My friendly argument with Michael Krauss over federalism and gun litigation (he thinks the Constitution bars national pre-emption, I don’t) just began at PointOfLaw.com. I’ve just posted my initial volley, and Michael tells me he’ll have a response ready to post this morning. We’ll be going through Thursday or Friday, exploring different aspects of the issue. Stop by and, if the issue interests you, check in often for updates.
Archive for July, 2004
Initiative battles
In Florida, the state supreme court has certified for the fall ballot a doctor-backed initiative (see Mar. 1) that would cut lawyers’ fees in malpractice cases, and also three lawyer-backed “revenge” initiatives aimed at the doctors. And in Colorado, a proposed amendment is headed for the ballot that would write into the state constitution broad rights to sue over construction defects. Major battles are expected on both — details at Point Of Law (Fla., Colo.).
Guest Blogger Emerges
Hello folks, my name is Jim Leitzel and I generally hang out at Vice Squad. But the Overlawyered denizens have been kind enough to share their pixels with me this week, so here I am. I’ll probably talk mostly about vice, but I am an economist, not a lawyer, so I won’t be able to hold up my end of the lawyerly dialogue.
I’ll start with a quiz (though I won’t vouch for the correctness of my suggested answer). Imagine that you are concerned about three U.S. health-related problems: suicide, cancer, and sexually-transmitted diseases. Alas, you are limited to implementing only one policy reform. What should you do? To build suspense (is it working?), I’ll put my suggestion after the break…
Siccing the law on Fox News
Given its role in campaign speech suppression, we’ve long associated the goo-goo group Common Cause with scary assaults on free speech, so we can’t say we’re exactly surprised at this latest: in a petition to the Federal Trade Commission, it and the leftist MoveOn.org are alleging that the Fox News Network should be exposed to penalties for consumer fraud for using the slogan “Fair and Balanced” while repeatedly broadcasting views strenuously disapproved of by C.C. and MO.O. (Jake Coyle, “Fox News’ use of ‘Fair and Balanced’ challenged legally”, AP/San Diego Union-Tribune, Jul. 19; Charles Geraci, “Activists Ask FTC to Take Action Against Fox News”, Editor and Publisher, Jul. 19). Fox “doesn’t have the right to market its network services to prospective viewers and advertisers by masquerading as a news network,” claims former FTC chairman Michael Pertschuk, who we’re very relieved held that position way back in the Carter era rather than more recently. (Albert Eisele and Jeff Dufour, “Under the dome: ‘Fair and balanced’ fight: Lefties hit Fox with FTC petition”, The Hill, Jul. 20). No word yet on whether equally inflamed right-wingers plan to haul the New York Times off to the authorities for using the slogan “All the News That’s Fit To Print”, which is no more believable than Fox’s (via Amy Ridenour). More: Jul. 26.
“Keep your laws off my sex jokes”
Guest blogger coming tomorrow
Beginning tomorrow we’ll be joined for a week by a new guest blogger. Be sure to stop by.
“Edwards & Co.” online
My op-ed from last Monday’s Wall Street Journal on some of the more dubious men behind John Edwards’ campaign has now been posted on the WSJ’s OpinionJournal site, which makes it available to everyone and not just Journal subscribers. (Walter Olson, “Edwards & Co.”, OpinionJournal, Jul. 19)(WSJ version).
Baltimore Sun on obstetrics
Who’s going to be left delivering babies? Maybe foreign medical graduates, who still perceive themselves as having fewer options than the U.S.-born medical students who are increasingly steering clear of obstetrics as a specialty. Of course there’s also the option of departing a state like Maryland, where the prevailing insurance premium for an ob/gyn is slated to rise this year to $160,130, and starting up practice instead in a state like Wisconsin, where tough tort reforms keep the corresponding figure to an average of $45,000 to $50,000, according to Dr. Douglas Laube, head of an American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists panel on obstetrics residency. (Jonathan Bor, “Obstetrics is failing to draw new doctors”, Baltimore Sun, Jul. 11).
“Compensation culture” — in Iraq
“Whatever you think about democracy and human rights, the Coalition successfully imported one thing from the West into post-Saddam Iraq — the compensation culture. Iraq has become a hotbed of legal claims and counterclaims, of individual complaints and class action lawsuits, for everything from physical and mental injury to destruction of property. Iraqis demand compensation for damage caused to their gardens by American tanks, or for the scrapes and dents to their cars caused by run-ins with speeding Humvees. American soldiers have threatened to sue the US military for exposing them to death and injury by terrorist attack, while British soldiers want compensation for injuries sustained in friendly fire incidents. Ambulance-chasing (or perhaps Humvee-chasing) human rights lawyers are everywhere in Iraq, encouraging Iraqis to sue, sue, sue.” (Brendan O?Neill, “Invasion of the lawyers”, The Spectator (U.K.), Jul. 10 issue, posted Jul. 17)(reg).
Update: DoJ off overtime hook
Updating our report of Aug. 30, 1999: “A federal appeals court [last month] threw out a class action seeking overtime pay for more than 9,000 government attorneys because the lawyers didn’t get the proper written approval before putting in extra hours. … The largely anonymous class sought $500 million in overtime pay for work performed between 1992 and 1999, when Congress passed a law barring overtime pay.” We have observed before that the antediluvian overtime-pay mandates of federal labor law are easy to break inadvertently, and this would seem to be an illustration: neither the government agency charged with making everyone else obey the laws, nor its highly skilled lawyer-employees, seemed to have their eyes on the ball with regard to overtime obligations until the possibility of a retroactive claim came up. (Jeff Chorney, “Federal Circuit Says No Back Pay for DOJ Lawyers”, The Recorder, Jun. 24).