“U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Joan Lloyd ruled Friday that attorney Bruce Atherton and [financier] Randall Scott Waldman ‘blatantly breached’ their duty to the owner of a Louisville tool machinery company by forcing him out of business and seizing his assets. …Atherton was suspended from practicing law last month by the Kentucky Supreme Court based on his guilty plea in September in Pennsylvania federal court to charges that he aided a scheme in which other defendants allegedly ‘busted out’ small businesses by pretending to buy them, then draining their assets before the deals were completed.” [Louisville Courier-Journal via ABA Journal]
Tagged as:
bankruptcy,
ethics,
Kentucky
By a 3-2 vote, the CPSC has confirmed that the absurd and inflexible Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act bans the sale of children’s products which contain components of conventional (leaded) brass. The vote drew dissents from commissioners Anne Northup (statement) and Nancy Nord (official comments, PDF; further statement at her blog). From the latter:
…The Commission has now very clearly determined that we do not have the flexibility under the law to make common sense decisions with respect to lead.
…I am especially concerned about what this decision means for our schools, where brass is found on desk hinges, coat hooks, locker pulls and many other items. Are schools now going to be forced to remove all brass and if so, who will bear this financial burden?
…brass is found throughout a home and removing it from toys does little in terms of removing it from a child’s environment. If brass were really harmful to children, we would be taking action to remove it from the home but no one is suggesting that there is a safety issue that needs to be addressed in this way.
Evidence of actual health risks from brass in the everyday environments of American children is, of course, anything but compelling. Rick Woldenberg has been covering the story here, here, here, and here. Greco Woodcrafting predicts rough times ahead for school bands, as well. And the WSJ editorializes today.
More: this summer the CPSC issued guidance on the closely related topic of ballpoint pens (the roller balls of which include lead alloy); the upshot was so long as manufacturers don’t primarily market any given pen design as being for kids, they’re in the clear, even if large numbers of children are among the pens’ users. (Writing Instrument Manufacturers Association petition and response, both PDF; earlier here, here, etc.) For more on that episode, see 3 Green Angels, NAM “Shop Floor” and more, Rick Woldenberg and more, and Whimsical Walney.
PUBLIC DOMAIN IMAGES from Elise Bake, Der Ball Der Tiere (”The Animals’ Ball”, German, 1891), courtesy ChildrensLibrary.org.
Tagged as:
CPSC,
CPSIA,
CPSIA and toys,
music and musicians,
schools
- Shop worker prevails in U.K.: no need to pay music royalty fees for singing while stacking shelves [BBC]
- Word arrives that Eric Turkewitz has been named a New York Super Lawyer, but he manages to control his enthusiasm [New York Personal Injury]
- In which a columnist criticizes a post-election Tweet of mine, labels me “socially liberal libertarian” [Carney, DC Examiner; Roger Simon, "The Strange Case of NY-23"]
- Plaintiff’s lawyers may bag $28 million in Wal-Mart wage/hour class actions [ABA Journal]
- Contestant’s million-dollar suit against California pageant ends abruptly after surfacing of too-racy-to-post video [TMZ; irony-fraught background at Brayton and Good As You]
- News bulletin: lawyers shouldn’t trade on inside information [Cunningham, Concur Op]
- Possession, not just wrongful use: “L.A. Halloween Silly String Ban” [Volokh]
- Video of man who runs giant soda pop store in L.A., includes his thoughts on recycling law and the way regulation often works to big businesses’ advantage against small [Boing Boing]
Tagged as:
attorneys' fees,
RIAA and file sharing,
small business,
United Kingdom,
wage and hour suits,
Wal-Mart
“A former Brooklyn, N.Y., lawyer has pleaded guilty to fleecing millions of dollars from guardianship accounts he oversaw for incapacitated seniors and children. … at least 16 court examiners who oversaw Rondos [Steven T. Rondos] had signed off on his reports without detecting any red flags.” [NYLJ]
Tagged as:
ethics,
NYC,
wills and trusts
“Reports [Britney Spears] will lip-sync during many of [her 15 planned Australian] concerts has prompted debate on whether there should be disclaimers on tickets advising consumers whether a concert has been pre-recorded.” [ABC.net.au] Writes reader Steven Jones: “The inevitable result of this legislation is that concert promoters will have the warning whether the performer lipsyncs or not (there is no legal penalty for a false warning). This means that consumers will be no better informed, but the promoters will be covered legally.”
Tagged as:
Australia,
music and musicians
I’m quoted by Ben Brody in this month’s Westchester Magazine in an article about fear of harassment charges in the workplace.
Tagged as:
harassment law
Paul Levy, Consumer Law and Policy:
The Freehold School Board has subpoenaed New Jersey Online to identify several citizens who chimed in to discuss stories published in the Newark Star Ledger and New Jersey Online about several high administrators who got fake degrees from an online diploma mill, and hence received higher pay. After New Jersey Online notified its subscribers of the subpoena, the ACLU of New Jersey and Freehold attorney Stuart J. Moskovitz stepped in to represent various anonymous posters, and NJ.com has refused to furnish identifying information about the posters.
Asbury Park Press:
Howell representative William Bruno on the school board said he was in favor of the Aug. 31 subpoena.
“If they have nothing to hide, what’s the problem?” Bruno said.
Tagged as:
New Jersey,
online speech,
schools
New at Forbes.com: John Endean has an important article demonstrating that while American unionists seek to use Canada’s pro-union labor laws as a model for their proposed Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), they seldom mention that Canadians themselves have found it advisable to rethink and retreat from some of those laws. It’s a condensed adaptation of a paper that will soon be published here as the first in a planned Manhattan Institute series on labor policy. Check it out here (cross-posted from Point of Law).
Tagged as:
Canada,
Employee Free Choice Act,
labor unions
I’ve got a new piece up at City Journal on Tuesday’s sensational Westchester County upset, in which GOP challenger Rob Astorino knocked off Andy Spano, the longtime Democratic incumbent county executive, by a convincing 58-42 percent margin. Taxes were a key issue, but so was the county’s consent to what was billed as a landmark housing-reform settlement in which it agreed to arm-twist affluent towns into accepting low-income housing. Many Westchester residents were wary of the potential consequences — and downright insulted when Spano suggested that to resist the lawsuit further would be to make the generally liberal-leaning county a “symbol of racism”.
The federally brokered settlement is itself of interest far beyond Westchester, if only as the occasion of a truly remarkable rhetorical flourish from an Obama Administration official, HUD deputy secretary Ron Sims: “It’s time to remove zip codes as a factor in the quality of life in America.” It was also hailed at once in some quarters as a model for similar legal action against other suburban jurisdictions considered guilty of not being hospitable enough to low-income housing. The Westchester voter revolt, I argue in the piece, may serve as a signal to local officials elsewhere to fight, rather than roll over, when the social engineers and their lawyers come knocking (cross-posted from Point of Law).
Tagged as:
fair housing,
politics
A nice way to support a family, but it’s sure too bad about CPSIA. And a Columbus, Ohio stay-at-home mom trained as an artist is afraid the law’s testing costs will sink her small-batch online business making bibs, burp clothes, blankets and similar baby items. [Business First of Columbus]
P.S. Be warned: the Grand Haven, Mich. report contains an error regarding the law’s coverage of secondhand stores (h/t reader Panthan in comments).
Tagged as:
CPSIA,
CPSIA and apparel/needle trades,
Michigan
Making the rounds of the legal and libertarian blogs: Legal Ethics Forum, Scott Greenfield, Coyote, Orin Kerr/Volokh, from original reporting by Nick R. Martin/Heat City. Radley Balko at Reason:
I don’t know Arizona law, so perhaps a Hit & Run reader with some experience there can help out. Could it possibly be legal for a law enforcement official to meander up to the defense table, begin reading the defense team’s files, then take documents from said files without notifying the attorney? That sounds absurd on its face, even for Maricopa County.
Tagged as:
Arizona,
Phoenix,
police
