Overlawyered » CPSC http://overlawyered.com Chronicling the high cost of our legal system Tue, 14 Feb 2012 11:28:52 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 February 14 roundup http://overlawyered.com/2012/02/february-14-roundup-2/ http://overlawyered.com/2012/02/february-14-roundup-2/#comments Tue, 14 Feb 2012 05:08:05 +0000 Walter Olson http://overlawyered.com/?p=27567
  • “Brazil Sues Twitter in Bid to Ban Speed Trap and Roadblock Warnings” [ABA Journal]
  • Obama nominates Michigan trial lawyer Marietta Robinson to vacancy on Consumer Product Safety Commission, ensuring aggressively pro-regulatory majority [Bluey, Heritage]
  • “AMA reports show high cost of malpractice suits” [HCFN] “Average expense to defend against a medical liability claim in 2010 was $47,158″ [American Medical News, more] Survey of 1,200 orthopedic surgeons finds defensive medicine rife, at cost of billions, accounting for 7 percent of all hospital admissions [MedPageToday]
  • “Sue us only in Delaware” bylaws would kill off forum-shopping and what fun is that? [Bainbridge]
  • Trial by media: Lefty “SourceWatch” posts, then deletes, docs from Madison County pesticide suit [Madison County Record]
  • Think you’ve beaten FCPA rap? Meet the obscure “Travel Act” [Mike Emmick, Reuters] Federal court expands “honest services fraud” in lobbying case [Paul Enzinna, Point of Law]
  • “On the horrors of getting approval for an ice-cream parlour in San Francisco” [NYT via Doctorow/BoingBoing]
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    ]]>     http://overlawyered.com/2012/02/february-14-roundup-2/feed/ 1     November 21 roundup http://overlawyered.com/2011/11/november-21-roundup-3/ http://overlawyered.com/2011/11/november-21-roundup-3/#comments Mon, 21 Nov 2011 05:14:12 +0000 Walter Olson http://overlawyered.com/?p=25698
  • 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]
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    ]]>     http://overlawyered.com/2011/11/november-21-roundup-3/feed/ 2     September 12 roundup http://overlawyered.com/2011/09/september-12-roundup/ http://overlawyered.com/2011/09/september-12-roundup/#comments Mon, 12 Sep 2011 12:37:28 +0000 Walter Olson http://overlawyered.com/?p=24482
  • 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]
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    ]]>     http://overlawyered.com/2011/09/september-12-roundup/feed/ 3     July 19 roundup http://overlawyered.com/2011/07/july-19-roundup-2/ http://overlawyered.com/2011/07/july-19-roundup-2/#comments Tue, 19 Jul 2011 13:52:12 +0000 Walter Olson http://overlawyered.com/?p=23917
  • 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]
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    ]]>     http://overlawyered.com/2011/07/july-19-roundup-2/feed/ 1     House committee votes to defund CPSC database http://overlawyered.com/2011/07/house-committee-votes-to-defund-cpsc-database/ http://overlawyered.com/2011/07/house-committee-votes-to-defund-cpsc-database/#comments Tue, 12 Jul 2011 18:43:13 +0000 Walter Olson http://overlawyered.com/?p=23801 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.

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    ]]>     http://overlawyered.com/2011/07/house-committee-votes-to-defund-cpsc-database/feed/ 0     Bungling nanny trashes 100,000 cribs http://overlawyered.com/2011/06/bungling-nanny-trashes-100000-cribs/ http://overlawyered.com/2011/06/bungling-nanny-trashes-100000-cribs/#comments Tue, 28 Jun 2011 13:52:20 +0000 Walter Olson http://overlawyered.com/?p=23624 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.

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    ]]>     http://overlawyered.com/2011/06/bungling-nanny-trashes-100000-cribs/feed/ 5     CPSC: never mind http://overlawyered.com/2011/06/cpsc-never-mind/ http://overlawyered.com/2011/06/cpsc-never-mind/#comments Thu, 16 Jun 2011 12:21:15 +0000 Walter Olson http://overlawyered.com/?p=23389 “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)

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    ]]>     http://overlawyered.com/2011/06/cpsc-never-mind/feed/ 3     “The phenomenon of lower extremity impacts into furniture is not unusual” http://overlawyered.com/2011/06/the-phenomenon-of-lower-extremity-impacts-into-furniture-is-not-unusual/ http://overlawyered.com/2011/06/the-phenomenon-of-lower-extremity-impacts-into-furniture-is-not-unusual/#comments Fri, 10 Jun 2011 15:24:46 +0000 Walter Olson http://overlawyered.com/?p=23343 Thanks to Ben S., discussing the CPSC product-safety database, for the week’s drollest comment.

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    ]]>     http://overlawyered.com/2011/06/the-phenomenon-of-lower-extremity-impacts-into-furniture-is-not-unusual/feed/ 2     CPSC database: Wobbly on its feet http://overlawyered.com/2011/06/cpsc-database-wobbly-on-its-feet/ http://overlawyered.com/2011/06/cpsc-database-wobbly-on-its-feet/#comments Mon, 06 Jun 2011 13:28:21 +0000 Walter Olson http://overlawyered.com/?p=23272 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.

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    ]]>     http://overlawyered.com/2011/06/cpsc-database-wobbly-on-its-feet/feed/ 2     Grown woman stuck in baby swing http://overlawyered.com/2011/05/grown-woman-stuck-in-baby-swing/ http://overlawyered.com/2011/05/grown-woman-stuck-in-baby-swing/#comments Sat, 21 May 2011 15:52:45 +0000 Walter Olson http://overlawyered.com/?p=23056 And other tales of playground litigation and the Consumer Product Safety Commission [Free-Range Kids]

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