- I dreamed someone sabotaged the memory care unit by switching Rosa DeLauro’s name tag with Rosa Luxemburg’s [Fox; Raising Hale, Labor Union Report with more on alleged nursing home sabotage and the Connecticut pols that enable it]
- New York’s Scaffold Law will inflate cost of Tappan Zee Bridge rebuild by hundreds of millions, according to Bill Hammond [NYDN]
- “In Michigan, a ballot measure to enshrine union rights” [Reuters, WDIV]
- Massachusetts voters rejected unionizing child care providers, but legislature decided to do it anyway [Boston Herald]
- SEIU flexes muscle: “Surprise strike closes SF courtrooms” [SFGate, NBC Bay Area]
- If it goes to arbitration, forget about disciplining a Portland police officer [Oregonian via PoliceMisconduct.net] Boston police overtime scandal [Reason] Related, San Bernardino [San Diego Union-Tribune]
- Louisiana teacher union furor: “Now There’s A Legal Defense Fund For Schools The LAE Is Threatening To Sue” [Hayride, earlier]
- As unions terrorize a Philadelphia construction project, much of the city looks the other way [Inga Saffron, Philadelphia Inquirer, PhillyBully.com; via Barro]
Tagged as:
Boston,
Connecticut,
Louisiana,
Massachusetts,
Michigan,
New York,
Philadelphia,
police
- Bloomberg’s petty tyranny: NYC plans ban on soft drink sizes bigger than 16 oz. at most eateries, though free refills and sales of multiple cups will still be legal [NBC New York]
- Will Michigan suppress a heritage-breed pig farm? [PLF] NW bakers cautiously optimistic as state of Washington enacts Cottage Food Act [Seattle Times]
- Hide your plates: here comes the feds’ mandatory recipe for school lunch [NH Register] School fined $15K for accidental soda [Katherine Mangu-Ward] Opt out of school lunch! [Baylen Linnekin]
- Losing his breakfast: court tosses New Yorker’s suit claiming that promised free food spread at club fell short [Lowering the Bar, earlier]
- Amid parent revolt, Massachusetts lawmakers intervene with intent to block school bake-sale ban [Springfield Republican, Boston Herald, Ronald Bailey]
- Interview on farm and food issues with Joel Salatin [Baylen Linnekin, Reason]
- “Nutella class action settlement far worse than being reported” [Ted Frank]
- Under political pressure, candy bar makers phase out some consumer choices [Greg Beato] Hans Bader on dismissal of Happy Meal lawsuit [CEI, earlier]
Tagged as:
agriculture and farming,
eat drink and be merry,
Michael Bloomberg,
Michigan,
obesity,
schools,
small business,
soft drinks,
Washington state
- Congress again debates bad idea of race-based government for native Hawaiians [Ramesh Ponnuru, Ilya Shapiro/Cato; earlier here, etc.]
- “I could have been killed for blogging.” [Patterico, Scott Greenfield] Latest blogger “swatting” (bogus police call) hits RedState’s Erick Erickson [same] Incivility is a hazard for bloggers, but fear for families’ physical safety shouldn’t be [Jonathan Adler, Amy Alkon] Dear authorities in Montgomery County, Md. and elsewhere: you should know it’s not every day Radley Balko calls for tougher law enforcement. Earlier here and here.
- More dying from guns than from car crashes? Eugene Volokh skewers some misleading arguments from the Detroit Free Press;
- Mississippi: Judge dismisses Dickie Scruggs’s motion to vacate bribery conviction [AP; Tom Freeland and more]
- Washington Times kindly cites coverage in this space on Maryland “structuring” prosecutions [editorial]. Maryland delayed foreclosures and is now paying the price in slower housing recovery [Hayley Peterson, Examiner]
- Andrew Pincus defends arbitration and SCOTUS decision in Concepcion [NYTimes "DealBook"; NLJ] Effort in Florida to ease use of arbitration in med-mal disputes [Miami Herald]
- Michigan Supreme Court judge Diane Hathaway, elected via 2008′s most unfair attack ad, is now in a spot of ethical bother [Ted Frank]
Tagged as:
arbitration,
Dickie Scruggs,
guns,
Hawaii,
Indian tribes,
Maryland,
Michigan,
mortgages
Lawyers representing a White Lake, Mich. woman say that whether or not Ally Financial was within its rights to repossess her 2006 Pontiac, it was not entitled to the half-tank of gas it carried. They are asking class-action status on behalf of Michigan customers and seek $5 million. [Detroit News]
Tagged as:
autos,
class actions,
Michigan
- Mortgage robo-signing settlement not actually as punitive toward the banks as you might think, succeeds in sticking costs onto various parties not at table [FT, more (US taxpayers could wind up covering much of write-down costs through HAMP program); Felix Salmon (write-downs of underwater mortgages should not be assessed at face value); Mark Calabria, Cato and more, Bloomberg (banks managing to offload much of the cramdown onto investors such as pension funds); Daniel Fisher/Forbes one, two, three (banks get covert benefits, politicos get social engineering and fees -- shades of the collusive tobacco settlement!); Above the Law (Schneiderman steers money to legal services programs); Linette Lopez, BI (banks still exposed on many issues). More: Hans Bader, John Steele Gordon.
- "Burned at mediation by my own Facebook post" [Stuart Mauney, Abnormal Use]
- As anti-discrimination law advances, religious liberty retreats [Roger Pilon, Cato] Two views on the birth control mandate [Cathy Young, David Henderson] More: Adler, Frum.
- Motel Caswell case from Tewksbury, Mass. heads to court, could test forfeiture law [Balko] More: Washington Post editorial.
- Which is more unreasonable, OSHA regulation or FAA’s? Open to dispute [John Cochrane, Grumpy Economist]
- Indiana becomes a right to work state. On to Michigan next? [Shikha Dalmia, Reason]
- Warning! Tale of trial psychologists in wizard garb comes from a sinister source, namely me ["In the News," forensic psychologist Karen Franklin, handsome illustration swiped from Cato site]
Tagged as:
aviation,
banks,
discrimination law,
Facebook,
forfeiture,
Indiana,
labor unions,
Michigan,
mortgages,
OSHA
“A single woman who was denied treatment by a west Michigan in vitro fertilization clinic can proceed with a lawsuit claiming unlawful discrimination, the state Court of Appeals ruled in a decision released today. The case against Grand Rapids Fertility and IVF was filed after a doctor there told Allison Moon that his clinic could not provide the service out of concern that Michigan paternity law is so vague that a child conceived by IVF and born to a single mother could successfully sue the clinic for child support.” [Dawson Bell, Detroit Free Press] The appeals court said Michigan’s Elliot-Larsen Civil Rights Act, which prohibits services of public accommodation from discriminating on the basis of marital status among other grounds, extinguishes doctors’ common law right to decide with whom to undertake a physician-patient relationship. [Michigan Health Law Link]
Tagged as:
discrimination law,
medical,
Michigan
“Macomb County Probate Court officials can’t explain how a man falsely claiming to be a medical doctor was allowed to decide whether people were mentally competent to handle their own estates and whether jail inmates needed mental health care.” [Detroit News]
Tagged as:
expert witnesses,
Michigan,
psychiatry
Sarah Deming has sued the distributor of the critically acclaimed Ryan Gosling thriller DRIVE under Michigan’s Consumer Protection Act, saying it was promoted “as very similar to the Fast and Furious, or similar, series of movies” but “bore very little similarity to a chase, or race action film…having very little driving in the motion picture.” The suit aims for class-action status. [Lawyerist, Guardian]
Tagged as:
advertising,
Michigan,
movies film and videos
- Don’t: “Lawyer Disbarred for Verbal Aggression to Pay $9.8M Fine for Hiding Cash Overseas” [Weiss, ABA Journal]
- Loser-pays might help: “Dropped malpractice lawsuits cost legal system time and money” [Liz Kowalczyk, Boston Globe]
- “Kim Kardashian and the Problem With ‘Celebrity Likeness’ Lawsuits” [Atlantic Wire]
- Kim Strassel on the Franken-spun Jamie Leigh Jones case [WSJ]
- Peggy Little interviews Prof. Lester Brickman (Lawyer Barons) on new Federalist Society podcast;
- Worse than Wisconsin? “Weaponizing” recusal at the Michigan Supreme Court [Jeff Hadden, Detroit News]
- New York legislature requires warning labels for sippy cups [NYDN]
Tagged as:
Al Franken,
don't,
Lester Brickman,
loser pays,
medical malpractice,
Michigan,
nanny state,
recusals,
right of publicity
New Michigan rules allow juries to ask questions and judges to summarize evidence for their benefit. Michigan Chief Justice (and Overlawyered favorite) Robert Young Jr. “says jurors will no longer be treated like kindergarteners” under the new rules. [ABA Journal; my take back when]
Tagged as:
juries,
Michigan
Julie Mack, Kalamazoo Gazette (via Mark Hemingway, Examiner):
In 1993, Chelsea High School teacher Stephen Leith shot to death his superintendent and wounded his principal and another teacher during a confrontation at the school. Leith was convicted of homicide and given a life sentence; from prison, he continued to pursue an appeal of his firing from Chelsea Public Schools, blaming his actions on medication.
“He murdered his superintendent. It’s crazy,” said Tom White, associate director of labor relations for [the] Michigan School Board Association.
Tagged as:
Michigan,
teacher tenure
“Former justice Elizabeth Weaver, who retired this year after 16 years on the Michigan Supreme Court, evidently made secret recordings of internal court deliberations and has released transcripts of some of the meetings.” Most of Weaver’s former colleagues on the court have signed a letter condemning her resort to secret taping, saying they were unaware of it and would never have consented to it or to her revelation of court deliberations generally. Weaver came to the bench as a Republican but was long at odds with the other GOP members of the court. [WSJ Law Blog, Knake/Legal Ethics Blog]
Tagged as:
judges,
Michigan
Election edition:
- On Oklahoma ballot: grossly overbroad measure to ban use of foreign law [Atlantic Wire, Transplanted Lawyer, earlier Volokh]
- Michigan race: “Dems cross the line with bigoted Supreme Court ad” [Stephen Henderson, Freep; earlier on attacks on Justice Robert Young]
- Jacob Sullum is another non-fan of Andrew Cuomo’s record;
- What was the exact nature of that Vancouver fundraiser so many Senate hopefuls attended? Carter Wood wishes he could add a footnote to an already strong column by George Will on the Linda McMahon-Richard Blumenthal Senate race in Connecticut;
- Speaking of which, Will’s latest election roundup column is just out, while Nate Silver at the NYT’s Five Thirty Eight blog offers an outstanding hour-by-hour election-night guide;
- Iowa poll shows former AAJ/ATLA president Roxanne Conlin, of SomePeopleJustNeedToBeSued.com fame, trailing far behind in bid to unseat Sen. Chuck Grassley [WHO-TV via Carter Wood's PoL election roundup;
- Trial lawyers pour cash into California insurance commissioner race [CJAC]
- Latest effort by New York Times to lionize activist AGs as “next Eliot Spitzers” recalls earlier Times pieces written to same formula, in the most amusing of which it lionized as the next Spitzer Ohio’s since-disgraced Marc Dann. Yet (the shaky electoral performance of such Times favorites as Massachusetts’ Martha Coakley aside) there’s reason to suspect voters this year will return a roster of AGs that’s less inclined toward business-bashing, not more [Jack Fowler at NRO].
- Government a threat to liberty? Doesn’t just depend on whether “our” team’s in charge [Gene Healy, Examiner]
Tagged as:
Andrew Cuomo,
attorneys general,
California,
Connecticut,
Iowa,
judicial elections,
Michigan,
Oklahoma,
politics
