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Blogger Subpoenaed for Criticizing Trial Lawyers
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Fri Apr 11, 2008 02:19 PM
from the lookin-for-a-free-ride dept.
from the lookin-for-a-free-ride dept.
Cutie Pi writes "Katherine Seidel, mother of an autistic child and an avid blogger has been subpoenaed for her "family's bank records, tax returns, autism-related medical and educational records, and every communication concerning all of the issues to which [she] has devoted [her] attention and energy in recent years." The lawyer in question is representing a mother who is suing Bayer for $20M with the claim that mercury in their vaccines caused her child's autism. In her blog Seidel has spoken out against lawyers trying to cash in on thimerosal lawsuits, noting that the thimerosal-autism link has been debunked in several studies. But Seidel herself has had no direct involvement in the lawsuit."
Related Stories
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Science: Thimerosal Does Not Cause Autism 298 comments
jamie found an article over at Washington Monthly discussing the recent finding that there is no link between thimerosal and autism. It seems that after the mercury-based vaccine preservative was withdrawn from use in 1999, no drop in autism rates has been observed in a large California study. Here's the Science Daily writeup on the study, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry.
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Blogger Successfully Quashes Subpoena 172 comments
Ares writes "In a follow-up to Blogger Subpoenaed for Criticizing Trial Lawyers, Katherine Seidel's blog indicates that not only has she successfully quashed her subpoena, but the lawyer issuing said subpoena is now under orders to appear and explain why the courts shouldn't sanction him for it. This should be interesting, because in addition to Ms. Seidel's subpoena in New Hampshire, the lawyer issued a similar subpoena to a doctor and a Harvard professor under similar circumstances."
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News: Lawyer Who Subpoenaed Blogger Seidel Sanctioned 35 comments
Zathras26 writes "Slashdot has previously reported on a lawyer subpoenaing Kathleen Seidel for blogging about him in an unflattering light. Seidel successfully moved to quash the subpoena. In granting the motion to quash, the judge ordered the lawyer, Clifford Shoemaker, to show cause as to why he should not be sanctioned for his behavior. Whatever his response was, if any, it apparently wasn't good enough, because Shoemaker has been formally sanctioned for his actions."
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This lawyer... (Score:5, Funny)
*HIDES*
Logic and evidence be damned (Score:5, Insightful)
Scumbag lawyers, shoddy science, willfully ignorant and upset parents - it's a perfect combination.
Re:Logic and evidence be damned (Score:5, Insightful)
He is clearly addicted to the idea of being a superstar doctor, and doesn't mind how many hopes, dreams and desperate parents he abuses along the way.
As science becomes debased in popular culture, by everything from homeopathy to astrology to religion, tragedies like this one will be the consequence.
We geeks need to get out of the basement and put our collective intelligence to work.
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Re:Logic and evidence be damned (Score:4, Funny)
But the light is so bright!
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Atheist Mythology (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Logic and evidence be damned (Score:4, Insightful)
This is because science, as we know it, only started in earnest in the last two hundred years.
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Re:Logic and evidence be damned (Score:5, Insightful)
More like as long as the latter doesn't waltz into the former's territory.
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Re:Logic and evidence be damned (Score:5, Insightful)
It's really sad, because these people are risking allowing some truly horrible and often fatal diseases to come back decades after they were virtually wiped out. I'd much rather have a minuscule and totally unproven chance of a few kids getting autism, which is not fatal, than have a virtual certainty of thousands of kids getting fatal and/or permanently disfiguring diseases like pertussis or polio.
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Re:Logic and evidence be damned (Score:5, Informative)
http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/03/correlation_causation_vaccinat.php [theatlantic.com]
This is the sure sign of a crank. It is possible that all these people are wrong--science has had much more spectacular failures in the face of clear evidence. But there is no such thing as a multi-million person conspiracy.
Looking for those links is entirely natural. But fingering vaccines has real and terrible consequences. Millions of children die worldwide every year from childhood diseases that we've eliminated here through vaccination. Now, because these websites are frightening people about vaccination, we're seeing a resurgence of those diseases. People are dying from them again, and others are being left with permanent health impairment. Leaving children unvaccinated means going back to
* Leg braces and iron lungs for people with polio (57,628 cases in 1952)
* Encephalitis and sterility for people with mumps (200,000 cases a year in the 1960s)
* Congenital rubella syndrome for children whose mothers contracted the illness during pregnancy.
* Blindness, pneumonia, encephalitis, and death--one per thousand--for people with measles (nearly 1 million cases a year in the US before vaccines).
* Encephalitis and pulmonary hypertension for people with whooping cough--thanks to people who don't vaccinate their kids, in 2001, 17 people, mostly infants, died of pertussis (200,000 cases in 1940).
* Cardiac arrest and paralysis for people with diptheria (207,000 cases and about 15,000 deaths in 1920).
The vaccines scare us because the diseases don't. And they don't because of the vaccines.
Parent
This is why people hate lawyers... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is why people hate lawyers... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is not "probably" an abuse of the legal system. It is one. It is also overly intrusive, and has a number of other "defects".
The last time I saw a subpeona like this, the lawyer quickly backed down, because he realized we were going to ask for sanctions for abuse of process as soon as we walked into the courthouse.
Parent
Re:This is why people hate lawyers... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's called a chilling effect [wikipedia.org]. If this is upheld, it will send the message that if you criticise pseudo-science, you are in danger of being dragged before a court and having all your personal details examined for no good reason. It's an undue burden on speech that many people will not be willing to take just to speak out against some kooks.
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Re:This is why people hate lawyers... (Score:5, Insightful)
They want her bank statements, her canceled checks, her tax returns, and any documents even vaguely related to any issue covered on her web site, including correspondence with her physicians, attorneys, and any member of the government. Imagine how you would feel about giving the last seven years of your correspondence and financial records over to a hostile party.
And, of course, they want the right to grill her about anything related to any of that, while she pays a couple hundred bucks an hour in legal fees. And for why? Because she has blogged critically about them.
That doesn't just have an effect on her right to free speech. It has an chilling effect [wikipedia.org] on every blogger who sees themselves as a citizen journalist. Anybody who wants to blog about something important -- or even read blogs like that -- should oppose legal harassment like this.
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Re:This is why people hate lawyers... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:This is why people hate lawyers... (Score:5, Insightful)
Her right to free speech is not being interfered with
The hell it isn't. [wikipedia.org]
It's not about denying someone their rights.
It's about exerting social influence on them to distract/prevent them from exercising those rights.
And, failing that, it's about creating pain points when one decides to exercise those rights. Like electroshock therapy. Sure, nothing's STOPPING you from doing "Activity A", but if you get a painful jolt every time you do "Activity A", you'll soon find that you either reduce or completely stop doing "Activity A".
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Re:This is why people hate lawyers... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Man it's cold (Score:4, Funny)
Blinded by the light (Score:5, Interesting)
I suppose, in some sense, that it's like telling her that her religion is wrong.
Re:Blinded by the light (Score:5, Insightful)
As a father of an autistic child, I can totally understand an emotional and illogical response to the suggestion of a Thimerosal/autism link. Believe me, at first it had me somewhat enraged as well. In light of some other drugs that have come under fire in past years for either under-delivering on promises or outright harming people that take them, it only makes sense that some people are going to look at a statement like that and say "Oh, look, something *else* the FDA missed!"
The problem is most people nowadays seem to either 1) lack the capacity to think for themselves (either mentally or as a result of time constraints, etc.) 2) lack the desire to think for themselves. After all, why bother doing that when someone else has already done it for me?
I also think that both sides are sitting too much in the area of absolutes. It seems that most scientists insist that *every* vaccine is safe for *every* child, and the inverse is true for those who think Thimerosal causes autism. Obviously, just the mere presence of Thimerosal doesn't cause autism, because if it did we'd all be autistic. But at the same time, I don't think it's unreasonable to believe that the large number of vaccines that are administered at once nowadays, along with other possible factors, are at the source.
Autism can be very difficult to work with as a parent, and I hope they find out the cause/cure soon. But flying off the handle, on either side, isn't going to get it done.
Parent
Re:Blinded by the light (Score:5, Insightful)
And these are planetary efforts. Sure in the US most of these diseases are not going to kill your kid (unless they're born prematurely), but outside the US these childhood diseases are much more serious. Vaccines are for the good of mankind.
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Re:Blinded by the light (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Blinded by the light (Score:5, Insightful)
According to wikipedia 300-500 million people died of smallpox in the 20th century. It was irradicated via vaccine in 1979.
Ok, first of all Thermisol is a preservative. It doesn't have to be in vaccines. It did not do anything to help your body. And autism cases have increased since they removed it.
"If it works, your kid had it and won't get Pluto's Spotted Canker Sores."
If it works your kid gets antibodies and won't get paralyzed by Polio.
"If it doesn't, why do I have to take it anyway?"
This is a common argument. Social Darwanism would seem to say this would be desirable. If you're not intelligent enough to recognize the value of vaccines then your children should be free to die from early childhood diseases and no longer populate the gene pool with your particular brand of ignorance.
Except that this doesn't happen in the US the fact that everyone else is vaccinated means that the chance of your child getting a horrible disease is pretty low. You can piggyback off the immunity of others.
The problem is that your child becomes a host for disease. Those bugs are free to use your child to breed and spread. They're also able to use your child to mutate into new strains that can bypass the antibodies created by the vaccines in the healthy population. And your kid can wipe out 5% of the kids in the US. That's why vaccines are mandated.
The main reason that this is an issue is because we really don't have any horrible childhood diseases anymore, so no one remembers why we started this vaccinating stuff in the first place.
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Re:Blinded by the light (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless a child has an allergy to something in the vaccine, they are.
"I don't think it's unreasonable to believe that the large number of vaccines that are administered at once nowadays, along with other possible factors, are at the source."
Actually it is unreasonable.
It wasn't unreasonable to look at that possibility, but it has been shown not to be the cause many times.
"Autism can be very difficult to work with as a parent, "
no doubt, but continuing to say 'maybe' to the vaccine issue doesn't help.
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Re:Blinded by the light (Score:5, Insightful)
Not even close. What they do say, is that the chances of side-effects from vaccines are less than the hazards of the disease that the vaccine prevents.
-jcr
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How do you asses Blame? (Score:5, Insightful)
I find it difficult to believe that the parent of an autistic child is to be "blamed." At this stage in the game, no one knows what causes autism so it is too early to asses blame.
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Re:How do you asses Blame? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Some idea of what their doing (Score:5, Interesting)
What is the judge thinking? (Score:5, Insightful)
Third party subpoenas should be looked at under a microscope for relevance. This lady didn't manufacture, sell, or administrate the vaccine in question. What does she have to do with the underlying lawsuit?
Re:What is the judge thinking? (Score:5, Informative)
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Subpoenas (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing to understand about subpoenas is that in most states, once litigation commences, the lawyers (as officers of the court) for each side have the power to issue subpoenas to anyone who might have information relevant to the lawsuit.
The major limitations on such subpoenas are ethical limitations (attorneys' behavior is governed by a complex but far-from-bright-line set of rules) and the rules against discovery abuse, which can be found at Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(b) and elsewhere. The decision to grant sanctions is up to the discretion of the court, which basically means that an appellate court will go with what the judge decides, unless, for example, the discovery sanction is death.
However, it looks like Ms. Seidel is in good hands lawyer-wise. Her motion to quash the subpoena (the way that one tries to avoid having to comply) hits a lot of different theories and defenses, including the most important one: that the subpoena won't lead to discoverable evidence.
Postscript of Surprise: The plaintiff's attorney filed the suit in the Eastern District of Virginia, a federal court whose nickname is "The Rocket Docket." The consensus among attorneys is that once you file a case there, you should go ahead and say goodbye to your family for a few months. Rather than let litigation drag out for years, the Rocket Docket judges set -extremely- aggressive discovery schedules. Filing any complaint there is ballsy, no less a thimerosal one, since whether thimerosal causes autism is far from crystal-clear. Long discovery would mean more time for the plaintiff to gather evidence (and for new autism studies to come out).
Correct spelling (Score:4, Informative)
Thiomersal is one of those words that is more misspelled (as "thimerosal") than spelled correctly (according to hit counts from a Google Search). Both the blogger and the lawyer in this case have it wrong. More info is at http://www.who.int/vaccine_safety/topics/thiomersal/questions/en/ [who.int] and http://www.who.int/vaccine_safety/topics/thiomersal/en/index.html [who.int]. Also see http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=516680 [nih.gov].
Money quote from Motion to Quash (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Silent Spring all over again (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Silent Spring all over again (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Silent Spring all over again (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Silent Spring all over again (Score:5, Informative)
It's not legal to use it how we WERE using it -- to get a slightly higher yield from wholly un-diseased agriculture.
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DDT (Score:5, Interesting)
DDT didn't cause the thinning. It's still banned though, because people fear global warming and other such nonsense.
"In the 1950s [wilsoncenter.org], the World Health Organization (WTO) dropped DDT on the island of Borneo to control mosquitoes, resulting in two unexpected events. First, homes collapsed under the weight of hornets' nests that died and hardened from the DDT; and second, and more troubling, there was an outbreak of bubonic plague because the DDT affected the island's animal nutrient cycle. Small animals (lizards, insects, etc.) became sluggish, while larger animals such as cats ended up with toxic levels of DDT from consumption of smaller creatures. Eventually, all the cats died, leading to an increase in the rat population and an outbreak of bubonic plague. The WTO's solution--which worked--was to airdrop cats to deal with the rat problem, which, in turn, addressed the bubonic plague problem."
FalconParent
Re:Silent Spring all over again (Score:5, Interesting)
Silent Spring was a crock in the overreaction that followed the book.
We went from spraying DDT on everything, to nothing.
There are films from the 40s and 50s where trucks would just drive down neighborhoods spraying DDT. They'd do it at public pools. No one thought anything of it. We way over used DDT.
In the wake of the book, people overreacted and moved to basically ban DDT outright. Instead of spraying in a controlled manner (such as, say, only where mosquitoes are a problem), we stopped spraying it altogether despite the fact that it was incredibly effective and cheap.
The book it's self was fine. As I remember Rachel Carson didn't argue to ban DDT but to be much more responsible in it's use. That really isn't what happened. It's that legacy (overreaction causing serious other problems) that people generally mean when they talk about Silent Spring being a crock.
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Re:Silent Spring all over again (Score:4, Interesting)
The studies trying to link Autism to Vaccines all clearly show no such link.
On top of that, the rate of increase has stayed the same even after the removal of Themarisol.
That not really a surprise considering it's a different type of mercury then that which causes developmental problems.
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Re:Silent Spring all over again (Score:4, Interesting)
Here is how Dixy Lee Ray (with Lou Guzzo) described events (Trashing the Planet, page 69) [note: Ray has the timing wrong, the spraying was stopped in 1964, not the late 60s]:
Public health statistics from Sri Lanka testify to the effectiveness of the spraying program. In 1948, before the use of DDT, there were 2.8 million cases of malaria. By 1963, there were only 17. Low levels of infection continued until the late 1960s, when the attacks on DDT in the U.S. convinced officials to suspend spraying. In 1968, there were one million cases of malaria. In 1969, the number reached 2.5 million, back to the pre-DDT levels. Moreover, by 1972, the largely unsubstantiated charges against DDT in the United States had a worldwide effect. In 1970, of two billion people living in malaria regions, 79 percent were protected and the expectation was that malaria would be eradicated. Six years after the United States banned DDT, there were 800 million cases of malaria and 8.2 million deaths per year. Even worse, because eradication programs were halted at a critical time, resistant malaria is now widespread and travelers could take it home.
From: http://info-pollution.com/ddtban.htm [info-pollution.com]Parent
Re:Silent Spring all over again (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Silent Spring all over again (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Silent Spring all over again (Score:4, Insightful)
I see that this is really the media's fault, to a large degree.
We got really flimsy evidence of this link, which they trumpeted (because it was "sexy" and brought in eyeballs). When these studies were basically proven false, they got very little mention.
So now what you see is every once in a while a story is done about these things. They show some doctor saying "that's nonsense, you should be more afraid of scarlet fever." Then you see 4 crying mothers talking about how doctors ruined her kid's life. They are given equal weight.
So people don't get the right picture. They get a skewed one. They glamorize the "poor mothers" who get outpourings of grief. They play on people's fears. They don't deal with the elephant in the room.
The people who do these kinds of suits are either really stupid, or not finished grieving. The people that take it this far (make sites devoted to it, sue everyone involved, etc) are quite probably just in the "anger" stage of grief. They are looking for anyone or anything to blame so that it's not their fault, it's not random, etc. People prefer concrete incorrect answers (it's the mercury) to abstract correct answers (some kids just develop that way).
They don't talk about how these kind of things could be because of grief. They don't talk about how there is basically no evidence. They try to get viewers. The lawyers go for the long shot cash and the good publicity. Both are taking advantage of people operating out of grief.
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Re:Flashback! (Score:5, Insightful)
The long and the short is that a courtroom isn't the place to do scientific research, nor is it the place to review such research. The research is pretty clear that there is no link to autism. That should be the end of it. It shouldn't be about who can produce the most emotional appeal. It shouldn't be about who can send out the most threatening or largest quantities of subpoenas, it shouldn't be about who keep can keep discovery going forever, it should be about the facts. If the facts aren't there, the case should be tossed out. That's sort of how it works in criminal cases, where a grand jury convenes to determine whether there is, in fact, sufficient evidence to proceed. I think that should be mapped over to the civil system so cases like this (and even cases like SCO's IP claims) simply don't get into a courtroom until a preliminary jury can be convinced there's even a case there.
There's never going to be a perfect legal system, but we can sure as hell reform the system sufficiently so that nuisance cases never go anywhere. And make no mistake, no matter how angry and distraught these parents are, that's exactly what it is, a baseless nuisance case, an abuse of the system, a waste of money, and I would support, despite the teary-eyed mothers who clearly have many problems to deal with, seeing them pay the defendants' fees, not because I like drug companies, but because I think the only way the system is going to be brought back down to earth is by making those who weight down the system with frivolous cases pay dearly for wasting the court's time.
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Re:Silent Spring all over again (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Silent Spring all over again (Score:5, Insightful)
You're evidently (and self-admittedly) irrational about the subject. I understand your feelings, but feelings don't determine facts. You can rage, ignore, or refuse to let facts influence you, but they will remain facts.
If Autism is ever to be cured or prevented, by the way, it will be by somebody who respects facts. This vaccine controversy is a huge distraction from what we should be doing.
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Re:Silent Spring all over again (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Silent Spring all over again (Score:5, Informative)
I'm a father of a 2 year old (who has had all the vaccinations), I also spent 7 years working in the area of mercury control, including thimerisol. Hg is nasty in most forms, but typically it takes a period of long exposure and bioaccumulation for someone to be affected. There are the cases where Hg containing substances have a lethal effect, but in these cases the effect is so potent that they would impact every person that came into contact with it, and we know from the statistics that this is not the case with thimerisol.
Think about this statement, my grandmother was perfectly fine and then one day I bought her new alumnium pots, within a week (more than 24 hours) she was diagnosed with Altzhiemers...it must have been my fault!!
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Re:Thimerisol has not been debunked. (Score:4, Informative)
"A medical review board just agreed that Thimerisol, and specific conditions in a young girl were responsible for causing her Autism."
that is NOT what happened, stop it. You ahve completely misunderstood it.
and
"mercury "
No it's the wrong kind of mercury. It is NOT the same stuff that comes in thermometers.
"I find the whole "debunking" thing these days, to highly favor well paid corporations."
really? I find it to be favoring the truth. as it turns out many corporation are actually telling the truth.
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The GP *WAS* informative (Score:5, Informative)
Furthermore after 2001 , NO REDUCTION in autism was observed despite lessened to null use of thiomersal. And study were made it has no autism impact. How many more evidence you need ? Finally you are omitting a very important fact from your "ethyl mercury is toxic" meme. 1) how long does it take to metabolise from thiomersal to ethyl mercury 2) how does it relate to ethyl mercury half life in the body 3) how does it relate to the minimal quantity of thiomersal in vaccine ? 4) how is the quantity of ethyl mercury due to vaccine at ANY time in comparison to the dosis at which it starts affecting the body (and yes there are quantity which are perfectly tolerable, and even quantity of Eth-Hg which can be totally ignored). and more importantly 5) how does it relate to parents saying that within 24 hours their kids got autism !!!!
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