In a case entitled Gulino v. New York State Education Department, the federal appeals court earlier this month “reinstated a race discrimination suit against the New York State Education Department based on the theory that a test of ‘basic college-level content’ that asks applicants to get just two-thirds of the questions right is racially discriminatory because it has a ‘disparate impact’ on African-American and Latino teachers.” Dan McLaughlin at Baseball Crank acknowledges that the court relied on existing Supreme Court precedent, but is still rubbed the wrong way by its assumptions (Aug. 31).
Archive for August, 2006
From the comments: a chill on safety discussions
While the comments action has been lively elsewhere on this site, I noticed a comment that Jim Collins made on Ted’s post “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t files: Putnam Hospital” which I thought deserved its own freestanding entry:
The medical profession isn’t the only place where this happens. I used to be an aircraft mechanic for one of the major airlines, several years ago. Twice a month, after finishing our shift, we would go to a breakfast meeting. This meeting was attended by all of the mechanics from all of the airlines at that airport who worked the same shift. Several people from the airport and the FAA also attended. The purpose of this meeting was to share information on maintenance and airport safety issues. The FAA rep always took notes, compiled them from all of the shifts and a couple days later a copy was in your mailbox. I know of several problems and possible accidents that were prevented because of the information shared at these meetings. These meetings were suddenly stopped after company management found out that trial lawyers could obtain the minutes of them, from the FAA, through the Freedom of Information Act and use them against the airline in court.
New Times column — Katrina verdict
My new column at the Times (U.K.) Online is on last week’s Mississippi Katrina insurance verdict. (Walter Olson, “Insurers can breathe easier over Katrina lawsuits”, Aug. 30). Concluding paragraph:
Major coverage issues remain to be resolved (and appealed), but at least we can take note at this point that America is not Zimbabwe or Bolivia. As Dickie Scruggs said before the Leonard ruling, “If you win it, it’s a huge win. If you lose it, you spin it the best way you can.”
Also, I was a guest last evening (6:30 p.m. Eastern) on Marc Bernier’s high-rated radio show, “The Talk of Florida” to discuss the article.
New David Lat blog
David Lat, a.k.a. “Article III Groupie” of the great Underneath Their Robes blog, and former co-head of the DC gossip blog Wonkette, has a new site, Above the Law, that looks promising. Plus, he sent me the same e-mail he sent Eugene Volokh, and anyone who flatters me to tell me I’m as influential as Eugene Volokh gets a free plug.
Fact-checking the mainstream media (lawsuit division)
News clips reporting on large verdicts and settlements cross my desk regularly, and most do not seem on their surface to be worth blogging about. Most are terse summaries of a case’s outcome, and others do not present any indication (again, on the surface at least) that a case might have problematic aspects. The other day, however, I ran across a story in the Charleston (W.V.) Gazette describing a case in which a plaintiff had been terribly injured after a retailer sold what the reporter bluntly stated was a “defective mower.” This particular newspaper story was so one-sided that I thought there almost had to be more to it than was being reported — and I had no idea how right I was in that suspicion. This is a long post, but I hope worth readers’ while. It certainly makes me wonder how much I’m missing when I don’t go into the dockets to fact-check other seemingly run-of-the-mill cases.
Duke rape claim: the Times’s sorry showing
Stuart Taylor Jr. arraigns the New York Times for the many weaknesses of the recent article by Duff Wilson and Jonathan Glater which sought to rehabilitate the prosecution’s crumbling case. “The Times still seems bent on advancing its race-sex-class ideological agenda, even at the cost of ruining the lives of three young men who it has reason to know are very probably innocent.” (Slate, “Witness for the Prosecution?”, Aug. 29). Earlier: Aug. 25, Jun. 24, etc.
“What should be taught in Torts?”
The new symposium on legal education at Bill Childs’ website is well worth a look-through, even aside from Ted’s contribution.
“Trial lawyers target Republicans”
The topics of ATLA’s ad campaign in five GOP districts — drug prices and oil prices — don’t exactly seem central to the organized plaintiff’s bar’s own mission in life, but perhaps the wider message is just that the national Republican party Must Be Punished for supporting liability reform, and any issues that come to hand will do. (Jim Kuhnhenn, AP/Washington Post, Aug. 29)
Busy Lizzies in a hanging pot
Think twice about trying to grow your own from nursery stock: If the patent held by biotech firm Syngenta doesn’t get you, the indigenous-flora royalty supposedly owed to the government of Tanzania just might (Antony Barnett, “The new piracy: how West ‘steals’ Africa’s plants”, The Observer (UK), Aug. 27).
And I think something else happened that day
Attorney celebrations in the news:
“Joseph P. Awad, the incoming president of the New York State Trial Lawyers Association and a partner in Garden City, N.Y.’s Silberstein, Awad & Miklos, was one of the lawyers who participated in TLC. He said the group was holding a dinner on the fifth anniversary of the [September 11] terrorist attacks to celebrate ‘the largest pro bono project in history.'”
(Anthony Lin, “Attorney’s $2 Million 9/11 Fee Called ‘Shocking, Unconscionable'”, New York Law Journal, Aug. 28).