Illinois: “The daughter of a St. Clair County man killed while crossing a DuQuoin street in his wheelchair is suing the makers of the wheelchair and the driver of the car that allegedly hit him. … [Candess] Higgerson claims the wheelchair, made by Invacare and sold by The Scooter Store, was defective because it was not equipped with flags or other devices to make it visible to motorists.” [Madison County Record]
Archive for 2011
July 26 roundup
- Murder victim’s family sues Schwarzenegger for commuting sentence [KTXL]
- Easter egg in Dodd-Frank: Lawmaker’s pet “conflict minerals” proposal, to be enforced by SEC [Protess] More on costs to automakers and others: WLF, Carter Wood, more. Further: Bader.
- Push is on again for fashion design copyright protection [NYT, earlier] Another skeptical view of bill [Katy Tasker, Public Knowledge]
- Charges dropped against woman who videotaped cops from her front yard [Rochester D&C]
- “Mom Charged with ‘Child Endangerment’ When Tot Wanders Off” [Free-Range Kids]
- Live off the land? Better not try that in rural L.A. County [Cavanaugh]
- Does the U.S. maintain diplomatic relations with this strange realm of “Gould, Arkansas”? [Volokh, Underhill/Forbes]
Prison for unauthorized use of “Smokey Bear” image
Great WSJ article on the unending proliferation of federal crimes, with appearances by a family that ran into a law making it a felony to dig for arrowheads on federal land, Bobby Unser and his snowmobile-astray ordeal, and a man effectively ruined by the $860,000+ cost of successfully defending himself against a federal charge of violating Russian hunting regulations.
“Most people think criminal law is for bad people,” says Timothy Lynch of Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. People don’t realize “they’re one misstep away from the nightmare of a federal indictment.”
More: from Tim Lynch, and (via PoL) Josh Blackman, William Anderson/Regulation mag.
California workplace seating suits, cont’d
AP: “Nearly every national [retail] chain is under legal attack in California for failing to provide ‘suitable seating’ for cashiers and other employees who are expected to spend most of their work day on their feet.” For more on recent plaintiff victories under California’s distinctive bounty-hunting labor law, see this April link.
July 25 roundup
- Nice going, sex offender registries [Brian Dickerson, Detroit Free Press] And I’m quoted in a syndicated column by Lenore Skenazy (and thence by Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing) on the registries’ tendency to sweep in much wider circles of offender than many advocates originally had in mind. More: a tale of child-abuse registries [Skenazy];
- New York Times exposes scandal: businessman holds seat in Congress. Quick, replace him with another lawyer! [Ribstein]
- Race separation’s unlawful for school attendance. So why’s it OK for school voting districts? [Quin Hillyer, Mobile Press-Register]
- Speech and property rights in peril: “Fear of a Muslim America” [Cathy Young, Reason]
- Before blaming bank dereg for “Too Big To Fail,” read this [Mark Calabria, Cato at Liberty]
- After fatal one-car crash, drunk driver’s survivors sue popular Irish bar that served him [NJLRA; Trenton, N.J.]
- Scotland: Thief wants victim prosecuted for keeping gun in her house [Daily Record]
Gasp-worthy
The Food and Drug Administration has banned the only over-the-counter asthma inhaler, Primatene Mist, on the grounds that it releases chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and is thus bad for the ozone layer. [Chris Horner, Big Government via Alkon; Washington Post](& welcome Above the Law readers)
More from @larkinrule: “I was alone at my family cabin had an asthma attack and no inhaler. The corner store had one left. I believe it saved my life.”
Memo to Prof. Turley
Deriding Schlussel is more satisfactory in every way than suing Schlussel [Greenfield]
“The case against law school”
An opinion roundtable at the New York Times’ “Room for Debate.”
Related: “How law schools are helping the elite” [Brian Tamanaha, Balkinization] And it rather missed the point for the underlying NYT report to call law schools “singular creature of American capitalism” [Larry Ribstein] Earlier: Theodore Seto via Taxprof, Stephen Bainbridge,
Attorney general slush funds, cont’d
It’s surprising there isn’t more controversy over state AGs’ frequent practice of using moneys from lawsuit settlements for their own favored causes (as opposed to, say, handing it over to the state treasury). Now Arkansas AG Dustin McDaniel is drawing criticism for his funneling of cy pres funds to politically advantageous causes that don’t happen to have been voted appropriations by the state legislature [John Brummett, Arkansas News; Dan Greenberg, The Arkansas Project, and followup]
P.S. Related on cy pres in private class actions: Dan Popeo, WLF (Google Buzz settlement); Michael Tremoglie, LNL; Ted Frank.
Musical forensics, via Google
“Does the infamous ‘Happy Birthday to You’ copyright hold up to scrutiny?” [Paul Collins, Slate]