As Scott Greenfield notices, the lawprof chatfest (organized by Danielle Citron, Frank Pasquale, David Hoffman, and Deven Desai) is tilted toward participants who want to restrict online speech in the name of feminism and civil rights.
P.S. One of the symposium participants most inclined toward the free-speech position, Michael Froomkin, draws some particularly lively comments. And Paul Horwitz at Prawfsblawg offers some pointed criticisms.
Our item on the lawyer who “lies so much he had to hire someone to call his dog” reminded Tom Freeland of a lawyer who flourished during the boom years in early Mississippi that began in the 1830s, one Ovid Bolus, Esq., as portrayed in a book of the 1850s:
Bolus was a natural liar, just as some horses are natural pacers, and some dogs natural setters. What he did in that walk, was from the irresistible promptings of instinct, and a disinterested love of art. His genius and his performances were free from the vulgar alloy of interest or temptation.
Accordingly, he did not labor a lie: he lied with a relish: he lied with a coming appetite, growing with what it fed on: he lied from the delight of invention and the charm of fictitious narrative.
The much longer passage of which that is a sample is well worth reading in its entirety, if only for its historical flavor (and not because any lawyers like that still walk among us, of course).
Freeland, incidentally, is well known to many readers as longtime contributor “NMC” at Folo, a blog that for years shed invaluable light on Mississippi politics and law and in particular the state’s judicial scandals; that blog and its editor Lotus have lately gone on hiatus, but Freeland has set up with his own Mississippi-focused blog.
According to descriptions of a forthcoming Fox reality TV show, “actual, struggling companies with about 15 to 20 employees will let their staffs decide who gets laid off. The employee-judges will use confidential information — salaries, job evaluations — to make that final call on the show.” If that’s really the show’s format, the employers are setting themselves up for lawsuits under discrimination, retaliation, and other employment laws, not all of which can be fended off by having the employees sign waivers. [National Law Journal] More: Evil HR Lady.
Wisconsin: “A 78-year-old Monroe woman who was banned from a city-owned senior center in Monroe after complaining about how a card game was being scored filed a federal lawsuit against the facility, alleging the center violated her free speech rights and that its code of conduct is vague and overly broad.” [State Journal]
There is a horrifying tale on Consumerist about a family that missed a flight to visit their dying mother in the hospital because a ticket agent refused to help them because it was time for her break. What the story doesn’t tell you, and what none of the commenters seem to realize, is that it’s the trial lawyers that put United Airlines in that situation. Oregon labor laws California labor laws require workers to be permitted to take breaks; plaintiffs’ attorneys have made a multi-million-dollar cottage industry out of class action lawsuits against employers where customer service was permitted to take priority and workers occasionally didn’t take their breaks. (In California, the penalty for failing to provide a ten-minute break is an hour of pay.) To avoid this, the employer has to enforce the break period stringently, because they can potentially be held liable even if the employee voluntarily avoids the break.
My post last week on a bill that would greatly expand federal food safety law, and the dangers it could pose to small producers, drew a large number of readers, especially from Andrew Sullivan’s link; some other notable mentions and reactions include Rod Dreher, Nick Gillespie @ Reason “Hit and Run”, Hans Bader and more, John Phipps/Incoming, and Vines and Cattle.
At the same time, bill sponsor Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Ct.) and allies continue their efforts to dismiss alarm about possible effects on small producers as just hysteria whipped up from nothing, a trope that Patrick at Popehat has a bit of fun with. DeLauro has given interviews along these lines in recent days to the Hartford Courant and Huffington Post. Meanwhile, Factcheck.org criticizes untruths and hyperbole about the bill found in a widely sent chain email, most of which is fair enough — lots of misinformation is being circulated — but can’t resist a bit of Snopes-like over-reassurance about the law’s supposed general innocuousness. (Incidentally, for those who keep track of such things, oft-accurate FactCheck.org has just conferred its seal of approval on oft-accurate Snopes.com. Everyone can feel better now.)
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports (blog summary) that Pennsylvania is cracking down on women who prepare home-baked pies for church fish fries without arranging for a license and state inspection access to their kitchens. 
Little in the story is surprising to those who’ve followed our coverage over the years of similar controversies over pies in Connecticut, cupcakes in Massachusetts, cookies in Maine, county-fair jams in Virginia, and church potlucks in Indiana. All these instances of regulation, one might note, were at the hands of state and local governments, which are widely reputed to be more easily reached by irate constituents and less likely to regulate with a heavy hand than the feds in Washington.
More to come later, including an effort to sort out the confusion over what H.R. 875 as currently written exempts (e.g., many direct farm-to-consumer transactions) and what it does not exempt (lots and lots of other small and local transactions).
It’s pulling them off and replacing them with new buttons so as to bring children’s clothing into CPSIA compliance.
A Family Dollar store in Maryland was removing kids’ shoes from the shelf and destroying them, thus baffling an onlooker who wondered why they couldn’t have been donated instead. (Because that’s what the law says.) More on that episode: Deputy Headmistress.
This proposed holiday (proposed by someone, anyway) set for today, April 14, doesn’t seem to have caught on much yet (h/t: reader M.L.)
Past differences on other issues aside, Jonathan Turley has a good column (in Sunday’s WaPo) on international trends toward restricting speech.
The Smoking Gun (via Childs/TortsProf): “A Las Vegas party promoter has dropped a libel lawsuit over his portrayal as a ‘douchebag’ in the book ‘Hot Chicks with Douchebags.'” Earlier here, here, etc.