A 3-2 vote at the Consumer Product Safety Commission last week ensures that the federal government will put its imprimatur behind allegations about supposed hazards in consumer products — whether true or not. I explain in a new post at Cato at Liberty.
P.S. Kelly Young comments: “I wonder if they’d be willing to maintain a public database of complaints against federal employees?” More: Coyote (comparing relative sophistication of Amazon, TripAdvisor consumer ratings systems with primitive nature of CPSC’s); letter from Rep. Joe Barton, PDF; Washington Post; ACSH.
Tagged as:
CPSC,
CPSIA,
CPSIA and Congress,
U.S. House of Representatives
- White House panel’s counsel: no evidence corner-cutting caused Gulf spill [NYT, Reuters] Furor ensues [WaPo]
- Report: grief counselors assigned to Democratic congressional staffers [Maggie Haberman, Politico]
- “Lawyer Sues for Humiliation and Lost Business Due to Misspelled Yellowbook Ad” [ABA Journal, South Dakota]
- Argument today in important Supreme Court case, AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion: will courts respect freedom of contract in consumer arbitration context, or yield Litigation Lobby the monopoly it seeks over dispute resolution? [Ted at PoL]
- No search warrant needed: armed deputies in Orlando storm unlicensed barbershops, handcuff barbers [Balko, Reason "Hit and Run"]
- After Colorado hit-run, banker allowed to plead down to misdemeanors lest his job be at risk [Greenfield]
- FDA to decide whether to ban menthol in cigarettes [CEI]
- Reshuffling blackjack decks is not “racketeering” [ten years ago on Overlawyered]
Tagged as:
arbitration,
BP Transocean oil spill,
chasing clients,
South Dakota,
tobacco,
U.S. House of Representatives
- Representing Prof. Michael Krauss, Ted Frank will file objection to Classmates.com class action settlement [CCAF]
- Not without condescension, Harvard historian/New Yorker writer Jill Lepore asks why Woodrow Wilson’s so disliked these days; Radley Balko offers some help [The Agitator, NYT "Room for Debate"]
- China needs true private property rights, according to Charter 08 document, which helped Liu Xiaobo win Nobel Peace Prize [Tyler Cowen]
- Axelrod “foreign funders under every rug” demagogy might be turned against his own allies [Stoll; New York Times refutes earlier Obama talking point; Atlantic Wire; Sullum]
- R.I.P. influential class actions and mass torts scholar Richard Nagareda [Vanderbilt Law School]
- “Web Seminar Makes Case for Patent Troll Lawsuit Targets to Fight Back” [Washington Legal Foundation Legal Pulse]
- Contrary to WSJ report, if Congressional staffers are profiting in stock trades by way of insider knowledge, they probably do face some risk of legal liability [Bainbridge; a not entirely unrelated inside-trading controversy]
- Underpublicized: “California’s Proposed ‘Green Chemistry’ Regulations Move Forward” [Wajert]
Tagged as:
California,
campaign regulation,
class action settlements,
patent trolls,
Senate,
Ted Frank,
U.S. House of Representatives
- Update: “Tax Panel Rejects Lawyer’s Bid to Deduct Spending for Sex” [NYLJ, William Barrett/Forbes, earlier] And: “Musings on laws affecting adult entertainment, alcoholic beverages and other ‘vice’ industries” [Meeting the Sin Laws blog]
- Mississippi: judge jails lawyer for not saying Pledge of Allegiance [Freeland]
- More on much-written-about Israeli “rape by fraud” case [Volokh, more, earlier here and here]
- “Tribune bankruptcy talks complicated by emergence of pugnacious hedge fund” [Romenesko; earlier on involvement of hedge funds in bankruptcies]
- More disturbing tales from Connecticut probate court [Rick Green, Hartford Courant, earlier]
- Marc Williams of the Defense Research Institute responds to Ted Frank’s criticism of many defense lawyers [PoL]
- Advice for Australians: to fix your litigation system, look to Germany’s success [Ackland, Sydney Morning Herald]
- Rep. John Hall (D-N.Y.) & ’70s band Orleans threaten suit against GOP remix ["Orleans Reunion Tour"]
Tagged as:
Australia,
bankruptcy,
Connecticut,
defense lawyers,
Germany,
Mississippi,
music and musicians,
strippers and exotic dancers,
taxes,
U.S. House of Representatives,
wills and trusts
“One of the countless drawbacks of being in Congress is that I am compelled to receive impertinent letters from a jackass like you in which you say I promised to have the Sierra Madre mountains reforested and I have been in Congress two months and haven’t done it. Will you please take two running jumps and go to hell.”
– Congressman John McGroarty, engaged in constituent service (1934).
(via Magliocca/Concur Op).
Tagged as:
U.S. House of Representatives
Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.), who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, posted documents purporting to show that Toyota held onto safety documents it was supposed to turn over to opponents in litigation. Turns out the documents had been shoddily snipped, edited and mischaracterized to advance the charges against the automaker. [Christine Tierney, Detroit News via Henry Payne, NRO; more background on whistleblower controversy, The Recorder last year]
Tagged as:
Toyota,
U.S. House of Representatives
A compulsory subpoena could follow if they don’t fork over information on “compensation of highly paid employees” and “expenses stemming from any event held outside company facilities in the past 2 1/2 years”, among other topics. As AP notes, industries that vocally support, rather than oppose, health care reform aren’t targets of the investigation. More: Politico.
Tagged as:
Henry Waxman,
insurers,
subpoenas,
U.S. House of Representatives
Forbes is just up with a new, improved version of my piece on the amazing trial lawyer bonanza that someone quietly tucked into last week’s draft of the health care bill. An earlier version of the piece ran at Overlawyered on Friday. The Forbes version takes note of the names of the House members who were pushing for and against the idea on the Ways & Means panel. Michelle Malkin gives it a recommendation here.
P.S. Some kind words, as well as a link, from Ashby Jones at the WSJ Law Blog (calling us “the granddaddy of legal blogs”). Plus: Don Surber, Charleston (W.V.) Daily Mail, Bainbridge, Wood/ShopFloor, Riehl World View, Bader/CEI “Open Market”.
Tagged as:
accolades,
Medicare,
ObamaCare,
qui tam,
U.S. House of Representatives,
WO writings
Left-leaning author, lawyer and union advocate Thomas Geoghegan is running for Rahm Emanuel’s House seat in Chicago. I’ve often in the past recommended Geoghegan’s first book on labor unions Which Side Are You On?, because of its force and originality, despite my (pretty much diametric) opposition to most of his ideas policy-wise.
His most recent book See You in Court: How the Right Made America a Lawsuit Nation (2007, New Press, and out in paperback this month) showed independence of mind and a willingness to rethink received ideas, as usual, but disappointed in other respects. For one thing, Geoghegan seemed more interested in blowing off steam against conservatives and litigation reformers than in trying to understand what they actually think about the issues he raised. The result was that some of his shots fell very wide of the mark, while he missed other points that might have advanced his case. Ted wrote a much more extended critique of the book that is linked here.
Note, however, that commenter “Vail Beach” stopped by the other day to offer a more positive assessment of “Lawsuit Nation” that is worth giving thought to. The House race, at any rate, should be fun to watch. More: Kaus.
Tagged as:
Chicago,
labor unions,
Thomas Geoghegan,
U.S. House of Representatives
