- Bill McKibben et al press Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against energy producers, hint at direct action [Andrew Sullivan]
- Billion-dollar compensation program may be unstoppable, though: “Cancer Not Increased by Exposure to World Trade Center 9/11 Attack Debris” [Ronald Bailey, Ted Frank/PoL, earlier here, here, here, here, etc.]
- “EPA cries ‘uncle’ in face of lawsuit, withdraws threat against W.Va. chicken farmer” [David Martosko, Daily Caller]
- Jim Manzi finds lead-and-crime thesis less “blindingly obvious” than does Kevin Drum [NRO, and Drum's response]
- In state’s dispute with EPA, plenty of Virginia moderates think federal agency has overreached [A. Barton Hinkle, Richmond Times-Dispatch]
- “Lawsuits seek to generate “awareness” of global warming, costs states a bundle” [@andrewmgrossman on Laurence Hurley/EENews story; Michael Greve/Liberty and Law]
- EPA’s departing Jackson has been poster child for “we can’t wait” governance approach [Jim Huffman]
Posts tagged as:
West Virginia
- Pittsburgh firm sued in W.V.: “Law Firm Hit With $429,000 Verdict Over Faked Asbestos Suits” [Daniel Fisher]
- “Mashantucket tribal leaders indicted in theft” [Norwich Bulletin; My 2004 take on Connecticut's pioneering casino tribe]
- New Mexico: “Booster Club Parents Fed up with Regs” [Saving Sports] No, you can’t blame football for Title IX-driven cuts at Mount St. Mary’s [same; University of Maryland Big Ten angle]
- How about this compromise: Gannett publishes where gun owners live, but agrees to do so using Apple Maps.
- On a more serious note, some thoughts on the efficacy of popular gun-control measures in preventing mass shootings [Steve Chapman, Larry Correia, Cato on gun control] “During our negotiations, it wasn’t the NRA that was opposed to putting the names of people receiving anti-psychotic medication into the Instant Check database…it was advocates for the mentally ill.” [Josh Tzuker quoted by Tom Coale]
- “FBI Arrests 26 People for Immigration Fraud; 21 from Law Firms” [Legal Ethics Forum]
- Would anyone notice if we abolished the Cabinet position of Secretary of Commerce? [Ira Stoll]
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- If you file a tag-along injury claim over a mishap on the city bus, remember that surveillance cameras might be able to establish whether you were on the bus at the time [Philadelphia, Chamber-backed Pennsylvania Record]
- Baltimore, West Virginia among jurisdictions licked by flames in new “Judicial Hellhole” report [ATRA] Related? “New ad damnum law in Maryland” [Ron Miller]
- Ohio calls on asbestos claimants to notify adversaries about others they’ve sued for exposure, which is only fair [WSJ editorial, Daniel Fisher, Forbes, Buckeye Institute PDF]
- “Did the Founders’ Constitution Permit Federal Tort Reform?” [Randy Barnett and commenters]
- NY trial lawyers’ big-league political spending [NYP] [Lawsuit Reform Alliance of New York, PDF]
- Dueling theories on helicopter crash [AZCentral.com]
- “2012 Spot the Tort Contest” [LawHaha]
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- Adventures in causation: Per $19 million Mississippi verdict, fumes from leftover gasoline caused birth defects, asthma [Insurance Journal]
- Legal academia watch: lawprof proposes massive expansion of liability for parents [TortsProf]
- University of Virginia’s torts giant: “A Tribute To Jeffrey O’Connell” [U.Va. Dean Paul Mahoney, Virginia Law Review (PDF) via TortsProf]
- “Proposed civil justice reform in Canada” [Ted Frank]
- “Town Owes $10M To Pupil Paralyzed In School Beating” [New Jersey Law Journal; Irvington, N.J.]
- Businesses steer clear of Philadelphia litigation climate [Jim Copland, Inquirer; Trial Lawyers Inc. update]
- Longtime West Virginia attorney general Darrell McGraw, disliked by business, toppled in re-election bid [Charleston Gazette-Mail]
Errant West Virginia attorney: “Mr. Robinson committed a criminal offense by beating Mr. Gump, his client, with a baseball bat” [Charleston Gazette]
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- Vice President Biden raises at least hundreds of thousands of dollars at AAJ annual convention in Chicago [PoL] Romney’s law and legal policy team [Brian Baxter, AmLaw Daily]
- Law star Ted Cruz advances toward Senate [David Lat, AtL]
- Can Republicans make hay out of Democrats’ platform endorsement of same-sex marriage? New Pew poll, as well as May polling round, offers reasons to doubt that [my new post at Maryland for All Families]
- “Why Citizens United Has Nothing to Do with What Ails American Politics” [Ilya Shapiro, The American, more]
- Bridgeport mayor Joseph Ganim, of gun-suit fame, a step closer to getting law license back after serving 7-year prison term for corruption [Courant] Eight more indictments as the Connecticut corruption scandals roll on [Conn Post]
- Rob McKenna’s star on rise in Washington; he’s pursued public-liability reform as the state’s attorney general [Daily Caller, earlier]
- Bypassing public financing, West Virginia judicial candidates pour their own injury-law fortunes into races [Richie Heath, Charleston Daily Mail]
- “How hot is it in DC today? Congressman Paul is using a paper money substitute because his actual money melted.” [Tim Carney]
The case is from West Virginia, and Lowering the Bar and Rob Beschizza/BoingBoing have the details.
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“Ye Gave Children Joy, And Exercise Too/It’s Too Bad Those Parents Decided To Sue.” An epitaph on a West Virginia county’s swing sets [KaBOOM.org]
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In Cabell County, West Virginia, “in part because of lawsuits over injuries.” [AP] More: Investor’s Business Daily (editorial). Another view: Eric Turkewitz.
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“Ludicrous claims shouldn’t have caused U.S. District Joseph Goodwin to reject a class action over economic damages from heart medicine Digitek, according to Fred Thompson of Motley Rice.” [Chamber-backed WV Record] The background of the court action is interesting too:
Litigation began in 2008, after Actavis Totowa discovered 20 pills of double thickness in a batch at its plant in Little Falls, New Jersey.
Actavis Totowa recalled the batch, and no plaintiff has produced a double thick pill.
Some plaintiffs nevertheless claimed personal injuries and wrongful death. Others claimed only economic damages.
Thompson sought certification of a national economic damages class or single state classes in West Virginia, New Jersey, Kansas and Kentucky.
Judge Goodwin found that the claimants were too disparate in their posture to be joined appropriately as members of a single class; some had put in for the cost of such things as eyeglasses and enemas.
- Real-life Lysistrata: “Kenyan man sues over sex boycott ‘stress’” [Telegraph]
- Kagan record not reassuring on campaign-speech issues [Allison Hayward, CCP, Daniel Shuchman/Reason] A “fair-weather originalist”? [Ilya Shapiro, Cato]
- Eugene Volokh thinks the Court made the right call in the student-group-recognition Christian Legal Society case, while Richard Epstein thinks it didn’t;
- Coverage of Ted Frank’s objection in A.G. Edwards settlement [Daniel Fisher, Forbes; Bill McClellan, St. Louis Post-Dispatch]
- West Virginia: “Was DuPont railroaded in Harrison County?” [Don Surber]
- “Predicate” approach hasn’t always worked well as way to curb government privacy incursions [Stewart Baker]
- “Florida Court Tosses Out $522 Million Verdict Against Accounting Firm” [Daily Business Review]
- Justice Department dereliction? “Inside the Black Panther case” [J. Christian Adams, Washington Times]
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Sorry, says the West Virginia high court, but renewing your lapsed auto insurance policy the day after your crash won’t fly [WV Record] The decision reversed a lower court ruling ordering Progressive Insurance to pay the claim, which had been filed not by the driver but by a bank and car dealer.
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A Charleston, W.V. defendant said it would be OK for the victim of his alleged petty larceny to give him a slap by way of punishment. A prosecutor conveyed the offer, subsequently dropped the charges, and got into a bit of hot water as a result. [AP/WSAZ, Greenfield]
Last week twenty-eight Democratic senators sent a letter (PDF) to Acting CPSC Chair Nancy Nord the gist of which can be summed up as, “Never mind the law we passed, start enforcing the more reasonable law we wish we’d passed”. Neat move, if somewhat at odds with the concept of the “rule of law”.
Rick Woldenberg scrutinizes the politics (with particular attention to ATVs/minibikes) and also points out something seldom brought out in press accounts: the last 23 commission votes on CPSIA have been settled by 2-0 votes, with reputedly “good” CPSC commissioner Thomas Moore (cozy with Congress, vocally pro-CPSIA, a Democrat) voting exactly the same way as Nord, the reputedly “bad” commissioner (at odds with Congress, unenthusiastic about much of CPSIA, known to be a Republican, etc.)
Which particular decisions, one wonders, would have turned out differently had some new appointee been installed in the vacant third seat, as Rep. Henry Waxman is reputedly demanding as a precondition for even considering hearings on the law? Woldenberg makes the same point today in a Chicago Tribune letter to the editor, responding to an exceptionally lame April 4 editorial in that paper. More on CPSC politics: news-side WSJ; Nord responds to attack from Sen. Durbin, and requests that President Obama name permanent chair to replace her (more). (Update: the National Law Journal is out with coverage of the “furor” CPSIA has set off in Washington).
On a brighter note, AmendTheCPSIA has posted videos (slow loading) of the Capitol Hill rally two weeks ago to demand action on the law. Here’s the video of dirtbike racing dad Rod Yentzer and 6-year-old (!) son Chase:
And here’s bike dealer Steve Burnside of DSD Kawasaki in Parkersburg, West Virginia:
Also, Carol Baicker-McKee has a another excellent post on the rally, while Rick Woldenberg discusses the politics of the event. Earlier rally coverage here.
Public domain image: Yankee Mother Goose (1902), illustrator Ella S. Brison, courtesy ChildrensLibrary.org.
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[Broken link on CPSC surveillance program fixed now.]
- The internet is a-hum with reactions to a proposal by West Virginia state representative Jeff Eldridge (D-Big Ugly) to ban Barbie dolls “and other similar dolls that promote or influence girls to place an undue importance on physical beauty to the detriment of their intellectual and emotional development.” That idea is predictably going nowhere (at least in West Virginia: Montpelier, Vt. is said to have voted a Barbie ban*), but Eldridge can perhaps take consolation in that CPSIA has already (with virtually no media taking note of the fact) banned the sale of vast numbers of vintage Barbies that pose equal dangers of symbolic or psychological impairment, if not of actual physical dangers. This 1999 New York Times piece describes how Mattel was “beginning an effort to eliminate” the use of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) compounds in the dolls, and that environmental activist groups contended that PVC often included lead as well as (less surprisingly) the plastic softeners phthalates, some but not all of which are banned by the law.
As Denise Van Patten noted in an About.com write-up in January, it is not clear what old dolls are still going to be lawful to sell, distribute or give away under CPSIA, if they cannot be fit into the “adult collectible” exception that covers items so expensive they will be kept out of children’s hands. Soft plastic is only the beginning of the problem. Most older dolls have paint as a component — often only in the rendering of the eyes, but that’s enough to count as a resale red flag under the CPSC’s Feb. 9 guidelines. Hair and dyed fabric, both of unknown composition? Buttons or snaps in the garment, or worse yet, rhinestones? About the only such plaything a thrift shop would not advised to discard under the guidelines would be an unpainted and unvarnished rigid humanoid figurine of raw wood or cast aluminum. If your child does find one of those on a thrift store shelf, she’s welcome to cuddle it all she pleases. - Carol Baicker McKee is a children’s book author and illustrator who commented eloquently (more) on one of our earlier posts about books. Now she has a great post explaining why, although she “never used to think of myself as an activist,” she’s thrown herself into the fight to change this law. As she points out, some things changed, but other things didn’t change, when the CPSC announced a short safe list of presumptively lawful material for children’s products along with a one-year stay on many testing requirements (but not on the banning of goods that flunk the thresholds). She explains why “the stays provide only the illusion of relief,” and that “when the stay ends a year from now, the destructive testing provisions will still go into effect for all children’s products except the small percentage that have been given a reprieve – the costs of that testing will force the remaining small businesses that have limped along this year into oblivion (and the [requirement for] destructive testing will obviously signal the end of one of a kind products).” Read the whole thing.
- In a classic 1850 pamphlet, Frederic Bastiat writes of “what is seen, and what is not seen” when people recommend government solution to a problem. Deputy Headmistress writes of “what Congress didn’t see“. More: Patrick Stephens on a similar theme last month.
- A Georgia newspaper quotes CPSC spokeswoman Arlene Flecha as saying that “her agency will have inspectors make unannounced visits to stores throughout the country and will randomly conduct tests on products.” And if you’re wondering about the CPSC “Internet surveillance project”, in which agents of the commission pose as consumers in order to
trapdetect persons selling forbidden goods on eBay or Craigslist, you can find out more about that here (link fixed now). - At the Heritage Foundation’s InsiderOnline blog, Alex Adrianson has a detail-filled though not lengthy post that would make a good short introduction to the subject to send to (say) a lawmaker.
- Allison Loudermilk at the How Stuff Works blogs takes a look at the law’s heavy impact on thrift stores (“the selection at your local thrift store just got a whole lot slimmer”), while the PTA Thrift Shop of Carrboro, N.C. regrets to inform its customers that it’s out of kids’ resale entirely due to the law; things are only a little better in Salem, Ore. Manager Lisa Sonnek of the York, Nebraska Goodwill has pulled all the children’s clothing, toys, furniture, and pre-1985 books, in accord with policy from above, but has put aside “some clean children’s clothing, in anticipation of the policy being modified in the near future”. Dunno – that might depend on Henry Waxman’s heart melting or something.
*Although numerous online sources report as fact a Montpelier Barbie “ban”, commenter Barb says it’s far from clear that the reports have much of a factual basis.
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Yes, he’s back in court: Dr. John A. King is now suing, for $50 million, the lawyer he hired to sue the three law firms that represented him previously. “King has an extensive history of suing hospitals who terminated his privileges, medical boards who took away his licenses and lawyers he hired to represent him.” Putnam General Hospital, where he previously practiced, and HCA have paid out around $100 million to settle claims against King. [Charleston Sunday Gazette-Mail].
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The American Tort Reform Association is out with its annual ranking of the jurisdictions where it thinks civil defendants are farthest from being assured a fair trial, and they are:
- West Virginia
- South Florida
- Cook County, Ill.
- Atlantic County, NJ
- Montgomery and Macon Counties, Ala.
- Los Angeles County, CA
- Clark County (Las Vegas), Nev.
The list reflects the views of big-company managers and lawyers as to tort lawsuits; a poll of, say, doctors might result in different nominations (Brooklyn, Bronx, Long Island*, Philadelphia) and one of class-action or patent-infringement defendants would likely produce yet other lists.
ATRA has a supplementary “Watch List”, nicknamed by some of us “Heckholes”, of toasty but not quite infernal jurisdictions, on which it places the Rio Grande Valley and Gulf Coast of Texas, Madison County, Ill., Baltimore, Md., and St. Louis city and county and Jackson County, Mo. It also offers side essays on notable scandals among high-rolling lawyers, trial lawyer-AG alliances, and pro-plaintiff’s-bar lobbying efforts.
Some coverage of the report: Pero, ShopFloor (with this and this on AG alliances), Ambrogi, Genova, CalBizLit (“We’re Number 6! We’re Number 6!), TortsProf, Miller (Baltimore), and Turkewitz (cross-posted from Point of Law; also note this recent post).
* Commenter VMS makes a case that Long Island does not belong on such a list.
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- You are cordially invited to a fishing expedition for lawsuits over energy drink/alcohol mixes. RSVP: Center for Science in the Public Interest [Balko, Reason "Hit and Run"]
- Recent Overlawyered guestblogger Victoria Pynchon mediates an ADA claim against a Long Beach motel owner. Extortion? Fair compromise? Both? Neither? [Settle It Now, scroll]
- 19-year-old Ciara Sauro of Pittsburgh is disabled, in medical debt, and waiting for transplant, crowning touch is the $8,000 default judgment RIAA got against her for downloading 10 songs [Ambrogi]
- “It does not take a graduate degree to understand that it is unacceptable to hide evidence and lie in a deposition” — Seventh Circuit sanctions Amtrak worker for dodgery in workplace-injury suit [Ohio Employers' Law; Negrete v. Nat’l Railroad Pass, PDF]
- New Richard Nixon tapes: “I can’t have a high-minded lawyer … I want a son-of-a-b—-.” [Althouse]
- Aramark suit documents unsealed: girl paralyzed by drunk driver got $25 million in suit against New York Giants stadium beer vendor [AP/Vineland, N.J. Daily Journal, earlier]
- New York high court bounces Alice Lawrence/Graubard Miller fee suit back to lower courts, says more info needed [NYLJ, earlier]
- Couple claims retention of $1,075 rental security deposit was racially motivated, seeks $20 million [WV Record; Martinsburg, W.Va.]
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