Overlawyered » taxes

May 22 roundup

Walter Olson — Tue, 22 May 2012 04:10:24 +0000

Lacey Act madness: might Feds be empowered to disrupt summer concerts by seizing musicians’ Gibsons? [Bedard, DC Examiner; earlier; recent Heritage Foundation work; reworded to reflect comment from "Density Duck," below]
Contributors to new “Privatization Blog” include friend of this blog Coyote, e.g. here and here;
“Big Government Causes Hyper-Partisanship in the Judicial Appointment Process” [Ilya Shapiro] Fuels Culture War, too: “The faster the state expands, the more likely it is to violate your values” [Matt Welch]
Demagogy on expatriates: Schumer proposal for stiff tax on emigrants may have read better in original German [Ira Stoll, Roger Pilon/Cato, Paul Caron/TaxProf]
Georgia high court considers $459 million fax-spam verdict [AJC, AP, my take] “Hot fuel” class actions enrich the usual suspects [PoL]
New rebuttal to trial lawyer/HBO movie “Hot Coffee” [Victor Schwartz et al, auto-plays video] Ted Frank crossed swords with Litigation Lobby on the movie in January, particularly on the question of coffee temperature and the Liebeck case [PoL]
Overlawyered “will become the first [law] blog teenager this summer” [Bruce Carton, Legal Blog Watch] “I’ve been a fan of Walter Olson’s Overlawyered blog for years.” [Amy Alkon, Advice Goddess] Thanks!

Tags: accolades, endangered species, Georgia, hot coffee, judicial nominations, on other blogs, taxes

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

Labor and employment roundup

Walter Olson — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 04:03:55 +0000

“Increasing Employment Discrimination Awards to Take Account of Adverse Tax Consequences” [TaxProf]
NRA’s wrong on this: “Bill to bar employer bias against gun owners gets OK from Missouri House” [St. Louis Post-Dispatch]
ALJ: “we are an at-will employer” handbook statement violates NLRA [Duane Morris Institute]
“What the EEOC’s Strategic Plan Means for Employers” [Laura Harshbarger, NYLELR]
Connecticut bill would require public schools to teach organized labor history [Raised S.B. No. 304; background from a supporter, PDF; h/t Fountain]
SEIU hand seen in “Occupy”-allied sit-ins targeting GOP politicians [Richard Pollack, Daily Caller]
Wage and Hour Litigation is Big—and Getting Bigger” [Shannon Green, Corporate Counsel]

Tags: Connecticut, EEOC, guns, labor unions, Missouri, schools, taxes, wage and hour suits, workplace

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

March 21 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 04:11:06 +0000

Shame on DoJ: “Systematic concealment” of evidence when feds prosecuted Sen. Ted Stevens [WaPo, Caleb Mason/Prawfs] NYT notes feds’ losing streak in Foreign Corrupt Practices Act prosecutions [NYT, our latest]
Italy: tax officials stop luxury cars, demand drivers’ most recent tax returns [Secular Right]
Pinterest: casual users (perhaps especially casual users) might be opening themselves to copyright liability [DDK Portraits, WSJ Law Blog] And in case you needed a reminder not to publish photos grabbed from random web sources… [Webcopyplus]
In new Atlantic special report, Philip K. Howard collects papers on outdated government law and regulation from contributors Robert Litan, Julie Barnes, Mark Warner, Jim Cooper;
Institute for Justice sues IRS over its new licensing requirements for tax preparers [Ilya Shapiro and Chaim Gordon/Cato, Paul Caron/TaxProf, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Barton Hinkle]
“It is acceptable to refer to all court proceedings as a ‘trial,’ because seriously, you ever sat through one of those things?” [@FakeAPStylebook]
Christopher Booker series on child-snatching by UK authorities [Telegraph: first, second, third]

Tags: Child Protective Services, humor, Italy, Philip K. Howard, photography, prosecutorial abuse, taxes, taxpayers, United Kingdom

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

European roundup

Walter Olson — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 05:05:33 +0000

Overseas press excoriates new FATCA tax-Americans’-foreign-earnings law; some foreign banks now turn away American customers [Dan Mitchell, Cato, Reason] “The Fatca story is really kind of insane.” [Caplin & Drysdale's H. David Rosenbloom, NYT via TaxProf] Will Congress back down? [Peter Spiro/OJ, more]
Important new book from James Maxeiner (University of Baltimore) and co-authors Gyooho Lee and Armin Weber on what the U.S. can learn from legal procedure overseas: “Failures of American Civil Justice in International Perspective” [TortsProf]
Don’t do it: British administration mulls further move away from loser-pays rule in search of — what exactly, a yet more Americanized litigation culture? [Guardian, Law Society]
Apparently in Norway it’s possible to lose one’s kids by feeding them by hand [Shikha Dalmia, Reason]
Financial transaction tax? Ask the Swedes how that worked out [Mike "Mish" Shedlock, Business Insider]
Notes from conference on globalization of class actions [Karlsgodt] Related: Adam Zimmerman;
“Another conviction in Europe for insulting religion” [Volokh; Polish pop star] Campus secularists’ speech under fire in the U.K. as “Jesus and Mo” controversy spreads to LSE [Popehat] British speech prosecution of soccer star [Suneal Bedi and William Marra, NRO]

Tags: Child Protective Services, Europe, free speech, hate speech, loser pays, Norway, Sweden, taxes, United Kingdom

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

January 31 roundup

Walter Olson — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 05:06:21 +0000

Latest of periodic Towers Watson (formerly Towers Perrin/Tillinghast) surveys: tort costs fell in 2010 excluding oil spill liability [Towers Watson]
“Will Newt Neuter the Courts?” [James Huffman, Defining Ideas] Obama’s high court appointees are fortunately friendlier toward civil liberties than he is [Steve Chapman]
Unanimous Cal Supremes: companies not legally responsible for other companies’ asbestos products used as replacement for theirs [Cal Biz Lit, Jackson, Beck, Mass Tort Prof]
Claim: jurors considered policy implications of verdict and you can’t have that [On Point; defense verdict in Baltimore, Maryland school-bullying case]
Airfare display mandate: “‘Protecting’ Consumers from the Truth About the Cost of Government” [Thom Lambert, TotM]
Critical assessment of AP-backed new copyright aggregator “NewsRight” [Mike Masnick] Promises not to be “Righthaven 2.0″ [Cit Media Law]
Restatement (Third) of Torts drafters vs. Enlightenment scientific views of causation [David Oliver in June]

Tags: airlines, asbestos, Baltimore, Barack Obama, bullying, California, deep pocket, juries, Newt Gingrich, RightHaven, taxes, Tillinghast, toxic torts

January 31 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“Passing along” our new tax? Tell it to the judge, mate

Walter Olson — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 19:17:57 +0000

The official Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is menacing businesses with audits, “substantiation notices” and potentially stiff fines if they tell customers — even over the phone or in emails — that future price hikes on goods or services are the result of the nation’s newly adopted carbon tax. I discuss at Cato at Liberty (& Mark Hemingway, Weekly Standard).

Tags: advertising, Australia, climate change, Federal Trade Commission, taxes

“Passing along” our new tax? Tell it to the judge, mate is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

October 27 roundup

Walter Olson — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 12:41:10 +0000

“Table Saw without ‘saw stop’ technology defective: First Circuit” [George Conk, Ted Frank, earlier here, here]
Court OKs burned patron’s flaming-rum suit against Bacardi [Reuters]
Feds won’t pursue Title IX complaint against 60 Oregon school districts [Oregonian]
IRS putting the squeeze on small tax preparers [WaPo]
How the incinerator (and decades of bad decisions) bankrupted Harrisburg [Bond Girl]
“The most thoughtful, reasonable guy in the whole symposium” — aw [Greenfield on law licensing, earlier] P.S. And similarly from David Lat;
Adam Freedman and readers on Florida “wrongful birth” case [Ricochet, earlier]

Tags: alcohol, product liability, small business, taxes, Title IX, wrongful birth and wrongful life

October 27 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“Byzantium was far less complicated than any modern government.”

Walter Olson — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 12:53:27 +0000

So maybe it’s time to find a new way of expressing the idea of our Byzantine tax code, the Byzantine regulations of federal agencies, and so forth. [Brian Palmer, Slate; link fixed now, thanks reader Bob]

Tags: regulation and its reform, taxes

“Byzantium was far less complicated than any modern government.” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

No more tax avoidance strategy patents?

Walter Olson — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 14:46:58 +0000

The new patent reform bill may end, or at least restrict, the odd practice of asserting patents on ways to reduce tax liability. [Legal Ethics Forum, earlier here, here, etc.]

Tags: patent law, taxes

No more tax avoidance strategy patents? is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

August 4 roundup

Walter Olson — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 16:45:14 +0000

Burning Man, risk, and self-reliance [Claire Gordon, related]
Jacob Sullum challenges Mark “tax-the-snacks” Bittman [Reason; related, Rick Esenberg] “Fat tax” would be hard to target, hard to enforce, disliked by voters [David Gratzer]
“CSX claims racketeering in Pittsburgh law firm’s legal tactics” [Post-Gazette; earlier here, here, here, etc.] A different view: Max Kennerly.
Complaints over new class-action law in Canada [Reuters]
Minnesota preacher sues Rachel Maddow [TVNewser, Mother Jones]
Does the new Texas loser-pays bill go far enough? [Kyle Baum, WLF, earlier]
Tell us about it: “Why the Right to Criticize Lawyers is Vital” [Hans Bader, CEI]

Tags: asbestos, Canada, claims fraud, class actions, libel slander and defamation, loser pays, obesity, Pittsburgh, taxes, Texas

August 4 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system