A remarkable story of government power from Dundee, Scotland [Daily Mail via Steyn/NRO]
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Posts tagged as:
obesity
Paternalism under the palms [Future of Capitalism]:
The Los Angeles City Council, having already established “a moratorium on new openings of fast-food restaurants” within a 32-square-mile area of South Los Angeles, is now preparing a crackdown on convenience stores that “would prohibit such small neighborhood markets from being closer than one-half mile from one another unless they sold fresh fruit and vegetables,” reports the Los Angeles Times. Link via the American Council on Science and Health.
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The new regulations have 
drawn considerable negative comment from New York Times readers, and cartoonist/commentator Roz Chast doesn’t seem to hold them in very high regard either.
Only indirectly related — but also pointing up the unlikelihood of getting anything particularly tasty to eat in a Gotham public school environment 
– it seems that raw meat is not allowed in NYC school cafeteria kitchens, because it “poses too much of a food-handling challenge” [NYT again]
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Get ready for the “next big controversy in the wine business”. [Jeff Siegel, Palate Press]
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- Florida man and attorney file multiple ADA complaints against businesses in Seminole-Largo area [Tampa Bay Newspapers]
- “The growing ambitions of the food police”:
dietary paternalism in Bloomberg’s NYC and Washington, D.C. doesn’t go over well with writers at Slate [William Saletan, Jacob Weisberg, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Glenn Reynolds] - Assumption of risk is alive and well in New York cases over sports and spectator injuries [Hochfelder first, second, third posts, NYLJ]
- Favorable review of William Patry, “Moral Panics and the Copyright Laws” [BoingBoing]
- Kentucky high school case: “Coach Acquitted in Player’s Heatstroke Death” [ABA Journal]
- Olivia Judson on the Singh case and the many problems with British libel law [NYT; earlier here, here, etc.]
- Kids behave stupidly with girlfriends/boyfriends or dates, then the law ruins their lives [Alkon, Balko, Sullivan]
- “Report a bad doctor to the authorities, go to jail?” [Orac/Respectful Insolence, Texas; disclosure of patient and official information alleged against nurses]
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- It’s almost as if Arizona wants to encourage broken-windshield fraud [Coyote]
- “They are so greedy that — how awful! — they are selling food cheap.” [Ann Althouse takes out after Michael Pollan]
- Tom Freeland examines “Clarksdale sugar daddy” prosecution [Northern Mississippi Commentor; cf. Radley Balko]
- “Fire-safe” cigarettes are apparently not pleasurable to smoke, which may be part of their appeal to backers [Sullivan]
- “Justices: Bags of cash, guilty plea merit Seattle lawyer’s disbarment” [Seattle Times]
- Facebook plays a revenge prank on TechCrunch, and there’s a lesson there for the thin-skinned [Ken at Popehat]
- “The Rubber Room: The Battle Over New York City’s Worst Teachers” [Steven Brill, The New Yorker; Joanne Jacobs]
- One trial lawyer’s anything-but-supportive view of “runners” and “chasers” [Turkewitz]
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“An Indiana court has ruled that a pizza shop must pay for a 340-pound employee’s weight-loss surgery to ensure the success of another operation for a back injury he suffered at work — raising concern among businesses bracing for more such claims.” The case was decided under workers’ compensation law, which is generally more coverage-friendly than workplace liability law. [AP] More: NLJ.
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- Tiananmen Square events echo today in acrimonious defamation suit against filmmakers [Boston Globe]
- Andrew Ferguson disrespectful toward David Kessler’s nanniferous book on obesity policy [Weekly Standard]
- “Yes, People Dislike The RIAA Because Of Its Actions” [TechDirt]
- The big difference race makes in medical school admissions [Discriminations, Mark Perry/Carpe Diem]
- Texting, workplace flirtation and sexual harassment law [Forbes/MSNBC]
- After real estate firm grabs and uses online pic, photographer finds satisfaction through small claims court [West Seattle Blog h/t @VBalasubramani]
- Virginia: latest case seeking to open emotional-distress damages for death of pets gets help from former White House counsel Lanny Davis [WaPo, earlier]
- Brazil police allege that host of true-crime TV series ordered killings to ensure good footage for the show [AP]
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- Annals of legal marketing: law firm says its flyers offering to sue landlords over sexual assault on premises were left indiscriminately on car windshields, and it didn’t mean to target the woman who found it on hers and assumed it referred to her case [New Jersey Law Journal, Legal Blog Watch, Legal Ethics Forum]
- “The Bankruptcy Files: Inside Michael Vick’s ‘Excessive’ Legal Bills” [AmLaw Daily]
- Panel spanks U. of Illinois law school for admitting students at behest of politicos, but goes easy on the pols themselves [Ribstein, more, earlier here, here, here]
- Youths who obtained big settlement in San Francisco Zoo tiger attack are having more encounters with the law [SF Chronicle, earlier]
- Czech Republic: Suit by communist professor against critical students still in progress after 18 years [Volokh]
- More thoughts on Florida lawmakers’ criminalization of purported gang signals, on MySpace and elsewhere [Citizen Media Law, earlier]
- RIAA case: does the Constitution restrain unreasonable statutory damages? [Kennerly]
- Eager law grad hoping to make a career of suing foodmakers over obesity [six years ago on Overlawyered]
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Way to destroy one-of-a-kind eateries [Conor Friedersdorf at Daily Dish] Related: ABA Journal, Nick Gillespie/Reason “Hit and Run”.
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The former FDA chief and inveterate nanny-state advocate, David Kessler, has a new book arguing that chain restaurant food is excessively palatable, to the point where it effectively addicts the chains’ customers. Jacob Sullum at Reason accords Kessler’s theories all the respect they deserve.
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Dismissing a police officer for being out of shape is one thing, making it stick in court is another.
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- Tons and tons of favorable reaction to my Forbes piece on CPSIA: commenters there, Etsy thread, sampling of blogs: Polka Dot Patch, Heartkeeper’s Common Room, Colby Lane Designs, Baby Gardner’s (aw), Tristan Benz (double aw). Others who’ve gotten into the act: Iain Murray/Open Market, Jeff Nolan, Patrick @ Popehat (SSFC). New: Superblogger Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit, John Schwenkler, Carter Wood at ShopFloor, Ramesh Ponnuru at National Review “Corner”.
- “California Lawmakers Rush to Rescue Good Samaritans in Wake of Court Ruling” [The Recorder, Calif. Civil Justice Blog, earlier]
- “America needs a tax code simple enough for the Treasury secretary to figure out” [Taranto, WSJ]
- “Federal judge might ax $2M legal fee in Seattle ‘pro bono’ case” [ABA Journal, earlier here and here]
- Indictment of Long Island attorney Felix Vinluan dismissed; charged for advising nurses it was okay to quit their jobs [Cernovich, Volokh, Greenfield, Mitchell Rubinstein]
- “Apartment owner sued for common area second hand smoke” [Womble Carlyle]
- “Tulsa World sues alt-weekly over circulation story” [Romenesko and more, Shafer, BatesLine with many links] Update: drops suit against publication, leaving suit against columnist [Romenesko]
- “No evidence of a causal link between restaurants and obesity”. Hey, that could derail some lawsuits [Pethokoukis, U.S. News, on Northwestern/Berkeley study]
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Declining to hear an appeal by airlines: “Obese people have the right to two seats for the price of one on flights within Canada, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on Thursday.” (Reuters, Nov. 20; CBC). We’ve covered the issue for years, including, e.g., here, here, here (U.S.), here, and here. More thoughts: Scott Greenfield, Ann Althouse.
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- Time for another aspirin: Harvard Law’s Charles Ogletree, key backer of lawsuits for slave reparations, mentioned as possible Attorney General [CBS News, BostonChannel WCVB, Newsweek; earlier speculation about post as civil rights chief]
- Calif. law requires supervisors to attend sexual harassment prevention training, a/k/a sensitivity training, but UC Irvine biologist Alexander McPherson says he’ll face suspension rather than submit [AP/FoxNews.com, On the Record (UCI), Morrissey, Inside Higher Ed, OC Register; ScienceBlogs' Thus Spake Zuska flays him]
- Fan “not entitled to a permanent injunction requiring American Idol singer Clay Aiken to endorse her unauthorized biography” [Feral Child]
- Local authority in U.K. orders employees not to use Latin phrases such as bona fide, e.g., ad lib, et cetera, i.e., inter alia, per se, quid pro quo, vice versa “and even via” [via -- uh-oh -- Zincavage and Feral Child]
- Participants in 10th annual Boulder, Colo. Naked Pumpkin Run may have to register as sex offenders [Daily Camera, Obscure Store]
- Joins drunk in car as his passenger, then after crash collects $5 million from restaurant where he drank [AP/WBZ Boston, 99 Restaurant chain]
- Election may be over, but candidates’ defamation lawsuits against each other over linger on [Above the Law, NLJ]
- School nutrition regs endanger bake sales, but they’ll let you have “Healthy Hallowe’en Vegetable Platter” instead [NY Times]
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- Saying fashion model broke his very fancy umbrella, N.Y. restaurant owner Nello Balan sues her for $1 million, but instead gets fined $500 for wasting court’s time [AP/FoxNews.com, NY Times]
- Spokesman for Chesapeake, Va. schools says its OK for high school marching band to perform at Disney World, so long as they don’t ride any rides [Virginian-Pilot]
- More on Chicago parking tickets: revenue-hungry Mayor Daley rebuffed in plan to boot cars after only two tickets [Sun-Times, Tribune]
- Too old, in their 50s, to be raising kids? [Houston Chronicle via ABA Journal].
- Britain’s stringent libel laws and welcome mat for “libel tourism” draw criticism from the U.N. (of all places) [Guardian]
- Beaumont, Tex.: “Parents sue other driver, bar for daughter’s DUI death” [SE Texas Record, more, more]
- “Three pony rule”: $600,000 a year is needlessly high for child support, even if mom has costly tastes [N.J.L.J., Unfiltered Minds]
- Advocacy groups push to require health insurers and taxpayers to pay for kids’ weight-loss camps [NY Times]
- Lester Brickman: those fraud-rife mass screening operations may account for 90 percent of mass tort claims [PoL]
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At American.com, Sara Wexler casts a critical eye at the redlining of new fast-food restaurants out of certain Los Angeles neighborhoods. I hadn’t previously noticed that LA was justifying the ban in part on the claim that South LA’s obese residents are “plac[ing] enormous costs on the California state Medicare system”–as a good an example of the future dangers to freedom of government-run health-care as any.
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Governor Schwarzenegger has signed into law the first statewide ban on the use of the maligned ingredient by restaurants and food service facilities. (Samantha Sondag, “Gov. signs nation’s first statewide ban on trans fats in restaurants”, San Francisco Chronicle, Jul. 25).
P.S. Speaking of the nanny state in California, Los Angeles is moving to ban new fast food restaurants from poorer sections of South Central L.A. on the explicitly paternalistic grounds that it knows better than local residents what they should be eating. Prof. Bainbridge has more.
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