In the 1948 case of Shelley v. Kraemer, the U.S. Supreme Court held that racially restrictive real estate covenants, once a common practice, were not enforceable in court. Since then old covenants of that sort in title deeds have been a dead letter, but court clerks continue to copy them over as part of the historical transcription of title language that occurs in many real estate transactions. Now a couple described anonymously as John and Jane Doe, represented by attorney Zachary Gottesman of Cincinnati, have been suing county recorders around the state of Ohio asking for “an injunction requiring recorders to ‘sequester’ the offensive documents or, for those documents that have to be published, to redact the racially-offensive portions. They also ask for their attorney fees to be paid, punitive damages and any other relief the court deems just.” A lawyer representing the county clerks says they are legally obligated to copy, transcribe or otherwise make available the deeds as they find them, and that the anonymous filing of the lawsuit is improper. “Defendants,” argues the brief on their behalf, “cannot be held liable … in the same way a library or museum cannot be held liable for hate speech for maintaining a display of offensive historical documents,” he wrote. Please, don’t give the plaintiffs ideas for more suits. [Zanesville Times Recorder]
Tagged as:
Ohio,
real estate
Among the departing lawyers are those representing the state of Ohio in a public employee retirement fund-led class action; the state may not appreciate the fallout from Chesley’s efforts to fight disbarment in Kentucky over the fen-phen scandal. [Cincinnati Enquirer] Many of the one-time “Master of Disaster’s” bipartisan political ties, however, remain cozy:
Chesley noted that Hamilton County [= Cincinnati] Prosecutor Joe Deters, who has worked for Chesley as a private attorney for four years, continues to work at the firm.
Deters also works as a private attorney for the new firm created by Chesley’s former lawyers. Deters, a leader in Hamilton County’s Republican Party, praises Chesley, who has helped raise millions for Democrats…
Tagged as:
Cincinnati,
Kentucky fen-phen settlement fraud,
Ohio,
Stan Chesley
- As wildlife policy goes wrong, it’s guano on the rocks for La Jolla [Matt Welch, language]
- Georgia-Pacific West vs. NEDC: “Millions of jobs at stake in logging case” [David Hampton, Wash. Times; Henry Miller, Forbes]
- Ontario environment ministry won’t investigate complaint of noise from neighbor’s basketball play [National Post, earlier]
- Maryland: Following state mandate, Howard County prepares to stifle farmland development without compensation [HoCoRising]
- Role of local government structure: “New England vs. Midwest Culture” [George Mattei, Urbanophile]
- More re: suits vs. utilities over Sandy outages [Bloomberg (Long Island), NJ.com] Pre-Sandy, NY pols kicked around Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) for decades [Nicole Gelinas/ NYP]
- “Reckless Endangerment: Global Warming in the Courts” [Michael Greve, Liberty and Law] Various interest groups have already locked themselves into EPA’s jury-rigged scheme to limit carbon emissions [Greve]
Tagged as:
climate change,
endangered species,
environment,
Environmental Protection Agency,
global warming,
land use and zoning,
Maryland,
Ohio
At least the lawyers are getting some exercise [Cleveland Plain Dealer via Adler]:
Thursday was one of the strangest days in Ohio high school football history. Not a single down was played and it ended in total confusion…. The Ohio Supreme Court might have the final word….
Edgewood Superintendent Joe Spiccia said the plan Thursday night was to create a conflicting court order, which it did. … [OHSAA spokesman Tim Stried] said neither game will be played until the case is resolved by another court because if either game took place, it would be violating one of the two court orders.
Tagged as:
football,
Ohio,
schools,
sports
- Press accounts have exposed a pattern of police stops of out of state motorists in rural Tennessee, in which police search motorists’ cars and then confiscate large sums of money they find on the presumption that it is criminal-related. Now, in Henry, Tennessee — named after Patrick Henry, of “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” fame — the police chief has told the town he needs a police dog because “the city is missing out on possible revenues” [dog testimonials; more Tennessee, via Eapen Thampy of Americans for Forfeiture Reform, guestblogging last month at Radley Balko's Agitator site]
- Also via Thampy, economically hard-hit Butte County, California, north of Sacramento, has been filling its budget hole through pot-grower busts accompanied by aggressive forfeitures; in a perhaps not unrelated phenomenon, the county snatches kids from parents at an exceedingly high rate. More on child protective services in Butte County at the Chico News & Review (& more: Angela Bacca, SKUNK).
- Via Ilya Somin, this from a Steven Greenhut column:
Few groups of “sinners” were singled out in biblical accounts more than “tax collectors,” who were not merely state agents collecting revenues that taxpayers rightfully owed to the government. They were the source of particular loathing because they were extortionists, who profited personally by shaking down as much money from citizens as possible…
The Gospel accounts provide an early lesson in the danger of marrying the profit motive with governmental power. The possibility for abuse is great. Yet throughout the United States, government agencies increasingly rely on “civil forfeiture” to bolster their strained budgets. The more assets these modern-day tax collectors seize, the more money they have for new equipment and other things….
- From reader John Brewer, on an Ohio gardening-equipment seizure: “Structurally, it seems even worse to have the judge who originally signed the search warrant have a say in what gets done with the confiscated stuff than it does for the cops/DA to get it, despite the cute-and-cuddly outcome here.”
- Tomorrow’s abuses today: the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms [BATF] has just been given a major enhancement to its forfeiture powers. [David Kopel/Volokh]
- For more information on this subject, check out the many online resources offered by the Cato Institute; Cato scholars took an early interest in exposing the problems of civil and criminal asset forfeiture, and our focus on the issue continues to this day. More: Scott Greenfield. (& Tim Lynch, PoliceMisconduct.net)
Tagged as:
California,
Child Protective Services,
forfeiture,
Ohio,
Tennessee
The landmark in the Ohio town near Akron is one of only two survivors from a fashion for giant municipal flagpoles in the late nineteenth century; the other one is in Palmyra, N.Y. “The township trustees say they don’t want to own it anymore because of liability concerns.” [Recordpub.com via Robert Breugmann, Urbanophile]
Tagged as:
Ohio
- Primer on “severability”: would ObamaCare fall if individual mandate struck down? [Loyola, Epstein, Shapiro, American Interest] Maybe the President picked the wrong fight: “Supreme Court’s Ratings Jump Following Health Care Hearings” [Randy Barnett]
- Heritage on med-mal reform and federalism [Hans von Spakovsky; my take] A case for New Hampshire’s “early offer” med-mal proposal [Robinette, TortsProf] “Ohio’s tort reform has curbed soaring malpractice costs” [Columbus Dispatch editorial]
- Madison County: plaintiff’s lawyer seeks gag order in med-mal case [MC Record]
- Academics debate whether authorities should crack down on medical tourism [Cohen et al, Opinio Juris]
- Shortage of physician volunteers at marathon sports events, readers of this site can guess the reason [Outside mag via White Coat]
- Connecticut Gov. Malloy proposes letting home health workers rather than nurses administer pills to homebound patients, major savings foreseen [Connecticut Mirror] Related, David Henderson;
- Governments now often cite HIPAA as reason not to release information regarding accidents, crimes and disasters [Glenn Cook, Las Vegas Review-Journal] How HIPAA implementation can keep patient history out of emergency medical responders’ hands [EP Monthly]
- London: Red Ken has pay doc, NHS being Not His Style [Marian Tupy, Cato at Liberty]
Tagged as:
Connecticut,
emergency medicine,
HIPAA,
medical malpractice insurance,
New Hampshire,
ObamaCare,
Ohio
- N.Y. Times editorial flays Stand Your Ground, but dodges its (non)-application to Martin/Zimmerman case; Washington Post blasts same law, doesn’t seem to realize Florida homicide rate has gone down not up; chronology as of Sunday’s evidence [Frances Robles, Miami Herald] On the disputed facts of the case, it would be nice if NYT corrected its misreporting [Tom Maguire, more, yet more]
- Lawprof Michael Dorf vs. Jeffrey Toobin on president’s power not to enforce a statute [New Yorker letter]
- Israeli law bans underweight models [AP/Houston Chronicle]
- Is price-fixing OK? Depends on whether the government is helping arrange it [Mark Perry]
- Minnesota man arrested, jailed for neglecting to put siding on his house [KSTP via Alkon]
- Once lionized in press, former Ohio AG Dann now fights suspension of law license [Sue Reisinger, Corp Counsel, earlier]
- How California is that? “Killer got $30,000 in unemployment while in jail, officials say” [LAT]
Tagged as:
constitutional law,
Israel,
Martin-Zimmerman case,
Minnesota,
Ohio,
self-defense,
unemployment benefits
Ohio TV station WOIO is re-enacting highlights of a local corruption trial with puppets. More: Lowering the Bar (“I think that all court proceedings should be reported in this way, but would settle for either puppet coverage of arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court or a full reenactment of the Rod Blagojevich trial.”)
Tagged as:
cameras in the courtroom,
Cleveland,
Ohio
- Manhattan Institute’s “Trial Lawyers Inc.” series looks at cozy relations between state attorneys general and plaintiff’s bar [report, related featured discussion, Copland, Examiner] Report comes down hard on Ohio’s Richard Cordray, nominee to head CFPB [Copland, Gorodetski/PoL] Judge tosses Cordray suit against credit rating agencies [O'Brien/LNL, Krauss/American Thinker] Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller denounces report [IowaPolitics.com]
- “The Tort of Internet Mobbing Is Perfect For Suing The Internet” [Popehat]
- Canada faces challenge to hate speech law [Arthur Bright, Citizen Media Law] Do not put a frog down Her Majesty’s back at the county fair [Lowering the Bar]
- “Markopolos eyes a fortune from BNY whistleblowing” [Felix Salmon] “Bounty hunters in Korea” and closer to home [Alex Tabarrok] “Developments in Whistleblower Laws: Advantage Whistleblower” [Larry Wood & Richard William Diaz, Federalist Society "Engage"]
- As third party liability for crime anecdotes go, the case of Bonilla v. Motel 6 is on the lurid side [Point of Law]
- Prospect of cyberwar: official U.S. response is commando lawyering [Stewart Baker, Foreign Policy]
- Why it’s hard to stimulate manufacturing through product liability reform in one state [Rick Esenberg]
Tagged as:
attorneys general,
free speech in Canada,
Iowa,
Manhattan Institute,
Ohio,
product liability,
third party liability for crime,
whistleblowers
“U Raise ‘Em/We Cage ‘Em” t-shirts from a California law enforcement union [Radley Balko] From the same source, “NYPD cops demand the right to be corrupt.” And on Friday at Cato at Liberty, I gave my take on Ohio’s vote today on whether to approve a package of laws reining in public employee unionism.
More on Ohio’s S.B. 5, including political post-mortem: Michael Barone, Mark Steyn, Ted Frank, Mickey Kaus, Mytheos Holt. Philip K. Howard points out in the WSJ that the LIRR’s disability epidemic is “hardly unique – 82% of senior California state troopers are ‘disabled’ in their last year before retirement” [WSJ; more on LIRR, Nicole Gelinas] Radley Balko has another revealing police union vignette, this time from an incident in which an off-duty cop led another cop on a high-speed chase. And from Brian Strow [Western Kentucky], “Stop, Drop, and Roll: The Privileged Economic Position of Firefighters” [Library of Economics and Liberty]
Tagged as:
labor unions,
NYC,
Ohio,
police,
public employment
It appears President Obama “will nominate former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray to be the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB),” according to my colleague Mark Calabria, who recounts Cordray’s mixed record on topics of business litigation (he withdrew an abusive lawsuit against lead-paint manufacturers, while also campaigning against foreclosures). Earlier coverage here.
P.S. Daniel Fisher at Forbes reports that securities class action lawyers appear to adore Cordray, to judge from his campaign finances. John Berlau finds him inclined toward heavy-handed regulation, while Neil Munro wonders about his data privacy defense record.
Tagged as:
banks,
Ohio,
securities litigation,
Wall Street
“The [U.S. Department of Justice] has forced other police departments across the country to lower testing standards” on the grounds “that not enough black candidates were passing.” [WKEF (auto-plays video) via Perry]
Tagged as:
Ohio,
police,
testing
