New at Forbes.com: John Endean has an important article demonstrating that while American unionists seek to use Canada’s pro-union labor laws as a model for their proposed Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), they seldom mention that Canadians themselves have found it advisable to rethink and retreat from some of those laws. It’s a condensed adaptation of a paper that will soon be published here as the first in a planned Manhattan Institute series on labor policy. Check it out here (cross-posted from Point of Law).
Tagged as:
Canada,
Employee Free Choice Act,
labor unions
Mark Steyn calls this news clip from Canada “the descent into societal madness distilled into one perfect paragraph”:
People with outstanding warrants will be denied income assistance in British Columbia as soon as next year if legislation introduced yesterday is passed into law, said Rich Coleman, Minister of Housing and Social Development. “People who have outstanding warrants shouldn’t be getting welfare until they clean up the problem,” said Mr. Coleman, adding that to qualify, warrants must be for indictable offences such as murder, sexual assault and drug trafficking. But Mr. Coleman said the government will not run criminal background checks on welfare applicants to enforce the policy. Instead, it will rely on criminals to disclose their outstanding legal issues when they make an application.
Tagged as:
Canada,
crime and punishment
- Uh-huh: new report from federal Legal Services program calls for gigantic new allocation of tax money to, well, legal services programs [ABA Journal]
- “Judge: Man’s a ‘vexatious litigator’” [Cincinnati.com]
- Wisconsin governor signs bill requiring prescription to buy mercury thermometer [Popehat]
- “Injured by art?” Woman sues Museum of Fine Arts Houston after fall in artist-designed light tunnel [Mary Flood, Houston Chronicle "Legal Trade"]
- On Carol Browner and the cry of “environmental racism” (a/k/a “green redlining”) [Coyote]
- New York: “Lawyers implicated in $9 million mortgage fraud” [Business Insider]
- In Canada, as in the U.S., medical privacy rules hamper police investigations [Calgary Herald]
- Stalin’s grandson loses lawsuit in Russia against newspaper that supposedly defamed the dictator [WSJ Law Blog, Lowering the Bar, Volokh]
Tagged as:
art and artists,
Canada,
Cincinnati,
environment,
HIPAA,
Houston,
legal services programs,
mortgages,
redlining,
Russia,
serial litigants,
Wisconsin
Susan Taylor Martin in the St. Petersburg Times has some striking numbers:
For neurosurgeons in Miami, the annual cost of medical malpractice insurance is astronomical — $237,000, far more than the median price of a house.
In Toronto, a neurosurgeon pays about $29,200 for coverage. It’s even less in Montreal ($20,600) and Vancouver ($10,650).
Among the reasons why: in 1978 the Canadian Supreme Court imposed (on its own) nationwide limits on pain-and-suffering recoveries, adjusted for inflation and now just over $300,000. A single mutual insurer covers most doctors and takes an aggressive approach to defending claims. Most cases are tried before judges. Billboard and TV advertising by lawyers is much less prevalent in Canada. And so forth — all aside from the loser-pays principle.
Tagged as:
Canada,
damages,
medical malpractice
A Canadian plaintiff’s lawyer credits them with reducing defendants’ propensity to file obstructive motions [AmLaw Daily, interviewing class action attorney Andrew Morganti -- last paragraph]
Tagged as:
Canada,
loser pays
- On the medicalization of nearly everything: “Bitterness, Compulsive Shopping, and Internet Addiction” [Christopher Lane, Slate]
- Lawyer representing Sarah Palin to blogger: do you want to be served with our defamation suit at the kindergarten where you help out? [Alaska Report via Rachel Weiner, HuffPo]
- “The 7 Most Baffling Criminal Defenses (That Sort of Worked)” [Cracked via Popehat]
- Canada: crash victim gets C$2M, sues deceased lawyer for omitting a defendant who’d have chipped in another C$1.3 million [Calgary Sun]
- Privacy breach notifications mostly a costly waste of time but do keep lawyers busy [Lee Gomes, Forbes]
- “News Websites in Texas and Kentucky Invoke Shield Laws for Online Commenters” [Citizen Media Law]
- North Carolina suit against TVA “a sweet gig for the state’s attorneys” [Wood, Point of Law]
- Blawg Review #223 is at Scott Greenfield’s [Simple Justice] with another part hosted at the Blawg Review home site itself.
Tagged as:
bloggers and the law,
Canada,
crime and punishment,
libel slander and defamation,
nastygrams,
North Carolina,
online speech,
privacy,
Sarah Palin
Maclean’s reports on the “thriving black market in Canada for borderline illegal, locally produced foods,” from raw dairy products through illicit cured meats available to those with “the right social network”. “You’ve got to hook up with someone who’s got a hook-up. It’s like buying drugs,” says food writer Chris Nuttall-Smith. “Illegal eggs taste amazing.” (& welcome Hit & Run readers).
Tagged as:
agriculture and farming,
Canada,
food safety
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
Most of the 37 guards who work at the Cornwall Island, Ontario border crossing have notes from doctors saying that tensions arising from relations with the local Mohawk Indian tribe make it too stressful to work there and could result in harmful health effects. [CanWest/Vancouver Sun]
Tagged as:
Canada,
public employment
- See you in court, ma: “Man awarded $115K after suing mom for lost pinky finger” [Obscure Store, Bergen County (N.J.) Record]
- Please reassure us Canada’s not going to follow U.S. down abusive road of asset seizure in law enforcement [Moin Yahya and Janet Neilson, Western Standard]
- What sorts of intellectual property norms prevail in the world of stand-up comedy? [ConcurOp]
- “Marc Dreier’s Son Sues College Roommate for $1M” [ABA Journal]
- Intersection of state divorce law with peripatetic military life can lead to harsh results [Bader, CEI]
- Grape-Nuts contain neither grapes nor nuts! Cap’n Crunch isn’t a real captain! It’s not fair! [comments on our popular "Crunchberries" item]
- “Lawyer’s ‘Contentious’ Claims Against Landlord Are Rejected” [NYLJ]
- “Adult” won’t cut it any more, we need a new legal category, more responsible, of “grownup” [Ken at Popehat]
Tagged as:
Canada,
divorce,
forfeiture,
Marc Dreier,
military
Harrowing story of Brian Leckie, an Ontario therapist and crisis counselor cleared on charges of sexual assault; the legal fees ate up his life savings, and there’s nowhere he can turn to get his good name back. “Only the ER nurses seemed to give me the benefit of the doubt, because they’ve seen it. They’ve seen the lies and the accusations that come through emergency rooms. They see it all the time.” Meanwhile, the two accusers whose charges a judge found to have “no credible” basis cannot even be named in the press because of a publication ban [Mark Bonokoski, "Justice for an innocent man", Toronto Sun, May 4, via Amy Alkon]
Tagged as:
Canada,
crime and punishment
- Boy fatally shoots stepbrother at home, mom sues school district as well as shooter’s family [Seattle Post-Intelligencer]
- Problem gambler sues Ontario lottery for C$3.5 billion [Toronto Star]
- Cop declines training in which he’d be given Taser shock, and sues [Indianapolis Star]
- Ultra-litigious inmate Jonathan Lee Riches scrawls new complaint linking Bernard Madoff, Britney Spears [Kevin LaCroix]
- Just to read this update feels like an invasion of privacy: “Judge to Hear Challenge to $6M Herpes Case Award” [On Point News, earlier]
- “Best criminal strategy: join the Spokane police” [Coyote Blog] More: Greenfield, Brayton.
- Will mommy-bloggers be held liable for freebie product reviews? [Emily Friedman, ABC News, earlier]
- Update: “Fifth Circuit says no bail for Paul Minor” [Freeland]
Tagged as:
advertising,
Canada,
Federal Trade Commission,
Indiana,
Jonathan Lee Riches,
lottery,
Paul Minor,
police,
public employment,
schools,
Washington state
“A Quebec father who was taken to court by his 12-year-old daughter after he grounded her in June 2008 has lost his appeal.” [CBC] For some reason the litigation has not done wonders for family harmony:
The girl — who now lives with her mother — doesn’t have much of a relationship with her dad now, [attorney Kim] Beaudoin said.
“We went from a child who wanted to live with her father, and after all this has been done, they’re not speaking anymore.”
Tagged as:
Canada,
children's rights,
divorce
Short takes for the weekend:
- U.S. Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.) has introduced H.R. 1692, a bill to exempt ordinary books from the law’s lead limits; the American Library Association immediately endorsed the bill [ALA District Dispatch]
- Lead poisoning, the Law of Diminishing Returns, and the fanaticism of “zero” as a goal [Fenris Lorsrai] “Dangerous until proven safe” [Coyote Blog]
- The very popular style site Dooce gives the law a mention in a review of a handmade hippo wood teether;
- From Ed Driscoll/Pajamas Media, a new Silicon Graffiti video: “2009: A Book Banning Odyssey”. We get kindly mentioned.
- His company can comply with CPSIA and carry on as before. So why is he so upset? [Rick Woldenberg] And Darleen Click picks up on Woldenberg’s parody post-CPSIA toy “catalog” [Protein Wisdom]
- “It wouldn’t be fair ’cause everybody wants to ride”: Kids themselves, mostly ages 7-9, comment on the minibike ban [Valley News] Some thoughts on why much of the media began to “get” the off-highway-vehicle (OHV) ban before it started to realize the law’s implications for books, apparel, toys and so forth [Wacky Hermit]
- Could Canada be preparing to repeat some of the errors of CPSIA in its own law? Is someone alerting the folks in Ottawa to try to make sure that doesn’t happen? [ecoDomestica; Product-safety bill C-6 #CCPSA, successor to Bill C-52; Tim Holtorf, Tim & Zodi's and followup]
- Just made my travel reservations for Washington, D.C. April 1; I’ll be observing the CPSIA rally on Capitol Hill. And you?
Tagged as:
Canada,
CPSIA,
CPSIA and minibikes,
safety
