The Third Circuit has ruled that under the Americans with Disabilities Act “employers may need to make reasonable shift changes in order to accommodate a disabled employee’s disability-related difficulties in getting to work.” The case involved a Rite Aid worker who could not drive at night because of glaucoma and wanted a transfer to the day shift. [Colwell v. Rite-Aid, PDF, via Hyman]
Archive for May, 2010
Sophisticated advisors?
According to the New York Law Journal, “hundreds” at least of law firms have fallen victim to advance-fee and counterfeit-check scams in recent years.
The fatal workplace joke
“Palm Beach Gardens firm accused of filing lawsuits just to collect legal fees”
The firm often sues insurance companies for amounts under $50, sometimes under $5. A manager with one defendant said the lawyers can use a $1 settlement to leverage a demand for thousands in legal fees payable by defendants. The firm, which has filed more than a thousand cases since last summer, acquires potential claims from medical clinics which bill the insurers over care dispensed after no-fault auto accidents; often the clinics have been paid for the bulk of the case, leaving a small unpaid sum. [Jane Musgrave, Palm Beach Post]
Talking-squirrel injury lawyer ad
With extra cheese:
Via Above the Law last month, which also found a decidedly strange reggae video singing the praises of a Los Angeles entertainment-law firm.
“California Court Rejects Santa Barbara Beach Club’s Attempts to Suppress Criticism”
Free speech wins one in a neighborhood dispute. [Eugene Volokh]
Woman finds “demonic” face on canned pear
And wants recompense from the fruit canner, in New Zealand. [Stuff.co.nz]
Food safety bill: big vs. small business
From the WSJ last month (Division of Labour) on the big federal food-safety bill sailing through Congress:
:…small farmers worry the measure’s fees and inspection requirements would be ruinously expensive and are pushing for exemptions.
“I know people who have been small farmers for 25 to 30 years who are looking to get out of the business because food safety is becoming so alarmist,” said Mary Alionis, whose eight-acre Whistling Duck Farm in Grants Pass, Ore., sells produce to farmers markets and restaurants.
Big food companies generally support the bill, judging the added expenses it would bring to be small compared with the potential financial damage of a vast product recall.
It’s a pattern we’ve seen before.
Connecticut: “Lawsuit Verdict May Shut MDC Reservoirs to Cyclists”
As lawsuits advance, recreation retreats: the Hartford-area Metropolitan District Commission “is now looking at shutting access to its popular reservoir trails to cyclists” following a $2.9 million jury award to a bicyclist who crashed into a gate. “The controversial verdict came after rulings that the MDC — a nonprofit municipal corporation — was not immune to lawsuits, in this case from a cyclist who wasn’t paying enough attention as she rode the well-marked trails.” [Rick Green, Hartford Courant; background from 1999]
Chasing the Toyota hobgoblin
The quest to do something about the imagined Toyota crisis may result in a federal mandate for all cars to include “brake-override” features that cut off power when the driver hits the brake. Writing in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Michael Fumento says many cars on the road do already have such a feature — but lawmakers don’t seem overly curious as to whether it’s made a difference.