Proof That Lawyers Are Descending Into Feeding Frenzy Mode

Because of a shortage of ambulances to chase.  A lawyer is now asking a court to order Volokh Conspiracy to remove a blog posting that quoted a court filing!  A little of the background:

Check out the Appellant’s Emergency Motion to Seal Portions of Court Filings Referencing Libelous Statements Made by Others in Wolk v. Olson (3d Cir.). To review the bidding, Arthur Wolk sued Overlawyered.com, alleging Overlawyered had libeled him. The case was dismissed on statute of limitations grounds, and Wolk appealled. Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit), Marc Randazza (Legal Satyricon), Ed Whelan (National Review Online), and I signed an amicus brief supporting Overlawyered’s position in the appeal. Wolk’s lawyers then filed a response in opposition to the motion for leave to file that amicus brief.

That response, filed on Wolk’s behalf by his lawyers, made a false assertion about a post of mine on incest law. And it also wrongly suggested — with no foundation whatsoever — that my incest law post gave Wolk “more than a reasonable basis to question whether at least one of the amicus bloggers seeking this Court’s audience, one of whom apparently has a penchant for discussing sexual misconduct, may be responsible for the horrible accusations of sexual misconduct against Wolk on Reason.com.” The response quoted those accusations of sexual misconduct (which had been posted by anonymous Reason.com commenters, apparently prompted by coverage of Wolk’s lawsuit against Overlawyered).

As I commented over there:

I stand by my previous suggestion that anytime a court finds that a lawyer has filed a frivolous lawsuit, on behalf of others--but especially on his own behalf, one of the lawyer's fingers gets cut off.  It would certainly encourage a long, long thought about the merits of the suit.

 But that's only because there might be Eighth Amendment questions about cutting off other lawyer body parts.