Posts tagged as:

child protection

…and something bad might happen. Can you guess what that bad thing is most likely to be? [Free-Range Kids]

Parents who volunteer at school won’t need to hold back until they’ve completed a police scan. [Free-Range Kids]

Gotham cops crack down on pawn pushers in parks. [NY Times]

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More poppy seed madness

by Walter Olson on November 10, 2010

“Eat a bagel, lose your baby” [Jacob Sullum, Reason] For more on the problematic legal status of the classic bagel and European-bread enhancement, see Michael Pollan’s classic 1997 Harper’s article.

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Lenore Skenazy debunks the scare: there’s no evidence that any American child has ever been killed by poisoned candy from a stranger.

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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]

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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.

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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]

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June 1 roundup

by Walter Olson on June 1, 2010

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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]

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December 15 roundup

by Walter Olson on December 15, 2009

  • “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]

Testimony by now-disgraced forensic pathologist Charles Smith sent Sherry Sherret-Robinson to jail for a year on charges of infanticide, and resulted in the permanent loss of her other child. Ontario’s highest court has cleared her, but it is rather late. [Jonathan Turley via Radley Balko; Wikipedia on Charles Randal Smith, CBC and more]

December 4 roundup

by Walter Olson on December 4, 2009

  • 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]

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Reads like a parody: “Health and safety inspectors are to be given unprecedented access to family homes to ensure that parents are protecting their children from household accidents.” [Times Online]

November 23 roundup

by Walter Olson on November 23, 2009

November 4 roundup

by Walter Olson on November 4, 2009

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And now police have charged mom with a felony. [AP/Hartford Courant]

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October 30 roundup

by Walter Olson on October 30, 2009

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