“A federal jury on Tuesday afternoon ruled that an Arizona rancher did not violate the civil rights of 16 Mexican nationals he detained at gunpoint after they had snuck illegally into the United States in 2004, but the jury awarded $78,000 in actual and punitive damages to six of the illegal immigrants on claims of assault and infliction of emotional distress.” [Jerry Seper/Washington Times, earlier]
Archive for February, 2009
CPSIA on the radio
Yesterday I taped a ten-minute segment with Ed Driscoll for his weekly Pajamas Radio show, which will air this weekend on Sirius. We talked about the legal dangers to vintage children’s books as well as the wider problems with the law in general. And conservative host Rush Limbaugh took up the subject yesterday on his show as well.
February 18 roundup
- Golfer’s ball bounces off yardage marker and hits him in eye, and he sues; not the Florida case we blogged last month, this one took place in New Hampshire [Manchester Union-Leader]
- Who needs democracy, much easier just to let the Litigation Lobby run things: elected Illinois lawmakers keep enacting limits on med-mal awards, but trial-lawyer-friendly Illinois Supreme Court keeps striking them down, third round pending at the moment [Peoria Journal-Star, Alton Telegraph, Illinois Times, Reality Medicine (ISMS)]
- “A sword-wielding, parent-killing psychopath can be such a help around the house.” [we have funny commenters]
- Brooklyn lawyer Steven Rondos, charged with particularly horrendous looting of incapacitated clients’ estates [earlier], said to have served the New York State Bar Association “as vice president of its guardianship committee” [NYPost]
- Updated annals of public employee tenure: Connecticut state lawyer who assumed bogus identity to write letter that got her boss fired drew a $1000 fine as well as a reprimand — and then got a raise [Jon Lender/Hartford Courant and more, earlier here and here]
- Judge Bobby DeLaughter indicted and arraigned as new chapter of Dickie Scruggs judicial-corruption story gets under way in Mississippi; Tim Balducci and Steve Patterson, central figures in Scruggs I, each draw 2-year sentences [NMC/Folo and more, more, YallPolitics, more, earlier on Balducci, DeLaughter]
- Disney “Tower of Terror” ride not therapeutic for all patrons: British woman sues saying she suffered heart attack and stroke after riding it several times [AP]
- Convicted of torching his farm, Manitoba man sues his insurance company for not making good on policy [five years ago on Overlawyered]
Erwin Chemerinsky’s good-neighbor policy
The founding dean of the ideologically charged new law school at the University of California, Irvine, is already taking a hand in Orange County public affairs by suing the town of Laguna Beach on behalf of homeless persons: he and his public-interest-law colleagues “want a federal judge to enjoin enforcement of Laguna’s anticamping ordinance until the city builds more no-strings-attached homeless housing.” [Heather Mac Donald, WSJ] More: Chemerinsky offers to debate Mac Donald.
“N.Y. High Court: Lawyer Subject to Treble Damages for Attempt to Deceive Court”
“Tracing the legal principles behind a New York statute on lawyer deceit to a law adopted by the English Parliament in 1275, the New York Court of Appeals has determined that an attorney can be subject to treble damages in New York for an unsuccessful attempt to deceive a court. Responding to certified questions from the 2nd Circuit, the Court of Appeals ruled that the ‘unique statute of ancient origin’ was not a codification of common law fraud, and applied to attempted deceptions as well as successful ones.” [Joel Stashenko, New York Law Journal]
CPSIA and vintage books, cont’d: slicing the past
The article I wrote for City Journal Thursday on the legal fate of pre-1985 children’s books has been drawing all sorts of attention, and all I can acknowledge are a few of the highlights. Education expert Jay Greene and Darleen Click at Protein Wisdom are among those put in mind of Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451. “Of all the risks facing American children, old books must rank very, very low,” writes leading education blogger Joanne Jacobs. Will Benton: “Every time I learn something new about the CPSIA, I get more enraged.” Illinois blogger T. Varner notices an ad for a local thrift store saying it would no longer accept donations of a “very long list” of items including “children’s books published before 1985”; only later does it click. Hector Owen: “This is what happens when Congress passes these bloated bills that nobody reads, and the President signs them, and then we start to find out what was in there. Oh dear, what did they just do last week?” JDub at Ace of Spades: “Overlawyered has pretty much flooded the zone on this — I don’t want to simply link all of the things he’s got, so give him a look. … Go. Read. Be angry.” And Mark Bennett, of criminal law blog Defending People, gives it a mention in the course of hosting Blawg Review no. 199.
If you have time to read only one post from the weekend on the topic of CPSIA and books, however, make it Common Room‘s. She discusses, among other topics, the narrowness of the “collectibles for adult use” exception, the extra-vulnerable status of vintage kids’ nature and science books, which go out of print quickly and are seldom reprinted, and the fate of ex-library versions, beloved by book buyers on budgets. She also confesses to a temptation to slice the gorgeous illustrations out of certain books, a practice likely to be encouraged by CPSIA, if only because 1) the illustrations often have monetary value and might benefit from the defense that on their own they are not a product intended for children’s use; 2) the mutilated book that remains will be a less risky thing to donate, circulate or sell, since it is the color illustrations that are thought to pose the prime risk of containing infinitesimal lead exposures.* (More: as part of another good roundup, she calls our attention to this excellent Valerie Jacobsen post on why “marketing vintage children’s books as ‘adult collectibles’ will work for some children’s books, but only for a few.”)
Sierra Highlands, who like Common Room includes some beguiling illustrations, writes:
….so long as Google Books and Gutenberg are out there, the old books won’t be gone completely, but it hurts to hear of the beautiful old editions going out with tomorrow’s trash. It really, really hurts. There’s something about the physical presence of an old book that links us to our ancestors and to a world where books were loved enough to be put into beautiful editions. When I pick up an old book, often shabby on the surface but well handled, well made, well-loved, quiet but rich in form and content, I feel connected to the Permanent Things in body as well as spirit.
The BookShopBlog owner’s removal of six boxes of older children’s books from her shelves, mentioned here, also started an Etsy thread. Another poster at the same location had an idea for a national read-in day of protest for vintage books on the last day of National Library Week, Apr. 18.
Also, I was linked by a resource page on Anne of Green Gables and her creator, L.M. Montgomery, which made my week all by itself. I’ve started a special tag for CPSIA and books, distinct from the general CPSIA tag.
*Just to clarify the legalities once more: CPSIA does not make it unlawful to own pre-1985 kids’ books, nor does it ban the sale of such books when, as is true for many millions of them, they contain no lead in their pigments. But resellers cannot be sure which do and which don’t, and the law exposes them to liability should they stock a book with lead even if the misstep was in good faith and even if (of course) no child is hurt. The CPSC’s guidance provides a conspicuous safe harbor for the sale of books printed after 1985.
“Virginia Blogger Targeted With Outrageous Subpoena”
Sam Bayard at Citizen Media Law: “In perhaps the most blatant misuse of the subpoena power we’ve seen since the subpoena served on Kathleen Seidel of Neurodiversity last March, a lawyer for Thomas Garrett of Virginia has served a patently overbroad subpoena on blogger Waldo Jaquith, who publishes cvillenews.com, a community news blog about Charlottesville, Virginia.” Garrett is suing The Hook, a Charlottesville newspaper and associated website, for defamation, and Jaquith at his own publication covered that controversy in a blog post. Now, as part of his suit against The Hook, Garrett is demanding from Jaquith information to assist in identifying the many persons who commented on the post and even persons who merely viewed it.
CPSIA, board games and hobby gaming, cont’d
If you’re interested in older board games you may have gotten into the habit of haunting thrift stores, but over at leading gamer site Board Game Geek, they’re noticing that things are changing for the worse as shelves empty at many stores. Our earlier coverage of CPSIA’s likely impact on gaming is here.
February 16 roundup
- “Texas Judge Orders 178 Anonymous ‘John Does’ Who Posted on Topix Be Revealed” [Citizen Media Law]
- $4 billion lawsuit over racially insensitive Miley Cyrus eye gestures [Michelle Malkin, TMZ.com]
- Update: “Tulsa World drops lawsuit after writer apologizes” [Romenesko/Tulsa World, earlier]
- Also update: “Seventh Circuit Affirms Dismissal of John Lott’s Libel Lawsuit Against Steven Levitt” [Volokh, earlier]
- “M-I-C — Cease and desist! K-E-Y — Why? Because we caught you! M-O-U-S-E” [Ron Coleman]
- California: “Another Step Toward Shielding Good Samaritans From Civil Damages” [Calif. Civil Justice Blog, more]
- Montana lawmakers consider bill saying hazardous recreation goes on at your own risk [PoL]
- Senior writer at Wired decides to go work for Wal-Mart, what he found departed from the Barbara Ehrenreich formula [BoingBoing]