- KlearGear and the consumer non-disparagement clause that ate (or tried to eat) Chicago [Popehat and followup]
- “House Passes Bill That Would Open Asbestos Trusts To Scrutiny” [Daniel Fisher/Forbes, Chamber-backed Legal NewsLine]
- Randy Maniloff interviews Judge Richard Posner on his new book Reflections on Judging [Coverage Opinions]
- In a custody fight, anything can happen: “Dad Accused of ‘Unfit Parenting’ for Refusing to Take His Son to McDonalds” [TIME]
- “Released after serving 10 years on false rape accusation –then wrongly arrested for not registering as sex offender” [Chicago Tribune via @radleybalko]
- Institute for Justice launches campaign to challenge local restrictions on food with suits over sale of cottage baked goods, front-yard vegetable gardens, advertising of raw milk [AP/Yahoo, “National Food Freedom Initiative“]
- Alabama regulators add hassle factor when business tries to move into the state [Coyote]
Archive for November, 2013
Emergency meningitis vaccine
“It’s good that the FDA lifted the ban on Bexsero but why should Americans have to wait for the FDA?” [Alex Tabarrok, Bloomberg]
It’s “what I was born to do”
John Edwards returns to law practice.
More from commenter ras: “Can we sue the attending physician?”
Proposals to require gun owners to buy liability insurance
They appear to be going nowhere in state legislatures:
A mandate for gun buyers could be more challenging than for drivers, given insurers’ aversion to the risk from assaults. That compares with U.S. auto insurance, where companies spend more than $5 billion a year to win customers in a $178 billion market.
“That’s why things like mandatory auto insurance kind of work, because you’ve already got a highly functional market and it’s a matter of herding the last stragglers into it,” Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a think tank dedicated to limited government, said in an interview. “But when there is no functional insurance market at all for some kind of risk, it’s a different question.”
It doesn’t help that the ObamaCare episode has raised public resistance to the idea of mandatory insurance. Related: even two authors somewhat favorably disposed toward the idea, and who believe it might be enacted in some forms without overstepping the Constitution, predict its effect in reducing injury by deterring negligent gun handling would “probably not be very great.” [Stephen Gilles and Nelson Lund, Regulation magazine (Cato, PDF)]
The New Age of Litigation Finance
On Thursday I was a panelist at the Federalist Society National Lawyers’ Conference discussing the rapid rise of litigation funding — specifically, well-capitalized firms that advance money to plaintiffs in commercial high-stakes litigation, often in exchange for a share in the proceeds. (A separate wing of the litigation finance business, which was not the panel’s primary focus, advances smallish sums to individual injury plaintiffs at high interest rates in a sort of analogue of payday lending.)
My opening remarks speculate about the future emergence of divorce trolls — excuse me, “marital rights assertion entities” — set up to buy out an ex-spouse’s stake in ongoing matrimonial strife and play it for maximum extraction value. While no one has yet rolled out that kind of business model, note that outside financiers have indeed begun to fund divorce litigation.
More seriously, I went on to argue that the rise of patent trolls and mass tort operations prefigures problems we are likely to see emerge from litigation finance, from the encouragement given to low-value claims to a settlement process skewed by the interests of the funders rather than the original disputants, and suggest that the age-old rules against champerty, maintenance and barratry might owe something to an appreciation of such dangers. A link to the video is here.
More: Check out Roger Pilon’s post on what else Cato people were up to at the Mayflower last week.
Supreme Court and constitutional law roundup
- Court agrees to hear case that could be vehicle for reconsidering “fraud on the market” theory embraced in Basic Inc. v. Levinson, 1988, which would spell huge news for securities class actions [Daniel Fisher, Class Defense Blog, Halliburton v. Erica P. John Fund at SCOTUSBlog; noteworthy amicus brief (PDF) from former SEC commissioners and officials and law professors]
- Elane Photography files certiorari petition [PDF] seeking review of ruling compelling owner to shoot same-sex partnership celebration [Adam Liptak, NYT, citing Cato brief in New Mexico case below, more on which here]
- Court hears oral argument on Hood v. AU Optronics: is state attorney general’s parens patriae antitrust suit removable to federal court under CAFA? [Ronald Mann/SCOTUSBlog, Class Defense Blog]
- “Party autonomy reigns supreme: arbitration and class actions in the Supreme Court’s 2012 term” [Mark Morril, WLF]
- More views on Bond v. U.S., the treaty case [Nick Dranias, Oona Hathaway, Spiro et al/Opinio Juris, Will Baude, earlier]
- Housing disparate impact: “St. Paul landlords’ suit may move forward, after New Jersey case settled” [St. Paul Pioneer-Press, Josh Blackman and more, earlier]
- Hee hee: SCOTUSBlog is for sale, and Kyle Graham is handicapping the possible purchasers [Non Curat Lex]
- There’s no constitutional authority for federal hate crime law [Ilya Shapiro, Cato]
“Whistleblowers coming from compliance departments”
Much more rewarding to act as a government informant than to help the employer address the problem: “Allegations of wrongdoing within a company often surface in the compliance department, which often is involved in internal investigations and receives employee complaints. Like other employees, compliance staff can under various statutes submit information on potential wrongdoing for whistleblower awards or claim retaliation for raising concerns about alleged wrongdoing.” [WSJ via CompliancEX]
“The agency has filed more lawsuits against lawyers…”
“…than [against] almost any other group.” Can you guess which new federal agency is being referred to? [National Law Journal]
Toward the domestic frontier
Berkeley, Calif. councilman Jesse Arreguin proposes banning smoking in private single family homes when children, seniors or lodgers are present [San Francisco Chronicle]
More: I’m quoted by Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders:
In deference to the secondhand smoke rationale, Arreguin suggests that the ban apply if a minor lives in the home, “a nonsmoking elder, 62 years of age or older is present” or any other “non-smoking lodger is present.”
Walter Olson of the libertarian Cato Institute compares the Berkeley nanny ordinance to secondhand smoke itself: “They are seeping under our doors now to get into places where they’re not wanted.”
He faults “ever more ambitious smoking bans” that rework the definition of private space. “Now they’re really just saying it doesn’t matter if you have the consent of everyone in the room.” Olson savored Arreguin’s suggestion that 63-year-olds cannot consent to being near a smoker.
Law schools roundup
- “California AG files claim against school that hired its own students to boost employment numbers” — not a story about a law school, but it might have been [John Steele]
- Hardly anyone took the constitutional challenge to ObamaCare seriously, at least it seems not at Yale [David Bernstein, Volokh; and speaking of law school ideology my book Schools for Misrule makes a great holiday gift]
- Clinical legal education: “shift from service clinics to impact clinics is partly driven by clinicians’ search for status within the academy” [Margaret Drew and Andrew Morriss, SSRN]
- Shorten law school to two years? [NYT “DealBook” on Obama comments, Jim Dedman, Abnormal Use] “UVM, Vermont Law School consider joint degree” [Burlington Free Press]
- As “Old Media” shrinks, shouldn’t the number of law reviews do so too? [Gerard Magliocca]
- Lighter regulation of UK law schools, and more pathways to practice? [John Flood]
- Cleveland State law profs say “Satanic” $666 pay hike was retaliation for union activities [TaxProf]