Tort reform, Texas style

Class action lawyer Bill Lerach has been the scourge of small companies for years. When a stock drops, Lerach rounds up shareholders to file suit against the company. Companies often settle these nuisance lawsuits to avoid long and expensive legal hassles. Generally, the lawyers get rich and the "plaintiffs" get a pittance.

Until now. Federal Judge Melinda Harmon (Bush 41 - Texas) is making Lerach pay the defendants' legal costs in a meritless lawsuit ($):

One reason the tort bar files so many frivolous lawsuits is that there have been very few penalties for its legal abuses. So congratulations are due to a Texas judge who last week ordered class-action kingpin Bill Lerach to pay up for his latest wretched excess.

Federal Judge Melinda Harmon's good deed came at the end of a high-profile suit against Alliance Capital. She dismissed the case in summary fashion and invoked a little-used legal rule that requires the Lerach firm to pay Alliance's legal fees. While the plaintiffs might have had cause for filing the suit, the judge said, by the end of discovery it was clear "the continuance of the claim against Alliance was at that point without merit" and so the Lerach firm must pay for dragging Alliance past that point.

"Loser pays" is standard practice in Britain. It helps discourage frivolous lawsuits. We should use it more often here.

Economics 101

Subsidize retardation, and you'll get more of it.

Man accused of faking retardation for the benefits.

This year's hottest Christmas toy

Anyone still looking for a Christmas present for me? This is it.

'Beanbag gun' used to subdue OFFICERS

Fancy places

Sunday Borat Update, Part II

More victims of Borat:

A TV crew from Kazakhstan's Channel 31 was in Columbus on Nov. 6 and 7 to make a real documentary on the U.S. political system, but the crew got a wary reception from press secretaries who feared public skewering by comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, star of the mockumentary "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan."

It didn't help that the Kazakh cameraman's first name was "Bolat," a name similar to Cohen's alias...

When the real central Asian TV crew showed up in Ohio, press secretaries for the state's Republican and Democratic parties were suspicious enough to verify their credentials with the U.S. State Department.

"They were really adamant that they were not Borat," said Ohio Democratic Party press secretary Randy Borntrager, adding that the film crew told him that "Borat" "is giving Kazakhstan a bad name."

State Department officials who supervised the TV crew's two-week multistate trip say they got apprehensive phone calls wherever the real Kazakhs went. Even the FBI called them to make sure the crew was legitimate.

Sunday Borat update, Part I

Borat is one of the greatest movies of all time. Sacha Baron Cohen is one of the greatest comedians of all time.

But this constantly repeated media theme about Borat as social commentary that reveals the dark truths about Americans is overblown. On the Arizona bar patrons that gleefully sang along to "Throw the Jew Down the Well":

A very different picture, though, emerged from a conversation with the treasurer of the company that owns the bar, Carol Pierce, who said that she herself is Jewish. Pierce could be seen during the segment on HBO, laughing heartily behind her goateed husband.

In explaining her light-hearted take on Borat, she pointed out that what television viewers saw was only a few minutes of the two-and-a-half-hour performance that Borat gave when he came to Tucson, Ariz., in April. The rest of Borat’s performance, in which he sang about throwing his wife and family down the well, made it perfectly clear to Pierce that the man performing was a comedian in disguise — who was very funny.

HT: Karol.

WSJ to readers: You illiterate losers!

The Wall Street Journal enjoys running articles that let you know whether you're literate or not. Here are two easy ways to test yourself:

#1. WSJ 11/7/06

"Anthropologist Clifford Geertz of the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton passed away last week. His name will be generally -- if often hazily -- familiar to literate people who will, however, be unlikely to appreciate the considerable impact he had on our intellectual world."

#2 WSJ 11/21/06:

"Even the most reasonably literate American may find it difficult to name more than three of the past chief justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. But of those three, one of them will almost certainly be Roger Brooke Taney..."

I'm illiterate on Count 1. That name is not generally, nor hazily, familiar. But the music there... it was hauntingly familiar.

On Count 2, I'll name John Marshall, William Howard Taft, Earl Warren, Warren Burger, and William Rehnquist. That's five. That makes me The Most Reasonably Literate American in the Wall Street Journal's eyes. Sorry George Will, William F. Buckley, Noam Chomsky, et. al. You are all distant seconds.

But Roger Brooke Taney? Who the &*^# is that???

Even the most illiterate Wall Street Journal reviewer of books on American history should be able to name Marshall, Warren, Burger, and Rehnquist. If they keep hiring these illiterate hacks, I might have to cancel my subscription.

HT: Old Zeke, who adds that the use of the phrase "the most reasonably literate American" is, in itself, evidence of minimal literacy.