It resulted in a lost product liability action against the pool maker in a recent Rhode Island case [Abnormal Use]
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From the monthly archives:
August 2010
“…with the end result being $338 million paid into the United States treasury.” Mike Koehler reports on a cluster of enforcement actions that illustrate how the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act — now with added whistleblowing goodness — is fast turning into a cash cow for Washington, D.C. enforcers [earlier]
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- “Wacky warning dept.: Steven Morris v. Harley-Davidson Motor Co.” [Wajert and Ted at PoL]
- “Are HOA Foreclosures a Necessary Tool or an Extortion Racket?” [Jurow, Business Insider]
- “Court Under Roberts Is Most Restrained in Decades” [Adler/Volokh, earlier]
- New Jersey Supreme Court confirms equestrian center’s legal protection in horseback-injury case [NJLRA]
- White-collar prosecution: Is “Conscious Avoidance” the Next “Honest Services”? [Christine Hurt, Conglomerate]
- Cy pres class action giveaways arrive in Canada [National Post]
- More on why Wal-Mart is spending big to fight a relatively low OSHA fine [Paul Greenberg, earlier]
- Older jobseekers find offers scarce? Someone should pass a law! Oh wait [four years ago on Overlawyered]
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The historic town of Mauch Chunk, Pa. changed its name to Jim Thorpe, Pa. as part of a deal to honor the Native American-descended athlete. Now a lawsuit is invoking the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 (NAGPRA) to demand removal of Thorpe’s remains to Oklahoma [Never Yet Melted]
Meanwhile, scientists, universities and museums are considering their legal options in the face of new Interior Department interpretations of NAGPRA mandating “that after appropriate tribal consultation, transfer of culturally unidentifiable remains is to be made to a tribe from whose tribal or aboriginal lands the remains were excavated or removed.” [Indian Country Today, April; earlier posts on Kennewick Man controversy]
When several universities put out word that they were considering lightening the textbook load on their student body by moving to e-book formats, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division put them under investigation for possible violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The targets soon buckled: “The schools denied violating the ADA but agreed that until the Kindle was fully accessible, nobody would use it.” [Byron York, Examiner]
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Could they have been introduced successfully under today’s product liability law? [Ted at PoL]
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Wal-Mart stores in many parts of the country are famous for letting motor-home travelers park overnight in their lots for free. One wonders whether that policy will last: a Florida couple is now suing the retailer over an incident in the parking lot of its Cedar City, Utah store, in which the family shot and killed a man who intruded in their parked home. They say they have suffered emotional distress and medical problems and that “store officials knew the man was loitering in the lot” but failed to act. [Salt Lake Tribune via Consumerist, where commenters haven't been conspicuously sympathetic to the plaintiffs]
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“A Louisville police detective testified Monday that she was surprised to see television reporters outside the police station when Karen Sypher arrived to file a rape report last year against University of Louisville basketball coach Rick Pitino.” [USA Today, more] A year ago Sypher’s lawyer wrote Pitino a letter demanding $10 million on threat of suit. Sypher is now on trial for alleged extortion and her then lawyer has given testimony for the prosecution. [ABA Journal]
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The paper’s pretty good, really, when it comes to arguing for First Amendment protection of violent videogames and depictions of animal cruelty. So let’s be thankful for that. Now if we could only get it to take political speech seriously! [Stoll]
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Fixing the restrooms and other design problems is going to cost Oconee County $2 million, of which it will have recovered about half by suing a now-defunct architect. One big problem, per Spartanburg’s WSPA, is that “ADA requires toilets to measure 18 inches from the center of the bowl to the wall” and some of the courthouse toilets were mistakenly built at 19 inches instead.
“If they were mounted in the floor like the one at your house, you could just put in an offset flange and slide it over one inch to be in compliance,” says [county facilities director] Julian. “But since it’s mounted into the wall, all of the plumbing runs up through the wall.”
Which means the entire wall will have to be torn out and all of the plumbing shifted over — one inch.
More on courthouses and accessibility here.
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- “Why Do Employers Use FICO Scores?” Maybe one reason is that government places off limits so many of the other ways they might evaluate job applicants [McArdle, Coyote]
- Michael Fumento on $671 million verdict against nursing home in California [Forbes]
- Ted Frank is looking for a pro bono economics expert [CCAF]
- Lester Brickman, “Anatomy of an Aggregate Settlement: The Triumph of Temptation Over Ethics” [Phillips Petroleum explosion; SSRN via Legal Ethics Forum]
- Ice cream trucks return to Niskayuna, N.Y. 34 years after a panic-occasioned ban [Free-Range Kids, Mangu-Ward]
- Galloping trend toward “whistleblower” enactments: this time lawmakers are rushing one on oil workers [Smith/ShopFloor, more, earlier]
- Class action lawsuit filed against Trident Xtra Care gum, marketed as good for one’s teeth [Hoffman/ConcurOp; compare Russell Jackson on Wrigley's settlement of a class action over Eclipse chewing gum]
- EEOC officials urge employers to ban foul language and swearing in workplace [seven years ago at Overlawyered]
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Hello? Guantanamo? It’s not as if you’d expect any sort of consistent policy on these matters from the imaginatively named Alliance for Justice. But it’s still strange that they’d open the door to future attacks on their own favored judicial nominees based on clients they represented long before reaching the bench. [Joel Cohen and Katherine Helm/Law.com, NLJ] More: John Steele at Legal Ethics Forum takes a different view, and I comment.
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“What kind of journalist would cheer a defamation plaintiff?” [James Taranto, WSJ "Best of the Web"] Earlier here, here, and here.
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They’re piling on now [Lammi, WLF] Earlier here, here.
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