- Judge rules in first California “suitable seating at work” trial [The Recorder; earlier here, here]
- On business travel: “Injury During Sex is Work-Related and Compensable, Aussie Court Holds” [Workplace Prof]
- On the other hand: “Running in High Heels Was Probably Enough to Defeat This Workers’ Comp Claim” [Lowering the Bar]
- Illinois federal court rules that unpaid volunteers may be covered by Title VII discrimination law [Eric Sigda, GTLE Blog]
- Seattle to pay drama teacher $750K for not accommodating wishes re: renovation of building [Seattle Times, meanwhile]
- Recalling AP v. NLRB, 1937, in which SCOTUS rejected First Amendment defense to Wagner Act, over Sutherland dissent [Gerard Magliocca, ConcurOp]
- House Oversight Committee blasts NLRB for pro-union bias [press release and staff report PDF, Goldberg Segalla]
Tagged as:
Australia,
labor unions,
Seattle,
volunteers,
workers' compensation
In Clyde Hill, Wash., a retired Seattle Mariners baseball player has won a ruling from the town that his neighbors must remove two trees that block what would otherwise be an “amazing view of Seattle’s skyline” from his property. “An appraiser hired by John and Kelly Olerud said their $4 million home would be worth $255,000 more if the rare Chinese pine and the Colorado spruce across the street were cut down and replaced with smaller plants. The Chinese pine’s value is estimated at more than $18,000.” [Seattle Times, Ilya Somin] In other tree removal news, an Ontario mother “is fighting to have oak trees removed near her child’s school, fearing that acorns could pose a deadly threat to students with severe allergies.” Local officials say it is unlikely the acorns would prove allergenic to a child unless eaten, which rarely happens given their extreme bitterness. The mother also says acorns “can also be used to bully and torment children.” [Toronto Star via Lenore Skenazy]
Tagged as:
allergies,
bullying,
Canada,
property law,
Seattle,
trees
“Rain delays kept postponing the game” — this was Seattle — and eventually authorities disqualified both teams. Court action resulted: “‘I asked my daughter, she asked us to fight, so we fought,’ said Patrick Jones, one player’s father.” Because of course parents are supposed to be guided by their kids’ wishes as to whether to set loose the lawyers in such matters. [KING 5]
Tagged as:
Little League,
Seattle
- “A 4-Page Playdate Waiver? Is This the New Normal?” [Lenore Skenazy, Free-Range Kids; our 2000 post on "Rise of the High-School Sleepover Disclaimer"]
- Spirit Airlines sets what it calls DOTUC fee, for “Dept. of Transportation Unintended Consequences” [Stoll]
- How fairly are fathers treated in family court? [Nina Shapiro, Seattle Weekly via Alkon]
- “‘Insider’ Trading by the Representative Plaintiff in Shareholder Litigation” [Bainbridge]
- “Donation controversy focuses attention on Madison County asbestos litigation” [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Chamber-backed LNL]
- Update: Appeals court reinstates Duluth doc’s defamation claims [DNT, earlier here, here, here; "bedside manner" criticism]
- U.K.: “‘Psychic’ Sally Morgan Sues Critics for £150,000 After Refusing $1 Million to Prove Her Powers” [D.J. Grothe, HuffPo] “She’ll be calling witnesses such as ‘an uncle, or father, or a man… with a b in his first name’.” [@thegagthief]
Tagged as:
airlines,
asbestos,
divorce,
family law,
libel slander and defamation,
Madison County,
recreation,
Seattle,
securities litigation,
United Kingdom
Updating our August 12 item: “A King County Superior Court judge refused Monday to vacate a nearly $13 million award to a Seattle firefighter who was injured at a fire station in 2003. The city of Seattle appealed the award after an investigator it hired captured Mark Jones on surveillance video dancing, chopping wood, playing horseshoes and bocce ball this past spring.” Judge Susan Craighead said the city should have developed its evidence earlier and that the standard for demonstrating fraud is an extremely high one in cases of this kind. [KOMO]
Tagged as:
Seattle,
Washington state
- International House of Pancakes (restaurant chain) vs. International House of Prayer (church) [CNN]
- “Law Schools Now Require Applicants To Honestly State Whether They Want To Go To Law School” [The Onion, satire]
- “As ENDA Lingers in Congress, a [million-dollar verdict] in Maine” [Michael Fox]
- Fear: On advice of FBI, cartoonist who organized “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” drops out and changes name [Seattle Weekly, Welch, Moynihan]
- University of Windsor lawprof asks Ontario Human Rights Tribunal to overturn school’s decision not to make her dean [National Post]
- Prominent Seattle lawyer arrested, and do-you-know-who-I-am-ery allegedly ensues [Above the Law]
- “Man rushed to hospital after finding tampon in his cereal” [Obscure Store, Macon Telegraph] Update: suit dropped.
- Manufacture iPhones in the U.S.? “I worry America has too many lawyers. I don’t want to spend time having people sue me every day.” [Foxconn's Terry Gau, quoted in Business Week]
Tagged as:
Canada,
discrimination law,
do you know who I am?,
law schools,
Seattle,
trademarks
“The city of Seattle is seeking to overturn a $12.8 million judgment awarded to a former firefighter, who claimed he was permanently disabled by an on-duty fall, after investigators secretly shot video of the man chopping wood, playing horseshoes and bocce ball, and even breaking into a victory dance.” [Jennifer Sullivan, Seattle Times]
Tagged as:
firefighters,
Seattle
Bicycling and streetcar tracks can make for a hazardous mix because the “flange way gap” alongside the rail can entrap bicycle wheels. Now six cyclists who crashed while crossing the new Westlake Avenue streetcar project are suing the city of Seattle. They are citing the city’s failure to follow a consultant’s recommendation that it close the avenue to bicyclists. [SeattlePI.com]
Tagged as:
roads and streets,
Seattle
- Some California attorneys hoping to restart lucrative construction-defect litigation [Frith, Cal Civil Justice]
- Jury awards Seattle bus passenger $1.3 million for stair mishap [KOMO, Seattle Times]
- “Louisiana Bill Would Outlaw Insulting an Under-17-Year-Old By E-Mail” [Volokh, earlier] Update: bill watered down before passage, but still bad news for speech;
- “Attorney Fee Fight Gets Ugly in World Trade Center Litigation” [Turkewitz and more]
- Preventive detention law shows why we need to confine Congress [Sullum, Greenfield]
- Mass Fifth Circuit recusals in Comer v. Murphy Oil global warming case [Wood/PoL, Jackson] More: Shapiro, Cato, Wood/ShopFloor (a strategy to provoke recusals?)
- “By some estimates, circa 40 percent of cases in the Central African court system are witchcraft prosecutions” [Graeme Wood, The Atlantic]
- Lawyers who sued Facebook over “Beacon” to get $2.3 million in fees, class $0.00 [Balasubramani, SpamNotes]
Tagged as:
California,
child protection,
class action settlements,
construction defect,
Facebook,
Fifth Circuit,
global warming,
Louisiana,
recusals,
Seattle
- Math curriculum wars in Seattle school district head for court [Seattle Times]
- Stuart Taylor, Jr. reviews new Abigail Thernstrom book on the Voting Rights Act [New Republic]
- Gail Wilensky: Dems could’ve gotten GOP votes for health care reform if they’d compromised on medical liability [The Hill]
- Erin Brockovich swoops down on Florida cancer cluster [Fumento/CEI, more, also on Florida case]
- Barry Goldwater was right: right-leaning bloggers favor lifting military gay ban by 62-37 margin in National Journal bloggers poll;
- Jim Copland vs. Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter [Point of Law, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, more]
- Why is there no iPod or iPhone equivalent for automobiles? Regulation might have something to do with it [Ryan Avent and more via Sullivan; McArdle and more (commenter: "Motorcycles would never, EVER be approved by NHTSA if they were invented today.")]
- So reassuring: for now FTC says it’s “unlikely to actually investigate individual bloggers” [Lewis, NYLJ] More from late last year on commission’s semi-retreat on blogger freebies [Publisher's Weekly, GalleySmith, GalleyCat, Reason "Hit and Run", William S. Galkin] Icons to make disclosure easy [Louis Gray]
Tagged as:
Arlen Specter,
Erin Brockovich,
FTC endorsement rules,
military,
NHTSA,
publishers,
schools,
Seattle,
Voting Rights Act
Mike Hipple took photos of Dance Steps on Broadway, a public art installation on sidewalks in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. The photos earned him $60 and now a lawsuit from sculptor Jack Mackie. [KOMO]
Tagged as:
art and artists,
copyright,
photography,
Seattle
“A Seattle civil-rights attorney who was disbarred earlier this month after the state Supreme Court unanimously found that he had gouged some clients and bullied others into unwanted settlements has sued the Washington State Bar Association, claiming its investigation was rife with errors and conflicts of interest.” [Seattle Times]
Tagged as:
bar associations,
discipline,
Seattle
- Teacher’s aide in Queens, N.Y., sues 11 year old, saying he was dashing for ice cream and ran into her (this happened when he was eight) [WPIX; Rosanna Tomack, Joseph Cicak]
- Extraterritoriality, or exit fees? Stiff taxes these days on Americans who renounce their citizenship [Coyote Blog]
- Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell hires Bailey, Perrin & Bailey, big campaign-donor law firm for anti-drugmaker suit [WSJ, Point of Law, ShopFloor, Adler @ Volokh]
- Injured in wrestling fall, will get $15 million from school district [Seattle Times]
- Feds seized Petri dishes at Buffalo professor’s home and word spread of major bioterror bust. Oops [Andrew Grossman, Heritage]
- Toward “public control over the media”: Creepy ideological origins of Nichols/McChesney scheme to subsidize newspapers [Adam Thierer, City Journal]
- Thanks to expensive modern medicine Virginia Postrel has been doing well in her fight against breast cancer, story might not have been so happy in some countries [The Atlantic, second essay responding to letters]
- Jury awards $22.5 million against vaccine maker to man who says he caught polio from daughter’s shot [Staten Island Advance]
Tagged as:
extraterritoriality,
newspapers,
Pennsylvania,
schools,
Seattle,
sports,
vaccines
Aren’t class actions great? The only problem is that the money for the residents will have to come from, well, themselves:
“We are having an accounting game. It’s basically saying, ‘we’re sorry you paid it from this pocket, instead it should have come from this pocket,” said Seattle City Council member Richard Conlin. …
“The only party benefiting from this are the law firms,” said Conlin.
The attorneys who fought the city on the hydrants will get $4.2 million plus interest charges.
City water customers will get refunds averaging $45 but will be obliged to pay surcharges averaging $59 to cover the cost of the settlement [KOMO].
Tagged as:
class actions,
Seattle,
taxpayers
