So indicated San Francisco Superior Court Judge Thomas Mellon Jr., who indicated he will not allow fees to reach the $2.53 million previously indicated. Objectors’ fees will be cut as well as the original attorneys, however, which could deter future attempts to intervene in unfair settlements. (Michael Liedtke, AP/Washington Post, Mar. 22; Josh Gerstein, “Judge Seeks To Sweeten Netflix Pact By Cutting Fees to Plaintiff Lawyers”, NY Sun, Mar. 23). We covered the Netflix class action extensively: Nov. 3, Jan. 11, Jan. 21, Feb. 21.
Archive for March, 2006
Don’t Mess with Texas Morals Police: Tavern Patrons Arrested for Intoxication
“Texas has begun sending undercover agents into bars to arrest drinkers for being drunk, a spokeswoman for the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission said,” according to Reuters. Public intoxication is illegal in Texas, and the authorities contend that their preemptive arrests will prevent people from driving drunk or committing other offenses. HT Peaktalk. More: Mar. 31.
Easier Forfeiture of Property: The New Federal Rules of Civil Procedure
According to Forfeiture Endangers American Rights, the U.S. Dept. of Justice is proposing revisions of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure which would facilitate property forfeiture. The FEAR site links to the new draft rules, and to critiiques of those rules.
human rights = allah
The Brussels Journal points out the close resemblence between the Arabic word for “Allah” and the logo of the UN Human Rights Commission, which may have been imposed by ” a high-ranking Muslim UN official .” Even if “Allah” is not the official UN Human Rights Commission logo, the UN acts as if it were. Brussels Journals points to “last week’s common declaration signed by EU Foreign Policy Coordinator Javier Solana, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the Secretary-General of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC). The three men pledged to rewrite the UN Human Rights Charter to ‘protect the sanctity of religions and the prophets.'”
Today’s Courageous Feminists
Cinnamon Stillwell observes International Women’s Day by observing that:
the real radical women in the world go largely unremarked by the feminist movement. Today’s true heroines are those who do battle with the gender apartheid, violence and oppression practiced against women in the Muslim world. There, women face not just phantom infringements to their civil rights and perceived slights to their sensitivities, but threats to their lives.
Read the whole article for an inspiring litany of women putting lives on the line by speaking out against Islamist oppression.
Whoopie Cushion Chair Prompts Lawsuit
Today’s Times of London reports an employment law claim by a teacher who chair made flatulent noises whenever she moved. The teacher, who resigned her position, is claiming constructive dismissal, and asking for one million Pounds in compensation.
Asked why she did not sort out the problem, she told the tribunal: “It’s a health and safety issue for an employer to ensure you have a comfortable chair.”
A chair that forces a person into bad posture might well be a health and safety issue, but a chair that merely causes embarassment is plainly not a health and safety issue — although the chair should still be replaced.
Lawsuit over Denial of Federal Financial Aid to College Students with Drug Convictions
Students for Sensible Drug Policy and the American Civil Liberties Union have filed a lawsuit alleging that the federal law which denies federal financial aid to any student with a drug law conviction is unconstitutional. Personally, I think the federal law is atrocious, and would vote to repeal it. But I think the prospects for victory in court are very slim. The SSDP press release points out several good policy arguments, but raises only two legal points:
The law punishes individuals twice for the same infraction. Affected students have already been dealt with by the criminal justice system. Taking away their access to education after they’ve already paid their debt to society is unnecessary. This violates the “double jeopardy” clause of the Fifth Amendment.
Commenters are welcome to correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think that the Fifth Amendment has ever been interpretted to prohibit governments from choosing to make persons with criminal convictions ineligible for welfare programs, including student aid for higher education.
Second, SSDP argues:
Putting up roadblocks on the path to education does nothing to solve our nation’s drug and crime problems; it only makes them worse. Forcing students convicted of drug charges to drop out of school makes them more likely to fall into drug abuse or commit crimes (thus becoming costly burdens on the criminal justice system) and less likely to become productive taxpaying citizens (thus reducing the nation’s economic productivity). Congress has no rational basis to attach student aid eligibility to drug convictions, especially since murderers, rapists, burglars, and arsonists can still receive financial aid. This violates the equal protection guarantee of the Fifth Amendment’s “due process” clause.
The first half of the paragraph is really a policy argument. The second half — that it is irrational to deny aid to a person with a misdemeanor marijuana conviction, while giving aid to a person with a felony rape or arson conviction — seems more plausible. In an article in the Journal of Contemporary Law, I have argued for taking the rational basis test seriously. But whether courts will do is uncertain.
Health Insurance Doesn’t Matter. Medicaid Should be Scrapped:
John Goodman, of the National Center for Policy Analysis, comments on a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine: “Who is at Greatest Risk for Receiving Poor-quality Health Care?” Contrary to many previous studies, the NEJM study found that, in Goodman’s words:
– Among people who seek care (actually see a doctor), there is virtually no difference in the quality of care received by the insured and uninsured.
– There is also very little difference in the care provided by different types of insurance – Medicaid, managed care, fee-for-service and so forth.
The study is consistent with Dallas-area data reported by Goodman in his book Lives at Risk. Goodman summarizes the implications of the NEJM study:
The entire Medicaid program (at a cost of $1,000 per person for every man, woman and child in the country and a huge crowd out of private insurance) is predicated on the conventional wisdom that being insured matters. Now we know that what really matters is seeing a doctor. Two deterrents are rationing by waiting and physician fees. Both hurdles could be overcome with funded health savings accounts.
Another conventional wisdom is that the uninsured need sky-is-the-limit coverage just like the United Auto Workers. But since the low-income uninsured have few assets to protect, why do people with modest means need such expensive coverage? They don’t. A scaled down plan could give them ample choice of doctors and allow entry into the system for much lower premiums.
Alexandra Shaw and the Princeton bell tower
Police detected a “strong smell of alcohol” on 21-year-old Alexandra Shaw’s breath when they rescued her after she took a 40-foot fall through a grate in a Princeton University bell tower that was closed for renovations. But no blood test was done, Shaw claimed to have had only one beer, and the two contractors she sued settled the suit for $350,000 rather than risk a greater liability finding from a jury.
“The young lady fell and she was rather seriously injured,” [defense attorney Michael] O’Mara said. But the area where the accident occurred was not open to the public and “a person of common sense would not have entered. It looked like the bowels of the earth.”
Neither his client nor the co-defendant were responsible for the condition of the grate Shaw stepped through, O’Mara said. But there was a possibility that the jury might find liability so a compromise was reached.
(Linda Stein, “$350,000 settles tower plunge suit”, The Trenton Times, Mar. 22 (h/t P.E.); Bill Beaver, “Undergraduate falls climbing in chapel turret, injures leg”, Daily Princetonian, Dec. 14, 2001).
Journal on Fireams & Public Policy now accepting submissions
I am the Editor of an iinterdisciplinary academic journal, the Journal on Firearms and Public Policy. The Journal is now accepting submissions for its next volume, our 18th year of publication. Some sample issues, in PDF, are here. (We hope eventually to put all volumes on-line.) Because we are interdiscplinary, articles may be written in a variety of academic and citation styles, including law, history, social science, philosophy, and so forth. The JFPP’s circulation is vastly larger than most academic journals. If you would like to submit an article, or send a query about possible submission, please write me at the e-mail link on the lower-left column of my website.