New York gets a new blogger, doing his thing at Lou and The Law. Lou has been an occasional commenter here, and comes from the defense side of the aisle having worked as senior trial attorney for Liberty Mutual Insurance for almost 30 years. Worth reading for New York practitioners is Late Expert Disclosure Affidavits, and it is worth it because the statute governing expert affidavits doesn't actually have a time frame in it.

John Hochfelder rants against New York's appellate judges who knock down jury awards, but fail to explain why;

Mark Bennett has 16 Rules for Lawyers Who (Think They) Want to Market Online. Proceed with caution.

But Bennett missed this one: Don't use the names of your competitors as keywords for Google ads, as the Milwaukee personal injury firm of Cannon & Dunphy now learns as their name turns to mud;

And more from the attorney advertising department: Florida settles a case that now allows lawyers to use sites like Avvo and LinkedIn.

Carolyn Elefant on Google's new research tool, Google Scholar, and what it means for lawyers. I know what it means for me, as I discovered that I've been cited in a couple of law reviews, a litigation reporter, and a medical journal.

Mickey Mouse sued Donald Duck;

Is there a cause of action for Goth Discrimination?

What happens if you dress up like a suspect?

The family of a dead man -- who it turns out wasn't quite dead yet -- wants to sue the medical examiner;

As tort "reform" comes up in the debate over the health care bill -- along with screams of excess litigation and frivolous suits -- a reminder from Public Citizen that the actual data on tort trials is that they have decreased in number over the years;

Scott Greenfield shreds New York's new drunk-driver law;

The Personal Injury Law Round-Up is up at TortsProf; and

Blawg Review #238 is up at the Twin Cities Carry Journal, authored by Joel Rosenberg, prolific novelist, non lawyer and Jew With a Gun. His theme? Tolerance (and the lack thereof), with an introduction by one of the all time great political-humor songs.

Labels: Random Notes

Last month, Kevin Pho, M.D., of Kevin, MD fame, had an op-ed in USA Today on potential solutions to medical malpractice litigation issues.

I've responded to that piece, and he has it as a guest blog today:

How a personal injury lawyer views the medical malpractice system

Dr. Pho runs the most widely followed doctor's blog in the medical blogosphere, and he appears frequently on op-ed pages.

Labels: Medical Malpractice

Five months back there was a Metro train crash in Washington DC, and I watched from a distance to see who/how/where/when the web would be used by lawyers to find victims. And one of the things we saw was that one of the gazillion attorney search firms that infect the web was soliciting clients. Given that these search firms are agents of the lawyers, that raised the problem of attorneys using the web to solicit.

Thus was born this little formula in June: outsourcing marketing = outsourcing ethics. This wasn't, by any means, the first time I'd appreciated the problem of outsourcing marketing, having written about the ethics of attorney search services two years ago:

The implications of attorneys outsourcing advertising to a third party that may be acting unethically represents an area of law that is unexplored by many ethics committees.

The implications of being the test case are not pretty, and there after now five lawyers in Connecticut feeling the heat, as the state tries to decide if they violated local ethics laws by paying referral fees to the non-attorneys at a site called TotalBankruptcy.com. Some of the discussion goes to differentiating between a mere advertisement like a Google ad, and a "referral" from a search site after it takes in information from the consumer and then spits out a name.

For more on that, you can read Carolyn Elefant (in defense of the five), Scott Greenfield (calling the search service a cancer in the legal profession), Mark Bennett (suggesting disbarment, not saving), Josh King (the rules are unconstitutional), Larry Bodine (looking at the attorney who filed such complaints in 47 states) with both Bob Ambrogi and Colin Samuals doing extensive analysis of all the commentary.

It sucks to be a test case. It's one of those things lawyers should aspire to avoid.

It wasn't my intention to coin a phrase regarding this kind of stuff six months ago when I wrote about the train accident and the solicitation, but several others have now picked up that theme so it's worth expanding on.

When lawyers outsource their marketing to others -- be it a "search engine optimization" company, an attorney search company, or some hybrid -- they are hiring agents to do their advertising. Agents. We learned about that stuff in law school. The concept has a long and deep legal history. The web didn't make it go away.

And when it comes to the web, these are five things that those agents might be doing in your name that can get you in big trouble on the web, because attorney ethics are deeply intertwined now with marketing:

• You are accused of sharing legal fees with non-lawyers (See Connecticut Five, above).

• The agents solicit clients in violation of ethics rules (See Metro train crash incident);

• They could spam blogs with your firm name;

• They could scrape content from other blogs (or news sources) and post it as yours, thereby violating copyright laws in your name,

• They could circumvent rules by engaging in ethics laundering.

It's interesting to note that simply going out and hiring a high-profile marketing company won't necessarily help you. For instance, Avvo is one of those find-a-lawyer sites, that also has reviews of attorneys. They've made a big splash and are as tech-savvy as anyone. Yet, if you go to their site, which now looks for attorneys to pay $49.95/month for "enhanced" visibility, you will find that they appear to violate one of New York's ethic's rules that went into effect in 2007.

Which rule does Avvo appear to break? The requirement that "attorney advertising" be placed on their home page, a failure that I noted hit many firms at the time it was implemented. Does an attorney search site need to have that mark on it? I would think so, as they are acting as the agents of the lawyers that hired them.

So what's the downside to all this? Well, the lawyers that hire others to do their marketing might find that company violating copyright law (content scraping) or ethics rules and subject them to litigation. Litigation can be long and expensive.

But it's actually a lot worse than that because litigation takes time and money and many don't want to do it unless they absolutely have to.

Blogging, however, takes very little time and very little money. And if you piss off just one blogger with ethically and legally dubious behavior, s/he might write about you. And put your names in the headlines. And that blogger might have some readers who are also bloggers....And the effect is felt as soon as Google happens to index those blogs; which is to say if they are active bloggers, immediate. When potential clients Google you, the results can be painful.

Litigation can be so passe.

These are some of the blogs that seem committed to outing the malfeasors, in hopes of cleaning up the lawyers part of the web so that our collective reputation doesn't sink further:

• Simple Justice

• Defending People

• Popehat

• Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog (re: Denver Motorcycle Lawyer Comment)
  

I'll add to this list as I become aware of other posts on the subject.

Labels: Attorney Ethics

New York's legislature overwhelmingly passed new laws that stop most insurers from jamming their feet into personal injury settlements seeking repayment of funds they used for medical care. (Plaintiffs were not entitled to receive these monies in verdicts, but that didn't stop insurers from trying to grab it anyway.) The bill awaits Gov. Paterson's signature. This is one bill that I've lobbied for in the past with the New York State Trial Lawyer's Association and hope to blog on in more depth in the future. For now, see Roy Mura's New York State Legislature Passes New Anti-Subrogation Law;

The number and amount of medical malpractice payments is down. Justinian Lane asks, What Medical Malpractice Crisis?

Of course, doctor's still want more immunity from law suits (Walter Olson @ Point of Law);

Perhaps reducing medical errors would be a better idea;

And maybe putting video cameras in the OR would be one way to do that, since this hospital seems to have problems with things like wrong site surgery;

You can find a ton of statistics on personal injury litigation at Ron Miller's blog. Do those stats conform to your notions of what is really happening? Like, for instance, who decides cases more favorably for plaintiffs? Judges or juries?

Blawg Review #237 is up at Christian Metcalfe's property law blog, with its theme of The Putney Debates. No, I won't explain then, he will.

Some other web carnivals to explore that often have legal links: Health Wonk Review; Grand Rounds from the world of medicine; and Cavalcade of Risk from the world of insurance.

Here are 50 great blogs by and for law professors. But precious few seem to be written by actual legal practitioners. Maybe the real world isn't all that important?

Another list of 50...free resources to create your own website;

Lastly, MarineTraffic.com is one really cool site (via Volokh). You can track tankers, cruise ships and the Staten Island Ferry.

Labels: Random Notes

Traditional lawyer advertising may be branching out in very nontraditional ways. The Buffalo-based personal injury firm of Cellino & Barnes is known for its very extensive advertising campaign in western New York, with billboards and TV commercials galore (as well as ethics troubles, Matter of Cellino).

But in trying to make inroads downstate, they've invaded one of the local hockey arenas: The Nassau Coliseum. And they've done it by sponsoring a welcome home message for an Iraqi war veteran, not the type of advertising NY metro area residents are accustomed to, since we usually see subway ads, radio and TV.

My Nassau County Bureau Chief, a personal injury guy, reported to me last week to me that he saw this at a recent Islanders game:

Last night at the Islander game -- best personal injury lawyer advertising I've ever seen. Between the second and third period. Flashed on the screen is "Home from Iraq." White army style jagged edge lettering with a couple of army stripes on a military green background. Announcer announces back from Iraq is the American hero. The soldier, at the game, is flashed on the screen and waves to the crowd. The screen pans back to the Home from Iraq lettering and in smaller letters in the lower right hand corner is "Cellino & Barnes."

Was the advertisement effective? Well, this was the response:

This got a bigger round of applause than the Islanders on their way to their fourth straight win of the season. Those guys know what they're doing.

I have mixed thoughts on this. We start with the premise that the vast majority of ads for personal injury attorneys suck, and consist of "If you or someone you know has been injured..." types of blather. It's damaging to the profession and damaging to the clients, a fact that can only be appreciated when picking a jury and watching eyes roll when you tell them it's a personal injury case. So any ad that doesn't come within that wretched format is, by definition, a better ad. The bar for quality is set very low.

From there you move on to the issue of whether this is a cynical exploitation of our troops. But this type of tribute doesn't appear to be any different in concept from the Super Bowl ads run by Anheuser Busch in 2002 with Clydesdales walking across the Brooklyn Bridge and going down on one knee before the skyline of New York, or its 2005 ad of troops moving through the airport to the applause of bystanders.

On the whole, even with the cynicism in my mind regarding exploitation, I'd have to say that this is effective advertising. It doesn't say anything about the skills of the attorneys, of course, but nor do the Anheuser Busch ads tell you what Bud tastes like.

Labels: Marketing

Houston criminal defense attorney and blogger Mark Bennett is live-twittering while his protege picks a jury.

And Eugene Volokh reports on the federal rules prohibiting tweets from the courtroom.

While Twitter pretty much stinks as a means of carrying on conversations, it obviously can be used effectively to transmit small snippets of a story. Now the courts will have to wrestle with how to handle it.

Labels: Twitter

Cape Cod Hospital has reported that a drug wholesaler approached it trying to sell purported flu vaccine for 8x the normal price. But in addition to profiteering during a vaccine shortage came this notable news: The wholesaler refused to say where the drugs came from.

The article in yesterdays Cape Cod Times (for which I was interviewed and quoted) should sound the liability alarms throughout the pharmacy community. For if the wholesaler won't say where the drugs come from then they cannot be authenticated. A pharmacy that buys such product is therefore merely buying mystery medicine. Perhaps it came from a bona fide manufacturer, or perhaps the "drugs" originated in a Chinese factory that makes counterfeits, and the "medicine" has already changed hands a dozen or more times.

The sad truth is that we do a lousy job tracking pharmaceuticals and have a large gray market of secondary wholesalers. The pedigree of a drug -- its chain of ownership from the time of its manufacture -- is critical to determining the drug's authenticity. But if the pedigree is hidden, as with the case of the flu vaccine offered to Cape Cod Hospital, there is no real way to know what is within the packaging thereby opening the door wide to injury and death from the product.

So make no mistake about it: Any pharmacy that buys such mystery medicine will be responsible if the drug isn't the real deal. And I don't think it would be a situation of just being responsible for the injury or death that occurs, but that a good case could be made for punitive damages for conduct that I view as clearly reckless. The problem of counterfeits within the pharmaceutical chain has been widely documented, and all pharmacies are duty-bound to be on high alert for suspicious activity.

I was interviewed for the piece last week as a result of my prior representation of Tim Fagan, a Long Island teen who had been injected in 2002 with counterfeit Epogen after an emergency liver transplant. Representative Steve Israel introduced Tim Fagan's Law as a result, to toughen penalties against counterfeiters, and the FDA broader power to investigate, conduct recalls and spot check the market for counterfeits. (You can read more on it at the counterfeit drugs resource page at my web site, or by clicking the counterfeit drugs tag here.)

Cape Cod Hospital, to its considerable credit, refused to deal with the wholesaler. My only regret is that the company was not named so that others would know to be on the lookout for them.

Updated 11/12/09: See also Gray Market: I'm Not Dead Yet (Adam Fein @ Drug Channels)

Labels: counterfeit drugs

I'm getting tired of seeing spam in the comment area of my blog that comes from law firms and attorney search services. So if it comes in again I'm going to write a fresh post about them. I've done this a couple of times before but now I'm going to make a policy of it.

While I expect this nonsense from the drug hustlers (findrxonline seems to love spamming me) and the gold sites and others, I don't see that I can really do much about them except keep the comments moderated and simply reject them.

But law bloggers can do something about the law field spammers. Because unlike the other sites, these folks generally have very little Google juice and should actually care about their reputations. So if a few blogs decide to out the spammers, this could have a pretty big effect on the firms. When their names are Googled by potential clients, the potential clients will see that they are spammers. And it will no doubt cause them to stop.

If it is the crappy search engine optimization companies that they hired that are doing it on their behalf, without their knowledge, then the attorneys will still suffer. Lawyers are responsible for the acts of their agents.

I came up with this little rule about lawyer advertising when it comes to solicitation, but it applies equally well here:

Outsourcing marketing = outsourcing ethics

Perhaps, if enough bloggers do this then the lawyers that get busted for this kind of slimy stuff will fire the people responsible. And if enough SEO companies are fired by their clients for having done this in their name, then the tactic will be used less often. I'm not so naive as to think it will stop, but if it gets cut in half that would be a huge victory.

You've been warned.

Labels: Spam

As quickly as it started with a bang, the lawsuit by Miami law professor Donald Jones against mega law blog Above the Law and its Editor in Chief David Lat), has been dropped.

The suit had been widely lampooned around the legal blogosphere, both for its lack of legal merit as well as the resulting public relations debacle.

In today's post, Lat showed more than a bit of class with this offer:

We have offered Professor Jones a guest post on Above the Law in which to provide his side of the story, about either the lawsuit or the underlying facts. We have offered to keep the comments on that post closed or open, depending on his preference.

The case, in essence, ended pretty much the way I suggested yesterday. Jones bailed out of a poorly thought suit, and at the same time corrected the digital record that had last seen him being arrested on a prostitution solicitation charge. Those who Google him 5 years from now will no longer see an arrest of this type on Google's first page.

Instead they will see this lawsuit. And if accepts the ATL offer, they will likely see his explanation.

As I noted in the comments yesterday, it was wise for Prof. Jones to drop quickly, since once ATL answered the suit, they would need ATL's permission to drop it. And ATL might have decided not to allow it without some other type of concession from Jones. (A tactic I used ten years ago defending one of the first internet defamation cases.)

First Amendment guru Marc Randazza was defending Above the Law, and "hoping to open up this can of whup ass I have lying around." And if anyone has any thoughts about suing me for anything related to this blog, you should know I've got Randazza on my short list also.

Labels: First Amendment

I'm grateful to the many people who offered up their flattering comments and links regarding this week's Halloween themed Blawg Review, starring The Bogeyman. Some came in the comments area, some came in by Twitter and some on blogs:

• If you missed @turkewitz's Halloween themed Blawg Review--go read it now. It is beyond clever (Rita Handrich @ The Jury Expert)
  

• a super edition of Halloween Blawg Review (Kevin Underhill @ Lowering The Bar)

• Eric Turkewitz never fails. But here he 'frightens' (Susan Cartier Liebel @ SoloPracticeUniversity)

• As always with the Turk, its top shelf (Kevin O'Keefe at Real Lawyers Have Blogs)

• Eric Turkewitz does a bang-up job on a spooky Blawg Review #236 over at his New York Personal Injury Law Blog. Enjoy. (Ken @ Popehat)

• @turkewitz & a scary Blawg Review #236 -- murder, mayhem & protecting his kids (Doug Keene @ KeeneTrial)

• Expectations were high; he exceeded them (Anne Reed @ Deliberations) Retweeted by: Erik Magraken; Scott Greenfield; Christopher Hill; CharonQC;

• Eric Turkewitz writes a 'mean' Blawg Review ... and I mean that in the Cowboy Western 'mean an ornery' sense ... manages to cover a wide range of blogs in a highly readable way ... [more @ CharonQC]

• Eric Turkewitz' Halloween-themed Blawg Review #236, hosted at his New York Personal Injury Law Blog, was a real treat ... Turkewitz is a perennial contender for Blawg Review of the Year honors. If this one doesn't put him at the top of voters' lists this year, there must be some trick. (Colin Samuels @ Infamy and Praise, who has won all four of the Blawg Review of the Year awards, so yes, there must be some trick)
  

As well as other links provided by: Above the Law; Point of Law; Blawg Review; montserratlj; Ron Coleman

If others come in, I'll tack them on.

Labels: Blawg Review

Above the Law has been sued by University of Miami law professor Donald Jones. Others are opining on the details of how the suit arose, but I'm here to tell you how I think it will (or should) end.

First, the back story: Prof. Jones was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of soliciting a prostitute. Above the Law picked up the story and, in its legal tabloid fashion, ran with it making him their "Lawyer of the Day" and publishing the police report. They did an update on the not guilty plea, and then followed up again with a post entitled "The Nutty Professor: A Commemorative Graphic." He has alleged the graphic is racist.

He sued ATL for $22M for portraying him in a false light, invading his privacy and violating the university's copyright on his faculty photo. (His claims are set forth in this Complaint.)

Others are opining on the merits of the suit and the First Amendment issues. The links to those posts are below. But I'm going to zoom right past all that and try to hit the crux of the case, why it was brought, and how I think it should be resolved without further litigation.

Prof. Jones, you see, has had the charges dismissed. Yet when you Google "University of Miami law professor Donald Jones," up pops those ATL posts on the first page, since ATL has some pretty impressive Google juice. And nowhere are there any posts from ATL about the charges being dismissed, because that post hadn't been written. So it's pretty safe to say that Prof. Jones is steamed. Big time.

Jones has had his Google reputation pretty seriously impaired. If repairing that reputation was his true motive, then by bringing suit, he has taken one step toward fixing it. Blogs all over are covering the story and now everyone knows the criminal case was tossed. That solves one problem.

But it creates another problem, that of a law professor starting a lawsuit that might have some pretty dubious merit (see below). And that isn't so hot if you're working the law professor circuit.

Working under the assumption that what Jones truly wants is his name back, and not $22 million, then the resolution of this dispute would seem to be pretty straightforward.

First, ATL publishes an "oops" (assuming they knew about the dismissal). Not for posting the initial stuff, all of which is likely protected under the First Amendment. Rather, I'm going to guess that someplace in the pit of his stomach, ATL founder and editor David Lat probably feels that if he is going to skewer a law prof that was arrested in this manner, that he probably ought to update his readers with news that the charges were dismissed. That doesn't go to any legal duty, but to human nature. It's just the right thing to do. So it may be that a mea culpa is in order for not updating the story in a more timely fashion.

(Of course, if they didn't know, that wouldn't apply.)

Prof. Jones, it should be noted, also wants the old posts taken down. I don't see ATL and Lat caving in to that demand. But, if they elect to write a new post updating the status of the criminal charges, then those old posts should probably have an updated link at the bottom referencing the new post. Bloggers run these types of updates all the time.

So I'm going out on a limb here to suggest that if ATL runs an update on the charges being dismissed with a mea culpa (if that part applies) on not telling its readers earlier, that would probably suffice. Since that is the type of update should probably be done anyway now, and there is no downside to ATL and Jones has his reputation updated.

On the flip side, if ATL makes a motion to dismiss (and I presume this is already being worked on) and Jones loses, he doesn't look so hot as a law prof. So Jones has a pretty good motive to accept those terms.

And if the two of them want to talk this over in a local tavern, I'll buy the beer.

Others opining on the subject:

• Law Professor Sues Above the Law Blog, Alleging 'Viciously Racist Series of Rants' (National Law Journal)

• Law Professor Sues "Above the Law" (Michael Krauss @ Point of Law)

• Law Professor Sues "Above the Law" blog; Time to go back to complaint-drafting school (Copyrights & Campaigns)

• Blog Sued: Above the law.com not above the law (Law and More)

• Law Prof Sues Above the Law, Claims 'Racist Series of Rants' About His Arrest (ABA Journal)

• Lawsuit of the Day: Jones v. Minkin (Above the Law)

• Prof. Donald Jones' Lawsuit Against Above The Law (Eugene Volokh @ Volokh Conspiracy)

----------------
Update (11/4/09) Prof Jones has wisely dropped the lawsuit

Labels: First Amendment

(For centuries a wanderer has traveled about during Halloween week to see what lawyers are discussing on their blogs, and presented it in Blawg Review.)

The Bogeyman was pissed. And when The Bogeyman gets pissed, it's probably wise to listen.

"Law bloggers are trying to steal my thunder," he hissed, "It used to be that I had dibs on scaring the bejesus out of people. Now only 40% believe that my coterie of demons inhabits this earth. And I blame the lawyers. What are you guys trying to do to me?"

So as I stepped from my home to trick-or-treat with Little Man and Sweet Pea, he said "I'm coming along to show you what I mean." Oh, great.

We stopped at the house of Canadian law professor Sharon Sutherland who told us, while she tossed twizzlers into my kids' bags and blasted Thriller into the street, that there were more than 200 mentions of zombies in case law over the last 50 years, with most occurring in the last decade.

"See what I mean?" said The Bogeyman, "I'm supposed to control all the zombies. I mean, I can still invade a few brains to alert the world to real Zombies, and rattle a few people on the street, but too many lawyers are grabbing my turf."

"I mean, really, Zombie law firms! Isn't society overusing my minions?

He was on a roll while my kids were chattering happily, looking to score some Nerds. Maybe Scott Greenfield could get the kids sugar-zonked, while transporting me somewhere pleasant away from zombies. But Greenfield was spooked. He saw a prosecutor, once imbued with power, who was fired and then blogged about it. And now he'd vanished into the ethers, leaving behind his unpleasant ghost.

My kids were unimpressed with this tale, despite the Ghostbusters soundtrack playing in the background. They wanted gore. And so did The Bogeyman.

So we stopped at Kevin Underhill's, because he had a fish knifed into his door, and this, oddly enough, got my kids excited. Was this some Godfatherish death warning to Halloween tricksters, I wondered? And what happened to the fish killer asked the kids? My kids scored some gummy fish and scampered away.

Animals are fun, said Little Man, but can we find some live ones next time? Well, we could always find people humiliating their pets. "Fun!" said the son. "There oughta be a law," groused The Bogeyman as his eyes started to glow.

Next door was sweet, old Mother Jones; perhaps she could spook the kids? But Mother was too busy laughing while nibbling on a pop tort. It seems that the tort reformin', lawsuit hatin' US Chamber of Commerce had been punked when a group parodied them. And they not only threatened a suit of their own but were actually dumb enough to start one. My daughter looked up and asked, "Is this where the phrase 'good for thee but not for me' comes from?" Smart kid. Mother didn't spook, but she did spoil, with a fistful of vegan candy. My kids pretended not to notice. They're good that way.

Then they raced down the street to the little niche that Mark Herrmann and Jim Beck share. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Together they looked down at my happy little munchkins: "If you ever grow up to be drug company executives," they thundered in unison, "Stay out of West Virginia! For the learned intermediary doctrine won't apply!" I'd never seen my kids' eyes grow so wide. I don't know if it was fear or bewilderment, but they scampered away quickly, without even realizing the candy wrappers were completely filled with warning labels.

The little 'uns had no interest in discussions of drug company law, nor hypocritical faux "reformers," they wanted monsters, and not the monsters that inhabit law schools. So we went in search of something ...monstery? The Bogeyman was salivating. Finally.

While the kids were distracted chewing on Twizzlers, I told The Bogeyman about Monster Energy Drink and their chuckleheaded lawyering that managed to pull two bone-headed moves, trying to crush the free speech of a website that gave them a negative review, and trying to stop a small Vermont brewery from making Vermonster Beer.

See? Monsters! The Bogeyman still wasn't impressed -- and if you've ever tried to impress The Bogeyman you'll understand how difficult this task is -- so we went next door to IP guru Ron Coleman.

"The End Days are here," he said cryptically while Bad Moon Rising poured forth, and I saw The Bogeyman start to smile, making my stomach turn. Coleman explained to me, while tossing M&Ms at my kids, that "abusive DMCA takedown notices sent by copyright owners" will alter Google for the worse. "It's over." Dennis Kennedy, who snuck up behind us in the doorway with is own little troop, says he thinks that Google's best days are behind it as the next generation of search arrives. As we walked away, Mr. B said that my neighbors had awfully skewed perspectives on what End Days really means.

And then came a cheery call to us from Eoin O'Dell, temporarily in the US, who was researching the law of haunted houses and whether there was a duty to disclose a haunting in a house sale. And if you don't believe me, you can check his citation to a New York appellate court. But the only appeal for the children were the brightly colored sucking candies she brought with her from overseas.

The Bogeyman told me he was getting annoyed, but saw promise as we hit the walkway to Bruce Carton's place. Hanging from a tree was an effigy with all manner of injuries. He's wearing a Mets jersey, representing a season to forget. As we rang the doorbell, my son questioned me on a conundrum: Yankees or Phillies? As Mets fans we hate both. But when Carton gets an earful of our discussion, he can't wait to tell the story of the gorgeous tall buxom blonde -- in desperate need of two World Series tickets and what she will do to get them. Baseball, I tell my kids, is all about scoring, and I get them the hell out of the house.

But the talk of sex has caught the happy ear of next door neighbor Kashmir Hill, with gravestones sticking up from her front lawn. She pointed toward one of them, with the name of the 66 year-old assistant district of attorney caught with the 18 year-old stripper. Caught, she adds, in a graveyard. Douglas Keene, visiting with Hill, chipped in with more while the kids happily tangled themselves up in the spider webby stuff that Hill hung from the trees: Keene whispered that it was now possible to look at someone's Facebook account and determine their sexual orientation. The Bogeyman was going apoplectic. "Give me real villains," he snarled. His left ear started to smoke.

"And if you can't make me sick, at least try to amuse me." So I showed him Adrian Dayton's idea of a funny Halloween costume, focusing on social media. And Ann Althouse with her werewolf. "You humans can't even do humor right, though the CEO that dressed in six different Halloween costumes for his deposition was at least a good effort," said The Bogeyman. "As was the guy who came to see the Utah Attorney General dressed in full SWAT gear. But you're mostly pathetic. In some places, it could even be a felony to wear a Halloween mask. If you want costumes, look at this commercial one of my people did, though you should tell your more cowardly readers not to blast the volume if they're sneaking a peak at work."

When we walked up to the home of Jeralyn Merritt, she was outside talking about abuse with Ken from Popehat. Jeralyn pushed a deep dish of mini-chocolates toward my kids without breaking stride in the story she was telling of the six Gitmo Uighurs that had finally been freed and finally found a home, though it wasn't their own. And Ken was talking about abuse elsewhere: when a southwestern hotelier demanded that his Spanish-speaking employees cease and desist their native language because he feared they are secretly mocking him behind his back. Maybe he deserved to be mocked?

My kids strolled into the house, and The Bogeyman pulled me aside. You call this Halloween? Where are the real goods? With my kids now safely out of sight, I took him around the corner...

We found Howard Wasserman at the next house, with its glowing jack-o-laterns out front and Black Magic Woman filling the air. He was starting a Suicide Pool, watching as "Birther" lawyer and nut job (and dentist!) Orly Taitz continued down a path that has already had her sanctioned and will likely to cost her her license when done. "That's not real death," growled The Bogeyman.

OK, I told him, I'll give you a taste of the real deal.

Anne Reed greeted us ever so quietly where she sat on her front porch with a simple un-carved pumpkin. And she told us of the murder trial of a 4 year old girl, and the artwork created by a juror. She was sitting with Tom Kirkendall who told of the tragic car accident death of Houston trial lawyer John O'Quinn. Ashby Jones, who had just joined them, shared the story of real life monster Radovan Karadzic, the Serb accused of war crimes in Bosnia, whose war crimes trial was about to start at The Hague.

The four of them had an open laptop, and were looking at the site of Chicago Now. I think we found some of your friends living here, I whispered to The Bogeyman. The tatooed faces in these mug shots seem to scream out that evil was here.

The Bogeyman smiled and quieted down as he saw the fruits of some of his labors. He drifted off aways.

But Kevin Underhill had left his home to follow me, and now reappeared. He wanted to tell me, as if to taunt The Bogeyman back into my life, that he was most unimpressed. Those tats can be creatively covered up...just look what this guy is planning to do with his."

With The Bogeyman's blood thirst hopefully sated, despite Underhill's efforts, I scooped up my kids and headed to the home of John Hochfelder. He had a roaring fire in a pit on the front patio to break the late October chill, and Phantom of the Opera played quietly in the background. The parents drank wine and beer as the kids roasted marsh mellows into a goopy mess that were then decorated with candies in a gross-out contest. While Hochfelder served the booze, he also talked to us about the problem a certain Halloween witch had when she got drunk and was then hit by two cars, one of which was the responding police.

Gideon -- who had been talking to others about his beliefs on good and evil and the differences between those in the dock and those sitting in justice -- shifted gears to join the drunk driving discussion. He noted a little dissent where Chief Justice Roberts argued that anytime police receive an anonymous tip that someone is driving drunk they should be able to pull them over and conduct an investigatory stop.

But stories of drunks don't always have to end with death and destruction, and Jonathan Turley hoisted a tankard of suds to the cop that pulled a gun on a character in a haunted house. Hey, he said, no one got hurt. The Bogeyman, standing under a tree in the distance, started to glow again as his nostrils flared out almost to his ears.

Siouxsielaw sat with us by the fire -- having just moved into the neighborhood as the planet's first Gothic law blogger. Talk about your niche areas. But she wanted to return to Hochfelder's witch case. It seems that the Supreme Court of Massachusetts has allowed a Halloween costume to be admissible in a sex discrimination lawsuit. Siouxsie, by the way, also has a Halloween waiver and has a trick or tort posting and a motto that "Good Lawyers Wear Black?" Is this blogger a keeper? Me thinks so, I told the crowd.

As the night wore down and I scooped up the kids to leave, I collared Bill Childs and thanked him for doing a round-up of the personal injury discussions of the past week, because I surely didn't have the time to do so here. When he said that newcomers to this site really wouldn't get a true taste of my blog by reading my account of this evening, I reminded him that they could simply go to the "greatest hits" page that I have.

And when Blawg Review #237 hits Chritsian Metcalfe's property law blog next week, hopefully The Bogeyman will stay home.

Labels: Blawg Review