Posts Tagged ‘Bay Area’

Liability roundup

  • Hoping to blame Pacific Gas & Electric power lines for Northern California fires, lawyers from coast to coast descend on wine country [Paul Payne, Santa Rosa Press-Democrat]
  • Courts should police lawyers’ handling of class actions, including temptation to sweep additional members with doubtful claims into class so as to boost fees [Ilya Shapiro, Trevor Burrus, and Reilly Stephens on Cato certiorari amicus in case of Yang v. Wortman]
  • “Seventh Circuit Curtails RICO Application to Third-Party Payor Off-Label Suits” [Stephen McConnell, D&DL] “Here Is Why The False Claims Act Is An ‘Awkward Vehicle’ In Pharma Cases” [Steven Boranian]
  • Litigation finance moves into car crash business [Denise Johnson, Insurance Journal]
  • Slain NYC sanitation worker’s “frequent advice to Sanitation colleagues about how to save for the future helped persuade the jury that Frosch had a viable career ahead of him in financial planning,” contributing large future earnings component to $41 million award [Stephen Rex Brown, New York Daily News]
  • “Ninth Circuit Overturns State Licensing Scheme Forcing Businesses to Incorporate in California” [Cory Andrews, WLF]

Labor and employment roundup

Great moments in privacy

After a Saturday evening incident in which 40 to 60 teenagers invaded an Oakland, Calif. rapid transit station, robbing and beating riders, a spokesman for BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) says surveillance videos of the flash-mob robbery will not be made public because people committing crimes appear to be minors. [Demian Bulwa and Michael Cabanatuan, San Francisco Chronicle via Ann Althouse]

Did ADA serial claimant pay taxes on his loot?

“IRS and federal prosecutors have launched a criminal investigation into serial disability access plaintiff Scott Johnson, who has moved his lawsuit operation to the Bay Area in recent months, to determine whether he has paid taxes on his alleged millions of dollars in settlements, multiple sources told this newspaper.

“Unless a plaintiff suffered physical injuries as a result of a civil settlement, that individual must pay taxes on the monetary award, tax experts said. It is unclear whether Johnson paid any taxes on any of his Americans with Disabilities Act settlements with thousands of businesses in California that he alleged obstructed his access as a paralyzed customer using a wheelchair. He and his attorney did not return requests for comment.” [San Jose Mercury-News, more of its coverage on Scott Johnson, earlier on ADA filing mills generally and on Johnson in particular here, here, here, here, and here]

Who’s to blame for San Francisco’s housing cost spiral?

Bay Area progressives are fond of blaming new-arriving rich techies for the dizzying rise in San Francisco housing costs. Yet the trail just as plausibly leads back to the door of some of the same people doing the demonizing, who have resisted the building of serious new housing capacity in the city. [Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic]

Like me, Friedersdorf was also struck by the story (told on public radio’s This American Life) of a San Francisco after-school program’s school musical, an anti-“gentrification” propaganda effort, which trained kids as young as six to go on stage in a production portraying their parents’ class as moral monsters. Shouldn’t that wait for college?

“Artist Sues Oakland Auto Dealer Over Mural’s Removal”

Muralist Dan Fontes “is seeking $400,000 in damages from the current and former operators of Autocom Nissan at Broadway and 27th Streets in Oakland.” His lawyer “argues that when the dealership painted over the mural in 2013, they violated the U.S. Visual Artist Rights Act (VARA), a law dating back to 1990. Among other things, the law requires a building owner to give an artist a 90-day notice before the mural is removed or painted over, so the artist can take back or at least document the work.” The mural itself predates VARA by three years — it was painted in 1987 — but the lawyer is taking the position that the 1990 law stripped rights from owners of existing mural works that had not changed ownership before the law’s passage, and reassigned them to original artists. [KQED, Contra Costa Times] We’ve covered VARA and the misnamed concept of “moral rights” before.

Environment roundup

  • I own a Volkswagen clean diesel myself, and can recommend its terrific fuel economy and peppy performance. It’s almost too good to be true [Clive Crook on policy background] Class action lawyers expect huge payday from scandal, but their emissions might not be very reliable either [Daniel Fisher] More from Fisher: will VW owners actually take their vehicles in for the recall? and more on litigation prospects [More: Car and Driver];
  • Housing advocates looking for plaintiffs to sue Bay Area town that refuses to make its housing supply denser [CityLab]
  • Behind court’s strikedown of NYC Styrofoam ban [Erik Engquist, Crain’s New York; Entrepreneur]
  • “Did Flint, Michigan Just Lead Poison Its Children? Doctors Think So.” [Russell Saunders, The Daily Beast]
  • “Global regulatory norms” favored by pontiff “would globalize Argentina’s downward mobility.” [George Will]
  • After long silence, Hillary Clinton declares opposition to Keystone XL pipeline [Politico, more]
  • Houston: “For the most part, we don’t look all that different from other big cities that do have zoning.” [The Urban Edge; Kinder Institute, Rice U.]