At only #3, Connecticut’s Richard Blumenthal demands a recount [Hans Bader, CEI, PDF]
Archive for July, 2010
NHTSA consumer complaint Hall of Fame
P.S. More seriously, Fumento has a piece out in the new Forbes about how weaknesses in the NHTSA consumer database helped fuel the Toyota panic. He provides damning details about how press outlets like CBS News, the L.A. Times and U.S. News turned “a motley collection of anecdotes, many of them absurd” in which “anybody can enter anything” into assertions that Toyota acceleration has “caused” or “led to” 89 or more deaths. Read it here, with more at CEI.
Mortgage watchdog site, sued by critics, may go broke
“A SLAPP statute that depends on a finding that the suit was brought in bad faith is nearly worthless,” writes Paul Alan Levy of a Maryland enactment that was not enough to save the publisher of the “Mortgage Lender Implode-o-Meter” blog. [Consumer Law & Policy, more, earlier here and here, h/t @petewarden]
“Patent marking” lawsuit craze
Now it’s caught up with Apple. Earlier here, here, here, etc. More: video from Washington Legal Foundation.
“The Regulatory Avalanche From Washington, D.C.”
New obligations and liabilities for employers, as catalogued by the law firm of Ogletree Deakins.
“When the Victim Is the Criminal”
Scott Greenfield relates the case of a California woman who found it only too easy to engineer criminal charges over fictitious harassment. “Notice that it was left to the defendants to investigate? That’s because the police already had their perps in custody. … It really can’t be this easy for someone to hatch a scheme and use the machinery of the legal system to her own advantage.” [Orange County Register]
Update: New York bill banning short-term rentals
Advocates have been hawking the ban in the state legislature as a tenant protection measure. To their dismay, however, Gov. Paterson has signaled that he intends to veto the bill. [NYT, earlier] The Times travel section had a story over the weekend praising the new kind of “Social B&B” arrangement as a welcome travel bargain, but the newspaper does not seem to have realized that there is any connection between its two articles.
Bad-mouthing Toyota and its defenders
Years ago I promised myself that I’d stop wading into comments sections, but my breach of that promise today in a trial-lawyer blog attacking me for pointing out the truth about the bogus Toyota sudden acceleration claims might amuse some readers, and I might as well get a post out of it.
“Are not companies obligated to make the safest vehicle possible?”
The safest vehicle possible is a Sherman tank with a restrictor plate preventing it from exceeding 1 mph, so the answer to your question is “no”—though certainly trial lawyers have an interest in asking you to think manufacturers are doing something wrong when they don’t.
“Until Toyota can identify the exact cause of these accidents (besides the too-convenient driver error) anything and everything is in question and must be investigated.”
I look forward to you writing NHTSA and demanding they investigate if invisible vampires are causing elderly drivers to hit the wrong pedal. After all, anything and everything is in question, and you reject Occam’s Razor when it comes to an alleged electronic defect that simultaneously causes three separate systems to malfunction six times more often for elderly drivers than non-elderly drivers, so why not demand an investigation of the equally unlikely invisible-vampire problem as long as you’re rejecting science?
“German police officer earns extra week’s holiday for getting dressed”
The test case in the city of Muenster has German municipal officials worried about busted budgets. [Guardian, Telegraph] So-called “don/doff” lawsuits have been a pretty big deal in our own employment law in recent years, although, as our 2008 report from Arkansas indicates, they don’t always have the support of the putative victims.
“Lawyers line up to fight BP”
I’m quoted in the Times (UK) on lawyers’ binge of client-chasing in the Gulf, and the legacy of “home cooking” that can make it hard for outside defendants to be treated fairly in that part of the country [reprinted in The Australian]