Missed from earlier this year: in the fall of 2007, following extensive litigation, the government of Canada began issuing payments to persons of Indian ancestry who had attended an officially promoted network of residential schools where abuse was common and whose aim of assimilating students into broader Canadian life was later assailed as calculated to suppress native culture. While the payments brought benefit to many recipients, among others they seem to have led to new cycles of dysfunction, family strife and substance abuse. [Jack Branswell and Ken Meaney, "Native suicides linked to compensation, Canwest/National Post, Jan. 26 via Western Standard]
Tagged as:
Canada,
Indian tribes,
reparations
Newark Star-Ledger:
The mother of an East Orange man killed when Denver Nuggets guard J.R. Smith ran a stop sign in Millstone told authorities she didn’t want the NBA player to be prosecuted because she wants closure for her family.
But [she] is continuing a civil suit against the basketball star because Smith has not reformed his dangerous driving habits, which she contends caused the death of her 21-year-old son, Andre Bell, on June 9, 2007, her attorney said. …
Tagged as:
New Jersey,
sports
A jury convicted three California lawyers and two interpreters who prosecutors said had organized massive fraud in the filing of asylum claims, generating false documents and coaching hundreds of clients to make false claims of persecution in India, Romania, and other countries so as to obtain the right to remain in this country. [Sacramento Bee; Jagprit Singh Sekhon, Jagdip Singh Sekhon, and Manjit Kaur Rai] “Meanwhile, in Boston, federal immigration authorities have begun rejecting dozens of immigration applications filed by lawyer John K. Dvorak, The Boston Globe reports. Officials allege they have found fraud, such as fake employment letters, in a significant number of Dvorak’s cases.” [Ambrogi, LegalBlogWatch]
Tagged as:
asylum law,
immigration law
- Transportation Security Administration detained comic book artist based on art he was carrying with him [Popehat]
- More unease over Federal Trade Commission move to regulate bloggers’ freebies [Citizen Media Law, CEI "Open Market", earlier] “I could care less that Milly the Yarn Spinner at millysworldofyarn.com is getting free samples of yarn to review on her blog.” [John Dvorak, PC Mag]
- “Judge Calls Frivolous Suits Against Attorneys a ‘Disturbing Trend’” [NYLJ; Staten Island, N.Y.]
- Sad news: Excellent online music service Pandora, unable to negotiate rights affordably, shuts down for customers outside the U.S. [Prefixmag, earlier]
- Joseph Stiglitz says the UN has a key role to play in “reforming the global financial and economic system”, which “is a bad idea. It is a very bad idea.” [Tyler Cowen]
- All assemble for trial: more installments in White Coat’s saga of his malpractice case [Emergency Physicians Monthly, parts seven and eight]
- Netherlands: site gets sued because of the way Google indexed it [TheNextWeb.com]
- Phone company faces grievance after disallowing workers’ metal facial jewelry as electricity-conducting risk [eight years ago on Overlawyered]
Tagged as:
bloggers and the law,
Federal Trade Commission,
Google,
medical malpractice,
Netherlands,
United Nations
On August 14, unless the Consumer Product Safety Commission acts to stay matters, a new set of CPSIA provisions will take effect requiring makers of children’s products to affix to their goods tracking labels intended to facilitate future recalls and other safety-related measures. As with many other aspects of this law, the tracking rules impose a burden that is perhaps bearable for many producers who operate on a large industrial scale; as noted in some detail two weeks ago, however, they are causing much hair-pulling — if not thoughts of retirement or bankruptcy — for many others that produce handmade, customized or small-batch items, or items not well suited in size, material, use or packaging to an individual labeling process. Kathleen Fasanella has a short account at Fashion Incubator explaining some of the steps that will be expected of those producing children’s apparel and sewn products, including makers who might have been turning out a dozen hats or cloth dolls a month at their kitchen tables: 
…Each batch needs a unique identifying number.
However, if in the course of making the products, you have to break into a separate box of buttons that has a separate batch or lot number itself, even if the product is otherwise identical, this is a separate batch and you need a separate new label for it with its own batch number that you assign. … It is conceivable [if you incorporate variations into the product] every item you produce is its own batch and each needs its own number and label. …
You will need to do “batch control”. You need to create a separate BOM [Bill of Materials] for each batch. You can keep this electronically in a database or spreadsheet. It is my understanding you need to keep these records for three years.
The CPSC has issued no guidance on the tracking label requirements, which means producers can only guess as to exactly what will prove acceptable, with the price of guessing wrong set very high indeed. A hearing by the commission in May aired a sampling of the expectations of disaster from various affected businesses around the country.
Per ShopFloor, “the National Association of Manufacturers and the CPSC Coalition have submitted another request for an emergency, one-year stay of enforcement” of CPSIA’s Section 103, which imposes the requirement; the commission has (after much agonizing) agreed to stay some of the law’s other impractical mandates for periods of a year or two, but a petition to stay the tracking-label rules failed in March when the then-two-member commission split 1-1 on it. Now, however, a third member has joined in the person of newly confirmed Chairman Inez Tenenbaum, whose opinion may prove decisive. Reform voice Rick Woldenberg argues that the CPSC should adopt at least a one-year stay and indeed go further than that so as to avert a “fiasco” that “creates enormous burdens for industry and is in many ways pointless and unjustifiable”.
Or Congress could step in, admit it went too far last year, and set about fixing things. Just kidding! We know it won’t.
Public domain paper doll images courtesy Karen’s Whimsy.
Tagged as:
CPSIA,
CPSIA and apparel/needle trades
Ending the brouhaha over Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Alex Kozinski’s having stored off-color cartoons, joke photos and other office humor on a private server inadvertently made available to public access, an 11-judge panel has now issued a unanimous 41-page opinion admonishing Kozinski for his error but declining to employ any reprimand or other discipline. Coverage is everywhere: Volokh, Above the Law, Legal Intelligencer. “A handful of prominent ethics experts, including NYU’s Stephen Gillers, Northwestern’s Steven Lubet and Hofstra’s Monroe Friedman, all sent letters in support of Kozinski.” (WSJ Law Blog). Our earlier coverage of the judge is here.
Tagged as:
Alex Kozinski
An FDA panel’s recommendation to withdraw Vicodin, Percocet, and other opioid-plus-acetaminophen painkillers seems calculated to “sacrifice the interests of consumers who follow instructions for the sake of consumers who don’t”, says Jacob Sullum. ER blog Crass-Pollination has some thoughts as well.
Tagged as:
pharmaceuticals
Ten years ago — July 1, 1999 — I put up the first post in this space. You can read the first fifteen days’ worth of posts here.
Thanks for the congratulations and kind words that have been coming in:
- Patrick, Popehat: “Here’s to ten more years for Overlawyered. And may your name never be featured there.”
- Scott Greenfield, Simple Justice: “That’s 10 years of holding lawyers’ feet to the fire. Thank you!” [Twitter]
- Social-media champion Kevin O’Keefe, of the LexBlog empire: “Don’t always agree, but inspired me to blog.” [Twitter]
- Eric Turkewitz of New York Personal Injury Law Blog has an exceedingly generous post that notes my interest in linking to views from across the conventional divide. I hope I succeed in living up to his high praise.
- Carter Wood, NAM “ShopFloor”: “the Web’s single most effective puncher-of-holes in the excesses of the litigation industry”.
- Ron Miller, Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog: “You always feel like you are getting his thoughtful views as opposed to a knee jerk ‘party platform’ opinion.”
- David Bernstein, Volokh Conspiracy: “I think it was the first legal blog, and I know it’s still one of the best.”
- Cathy Gellis (Statements of Interest): “Blog so old he used to post with typewriter and carbon paper ;)”
- Robert Ambrogi, Law.com “Legal Blog Watch”: “That is a full decade of chronicling the abuses and excesses of the litigation system, of commentary that is consistently cutting and wry. I may not always agree with Walter Olson, but I sure as heck always read him.”
- Mickey Kaus, Slate “Kausfiles”: “The high process costs of litigation are what lawyers — for obvious reasons — habitually leave out of their let’s-have-notice-and-a-hearing-for-everything reasoning. One thing Olson does is to put them back in.”
- And more: Doctor Wes of the eponymous blog [Twitter], Steven Cohen’s LibraryStuff, Spada (U.K.) Swordplay, Wise Law Blog (Toronto), Milwaukee Federalists, Ron Coleman/Likelihood of Confusion, and Christopher Robinette at TortsProf.
Tagged as:
about the site,
accolades
Annals of bounty-hunting: “A recent ruling on an obscure, century-old statute has opened the door for people familiar with the finer points of patent law to sue companies that stamp their products with expired patent numbers.” Washington, D.C. patent attorney Matthew Pequignot “noticed the patent marks on the lid to his daily cup of coffee, did some research and found that the lid’s maker, Solo Cup Co., was continuing to claim patent protections for disposable lids that had expired nearly 20 years ago.” So he’s sued Solo and E.D. Va. federal judge Leonie Brinkema has allowed his case to go forward, ruling that the requisite harm to the government is satisfied because the government’s laws against “false markings” were violated. (A federal judge in New York, however, ruled differently on the harm-to-government issue in a recent case with similar facts.) Pequignot has offered to settle the Solo suit for $9 million and has sued Gillette on similar theories; the bounty-hunting law allows claimants to keep half of the recovery.
Pequignot, for his part, says he does not expect an avalanche of false markings lawsuits, despite the fact that [attorney Raymond] Stauffer and some others have already followed in his footsteps. He said that, even as a patent attorney, it took him many hours of research to be able to file his lawsuit.
[AP/Fort Wayne Journal Gazette via ABA Journal; Sheri Qualters, NLJ]
Tagged as:
patent law,
qui tam
Catching up with a story from a while back: a law professor at Oklahoma City University, Danne Johnson, has filed a federal lawsuit accusing the university of discrimination. Per this account six months ago in The Oklahoman, the lawsuit sounds as if it will raise issues of wider interest. It is apparently based at least in part on the handling of an October 2007 memo by four OCU law professors alleging, in The Oklahoman’s words, “sexual harassment, pay disparity and insensitivity”:
The female professors also complained the OCU law school has no regular civil rights course, criminal law classes don’t cover rape, and the landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade is only covered sporadically in constitutional law.
The memo was sparked by two incidents: the alleged sexual harassment of two female professors at Dean Lawrence Hellman’s home in July 2007 and the all-male panel chosen for a Constitution Day program in September 2007. …
The memo notes the lack of women on a faculty appointment committee, which regularly included two university professors who are “openly hostile” to the idea of giving special consideration for women and minorities.
According to The Oklahoman, Johnson’s lawsuit cites as indicative of the university’s discriminatory stance that its general counsel, William J. Conger, “indicated the issues raised by Johnson and the other professors were misunderstandings or ‘cultural’ issues, rather than legal issues” (via Secunda/Workplace Prof Blog).
Tagged as:
constitutional law,
discrimination law,
law schools,
Oklahoma
