Overlawyered » Spain

Labor and employment law roundup

Walter Olson — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 04:08:22 +0000

Court rebukes EEOC in big sex harassment class action against trucking firm [Memphis Commercial Appeal]
Union protects some dodgy educators: “Found to Have Misbehaved With Pupils, but Still Teaching” [New York Times]
Spain changes its labor law [Global Post]
Employment-law blogs debate employment at will [Jon Hyman]
James Sherk of Heritage on proposed Employee Rights Act;
Unlawful under Contracts Clause to alter public employee pensions? Really? [Secunda, Workplace Prof; Barnes v. Arizona State Ret. Sys., Ariz. Super. Ct., No. CV-2011-011638, 2/1/12]
Coalition challenges Connecticut governor’s executive order aimed at unionizing home health aides [Michael Tremoglie, Legal NewsLine]

Tags: Arizona, Connecticut, constitutional law, EEOC, employment at will, Europe, labor unions, Spain, teacher tenure

Labor and employment law roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Spanish professor says recording industry group violates antitrust law

Walter Olson — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 12:39:55 +0000

And the next thing you know, they sue him [Josh Wright, Mike Masnick] The blog post by Enrique Dans, who is professor of information systems at IE Business School, is here.

Tags: antitrust, bloggers and the law, copyright, RIAA and file sharing, Spain

Spanish professor says recording industry group violates antitrust law is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Spain adapts around employment tenure laws

Walter Olson — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 05:02:18 +0000

Spanish law makes it difficult and expensive to dismiss conventionally employed workers, but the market has managed to route around that to some extent [J. Servulo Gonzalez, El Pais via Tyler Cowen]:

Temporary contracts were introduced in a labor reform approved in 1984 by the Socialist government of Felipe González, and they have remained in favor ever since – even more so during times of crisis, such as those currently being seen in Spain, where 93 out of every 100 contracts signed of late have been temporary.

Although the Spanish government has attempted to re-regulate temporary employment, as by forbidding renewal of temporary contracts — a step that obviously works to the disadvantage of some of the workers affected — it has also been forced to trim back some of the elaborate tenure protections for private-sector workers, who may now walk away with a maximum of two years’ salary as severance, down from three and a half years’.

Tags: employment at will, Spain

Spain adapts around employment tenure laws is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

November 21 roundup

Walter Olson — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 05:14:12 +0000

Spanish government fines filmmaker for movie poster showing “reckless driving” [Lowering the Bar] Siri, distracted driving, and police discretion [Balko]
Parents taking care of their kids under Michigan program must pay $30/mo. to SEIU for representation [Joel Gehrke, Examiner]
Stretching the Fifth: Joe Francis bad deposition behavior [Legal Ethics Forum]
WaPo covers deep split on Consumer Product Safety Commission, left wants fifth seat filled ASAP;
“Threat to Student Due Process Rights Dropped from Draft of Violence Against Women Act” [FIRE, background; Cathy Young/Reason]
After $300K donation from Philadelphia trial lawyers, you may call him “Judge Wecht” [AP/WPVI]
Court reverses $43M Madison County verdict against Ford [AP/Alton Telegraph, some background]

Tags: CPSC, Ford Motor, labor unions, Pennsylvania, Spain, traffic laws

November 21 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Lileks on Pamplona

Walter Olson — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 05:08:38 +0000

“If the event was held in America the bull would be in the back of a pickup truck going five miles an hour, and all the runners would have to wear helmets. The bull would wear a helmet.” [Ricochet.com]

Tags: animals, safety, Spain

Lileks on Pamplona is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“Universal jurisdiction”, Judge Garzon, and the Pope

Walter Olson — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 17:33:53 +0000

I’ve got a few thoughts at Point of Law on the continuing uproar over prosecutions of international human rights violations against the will of the home countries of the alleged perpetrators.

Tags: Catholic Church, international human rights, Spain

“Universal jurisdiction”, Judge Garzon, and the Pope is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Graffiti and copyright

Walter Olson — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 04:05:05 +0000

“For the graffiti artists, copyright cases are a common problem. ‘It is very disappointing that copyrights of our work are often not respected’, [says German graffiti artist CanTwo,] who received damages from a music label using one of his pieces illegally some years ago. ‘Strangely enough, but people think that because our work is public and it is sometimes illegally painted, they could use it any way they want.’” (Markus Balser, WSJ Law Blog, Sept. 9).

Tags: art and artists, copyright, Germany, Spain

Graffiti and copyright is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

April 11 roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 00:04:16 +0000

Plenty of reaction to our Tuesday post questioning the NYT school-bullying story, including reader comments and discussion at other blogs; one lawprof passes along a response by the Wolfe family to the Northwest Arkansas Times’s reporting [updated post]
Geoffrey Fieger, of jury-swaying fame, says holding his forthcoming criminal trial in Detroit would be unfair because juries there hate his guts [Detroit News]
Another Borat suit down as Judge Preska says movie may be vulgar but has social value, and thus falls into “newsworthiness” exception to NY law barring commercial use of persons’ images [ABA Journal]
Employer found mostly responsible for accident that occurred after its functionaries overrode a safety device, but a heavy-equipment dealer also named as defendant will have to pay more than 90 percent of resulting $14.6 million award [Bloomington, Ill. Pantagraph]
New Mexico Human Rights Commission fines photographer $6600 for refusing a job photographing same-sex commitment ceremony [Volokh, Bader]
“Virginia reaches settlement with families of VA Tech shooting victims” [Jurist]
Roger Parloff on downfall of Dickie Scruggs [Fortune]
Judge in Spain fined heavily and disbarred for letting innocent man spend more than a year in jail [AP/IHT, Guardian]
Hard to know whether all those emergency airplane groundings actually improved safety, they might even have impaired it [Murray/NRO "Corner", WSJ edit]
“Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don’t give it any value” — tracking down the context of that now-celebrated quote from a Canadian Human Rights Commission investigator [Volokh]
Who was it that said that lawyers “need to be held accountable for frivolous lawsuits that help drive up the cost of malpractice insurance”? Hint: initials are J.E. [three years ago on Overlawyered]

Tags: Arkansas, Borat, bullying, Canada, deep pocket, Detroit, Dickie Scruggs, Europe, FAA, free speech, Geoffrey Fieger, joint and several liability, New Mexico, roundups, Spain, third party liability for crime, Virginia Tech

April 11 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“Driver Who Killed Teen Sues for Damage”

Walter Olson — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 00:03:21 +0000

Spain: “A speeding motorist who killed a teenage cyclist is suing the boy’s parents over damage to his luxury car, the government says.” (AP/WINS, Jan. 25).

Tags: personal responsibility, Spain

“Driver Who Killed Teen Sues for Damage” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

January 22 roundup

Walter Olson — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 01:09:29 +0000

“Woman who ‘lost count after drinking 14 vodkas’ awarded £7,000 over New Year fall from bridge” [The Scotsman]

Bar committee recommends disbarment for Beverly Hills lawyer who “played the courts like a bully in a child’s game of dodgeball” [Blogonaut (with response by attorney) via ABA Journal]

Shot and paralyzed in parking lot of South Florida strip club, cared for back home in Tunisia, Sami Barrak is now $26 million richer by way of his negligent-security suit [Sun-Sentinel] Earlier Florida negligent-security here, here, and here.

Canadian government orders airlines to stop charging the severely obese the price of a second seat [Winnipeg Free Press; earlier]

Study of head-injury victims in Spain finds “nearly half of the people who go to court feign psycho-cognitive disorders with the objective of profiting from this in some way.” [Science Daily]

Federal judge vacates $1.75 million verdict, questions reliability of expert testimony in Nebraska recovered-memory sex abuse case [Lincoln Journal-Star, AP/Sioux City Journal]

Confess your thoughts, citizen: Ezra Levant on his interrogation by official panel in Canada for publishing Mohammed cartoons [Globe & Mail; earlier]

Class-action lawyers continue to hop on glitches with Xbox Live, Halo 3 and related Microsoft gaming systems [Ars Technica, News.com; earlier here and here]

Bay Area proposal to ban much burning of wood in fireplaces and stoves (Nov. 30, etc.) draws strong reactions both ways [SF Chronicle]

Harder to get into Ringling Bros.’s Clown College than law school, says man who attended both [six years ago on Overlawyered]

P.S. Whoops, that’s what I get for posting while drowsy: earlier roundups by Ted already had the Scottish-tippler and obese-flyer items.

Tags: Bay Area, Canada, Danish cartoons, free speech in Canada, Nebraska, roundups, Spain

January 22 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system