“A Las Vegas lawyer who once ran a courthouse restaurant has pleaded guilty in a scheme to take $3,000 in kickbacks to rig two condo board elections in Nevada.” The takeover of the condo boards, advanced by methods that included stuffing ballot boxes with fake ballots, made it possible to bring in a favored law firm to file construction-defect suits. “Federal prosecutors claim conspirators used straw buyers to buy properties in about a dozen condo communities from 2003 to 2009 and helped them win control of condo boards, AP says.” A wider investigation continues whose targets allegedly include judges. [ABA Journal]
Tagged as:
construction defect,
Nevada,
real estate
Gordon Crovitz at the WSJ tells how muddled property rights, combined with the dependence of real estate developers on the good will of New York’s City Council, have resulted in the continuing occupation of Zuccotti Park.
Tagged as:
NYC,
real estate
Eduardo Penalver explains at PrawfsBlawg:
Cuban law has long permitted private homeownership…The most significant difference is that Cubans are not permitted to buy or sell their homes. Cuba’s blanket prohibition on sales leads to enormous problems. …The outcome of the 1980s experiment illustrates why Raul Castro’s housing reforms are likely to fail this time around as well. … What the Cuban government refuses to acknowledge is that Cuba’s housing problem is not really a housing problem. It’s a socialism problem.
Tagged as:
real estate
- Lack of defect poses problem for plaintiff: Toyota prevails in first acceleration case [NLJ]
- Australia: writer Andrew Bolt on trial for alleged racially disparaging columns [Herald Sun, Crikey, The Age]
- “Attorneys Put Themselves Before Consumers in Class Action over Faulty Computer Chip” [CJAC, Frank/CCAF on NVidia case]
- Ruling by Federal Circuit is thinning out rush of patent marking cases [Qualters, NLJ, earlier]
- Podcast: Lester Brickman and “Lawyer Barons” [PoL, earlier here and here]
- “Are class actions unconstitutional?” [Lahav, Mass Tort Lit, on Martin Redish book]
- “Free speech belongs on campuses too” [Ilya Shapiro, Cato, on Widener case, with kind mention of Schools for Misrule]
- King Canute turns attention to dry land: states mull bills to forbid use of distressed properties as appraisal comps [Funnell]
Tagged as:
Australia,
class action settlements,
class actions,
hate speech,
Lester Brickman,
patent marking,
real estate,
sudden acceleration,
Toyota
Britain is rethinking its curiously limp penalties for illegal property occupation [Legal Blog Watch]:
As a result, for example, when hotelier Connan Gupta moved out of his house in Camberwell for a week while it was being renovated, he returned to find 10 unwelcome Italian students who had moved in and changed the locks. Gupta learned that the police were powerless to help him because under existing U.K. law, squatters may legally enter an empty property if they do not cause damage when gaining access. To his dismay, Gupta was required to hire lawyers and begin a lengthy process of trying to evict the squatters. “It’s as if the squatters have more rights than I do,” he said at the time.
Tagged as:
real estate,
United Kingdom
A Manhattan couple were sued by their downstairs neighbors for allegedly allowing too much noise that might have been better muffled with carpets. They approached a well-known local reporter who did a segment in his “Shame! Shame! Shame!” consumer series critical of the suit. The plaintiffs proceeded to file a new $52 million suit against their upstairs neighbor for intentional infliction of emotional distress, which a judge has now dismissed. And now the defendant wife and her husband have sued the condo board for removing her from the board, apparently in reaction to the publicity. [TVSpy]
Tagged as:
libel slander and defamation,
NYC,
real estate
A Queens, N.Y. condo owner won her battle to keep her teacup terrier on the premises after a judge found that the condo board had not, as required, obtained the votes of 80 percent of unit owners before adopting a no-pet rule. “The board spent $100,000 on lawyers and the cost is now being passed on to the condo owners — roughly $4,200 apiece. ‘Nobody in the [building] is too happy with me right now because it’s costing everybody a lot of money and it’s not fair to the homeowners, I feel terrible,’ [the winner] said.” [CBS New York]
Tagged as:
animals,
NYC,
real estate
- Reason TV interviews Richard Epstein;
- On the SEC’s big new “insider trading” sweep [Ribstein, Bainbridge, Lambert, Salmon, more Ribstein]
- Losing = winning? Ambitious claim for fees in environmental case [California Civil Justice, scroll]
- “Unintended consequences department: canceled flights” [Ted at PoL] And check out Ted’s new TSA Abuse Blog, on one of the hottest issues of the moment. More on that from Popehat and Simple Justice;
- H.R. 1408, the Inclusive Home Design Act, would compel handicap accessibility in private home design, yet another dreadful idea from Rep. Jan Schakowsky of CPSIA fame [AmendTheCPSIA]
- “This place would be a shoplifter’s paradise (and a liability insurance abuser’s motherlode) in the United States, but we were in Japan, where they don’t seem to worry as much about that kind of thing.” [Mark Frauenfelder, BoingBoing, on the Showa Kan museum of everyday midcentury life in Takayama]
- UK: “I moved out for decorators and squatters took over my house” [Evening Standard]
- From the ruins of Pompeii, a reflection on government and disaster relief [Dum Spiro Spero]
Tagged as:
airlines,
attorneys' fees,
disabled rights,
emergency services,
Jan Schakowsky,
real estate,
Richard Epstein,
Securities and Exchange Commission,
terrorism
New federal regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency, aimed at curbing exposure to dust that might contain lead paint, will result in federal certification of many building-maintenance specialties and step up pressure against informal unlicensed suppliers of handyman and carpentry services:
On April 22, the Environmental Protection Agency is slated to enact rules requiring EPA certification for contractors working on homes built before lead paint was banned in 1978. The rule, aimed at limiting exposure to lead, applies to carpenters, plumbers, heating and air conditioning workers, window installers and others.
Two-thirds of U.S. homes and apartments (78 million out of 120 million) were built before 1978, says Calli Schmidt of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), citing Census Bureau data. She says half of the pre-1978 homes don’t contain lead but the rule, depending on implementation, might apply to all of them.
Making it unlawful to practice home renovation without federal certification will assuredly reduce the supply and raise the cost of renovations, the extent of the shift varying perhaps from one community to another depending on how professionalized the relevant markets already are. One result of shifting the cost curve will be to encourage teardowns of otherwise sound housing stock. Some other properties that remain occupied will simply go without renovations and repairs, with unpredictable (but probably not good) consequences for health and safety. [USA Today via Nick Gillespie, Reason] As for the prospect that the federal government will apply any sort of common-sense appraisal of the actual benefits of spending millions to avoid infinitesimal or nonexistent lead exposures, I’ll believe that when they fix CPSIA. More: WSJ (sub-only)
Tagged as:
Environmental Protection Agency,
lead paint,
real estate
It “did not rise to the level of a kitchen suitable for a property located at 50 Gramercy Park North,” says the realty group that rented the apartment from the owners. P.S. New York Daily News link mistakenly omitted before (h/t Bob Montgomery).
Tagged as:
NYC,
real estate
Obesity-as-disability in Canada: “Marise Myrand said her condo association discriminated against her by denying her a parking spot closer to her building entrance.” She’s now won a favorable ruling from the Quebec Human Rights Tribunal and a $10,000 settlement. [The Globe and Mail, h/t reader Vicky G.]
Tagged as:
Canada,
disabled rights,
obesity,
real estate
- Man who shot dogs sues blogger whose critical account of episode allegedly put him in false light [Christopher Comins v. Matthew Frederick VanVoorhis, Florida, Citizen Media Law; Greenfield (free speech attorney Marc Randazza assisting VanVoorhis)]
- Appeals court revives Pennsylvania couple’s trespass suit against Google over Google Street View pics of their home and pool [Legal Intelligencer, ABA Journal]
- “Rich Guy Sues to Keep $380/Month Rent on Park Ave.” [Gothamist]
- “Think Davis-Bacon on steroids” — Obamaites mull SEIU-driven “High Road” policy to push federal contractors into union practices [Daily Caller, Michael Fox via PoL]
- Federal judge’s 49-page sanctions order blasts Adorno & Yoss, two lawyers and client over bad faith conduct of trade dress suit [Fulton County Daily Report]
- “Terrorist who killed US medic wants C$10 million from Canadian taxpayers” [CanWest/Canada.com via David Frum]
- “Massachusetts Woman Sues Real Estate Broker over Second-Hand Smoke in Condo” [Somin, Volokh; case settles]
- “Our litigation process encourages radical polarization” — part II of Q&A with author Philip Howard [WSJ Law Blog, link to part I]
Tagged as:
bloggers and the law,
Google,
labor unions,
libel slander and defamation,
NYC,
Philip K. Howard,
real estate,
sanctions,
terrorism
Cheltenham, U.K.: “A businessman is facing a £300,000 legal bill after losing a boundary battle with his neighbour – over an area of land of just seven square yards.” About half of that represents the loser-pays bill that will be handed to Martin Charalambous and his partner for pursuing a legal campaign through appeal whose cost far exceeded the value of the land. [Daily Mail, Telegraph, This Is Gloucestershire]
Tagged as:
loser pays,
real estate,
United Kingdom
