A Florida complainant might wind up digging himself a deeper hole, reputation-wise. [Above the Law]
Archive for September, 2010
“Only you, Target Group, can make a martyr of Sick, Twisted Individual And his Followers.”
Patrick at Popehat comes up with a generic post that can be re-used every few months (or days, or hours) as similar future controversies thrust themselves into public awareness.
Suit claiming Ladies’ Nights at bars are unconstitutional…
…goes down in flames [Atlantic Wire] We’ve met the litigant before, and it is worth noting that statute-based challenges to Ladies’ Night discounts remain (unfortunately) alive and well in at least some states.
Shot if you do, sued if you don’t
“There’s no doubt delivering food is a risky job — it routinely ranks on the U.S. Bureau of Labor’s most-dangerous jobs list — and after last week’s much-publicized robbery of a Chinese food deliveryman, some restaurants might be inclined to avoid delivery to high-crime areas. But in doing so, restaurants might open themselves up to civil litigation regulating anti-discrimination practices, essentially creating a catch-22 for the businesses, legal experts said.” [Harrisburg Patriot-News]
CPSIA for soap?
“The Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010 (SCA 2010), now before the House of Representatives, is an inappropriate and seriously flawed attempt to make cosmetics safer.” Disregarding considerations of dose and concentration, the bill would require label disclosure of every substance present in an ingredient “at levels above technically feasible detection limits.” Essential oils and herb extracts typically contain 100 or more such substances, some of which, in isolation and at much larger concentrations, would qualify as toxic. And there’s a CPSIA-like requirement that manufacturers test all ingredients before sale. “Most small personal care product businesses will not survive if SCA 2010 passes.” [fragrance specialist Robert Tisserand] The lead sponsors of the proposed Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010 (H.R. 5786) are Reps. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill. of CPSIA fame, Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisc. [Drug Store News] More: Lela Barker, Cosmetics Design.
Variations on the standard author disclaimer
“Any errors are the fault of no-one in particular; rather, society itself is to blame.” And: “All errors are the authors’ sole responsibility, but persons aggrieved by any such errors are encouraged to sue the companies which manufactured our computers.” [Kopel/Volokh]
How California’s legal-business climate is different
Bruce Nye (Cal Biz Lit) and Michael Pappas (at Law.com Corporate Counsel) count the ways: “Why do I have to tell everyone that my grilled chicken, which is made the same way as my grandmother used to make it, may cause cancer?” (The answer being California-specific Proposition 65.)
“Toyota’s acceleration problem could be customer-based”
The Washington Post — unlike some other newspapers we might think of — doesn’t mind letting its editorial stance catch up with the facts on the ground as they appear to NHTSA staff. We’ve been on the story for quite a while.
My new Cato podcast: human rights redefined
The other day the Obama administration came out with the first official U.S. response to the United Nations’ “periodic review” critique of human rights practices within the United States. To the surprise of many — though not of those who’ve been following this area carefully — it presented as human rights imperatives worthy of international attention a wide range of initiatives that would earlier have been seen as domestic policy matters, from ObamaCare (whose passage — including a penalty on individuals for failing to buy health insurance — it depicted as a human rights advance) to labor law (where it suggested that Congress might be putting the U.S. human rights record at risk if it declines to expand the organizing rights of labor unions).
One of the major themes of my forthcoming book Schools for Misrule is the role of thinkers in the law schools in preparing the way for new and transformed (and gravely mistaken) conceptions of international human rights. Today on the Cato Institute’s daily podcast series, Caleb Brown interviews me about the ongoing redefinition of international human rights and how we got to this point. The interview audio is available here.
My Cato Institute colleague Roger Pilon, who directs the Institute’s Center for Constitutional Studies and served under Reagan as policy director for the State Department’s office on human rights, has been active in recent days in advancing a critique of the Obama administration’s approach in a Philadelphia Inquirer op-ed as well as at Cato at Liberty.
And coincidentally: today’s NYT reports that George Soros is giving $100 million to Human Rights Watch, a group in the forefront of advancing novel human rights claims.
September 7 roundup
- “If someone wants to sue you, they can. Easily, too.” Amy Wallace on being sued over her vaccine story [Reporting on Health, earlier]
- Jury tells Ford to pay $131 million after minor league ballplayer crashes Explorer at 80 mph+ [WaPo]
- Winnipeg judge scandal has sex, race, coercion and most riveting of all a legal ethics angle [Alice Woolley, LEF]
- “$667M Nursing Home Verdict Surprised Even the Plaintiffs’ Lawyers” [ABA Journal, earlier]
- “Maryland Woman Sues After Being Banned by Facebook” [Kashmir Hill/Forbes, MSNBC “Technolog”]
- The trouble with (some) defense-side trial lawyers [Ted Frank, CCAF] And: defense bar briefing prosecutorial agencies on ins and outs of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Ethics/loyalty problem in that, or no? [Koehler]
- Bow-tied troll? Patent-marking suits hit the big time [WSJ Law Blog and more, ABA Journal, Glenn Lammi/Forbes]
- “A girl named Sue who sues and sues and sues” [SE Tex Record]