Chronicling the high cost of our legal system
From the monthly archives:
New reports of a study linking an exceedingly rare cancer (anaplastic large cell lymphoma, 3 in 100 million women) to breast implants shouldn’t be seen as somehow vindicating the long-discredited litigation-driven scare campaign against the implants. [David Gorski; Robert Goldberg, DrugWonks; David Oliver]
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“Under a proposal submitted last Monday by the Civil Affairs Ministry to China’s State Council, adult children would be required by law to regularly visit their elderly parents. If they do not, parents can sue them.” ["China Might Force Visits to Mom and Dad," New York Times]
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Safety trumps other things dept.: in recent years “school districts have begun adopting policies that in many cases limit or even ban animals in the classroom unless they’re part of science projects.” Among reasons cited: “potential liability concerns.” [Everett, Wash. Herald via Free-Range Kids ("What is the least dangerous, cutest thing we can outlaw next?"]
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Vowing no longer to be Mister Nice City (assuming it ever qualified as such), Chicago is now willing to pay $50,000 to fight (successfully) a police-misconduct case it could have settled for $10,000:
Even though the city stands to lose money litigating every case under $100,000, a spokeswoman for the law department said that recently compiled figures showed the strategy seemed to be saving taxpayer money by dissuading lawyers from suing the police unless they are confident of victory.
(& welcome Coyote readers).
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Along with its formal report, the commission probing the financial crisis of 2008 has done an online archival dump of internal company documents that some hope, and others fear, will be of great help to litigators — even perhaps a “Wikileaks for the class action bar,” which with its allies was well represented on the commission and staff. [BLT; earlier]
More: David Frum has been doing a series of blog posts on the report’s substance.
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The Ohio lawmaker gives his side of the story. Earlier here.
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The restaurant chain responds with full-page newspaper ads to a headline-grabbing Beasley Allen lawsuit charging that its beef filling flunks federal standards for meat content. [ad via AP, Atlantic Wire, ABC, Atlanta Journal-Constitution] More: NPR (company has produced superhero cartoon spoof defending its product).
A Colorado cop gets reinstated with back pay after what his police chief considered an “egregious” incident of excessive force. And once again — I argue in my new post at Cato — we are given reason to rethink the strange phenomenon of public employee tenure.
P.S. Scott Greenfield has more on job security for errant police officers.
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During the successful campaign for Proposition 64 in California, reformers cited as an example of the sort of the “shakedown lawsuit” they hoped to eliminate a suit in which Bill Lerach’s class action firm demanded money from lock maker Kwikset because its product was marked “Made in U.S.A.” but included screws made in Taiwan. Nonetheless, the California Supreme Court has now ruled 5-2 that the proposition does not ban such suits after all, because consumers can claim to be injured by the arguable mislabeling, even though nothing was defective about the lock. Dissenting Justice Ming Chin, joined by Carol Corrigan, pointed out that to get around the Proposition 64 limit all that consumers “now have to allege is that they would not have bought the mislabeled product,” and that this “cannot be what the electorate intended” in voting for the measure. [L.A. Times, CJAC, earlier here, here, etc.]
Relatedly or otherwise: Glenn Reynolds interviews University of Tennessee law professor Ben Barton about his new book The Lawyer-Judge Bias in the American Legal System (”Virtually all American judges are former lawyers. This book argues that these lawyer-judges instinctively favor the legal profession in their decisions and that this bias has far-reaching and deleterious effects on American law.”)
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CBS News takes a look at some instances in which in-store cameras captured footage of, e.g., victims carefully positioning the spills on which they intended to slip. More: Legal Blog Watch.
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Connecticut state representative Patricia Dillon, seeking to protect the job market for U.S. lawyers’ services, has introduced a bill that would ban as “unauthorized practice of law” various types of outsourced legal work (such as document review, which some law firms now farm out to workers in India). Some don’t think the idea will fly: Westport-based law firm consultant Peter Giuliani “said the doc review-type tasks being done overseas is more like paralegal work. ‘You don’t need a license anywhere in the U.S. to do what they’re doing,’ he said.” [Connecticut Law Tribune via ABA Journal]
I’m beginning to set up the speaking tour on my forthcoming book (background) and from the invitations already on hand it looks as if over the next few months I’ll be visiting New York, Texas, the Midwest, northern California and the Rocky Mountain states, often speaking to Federalist Society chapters. Why not invite me to your area, or check about adding your venue to an already planned swing? Diane Morris at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. is taking the lead in handling arrangements; you can reach her at 789-5226, area code 202, or at dmorris – at – cato – dot – org.
Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit just contributed this great blurb for Schools for Misrule:
Every year I hire as law clerks some of the best and
brightest law students in the country, and spend a year
wringing out of them all the wrong-headed ideas their law
professors taught them. Now I know why.
To see what newsman John Stossel, author Philip K. Howard and Georgetown lawprof Randy Barnett said about the book, check out the jacket (PDF).
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He bit into a sandwich wrap in 2008 and encountered an olive pit, and now he wants $150,000. [Cleveland Plain Dealer, Wonkette, Memeorandum]
P.S. Gawker finds video taken five days later on the House floor in which the Ohio representative “looks fine and talks normal” notwithstanding the “serious and permanent dental and oral injuries requiring multiple oral and dental surgeries.” And Daniel Fisher at Forbes:
No indication why Kucinich mulled this lawsuit for three years before filing it…..* The lawsuit alleges negligence and breach of implied warranty.
*Commenter “Mattie” says the SOL in DC for this type of suit is indeed three years, though it would be one year for some other torts.
Who besides the People’s Congressman would be willing to name America’s olive pit safety crisis and call out the Big Pit interests responsible?
P.P.S.: As someone was asking, wasn’t generous government-furnished health insurance — like the kind available to Members of Congress — supposed to cut down on the need for personal injury suits? And Matthew Heller at OnPoint News finds some precedent for the suit.
And further: That was fast, Kucinich says he’s settled the suit (Jan. 28).
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It draws a lawsuit in France from the holder of the rights to the notorious killer’s famous 1960 photo. [The Sun, U.K.]
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Get your copy today! My new book tackles the question of why so many bad ideas come from the law schools. "Cutting-edge commentary, hard-hitting, witty, astute." -- Publisher's Weekly. "Excellent... A fine dissection of these strangely powerful institutions" -- Wall Street Journal.
Individual liberty, free markets, and peace: the world's premier libertarian think tank. Publishes Cato at Liberty, where I blog on contemporary policy issues.