Overlawyered » CPSIA

March 7 roundup

Walter Olson — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 04:17:15 +0000

Thank you, Sens. Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and Mike Lee, for getting Obama’s claim of warrantless domestic killing authority onto the media front burner — finally — through Sen. Paul’s filibuster last night. (More: Nick Gillespie, Conor Friedersdorf and background, Andrew Sullivan, Josh Blackman; Mediaite (Eric Holder sends letter, Rand Paul declares victory).
Pending SCOTUS case of “Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl” is not the first Indian Child Welfare Act fiasco [Ann Althouse] More on ICWA [NYT Room for Debate]
Has ABA now enlisted in the crusade against Stand Your Ground self-defense laws? [ABA Journal] Reminder #371 that the Martin-Zimmerman case is not likely to hinge on Florida’s SYG law [Jacob Sullum; Jeralyn Merritt with more detail on latest developments]
“Transparency in Government: Finding Out How Much the Government’s Mistakes Are Costing Us” [Hans von Spakovsky, Heritage]
“New York, to Stem Civil-Rights Suits, Is Now Reluctant to Settle” [NY Times]
CPSC adopts sweeping CPSIA testing and certification rule [Nancy Nord] Should the CPSC be structured as a multi-member commission? [Commissioner Nord at Cato's Regulation magazine, PDF, and "Conversations with Consumers"]
Illinois: “Small Town to Lose Its Only Sledding Hill” [Free-Range Kids]
“Word of the day: Mendicant” [New York Times education blog; I'm quoted in]

Tags: adoption, CPSC, CPSIA, Indian tribes, Martin-Zimmerman case, settlement

March 7 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

December 26 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 16:01:35 +0000

L.A. County assessor, though in jail, will keep drawing $197K salary plus raise [LAT]
IRS lowers the regulatory boom on tax preparers [Institute for Justice video, auto-plays]
On Wal-Mart Mexico bribery, NYT has a bit of a blind eye of its own [Stoll; earlier here, here, etc.]
Another painful CPSIA regulation: CPSC on testing “representative samples” [Nancy Nord]
“Popcorn lung” couple “won a $20 million judgment. Now, they’re broke.” [ABC]
From Todd Zywicki: Libertarianism, Law and Economics, and the Common Law [SSRN via Bainbridge]
If the courts disapprove of throttling internet speeds, what do they think of throttling class action claims redemption rates? [Ted Frank]

Tags: class action settlements, CPSC, CPSIA, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Los Angeles, taxes, Wal-Mart

December 26 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Child welfare/protection roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 05:10:14 +0000

Oh, American Academy of Pediatrics, why are you so consistently wrong? On videogames, on food-ad bans, on guns, CPSIA…
New book by Annette Fuentes, Lockdown High: When the Schoolhouse Becomes a Jailhouse [John Harris, Guardian]
There are genuine problems with some countries’ international adoption practices, but should UNICEF really be pushing toward a “leave the kids in orphanages” alternative? [Nick Gillespie on Reason documentary to be released tomorrow]
At expense of both federalism and religious accommodation, bill entitled “Every Child Deserves a Family Act” (ECDFA) would impose anti-bias rules on state adoption and foster care programs [Washington Blade]
Cash-for-kids Pennsylvania judge: “Former Luzerne judge Conahan sentenced to 17.5 years” [Times-Tribune, our earlier coverage]
“Met a guy who works at my old summer camp. Bunks still do raids on other bunks, but their counselors have to file raid forms first. How sad.” [@adamlisberg]
Sex offender registry horror story #14,283 [Skenazy]
“Safety rules rob pupils of hands-on science, say MPs” [Independent, U.K.]
Gee, who could’ve predicted that? NJ’s aggressive “anti-bullying” law leads to new problems [NYT, Greenfield, PoL, NJLRA] Rapid growth in bullying law assisted by push from Obama administration [WSJ Law Blog, Kenneth Marcus/Federalist Society, Bader]

Tags: bullying, child protection, CPSIA, family law, guns, Luzerne County judicial scandal, recreation, science and scientists, United Nations, zero tolerance

Child welfare/protection roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

September 12 roundup

Walter Olson — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 12:37:28 +0000

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]

Tags: advertising, CPSC, CPSIA, cruise ships, Dickie Scruggs, forfeiture, Google, hospitals, Katrina, Rick Perry, same-sex marriage, Texas

September 12 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

More CPSIA overkill: lowering lead limits

Walter Olson — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 13:06:05 +0000

By a 3-2 party line vote, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has voted to lower already infinitesimal thresholds of lead permitted in children’s products to 100 parts per million. The main impact will not be on surface paints or other flakable/chewable hazards to the youngest users, but on “substrate” elements such as metal alloys employed in such objects as bicycle parts, school binders, and ballpoint pens, an even wider swath of which will be hard to sell or resell without breaking the law. [Bloomberg; commissioners Nord, Northup; Woldenberg, more and yet more]

PUBLIC DOMAIN IMAGE from Walter Crane, The Baby’s Opera (1876), courtesy BabylonBaroque.

Tags: CPSIA

More CPSIA overkill: lowering lead limits is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Bungling nanny trashes 100,000 cribs

Walter Olson — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 13:52:20 +0000

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.

Tags: CPSC, CPSIA, small business

Bungling nanny trashes 100,000 cribs is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

May 27 roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 27 May 2011 11:42:52 +0000

Prospects dicey at best for CPSIA reform as Waxman, Dems toe consumer-group line [Woldenberg, more, Nord, Northup] If AAP is going to posit 49,000 poisonings from lead in recalled jewelry, shouldn’t it try to document a couple of them? [Woldenberg] Credit at least to House Commerce Committee majority for trying to tackle mess with this law [Mangu-Ward, ShopFloor, AtC]
“Lawsuit claims Jay-Z’s ‘Big Pimpin’ violates Egyptian ‘moral rights’” [DBR]
My Cato Institute colleague Gene Healy reviews new Eric Posner/Adrian Vermeule book on executive power [AmCon]
Subpoena filed by class-action lawyer Stephen Tillery demands contributor list of Chicago-based think tank critical of litigation [Madison County Record] Judge quashes subpoena as chilling of First Amendment liberties [same]
Suits filed by its own officers, often those accused of misconduct, have cost LAPD $18 million since 2005 [L.A. Times via Dave Krueger, Agitator]
“Do Menthol Cigarettes Taste Too Good to Be Legal?” [Sullum, earlier]
“Motion Claims Buxom Woman with Opposing Counsel Is Intended as Jury Distraction” [ABA Journal] More: Ken at Popehat, Lowering The Bar, Above the Law.

Tags: CPSIA, CPSIA and Congress, music and musicians, police, tobacco

May 27 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

CPSIA: “Toymakers Would Get Relief Under Republican Plan”

Walter Olson — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 05:49:16 +0000

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).

Tags: CPSC, CPSIA, CPSIA and Congress

CPSIA: “Toymakers Would Get Relief Under Republican Plan” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Mothering Magazine ceases print publication

Walter Olson — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 16:48:10 +0000

And one of the reasons for the title’s closure after 35 years might be surprising, at least to non-readers of this site. [Handmade Toy Alliance]

Tags: CPSIA

Mothering Magazine ceases print publication is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“I’m no longer comfortable posting publicly about CPSIA…”

Walter Olson — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 14:47:56 +0000

A thrift store owner explains why. [Rick Woldenberg] More: Timothy Carney, Examiner.

Tags: CPSIA, CPSIA and resale

“I’m no longer comfortable posting publicly about CPSIA…” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system