Prichard, Alabama can’t seem to get any luck. [Mobile Press-Register]
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Posts tagged as:
public employment
- Online game purveyor Evony threatens to sue UK critic in Australian court [GameSetWatch, Ken at Popehat, Patrick at Popehat]
- 106: number of (counted) cases filed since 2005 that blame errant grapes for slip-fall injuries [ABA Journal]
- Bayonne, N.J.: “Connolly suing county for $1M over job switch” [Jersey Journal; background (city councilman took six months off from job as coordinator of 9/11 emergency call center; "doctors won't let him go back because it's too stressful.")]
- “Lessons from Andrew Sullivan’s pot bust” [Sullum, Reason] More: Patrick at Popehat.
- “The Appraisal Debacle: How Not to Regulate” [Jack Guttentag, Yahoo Finance, via Fountain]
- Bizarre: “Paralegal Guilty in Fake-Libel-Suit Scam That Briefly Won $3M” [ABA Journal]
- Idea for immigration reform: “Let the smart people in”. [Farhad Manjoo, Slate, via Alkon] More: “Free the H-1Bs, free the economy” [Vivek Wadhwa, TechCrunch]
- Academic finds that depending on whom you ask, “It’s not about the money” or maybe it is [Relis, SSRN/Pittsburgh 2007, via Burch, Mass Tort Lit]
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We haven’t weighed in on the Henry Louis Gates vs. Cambridge police affair, but it looks as if at least one really choice employment-law suit is going to come out of it. [WSJ Law Blog, Boston Globe]. The cop, Justin Barrett, is suing for intentional infliction of emotional distress, among other harms. Elie Mystal, Above the Law: “I. Just. Love. America.“
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Most of the 37 guards who work at the Cornwall Island, Ontario border crossing have notes from doctors saying that tensions arising from relations with the local Mohawk Indian tribe make it too stressful to work there and could result in harmful health effects. [CanWest/Vancouver Sun]
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- Legal hazards of beachcombing: “Keeping bald eagle feather could result in a $100,000 fine and year in prison” [BoingBoing; our Sept. 1999 post]
- “E.U. Condemns America’s Online Gambling Crackdown” [Sullum, Reason "Hit and Run"]
- Much-loved Stockton, Calif. eatery Chuck’s Hamburgers is menaced by ADA serial litigator, and friends rally to save it [Stockton Record, 4000-member Facebook group]
- Doomed AF Flight 447 had multiple connections with France (airline, aircraft maker) and Brazil (takeoff, many passengers’ nationality), so of course some American lawyers are hoping to get resulting suits heard in U.S. courts [Bloomberg]
- Sure takes a lot of lawyering to bring a movie like “Bruno” to the screen [Althouse, WSJ Law Blog, Legal Ethics Forum]
- Form vs. substance: U.K. historic-preservation edict saves increasingly impractical Victorian bell frames, at expense of 650-year-old bell ringing tradition [Telegraph via Never Yet Melted]
- All in a day’s (double) work: take city retirement or even disability, then come back in second job [Al Tompkins, Lowell (Mass.) Sun]
- Can it be? In just about another two weeks your favorite source of legal consternation will turn ten years old [nine years and eleven months or so ago on Overlawyered]
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- Boy fatally shoots stepbrother at home, mom sues school district as well as shooter’s family [Seattle Post-Intelligencer]
- Problem gambler sues Ontario lottery for C$3.5 billion [Toronto Star]
- Cop declines training in which he’d be given Taser shock, and sues [Indianapolis Star]
- Ultra-litigious inmate Jonathan Lee Riches scrawls new complaint linking Bernard Madoff, Britney Spears [Kevin LaCroix]
- Just to read this update feels like an invasion of privacy: “Judge to Hear Challenge to $6M Herpes Case Award” [On Point News, earlier]
- “Best criminal strategy: join the Spokane police” [Coyote Blog] More: Greenfield, Brayton.
- Will mommy-bloggers be held liable for freebie product reviews? [Emily Friedman, ABC News, earlier]
- Update: “Fifth Circuit says no bail for Paul Minor” [Freeland]
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Before you click the link, guess: who wins the $200,000? Was your guess right? Were other guesses just as plausible? And where does race fit in?
More: Coyote (”Here is a real journalistic triumph — the story of a multi-party conflict in which I immediately dislike absolutely everyone in the story on all sides of the conflict, up to and including the jury and the third parties quoted.”) And Scott Greenfield.
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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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Teresa Wagner claims the University of Iowa Law School denied her the appointment because of her conservative views. (TaxProf, WSJ Law Blog, Somin @ Volokh).
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Progressive members of the City Council of Binghamton New York have expanded the boundaries of civil rights in their fair city to include protection for citizens on the basis of sexual orientation, nothing shocking in a university town. What is surprising is that the law also protects Binghamton citizens from discrimination in employment, housing, education, and public accommodation on the basis of height and weight. Presumably in the future, Binghamton bean poles will have to yield to their shorter peers for slots on basketball teams, and the horizontally expansive will be able to demand wider doors and sturdier seats in restaurants and shops.
According to the law’s chief proponent, Binghamton Council member Sean Massey, it is a “sad fact” that a law protecting the undertall or the overweight is necessary, and even if it isn’t, “It’s simply the right thing to do. … It is the human thing to do.”
While it’s not at all clear to me, from a simple google search, that Binghamton was experiencing a tide of discrimination against the short, the tall, the fat, or the cadaverous before the passage of this law, it’s also unclear how this law will in fact promote its author’s vision of Harrison Bergeronlike equality of outcome for people of nonstandard body configuration. Will morbidly obese firemen be able to sue the city for discrimination if they are not provided assistance in climbing ladders and carrying victims? Will students whose body mass makes them unappealing by conventional standards of good looks now demand appointment as homecoming kings and queens on the ground that they are denied a fair shot in student elections? And how, exactly, will the city determine that someone was denied housing on the basis of height or weight? While one assumes that signs reading “Fat people need not apply” are being removed from apartments all over Binghamton, apart from that what does this accomplish, other than making the Binghamton City Council feel good? Gannett: “Council Passes Rights Law”, Weekly Standard: “The Politics of Fat”, thanks to dispatches from TJICistan for the pointer.
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Assume a false identity and file a bogus misconduct complaint that gets your boss fired. Claim whistleblower protection and transfer to a nice job in another department. When the imposture is discovered, the state won’t be able to do more than slap your wrist. That’s been the happy experience of a lawyer with Connecticut’s state ethics bureau (!) in a case provoking considerable, though apparently futile, outrage in the Nutmeg State. (Point of Law, Nov. 25; Dan Schwartz, Nov. 17).
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I’m quoted in a sidebar about colorful or long-shot employment litigation, and mention the Rachael Ray anorexic employee suit and the Milwaukee cop who got disability for the stress of being fired over roughing up a suspect. On the latter case, by the way, rather than saying that the cop’s disability payments continue “to this day”, I should have used a phrase like “at last report”. (Brian Moore, “Tort Stories”, New York Post, Nov. 3; revised slightly to clarify final point).
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- Hey, that Jon Bon Jovi baseball anthem sounds familiar, make the check out for $400 billion please [Boston Herald]
- Cyrus Sanai, known for dogged campaign against Judge Kozinski, is back with a new 80-page complaint which also names “10 other district court and 9th Circuit judges who have been assigned to his family’s case at one time or another.” [NLJ]
- More on English “no barbed wire on allotments” rules: “I am replacing the glass in the windows of my house with tissue paper, so that burglars — poor lambs — will not cut themselves while breaking and entering.” [Dalrymple, City Journal]
- Ethical alarms should go off when criminal defense lawyers’ marketing hints at insider pull or former-prosecutor clout [Greenfield]
- Annals of public employee tenure: firing a cop in Chicago sure isn’t easy [TalkLeft, FOI files on Gerald Callahan and William Cozzi cases at Chicago Justice Project]
- Gigantic government database of cellphone users planned for U.K. [Massie]
- Babies only, please: Nebraska backs off from its dump-a-teen “safe haven” parental abandonment law [Althouse, earlier]
- Some Israelis may be overly cheery in welcoming presumed benefits of consumer class actions [Karlsgodt citing Jerusalem Post editorial]
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In 1997, Erie, Pa. hired its first female firefighter. Nearly a decade later, she was quietly fired after setting fire to her father’s house as part of a suicide attempt. In fact, the Erie Civil Service Commission wrote at the time that: “Her setting a fire … is the single most significant act a fire fighter may not commit. The act of establishing a fire in a residence is wholly incompatible with the role of the fire fighter, despite the mitigating circumstances of [her] psychological state.” Now, she has brought her appeal public in a filing in local courts earlier this year. (GoErie.com, 3/24)
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And you thought you had a tough day at work.
Apparently, that pales in comparison to the day that one undercover cop had from Texas. His job was so rough, he claims that he had to have sex with a prostitute during a sting operation. Unfortunately for him, his superiors didn’t think it was required. After being suspended, he’s brought suit challenging his discipline. At trial, here is his, ahem, money quote: “If you are asking if I had an orgasm, yes. It was a job, sir,” the cop said. “I didn’t have pleasure doing this. I was paid to do it.” (Beaumont Enterprise, 8/21)
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“Early in his career, officials found that Lieutenant [William] White had planted white powder on a suspect in a drug arrest, which cost him his job — though he won it back with the help of the police union.” White, who has headed the narcotics squad in the New Haven, Ct. police force, is now at the center of a widening corruption scandal. (Jennifer Medina, “For Connecticut Officer Charged With Theft, a Career of Ups and Downs”, New York Times, Mar. 15; “Bail set at $2 million for New Haven officer caught in sting”, AP/WTNH, Mar. 14; Mary E. O’Leary, “Ortiz: More arrests likely” (bail bonds angle), New Haven Register, Mar. 15).
Annals of public employee tenure, this time from Norwalk, Ct.: “The city will not appeal a state Labor Department ruling to reinstate police Officer Liam Callahan, a nine-year veteran fired last fall for taking a skull fragment from the scene of a May 2005 accident. ‘The laws in the state are such that it’s extremely difficult to overturn a ruling,’ Deputy Corporation Counsel Jeffry Spahr said yesterday after discussing the matter in executive session with the Norwalk Police Commission.” According to numerous press reports, co-workers of Callahan’s said he planned to use the skull fragment as an ashtray. An investigation concluded that Callahan’s statement after being confronted that he had intended to return the fragment was not credible. (Created Things (Jeff Hall), Jan. 16; Brian Lockhart, “City officer in skull-fragment case reinstated”, Stamford Advocate, Oct. 24). And on the sued-if-you-do, sued-if-you-don’t front, note well: “Callahan and the city still face a civil lawsuit from [victim Alfred] Caviola’s family.” Unless Callahan personally turns out to provide a deep pocket, it appears the longsuffering taxpayers of Norwalk may find themselves on the hook for who knows what sort of payout — juries in other cases have expressed outrage at mishandling of decedents’ remains — even as the city is unable to sever the actual perpetrator of the act from its payroll.
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