The Long Island man smuggled it out of a pet store under his jacket and used credit card fraud for another aquarium acquisition, notes Lowering the Bar. When the next fish you steal/Is a dangerous eel/That’s a moray….
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From the monthly archives:
January 2009
Mike Cernovich thinks the plaintiff suing over the sugar-laden beverage might have spared himself a lot of trouble by, you know, reading the label.
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“Loss of consortium” claims are familiar when the underlying claim of injury is physical in nature. But for defamation and other verbal entanglements? The wife of Ole Miss basketball coach Andy Kennedy is advancing those claims in a suit against a Cincinnati taxi driver who charged Kennedy with assault, and a valet driver who backed up his claims. [Deadspin, NMC @ Folo]
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On Friday there was a noteworthy development on CPSIA: Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) and Sens. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) sent a letter to Nancy Nord, chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, endorsing some softenings in the law’s regulatory interpretation, which seems to represent a modest shift (if not an admitted one) from their earlier position. At the same time, Waxman, Rush et al held the line against any demand to revise the law itself, despite the outcry being heard from small producers, retailers and secondhand sellers across the country (more: my recent Forbes piece, some reactions).
On the same day they sponsored a closed-door briefing for Hill staffers which was billed as correcting supposed misreporting and confusion about the law and its onerousness. Such briefings are common when members’ offices are being hit by a torrent of constituent inquiries and want to know how to respond.
An editor at a large publication has asked me to write something about these new developments, so I’ll be working on that piece over the next day or two. In the mean time, let me recommend as a good place to start two excellent blog posts by Rick Woldenberg of Learning Resources Inc. (first, second).
The first post responds to the apparent new strategy of Waxman and Co. of proposing to exempt a couple of categories of generally safe products (ordinary children’s books, fabric-only garments with no plastic or metal fasteners) in the apparent hope that 1) Congress will look like it’s reasonable and “trying to do something”; 2) a few of the more visible (and politically salient) critics of CPSIA will be placated, at least for the moment. (One might add a third objective, whether consciously formulated or not: running the clock until Feb. 10 in the expectation that many of those protesting will at that point be out of the game — no longer in the kids’ product business — and so in less of a position to cause them political mischief.)
[click to continue…]
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White Coat begins taking notes on how many times he practices defensive medicine in the course of a day in his emergency room, and concludes that, no, the whole phenomenon isn’t just a figment of his imagination the way so many lawyers say it is. More: Max Kennerly takes an opposing view, and White Coat returns for a followup post.
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Readers may remember the extensive litigation in and around Granite City, Illinois, involving the frequently aggrieved Peach family. Now Armettia Peach has settled with the last defendant, Kevin Link, in the suit described here, here, and here. (Madison County Record).
Unrelatedly, the Lakin Law Firm, which has represented the Peach family in numerous cases, has changed its name to LakinChapman LLC.
Or what passes by that name: lawyers for the ACLU say the design of a Milwaukee highway project is unfair to minorities (Rick Esenberg, Prawfsblawg; complaint, PDF, at WisPolitics.com).
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Oh, spare us, Rep. Joe Baca (D-Calif.).
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You may want to buy this cute item before the requirements of CPSIA go into effect on Feb. 10, when according to the Etsy listing its price will go up from $58 to $3,530 to cover the required testing.
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- Tons and tons of favorable reaction to my Forbes piece on CPSIA: commenters there, Etsy thread, sampling of blogs: Polka Dot Patch, Heartkeeper’s Common Room, Colby Lane Designs, Baby Gardner’s (aw), Tristan Benz (double aw). Others who’ve gotten into the act: Iain Murray/Open Market, Jeff Nolan, Patrick @ Popehat (SSFC). New: Superblogger Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit, John Schwenkler, Carter Wood at ShopFloor, Ramesh Ponnuru at National Review “Corner”.
- “California Lawmakers Rush to Rescue Good Samaritans in Wake of Court Ruling” [The Recorder, Calif. Civil Justice Blog, earlier]
- “America needs a tax code simple enough for the Treasury secretary to figure out” [Taranto, WSJ]
- “Federal judge might ax $2M legal fee in Seattle ‘pro bono’ case” [ABA Journal, earlier here and here]
- Indictment of Long Island attorney Felix Vinluan dismissed; charged for advising nurses it was okay to quit their jobs [Cernovich, Volokh, Greenfield, Mitchell Rubinstein]
- “Apartment owner sued for common area second hand smoke” [Womble Carlyle]
- “Tulsa World sues alt-weekly over circulation story” [Romenesko and more, Shafer, BatesLine with many links] Update: drops suit against publication, leaving suit against columnist [Romenesko]
- “No evidence of a causal link between restaurants and obesity”. Hey, that could derail some lawsuits [Pethokoukis, U.S. News, on Northwestern/Berkeley study]
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“The federal appeals court in Atlanta says a woman who took part in sexually explicit contests at a Daytona Beach, Fla., hotel two months shy of her 18th birthday cannot sue over Internet images of her, even though she was a minor.” [AP; Atlanta Journal-Constitution] We had a discussion of similar, more successful litigation a couple of years ago here and here.
Thanks to our readers for the more than respectable showing Overlawyered made in the “Best Law Blog” section of the 2008 WeblogAwards. The winner was the very deserving Volokh Conspiracy.
Also while we’re on popularity, my piece yesterday at Forbes on the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) is #6 top rated among the magazine’s articles at the moment. Thanks!
…just to pay Cook County’s outlays on lawsuits and settlements? Earlier here.
Well, that sounded plausible enough. Who knew there’d turn out to be more to the story?
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Asks Dan Slater at the WSJ Law Blog.
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I’ve got a new opinion piece up at Forbes.com on one of the worst pieces of legislation I’ve seen in many a year, the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, and the need to repeal it before it capsizes tens of thousands of small businesses:
Hailed almost universally on its passage last year–it passed the Senate 89 to three and the House by 424 to one, with Ron Paul the lone dissenter–CPSIA is now shaping up as a calamity for businesses and an epic failure of regulation, threatening to wipe out tens of thousands of small makers of children’s items from coast to coast, and taking a particular toll on the handcrafted and creative, the small-production-run and sideline at-home business, not to mention struggling retailers. How could this have happened?
(cross-posted from Point of Law). For our earlier coverage, follow our CPSIA tag.
P.S. The piece as first posted included a Vermont publication’s quote attributed to David Arkush of Public Citizen; that organization almost immediately wrote in to point out that Arkush has disavowed the quote in question, so I substituted a different one. The conversation at Greco Woodcrafting tracing the matter is well worth a close look.
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If rudeness and sarcasm are indeed now actionable in Texas, as Amy Modica in her suit seems to be hoping they are, a lot of bloggers will have to stay out of the state.
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