Want to get a local potato chip company to sponsor the scoreboard at your high school athletic field? Washington may soon be making that decision for you. Adam Cassandra of CNSNews.com quotes me in this piece on the federal government’s deepening involvement in school food issues, and the price it brings in local control.
Archive for June, 2010
WSJ: “Lanier Seeks to Repeat Courtroom Success”
Dionne Searcey of the Wall Street Journal quotes me in a piece this morning on Texas lawyer Mark Lanier’s high hopes for the BP/Transocean Gulf spill litigation.
“Too hot for Citi” complaint, cont’d
Radar Online reports that the complainant has hired Overlawyered favorite Gloria Allred, while Eric Turkewitz thinks Ms. Lorenzana might make not make the ideal client. Business Insider has more of the unedifying details, and Richard Thompson Ford explains (contra Deborah Rhode) “why lawsuits based on looks discrimination are a bad idea.” Earlier here.
Congress saves us from bank overdraft fees
As the title of Marc Hodak’s post explains: “Because Congress couldn’t pass something called ‘The Free Unlimited Checking Killer for Young, Old, and Underprivileged Americans Act of 2009′”
New sentencing blog
SentenceSpeak is hosted by Families Against Mandatory Minimums (via Douglas Berman and Scott Greenfield).
Massachusetts class-action bonanza
The Boston Globe reports that plaintiff’s securities law firms have become cash cows for Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley and Treasurer Timothy Cahill, who oversee the pension funds that strike representation deals with the lawyers. “Spokeswomen for Cahill and Coakley said the contributions played no part in the selection of the law firms, which were chosen in a competitive process five years ago.”
June 18 roundup
- “When the country went cold turkey”: Tyler Cowen reviews Last Call, Daniel Okrent’s history of Prohibition [Business Week]
- Phrases never to put in email, e.g., “We Probably Shouldn’t Put This in Email” [Balasubramani, SpamNotes]
- “My biggest wish was that I would get a cease and desist from the company that publishes Marmaduke” [Walker, Reason “Hit and Run”]
- California proposal to jail parents for kids’ truancy [Valerie Strauss/WaPo via Alkon] Parents arrested on charges of forging doctor sick note to excuse third grader [Glenn Reynolds, Dan Riehl]
- UK judge: NHS need not fund transsexual’s breast enlargement [Mail]
- “Charitable Foundation Leader Alarmed by Government Intrusions into Philanthropy” [WLF Legal Pulse]
- Missed earlier: “Stalking Victims’ Duty to Warn Employees, Lovers, Visitors, and Others?” [Volokh]
- “Overturning Iqbal and Twombly Would Encourage Frivolous Litigation” [Darpana Sheth, Insider Online]
Malpractice systems in other countries
They do things very differently elsewhere, reports the AMA’s American Medical News (via White Coat):
“Nobody is as hospitable to potential liability as we are in this country,” said Richard A. Epstein, director of the law and economics program at the University of Chicago Law School. “The unmistakable drift is we do much more liability than anybody else, and the evidence on improved care is vanishingly thin.”
In other news, the Obama administration is now rolling out its test project grants on med-mal; for reasons already aired in this space, Carter Wood isn’t expecting much.
“Pay me now”
Low-budget ads might seem fitting for a consumer bankruptcy law practice, one supposes:
According to the YouTube-watcher who called this to the attention of reader R.T., “it seems to be a franchise”:
Drugmaker to halt production of sedative
Following a Nevada jury’s highly controversial $500 million verdict over allegedly inadequate warnings against multiple patient use, as well as bad publicity over possible abuse by music legend Michael Jackson, “Israel-based Teva Pharmaceutical Industries recently announced it will stop production of its sedative propofol, which many worry will intensify an already existing shortage of one of the most widely used anesthetics in the United States.” [Abnormal Use, earlier]