Law

July 23, 2008

Blog Fights the Law, Blog Wins (For Now)

Room 8, a blog about New York politics, was served with a subpoena and an accompanying gag order in April by the Bronx DA's office, which was attempting to obtain information about the identities of anonymous bloggers and commenters. The subpoena centered on a blogger called Republican Dissident who made some critical claims about people involved in the Bronx GOP. (His posts have since been taken down.)

What did Republican Dissident say? It seems that his complaints, at their core, involved some Republican officials who claim residence in the Bronx but actually do not live there. This is sort of corrupt, but it seems to be rather small-scale stuff to us—we've long known of NYC civil servants who find creative ways around residency requirements. It's a pretty widely known practice.

This, of course, leaves the far more troubling issue of the justification for the subpoena. Nobody at Room 8 was told why an investigation was being conducted, nor was the New York Times. While Room 8 was successful in fighting the subpoena—it was eventually withdrawn—the investigation is still a mystery. It could be ongoing, and it's unclear what precipitated it, which has left Room 8 wondering if "the crime they were investigating was the criticism itself."

There's yet another question here, as well—the identity of Republican Dissident, who even the owners of Room 8 claim not to know offline. Several blog comments attributed to the alias to Phil Sanchez, an attorney and former Bronx GOP official. However, when Gelf contacted Sanchez he told us that he is not, in fact, the blogger in question. We haven't seen any other names suggested, but whoever Republican Dissident is, we hope the Bronx DA will leave him alone, or at the very least tell him what they're looking for.

Law

September 5, 2007

Is Ladies' Night Legal?

In June, Manhattan attorney Roy Den Hollander filed a federal lawsuit against a variety of New York nightclubs arguing that "Ladies' Nights" violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. This case is the latest in a string of lawsuits raising the question of whether businesses should be able to charge gender-specific admission or prices. Is it paternalistic or anti-capitalistic to set legal guidelines dictating identical prices for the genders, especially when there is unequal demand for certain services? Gelf checks the precedents to see if sex-based rates are Kool and the Gang.

Media

June 28, 2007

Lady Justice Wears the Pants

This week, District of Columbia judge Roy Pearson lost his $54 million lawsuit against a dry-cleaning company for losing a pair of his pants. The ensuing news coverage proved that media outlets are no slacks when it comes to fabricating jokes on the fly. After the jump are some of Gelf's favorite corny headlines sporting pants-related puns.

Law

January 26, 2006

America's Legal Isolationism

On Thursday's New York Times Op-Ed page, Felix G. Rohatyn, a former US ambassador to France, repeats a basic fallacy of the argument that foreign law should carry weight in American courts. I don't mean to pick on Rohatyn. I agree completely with his aims, and all he's doing is offering the best argument those frightened by American exceptionalism currently have. But that's the problem: The best argument sucks.

Law

January 3, 2006

Trademarking the Scandalous

The San Francisco-based women's motorcycle group Dykes on Bikes has finally been allowed to trademark its moniker after the U.S. Patent and Trademark office reversed two earlier rulings (San Francisco Chronicle). Initially, the group's application was rejected after the office claimed that the word "Dykes" was derogatory and therefore untrademarkable, but the office reversed itself after the group submitted hundreds of pages of documents from dozens of experts testifying that the word was no longer considered pejorative. That the women had so much trouble is testament to the weird system that the government uses to decide which trademarks are too offensive to be acceptable.

Law

August 16, 2005

I had Sex with Someone!

If I publish an article that falsely claims that Gelf scribe David Goldenberg enjoys purchasing from vending machines underwear previously worn by Japanese schoolgirls (Snopes), Mr. Goldenberg can sue me for defamation. The gist of his cause of action is that (1) I communicated a harmful statement to a third party; and (2) the statement is untrue. If my claims about Mr. Goldenberg are true he can not sue me for defamation. But can he sue me for something else?