Blogger Successfully Quashes Subpoena 172
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."
More important things (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:More important things (Score:5, Funny)
Are you saying lawyers aren't important?
Way to get sued!
Re:More important things (Score:5, Funny)
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I'm calling PETA and the *SPCA on you! If you hate your 'gators so much, why not just put them to sleep instead of torturing them?
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Re:More important things (Score:4, Insightful)
I hope you never get prosecuted or sued by the RIAA because your neighbor's son hacked your wireless router and used it to play with torrentz.
I hope your civil rights are never violated or that you never need the protection of bankruptcy court.
I hope you never have a problem with your income taxes, or a dispute with your business partner or get rear-ended by a drunk driver.
I hope you never have to set up a trust fund to care for a relative who is too ill to care for herself or have a dispute with your bank or have your identity stolen.
I hope you never get married unwisely and have to divorce from a spouse who wants to hurt you as much as possible.
I hope you never get overlooked for promotion because you are too old, or too black or too female.
It can be argued that lawyers do as much to protect our freedoms as the men and women in our military. Maybe more.
People who think our lives and our country would be better without lawyers are as stupid as stupid gets.
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yes, good lawyers are very useful people to have (good accountants also fall in the undervalued category), but there are way too many bad (where bad="complete lack of ethics") ones around, hence the big-brushing of the profession.
As a nitpick, the problem with "bad lawyers" is usually their morals, not their ethics.
Indeed, such people (along with, say, the average large corporation's upper management) are usually an excellent example for demonstrating the difference between "ethical" and "moral".
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The lawyer isn't the person suing the drug company...the person with the dispute is the one who is suing.
The lack of ethics and morality stands squarely on the shoulders of the person who is the client; the lawyer must always act within the bounds of the law and represent the client zealously, since that is his duty.
An ordinary foot soldier is not to blame for an immoral war, so long as his individual actio
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I hope you never get arrested for a crime you didn't commit or your kid isn't poisoned by some product made by a careless corporation.
Corporations are careless because their lawyers make them so expensive to sue, and ensure that the corporate officers are never held personally liable for unconscionable acts.
I hope you never get prosecuted or sued by the RIAA because your neighbor's son hacked your wireless router and used it to play with torrentz.
The RIAA is pretty much just a bunch of lawyers (oh - and lobbyists). Oops - most lobbyists *are* lawyers.
I hope your civil rights are never violated or that you never need the protection of bankruptcy court.
Why would I need protection of a bankruptcy court? Oh, yea, because there is someon
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And the old, old joke about lawyers is wrong-headed enough that I thought I ought to respond.
Remember, Abraham Lincoln was a lawyer. It's mainly lawyers who are preventing high-school biology classes across the US South from being replaced with Religion classes.
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Which of course doesn't make lawyers in general evil, but maintain some perspective.
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I was trying to figure out why laywers get a bad rap when clearly there are good apples and bad in every profession.
I think that it's because in other professions, the bad apples have nothing to gain, and everything to lose, either by trumpeting their own lack of ethics or by making their profession as a whole look unethical. (Sure, there are always a few cases of someone in a position of power getting a personal buzz out of flaunting what they can get away with, but they don't gain anything professionall
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Shouldn't courts be more interested in finding out the truth of what happened and not who can hire the best story teller? This is what I think is completely missing from the English-based legal system.
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This is where "ambulance chasing comes in". All of that bottom feeding that you
people like to moan about so much is where representation from the poor comes
from. You would rather just like to regurgitate corporate rhetoric about how
bad lawyers are.
Do a little digging into who spearheads tort reform.
It's usually some rich wanker that doesn't want to be held responsible
for his absurd levels of penny pinching.
As far as "national health care goes"...
There are pe
People with money and no ethics (Score:2)
Try being a citizen who is uninsured or underinsured or who works for some company like Wall*Mart which sues the people who get some compensation from a health related settlement.
One in eight people is disabled to some extent or other (15% according to the WHO) but we have 50+ million "working poor" people in this country who are in the same position that they were in before "Tricky Dick" dodged the bullet of people dy
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I hope you never get arrested for a crime you didn't commit or your kid isn't poisoned by some product made by a careless corporation.
Yeah, because your appointed lawyer is sure to beat said careless corporation's lawyer.
I hope you never get prosecuted or sued by the RIAA because your neighbor's son hacked your wireless router and used it to play with torrentz.
You may not be aware of this, but the RIAA has been using its highly paid lawyers to win the majority of those laughable cases.
It can be argued that lawyers do as much to protect our freedoms as the men and women in our military. Maybe more.
For every lawyer who defended someone's rights, there was another lawyer trying to usurp them for profit. Sadly, the amount of money you spend on your lawyer can be a much larger factor in the outcome of your case than being in the right is.
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Give up some references or go home.
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Re:More important things (Score:5, Informative)
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I've wondered about that.
If lord == lady, why is "Hey, lady!" casual slang, bordering on rude?
And where does the phrase "ladies and gentlemen" come from? I'd expect something more Max Payne-esque like "lords and ladies." I also doubt lord == gentleman - "Gentleman Voldemort" doesn't have the same ring to it. Does this mean "ladies and gentlemen" puts women > men, if lady is a greater title than gentleman?
And since when did "ma'am" turn into something for old people? Age isn't the only reason to
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Easy - lord != lady. Lord and Lady are terms of nobility, while Lady and Gentleman are terms of good breeding/class.
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Clerk: Mr. Smith?
Mr. Smith: That's my dad! (chuckling wittily)
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The trade term is "dominatrix".
Justice sure feels good (Score:5, Interesting)
If we were truly selfish creatures, wouldn't the opposite be true? We would have evidence that we could get away with our selfishness, and that would feel good. It seems our genetics code for cooperative behaviors over selfish ones. Is this simply the selfish best choice for individuals, to cooperate with each other, or can genes code for behaviors that are detrimental to the individual but good for the gene pool overall?
Re:Justice sure feels good (Score:5, Insightful)
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A company distributing a significant amount of its profits to all its employees might double all their salaries and be fair, but the top few management people could no longer draw $10m salaries for screwing the company up....
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I've found very few people that wouldn't make the choice to screw over others in my life, and those aren't the kind that would end up in the position to make such decisions.
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Crime is not generally a zero-sum game, it's a -negative- sum game.
A thief stealing your $1000 LCD-TV and selling it to finance his drug-consumption is likely to get a few hundred for it, tops, whereas you are out the full $1000.
Which is why crime doesn't just -redistribute- wealth, it -destroys- wealth.
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At which point here did the TV get destroyed ? Because surely whoever bougth it is either going to use it himself, or sell it forward for more money.
Thievery doesn't destroy wealth, as long as whatev
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Second, thievery forces society to spend resources nonproductively. A burglar-alarm for example costs resources to make.
Third, even though the physical TV may be the same, the *value* is not. Try selling a TV you bougth yesterday in the shop, you won't get back even -close- to the entire price, not even -with- a receipt and the original packaging.
That is because people put a value on convenience (large selection in store versu
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Which sucks for you but is good for whoever buys from you. To use an extreme example, if you spent $1000 on the TV and someone purchases it from you for $100, you've down $900 but that other guy has just saved $900 dollars. In other words, zero-sum. The amount of goods and the a
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The thief breaks a window, steps on a couch, drags mud all over the carpet, wrecks an end-table and steals a TV that cost the owner $500 and sells it for $35.
The homeowner buys a new window for $250 and has the carpets and apolstery cleaned for $100.
The window shop hires a new employee because of all the robberies in the area, the guy from the carpet cleaning company goes out and buys a round of beer for the guys because of the extra $ he's made this w
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A similar phenomenon (yet the opposite direction) is us always hoping that Skeletor will kick He-man's ass if JUST ONCE
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And yet there is not even ONE example of this actually depriving society of anything. Gates? Rockefeller? Name any one of today's actual billionaires and I'll show you a life-changing philanthropist.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to iterate this time and time again, but to a new audience every time.
The only way anybody gets truly wealthy in this country is by bringing other people there with him. Most of the wealthiest people in this country were/are philanthropists.
You get there by bringing other peop
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Most want to live on somehow. Having lots of money alone doesn't cut it.
So some start aiming for power, and some for philantrophy. A rare few find God.
Most of these billionaires aren't stupid and barring "sudden death" it's pretty silly to be holding on to tons of money when you're dead.
e.g. "Being of sound mind and body, I spent it all"
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. Is this simply the selfish best choice for individuals, to cooperate with each other, or can genes code for behaviors that are detrimental to the individual but good for the gene pool overall?
They can, but it's hard to make it work. Basically, a mechanism is required such that the benefits of the behavior accrue more to those who have the gene than to those who don't. So if it is detrimental to you, but beneficial to a other of people who are more likely than the average person to share that gene, then it can be favored by natural selection. So one tends to look for direct benefits before looking for indirect ones
Reciprocal altruism is one example--for example, if altruists are more likely to c
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Chimps will take whatever they think they can get away with, and never actively teach and often try to hide things from each other. Humans may have a lot of the same tendencies, but not nearly to the same degree.
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But pygmy chimps (also known as bonobos) are very, very different animals behaviorally. Researchers speculate that the abundance of resources in the South American habitat of the bonobos, as compared to the African chimps, leads to more cooperative behavior. Bonobos are highly
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If sex was used to diffuse social tension, I think you'd see people start arguments over nothing just to end up in bed after their night at the bar.
Man: Hey lady! You are sitting in my seat!
Woman: But I've been here all night.
Man: Doesn't matter. That seat is my territory and you'd better move or I will get real angry.
Woman: You know what? Fuck you, too. And you can can have your stupid chair because their is too much tension here.
Man: By any chance, could I help you relieve your tension?
Woman: I don't
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Isn't this almost a stereotype in many forms of fiction ? Two people meet, can't stand each other, but eventually end up becoming a couple. Belgarion & C'Nedra, Han & Leia, almost all anime that has couples period... Sure, these aren't real-world examples, but since this stereotype is so wide-spread and apparently cross-cultural, I can't help but thi
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Like the RIAA, you mean?
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The reason I like to see these bastards get nailed to the wall is that they're usually attacking people who were minding their own damn business and not looking for a fight to begin with. The victim usually is completely unprepared for the fight and has significantly fewer resources than the attacker.
If there's such a thing as a cooperative gene, then I'd say that it feels g
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But what you do, if it doesn't benefit the group, isn't likely to outlast you, unless you become immortal, somehow. Selfish or selfless... are abstract, survival is very concrete. The genes don't code one behaviour over the other, it's just "not too much of an asshole" are less likely to be selected against
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can genes code for behaviors that are detrimental to the individual but good for the gene pool overall?
Genes generally code for behavior that is good for genes. A gene for you to treat family well doesn't give a shit about you personally; your family members are likely to have the same gene, so it's just being good to other copies of itself.
Those seriously wondering about this topic should read The Selfish Gene [amazon.com] (Richard Dawkins's first book, wherein he coined the term "meme"). Then follow that up with Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals [amazon.com]. They're two very readable books
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Be careful, you might end up proving the existence of God...
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I think you have to go to another level of abstraction. Humans need a rational universe, or else we have no control. We've evolved to believe in cause and effect, and many universal laws of physics are practically
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Honestly, it is hard to say how much of that is heritable, and how much is learned, cultural in nature (this particular argument goes back centuries.) Look at much of the Oriental world, for instance. Doing what Westerners would call "bad" things is tolerated, so long as one is not caught. Only at that point is it consi
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For social creatures, things like fairness and reciprocity are beneficial, because they encourage peop
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similarly, the fact that we like to root for the underdog...
Or more likely, we've either been f*cked over by a lawyer in the past, or know someone who has been. There's a BIG difference between the law and justice, and the law as currently practiced is often unjust.
It also explains all the lawyer jokes:
Like, "Deep down, lawyers are okay - preferrably at least 6 feet down."
Q. what do you call 1000 lawyers buried up to their necks in sand?
A. Not enough sand.
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Sweet justice (Score:2)
Can't wait for sanctions against this scumbag. Hopefully other overzealus lawyers will take notice too.
Re:Sweet justice (Score:5, Informative)
Paraphrased from Kathy's extremely... "in-depth" blog http://www.neurodiversity.com/weblog/article/149 [neurodiversity.com]:
Since June of 2006, Mr. Shoemaker (scumbag) has been paid fees in 22 VICP cases, 15 of which were dismissed.
Total fees paid to this DB for the DISMISSED CASES are up to $254,291.25.
Total fees paid for cases which resulted in awards were $330.158.04.
Oh, and it was 4 hours after this info was published on Kathy's Blog that she was served with the Subpoena.
s/Katherine/Kathleen/ (Score:5, Informative)
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Ah, forgot that this is Slashdot for a moment. Nevermind, move along.
Re:s/Katherine/Kathleen/ (Score:4, Funny)
Should be above your post, but... (Score:2)
Hooray for a bit of legal sanity (Score:4, Insightful)
I have a friend who recently started a small business (he makes board games). On release of his first game, he was immediately sent a letter from a competitor's lawyer demanding either cease-and-desist, or a licensing agreement for the use of the term "Superheroes*". Are you kidding me?! My understanding is that this company routinely threatens any small business (they're fairly small too) that creates a game with "Superheroes" in the name, and threatens legal action or a licensing payment.
Most of these companies run on a shoestring budget and caved, but my friend hired a lawyer to write an aggressive response, threatening countersuits, etc. My understanding is that he never heard from them again. In an ideal world, this sort of through-the-legal-system extortion and bullying would be severely reprimanded, but in the real world, a small business is generally considered lucky if they only have to shell out a few hundred (or thousand) in lawyer fees.
* It wasn't really that, but a similarly generic term. I don't want to stir anything up for my friend. Lawyers may be listening!
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I also had a nice 'cease and desist' letter sent to me. Other than trying to suggest that I would be brought up on unspecified criminal charges(yes, criminal), the letter also mentioned copyright and trademark violations that I was being accused of violating. Actually, in one sentence of the letter it accused me of making possibly libelous statements, and in almost the very next sentence, it accused me of knowingly making libelous statements. Granted, by this point I already knew the letter was just thrown
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Was it by any chance a generic term starting with Z refering to a type of undead creature? I have a friend who had a sufficiently negative experience of the sort you relate that I'm shy of making the word show up on a search engine. Well, that and it's fun to be paranoid.
Note that I've no idea who your friend is, and the other facts presented don't m
I Thought Everybody Knew... (Score:2)
I thought everybody knew you don't mess with Harvard when it comes to legal matters. Even the RIAA has stayed far clear of Harvard Square with their John Doe suits and subpoenas for student information.
What I want to know... (Score:4, Insightful)
And don't say "She can get damages from that shyster for his misuse of the legal system". That's a lot harder to do than people seem to realize.
pro bono? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:What I want to know... (Score:4, Funny)
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Joke or not, the link seems to serve its primary purpose, which is to discourage people from modding me down just because they disagree with me.
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Does slash record IPs for this kind of stuff? Frankly, it should. Allowing the sort of trick that you (claim) you do and that I tried means eliminating the requirement that mods not post in the discussion. A similar trick would involve making an alternative login and garnering karma bonuses, etc., by modding up your own posts, and this patently violates the spirit of the system
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Frankly, it should. Allowing the sort of trick that you (claim) you do and that I tried means eliminating the requirement that mods not post in the discussion.
Huh? I don't follow that. I'm reminding moderators that there are rules for moderation that should not be ignored. What does that have to do with the no-posting rule?
Anyway, I don't view it as a trick. I really do believe that the current moderator pool sucks. There were some changes a few years ago that I think really hurt the mod system.
Society Strikes Back (Score:2)
I don
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Re:Society Strikes Back (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure we have. They're called "doctors", "politicians" and "Chief Executive Officers", respectively. Granted, many politicians are also lawyers, so there's some crossover but they all they tend to think just as highly of themselves. I will agree that, unlike the other three groups, doctors do provide useful if overpriced services. If all physicians suddenly disappeared tomorrow many of us would be in trouble, but if attorneys, politicians and "Chief Executive Officers" vanished from the face of the Earth most of us wouldn't even notice.
For sure there'd be a lot of nice homes and used luxury cars on the market.
Bravo (Score:2, Informative)
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Re:In Communist China (Score:5, Interesting)
In part (Score:3, Informative)