Following an outcry from various sectors of the farm community, the U.S. Senate may have slowed or even broken the momentum toward federally sponsored numbering and tagging of farmyard animals. 
The upper house embraced “an amendment sponsored by Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., and Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., that slashes funding for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Animal Identification System by one-half in the 2010 agriculture appropriations bill.” [AgWeek, Drovers] NAIS, or the National Animal Identification System, has been promoted on (among other grounds) improving “traceability” of food safety problems. Earlier coverage here, here, etc.
Archive for 2009
August 18 roundup
- Tiananmen Square events echo today in acrimonious defamation suit against filmmakers [Boston Globe]
- Andrew Ferguson disrespectful toward David Kessler’s nanniferous book on obesity policy [Weekly Standard]
- “Yes, People Dislike The RIAA Because Of Its Actions” [TechDirt]
- The big difference race makes in medical school admissions [Discriminations, Mark Perry/Carpe Diem]
- Texting, workplace flirtation and sexual harassment law [Forbes/MSNBC]
- After real estate firm grabs and uses online pic, photographer finds satisfaction through small claims court [West Seattle Blog h/t @VBalasubramani]
- Virginia: latest case seeking to open emotional-distress damages for death of pets gets help from former White House counsel Lanny Davis [WaPo, earlier]
- Brazil police allege that host of true-crime TV series ordered killings to ensure good footage for the show [AP]
“Skydiver’s Parachute Fails to Open, Instructor Saves Her, She Sues for Two Broken Fingers”
Personal injury law attorney/blogger John Hochfelder, who’s also guestblogging this week at my other website Point of Law, has this story from Gardiner, New York. More: Coyote, Right-Thinking from the Left Coast.
Great moments in litigation defense
Connecticut Post: “Attorneys representing the Stamford Marriott Hotel & Spa and other firms being sued by a woman raped in their parking garage in 2006 withdrew special defenses Monday that claimed the woman was negligent and careless and that she and her children failed to ‘mitigate their damages.'” [via Christopher Fountain and followup] More: John Bratt, Baltimore Injury Law (with kind words for this site).
Deceased Austin lawyer probed over demand letters to restaurants
Prominent Austin, Texas lawyer and judicial candidate Mina Brees, who died Aug. 7, is the target of a probe by the state’s attorney general after sending scores of letters to Houston and Dallas area restaurants advising them that their business name registrations had expired and that they could buy them back by dealing with her at a cost of $20,000 or $25,000 each. The letters informed them that a client, Chicksports Inc., had taken possession of the names, but did not mention that she herself was the president of Chicksports or that it operated from the address of her solo-practice law firm. The Texas Restaurant Association had advised its members not to pay and said under state law lapses in name registrations do not deprive restaurants of their legal rights to their distinctive names. Brees had been on strained terms with a famous son, NFL quarterback Drew Brees. [Mike Tolson, Houston Chronicle/KHOU, Austin American-Statesman, more Houston Chronicle, Tex Parte, DeadSpin] Per the Austin American-Statesman, “Brees received the Austin Bar Association’s 2005 professionalism award for legal ethics and professionalism.”
“Gallion gets 25 years, Cunningham 20 in fen-phen fraud case”
Stiff sentences for the two lawyers most closely identified with the Kentucky fen-phen settlement scandal. [Louisville Courier-Journal, Lexington Herald-Leader, Bloomberg, ABA Journal]. More: Howard Erichson, Mass Tort Lit Blog.
August 17 roundup
- Liability protection for doctors, premised on “best-practices” medicine: a proposal to address the federalism difficulties [Bernstein/MacCourt, MI Center for Medical Progress, PoL]
- Fraud in immigration law victimizes both U.S. and aspiring immigrants [NYT]
- Paralyzed while tackling opponent, high school footballer now suing Barre, Vt. school system [Barre-Montpelier Times Argus]
- Memo to Sen. Edwards: voters forgave Grover Cleveland the paternity, but they do mind lies [Mickey Kaus]
- Issue in New Orleans case: defamatory to call tour guides “thugs”? [Times-Picayune]
- No more Lux et Veritas: Yale press
wimps out on Mohammed cartoons [NYT, Moynihan/Reason “Hit and Run”, Steyn/NRO “Corner”, Hitchens] - More on NYC woman’s “wasted-tuition” suit against college [Mark Gimein, NY Mag via Genova, earlier]
- Do we really want to let CPSIA’s drafters within a mile of redesigning our health care system? [Inoculated]
“Lawsuits are the latest roadblock for California budget”
The L.A. Times reports (via PoL and Bainbridge) that just in case Golden State government were not dysfunctional enough otherwise, you-know-who has gotten involved:
Lawyers are being drafted in droves to unravel spending plans passed by the Legislature and signed by the governor. The goal of these litigators is to get back money their clients lost in the budget process. They are having considerable success, winning one lawsuit after another, costing the state billions of dollars and throwing California’s budget process into further tumult.
Golden receivers, cont’d
Critics including the Securities and Exchange Commission dispute whether receivers really deserve $27 million for their work through May in cleaning up after the collapse of Texas businessman R. Allen Stanford’s empire. [AP/USA Today; earlier]
On video: California bookstore owner’s ADA suit
Alzada Knickerbocker’s bookshop in Davis Sacramento, California, the Avid Reader, was hit with a complaint from a serial ADA filer. She went on camera to explain what happened for the Sick of Lawsuits video series. More on ADA serial filers here. And the Desert Sun in southern California profiles the activities of San Diego resident Roy Gash, who “is or was the plaintiff in more than 200 ADA lawsuits,” and his lawyer Theodore Pinnock, whose San Diego firm Pinnock and Wakefield “has filed about 2,000 such suits.”
P.S. Thanks to commenter B.P. for correction: the suit was against the store’s Sacramento, not Davis, branch.