Chronicling the high cost of our legal system
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Chicago Mayor Richard Daley wants to begin a new chapter in gun-control-through-litigation by commencing proceedings in the World Court. I discuss that wretched idea at Cato at Liberty (& thanks to Glenn Reynolds and Damon Root for the links)
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A Chicago parks supervisor, Mr. Yost reported a man behaving strangely, and wound up facing a decade’s worth of pro se suits that he says have cost him “well in excess of six figures.” [The Provocateur and related documents; CBS2Chicago; more from law firm representing Yost]
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And suits against multiple defendants follow, including an allegation that the owners of the salon in question had reason to know that the sidewalk in front of their window was “frequently traveled by intoxicated pedestrians.” [WBBM Chicago]
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Chicago-area readers may be interested in attending a 12:15 pm lunchtime debate sponsored by the University of Chicago Law School Federalist Society between me and Tom Geoghegan about tort reform and the role (or non-role) of Republican deregulation in the litigation explosion—a debate I’ve previously engaged in in print.
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“A woman who says she was attacked by a homeless man and woman while leaving a Jewel Food Store is suing the store and the alleged homeless individuals.” [Jennifer Fernicola, ChicagoNow]
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Subsidies are better for the Metra commuter rail line than for the city subways, which carry a more heavily minority ridership, says the class-action lawsuit against the State of Illinois, the RTA and the Metra. [Jennifer Fernicola, ChicagoNow]
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Confetti on a nightclub stage, a wrestler hurt getting out of the ring, and of course the celebrated dolphin-splash suit [Jennifer Fernicola, Chicago Now]
So asks Charlie Roberts, who ran the testing division for the Chicago Police Department from 1995 to 1999, upon learning that the city is simply going to give up on testing because of the threat of lawsuits. (Fran Spielman and Frank Main, “Police may scrap entrance exam”, Chicago Sun-Times, Jan. 6.) The problem is exacerbated by the EEOC’s Four-Fifths Rule—of dubious constitutionality after Ricci—which holds that any selection process that results in a selection rate for any race, sex, or ethnic group less than four-fifths of the most successful group is “adverse impact” that “constitutes discrimination unless justified.” 41 CFR § 60-3.
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Two Chicago grocery store chains, Jewel and Dominick’s, bought full-page ads in “a special commemorative issue of Sports Illustrated magazine dedicated to [Michael] Jordan and his career”. The ads saluted the Chicago Bulls great for his achievements. Jordan proceeded to sue them for trademark infringement. [Chicago Breaking Sports, Tactical IP via Legal Satyricon]
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Outlaw meats in Chicago [The Reader] And Katherine Mangu-Ward at Reason reports on the continuing legal travails of food trucks.
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Illinois: “A Hillside police dispatcher who was fired after telling a supervisor she suffered from narcolepsy– which can cause its victims to fall asleep unexpectedly — has tentatively settled her lawsuit against the west suburban town.” [WGN Chicago; & welcome Above the Law readers]
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The grandstanding sheriff of Cook County, Ill. is thrown out of court. More: Eugene Volokh, Citizen Media Law.
Don’t miss: Abdon Pallasch of the Chicago Sun-Times takes a look “inside the beast” at how the Cook County Democratic Party “slates” its judges. Women with Irish-sounding names do best with voters:
That’s why lawyers of Jewish or other ancestry often legally adopt Irish names to run for judge here. That’s why when party leaders slate men without Irish names, such as William Haddad, who would have been the first Arab-American full-circuit judge in Cook County, the party must recruit Irish women lawyers to run as “ringers” or “stalking horses” to flood the ballot and fracture the Irish-woman vote.
There’s a Corboy & Demetrio angle, too. And the National Law Journal covers the controversy over the Cook County Clerk’s decision to accept paid lawyer advertising on her office’s website (earlier).
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… on its website. Some lawyers — among others — are not happy about that. [ABA Journal]
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The Chicago Zoological Society and Brookfield Zoo, according to Allecyn Edwards’ suit, “recklessly and willfully trained and encouraged the dolphins to throw water at the spectators in the stands making the floor wet and slippery,” among other derelictions. [Chicago Tribune, Sun-Times, Riverside/Brookfield Landmark] More: Lowering the Bar (“based on my extensive Discovery Channel research, most dolphins live in water, either a pool of it or, in some extreme cases, an entire ocean. It appears to be not uncommon for surfaces near these bodies of water to become wet and slippery.”)
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Individual liberty, free markets, and peace: the world's premier libertarian think tank. Publishes Cato at Liberty, where I blog on contemporary policy issues.
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