused petitioner great injury, and the Court now compounds that injury by depriving petitioner of a judgment that acknowledges the wrong he suffered.

In order to have a society in which public issues can be openly and vigorously debated, it is not necessary to allow the brutalization of innocent victims like petitioner.

Breyer's short concurrence makes the point that the decision is limited to in-person picketing about matters of "public concern." In adding that the Court "does not examine in depth the effect of television broadcasting" and "internet postings," I get the sense that he's looking ahead to cases about bullying. 

Photography in the delivery room — parents feel like they have a right...

... and the doctors and hospital staff don't like doing their work on camera.

Many hospitals allow and even encourage recording because modern cameras, particularly those taking video, are so unobtrusive. But that same technology has introduced a wild card into a fraught scene that could shock a jury — with the mother screaming and staff responding (or not) to what may look like an emergency — all of which can be edited to misrepresent what actually took place....

“When we had people videotaping, it got to be a bit of a media circus,” Dr. Tracy said, adding that the banning of cameras evolved through general practice rather than a written policy. “I want to be 100 percent focused on the medical care, and in this litigious atmosphere, where ads are on TV every 30 seconds about suing, it makes physicians gun shy.”...

Dr. Elliott Main, chairman of obstetrics and gynecology at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, which also allows filming of births, said, “The modern approach is not to ban cameras but to do drills and practice.”

“Where you get into trouble is where people panic or don’t know what to do next and have blank looks on their faces,” he said. Videotaping simulated births, he said, can help the medical staff adjust their behavior.

Now, part of medical training is: Acting!

Look like you're doing the right thing, even when you're confused and you know you're hurting someone. That would be a good approach even without the cameras, but medical personnel — like politicians — need to adjust their demeanor and expression for the world of YouTube.

"Last week, all humanity thrilled to the footage caught on a mall security camera of a walking-and-texting woman falling into a fountain."

"This week, the once-anonymous woman is doing an airing-of-grievances media blitz, complete with threats of legal action against those who made her hilarious klutziness an internet sensation."

Is there a cause of action for the invasion of privacy that takes place these days when someone catches something stupid that you do — in public — and puts it on YouTube? Hey, don't be stupid! The consequences are much higher today with the internet and viral video. It's a big deterrent. If the legal system turns that deterrent into a monetary gain, it will be incentivizing stupidity.

We need to learn how to live in the world as it is. When we're in public, we have a new dimension of visibility because of digital cameras and the internet. I've been thinking about the effect this is having on politics. Politicians have to watch every single thing they say. That's difficult.

Remember how one word uttered by George Allen destroyed him, because he foolishly thought he was speaking only to a small group and did not foresee how it would play on YouTube. Politicians will have to speak clearly, with a consistent message, and not something tailored to the particular group that they are speaking to at the moment. Obama was able to overcome his "bitter clingers" remark, which was specially designed to reach the hearts of wealthy San Franciscans. But it wasn't easy, and it still dogs him.

Heads up, everybody. Don't stare at the one thing that's right in front of your nose — whether it's your Blackberry or your biggest, wealthiest fans. Pay attention. There's a low wall just ahead, you're about to tumble into the fountain, and the internet is waiting to make you the next sensation.

A woman gets $5.8 million in damages from the woman who stole her husband.

It's the tort called "alienation of affection" — and it worked in North Carolina.

"If you want to have an affair, you need to choose someone who doesn’t reside in North Carolina to have it with because you are going, you’re gonna’ open yourself up to a liability if you do so."

Apparently, to North Carolinians, the words "Do you fully support the Obama agenda?" are fighting words.

What is wrong with that man tortfeasor?



How can Congressman Bob Etheridge (D-NC2) think he can lay hands on someone for asking a question like that? Why did that question make him so angry? Look how much he believes in his own capacity and right to intimidate! Quite aside from the manhandling, where does Etheridge get the idea that someone who asks a question is required to divulge his name? Is he completely deranged? Does he not remember what a camera is? Has he never heard of YouTube? I bet he has now.

ADDED: Here's how WaPo's Dave Weigel minimizes the story:

But without any name or organizational support, just by riling up a member of Congress, the students have created the first conservative meme of the week. They seem to have learned from organizations such as ThinkProgress that any video of a member acting strangely, no matter how grainy, is grist for the Web.

And Weigel is aptly embarrassed by the first comment:

You refer to this dismissively as "video of a member acting strangely." Sorry, this isn't so easily dismissed. It's video of a member acting thuggishly, committing an assault and battery. And it's video of a member who has the arrogance to claim he has a right to know the identity of someone who asked me a question on the street. He doesn't have any such right. What he has is the dangerous notion that he's exempt from the laws of the District of Columbia and from the dictates of a civil society. And by your so cavalierly dismissing his outrageous behavior, you're complicit.

Posted by: Rob_ | June 14, 2010 10:52 AM...

Of course, the big question now — for anyone with a Weigel-y mentality — is: Who's Rob_?

MORE: This came in the email:

I'm Rob_ 

I know your question at the end of the Etheridge post was facetious, but I figured I'd answer it anyway. I'm Robert Cantor, a retired lawyer and amateur photographer in Rockville, Maryland, unaffiliated with Andrew Breitbart or any other political or journalistic operation but fascinated both by Etheridge's outrageous behavior and the way it was covered in the media. Not only did Weigel mischaracterize it and treat it dismissively, but others like CBS chose to edit down the battery to eliminate Etheridge's very rough grabbing of the young man's neck as well as the repeated requests from the young man that Etheridge let him go. The New York Times, following the pattern of its coverage of Van Jones and Helen Thomas, waited to report anything about the incident until Etheridge had apologized, then made his apology the story and reported little about the incident itself. Thank goodness for Glenn Greenwald, who had the integrity to call for Etheridge to be arrested and the courage to call out the commenters to his post who defended Etheridge.

(Rob gave me permission to copy this.)

"Are you seriously wanting this [parking] spot so badly?"

A $5 million lawsuit arising out of a deliberately run-over foot.

The model insisted on outing the blogger who called her a "skank."

And look, it's a woman — a young woman — a pretty young woman.

Speaking out for the first time since a court order forced Google to reveal her identity, blogger Rosemary Port tells the Daily News that model Liskula Cohen should blame herself for the uproar.

"This has become a public spectacle and a circus that is not my doing," said Port, whose "Skanks in NYC" site branded the 37-year-old Cohen an "old hag."

"By going to the press, she defamed herself," Port said.

"Before her suit, there were probably two hits on my Web site: One from me looking at it, and one from her looking at it," Port said. "That was before it became a spectacle. I feel my right to privacy has been violated."

But before you celebrate Port's seemingly wise anti-litigation statement, take note that she's suing Google... for $15 million federal lawsuit against the Web giant.

"When I was being defended by attorneys for Google, I thought my right to privacy was being protected," Port said.

"But that right fell through the cracks. Without any warning, I was put on a silver platter for the press to attack me. I would think that a multi-billion dollar conglomerate would protect the rights of all its users."

In her suit, she'll charge Google "breached its fiduciary duty to protect her expectation of anonymity," said her high-powered attorney Salvatore Strazzullo.

"I'm ready to take this all the way to the Supreme Court," Strazzullo said. "Our Founding Fathers wrote 'The Federalist Papers' under pseudonyms. Inherent in the First Amendment is the right to speak anonymously. Shouldn't that right extend to the new public square of the Internet?"

How hard did Google fight? Surely, there's no absolute right to hide your identity. Why should someone who commits the tort of defamation escape a lawsuit by hiding behind a pseudonym? It's not fair to the people who have the guts to show their names when they libel people. They get stuck being defendants in defamation suits.

The key is for courts to have a high standard in determining whether there really is defamation before they order that the name be revealed. Otherwise, someone who has not actually suffered a legally remediable injury can use a lawsuit for the wrong purpose: to inflict the injury of making a pseudonymous writer's name public.

Note that Liskula Cohen is now dropping her defamation suit against Port. That's good for Port. It's bad to be sued for $3 million. But it suggests that the disclosure of the name was the point of the lawsuit. Courts should not allow themselves to be used for that purpose. And Google's lawyers should fight hard to make courts see it that way.

Look out! Sarah's got a new Facebook entry about health care.

This time, she wants the thing Obama won't talk about: malpractice law reform.

When robots attack.

Good luck suing in Sweden.

In 2007, a muscular robot programmed to lift heavy stones malfunctioned in a factory near Stockholm, Sweden, and some poor devil—who thought he'd turned off the power—nearly got himself killed when the robot grabbed his head and shook him around. He ended up with four broken ribs, but managed to "defend himself" and live. The judge awarded the guy 25,000 Swedish kronor, which sounds nice except that it's only about $3,000. The judge also reprimanded the guy for being at least partially at fault, if I'm reading the Swedish translation correctly.

Get robot insurance:

About that AutoAdmit litigation.

The latest.

... Anthony Ciolli, a University of Pennsylvania Law School graduate and former chief education director at AutoAdmit, can press ahead with his lawsuit against Stanford Law School professor Mark Lemley, who worked as counsel at San Francisco-based Keker & Van Nest, two Yale Law School students and others.

Ciolli's lawsuit claims that he was wrongly included as a defendant in a case brought in June 2007 by the two law students, who alleged that AutoAdmit defamed them on its discussion board. He also claims that Boston-based Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge rescinded its offer of full-time employment because of the alleged connection between him and the statements about the women.....

Named as defendants in his suit are Heide Iravani and Brittan Heller, the former Yale law students; and ReputationDefender, a public relations firm that represented the students. Also named are Lemley; Keker & Van Nest; the Los Angeles-based law firm Rosen & Associates; and attorney David Rosen. Lemley and Rosen were attorneys for the students.

Ciolli's lawsuit alleges wrongful initiation of civil proceedings, abuse of process, libel, slander, false-light invasion of privacy, tortious interference with contract and unauthorized use of name or likeness.

A huge reason not to sue someone: He'll sue you back. How awful!

"An act of adultery between the defendant and the spouse of the plaintiff..."

"... when the defendant knew or should have known that the plaintiff’s spouse was married shall constitute proof of intentional interference with the plaintiff’s marriage. Damages awarded pursuant to this statute shall not exceed $500,000. This action shall be instituted within two years of the discovery of the adultery."

Maggie Gallagher is inspired by this proposed statute (from Minnesota, oddly enough). But what she really wants is not that you should be able to extract half a million dollars from the person who seduced your husband/wife. She wants a cause of action against websites that facilitate adultery.

Political stories I'd blog if I felt more like it.

1. Obama wants to bankrupt to bankrupt the coal industry (and the SF Chronicle sat on the audiotape).

2. Josh Marshall slurs Joe the Plumber as "Joe the Skinhead."

3. Jonah Goldberg pretend-looks back on the Obama presidency -- his "precipitous fall from would-be messiah, to near pariah."

4. "We’ve got to have a civilian national security force..."

5. Sarah Palin receives a (Canadian) prank call.

6. Old radical rag referred to community organizing and had a circular logo.

7. Fred Thompson speaks for John McCain, and John Kerry speaks for Barack Obama. Both do a nice job.

8. Another Senatorial candidate files a defamation lawsuit. The matter in dispute: godlessness.

9. Instapundit had more traffic in September than in October. Me too. Political fever peaks in September. By October, we're just trying to make it to the end.

10. And now, it's November, and this list hits the round number 10. The feeling is: Let it end!

The accuser in the Duke rape case is publishing a memoir.

And LaShawn Barber says:

If Crystal Mangum had any grace, she’d ask for God’s grace, get on with her life, make amends the best she can, and raise decent children. But she’s still trying to get paid.

According to the linked article, she's thinking of going to law school. Well, we'll see what she does with this memoir. Even if people buy this book, it won't work as a moneymaking scheme if it provokes a defamation lawsuit.

Obama's law review case comment — about the rights of a fetus againt its mother.

Politico has unearthed Barack Obama's lost law review article — a short, unsigned piece known a "case comment."

The six-page summary, tucked into the third volume of the year's Harvard Law Review, considers the charged, if peripheral, question of whether fetuses should be able to file lawsuits against their mothers. Obama's answer, like most courts': No. He wrote approvingly of an Illinois Supreme Court ruling that the unborn cannot sue their mothers for negligence, and he suggested that allowing fetuses to sue would violate the mother's rights and could, perversely, cause her to take more risks with her pregnancy.

The subject matter took Obama to the treacherous political landscape of reproductive rights, and - unlike many student authors - he dived eagerly into the policy implications of the court decision. His article acknowledged a public interest in the health of the fetus, but also seemed to demonstrate his continuing commitment to abortion rights, and suggested that the government may have more important concerns than "ensuring that any particular fetus is born."

And he concluded the article with a flourish: "Expanded access to prenatal education and heath care facilities will far more likely serve the very real state interest in preventing increasing numbers of children from being born in to lives of pain and despair."

I looked up the article and can assure you that the last line has the word "into" and not "in to," so hold your mockery on that point. And the case he's writing about, Stallman v. Youngquist, did not involve a fetus that survived abortion. A child was born with injuries caused in the womb when the mother had a car accident. But the issue of abortion is in the background and the subject comes up in the penultimate paragraph, which reads:

Most proponents and critics of the creation of a fetus' right to sue its mother agree that the approach taken in the Supreme Court's abortion decisions -- balancing a woman's right to privacy and bodily autonomy against the state's interest in protecting the fetus -- provides a starting point for analyzing the constitutionality of fetal-maternal tort suits. Commentators also agree that courts should weigh these interests differently in cases where a woman has decided to carry her pregnancy to term, and that the issue of fetal-maternal tort suits therefore demands a separate doctrinal framework. For example, fetal-maternal tort suits might entail far more intrusive scrutiny of a woman's behavior than the scrutiny involved in the discrete regulation of the abortion decision. On the other hand, the state may also have a more compelling interest in ensuring that fetuses carried to term do not suffer from debilitating injuries than it does in ensuring that any particular fetus is born.

Be very careful here. That last line, that "flourish," as Politico has it, about "preventing increasing numbers of children from being born into lives of pain and despair," is not an expression of enthusiasm for aborting children who, if born, would have an unfortunate life. It refers to encouraging pregnant women to take care so that their children are not injured in utero and will be born into a happier life. Note too, that the lawsuit is really about the injured child getting access to the mother's insurers.

What is odd is that up until now, we'd been led to think that Obama, despite his stature as president of the Harvard Law Review, had never written anything. Once Politico tracked down the article, the campaign acknowledged that Obama had written it. But why the urge to suppress it? Obama took knocks for his supposed failure to produce any legal scholarship. It seems that abortion is just not something he wants to have to talk about.

ADDED: Eugene Volokh makes a nice point about the legal issue:

Pretending for a moment that we actually care about the article as an article, my one suggestion would have been to pay a bit more attention to the risk of collusive lawsuits: Since the fetus-mother lawsuit would usually make sense only if the mother has liability insurance -- as many people do, just under their auto insurance or homeowner's insurance policies -- there would be very great temptation in an injury case for the mother to overstate her possible negligence, so the fetus gets more money from the insurance company. I imagine many a person, even one who is ordinarily quite ethical, might find this temptation hard to resist in a case such as this one, when it's a matter of helping one's family (especially when the family will be facing huge medical or supplemental care bills as a result of the injury) at the expense of a faceless insurance company. The article mentions the insurance factor as a reason to worry about generally higher premiums for pregnant women, but not the collusive lawsuit concern.

Obama refrained from saying something negative about women and from highlighting the interests of the insurance companies.