Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Archive for 2010

“Students Aren’t Allowed To Touch Real Rocks”

Lenore Skenazy at Forbes: “How the Consumer Product Safety Commission drives parents — and everyone else — crazy.” Besides the CPSIA rock-poster story of the headline (earlier), the CPSC has scared parents about not-very-terrifying Graco high chairs and Little Tykes workbenches, to say nothing of those McDonald’s Shrek glasses with traces of cadmium.

Related: the Federalist Society presents a podcast on CPSIA with CPSC commissioners Nancy Nord and Robert Adler; rules for making kids’ products recall the IRS code in complexity; the new public database of alleged product-related injuries, a la NHTSA’s, draws critical attention from manufacturers and CPSC commissioner Anne Northup; and the commission tackles the dangers of clacker balls.

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July 23 roundup

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“New Financial Regulations Will Make Whistleblowing Lucrative”

I’m quoted in this report by Dunstan Prial of FoxBusiness.com and in this report by David Savage of the Los Angeles Times on the large-scale bounty incentives in the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill, which bring us closer to an “informer model of law enforcement” that “encourages people to be disloyal to their friends and co-workers.” Earlier here and here. Other coverage of the whistleblowing provisions: Coyle/NLJ, Koehler/FCPA Professor, Baer/Prawfsblawg.

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“Worst state attorneys general”, cont’d

Hans Bader of the Competitive Enterprise Institute informs me that Connecticut’s Richard Blumenthal has in a sense won his recount after all: a recalculation taking into account a bit of overlooked data has now moved him up from #3 to #2 on this year’s list, though he’s still essentially tied with Oklahoma’s Drew Edmondson. In first place: California’s Jerry Brown, while perennial favorites Patrick Lynch of Rhode Island and Darrell McGraw of West Virginia fill the #4 and #5 places, and a newcomer, William Sorrell of Vermont, makes an appearance at #6.

More: Bader in the Examiner on the selection process.

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Court: competitive cheerleading not varsity sport

Thus achieving two of feminist litigators’ goals at once: 1) sending a message that cheerleading is not a government-approved aspiration for young women; 2) further humbling men’s college sports, since quota incentives are now likely to bring renewed pressure for budget and roster cuts at universities like Quinnipiac. Congratulations! [Inside Higher Ed, earlier here and here] More: Neal McCluskey, Cato at Liberty; Atlantic Wire.

Related: Fascinating USA Today coverage of multiple lawsuits arising from the tense relationship between men’s and women’s athletics at Lock Haven University in Pennsylvania (h/t Jim Copland).

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July 22 roundup

  • Update from Germany: “Teacher Loses ‘Rabbit-Phobia’ Trial” [Spiegel, earlier]
  • Farther shores of for-your-own-goodery: “Should Obese Kids Be Placed In Foster Care?” [Katz, CBS News]
  • Just one problem with that $725 million AIG securities suit settlement [D&O Diary]
  • After Texas passed bill requiring evidence of impairment, more than 99% of silicosis claimants dropped out [LNL, PoL]
  • Lindsay Lohan disserved by lawyer who can’t keep a confidence [Turkewitz]
  • Pearlstein’s the Washington Post’s anti-business business columnist [McArdle, Wood/ShopFloor]
  • Lawyer shenanigans in Fosamax trial in New York [Walk, Drug & Device Law]
  • Unwelcome surprise: health care bill turns out to tax many house sales [David Boaz, Cato at Liberty]

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$13 million settlement for USDA-er Shirley Sherrod’s group

The immediate controversy over Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack’s removal of Sherrod from her post is interesting enough — both the NAACP and many conservatives withdrew their initial support for Sherrod’s firing and began defending her as more context emerged — but perhaps the more durable story worth public attention is the background, which includes a $1 billion lawsuit discrimination settlement of which $13 million went to Sherrod’s advocacy group [Rural Development Leadership Network via Tom Blumer, Examiner, h/t reader Aaron W.; ten years ago] More: FoxNews.com.

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“Rape by deception” in Israel

“A Palestinian man has been convicted of rape after having consensual sex with a woman who had believed him to be a fellow Jew.” [Guardian] Rape by deception is a crime in many although not all jurisdictions, with impersonation of a woman’s husband or lover being one classic fact pattern giving rise to charges; two years ago, in a debate over such a law in Massachusetts, critics expressed unease about which other sorts of misrepresentations might be reached as well [CBS News]

As for the civil-law side, a few years back (to quote from the manuscript of my forthcoming book Schools for Misrule):

a Northwestern law professor, building on the undeniable fact that many persons behave badly on the dating market, proposed as a remedy the development of a new tort of “sexual fraud,” which would allow lawsuits for cash damages against persons who use lies or insincerity to get others to sleep with them (“Of course I’m not married.”) It was one of the year’s most widely hailed and talked-about articles.

More: Max Fisher, Atlantic Wire (rounding up reactions); Eugene Volokh (including link to discussion of Massachusetts bill). And: comments from Andrew Sullivan’s readers.

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