“The president of the Florence Park District says he’s disappointed in a system that allows a man riding a motorized bicycle on a winter night on a trail that doesn’t allow motorized vehicles to receive an insurance settlement. Half of the settlement came from a Florence bar because snow was pushed onto the trail when the bar parking lot was plowed.” [AP]
From the monthly archives:
December 2011
The slogan “Eat More Kale” gets a Vermont t-shirt silk-screener in trouble with the fast-food chain. [Gothamist]
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“Alarm fatigue” is said to be a growing peril in hospitals as “nurses become so desensitized to the constant beeping that they don’t hear or ignore important warnings that a patient’s condition might be worsening.” [Liz Kowalczyk, Boston Globe]
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Yes, media coverage does affect the outcome of court cases, and here are some of the ways [Andrew Trask]
“A youth group adviser from California has brought a class-action suit against her employer, the Orthodox Union. …Her complaint states that in addition to her ‘nine-to-five’ duties of teaching classes, meeting with students and co-workers, cooking for holiday meals and running programs, she also had students at her house on Friday nights, Saturdays and Sundays. She had to make herself constantly available to students and their parents by phone and e-mail, and she worked around the clock while chaperoning Shabbatons and trips.” Overtime was not paid for these duties as legally required, her lawyer says. [JTA via Helfand/Prawfs; related on scope of "ministerial exception" in employment law]
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We will not at present inquire whether the doctrine which is held on this subject by English lawyers be or be not agreeable to reason and morality; whether it be right that a man should, with a wig on his head, and a band round his neck, do for a guinea what, without those appendages, he would think it wicked and infamous to do for an empire; whether it be right that, not merely believing but knowing a statement to be true, he should do all that can be done by sophistry, by rhetoric, by solemn asseveration, by indignant exclamation, by gesture, by play of features, by terrifying one honest witness, by perplexing another, to cause a jury to think that statement false.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, Essay on Francis Bacon
“…then suing for the same reason seems illogical.” [Nick Farr, Abnormal Use, on Yamaha Rhino cases]
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California public employees can appeal to the little-known Personnel Board to challenge terminations. Among those ordered reinstated: “A nurse’s aide accused of stealing money from an elderly patient and a hospital staffer who allegedly beat a disabled patient with a shoe.” Replete with examples, this is the sort of investigative piece that ought to make a difference, though alas it probably won’t [Los Angeles Times]
More: At The American, Lee Ohanian has a fact-packed overview of “America’s public sector union dilemma.” Fred Siegel is interviewed by Matthew Kaminski on New York City and public sector unions as the “New Tammany Hall” [WSJ] SEC chief Mary Schapiro says firing failed employees would “harm” the agency [Mark Calabria, Cato]. And Jonah Goldberg discovers that, especially in California, there really is something to this talk of a “prison-industrial complex.”
Today I’m talking to state legislators courtesy of the American Legislative Exchange Council. Next week I head off for luncheon talks about my new book Schools for Misrule before Federalist Society lawyers’ chapters in Greenville, S.C. on Wed. Dec. 7, and Charlotte, N.C. on Thurs. Dec. 8. And then the following week I keynote the annual luncheon of the Colorado Civil Justice League Dec. 13 in Denver. If you’re in the audience, do introduce yourself!
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The Justice Department has sued the University of Nebraska-Kearney and its regents and employees for allegedly “denying reasonable accommodation requests by students with psychological or emotional disabilities seeking to live with emotional assistance animals in university housing.” [Disability Law]
More/update: Inside Higher Ed.
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