Chronicling the high cost of our legal system
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“In non-Western countries, demons and witchcraft are still sometimes blamed for outbreaks of fainting and fits [PDF]. Pollution, poisoning, chemical weapons, and other environmental concerns are dominant in the West (a fact that makes Brockovich something of a mass hysteria machine). Some bloggers are now claiming that the upstate New York girls fell ill because of the HPV vaccine or fracking.” [Ruth Graham, Slate]
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A distinctively unfair bit of favoritism toward public sector unions, it legally locks in benefits after a contract expires, thus encouraging and rewarding union intransigence in negotiating the next. [Michael Allegretti, Public Sector Inc.; Empire Center for New York State Policy]
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A New York Times story criticizing natural gas fracking raises controversy. [Ira Stoll, more, Diana Furchtgott-Roth]
“Over the past five years, New York State has awarded more than $7.4 billion in contracts to clients of law firms that employ state legislators, according to a review of court filings and other records.” [New York Times]
Following national publicity, the state of New York has backed off regulations that defined games like wiffle ball and freeze tag as risky enough that day camps might be obliged to consider medical contingency plans. [Coyote, MSNBC]
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On Super Bowl Sunday, E-Trade ran one of their annoying talking-baby commercials; this one featured a blond baby named “Lindsay” (the 380th most popular baby-girl name in 2008) that another baby calls a “milk-aholic.” This, says 23-year-old Lindsay Lohan, was a violation of the rights to her “name and characterization”; she’s sued in Nassau County, New York state court, and is asking for $100 million. The advertising agency says Baby Lindsay was named after someone on the ad team. [lawsuit via TMZ; NY Post; Reuters]
Commenter Richard Nieporent reminds us of the similar Spike Lee vs. Spike TV silliness.
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The miscreant skipper has already pleaded guilty to manslaughter and intoxicated boating, but the family of a slain passenger is now suing the feds for not lighting the pier more brightly. [Jessica Spies, Greece (N.Y.) Post]
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Stories you may be missing if you’re not following our sister site:
Two sisters were repeatedly raped and sexually abused by their older half-brother. This is, a federal jury decided, the fault of their pediatrician, Dr. Patricia Monroe, who failed to report the abuse–though there was no evidence she was aware of the scope of it. Monroe’s attorney “says that’s because the girl refused to speak to Monroe and because the incident wasn’t reportable to Child Protective Services.” The decision will be appealed. (Chris Knight, “Monroe to appeal $11M verdict”, Adirondack Daily Enterprise, Sep. 3).
A message has been sent: make defensive reports to Child Protective Services, and parents will all be worse off when CPS overreacts.
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That’s the explanation given by Charles J. O’Byrne’s lawyer for why his client didn’t file income taxes for year after year. I’ve never tried that one myself, but then, I’m not the chief aide to the governor of the state of New York, the way O’Byrne is. He has no plans to resign from his position. (Nicholas Confessore and Jeremy W. Peters, “Governor’s Aide Had ‘Late-Filing Syndrome,’ Lawyer Says”, New York Times, Oct. 23).
Relatedly or otherwise, Carolyn Elefant at Legal Blog Watch notes (Oct. 22) that Harpreet Singh Brar, known to Overlawyered readers for his abusive mass mailing of demand letters to California businesses,
came up with an even better defense to charges of failure to file tax returns on behalf of himself and his professional corporation: ineffective assistance of counsel. Sounds promising, except when you consider that Brar is an attorney who represented himself at trial. On appeal, he’s argued that he did not knowingly waive his right to counsel, and that he may have been under the influence of drugs and alcohol at the time of the waiver. Not surprisingly, the appeals court rejected Brar’s argument. (Source: Metropolitan News-Enterprise.)
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15-year-old honor student and SADD member Lindsey Billman snuck out of a slumber party with three of her friends and had an alcohol-fueled night with two 18-year-old boys. Around 2:45 a.m., two boys and two girls had the clever idea of stacking milk crates to reach an air-conditioning unit that allowed them to clamber onto the roof of Anna S. Kuhl Elementary School. The two couples went to separate sides of the roof. Billman and Nicholas Moscatiello then had the further clever idea of doing whatever they were doing while sitting on a skylight, which didn’t support their weight, and the 33-foot-fall onto the gymnasium floor below killed Billman.
This is, alleges an Orange County, New York, suit filed by Lindsey’s parents, the fault of the school district and the city of Port Jervis, New York. After all, the district was “irresponsible” stacking milk crates by the school. A curious choice of words: out of the number of people irresponsible here, it seems to me that the district is at most a distant eighth. (Steve Sacco, “Parents suing Port Jervis, school in girl’s fatal fall through roof”, Times Herald-Record, Jul. 26; Adam Bosch, “1 teen dead, 1 critical in fall”, Times Herald-Record, Jan. 27). The attorney is Corey Stark, a 2001 law-school graduate in New York City who has single-handedly refuted the proposition that New York state needs more law schools. (Thought experiment: if the milk crates are an attractive nuisance, why isn’t the dairy liable?)
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Individual liberty, free markets, and peace: the world's premier libertarian think tank. Publishes Cato at Liberty, where I blog on contemporary policy issues.
