Chronicling the high cost of our legal system
From the monthly archives:
Arguing for a temporary restraining order in a civil dispute, lawyers for Sony argue that the federal “anti-hacking” law prohibits unauthorized access to one’s own computer. (As commenters point out, the company may also have less controversial arguments based on other areas of law, such as intellectual property and contract.) [Orin Kerr]
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The quota pressure in sports has been around for a while, but the idea of an enforcement push in hard academic disciplines may be getting extra encouragement from the very top:
Obama himself seems to have latched onto the idea. While praising Title IX’s impact on increasing women’s participation in athletics, he said, “If pursued with the necessary attention and enforcement, Title IX has the potential to make similar, striking advances in the opportunities that girls have in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (“STEM”) disciplines.” The nation’s university science, engineering, and mathematics departments may thus soon find themselves faced with the task of complying with a regulatory regime similar to the intercollegiate athletics three part test.
[Alison Somin, Federalist Society "Engage", PDF]
More: a John Stossel segment, and cutbacks in men’s sports at Delaware.
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Amid much hoopla, the Center for Science in the Public Interest had filed a suit on behalf of a New Jersey man claiming Denny’s hadn’t adequately warned its meals were salty. Now an appeals court has upheld the dismissal of the suit’s consumer-fraud theory, meaning that the complainant would be able to proceed only by proving actual personal injury [Abnormal Use, Home News Tribune via NJLRA; earlier here, here, etc.]
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Misleading investigators about the circumstances of your hit-run won’t do it, apparently. The lawyer in question has served as a traffic court judge. [Legal Profession Blog, ABA Journal, Randazza]
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“The amount of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico from the Deepwater Horizon rig blowout will be determined by protracted court proceedings rather than purely scientific calculations, the nation’s top environmental enforcement officer said Thursday.” [Houston Chronicle]
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Former Florida Governor Charles Crist has signed on with the big Orlando personal injury firm of Morgan & Morgan, “run by one of his longtime political supporters, Democrat John Morgan.” [St. Petersburg Times] More: Timothy Carney, Examiner.
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Don’t Do It Dept.: Alaska is the only remaining state without a law school, so (it’s argued) it must need one. Right? [ABA Journal] Because of the absence of a law school in the Last Frontier, the Alaska Law Review has been published at academic institutions in the Lower 48, first UCLA and more recently Duke.
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As promised earlier: “Two Canadians injured in car collisions with moose in Newfoundland have filed a class-action lawsuit against the province, claiming it has not properly controlled the animal’s numbers.” [BBC]
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Mutiny of the figurehead? One of the two lead plaintiffs in a computer-printer class action says he wasn’t adequately told what he was agreeing to, and is now objecting to the settlement. Class counsel in the settlement counter that the objector has been influenced by a lawyer pressing a rival class action. [Ted at PoL]
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We’ve reported before (related) on the federal government’s ban on Kinder Surprise chocolate-wrapped toys, considered innocuous in many other countries but deemed an illicit choking hazard here. They’re back in the news [Lenore Skenazy, Katherine Mangu-Ward] with the key paragraph in the CBC’s report indicating how very frequently the candies are seized from bewildered travelers:
The U.S. takes catching illegal Kinder candy seriously, judging by the number of them they’ve confiscated in the last year. Officials said they’ve seized more than 25,000 of the treats in 2,000 separate seizures.
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Having agreed to hear a different global warming case this term, the Supreme Court has declined to review the dismissal of a case blaming thirty energy companies (via greenhouse gas emissions) for Hurricane Katrina damage. [NOLA.com, earlier here and here] The case had reached a curious procedural posture following the recusal of half the judges on the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. My Cato colleague Ilya Shapiro has details on that and other cases that notably won’t be appearing on the Supreme Court’s docket this term.
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Should the damages be confined to the unrecoverable costs of the planned wedding, or extend beyond that? [Today Show]
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Although balloon dogs existed long before artist Jeff Koons began doing showy steel replicas of them for museum installations, his lawyers have sent a cease and desist letter to a gallery over its sale of resin bookends in the form of the canine inflatables [L Magazine]
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Hey, that might work here too! It’s the subject of my new Cato Institute post, which also mentions today’s news of a big jump (to record levels) in federal employment discrimination cases, fueled by the 2008 ADA Amendments Act.
Liability is predicated on “intent to harm, intimidate, threaten, or defraud another person – not necessarily the person you are impersonating.” [Michael Arrington, TechCrunch] Despite talk of using the statute against stalkers, Choire Sicha predicts a somewhat different application: “harm as in ‘brand dilution’ — that is what will be prosecuted. Of course there is no carve-out for playful, political or non-murderous uses of online impersonation.” The bill’s text, notes Arrington, doesn’t address such free speech issues as satire and parody, though it does restrict itself to impersonations that are “credible.” Compare: much-demonized Koch Industries goes to court to identify originators (apparently political critics) of website imitating its own [Web Host Industry Review]
The Americans with Disabilities Act requires employers to accommodate mentally disabled employees, but makes an exception for those who pose a “direct threat” to co-workers or others. Trouble is, to invoke the narrow “direct threat” exception, an employer may need to be prepared to prove that it has based its decision either on “a reasonable medical judgment that relies on the most current medical knowledge” or “on the best available objective evidence” — a much tougher evidentiary standard than is required for the making of many other workplace, governmental and medical decisions. [Jon Hyman, Ohio Employer's Law Blog]
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