“Jury clears companies in lawn mower lawsuit” [Eugene, Oregon, Register-Guard]
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From the monthly archives:
October 2009
A remarkable story of government power from Dundee, Scotland [Daily Mail via Steyn/NRO, earlier]
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And per this L.A. Times account, business — at least business with an organized Washington, D.C. presence — is on board, just as it was when CPSIA passed. So what could go wrong?
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Jack Shafer has some thoughts about the soft center of the supposedly hard-boiled press when it comes to stories like that of Megan Williams of Charleston, W.V., who has just recanted some elements of a sensational 2007 kidnap/assault story that sent six accused persons to prison for long terms.
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- Is it against the law to report police movements on Twitter? [Valetk, Law.com; Volokh]
- “Attorney Charged With Posting Ad Seeking ‘Secretary With Benefits’” [Legal Profession Blog via Bruce Carton, Legal Blog Watch]
- Maker of Monster energy drinks drops its cease and desist demand against Vermonster beer [Burlington Free Press, earlier] More: Turkewitz.
- Putative class action filed against University of Illinois over clout-in-admissions scandal; a contest challenges readers to come up with best arguments for dismissal [Russell Jackson]
- Settlement in case where wrongful suspicion of shoplifting/counterfeiting led to $3.1 million verdict against Target [Greenville News via Turkewitz, earlier]
- Things you can’t bring on the school bus: softball bats, canned vegetables [Free Range Kids and again]
- “Veil-Wearing Muslim Woman Drops Battle With Judge” [OnPoint News]
- Great moments in voting rights law: no, you can’t have nonpartisan elections [Washington Times] (& Popehat)
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Mark Steyn calls this news clip from Canada “the descent into societal madness distilled into one perfect paragraph”:
People with outstanding warrants will be denied income assistance in British Columbia as soon as next year if legislation introduced yesterday is passed into law, said Rich Coleman, Minister of Housing and Social Development. “People who have outstanding warrants shouldn’t be getting welfare until they clean up the problem,” said Mr. Coleman, adding that to qualify, warrants must be for indictable offences such as murder, sexual assault and drug trafficking. But Mr. Coleman said the government will not run criminal background checks on welfare applicants to enforce the policy. Instead, it will rely on criminals to disclose their outstanding legal issues when they make an application.
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A neon-look lighted vehicle wrap, more than 275 domain names and a paid person “ready to chat with any visitor to his Web sites” day or night are all part of the Florida DUI specialist’s marketing effort: “This is the way of the future,” he says. [Herald-Tribune via ABA Journal]
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The grandstanding sheriff of Cook County, Ill. is thrown out of court. More: Eugene Volokh, Citizen Media Law.
Above the Law and Ann Althouse cover the end of a much-watched lawsuit filed by Yale students over nasty personal comments on a well-known message board.
An editorial in the Palm Beach Post advises reader caution about the glamorous tort-chaser’s efforts to drum up clients for Weitz & Luxenberg and Searcy Denney Scarola Barnhart & Shipley based on allegations of a cancer cluster with a claimed link to radioactive drinking water:
The lawyers discussed water samples from 10 homes of cancer patients that showed at least trace amounts of radium, a naturally occurring metal. Those studies, however, echoed Florida Department of Environmental Protection results from 50 randomly selected homes. …
…one resident concluded on a Web site after the meeting: “Last night, we were validated.” Amid the personal appeals came the business pitch. Attorney Jack Scarola explained the contingency contract, which means that clients would pay nothing, even if they lost. He urged residents to take their time reading the contract because if “you inform yourselves well, you will find it’s in your best interest to sign with us.”
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Patrick at Popehat does some digging, in fact quite a lot of it, about a curious suit filed in Australia. Earlier here.
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- Unsafe at any read: new Ralph Nader novel panned by Chris Hayes, Washington editor of The Nation [Barnes and Noble Review via Suderman, Reason]
- Microsoft says “most, if not all” customer data from T-Mobile Sidekick smartphones has been recovered, but class action lawyers say they’re undeterred [Seattle P-I]
- Sue them all and sort things out later? Lawsuit over Air France Airbus crash off coast of Brazil names long list of aerospace suppliers as defendants [Reuters]
- “No cash for this clunker”: opposition mounts to proposal for Massachusetts public law school [Boston Herald editorial via Legal Blog Watch, earlier link roundup at Point of Law]
- Ralph Lauren experiences Streisand Effect over skinny-model nastygram [Althouse, earlier]
- High-profile L.A. plaintiff’s lawyer Walter Lack speaks under questioning about role in Nicaraguan banana-worker suit against Dole [Recorder, earlier, background] And: “Dole on a Roll: Court Declines to Enforce $97M Judgment” [WSJ Law Blog, Bloomberg]
- Miller-Jenkins lesbian custody case, much meddled in by conservative religious groups, recalls the ways divorced dads get cut out of their kids’ lives [Glenn Sacks/Ned Holstein via Amy Alkon, background]
- Daniel Kalder speculates on why the New York Times editorially “purred with approval” of the new FTC blogger regulations in such an “impressively superficial” way [Guardian Books Blog]. More on FTC’s semi-backtracking on the controversy: Media Bistro “Galleycat”, Publisher’s Weekly, Galleysmith. And having been hoping for ages to get a link some day from blogging legend Jason Kottke, this one will go in the souvenir file [Kottke.org]
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CBS Sunday Morning this weekend profiled author, lawyer and reformer (Common Good/”health courts”) Philip K. Howard. Related: Progressive Policy Institute to press health-court idea on Capitol Hill? [AP/Washington Post]
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A video is promised soon, and some of the speakers’ supporting materials are already online. Angela Logomasini has a writeup for CEI’s “Open Market”. Earlier here. I spoke at length about the CPSIA calamity and had a few things to say about the food side as well.
Charlotte Allen of the Manhattan Institute on the EEOC’s crackdown on a traditionalist Catholic college for not including contraceptives in its health plan. [Weekly Standard]
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Via David Post at Volokh, a nastygram sent by the American Federation of Teachers to the critical site AFTExposed.com. More: Ron Coleman, Likelihood of Confusion.
New regulations from the Department of Justice may at last curb demands that business owners admit an ever wider array of designated service animals as an accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act. ABA Journal:
Proposed revisions published in the Federal Register (PDF) would exclude not only snakes and other reptiles, but rabbits, farm animals, amphibians, ferrets, rodents and wild animals including monkeys born in captivity, according to the newspaper. They would also eliminate from the definition of service animal creatures who simply provide emotional support, comfort or companionship.
That would be a most unwelcome development to a Shelton, Wash. man who has gotten into conflicts with store and restaurant managers by bringing onto the premises the boa constrictor that he says helps alert him to impending seizures. Seattle Times:
The species are so varied that the Department of Transportation (DOT) mentioned some by name: spiders, for example, in regulations banning them from flying in aircraft cabins.
That the DOT mentioned spiders by name “means somewhere along the line, somebody brought … a service spider on the aircraft,” wrote Candy Harrington, editor of Emerging Horizons, a magazine for disabled travelers, in her blog.
The Department has received thousands of letters supporting the animal owners’ case, though. More on service animals here.
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Boston software maker Jenzabar has already sued the makers of a Tienanmen Square documentary on defamation theories, which a court dismissed. But it’s kept the litigation going on trademark infringement theories. [Paul Levy, Consumer Law & Policy; Ron Coleman, Likelihood of Confusion; Boston Globe June report linked earlier]
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