“Prisoners released early under a government scheme to cut jail overcrowding have been paid more than £5m in ‘compensation’ for losing free board and lodging. The figures — disclosed by Jack Straw, the justice secretary, after Tory pressure – have prompted a political row.” [Times Online]
Archive for March, 2009
“Suit claims $250K scam by psychic in Mendham”
“Charles W. Silveira, in a lawsuit filed in Morristown on Monday, claims Ava T. Miller of Mendham required large cash payments to buy enough gold to make a statue that would ward off the negativity allegedly surrounding him.” [Morristown, N.J. Daily Record via Obscure Store, Newark Star-Ledger] For another New Jersey lawsuit over disappointment with psychic services with even more colorful facts, see Jun. 20, 2001.
“New Business for Courts: Pet Custody”
“The [New Jersey appellate] panel declined to adopt a best-interests-of-the-pet standard as urged by amici in the case.” Judge Jane Grall wrote that in the absence of legally cognizable abuse or neglect to an animal, there might not be “judicially discoverable and manageable standards for resolving questions of possession from the perspective of a pet”. [New Jersey Law Journal]
“Lawyer Sues To Get a Patent On Marketing”
Lawyer Scott Harris is appealing the Patent Office’s rejection of US Patent Application No. 09/387,823, in which he had hoped to obtain a patent on the concept of a “marketing company devoted to selling/marketing products produced by other companies in return for a share of their profits”. [Slashdot]
Where that Connecticut Catholic bill came from
I posted yesterday over at Secular Right about the origins of that strange, deplorable proposal in the Connecticut legislature to prescribe control of the Roman Catholic Church by boards of laypeople. The proposal is just as bad and unconstitutional as it has been rumored to be, but its origins are rather different than you might think from reading some conservative publications.
Claim: $1 million for missing XBox
Yale student Jesse Maiman says US Airways lost his XBox videogame console and he thinks $1 million would make a fair exchange. [Cincinnati Enquirer]
Church gunman suffered from “Lyme rage”
CPSIA: “We are sorry to report…”
Fewer options for kids in Santa Rosa, California:
We are sorry to report that Eleven 11 Kids has been forced to close its doors as of February 10, 2009 due to the new federal children’s environmental law, CPSIA, (HR4040) that went into effect on 2/10/09.
And then the store explains in some detail why it felt it had to close. It is too polite, perhaps, to mention that both California senators, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, played prominent roles in getting CPSIA passed, with Boxer in particular pushing the retroactive phthalates ban that has been notably harmful to resellers.
At ShopFloor, Carter Wood writes that the Senate version of the bill was (even) more extreme in its provisions than the House version, and that the Senate version unfortunately “wound up playing a bigger role in the writing of the final bill”. The Hospice of Amador and Calaveras Thrift Store, in California’s Sierra Nevada, is still operating but has stopped carrying children’s items.
In Ellensburg, Washington, north of Yakima, Cheryl Smith was “living the American dream” with her store Hailina’s Closet, which “opened last April and [sold] gently used children’s clothing and toys.” But it is just a memory now. The Kitsap Sun reported that Perfect Circle, a Bremerton children’s consignment store, also had to go out of business.
A few more reports from Goodwill: Roanoke, Virginia, Le Mars, Iowa (rare good news, some items being put back on shelves), Rock County, Wisconsin.
Truth Commissions, then and now
At the indispensable American.com, I find some similarities between Patrick Leahy’s proposal and a fiasco of a publicity stunt 75 years ago.
Copland and Howard: a proposal for drug-injury administrative compensation
My Manhattan Institute colleagues James Copland and Paul Howard are the authors of a just-released paper which proposes comprehensive federal preemption of state product liability drug litigation, combined with a new administrative compensation program for persons injured by unforeseen drug side effects, modeled on the existing vaccine injury compensation program. Their paper is here, and the section on administered compensation begins here. A summary, and early reaction: Medical News Today, Legal NewsLine, their Washington Times op-ed, AmLaw Daily (“makes for interesting reading”), Drug and Device Law (cross-posted from Point of Law).