Authorities in the Lincolnshire village of Glentham, U.K., are threatening action based on “child protection” if a couple continue to let their daughter walk 40 yards to her school bus stop. The couple say the road isn’t particularly busy and that Isabelle is good about looking both ways before crossing. [Daily Mail]
Tagged as:
child protection,
United Kingdom
Famed for playing (among others) the tough Nanny McPhee, the actress has this to say (BabyCenter interview via FreeRangeKids):
I think it’s good to be brave because then you’re also slightly more able to cope with failure and failure of course is your best friend in every regard really. Children are brave and they’re more likely to take risks and they’re more likely to learn really important lessons.
That’s really what I mean by being brave, you know. That we take care of our children very carefully and that’s absolutely right, but in certainly my culture children are being so, I think, stifled by sort of health and safety so that they’re not climbing trees anymore, they’re not taking risks, physical risks anymore.
Tagged as:
child protection,
recreation
Paging Lenore Skenazy! “Courts are rewarding ‘intensive parenting’ and making it a legal standard, particularly in custody disputes, two law professors say in a paper that will be published in the U.C. Davis Law Review.” Gaia Bernstein (Seton Hall) and Zvi Triger (College of Management School of Law, Israel) say custody law rewards parents for greater involvement in their kids’ lives even if it amounts to over-involvement. “In tort cases, courts are narrowing or eliminating the parental immunity doctrine and creating the potential for judgments against parents for inadequate parental supervision.” [ABA Journal, "Over-Parenting" on SSRN; Prawfsblawg]
Tagged as:
child custody,
child protection
- Some California attorneys hoping to restart lucrative construction-defect litigation [Frith, Cal Civil Justice]
- Jury awards Seattle bus passenger $1.3 million for stair mishap [KOMO, Seattle Times]
- “Louisiana Bill Would Outlaw Insulting an Under-17-Year-Old By E-Mail” [Volokh, earlier] Update: bill watered down before passage, but still bad news for speech;
- “Attorney Fee Fight Gets Ugly in World Trade Center Litigation” [Turkewitz and more]
- Preventive detention law shows why we need to confine Congress [Sullum, Greenfield]
- Mass Fifth Circuit recusals in Comer v. Murphy Oil global warming case [Wood/PoL, Jackson] More: Shapiro, Cato, Wood/ShopFloor (a strategy to provoke recusals?)
- “By some estimates, circa 40 percent of cases in the Central African court system are witchcraft prosecutions” [Graeme Wood, The Atlantic]
- Lawyers who sued Facebook over “Beacon” to get $2.3 million in fees, class $0.00 [Balasubramani, SpamNotes]
Tagged as:
California,
child protection,
class action settlements,
construction defect,
Facebook,
Fifth Circuit,
global warming,
Louisiana,
recusals,
Seattle
It seems the American Academy of Pediatrics wants just about every non-pureed food you can think of — carrots, apples, hot dogs — to carry a warning label about the risk of choking to children. “Some say other risky foods, including hard candies, popcorn, peanuts and marshmallows, shouldn’t be given to young children at all.” [AP; Free-Range Kids] More from Patrick at Popehat: “What Are Your Child’s Odds Of Choking To Death On A Hot Dog?”
And: For better child safety, think like an economist, says Steven Horwitz: don’t let worst-case scenarios rule your thinking and recognize that every good comes with tradeoffs [Free-Range Kids]
Tagged as:
child protection,
food safety,
safety
- “Truck drivers with positive drug tests should not file lawsuits … period.” [Jon Hyman, Ohio Employer's Law]
- Tiger Woods hires a Hollywood law firm famous for its nastygrams to the press [Bronstad, NLJ; earlier on Lavely & Singer]
- “Mom Who Let Kids Play Outside Threatened by Cops” [Aliso Viejo, Calif.; Free-Range Kids]
- When you’re embarking on the business of not raising pigs, best to start small and ramp up from there [Coyote, U.K.]
- Harvey Silverglate, author of Three Felonies a Day, guestblogging at Volokh Conspiracy on, inter alia, “honest services fraud“;
- If you’re uneasy about the FTC’s claims to regulate blogger freebies and other entanglements of commerce with online speech, wait till the agency gets the beefed-up enforcement powers it’s seeking [WSJ editorial]
- Replaying a discussion familiar in this country, Israel wonders whether it’s got too many lawyers [Jerusalem Post]
- “Wrongful Death Suit Filed Against O’Quinn Estate Over Fatal Car Crash” [Texas Lawyer]
Tagged as:
child protection,
Federal Trade Commission,
illegal drugs,
Israel,
John O'Quinn
- Insurance mandate or no, New Jersey specialists tending to duck out of high-legal-risk procedures like mammography [Amy Handlin, Gloucester County Times via NJLRA]
- Audi redux, or something different this time? L.A. Times endorses charges of sudden acceleration against Toyota [Holman Jenkins/WSJ, FindLaw "Injured"]
- Ghastly idea of the year: Rep. Waxman wants federal government to be “responsible” for fixing journalism [Coyote, Bainbridge]
- “Arkansas Judge Tosses Defamation Lawsuit Against Dixie Chicks Over ‘West Memphis Three’ Letter” [Citizen Media Law, Longstreth/American Lawyer]
- Judge Weinstein: falsification by arresting officers seems “widespread” in NYPD [Balko, Greenfield]
- U.K.: Carbon ration cards? [Krauthammer]
- Nova Scotia, Canada: “A Couple in their 70s Wave at A Kid…And In Swoop the Cops” [Free-Range Kids]
- Barbra Streisand loses suit over aerial photo of her Malibu home taken by environmental group; by suing, she ensures that many thousands more people will see the photograph, in what is dubbed “Streisand effect” [six years ago on Overlawyered]
Tagged as:
Arkansas,
Canada,
child protection,
climate change,
defensive medicine,
libel slander and defamation,
New Jersey,
newspapers,
police,
Streisand effect,
sudden acceleration
Tagged as:
AAJ,
bar associations,
Chicago,
child protection,
feeing frenzy,
immigration law,
judges,
New York,
politics,
tort reform,
workers' compensation
- Four California lawyers accused in what prosecutors say is giant insurance fraud ring employing staged or “paper” car wrecks, Mark Geragos is defending [Metropolitan News-Enterprise, Glendale News-Press via ABA Journal]
- “Civil Gideon law could overwhelm civil courts”, Ted is interviewed again [Legal NewsLine, earlier]
- “Is that a popularly-elected state judge in your pocket?” [What About Clients?, earlier]
- Audit Integrity, sued by Hertz over financial risk assessment, takes case to SEC [Felix Salmon, earlier]
- OSHA nominee David Michaels, SKAPP and the right to bear arms, continued [David Kopel/America's First Freedom, earlier and more]
- NJ case raises knotty questions of press liability for reporting allegations in lawsuits [WSJ Law Blog]
- Washtenaw Jail Diary, which made splash on Twitter earlier this year, now reprinting at Ann Arbor Chronicle (earlier);
- “Not every country bubblewraps its kids” [Free-Range Kids on Germany] Background checks for senior-center pen pals and more school overprotectiveness [same]
Tagged as:
child protection,
civil gideon,
crash faking,
David Michaels,
insurance fraud,
judicial elections,
libel slander and defamation
- Annals of discrimination lawsuits: a Tennessee cop contests his firing [Chattanooga Pulse]
- New book on lawsuits against universities: Amy Gajda, “The Trials of Academe: The New Era of Campus Litigation” [Harvard University Press via Stanley Fish, NYT]
- Bernard Kerik’s bail revoked because he used Twitter to promote a website put up by his friends flaying the prosecution? [Scott Greenfield] Plus: More complicated than that, says Bill Poser in comments;
- Another big setback for birther litigation [Wasserman/ Prawfsblawg, Little Green Footballs, earlier]
- “I won’t be able to function,” says Missouri woman after judge rules her monkey is not a service animal [On Point News, Molly DiBianca] More: service ferret gets owner kicked out of North Carolina mall [DigTriad]
- Eleventh Circuit agrees that U.S. cannot prosecute criminal defense lawyer Ben Kuehne for money laundering charges for having written opinion letter saying untainted money was available for legal fees [WSJ Law Blog, coverage (and update) at Scott Greenfield's site, Miami Herald]
- One for the Coase Theorem literature? Cranky neighbor forces closure of famed South Carolina recording venue [Ribstein]
- Hallowe’en is safe [BoingBoing, earlier on Pennsylvania town's trick-or-treating ban] “Toronto schools: Hallowe’en insensitive to witches” [four years ago on Overlawyered]
Tagged as:
Barack Obama,
child protection,
colleges and universities,
defense lawyers,
Missouri,
music and musicians,
police,
prosecution,
service animals,
South Carolina,
Tennessee
In England, the Watford Borough Council now bars parents from supervising their own kids at playgrounds unless they undergo criminal record checks. Council-vetted “play rangers” are still allowed to move among the kids, but parents who have not undergone checks must “watch from outside a perimeter fence.” [Telegraph via BoingBoing]
Tagged as:
child protection,
United Kingdom
“Bob Huggins, a Dunkard Township supervisor, said many local residents agree with town officials that it would be better for local youngsters not to be going door-to-door.” [KDKA Pittsburgh; Ken at Popehat ("To Save Childhood, It Is Necessary To Destroy It"); Dunkard/Bobtown, Greene County, Pennsylvania]
Tagged as:
child protection,
Pennsylvania
- Lawyer blames “fine print” for overstepping solicitation rule on Buffalo air-crash victims [NJLJ, New Jersey Lawsuit Reform Watch]
- “Music Industry Takes Aim at Publishers of Online Lyrics” [ABA Journal]
- Prosecuting energy producers when their operations accidentally kill birds? Well, sometimes [WSJ Law Blog, Stossel, Adler at Volokh]
- Ninth Circuit rejects “litigation factory” approach to CAN-SPAM enforcement [California Civil Justice, Spam Notes]
- The semantics of saying “illegal” vs. “undocumented” alien [Volokh]
- “The crime of passing through town without an adequate explanation” [Freeland, Mississippi, on MotorhomeDiaries.com case]
- Report vague suspicion of child abuse, or not? Trust your instincts, says a public service ad. Bad advice [Free Range Kids, Common Room]
- “Plaintiff on Troll Tracker: ‘Let’s Get This [Blog] Shut Down’” [Mullin, IP Law & Business, earlier] More: SE Texas Record.
Tagged as:
bloggers and the law,
chasing clients,
child abuse,
child protection,
environment,
Mississippi,
Patent Troll Tracker
