Bradford, England: “A judge has condemned a ‘grotesque’ waste of taxpayers’ money spent on prosecuting teenager Larissa Wilkinson for allowing her 18 month-old niece to drop a sweet wrapper.” [Telegraph]
{ 1 comment }
Chronicling the high cost of our legal system
Posts tagged as:
Neil Munro covers it at National Journal (PDF, courtesy AmendTheCPSIA), and mentions toward the end a certain blog that “has rallied opponents of the law”. A few highlights:
{ 5 comments }
Apparently there are a lot of hidden surprises in this Waxman-Markey “cap and trade” energy/environment bill we’ll be hearing about in coming weeks [Washington Post via Virginia Postrel].
{ 0 comments }
Wear appropriate protective clothing, “do not let this chemical enter the environment”, and if you come in contact with it, “immediately flush skin with plenty of water for at least 15 minutes while removing contaminated clothing and shoes”. It’s ocean sand! MSDSs (Material Safety Data Sheets) are by and for lawyers: “Very few chemists, in my experience, spend much time with these forms at all, preferring to get their information from almost any other source.” [Derek Lowe via Virginia Postrel]
More: Interesting comments, including one on ionized water (if exposed, “flush the contaminated area with water”) and this from reader John: “Good news: if the sand is intended for use by children under 12, as of August 14 the sand itself will have to be permanently labeled with the a batch number so it can be easily recalled.”
{ 12 comments }
{ 3 comments }
The state may ban many popular models on the at-best-paternalistic grounds that they consume too much energy.
{ 11 comments }
Toronto considers a ban (via Fountain).
Dirk Olin at Portfolio magazine on the Valdez spill litigation.
{ 1 comment }

Major story by Jon Hamilton on yesterday’s NPR “Morning Edition”: “A new federal ban on chemical compounds used in rubber duckies and other toys isn’t necessary, say the government scientists who studied the problem.” “Now they tell us,” writes Carter Wood. More from Jonathan Adler @ Volokh and commenters.
Although most coverage of the CPSIA debacle (this site’s included) has focused on the lead rules, the phthalates ban (phthalates are an ingredient often used to make plastic soft and bendable) is also extraordinarily burdensome, for a number of reasons: 1) as readers may recall, a successful lawsuit by the Natural Resources Defense Council and others forced the last-minute retroactive banning of already-existing playthings and child care items, costing business billions in inventory and other losses; 2) vast numbers of vintage dolls, board games and other existing playthings are noncompliant, which means they cannot legally be resold even at garage sales, let alone thrift or consignment shops, and are marked for landfills instead; 3) obligatory lab testing to prove the non-presence of phthalates in newly made items is even more expensive than testing to prove the non-presence of lead. The phthalate ban is also an important contributor to the burden of the law on the apparel industry (the ingredient has often been used in screen printing on t-shirts and similar items) and books (”book-plus” items with play value often have plastic components). AmendTheCPSIA.com has reprinted a letter from Robert Dawson of Good Times Inc., an amusement maker.
Earlier coverage: Feb. 6 (NRDC and allies win court case on retroactivity); Feb. 7 (various points, including Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal’s vow that his office will “take whatever steps are necessary [emphasis added] to ensure this phthalate ban is enforced”); Feb. 12 (what ingredients in playthings are going to replace phthalates, and are those ingredients going to be more safe or less?); Mar. 4 (vintage dolls); Mar. 11 (California Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein were particularly identified with pushing the phthalates ban to enactment).
P.S. Environmentalists disputing the NPR coverage: Jennifer & Jeremiah @ ZRecommends, Jennifer Taggart (The Smart Mama) in NPR comments. And Sacramento attorney Anthony Caso has a backgrounder for the Washington Legal Foundation (PDF) with more about the CPSC, the NRDC, and maneuvering on phthalates.
{ 1 comment }
Michael Arrington, TechCrunch: “The California legislature is considering regulating the color of cars and reflectivity of paint to reduce the energy requirements to cool them. …dark colors just don’t reflect well, so they are likely out.” (via Coyote Blog).
P.S. Ian Douglas of the Telegraph (h/t Walker in comments) says reaction to the rules has been exaggerated and that so long as a “cool paint” with infrared reflectivity is used, California drivers can have any color they want, even if it’s black. And yet more from Janet Neilson, Western Standard.
{ 4 comments }

If CPSIA is premised on anything, it’s the idea that before makers of goods place items on the market, they should have to shoulder the burden of proving that they’re safe, even if it seems very, very unlikely on the face of it (as with books, cotton bibs, ballpoint pens, etc.) that they’re doing any significant harm. Is this perhaps an early application of the much-debated “precautionary principle“, which proposes that gaps in scientific knowledge be resolved against those who want to introduce anything new or potentially dangerous? Deputy Headmistress wonders. She also links to Rick Woldenberg who continues his revisionist looks at the Great Toy Scare of 2006-7, noting that in one much-publicized recall of 436,000 toys by Mattel, the trigger for the recall was that “TWO CANS OF PAINT slipped through its safety systems, and were spread ratably over 436,000 units. Hmmm - how dangerous do you think one Sarge car would be with 1/218,000th of a can of paint on it? This event was one of the sparks that triggered the mania leading to the CPSIA - the same mania that now sweeps up libraries.”
Brian Micklethwait, a while back, had a further relevant thought about whether the Precautionary Principle has itself been proven safe.
More: An interesting contribution from Dan Marshall at Change.org.
Public domain graphic: Grandma’s Graphics, Ruth Mary Hallock.
{ 5 comments }
Or what passes by that name: lawyers for the ACLU say the design of a Milwaukee highway project is unfair to minorities (Rick Esenberg, Prawfsblawg; complaint, PDF, at WisPolitics.com).
{ 1 comment }
Daily Roundup sounds better than Microblog, if you ask me.
Tomorrow, I predict that somewhere, someone will be sued.
{ 3 comments }
…in the sonar-marine mammal litigation before the Supreme Court, which we’ve covered a lot over the years. (Althouse, WSJ law blog).
Plus, the ultimate in post titles for the case: “Habeas Porpoise“.
{ 2 comments }
{ 1 comment }