Movie goers are abuzz over the most recent installment of the James Bond franchise, Spectre. But who is James Bond? Apparently, the subject is up for debate.

In one case, in which the characteristics which make up James Bond were hotly contested, the Plaintiff pointed to various character traits specific to Bond, including “his cold-bloodedness; his overt sexuality; his love of martinis ‘shaken, not stirred;’ his marksmanship; his ‘license to kill’ and use of guns; his physical strength; his sophistication . . . .” Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc. v. Am. Honda Motor Co., 900 F. Supp. 1287, 1296 (C.D. Cal. 1995). At least one commentator has asked “[i]f James Bond is removed from international adventure and placed in a supermarket or an office-building with no villains to fight or women to seduce, would he still be the same character?” Samuel J. Coe, The Story of A Character: Establishing the Limits of Independent Copyright Protection for Literary Characters, 86 Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 1305, 1306 (2011). Differences aside, everyone can agree that Bond frequently seduces members of the opposite sex, and that he has done so quite prolifically over the course of his sixty year, 24 film career.

At least for Bond, there do not appear to have been any consequences to date for his behavior. If Bond would like that trend to continue, he should avoid the state of Mississippi.  Why Mississippi, you ask? In Mississippi, “[a]n unmarried female may prosecute an action for her own seduction, and recover damages.” Miss. Code. Ann. § 11-7-9; Mississippi Law of Damages § 19:3 (3d ed.). We know what you are thinking, that Bond can just stay out of trouble by only having social encounters with married women. Not so fast! In Mississippi, an aggrieved spouse can recover against a paramour for seducing the other spouse if he or she proves “(1) wrongful conduct of the defendant; (2) loss of affection or consortium; and (3) causal connection between such conduct and loss.” Carter v. Reddix, 115 So. 3d 851, 857 (Miss. Ct. App. 2012).   Unfortunately for Bond, his very essence is wrongful in Mississippi.

So, Bond would be wise to avoid Mississippi.  Otherwise, he risks paying some of his fortune to seducees, seducess suing in a representative capacity on behalf of similarly situated women, and/or spouses of seducees.

(Hat Tip: D. Scott Murray and Jacob T.E. Stutzman).

We can envision few acts more cowardly than ambushing and murdering unarmed civilians engaged in leisure. That is precisely what occurred on Friday, November 13, 2015.

By now, we all know that several groups of terrorists affiliated with ISIS launched a coordinated attack against unarmed Parisians with explosives and assault rifles. One minute, the victims were enjoying a care-free Friday night, the next minute, they were under attack with no chance of defending themselves.

We here at Abnormal Use cannot even pretend to understand what the families of those slain now endure, nor can we comprehend the pain experienced by the wounded who are still struggling to survive. We do want those who were directly affected by these senseless attacks to know that they are in our thoughts and prayers.

Additionally, because we are a legal blog, we would like to take this time to honor a member of the legal community whose life was taken too early. The “first confirmed fatality” in the Parisian attack was an associate attorney at Hogan Lovells named Valentin Ribet.

Ribet was a graduate of the London School of Economics where he earned a degree in political science. Prior to Hogan Lovells, Ribet worked for the law firm of what is now called Freshfield Bruckhaus Deringer. Ribet was 26 years years old at the time of his passing, and according to a statement by Hogan Lovells, Ribet “worked in the litigation team, specializing in white-collar crime.” Ribet was also reportedly a “a talented lawyer” who was “extremely well liked, and a wonderful personality in the office.” According to comments by friends of Ribet on Twitter, in addition to being a talented lawyer with a promising future, he was a good person.

Our thoughts and prayers are also with the hundreds of others killed, wounded, and otherwise affected by the violence last week. Our hope is that the victims can find peace, and that the impuissant invertebrates who inflicted this harm will find themselves on the receiving end of swift and proportionate justice.

In a recent Charlotte Agenda article, the author, Mary F. Gross, reports on a home that her friend recently purchased – a 1920’s “bootlegger house” which came with historical character, secret compartments for stashing booze, and . . . a ghost? The buyers were apparently notified for the first time at the closing that the home also came with a “mischievous spirit.” In the piece, the author remarks that she would have “ripped up every single document in front of me and accused the owner of breaking some sort of ghost-disclosure law.” This got us thinking. Since it is the week of Halloween, we thought it appropriate to examine what type of “ghost disclosure law” there might be.

As you may expect, in the law, there are not many failure to disclose haunting cases, despite the fact that “[a] 2012 poll conducted by Huffington Post/YouGov found that 45 percent of American respondents believe in ghosts.” See Amanda C. Brown, Caveat Emptor, Buyer Boo-Ware Does Texas Require the Disclosure of Spooky Details in Real Estate Transactions?, 77 Tex. B.J. 780, 781 (2014).

One reported case we found comes from New York. In that proceeding, the “Plaintiff, to his horror, discovered that the house he had recently contracted to purchase was widely reputed to be possessed by poltergeists, reportedly seen by defendant seller and members of her family on numerous occasions over the last nine years.” Stambovsky v. Ackley, 169 A.D.2d 254, 255-56 (N.Y.A.D. 1991).  In Stambovsky, the court noted the traditional rule that “with respect to real estate . . . the doctrine of caveat emptore . . . imposes no duty upon the vendor to disclose any information concerning the premises.” Id. at 257. However, the Defendant in Stambovsky “reported [the] presence [of poltergeists] in both a national publication (Readers’ Digest) and the local press (in 1977 and 1982, respectively)” and the home was included on a walking ghost tour in the community. Id. at 256. In other words, the seller did disclose the presence of the poltergeists, but the disclosure was made to everyone except the buyer to whom she sold the home. As a result, the court found that the “defendant is estopped to deny [the poltergeists’] existence and, as a matter of law, the house is haunted.” Id. The Court ultimately concluded that “[a]pplication of the remedy of rescission, within the bounds of the narrow exception to the doctrine of caveat emptor set forth herein, is entirely appropriate to relieve the unwitting purchaser from the consequences of a most unnatural bargain.” Id. at 260.

Some states maintain statutes which generally dictate one’s duty to disclose murders or other ghastly crimes committed in a home. Florida’s statute provides that “[t]he fact that a property was, or was at any time suspected to have been, the site of a homicide, suicide, or death is not a material fact that must be disclosed in a real estate transaction.” Fla. Stat. Ann. § 689.25(b). Massachusetts law provides that a buyer has no duty to disclose that a property has been “psychologically impacted,” meaning that there is no duty to disclose “that the real property was the site of a felony, suicide or homicide” or “that the real property has been the site of an alleged parapsychological or supernatural phenomenon,” among other things.  Mass. Gen. Laws Ann. ch. 93, § 114 (b), (c). California law only requires disclosure of an “occupant’s death upon the real property or the manner of death” if the death occurred in the three years prior to the sale, unless the buyer specifically asks. Cal. Civ. Code § 1710.2 (“Nothing in this section shall be construed to immunize an owner or his or her agent from making an intentional misrepresentation in response to a direct inquiry from a transferee or a prospective transferee of real property, concerning deaths on the real property.”). And sorry, kids, you can’t vandalize a home just because you believe it to be haunted.  See Daniel B. Moar, Case Law from the Crypt the Law of Halloween, N.Y. St. B.J., October 2011, at 10, 12 (citing Hayward v. Carraway, 180 So. 2d 758 (La. Ct. App. 1965) writ refused, 248 La. 909, 182 So. 2d 662 (1966)).

So, there you have it, if the State of North Carolina follows what appears to be the general law on ghost disclosure, there would be no duty for the seller to disclose the ghost in the bootlegger house, unless the seller had previously represented that the house was haunted, or unless the seller responded in the negative when specifically asked. We also wonder whether courts these days would impute to buyers knowledge which can be gleaned from the Internet (for example, from websites which purportedly can tell you if anyone has died in the house you are buying). In any event, for the time being, it does not appear that there would be a cause of action for nondisclosure of the ghost in the bootlegger house.

And, while the question was not posed, we believe we know what the bootlegger house ghost is after. Think about it. The ghost locks himself in the bathroom with the water running and flees down the stairs when someone catches him in the act. He tries to fire up heat sources and gets down copper pots from the cabinets. Folks, the man just wants to make bathtub gin, white lightnin’, or some other form of home made booze!  Let the ghost do what he does best and you may see less of this:

And more of this:

[Of course, we make no representations regarding the safety or legality of humans or ghosts making alcohol in a private residence in North Carolina.]

We regret to inform our readers that various media outlets, including the American Cancer Society Pressroom Blog, have reported that the “International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a part of the World Health Organization, has classified processed meat as a cancer causing agent (carcinogen), and red meat as a probable carcinogen.” These conclusions apparently “are based primarily on evidence showing an increased risk of colorectal cancer” and “also evidence of increased risk of pancreatic and prostate cancer.”

We here at Abnormal Use have questions (after we pick ourselves up off the floor). For starters, how did the IARC reach these conclusions?

According to the WHO, the following is the more detailed basis for the conclusion as to red meat:

After thoroughly reviewing the accumulated scientific literature, a Working Group of 22 experts from 10 countries convened by the IARC Monographs Programme classified the consumption of red meat as probably carcinogenic to humans (Group 2A), based on limited evidence that the consumption of red meat causes cancer in humans and strong mechanistic evidence supporting a carcinogenic effect. This association was observed mainly for colorectal cancer, but associations were also seen for pancreatic cancer and prostate cancer.

As to processed meats, which include “hot dogs (frankfurters), ham, sausages, corned beef, and . . . beef jerky as well as canned meat and meat-based preparations and sauces,” the WHO explains only that “[p]rocessed meat was classified as carcinogenic to humans (Group 1), based on sufficient evidence in humans that the consumption of processed meat causes colorectal cancer.” So, “a Working Group of 22 experts from 10 countries” reviewed “scientific literature” and found “limited evidence” suggestion an “association” between consuming red meat and three types of cancer, and this same group of experts found “sufficient evidence” that the consumption of processed meat “causes” a specific type of cancer? We carnivores at Abnormal Use feel compelled mine down into these conclusions and educate our non-toxic tort lawyer readers on some of these terms that the WHO has used to accuse an American dietary staple of wrongdoing.

First of all, what is a carcinogen?

According to the American Cancer Society, carcinogens are “[s]ubstances and exposures that can lead to cancer.” (emphasis added). It is important to note that “[c]arcinogens do not cause cancer in every case, all the time” and that “[s]ubstances labeled as carcinogens may have different levels of cancer-causing potential.” For example, substances may be carcinogenic only at certain doses or exposure intervals. A person’s genetics may also play in to how carcinogenic a substance is for that person. The IARC places agents into various categories or groups of carcinogens, which are depicted in the image below:

Red meat has been placed in Group 2A and processed meat has been placed in Group 1.

How do scientists determine whether something is a carcinogen?

How do scientists determine the risk of disease presented by exposure to a particular substance? This is known as the field of epidemiology, which is typically defined as “the scientific study of disease patterns among populations in time and space.” Epidemiologists use various tools to assess risk of disease, including case-control studies, and cohort studies.

A cohort study is “a group of people with defined characteristics who are followed up to determine incidence of, or mortality from, some specific disease, all causes of death, or some other outcome.” With a case control study, “the diseased patient is questioned and examined, and elements from this history taking are knitted together to reveal characteristics or factors that predisposed the patient to the disease.” There are other tools used by epidemiologists, but these are the two which are most relevant to this article.

The goal of the epidemiological study (relevant to this post) is to determine the potential effect to a human being of exposure to a particular substance. An epidemiological study could find an “association” between an exposure and a health effect, which is simply “a relationship between two, or more, variables.” For example, a study of 20 murderers who happened to have all been wearing blue shirts might show that more blue shirts are associated with more murders. Causation, on the other hand, “means that the researchers found that changes in one variable they measured directly caused changes in the other,” which would be for example, “research showing that jumping of a cliff directly causes great physical damage.”

There are potential issues that could weaken a particular study. For example, the results of the study could be due to chance. In our blue shirt murderer example, the fact that all of the murders happened to be wearing blue shirts may simply be due to chance; therefore, the association between blue shirts and murder is meaningless. “Confounding” is also an issue which “involves the possibility that an observed association is due, totally or in part, to the effects of differences between the study groups (other than the exposure under investigation) that could affect their risk of developing the outcome being studied.” Another potential issue is bias, which includes “any systematic error in an epidemiological study that results in an incorrect estimate of the association between exposure and risk of disease.” For example, test subjects may have “recall bias” in that they remember some past exposures and forget others. Ideally, a study will control for these issues to strengthen the results of the study. In general, the more these issues are controlled for, the more reliable the results of the study, and vice versa.

How strong is the link between meat and cancer?

As mentioned above, the IARC has concluded that there may be an “association” between the consumption of red meat and the development of certain type(s) of cancer, and the IARC was able to find a causal link between processed meats and certain types of cancer. Obviously, we know that association is not synonymous with causation, and a reading of the full text version of the WHO article raises other concerns with the study linking the consumption of certain meats to cancer.  For example:

• Data on the association of red meat with colorectal cancer were only available from 14 cohort studies and 15 case-control studies, and positive associations were only found in half of the cohort studies and less than half of the case-control studies.
• While the experts believe they can rule out chance, bias, and confound as “unlikely” with processed meat, “[c]hance, bias, and confounding could not be ruled out with the same degree of confidence for the data on red meat consumption” because “no clear association was seen in several of the high quality studies and residual confounding from other diet and lifestyle risk is difficult to exclude.”

Additionally, we feel compelled to point out that the dose makes the poison, and according to the IARC, you have to eat approximately a quarter of a pound of red meat per day to increase your risk of developing cancer by 17 percent.  And you have to eat approximately an eighth of a pound of processed meat per day (apparently the equivalent of two strips of bacon) to increase your risk of cancer by 18%. Also, while the IARC suggests that “[m]eat smoked or cooked over a heated surface or open flame contains PAH,” which allegedly “cause DNA damage,” the IARC admits that “little direct evidence exists that this occurs following meat consumption.”

Without more information regarding: sample size; control for bias, confounding, and chance; and other important information, we at Abnormal Use are not inclined to amend our carnivorous habits.

For now, though, red meat and processed meats will have to remain in the list of substances accused by the IARC of containing carcinogens, along with substances such as chlorinated drinking water, pickled vegetables (asian), coffee, hair coloring products, extremely low frequency magnetic fields, salted fish (Chinese style), tea, and various others.

Self-driving cars are inevitable. But when human drivers are no longer operating their vehicles, who is to blame if the “self-driving” vehicle is involved in an accident? Google and Mercedes Benz have reportedly already “accept[ed] full liability if their self-driving vehicles cause a collision,” and now, Volvo has followed suit:

Only a few days after unveiling the user interface for its coming IntelliSafe Auto Pilot self-driving system, Volvo’s president and chief executive Håkan Samuelsson said the company would ‘accept full liability whenever one if its cars is in autonomous mode.’

What does that mean?

Apparently, Volvo will accept liability “for an accident if it was the result of a flaw in the car’s design.” However, “[i]f the customer used the technology in an inappropriate way then the user is still liable,” and of course, “if a third party vehicle causes the crash, then it would be liable.”

We at Abnormal Use struggle to see how this is different than the current state of the law, in which the manufacturer of a vehicle may be liable for an accident caused by a product defect and the driver of the vehicle may be liable if the driver’s negligence causes the collision. However, these proclamations by autonomous vehicle manufacturers may provide clarity in an otherwise uncertain, uncharted area.

Torts and their reforms have spurned hot debates among lawmakers. Most laymen do not know what a “tort” is, but many of them have also become convinced in recent years that torts must be reformed. Ralph Nader, long-time consumer advocate and enemy of “corporate America,” disagrees. He has recently opened a Tort Museum in Winsted, Connecticut which pays homage to the pure, unreformed tort. According to the museum’s website, the mission of the museum is simple: “The American Museum of Tort Law seeks to increase citizen understanding of Tort Law – the law of wrongful injury – and the role it plays in protecting personal freedom, health and safety through the American civil justice system.”

The New Yorker’s recent article offers readers an idea of what to expect from the attraction. The museum apparently has something for everyone. For beginners, the museum explains the basics:

…a tort is any wrongful act that can be the basis for a civil lawsuit. For example, if you punch the mailman, the county prosecutor can charge you with the crime of assault and the mailman can sue you for the tort of battery. The law looks at the same punch in two different ways.

Surely, the museum also included a disclaimer instructing museum patrons not to strike the mailman. The museum includes an exhibit on the Corvair, the vehicle which was the subject of Nader’s 1965 book, Unsafe at Any Speed. For the tort history buffs, the museum has an exhibit dedicated to the historic “flaming rat” case, which we are still talking about today. Of course, the museum also has a section dedicated to the famous “Hot Coffee” case, a subject on which we often post.  If you visit the tort museum, you may have the opportunity to hear Nader’s personal take on the case:

Inside the museum, Nader personally escorted bewildered townspeople through the exhibits. He stopped in front of the McDonald’s Coffee Cup Case exhibit. “The lawyers didn’t tell people that McDonald’s kept their coffee that hot for commercial advantage. So it would stay hotter than Burger King’s as you drove along the highway. They’d already gotten seven hundred complaints about the burns.” Nader shook his head and looked at his guest, who nodded. He had changed one mind. He seemed satisfied.

Apparently, there is some question whether the museum will be successful:

Tom Stebbins, executive director of the Lawsuit Reform Alliance of New York, an organization that supports changes to tort law, said he doesn’t think there is any interest from the general public.

‘You probably couldn’t get school kids there because they’d sue the bus driver on the way’ Mr. Stebbins joked. And the kids ‘might not get out of the parking lot,’ he added, suggesting young people might not be thrilled by a museum about torts.

According to The New Yorker, Stebbins may be right. At least one young lady, who happened to be sporting blue hair, a nose and lip ring, and a hat displaying the hashtag “biteme,” found the museum “boring.” Only time will tell whether the museum will accomplish its mission or whether the hottest item in the museum’s gift shop will be the flaming rat t-shirt or Prosser, Wade, and Schwartz on Torts.

Lowering the Bar recently blogged about a young college student who figured out a way to maintain style and mobility following an alcohol-related license suspension:

Tara Monroe is a college student in Texas who has gained some notoriety for her response to a DWI arrest in March. Monroe, whose “license was automatically suspended after [she refused] a breathalyzer test after a Waka Flocka concert,” then had to find some other way to get around. She has a bike, but “[r]iding a bike around campus sucks,” she noted. “Like, really sucks,” she added.

Left with no virtually no other choice, Ms. Monroe purchased a $60 Barbie convertible to drive around campus. Obviously, she draws the attention of other students, who apparently also take frequent photographs.

There is basically no downside to this mode of transportation, right?  Drive around in electric pink glory, drawing the attention of everyone you encounter, pounding booze the whole way, all without consequences? Wrong. Cue the buzzkill lawyers with their “legal opinions.” Lowering the Bar apologizes for being the “bearer of bad news,” but adds that the pounding booze aspect of driving the Barbie car is “not a good idea”:

As many of you know by now, driving something unusual is your right as an American, but driving something unusual while intoxicated can still get you in legal trouble. That’s been true even for vehicles that arguably are not at all dangerous to anyone (e.g., Zamboni, wheelchair, inflatable raft, motorized beer cooler), and there’s no “ridiculous vehicle” exception (e.g., golf cart, motorized bar stool, Christmas parade float). In any event, it always comes down to what the state’s law provides.

Lowering the Bar goes on to examine Texas law on the issue and determines that Texas apparently frowns upon driving unusual vehicles while drinking, in that doing so is illegal. But aha! Apparently, “there are no Texas cases (yet) that address these laws in the specific context of Barbie jeeps” and apparently you can drink and joy ride in a Barbie Jeep to your heart’s content as long as [no one is harmed] and you “at least stay on private property.”

Our brief research tells us that you also can also be arrested for: “stealing a lawn mower while intoxicated. State v. Bombailey, No. E2003-00421-CCA-R3CD, 2004 WL 170350, at *1 (Tenn. Crim. App. Jan. 28, 2004); [as noted by Lowering the Bar] “operating a riding lawn mower on a county road, apparently intoxicated” Williams v. State, No. 03-02-00751-CR, 2004 WL 34840, at *1 (Tex. App. Jan. 8, 2004); driving a bicycle while intoxicated. Velasquez v. Superior Court, 227 Cal. App. 4th 1471, 1478, 174 Cal. Rptr. 3d 541, 546 (2014), reh’g denied (Aug. 13, 2014), review denied (Oct. 22, 2014). However, the good news for Segway pub crawl participants is that “[t]he Minnesota Court of Appeals has concluded that operating a Segway while intoxicated does not violate Minnesota’s DWI statute.” Greenman v. Jessen, 787 F.3d 882, 891 (8th Cir. 2015). It is also worth noting that, while “driving a tricycle while intoxicated” may be fair game, one who is caught “driv[ing] onto a sidewalk, crush[ing] a child’s tricycle and driv[ing] off, seeming intoxicated” will likely not evade arrest. See Bagheri v. State, 119 S.W.3d 755, 762 n.4 (Tex. Crim. App. 2003); State v. Wallace, 539 So. 2d 123, 124 (La. Ct. App.) writ denied, 544 So. 2d 400 (La. 1989).

For better or worse, Donald Trump virtually controls the conversation surrounding the 2016 United States presidential election. He has offended. He has inspired. He has tweeted. He is unapologetic. But the thing that really sets him apart from the stereotypical presidential candidate is that, prior to entering the presidential race, he did not hold a political office. Rather, Trump’s chief occupation was corporate chief executive officer. As reported by The New York Times, “[o]nly once in American History has a major political party granted its prize to someone whose principal qualification was to have served as a corporate chief executive.” Apparently, the last time was in 1940, when Wendell Willke, the president of the Commonwealth and Southern, ran against President Franklin Roosevelt. The aspect of Willke’s background that caught our attention is that he was a lawyer who moved up the ranks to CEO be:

Born in the small town of Elwood, Ind., the well-read, bighearted, chain-smoking Willkie was a lawyer. Before his promotion to chief executive, he had been the company’s counsel. Until 1939, he had been a registered Democrat; he changed his party affiliation without fanfare. After Willkie made known his intention to run for president, James E. Watson, a Republican and former United States senator from Indiana, warned him that it would be difficult for a party switcher to be nominated.

Willke did not win the election, and his national political career was short-lived. CEO’s have typically not been nominated by either of the major political parties since, with a few well-known exceptions:

Since then, the two major parties have seldom sought out C.E.O.s for the White House. Some political consultants tried and failed to draft Lee Iacocca to run for president as a Democrat, on the heels of his best-selling autobiography, which described his success in reviving the Chrysler Corporation. In February 1992, the businessman H. Ross Perot pledged on the CNN program “Larry King Live” to attack the national deficit if he ran as an independent candidate, saying, “My strength is creating jobs and fixing things.” A Gallup poll that June found Mr. Perot running ahead of the major party candidates, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton. That November, after closing down (he later said he feared political “dirty tricks”) and then resuming his campaign, Mr. Perot won 19 percent of the popular vote. More recently, in 2012, Republicans nominated Mitt Romney, a founder and C.E.O. of Bain Capital who had also served as governor of Massachusetts.

Like Willke, Trump is a colorful chief executive; however, Trump is not a lawyer.  \That’s not to say that Trump is a stranger to the civil justice system. According to Fortune, Trump “has filed many, many lawsuits over the years.”  Trump apparently filed a lawsuit in the 1980’s against the Julius and Edmond Trump for misappropriating his last name for their business titled the Trump Group.  Trump apparently sued his ex-wife Ivana, “accusing her of fraud and of breaking an agreement not to talk about their relationship.” Trump was apparently awarded $5 million in his lawsuit against a former Miss USA pageant contestant who “claimed that the entire contest was rigged.”  And, of course, most recently Trump filed suit against Univision, seeking $500 million following Univision’s decision to drop coverage of Miss USA following comments by Trump regarding Mexican immigrants. These are just some of the lawsuits in which Trump has been involved.  Additional lawsuits involving Trump are covered here and here.

Reportedly, a class action lawsuit has now been filed in California by a “John Doe” plaintiff.  A summary of the suit from Forbes:

Doe is filing on behalf of all U.S. residents who signed up for the website, alleging that Ashley Madison did not take “necessary and reasonable precautions” regarding security. Among the plaintiff’s accusations, the class action complaint lists negligence and inflicting emotional distress.

One of the alleged problems is that some of the individuals whose data ended up being published allegedly paid Ashley Madison to remove their data prior to the breach:

Ashley Madison supposedly offered a $19 “scrub” option that promised to delete users profiles so they would be untraceable. The suit alleges that Avid Life Media simply collected the money and neglected to scrub the profiles. Doe also accuses the company of not informing users of the breach in a timely manner and neglecting to inform them of its extent.

The John Doe suit is the second lawsuit filed in the days following the data breach.  Two Canadian law firms apparently filed a class action suit against the cheating website seeking $578 million:

The plaintiff is Eliot Shore, who said he briefly joined Ashley Madison following the death of his wife to breast cancer. Shore said his membership did not result in any meetings with members of the site and that he never cheated on his wife.

The suit joins a $5 million class-action lawsuit filed in Missouri in July. The anonymous female plaintiff in that case claimed she’d paid $19 to Ashley Madison to run a “paid-delete” of her personal information, which was unsuccessful.

Ashley Madison is no stranger to lawsuits based on novel legal theories.  In 2013, Ashley Madison was sued for “alienation of affections,” an antiquated cause of action which is only viable in a handful of states, including Mississippi and North Carolina.  The plaintiff in the alienation of affections lawsuit alleged that the website caused the breakup of his marriage. The disposition of the case and/or whether it is still pending is unclear.

A final interesting tidbit, Ashley Madison is apparently owned by a Canadian lawyer named Noel Biderman.

In personal injury cases, defense lawyers typically prepare a medical chronology, which summarizes the Plaintiff’s medical treatment in chronological fashion. This helps defense lawyers understand various important facts: how the Plaintiff’s treatment progressed, whether the complaints of injury were consistent over time, and other medical issues. But medical records are not the only source of information. We seek out employment records, family court files, and other relevant, non-medical sources of information. So why are these not typically included in the chronology?

Take, for a hypothetical example, a Plaintiff who alleges that he suffered a traumatic brain injury, which led to seizures several months later.  The medical chronology tells you that the Plaintiff sought medical treatment for head injury and that he subsequently endured seizures.  So, on its face, the TBI/seizure claim seems legitimate.

But what happens when you incorporate the worker’s compensation file and the family court file?

You find out that the plaintiff was found to be at MMI on March 1 following the January 1 accident, and that he was subsequently cleared to return to work.  You find out that his spouse filed for divorce alleging drug and alcohol abuse on March 3, including that he used twice the recommended dosage of prescription anxiety medicine every day and mixed it with high levels of alcohol.  You also learn that the Court set a hearing to temporarily work out the child custody issue on March 8.  So, the March 7 seizure, which initially appeared to be a delayed effect of TBI, now appears to be related to mixing alcohol with prescription drugs and/or withdrawals caused by quitting prescription pain medication cold turkey in order to present well at the family court hearing.

The point of this is, if you are not doing so already, you should incorporate all of the documents you receive into a master chronology that provides the entire picture.