If the Food and Drug Administration continues down its current path, it could begin ordering mandatory salt reductions in processed and restaurant foods ranging from pretzels to cold cuts to take-out chicken nuggets. As I explain at Cato at Liberty, time is running out for public comment on the FDA’s plans to enter the field. Earlier here, etc.
Archive for 2011
Enviro groups: beware brass at Disneyland
Several environmental groups say objects accessible to visitors at Disney parks, such as brass knobs, test positive for lead. “The groups filed suit against Disneyland in April based on a California law that requires businesses to post warnings when lead levels in fixtures and other items exceed certain levels.” Lead in brass and similar stable alloys is often regarded as posing little or no danger as compared with lead in more readily ingestible forms, but has nonetheless been swept in for similar treatment under various ill-conceived laws. [Orlando Sentinel]
Suit: cabin noise deafened man
“An Oregon man who was flying home from the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport pleaded with a Delta Airlines flight attendant about the ‘extreme discomfort’ he was enduring because of a loud noise during the nearly four-hour flight.” Kent Neilson says he suffered permanent hearing loss and tinnitus and wants $2 million. [Oregonian]
November 23 roundup
- Big win for Ted Frank against cy pres slush funds [CCAF, Fisher, Zywicki, CL&P, @tedfrank (“Ninth Circuit rules in my favor … but I still think I’m right”.)]
- “Can the Vatican Be Subject to ICC Prosecution?” [Ku/OJ]
- “Tennessee: ATS Sues City Over Right Turn Ticket Money” [The Newspaper]
- “Law firms dominating campaign contributions to Obama” [WaPo]
- Does that mean it’s an entitlement? Punitive damage limits face constitutional challenges in Arkansas, Missouri [Cal Punitives]
- Businessman sues to silence critical blogger, case is dismissed, now files suit #2 [Scott Greenfield]
- Going Hollywood? “The Supreme Court should move to Los Angeles” [Conor Friedersdorf]
Privatizing retail permitting
The Washington Post offers an editorial caution to lawmakers in Montgomery County, the famously liberal slice of Maryland suburbia:
A bill before the Montgomery County Council would force big-box retailers such as Wal-Mart, Home Depot and Target to negotiate with neighborhood groups as a condition for getting their new stores approved. This is such a spectacularly bad idea, on so many levels, that it’s hard to imagine how it came to be taken seriously in the first place.
By contrast, the nearby District of Columbia, often seen as a challenging place to do business, seems to be making its peace with Wal-Mart, which has announced plans to open six new stores there.
Soup kitchen as “retail food establishment”
In Morristown, N.J., the city’s decision to reclassify a church-sponsored soup kitchen as a “retail food establishment” is expected to drive up the kitchen’s operating costs by at least $150,000 a year, in part by prohibiting volunteers from bringing in home-prepared food or even aprons. [William McGurn, Wall Street Journal] We’ve covered the issue periodically over the years.
November 22 roundup
- Furor continues over insider trading by Congress [Roger Parloff/Fortune, Bainbridge (“unimpressed” with reform proposal entitled STOCK Act), earlier] Rep. Bachus disputes claims in Peter Schweizer book [AW, Perry]
- “Fort Hood victims’ families seek $750M from feds” [Kenneth Timmerman, Daily Caller]
- “Chicago Lawyer Sues Southwest, Says Airline Breached Free-Drink Coupon Contract” [ABA Journal]
- “Lawyer Solicitation: Penn State Sex Abuse Edition” [Turkewitz] Slate slags Merck CEO [Ted Frank]
- Akaka Hawaii-racialization bill, smuggled in through the back door? [Ilya Shapiro, background]
- Suits over Hurricane Irene electrical outages expected to spread [Connecticut Law Tribune, Chris Powell]
- Fiasco envy? “RIAA Thinking Of Backing Righthaven” [Masnick, TechDirt] “Righthaven ordered to pay nearly $120,000 in attorney fees, court costs” [VegasInc., Ars Technica, American Power Blog]
Court: IVF clinic cannot turn away single customers
“A single woman who was denied treatment by a west Michigan in vitro fertilization clinic can proceed with a lawsuit claiming unlawful discrimination, the state Court of Appeals ruled in a decision released today. The case against Grand Rapids Fertility and IVF was filed after a doctor there told Allison Moon that his clinic could not provide the service out of concern that Michigan paternity law is so vague that a child conceived by IVF and born to a single mother could successfully sue the clinic for child support.” [Dawson Bell, Detroit Free Press] The appeals court said Michigan’s Elliot-Larsen Civil Rights Act, which prohibits services of public accommodation from discriminating on the basis of marital status among other grounds, extinguishes doctors’ common law right to decide with whom to undertake a physician-patient relationship. [Michigan Health Law Link]
NYT front-pager: law schools don’t teach how to be a lawyer
The story, by David Segal, is here, and yes, I did get there first earlier this year in chapter 3 of my book Schools for Misrule (which you can now take a closer look at through Amazon’s “Look Inside the Book” feature). Reaction from legal academia to Segal’s piece has been largely negative (Matt Bodie/Prawfs, Adler roundup), but Orin Kerr argues:
there’s an underlying point that I think is both important and correct: Law professors, at especially the “top” law schools, are becoming less connected to the legal profession. As a result, over time, they are less likely to know — and therefore less able to teach — the perspective an experienced lawyer would bring to legal problems.
And here is John Steele in the comments section at Prawfs:
Guys, lighten up. The article goes a little overboard here and there but for a general audience readership covers a lot of ground accurately. If “man bites dog” is what makes for news, the fact that students rack up $150,000 in debt and have no clue about mergers get done is news. It’s not news for those of us in practice or law schools or an in-house law departments, but it’s certainly news for the general audience.
Gideon Kanner sees an ideological angle.
P.S. So does Hans Bader. And John Steele amplifies his comments, while Rick Garnett weighs in on the anti-Segal side. Further: Erik Gerding.
NBA-er: team’s medical ineligibility ruling was disability discrimination
“Former National Basketball Association player Cuttino Mobley sued Madison Square Garden LP, parent of the New York Knicks, alleging that the team discriminated against him based on what it perceived to be a disability.
Mobley, who hasn’t played since the 2008-09 season, says the Knicks ended his career by having him declared medically ineligible to play because of a heart ailment, according to the complaint filed today in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.” [Bloomberg, NY Post]