Pleasant Hill, Calif.: “John F. Kennedy University this week removed a garden that had been at issue in a disabled-access lawsuit, stunning students and instructors who had raised thousands of dollars to fix the problem.” A graduate student had sued over lack of wheelchair access to the garden, which was used by about 60 students a year; the estimated cost of accessibility fixes was $56,000. [San Jose Mercury-News]
Archive for October, 2010
Fans can’t use Illinois mascot
“A Chief Illiniwek performance planned for homecoming weekend has been postponed indefinitely after the University of Illinois threatened legal sanction.” [Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette] Update: sponsors plan to proceed anyway.
October 18 roundup
- Touchy tandem jump: “Gay Skydiving Instructor Sues Over Firing” [Legal Blog Watch]
- Bucks County, Pennsylvania, plans to ticket people who forget to lock their cars [Ryan Young, CEI]
- Soft surface contact only next time: man hit in eye by exotic dancer’s heel wins $650K [NBC Miami, evidently a different case from this 2008 hit-by-exotic-dancer’s-shoe mishap, also in Florida]
- Breyers ice cream class action settlement with $0 for class might draw objections [CCAF]
- “Who are the Top Plaintiff’s Lawyers?” [Mark Behrens and Cary Silverman via AmLaw]
- California voters mulling attorney general choice should keep in mind lawsuit abuse issues [John Sullivan, Daily Journal courtesy CJAC]
- Mine safety enforcement push bogging down in litigation [WaPo]
- Liability a concern as elementary school in Attleboro, Mass. bans game of “tag” [four years ago on Overlawyered]
Great moments in lawyer TV advertising: “BullyLawyer.com”
Schiro & Zarzynski, Wisconsin:
Via Asylum.com’s selection of “10 Hilariously Awful Television Commercials for Lawyers”, which includes one or two others we haven’t featured here before.
Claim: it’s “open season” for saying bad things about lawyers
And that’s just so unfair, according to Lester Tate, president of the State Bar of Georgia. After all, it’s not as if lawyers have a lot of power or behave aggressively or hurtfully toward anyone else, right? “Particularly abhorrent are the attacks that come from candidates who are lawyers themselves.” Where’s their professional solidarity? [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]
Update: “Judge rules against edgy ‘troll’ Langdell”
In a 23-page opinion (PDF), federal judge William Alsup in California has scathingly rebuked a frequent litigant who is in the habit of asserting broad trademark claims over the use of the word “edge” in videogames and related items. [BoingBoing; earlier here and here]
“Drowning in law”
Author Philip K. Howard’s latest op-ed tells of the “legal quicksand” faced by small business owners, who
face legal challenges at every step. Municipalities requires multiple and often nonsensical forms to do business. Labor laws expose them to legal threats by any disgruntled employee. Mandates to provide costly employment benefits impose high hurdles to hiring new employees. Well-meaning but impossibly complex laws impose requirements to prevent consumer fraud, provide disability access, prevent hiring illegal immigrants, display warnings and notices and prevent scores of other potential evils. The tax code is incomprehensible.
All of this requires legal and other overhead – costing 50% more per employee for small businesses than big businesses.
Netherlands: Wilders not guilty, prosecutors say
Prosecutors say the evidence does not support convicting prominent Dutch politician Geert Wilders of violating hate speech laws. [Dutch News] On the other hand, Andy McCarthy points out that the Dutch legal system — which obviously differs on this point from our own — allows judges to force the case to continue notwithstanding the prosecutors’ view that it should be dropped. [NRO “Corner”]
Why I wouldn’t vote for Andrew Cuomo
And it’s not just the big role he played in the Fannie Mae-Freddie Mac debacle: my new post at Cato-at-Liberty (& thanks to Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit and Frum Forum for the links).
Firefighters who let houses burn
John Berlau recalls Memphis, Kansas City and Chicago strikes accompanied by arson, sabotage, and loss of both life and property:
If the IAFF [International Association of Fire Fighters] and its allies get their way with federal legislation to mandate collective bargaining for public-safety officers in every American community, the deadly fire-fighter strikes of the recent past will almost certainly be a part of our “progressive” future. …The biggest congressional priority of the IAFF over the past few years has been the so-called Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act, which would force unionization and collective bargaining on every one of the nation’s local fire departments. … According to the watchdog Public Service Research Council, public-employee strikes quadruple, on average, in the years after state laws mandating public-sector collective bargaining take effect.