July 22 roundup

  • Illinois prisoner sues for land to start his own country [AP]
  • “Have you got a piece of this lawsuit?” Important Roger Parloff piece on litigation finance [Fortune, now out from paywall] “Hedge Funds Finance Medical Malpractice Claims” [Jeff Segal, Michael Sacopulos and Wayne Oliver, Forbes via White Coat]
  • Criminalizing bad parenting: more scrutiny of “Caylee’s Law” proposals [Steve Chapman, L.A. Times and Boston Globe editorials, New Scientist]
  • Deal with ADA complainant averts closure of popular Popponesset Marketplace in Mashpee, Mass. [Cape Cod News]
  • Because it’s not as if NYC needs electricity or anything: Bloomberg gives $50 million to Sierra Club campaign to stop coal burning by utilities [WaPo] “Environmental justice” arguments deployed against pipeline that would bring Alberta tar sands oil to U.S. [John Kendrick, WLF]
  • Unimpaired have permanent right to sue: Fla. high court throws out asbestos-reform law [PBP]
  • Red tape demanded by quality-of-life progressivism suffices to strangle poorer urban economies [Walter Russell Mead]

5 Comments

  • I wonder how many percentage points will shutting down all coal-fired power plants add to the unemployment numbers?

    New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) and others have pressed to close the nearby Indian Point nuclear power plant, but the mayor said city residents get more than 8 percent of their electricity from the facility and lack a ready substitute. “It’s just not practical to close it down at the moment,” he said.

    I guess Bloomberg’s policy depends on whose ox is being gored. Hopefully we still produce tar and feathers. I see a great need for them right now.

  • Most US power plants are tri-fuel capable (coal, oil, and natural gas). The fuel chosen is the one which is the cheapest, and that is almost always coal. It seems to me that Bloomberg just wants to cause legal friction for reasons best known to him. No one is shutting down the coal-fired plants so quickly.

    It would be great to switch over to nuclear in a nationwide manner emulating the French or Canadian systems. For example Canada has the CANDU PWR reactors, all of the same design, so anytime a problem is found, all the reactors are upgraded. Somehow Canada and France have not had any accidents, or they have been very minor and not publicized.

  • Re med mal hedge funds

    Would it be a problem/conflict of interest if docs involved as defendants invested in these funds perhaps under the guise of someone else and then settled or threw the case just to make a nifty profit?

  • there was vet another instance of really crazy lawyer logic in the link to the Florida asbestos litigation. The Plaintiff in a tort claim asks to be made whole for the adverse consequences of a defendant’s actions or lack thereof. How could it possibly be unconstitutional for the court to require a showing of an adverse consequence? It is time to bulldoze our law schools, especially Yale and Harvard. The products of law school miss-education are intellectually toxic.

  • William – While I agree with your larger point, I think there is only Florida Supreme Court Justice who went to law school at Harvard or Yale, and that is Chief Justice Canady – a YLS grad who dissented from this laughable decision.