- Self-service arrangement: Pennsylvania judge charged with fixing her own parking tickets [Lancaster Online]
- Economist cover story: “Over-regulated America“. Obama hesitant about heavy-handed regulation? Really? [Veronique de Rugy, NRO]
- Argument for letting money market funds “break the buck” without federal backstop [David Henderson, EconLog]
- Suing apps makers? “Entertainment Lawyers Go Wild for ‘Secondary’ Copyright Lawsuits” [WSJ Law Blog] SWAT raid on Kiwi copyright scofflaw? [Balko] Despite its editor’s views, NYT finds it hard to avoid breaching copyright laws itself [Carly Carioli, Boston Phoenix] “Contempt Sanctions Imposed on Copyright Troll Evan Stone” [Paul Alan Levy] More: “obscene materials can’t be copyrighted” offered as defense in illegal download case [Kerr]
- Tenure terror: “Teacher in Los Angeles molest case reportedly paid $40G to drop appeal of firing” [AP]
- FDA rejects lead-in-lipstick scare campaign [ACSH vs. Environmental Working Group]
- A horror story of eyewitness I.D. [claim of DNA exoneration in Va. rape case; AP via Scott Greenfield]
Tagged as:
banks,
copyright,
cosmetics,
eyewitness testimony,
judges,
Los Angeles,
New York Times,
New Zealand,
Pennsylvania,
regulation and its reform,
teacher tenure
- Educator: please don’t bring lawyers to parent-teacher meetings [Ron Clark, CNN] Steve Brill: what I found when I investigated NYC teacher “rubber rooms” [Reuters] “The Six Dumbest Things Schools Are Doing in the Name of Safety” [Cracked] School waterfall liability [Lincoln, Neb. Journal-Star]
- As predicted: “Dodd-Frank Paperwork a Bonanza for Consultants and Lawyers” [NYT]
- “Running out of common drugs” [Josh Bloom, NY Post] Pharmaceutical shortages: the role of Medicare price controls [Richard Epstein, Hoover; earlier here, here, etc.]
- DoT insists on exposing private flight plans online. Yoo-hoo, privacy advocates? [Steve Chapman]
- New class action law in Mexico includes loser-pays provision [WSJ]
- Newt Gingrich candidacy revives memories of his 1995 call for death penalty (with “mass executions”) for drug smuggling [NYT archive via Josh Barro; see also @timothy_watson "Sounds kinda like Shariah Law to me.")
- "Cy pres slush fund in Georgia under ethics investigation" [PoL]
Tagged as:
aviation,
class actions,
cy pres,
Georgia,
illegal drugs,
loser pays,
Mexico,
pharmaceuticals,
schools,
teacher tenure
An arbitrator has reinstated 75 teachers dismissed by the Washington, D.C. school system during their 2-year probationary period — not after achieving tenure — for such infractions as perennial absence or tardiness, “rude and aggressive” behavior and “sketchy or nonexistent lesson plans.” “[Arbitrator Charles] Feigenbaum said that the teachers had been denied due process because they were not given reasons for their terminations. It’s a mind-boggling decision that essentially affords probationary teachers some of the rights that protect tenured teachers.” [Washington Post editorial] For another indication of the legal constraints on employee selection faced by the D.C. schools, see this 2001 post.
Tagged as:
teacher tenure,
Washington D.C.
Julie Mack, Kalamazoo Gazette (via Mark Hemingway, Examiner):
In 1993, Chelsea High School teacher Stephen Leith shot to death his superintendent and wounded his principal and another teacher during a confrontation at the school. Leith was convicted of homicide and given a life sentence; from prison, he continued to pursue an appeal of his firing from Chelsea Public Schools, blaming his actions on medication.
“He murdered his superintendent. It’s crazy,” said Tom White, associate director of labor relations for [the] Michigan School Board Association.
Tagged as:
Michigan,
teacher tenure
“An Ohio public school teacher accused of burning the mark of a cross on students’ arms said Friday he dropped a lawsuit over his firing because it would have interfered with a public airing of his complaint in a different venue.” [AP via Ed Brayton, earlier]
Tagged as:
Ohio,
religious discrimination,
teacher tenure
Press coverage of the “rubber rooms” was just too embarrassing, though it’s not clear that the new arrangements will solve much [Tabarrok; earlier here, here, etc.]
Tagged as:
NYC,
teacher tenure
A dismissed teacher’s case against the school system in Lowell is now before Massachusetts’s Supreme Judicial Court. Phanna Rem Robishaw, a native of Cambodia originally hired to teach bilingual programs, had received favorable evaluations for years but received an unsatisfactory rating in English fluency after the state began requiring that teachers be tested on that skill. An arbitrator reinstated her but a state court judge reversed the reinstatement, terming her performance on an interview test tape “utterly incomprehensible”. Robishaw’s lawyer says the arbitrator excluded the tape from evidence and that the judge should not have considered it, and that the judge failed to observe the presumption against overturning arbitration results. “In 2002, Massachusetts’ voters passed Question 2, requiring all school superintendents to attest to the English fluency and literacy of their teachers where ‘the teacher’s fluency is not apparent through classroom observation and assessment or interview assessment.’” [Lowell Sun]
Readers with long memories will recall the 1990s controversy over a hard-to-understand foreign-born teacher in Westfield, Mass. which led Massachusetts voters to adopt Question 2; I wrote about it for Reason here. By coincidence, presumably, Robishaw attended Westfield State College.
Tagged as:
language bias,
Massachusetts,
teacher tenure
- There are “almost certainly” many innocent persons in prison today wrongly convicted of shaking a baby to death [Radley Balko, Reason] Harris County, Texas forensic examiner under scrutiny [same, Reason "Hit and Run"] L.A. Times on forensics reform [same]
- Feds order large private insurer Humana to pull criticisms of Obama health plan from its website [David Henderson, Eugene Volokh and followup]
- Why would anyone market lawyers’ services through blog comment spam? Especially at Popehat? [first and second posts]
- “Revolving door” for officials of regulatory agencies tends to lead to law firms [Naked Capitalism]
- Tenure trouble: teacher’s union head “would protect a dead body in the classroom” [Ron Bailey, Reason on Brill "Rubber Room" article, earlier]
- Google asked to unmask user in another defamation suit (Turks & Caicos developer) [Brian Kumnick, FindLaw "Injured"]
- “Fired Ave Maria Law Prof Gets Tenure in Whistle-Blower Settlement, Lawyer Says” [ABA Journal, background Washington Monthly]
- Ted Frank on Ameritrade settlement [Center for Class Action Fairness, earlier]
Tagged as:
class action settlements,
free speech,
Google,
Houston,
law schools,
teacher tenure,
Ted Frank
Having been critical of the Los Angeles Times yesterday, let me accord all due credit to the paper for its investigative series on the near-impossibility of firing teachers in L.A. The district has spent more than $2 million, for example, trying to get rid of Matthew Kim, a special ed teacher accused of harassing teenagers and colleagues who has been collecting full salary for seven years without actually teaching. One underlying problem: “Kids don’t have a union.” Bloggers react: Ken @ Popehat, Mickey Kaus, Amy Alkon, Brian Doherty. Meanwhile, reports Seyward Darby in the New Republic (via Nick Gillespie), “About 1,400 teachers in New York City are receiving full salaries and benefits even though they don’t have permanent jobs. Two hundred and five of them have been without full-time work for three years. And they can continue receiving payments indefinitely even if they never secure new positions.” It’s called the Absent Teacher Reserve.
Tagged as:
labor unions,
Los Angeles,
teacher tenure
