That idea should ring Equal Protection alarm bells, no? [Greenfield]
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From the monthly archives:
November 2010
I’ve got some thoughts at Cato at Liberty on the overreaching way California’s Proposition 19 tried to curtail employers’ liberty in employment decisions related to pot smoking — which might have contributed to the measure’s defeat at the polls on Tuesday. Earlier here. Jacob Sullum points out that much of employers’ tendency to treat off-job marijuana use more harshly than off-job alcohol use is itself stimulated by government mandates and exhortation, prominently including drug testing programs (& welcome Instapundit readers). More: Nancy Berner, California Labor & Employment Law Blog (”Merely smelling marijuana on a worker’s clothes after lunch would not be sufficient to justify a write-up” had the measure passed.)
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The state of Texas’s use of a cowboy silhouette on vehicle inspection stickers could prove expensive if a photographer proves his claim that the image was illegally appropriated by a prison inmate who scanned it from a magazine without consent or payment. [San Antonio Express-News]
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Nordstrom, the successful retail chain, used to boast that its entire employee manual consisted of that admonition. But things have changed since then, and per Wikipedia “new hire orientations now provide this card along with a full handbook of other more specific rules and legal regulations.” [Bruce Carton, Legal Blog Watch]
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ABA Journal: “A South Carolina lawyer known for his TV commercials and billboards has turned over $994,000 in cash kept in a closet of his Myrtle Beach law office after a court-appointed bankruptcy investigator stressed the importance of disclosing his assets.” In initial filings, attorney Pavilack said he owed an estimated $72,500,000 to creditors and had $50,000 in assets; two months later he revised the asset disclosure upward to $8.9 million. A bankruptcy examiner says Pavilack’s financial affairs are in disarray and that it may be impossible to disentangle what he owns or where money went given a pattern of unexplained money transfers among a maze of business accounts. [Myrtle Beach Sun-News via Lowering the Bar]
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A much-criticized scheme to require businesses to disclose details of their litigation exposures is on hold for now. [Cal Biz Lit; earlier here, here, etc.] More: Carter at ShopFloor.
Feel free to discuss in comments. Some results (our preview post from Monday is here):
* In Iowa, Rep. Bruce Braley, a former plaintiff’s lawyer and leading spokesman for trial bar interests on Capitol Hill, appears to have squeaked through, but former ATLA/AAJ president Roxanne Conlin came nowhere close in her Senate bid against incumbent Chuck Grassley.
* Demagogic attacks on Michigan Supreme Court Justice Bob Young failed, as Michigan voters retained him. Illinois Supreme Court justice Thomas Kilbride, greatly aided by cash from unions, Democrats and you-know-who, won’t pay a retention price for a lawless decision striking down legislated limits on med-mal suits.
* The New York attorney general race wasn’t that tight after all, with Democrat Eric Schneiderman winning by 11 points, nor was the Connecticut senate race, where perennial Overlawyered bete noire Richard Blumenthal won by 10. Despite suggestions that attorney general candidate Kamala Harris was too far left even for California, she was running slightly ahead in late returns.
* Rhode Island voters turned down a proposal to change the official name of their state, “”State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations,” to appease the misplaced sensitivities of some who imagine that the word “plantations” implies a connection to slavery.
* Oklahomans ill-advisedly voted to forbid their courts from considering international law, even in the relatively narrow and well-defined circumstances where it has been traditional for them to do so. More: Roger Alford, OJ.
* Big news from Ohio, where voters turned out of office Democratic attorney general Richard Cordray, lately lionized by the New York Times as the next big activist A.G. The “next Eliot Spitzer” Times curse lives on!
* Via B.L.T., the House Judiciary Committee is set for a truly monumental ideological remake assuming that Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) is replaced by Lamar Smith (R-Tex.). Some changes will be coming along at Senate Judiciary as well.
* Republicans scored surprise inroads in Madison County, Illinois, the pro-plaintiff jurisdiction near St. Louis that has long generated vastly more than its share of high-ticket litigation. In particular, they managed to beat influential state representative/trial lawyer Jay Hoffman of Collinsville, a one-time floor leader for Gov. Rod Blagojevich, per reports by Ann Knef at the Chamber-backed Madison County Record and the Edwardsville Intelligencer.
* Mandatory employer recognition of unions on a “card check” basis without so much as a secret ballot? No thanks, say voters in four states [Wood; Hirsch/Workplace Prof].
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Carrying out its previously reported threat. [L.A. Times] More: Atlantic Wire; BoingBoing (with “fatwa” Photoshop); Lowering the Bar.
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A lawyer in St. John’s, Newfoundland, “says government could be held accountable for introducing moose to the province in 1912.” The giant herbivores sometimes cause serious car crashes. [Canadian Press via Karlsgodt]
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“The card check proposal now has a good chance of being Exhibit A in the post-election Case against Democratic Overreach. (Likely defense: ‘We were only pandering! You took us seriously!’)” [Newsweek "Kausfiles"]
Headline stories of the week:
- Crude for sure: Law.com runs highlights of the tapes of American lawyers stage-managing the Ecuador-Chevron suit [Corporate Counsel, ShopFloor]
- Why such broad gag orders in Kansas pain-doc advocacy case? [Jacob Sullum, Reason; Adam Liptak, NYT]
- Spectacular fall of lawyer Adorno in Miami fire fee case [ABA Journal, PoL, earlier]
- Fiscal 2010 saw biggest increase in regulatory burdens placed on US economy since measurements began [Heritage]
- Watch for nonstandard definitions of “rights”: “Unions Fear Rollback of Rights Under Republicans” [NYT]
- Marijuana, freedom and the California ballot [David Boaz, Cato at Liberty] Alas, text of Proposition 19 also contains “antidiscrimination” provisions that restrict private liberty [David Henderson]
- New papers from U.S. Chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform unveiled at last week’s Legal Reform Summit: ways to fix the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) (more on FCPA from Nathan Burney via Greenfield); Beisner-Miller-Schwartz on cy pres in class actions, via CCAF and Trask; and a new paper on asbestos claiming in Madison County, Illinois;
- Will Supreme Court clients be as keen on hiring Tribe after revelation of his letter trashing Sotomayor? [Whelan, NRO]
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“The calendar [on a U.S. Department of Labor "We Can Help" website] encourages employees to track their arrival and leave times, start and stop times, meal breaks, and other breaks on a daily basis. The distinctions drawn between arrival versus start times and stop versus leave times suggests that the DOL is trolling for potential off-the-clock claims against employers.” [Jon Hyman, Ohio Employer's Law]
The Pennsylvania attorney general has sued a debt collection company in Erie, charging that it operated a bogus “courtroom” to mislead or confuse debtors. “Consumers also allegedly received dubious ‘hearing notices’ and letters – often hand-delivered by individuals who appear to be Sheriff Deputies – which implied they would be taken into custody by the Sheriff if they failed to appear at the phony court for ‘hearings’ or ‘depositions’,” claims AG Tom Corbett [Corbett press release; WTAE]
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Election edition:
- On Oklahoma ballot: grossly overbroad measure to ban use of foreign law [Atlantic Wire, Transplanted Lawyer, earlier Volokh]
- Michigan race: “Dems cross the line with bigoted Supreme Court ad” [Stephen Henderson, Freep; earlier on attacks on Justice Robert Young]
- Jacob Sullum is another non-fan of Andrew Cuomo’s record;
- What was the exact nature of that Vancouver fundraiser so many Senate hopefuls attended? Carter Wood wishes he could add a footnote to an already strong column by George Will on the Linda McMahon-Richard Blumenthal Senate race in Connecticut;
- Speaking of which, Will’s latest election roundup column is just out, while Nate Silver at the NYT’s Five Thirty Eight blog offers an outstanding hour-by-hour election-night guide;
- Iowa poll shows former AAJ/ATLA president Roxanne Conlin, of SomePeopleJustNeedToBeSued.com fame, trailing far behind in bid to unseat Sen. Chuck Grassley [WHO-TV via Carter Wood's PoL election roundup;
- Trial lawyers pour cash into California insurance commissioner race [CJAC]
- Latest effort by New York Times to lionize activist AGs as “next Eliot Spitzers” recalls earlier Times pieces written to same formula, in the most amusing of which it lionized as the next Spitzer Ohio’s since-disgraced Marc Dann. Yet (the shaky electoral performance of such Times favorites as Massachusetts’ Martha Coakley aside) there’s reason to suspect voters this year will return a roster of AGs that’s less inclined toward business-bashing, not more [Jack Fowler at NRO].
- Government a threat to liberty? Doesn’t just depend on whether “our” team’s in charge [Gene Healy, Examiner]
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At City Journal, Heather Mac Donald has an important article on the federal courts’ willingness to second-guess in great detail the hiring practices of the New York City fire department, in search of more hiring of black applicants. It is worth noting that fire departments are pressed to rely (and even perhaps over-rely) on written tests in assessing applicants’ suitability in part because traditional testing of physical skills such as the ability to wield a charged hose, get up a ladder quickly, and carry body-size weights has been extensively and successfully sued against by lawyers representing female applicants.
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Over its alleged fashion use of the Angels’ trademarked “death’s-head” image [Legal Blog Watch]
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