And gets raided by them. More: Instapundit.
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From the monthly archives:
April 2009
Some thoughts from Mark Riffey on why lawmakers in the capital continue to fiddle, fiddle, fiddle.
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- The wages of addiction: former basketball star Roy Tarpley settles his $6.5 million ADA lawsuit against NBA and Dallas Mavericks [Randy Galloway, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Sports Law Blog]
- One result of litigation-fed “vaccines cause autism” scare: parents turn to dangerous quack treatments [Arthur Allen, Slate; in-depth coverage at Kathleen Seidel's and Orac's sites]
- Julie Hilden on First Circuit “true statements can be defamatory” ruling [FindLaw, earlier here and here]
- More coverage of conviction of Kentucky lawyers for grabbing much of fen-phen settlement [Louisville Courier-Journal, earlier]
- Judge dismisses most counts in lawsuit against Richard Laminack of Texas’s O’Quinn law firm [Texas Lawyer, earlier; FLSA overtime claims remain]
- All but three of the outstanding 9/11 airline suits due to settle for $500 million [AP/NorthJersey.com]
- One needn’t make the Community Reinvestment Act a scapegoat for unrelated credit woes to recognize it as an ill-conceived law [Bank Lawyer's Blog]
- U.K.: Woman who plays classical music to soothe horses told she must pay for public performance license [Telegraph]
Some in Britain are not happy about the combination of no-fee, no win lawyering (relatively recently legalized over there) and a taxpayer compensation scheme for medical negligence. [Times Online]. More: GruntDoc headlines his post, “In case you thought Nationalized Health would take the lawyers out of it…”.
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Despite some objections by class members to the resulting class action settlement, its approval is consider likely; class lawyers are set to bag $15 million while class members will get mostly vouchers unless they care to take delivery of the actual (generally useless to them) axles and wheels used to transport their manufactured homes. [SE Texas Record; Texarkana, Keil & Goodson, Nix Patterson & Roach, Crowley Norman, W.H. Dub Arnold]
In a plea for relief from the law, the printing industry reminds us that the world of printed material for children is a big and diverse one: any exemption narrowly drawn to cover bound books alone will expose to the law’s full and often prohibitive rigor a whole world of paper and paperboard wall posters, party invitations, thank-you cards, educational pamphlets and supplements, puzzles, leaflets, Halloween and Thanksgiving decorations, writing pads, folders and other back-to-school supplies, stickers, origami paper, Sunday school collection envelopes, mazes, score-keeping tallies, tracts, calendars, maps, home-school kits, Valentines, sticky notes, napkins and placemats, trading and playing cards, and much more. (Update: more from PIA).
Relatedly, Valerie Jacobsen narrates “a teacher’s dilemma”:
This teacher said that if she brought her own classroom into compliance, she would lose most of her carefully collected library and many more educational supplies that she finds very helpful. She said, “I guess our whole shelf of microscopes would have to go, too.”
This teacher is working to give her students a rich, well-rounded education and she finds older books very useful in her classroom. Meanwhile, her experience confirms my own: children just don’t eat books.
Jacobsen wonders whether Henry Waxman has talked to many teachers about the law, and whether it would change his mind if he did.
Another group hit by the law, many of whom sell in smallish quantities not well suited to amortize the costs of a testing program, are the suppliers of equipment for school science programs. Is there a “Teachers Against CPSIA” group yet? And if not, why not?
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According to a San Francisco supervisor, a succession of such traumas dating back to childhood predisposed him to the bribery/extortion rap that eventually tripped him up. He drew a maximum 64 month sentence anyway.
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You may recall the earlier trial of the Kentucky fen-phen attorneys who had stolen tens of millions of dollars from their clients ended in a mistrial for two and an acquittal for their third compatriot. This time around, a federal court jury, after ten hours of deliberation, found William Gallion and Shirley Cunningham Jr. guilty of eight counts of fraud and one count of conspiracy. A streamlined prosecution case no doubt helped make a difference; defense attorneys sought to blame the matter on Stan Chesley, who negotiated the underlying settlement and received millions more than he was contracted to receive, and it remains mysterious why he was not charged. [Courier-Journal]
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Shareholders get nothing, lawyers $1.2 million, comments accepted until April 20. Writes @Popehat, “found PDF settlement notice online (they made it hard). Truly awful settlement, not even named class reps get a penny. Sole consideration is revised SEC filing. No opt-out for anyone.”
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For a while after switching the site to the Thesis theme for WordPress I put up with Thesis’s default 404 Page Not Found message, but now (thanks to Sugar Rae for the tutorial) I’ve succeeded in customizing it back to the favorite old version, which periodically wins a place on “best 404s of the web” lists.
Not long ago the U.S. Senate refused to accept an amendment to the stimulus bill by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) that would have reformed some CPSIA provisions and delayed the implementation of others. Last night it rejected a similar DeMint effort in the form of a budget amendment, and this time there was a roll call, which confirmed that the rejection was largely along party lines: every Democrat voted against the measure except for Sens. Mark Begich (Alaska), Kay Hagan (N.C.), Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), and Ben Nelson (Neb.), while every Republican voted in favor except Susan Collins (Maine), John Cornyn (Tex.), Mike Johanns (Neb.), Mel Martinez (Fla.), and John McCain (Ariz.). Independent Bernie Sanders (Vt.) voted against, while Sens. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) and Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) did not vote.
Following Wednesday’s rally on Capitol Hill, small business people who fanned out to visit their Senators brought back many encouraging-sounding stories of the favorable “We hear you!” “We get it!” reactions they had received visiting the offices of Democratic Senators like Roland Burris (Ill.), Joseph Lieberman (Conn.), Jeff Merkley (Ore.), Jay Rockefeller (W.Va.), and Charles Schumer (N.Y.). Whether or not anyone in those offices hears or gets the outcry, it sounds as if the members even more clearly hear and get a different message: that of party discipline.
Kimberly Payne feels oddly hopeful: “The original vote on the CPSIA was nearly unanimous – this one was 39-58. I call that progress!”
The WSJ editorializes on the law again today, its third, concentrating this time on the youth motorcycle/ATV ban. More: Montana senators fiddle while small businesses perish (Mark Riffey, Flathead Beacon); the rally and the Democrats (Rick Woldenberg).
Public domain image: Yankee Mother Goose (1902), illustrator Ella S. Brison, courtesy ChildrensLibrary.org.
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- Those enviro-hazard warnings plastered all over because of Prop 65? They may be not merely pointless but untrue [California Civil Justice; a still-timely 2000 piece]
- Is it somehow wrong for a public medical examiner to testify against cops — even when it’s in another county? [Radley Balko, Reason]
- UCLA research scientists fight back against animal rights fanatics’ violence and intimidation [Orac/Respectful Insolence, "Pro-Test"]
- Ezra Levant, himself a target of Canada’s official speech tribunals, has written a new book denouncing them, buy before they ban it [Amazon; Andrew Coyne, Maclean's] Has odious censorship-complaint-filer Richard Warman finally gotten his comeuppance? [Ken @ Popehat] More: another Warman case [Cit Media Law]
- Roundup of recent sports/assumption of risk cases [John Hochfelder]
- Already in trouble on charges of faking a will, Allentown, Pa. police-brutality attorney John Karoly now faces tax charges including alleged failure to report $5 million in income for 2002, 2004 and 2005 [TaxGirl]
- Lawprof’s “Reparations, Reconciliation and Restorative Justice” seminar led to introduction of Maryland bill requiring insurers to disclose antebellum slaveholder policies [DelmarvaNow]
- Judge tosses suit by Clarksville, Tennessee officials against activists who called them cozy with developers [Sullum, Reason "Hit and Run"]
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German cops, however, got a surprise when they unmasked Ms. Moriarty.
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I wonder whether it’s time to start turning down review copies of books:
Revised guidelines on endorsements and testimonials by the Federal Trade Commission, now under review and expected to be adopted, would hold companies liable for untruthful statements made by bloggers and users of social networking sites who receive samples of their products.
The guidelines would also hold bloggers liable for the statements they make about products.
Related: 2007 Ron Coleman column.
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At least if there’s no one around watching.
In 2007, the Texas Supreme Court unanimously decided Borg-Warner v. Flores, holding that a defendant in an asbestos case was not liable unless its product was a “substantial factor” in causing injury.
But there are now bills in the Texas House and Senate, SB 1123 (recently reported out of Senate committee) and HB 1811, that seek to undo this by defining “substantial factor” to merely mean that a product “contributed to the [plaintiff’s] cumulative exposure”—whether or not other defendants’ products were far more responsible for a plaintiff’s injury. The effect of this rollback would be to return Texas to the role of asbestos magnet, since it could conceivably create indiscriminate liability for hundreds of innocent businesses in any given case. The effect will be very similar to the infamous Lipke rule in Madison County, Illinois that extracted billions of dollars from the innocent this decade.
Texans for Lawsuit Reform has a fact-sheet, as does the Texas Civil Justice League.
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And Larry Ribstein reasonably asks: What about Jeff Skilling?
