Friday, April 11, 2008

NeuroDiversity weblog: Subpoenaed

I've written on more than one occasion about the need for Tort Reform. The majority of the cases that over-emphasize the need are multi-million dollar lawsuits aimed at some segment of the Medical Industry driving up Health Care Costs exponentially.

This article is excellent example of the overreaching effects of runaway lawsuits and a primary reason of why Tort Reform is woefully needed in this country. An over-zealous and litigation happy lawyer has subpoenaed unneeded and inappropriate material from Kathleen Seidel, mother of an autistic child, a Blogger, an Independent Journalist and an Autism Research Advocate.

This was a retaliatory response from the lawyer and his clients engaged in a $20M lawsuit against a pharmaceutical company who were taken to task in an factual expose on a egregious example of the "Litigation Lottery".

More references to peruse

Slashdot article

Case Docket for Sykes et al v. Glaxo-SmithKline et al

Subpoena of Kathleen Seidel

The Volokh Conspiracy

My comment to Kathleen Seidel

A Collection of Links of supporting Articles added from the comments section.

A Powerful Related Article added from the comments section


[EDIT: Corrected Ms. Seidel's first name to Kathleen from Katherine. Thanks for the correction Joesph -- LNC]

3 comments:

Lotaso said...

Mi Padre, this is exactly part of the biggest case of an obvious runaway judiciary. Why would a Judge approve such a Subpeona anyway?

I belive the most important point of the whole thing is in last part of the motion to quash she states that the subpeona was "to indulge [Sykes'] parents’ and their attorney’s curiosity about my motivations and associations; to aggressively communicate their suspicion that I am not merely a fellow citizen who openly, intelligently and conscientiously disagrees with their public statements and actions, but a covert agent of the government, the pharmaceutical industry, or some other hidden force"

This is sad, that anyone should even care what her motivations are (it's not any of their business) let alone subpeona her during a case not even remotely related to her other than that she had some things to say about the case and/or some of the individuals involved.

This is all just mind boggling, I can't even emcompass all of the sheer down-right malicious tearing apart of her rights.

Liz Ditz said...

Thanks for commenting on the Seidel subpoena.

To the issue raised by Iotaso--the subpoena was issued in a state (Virginia) that does not require a judge to approve the subpoena.

I am one of the 100+ bloggers mentioned in item 5 of the subpoena.

I am keeping a running list of responses to the Seidel subpoena at I Speak of Dreams. I've added your blog.

Anonymous said...

A correction: Her name is Kathleen Seidel. The error originated with Slashdot apparently.