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February 12 roundup

by Walter Olson on February 12, 2010

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November 13 roundup

by Walter Olson on November 13, 2009

  • “Jailed Inventor Reveals Details of Patent Troll Settlements” [AmLaw Daily, IP Law and Business]
  • Sprinkler law inspired by Great White nightclub disaster could kill off small Seattle music venues [Nicole Brodeur, Seattle Times]
  • Court tosses law student’s suit against lawyer who boasted on air he’d pay a million bucks if anyone could prove him wrong about his case [Hoffman, ConcurOp; earlier]
  • Baseball-anthem case: “The Boston resident who saw his recent copyright claim against Bon Jovi dismissed is appealing the verdict.” [NME, earlier]
  • Man who climbed Mount Rainier while drawing workers’ comp pleads not guilty to fraud charge [KOMO; more on Washington workers' comp here, here and here]
  • Senate committee intends to vote next week on OSHA nomination of David Michaels without holding a hearing to air critics’ concerns [Carter Wood, ShopFloor]
  • Blawg Review #237 is at Christian Metcalfe’s U.K. Property Law Blog;
  • Are you sure you want to open that high-end restaurant in San Francisco given the city’s regulatory climate? [Crispy on the Outside citing SF Weekly interview with Daniel Patterson]

November 10 roundup

by Walter Olson on November 10, 2009

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A Montana jury decided that the aluminum baseball bat manufactured by “Louisville Slugger” maker Hillerich & Bradsby was not a defective product, but that the company should have warned of the dangers from its hitting balls at a higher speed, and awarded a family $850,000 for the 2003 death of their son at a baseball game. [Helena Independent Record, AP] Early commentary: Russell Jackson (doubting that a warning would actually have altered the behavior of those in the game) and Eugene Volokh (before verdict). Earlier here. More: Jim Copland discusses on CNN; Above the Law.

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The sixth annual Fulbright & Jaworski survey finds company lawyers expect a rise in labor, employment and regulatory actions. [ABA Journal, Fulbright site leads to report, WSJ Law Blog, FCPA Professor]

October 12 roundup

by Walter Olson on October 12, 2009

  • Speech-curbing proposals continue to get polite academic reception: NYU’s Jeremy Waldron, big advocate of laws to curb “hate speech”, delivered Holmes Lectures at Harvard this past week [HLS, schedule]
  • Lawsuit over collectible baseball hit into stands by Phillies’ Ryan Howard, his 200th career homer [Howard Wasserman, PrawfsBlawg; NJLRA]
  • Orchid-importer prosecution a poster case for the evils of overcriminalization? Maybe not [Ken at Popehat]
  • Texas State Fair and city of Dallas don’t have to allow evangelist to distribute religious tracts inside the fair, judge rules after three years [Dallas Observer blog]
  • Drug maker: FDA’s curbs on truthful promotion of off-label uses impair our First Amendment speech rights [Beck and Herrmann and more, Point of Law and more]
  • Did plaintiff Eolas Technologies go to unusual lengths to ensure Eastern District of Texas venue for its patent litigation? [Joe Mullin, IP Law and Business via Alison Frankel, AmLaw]
  • Update: “Lesbian Denied Infertility Treatment Settles Lawsuit” [San Diego 6, earlier]
  • Even in the Ninth Circuit, “psychological injury resulting from a legitimate personnel action” is not compensable [Volokh]

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September 24 roundup

by Walter Olson on September 24, 2009

  • Florida man and attorney file multiple ADA complaints against businesses in Seminole-Largo area [Tampa Bay Newspapers]
  • “The growing ambitions of the food police”: FrescaBottleCapdietary paternalism in Bloomberg’s NYC and Washington, D.C. doesn’t go over well with writers at Slate [William Saletan, Jacob Weisberg, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Glenn Reynolds]
  • Assumption of risk is alive and well in New York cases over sports and spectator injuries [Hochfelder first, second, third posts, NYLJ]
  • Favorable review of William Patry, “Moral Panics and the Copyright Laws” [BoingBoing]
  • Kentucky high school case: “Coach Acquitted in Player’s Heatstroke Death” [ABA Journal]
  • Olivia Judson on the Singh case and the many problems with British libel law [NYT; earlier here, here, etc.]
  • Kids behave stupidly with girlfriends/boyfriends or dates, then the law ruins their lives [Alkon, Balko, Sullivan]
  • “Report a bad doctor to the authorities, go to jail?” [Orac/Respectful Insolence, Texas; disclosure of patient and official information alleged against nurses]

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August 20 roundup

by Walter Olson on August 20, 2009

A New Mexico appeals court says the stadium can be sued. [AmLaw Daily]

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Staten Island, N.Y.: Little League Baseball Inc. and the New Springville Little League have agreed to pay $125,000 to settle Jean Gonzalez’s suit charging that negligent coaching and the use of a stationary base were responsible for her son Martin’s knee injury, incurred while sliding into second base. Two coaches were named personally in the lawsuit. “The defendants countered that Martin had been taught the proper sliding technique, and the bases used, detachable ‘Soft-Touch’ ‘pop-up’ bags, were compliant with all safety standards” and considered safer than the alternative design. The family’s lawyer was Alan C. Glassman of Brooklyn. [Staten Island Advance; our earlier coverage]

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The ballplayer has reportedly told Sports Illustrated that he plans to sue Major League Baseball for being unfair to steroids users and for keeping players like him out of the Hall of Fame [NY Daily News, Canadian Press via Krauss/PoL]

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Bruce Nye at Cal Biz Lit has more on the California lawyer and his numerous sex-bias challenges to stadium Mother’s-Day events and the like (Jun. 12, etc.). A coupon settlement with $260,000 in attorney’s fees is mentioned.

By reader acclaim: ESPN’s Rick Reilly is righteously hacked off at California serial litigator Alfred Rava and his sex discrimination settlement over an Oakland A’s breast cancer promotion which gave out floppy sun hats on Mother’s Day to women attending the game but not (horrors) to men. (”Make $100 the sleazy way“):

So how many guys have lined up to get their rightful floppy-hat-equivalent payment that was stolen from them by those selfish Mother’s Day-manipulating women? “Well, I haven’t taken a single call so far,” said the 1-888 operator at the firm handling claims. “And I’m here just about every day.”

Earlier coverage of Rava’s Oakland suit here, and on his earlier suit over an Anaheim Angels Mother’s Day tote bag giveaway here, here, here, and here.

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I’ve been added to the contributors at NRO’s Bench Memos discussing the Sotomayor nomination, and my first post skeptically looks at the talking point that she “saved baseball” in 1995.

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This time in Iowa:

A state Supreme Court ruling that allows a Bettendorf woman to sue over injuries her daughter suffered when she was struck with an errant bat at a minor-league baseball game threatens the spirit of America’s pastime, according to a judge who said his fellow justices have “taken a mighty swing … and missed by a mile.”

Cynthia Sweeney had signed a liability waiver, but sued anyway after her daughter, sitting in the bleachers as part of a school field trip, was struck by a bat that went flying. For more baseball-liability reports, follow our baseball tag.

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March 3 roundup

by Walter Olson on March 3, 2009

  • “Illinois trial lawyers take a swing at youth baseball” [Curt Mercadente, Illinois Civil Justice League]
  • Luzerne County, Pa. scandal: “Court Filing Says Former Judge Met With Felons Twice a Month” [Legal Intelligencer]
  • You’d think Obama could find some person without major-league trial lawyer connections for the cabinet seat on health, but you’d be wrong [Wood, PoL, on Kathleen Sebelius, and earlier on Tom Daschle]
  • Remember the many times when town officials do or say something arguably racist and the U.S. Department of Justice opens an investigation? Doesn’t seem to happen with the Detroit City Council [Nolan Finley, Detroit News]
  • Copyright enforcement doesn’t scale and that’s another reason its future looks bleak [David Post @ Volokh]
  • Thought it wasn’t going to happen? “Some Passengers Mull Lawsuits Over Life-Saving US Airways Crash-Landing” [ABA Journal, WSJ law blog, earlier here and here]
  • Sex shop that suddenly appeared in genteel Old Town Alexandria, near D.C. is sort of the zoning equivalent of a spite fence [WaPo]
  • Claim of British researchers: lawyers’ IQ-point edge over general public has declined over last decade [The Lawyer]

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February 19 roundup

by Walter Olson on February 19, 2009

  • Surprising origins of federal corruption probe that tripped up Luzerne County, Pa. judges who were getting kickbacks on juvenile detention referrals: insurers had noted local pattern of high car-crash arbitration sums and sniffed collusion between judges and plaintiff’s counsel [Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, Legal Intelligencer] Court administrator pleads to theft [Times Leader] Judge Ciavarella had secret probation parole program [PAHomepage]
  • We get accolades: “Overlawyered.com has a new look. Great new format, same good stuff,” writes ex-securities lawyer Christopher Fountain, whose real estate blog I’m always recommending to people even if they live nowhere near his turf of Greenwich, Ct. [For What It's Worth]
  • “Fla. Jury Awards $8M to Family of Dead Smoker in Philip Morris Case” [ABA Journal; for more on the complicated background of the Engle case, which renders Florida a unique environment for tobacco litigation, start here]
  • Scott Greenfield vs. Ann Bartow vs. Marc Randazza on the AutoAdmit online-bathroom-scrawl litigation, all in turn playing off a David Margolick piece in Portfolio;
  • Eric Turkewitz continues his investigations of online solicitation by lawyers following the Buffalo crash of Continental Flight #3407 [NY Personal Injury Law Blog, Mon. and Tues. posts; earlier]
  • One vital element of trial management: keep track of how many jurors there are [Anne Reed, Deliberations]
  • Public Citizen vs. public health: Sidney Wolfe may succeed in getting the FDA to ban Darvon, and the bone marrow transplant nurse isn’t happy about that [Dr. Wes, KevinMD, more on Wolfe here]
  • “Baseball Star’s [uninfected] Ex Seeks $15M for Fear of AIDS” [OnPoint News, WaPo, New York Mets star Roberto Alomar]

Raggedy Andy pillow fight

Much of the alarm over the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), the federal law enacted last year in response to panics over Chinese toys with lead paint and the phthalates found in plastic, has focused on the effect it will have on toys and related kids’ products, driving many of them from the market because it is too costly for handcrafters and small-run manufacturers to pay for the testing of every lot. (One protest site is entitled National Bankruptcy Day, after Feb. 10, the day the law is set to go into effect.) But the law is much wider in application than that. It also applies to a sweeping array of children’s goods including clothing, bedding, Scouting patches, and countless other fabric and textile goods for kids’ use; paper goods, school supplies, homeschooling kits, as well as library books and audiobooks, board games, baseball cards, and the like; outdoor gear, bikes, backpacks, telescopes and sporting equipment; home furnishings when marketed for use in kids’ rooms; and much more.

Endangered Whimsy is “a gallery of handmade products endangered by the CPSIA”. Just Add Charm has a CPSIA Awareness Series with other examples of products that could soon be withdrawn. There’s at least one Flickr group, too.

And that just scratches the surface. A familiar high point of many ethnic and heritage festivals is the children’s dance or ceremonial troupe in traditional costume. Yet handcrafted kids’ clothing, especially if intricate and including numerous components (beads, pendants, lace inserts, etc.) is likely to be highly expensive to test in compliance with the law. The same applies to the moccasins, buckskins, and dance gear that are cherished traditions for many Native American kids at powwows.

Some of the local press has been paying attention in recent days and the issue is beginning to reach the national press as well. The Wall Street Journal editorializes today. That attention has come only after weeks of mounting outrage at the grass-roots level, which as John Tozzi at Business Week has noted, has offered an emblematic example of the role of the new social media in giving voice to public concerns: besides alarm-raising at hundreds of blogs and forums (including Etsy and eBay), there’s been a torrent of Twitter discussion, a Ning group, YouTube, and nine Facebook groups so far. Even six month old babies are upset, or so their relatives say.

The initial reaction of many small businesspeople was to ask for as slight a modification in the law as they could, but it has become apparent that the law’s unreasonableness is across-the-board and systematic. Rick Woldenberg explains why a maze of exemptions and proliferation of categories would itself prove highly onerous, perhaps unworkable, for small businesses. Sarah at Just Add Charm writes, “it seems to me that a repeal of the CPSIA may be a better solution than trying to amend it to make it workable”. More on that idea here. I agree. Congress must repeal this bad law.

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