A recent anime (Japanese cartoon) portrays America as a land where pretty much any misadventure can be turned into grounds for a lawsuit. Siouxsie Law has the (funny? horrifying?) video clip, the plot line of which involves the catastrophic misuse of a microwave oven and its fictional legal consequences.
Archive for 2011
What judges do and how it’s misunderstood
Justice Samuel Alito’s Wriston Lecture before the Manhattan Institute last fall is now online.
Update: USDA overrides court’s ban on sugar-beet planting
“The Department of Agriculture said on Friday that American farmers could resume growing genetically engineered sugar beets that had been barred by a federal judge.” The ban had led to fears of sugar shortages and steep price hikes. [New York Times, earlier]
Mayor Bloomberg’s outdoor smoking ban
When you go too far even for the editorialists at the Times, you know you’ve really gone overboard.
(Still) misreporting Citizens United
At The Atlantic, civil libertarian Wendy Kaminer catches Washington Post columnist Katrina Vanden Heuvel misrepresenting the role of campaign spending in the defeat of Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold, and the New York Times — in a more appalling lapse of journalistic standards — digging in to defend gross misstatements about the high court’s opinion.
Delayed action
White Coat sums up a recent jury verdict: “Obstetrician ordered to pay $3 million to patient born with cerebral palsy … 18 years ago.” The doctor, from Glens Falls, N.Y., “has $2 million in insurance coverage and may have to cover $1 million of the verdict himself,” according to the story. Statutes of limitations in medical malpractice actions are often “tolled” (suspended) until a child reaches the age of majority, so that it is by no means unheard-of for families to file suit a decade and a half after a medical occurrence.
Dan Snyder vs. Washington City Paper
NHTSA: no electronic flaws in Toyotas
It’s basically the same message that leaked out seven months ago. In a new post at Cato at Liberty, I raise some questions about why it took so long to release the study results.
More: Jalopnik, Coyote, Marc Hodak, Rick Woldenberg/AmendTheCPSIA, Dan Fisher/Forbes, Dan Bigman/Forbes (LaHood: “no defect, but we’ll regulate the industry anyway”); Carter Wood/ShopFloor and more, Ted Frank/PoL (class action over loss of resale value continues), New York Times, Leonard Evans/AOL. My March 2010 National Review piece “Exorcising Toyota’s Demons” is here. And welcome readers from Instapundit, Charlie Martin/PJ Tatler, Pejman Yousefzadeh, Roger Donway/Atlas Society, Ira Stoll/Future of Capitalism.
“More than 100,000 People Have Been Sued for Sharing Movies in Past Year”
So far it’s mostly smaller and adult producers filing the suits. Will the broader film industry wind up going down the much-lawyered record-label route? [Hollywood Reporter THR, Esq.] Related: “Lessons from the Texas Downloading Dismissal – Why Due Process Matters” [Paul Alan Levy, CL&P]
Gun-safety instructor who shot himself sues over leaked video
A judge has dismissed a privacy claim by a gun instructor who shot himself during a safety demonstration; video of the incident later turned up at The Smoking Gun and elsewhere. [Lowering the Bar; compare the Fountain Lady’s video-privacy grievance.]