Overlawyered » Ohio

One way to get around courtroom camera ban

Walter Olson — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 19:16:28 +0000

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.”)

Tags: cameras in the courtroom, Cleveland, Ohio

“Battleground Ohio: John Kasich’s Collective Bargaining Reform Goes Down”

Walter Olson — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 05:48:18 +0000

At Capital Research Center, James Antle has a post-mortem on the defeat of Ohio Republicans’ ambitious attempt to turn around the public sector employment climate.

Tags: firefighters, labor unions, Ohio, police, public employment

November 11 roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 11:56:20 +0000

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]

Tags: attorneys general, free speech in Canada, Iowa, Manhattan Institute, Ohio, product liability, third party liability for crime, whistleblowers

Great moments in public sector unionism

Walter Olson — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 05:24:57 +0000

“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]

Tags: labor unions, NYC, Ohio, police, public employment

Update: ousted Congressman sues opponents for “loss of livelihood”

Walter Olson — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 06:00:34 +0000

Updating our story of last December: A federal judge has given the go-ahead to former Rep. Steve Dreihaus’s suit against the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List for allegedly falsely characterizing his stands on issues during last year’s race, thus causing him to lose. Earlier, Driehaus had filed a complaint against the Anthony List under Ohio’s remarkable False Statements Law, “which criminalizes lying about public officials” and has been assailed by the ACLU among other groups as inconsistent with the First Amendment. [Seth McKelvey, Reason; Peter Roff, U.S. News]

Tags: campaign regulation, libel slander and defamation, Ohio, U.S. House of Representatives

Cordray to CFPB

Walter Olson — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 15:20:47 +0000

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.

Tags: banks, Ohio, securities litigation, Wall Street

Feds require Dayton police department to lower hiring standards

Walter Olson — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 13:16:51 +0000

“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]

Tags: Ohio, police, testing

February 5 roundup

Walter Olson — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 19:33:05 +0000

Thomas Sowell on EPA dairy-spill regulations [NRO, earlier at Cato here and here] It’s the miracle federal agency: “What doesn’t the EPA do?” [ShopFloor]
President’s State of the Union medical malpractice gesture, cont’d [PoL, more, Ted Frank/Examiner, NJLRA, related, earlier here, here, here, here, here, here, here, etc.]
Fired minor-league Yankees mascot files wage-hour suit [ESPN]
Ohio sheriff prepares criminal complaint against reporter for asking him questions [WHIO via Balko]
It all happened so suddenly: Henry Waxman now disapproves of the use of subpoenas for fishing expeditions [Mark Tapscott, Examiner; earlier]
Should hospitals ban cameras from childbirth? [NYT "Room for Debate" with contribution from Jim Harper, Cato Institute]
Non-”flagrant” trespassing OK? Tort liability shift in Third Restatement [PoL]
Nope: “At this time, I would like to formally accuse Walter Olson of having an intern or something.” [Ron Miller]

Tags: agriculture and farming, Barack Obama, baseball, Environmental Protection Agency, Henry Waxman, hospitals, medical malpractice, Ohio, privacy, trespassers, wage and hour suits

February 2 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 13:38:55 +0000

Many of the best New Jersey sledding slopes are off limits now: “Litigators ruin pretty much everything” [Bainbridge]
Granola bar trans-fat lawsuit leaves Russell Jackson unimpressed;
“Criminal barbering”: license lapse gets 82-year-old Oregon hair-cutter in legal trouble [Perry]
Tomorrow’s economy won’t thrive if municipal authorities strangle innovative businesses where they incubate [Conor Friedersdorf, City Journal]
Need to bring property taxes under control? Try litigation reform [NJLRA]
Convicted at height of 90s child-abuse prosecution fever, Ohio pair seek to reopen case [Briefcase] More: Balko.
Here’s an idea: “Let the shareholders decide if SOX is worth the costs.” [Ribstein]
Retired Massachusetts attorney found in possession of stolen art trove [five years ago on Overlawyered] Updates courtesy reader Ronald Stimbert: Legal Blog Watch 2008 (attorney convicted); Cape Cod Times 2010 (paintings returned to owner).

Tags: child abuse, New Jersey, Ohio, recreation, Sarbanes-Oxley, small business, taxpayers, trans-fats

Rep. Dennis Kucinich sues House cafeteria over olive pit in sandwich

Walter Olson — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 20:52:35 +0000

He bit into a sandwich wrap in 2008 and encountered an olive pit, and now he wants $150,000. [Cleveland Plain Dealer, Wonkette, Memeorandum]

P.S. Gawker finds video taken five days later on the House floor in which the Ohio representative “looks fine and talks normal” notwithstanding the “serious and permanent dental and oral injuries requiring multiple oral and dental surgeries.” And Daniel Fisher at Forbes:

No indication why Kucinich mulled this lawsuit for three years before filing it…..* The lawsuit alleges negligence and breach of implied warranty.

*Commenter “Mattie” says the SOL in DC for this type of suit is indeed three years, though it would be one year for some other torts.

Who besides the People’s Congressman would be willing to name America’s olive pit safety crisis and call out the Big Pit interests responsible?

P.P.S.: As someone was asking, wasn’t generous government-furnished health insurance — like the kind available to Members of Congress — supposed to cut down on the need for personal injury suits? And Matthew Heller at OnPoint News finds some precedent for the suit.

And further: That was fast, Kucinich says he’s settled the suit (Jan. 28).

Tags: food safety, Ohio, restaurants, U.S. House of Representatives

Overlawyered » Ohio

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