- Spanish government fines filmmaker for movie poster showing “reckless driving” [Lowering the Bar] Siri, distracted driving, and police discretion [Balko]
- Parents taking care of their kids under Michigan program must pay $30/mo. to SEIU for representation [Joel Gehrke, Examiner]
- Stretching the Fifth: Joe Francis bad deposition behavior [Legal Ethics Forum]
- WaPo covers deep split on Consumer Product Safety Commission, left wants fifth seat filled ASAP;
- “Threat to Student Due Process Rights Dropped from Draft of Violence Against Women Act” [FIRE, background; Cathy Young/Reason]
- After $300K donation from Philadelphia trial lawyers, you may call him “Judge Wecht” [AP/WPVI]
- Court reverses $43M Madison County verdict against Ford [AP/Alton Telegraph, some background]
Tagged as:
CPSC,
Ford Motor,
labor unions,
Pennsylvania,
Spain,
traffic laws
- Ninth Circuit: Holland America cruise line not responsible for customer’s swimming mishap at Mexican beach [Metropolitan News-Enterprise]
- “President Perry would mean high noon for trial lawyers” [Kurt Schlichter, Washington Examiner; Politico; Prof. Bainbridge ("If the trial lawyers hate Rick Perry, maybe I should reconsider him")] Christie praises Perry’s “laudable” record on liability reform [PolitickerNJ] “Perry’s ‘loser pays’ is an economic winner” [Patrick Gleason and Jason Russell, Washington Times; Mass Tort Prof; background] Missing the point on the Texas med-mal experience [Coyote, earlier here, here, etc.] A bad sign: Gov. Perry reaches out to Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio [NRO, background] Another: courting social conservative vote, he pledges interference in state marriage law Houston Chronicle.
- Alan Lange and Tom Dawson discuss their Dickie Scruggs book [Above the Law, background]
- Hospital pays $25M to settle lawsuit charging lack of Katrina preparedness [White Coat]
- Democratic majority on CPSC plans to ram through burdensome CPSIA testing and certification rule next month [Commissioner Nancy Nord, more]
- For matching willing buyers with sellers through Canadian pharmacy ads, Google agrees to pay fine of $500 million, a forfeiture geared to the revenue the pharmacies (not it) took in from the ads [Atlantic Wire, Chris Fountain]
- “Woman Won’t Have to Pay for Her Own Cavity Search” [Lowering the Bar]
Tagged as:
advertising,
CPSC,
CPSIA,
cruise ships,
Dickie Scruggs,
forfeiture,
Google,
hospitals,
Katrina,
Rick Perry,
same-sex marriage,
Texas
- More on CPSC’s crib ban train wreck [Commissioner Anne Northup, more, earlier]
- One man’s nightmare of false accusation [LA Times via PoL]
- How many plaintiff’s-side flicks is HBO going to air this summer, anyway? ["Mann v. Ford," Abnormal Use]
- Apple granted “incredibly broad patent” over screen gesture technology [Tabarrok]
- Will Congress reverse this term’s much-attacked SCOTUS decisions? [Alison Frankel] Podcast on Wal-Mart v. Dukes with Brian Fitzpatrick [Fed Soc] “Wal-Mart ruling no knock-out blow for class actions” [Reuters] Contrary to some assertions, current law does strongly incentivize individual job-bias claims [Bader] More on case: Dan Bushell, and welcome Craig Newmark readers.
- Mississippi stops proceedings in $322 million asbestos case to consider judge’s possible conflict [JCL, earlier here, here]
- Nice coat, where’dja get it? [annals of incompetent crime, UK Daily Mail]
Tagged as:
CPSC,
environment,
Ford Motor,
Mississippi,
patent law,
recusals,
Wal-Mart v. Dukes
The House Appropriations Committee, following the lead of Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R-Mo.), is disinclined to throw more money at a flawed public denunciation box. Sean Wajert has more, while a L.A. Times columnist hyperventilates in a style not untypical of much of that newspaper’s consumer affairs coverage.
Tagged as:
CPSC
Around the country today, CPSC regulations are forcing retailers to throw out new, unused baby cribs — estimates of the number range higher than 100,000 — that the federal government itself considers safe enough to be used in day cares. I explain the latest Nanny State snafu in a new post at Cato at Liberty.
More: Quin Hillyer, CFIF; Katherine Mangu-Ward, Reason. And CPSC commissioner Anne Northup corrects a misimpression in some parts of the press:
The new standards ban drop-side cribs. But the standards also prohibit the sale, new or used, of all cribs – both drop-side and fixed-side – that are not tested to the new standards by a private laboratory. Because very few cribs that were not originally manufactured to the new standards will ever be tested, the new standards essentially ban all such cribs – drop-side and fixed side. As reported in today’s press, millions of drop-side cribs have been recalled. On the other hand, tens of millions of fixed side cribs manufactured to previous standards have never been recalled, never been found to be unsafe, and now also cannot be sold new or resold used.
Tagged as:
CPSC,
CPSIA,
small business
“Thanks for standing by for eight months after we told you to stop selling your infant slings pending a recall. We’ve decided no recall is needed. What, you’re out of business? Never mind.” [Commissioner Nancy Nord] (& Greenfield)
Tagged as:
CPSC
Thanks to Ben S., discussing the CPSC product-safety database, for the week’s drollest comment.
Tagged as:
CPSC
The new Consumer Product Safety Commission database, promoted by its backers as a vital new source of information about safety threats to the public, has garnered lots of consumer complaints about … shoes. [CPSC commissioner Nancy Nord] Earlier at Cato.
Tagged as:
CPSC
Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing: “The liability-phobic dilution of kids’ science has reached its apotheosis with ‘CHEMISTRY 60′: a chemistry kit that promises ‘60 fun activities with no chemicals.’ Kids are expected to supply the chemicals from their parents’ kitchen cupboards.” [linking to Sean Michael Ragan, MAKE; see also Chemical & Engineering News, RSC]
Several years ago Wired carried a report by Steve Silberman: “Garage chemistry used to be a rite of passage for geeky kids. But in their search for terrorist cells and meth labs, authorities are making a federal case out of DIY science.” The CPSC carries out a war on chemicals that can be used to make illegal fireworks, while a Texas law makes it illegal “to buy such basic labware as Erlenmeyer flasks or three-necked beakers without first registering with the state’s Department of Public Safety to declare that they will not be used to make drugs.” The renowned 1940s and 1950s manufacturer of chemistry sets, Porter ChemCraft of Hagerstown, Md., “produced more than a million chemistry sets before going out of business in the 1980s amid increasing liability concerns.”
Tagged as:
chemistry sets,
CPSC,
schools,
science and scientists
Reform efforts are finally afoot in the House of Representatives, at least two years after they should have started, but a three-member majority of the CPSC (two Obama appointees and a holdover) is defending the law on many though not all of its worst points. [Bloomberg, HuffPo] “This is by far the best bill we’ve seen to date,” declares the Handmade Toy Alliance. Tireless CPSIA critic Rick Woldenberg testified with other witnesses at a House Commerce hearing and contributes an op-ed to The Hill about the law’s irrationality. More coverage: Carter Wood/ShopFloor, Sean Wajert. And a memo by committee staff discussing some of the key issues is here (PDF).
Tagged as:
CPSC,
CPSIA,
CPSIA and Congress
It’s endangered by CPSIA, since organizers have no easy way to know whether a recyclable pair of kids’ jeans might have lead-containing brass in its buttons or zipper and thus be unlawful to sell (though not in fact dangerous). [Nancy Nord]
P.S.: Demise of print publication of Mothering Magazine after 35 years attributed in part to CPSIA and other CPSC regulations that devastated many advertisers [Handmade Toy Alliance]
Tagged as:
CPSC,
CPSIA,
CPSIA and apparel/needle trades,
CPSIA and resale
- Estate of Anna Nicole Smith may sue over opera based on her life [Daily Mail via Surber, other Daily Mail]
- Maryland Department of Environment: yep, we put tracking devices on Eastern Shore watermen’s boats [Red Maryland]
- Trial lawyers’ federal contributions went 97% to Dems last cycle [Freddoso, Examiner]
- $6.5 million for family abuse: unusual sovereign-exposure law costs Washington taxpayers again [PoL]
- Canadian court: no, we can’t and won’t waive loser-pays for needy litigants who lose cases [Erik Magraken]
- CPSC considers mandating “SawStop” technology [Crede, background]
- Gun groups alarmed over ATF pick [Chicago Tribune]
- Jury blames hit-run death on wheelchair curb cut [four years ago on Overlawyered]
Tagged as:
Canada,
CPSC,
environment,
guns,
loser pays,
Maryland,
music and musicians,
politics,
right of publicity,
sovereign immunity,
Washington state
Already postponed in their effect more than once, the testing rules required by the 2008 law are still impractical enough to threaten widespread business disruptions and closures. While the Consumer Product Safety 
Commission has come to agree that the law does not require endlessly reduplicative testing of the same components, “the hoped-for market for ‘CPSIA tested and certified’ components has not yet developed.” CPSC needs to extend the deadline while awaiting a more workable regulatory fix or better yet Congressional reconsideration. Carter Wood explains.
More: on the brighter side, the newly constituted House Energy and Commerce committee was quick out of the gate with a public meeting on CPSIA reform [Rick Woldenberg, statement, reminder of unhelpful role of "consumer" groups] And Wacky Hermit offers a CPSIA Primer.
PUBLIC DOMAIN IMAGE from Elise Bake, Der Ball Der Tiere (”The Animals’ Ball”, German, 1891), courtesy ChildrensLibrary.org.
Tagged as:
CPSC,
CPSIA
- When naming a new law, please, no acronyms, no victim names, and no assumptions about what it will accomplish [WSJ Law Blog on Brian Christopher Jones's recommendations] More: Wood.
- America’s Most Irresponsible Public Figure® — that would be RFK Jr. — sounds off on Tucson massacre [Hemingway, Examiner]
- More press attention for CPSC’s dubious consumer complaint database [Washington Post; my take last month]
- An appellate win for Internet anonymity in Pennsylvania [Levy, CL&P]
- Santa Clara lead paint case: Supreme Court won’t review government misuse of contingency lawyers [Wood, ShopFloor]
- DC cops’ “post and forfeit” policy deserves scrutiny [Greenfield]
- “Philosophy Explains How Legal Ethics Turn Lawyers Into Liars” [Kennerly]
- “Marshall, Texas: Patent Central” [six years ago on Overlawyered]
Tagged as:
contingent fee,
CPSC,
online speech,
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,
Washington D.C.
Lenore Skenazy: “As for cribs, one reason the drop-side models seem so ‘dangerous’ is because they are so popular. When you have millions of people using anything, no matter how safe, the odds of an accident go up because the odds go up with the numbers. … These products are not deadly. There’s a difference between a deadly product (cyanide) and a product that sometimes results in death (a grape). We keep obscuring that difference, and congratulating the folks who act as if it is only a lack of vigilance that allows anyone to die of anything other than old age.” More: Nick Farr, Abnormal Use; Rick Woldenberg.
Tagged as:
CPSC,
safety
A 3-2 vote at the Consumer Product Safety Commission last week ensures that the federal government will put its imprimatur behind allegations about supposed hazards in consumer products — whether true or not. I explain in a new post at Cato at Liberty.
P.S. Kelly Young comments: “I wonder if they’d be willing to maintain a public database of complaints against federal employees?” More: Coyote (comparing relative sophistication of Amazon, TripAdvisor consumer ratings systems with primitive nature of CPSC’s); letter from Rep. Joe Barton, PDF; Washington Post; ACSH.
Tagged as:
CPSC,
CPSIA,
CPSIA and Congress,
U.S. House of Representatives
