An overweight customer in Rockland County, N.Y. has dropped his Americans with Disabilities Act suit against White Castle after a Nanuet, N.Y. outpost of the hamburger chain put in new free-standing chairs that could accommodate him [NY Post, December via Lowering the Bar, earlier]
Archive for February, 2012
Child support for adult college students, cont’d
Two years ago a public outcry helped defeat a Virginia proposal that would have required that divorced noncustodial parents continue to support children in college through age 23. (Our post at the time.) Now, as Hans Bader of CEI points out, Maryland’s legislature is considering a bill (up for hearing Feb. 23) to impose this obligation on parents. It doesn’t look as radical as the Virginia bill — the support obligation would only extend through age 21, not 23, for example — and it’s easy to see why it might appeal to the state university and its budgeters, as well as to pro-custodial-parent constituencies in family law. But it still raises some of the same questions of fairness and practicality, given that children past 18 are legally independent and need not be even on speaking terms with the estranged parents, who may be in no financial position to consider, say, finishing their own delayed college plans, yet are expected to foot college bills for their estranged offspring.
“Do Not Point Gun At Own Face”
Kevin at Lowering the Bar wonders whether there’s a need for a California-specific warning.
Annals of wage and hour law
New York’s notoriously stringent Department of Labor has fined a pizza shop owner $5,535 for not giving his employees enough polo shirts to wear — at least five for those who work five days a week, even if they work only a few hours a day. Owner Christian King
was told that an appeal would take years due to the backlog and the fine would accrue with interest….
“What happened to him is not unusual,” agreed Richard De Groot, a Syracuse consultant who advises businesses — including King’s — on human resource issues. He represents employers across much of the Eastern Seaboard and says New York is unusually demanding.
“There is so much in the way of state rules and laws,” he said, adding that he would advise some businesses, such as manufacturers, to simply look to elsewhere.
[Albany TImes-Union via Stoll]
“Indian court forces Facebook, Google to censor content”
“The Delhi High Court has ordered 21 companies, which have already been asked to develop a mechanism to block objectionable material in India, to present their plans for policing their services in the next 15 days.” A private complaint had charged the internet firms with permitting the dissemination of material offensive to Hindus, Muslims and Christians. [Emil Protalinski, ZDNet]
When federal defendants settle lawsuits
Jenna Greene reports in the National Law Journal (reg) on the Judgment Fund, an obscure entity within the federal government that last year paid to settle more than 5,000 lawsuits against federal agencies. For the most part, its payouts are not subtracted from agency budgets, and overall dollar figures tend to be dominated by a few special situations such as (most recently) lawsuits by utilities over alleged Energy Department breach of contract for nuclear fuel storage, and by Indian tribes against the Department of the Interior and Department of Agriculture over financial mismanagement and alleged discrimination. A smaller, but controversial, category of payouts that has attracted Congressional attention consists of settlements with “cause” organizations such as environmentalists that sue to force policy change.
“The strange thing is the lack of transparency,” said Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute’s Center for Constitutional Studies. “Settlements deserve scrutiny.…There’s no reason why as a public process there shouldn’t be fine-grained disclosure.”
In April, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) introduced the Judgment Fund Transparency Act of 2011, which would require Treasury (unless barred by a court order or law) to make public the names of plaintiffs and counsel, plus a brief description of the facts that gave rise to the payments and a breakdown of principal and attorney fees.
However, Greene reports, the Issa measure has attracted no co-sponsors and is stuck in House Judiciary with no apparent plans for action.
Bribing states to spend and regulate
In the earlier and sounder conception of federalism, local and national government were meant to check each other’s overweening power. Nowadays, unfortunately, the two often interact in a cooperative way to encourage bigger government at both levels, as Washington bribes the states to spend and regulate more. I explain at Cato at Liberty (& Damon Root, Reason).
February 14 roundup
- “Brazil Sues Twitter in Bid to Ban Speed Trap and Roadblock Warnings” [ABA Journal]
- Obama nominates Michigan trial lawyer Marietta Robinson to vacancy on Consumer Product Safety Commission, ensuring aggressively pro-regulatory majority [Bluey, Heritage]
- “AMA reports show high cost of malpractice suits” [HCFN] “Average expense to defend against a medical liability claim in 2010 was $47,158” [American Medical News, more] Survey of 1,200 orthopedic surgeons finds defensive medicine rife, at cost of billions, accounting for 7 percent of all hospital admissions [MedPageToday]
- “Sue us only in Delaware” bylaws would kill off forum-shopping and what fun is that? [Bainbridge, Reuters]
- Trial by media: Lefty “SourceWatch” posts, then deletes, docs from Madison County pesticide suit [Madison County Record]
- Think you’ve beaten FCPA rap? Meet the obscure “Travel Act” [Mike Emmick, Reuters] Federal court expands “honest services fraud” in lobbying case [Paul Enzinna, Point of Law]
- “On the horrors of getting approval for an ice-cream parlour in San Francisco” [NYT via Doctorow/BoingBoing]
Fordham Law School tomorrow
I’ll be speaking about my book Schools for Misrule tomorrow (Tuesday) at 12:30 at Fordham Law School in New York City. The Federalist Society is sponsoring, and Prof. Zephyr Teachout will provide critical commentary. The event is open to the public, so feel free to introduce yourself afterward as an Overlawyered reader.
“The most plausible route to the death of football…”
“…starts with liability suits.” As concussion suits mount, will broadcast networks and high school referees need to worry about being named as defendants along with team franchises, schools, helmet manufacturers and other more obvious defendants? [Tyler Cowen and Kevin Grier, Grantland, via Ilya Somin] More: Miller (“I think these cases are going nowhere.”)