- “Seattle gun buyback backfires” [David Henderson]
- “Gun ban” vs. “sensible gun control”: sorting out some of the major players [David Kopel, Cato Unbound, 2008]
- Second Amendment vs. First? Maryland lawmaker proposes bill “to prohibit publications from printing private info of gun owners” [Justin Silverman, Citizen Media Law]
- Mental illness and the next Newtown [NYT “Room for Debate”, Nick Gillespie, Walter Russell Mead, Ann Coulter, Sam Bagenstos]
- Story of gun nuts heckling grieving Newtown father at hearing was too good to check [Nobody’s Business, Jim Treacher]
- If you’re going to break a D.C. gun law in some unintended and harmless way, let’s hope you’re a well-known journalist and not some unknown schmo [Henderson] Meet some other victims of gun overcriminalization [Scott Shackford]
- “The Problem With the ‘Public Health Research on Gun Violence’ That Obama Wants You to Pay For” [Jacob Sullum]
Archive for 2013
The “self-funding,” unaccountable CFPB
What Paul Krugman likes about the unprecedented structure of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau is what fans of constitutional government should dislike about it, writes Ira Stoll [SmarterTimes].
Samsung Super Bowl ad
It makes fun of the NFL’s overzealous protection of the Super Bowl trademark:
One in ten California drivers has disabled placard
But how many actually deserve one? [CBS Los Angeles via Alkon]
When does product liability reform improve economic well-being?
A new empirical study from Joanna Shepherd (Emory) in the Vanderbilt Law Review looks at the question (via Chris Robinette/TortsProf). Among the conclusions:
My empirical results indicate that several reforms that restrict the scope of products liability have a significant impact on economic activity. Statutes of repose that limit the time period for which manufacturers are liable for product defects, comparative negligence reforms that reduce damage awards when plaintiffs engage in negligent activity, and reforms that eliminate strict liability for nonmanufacturer product sellers are all associated with statistically significant increases in economic activity. Specifically, my results suggest that these reforms increase the number of businesses, employment, and production in the industries that bear most of the products liability claims: the manufacturing, retail, distribution, wholesale, and insurance industries.
In contrast, other reforms have a weak effect on economic activity. My results suggest that caps on noneconomic damages and reforms to the traditional collateral source rule are only weakly associated with increases in economic activity. Meanwhile, caps on punitive damages and reforms eliminating joint and several liability are weakly associated with decreases in certain measures of economic activity.
Ethics roundup
- His own bad deal to make: client can’t sue lawyer for malpractice after lawsuit lending swallows up proceeds of $150K settlement [BNA]
- U.K. legal representation: “John Flood looks at the cab rank rule” [Legal Ethics Forum, more]
- Drumming up business: “Junk fax class action may proceed despite attorney misconduct” [Reuters]
- “Personal Injury Lawyers Sue Other Personal Injury Lawyers Over Solicitation” [Turkewitz, more]
- Manipulating time records to qualify for bonus proves costly for Wisconsin attorney [Volokh]
- Lawyer profile: “Defender of the Notorious, and Now Himself” [NY Times]
- Local prosecutors connive at debt-collection abuses thanks to 2006 legal provision [LA Weekly]
Cop takes disability at 33, traumatized by crime scenes
Then what do you think he does? “Carroll then started a business that cleans up gory crime scenes, a New Jersey Watchdog investigation found. Yet the state continues to pay him a disability pension for life, a sum that could total $1 million or more.” [Morris County, N.J.; Mark Lagerkvist, Reason]
Steve Chapman on pro football litigation
As I’ve been saying for a while, if the logic of other mass tort litigation is to carry over to suits over traumatic brain damage from pro football, it’s by no means clear how the organized sport can make it through the coming wave of litigation other than by turning itself into a very different game. Chicago Tribune-based syndicated columnist Steve Chapman gives me a chance to outline some of the reasons why, including the high likely damages, pressure to draw in peripheral parties and defendants such as doctors and equipment makers, and difficulties in relying on an assumption of risk defense [Washington Examiner] Background on risks for school-age players: WSJ.
P.S. Some more stirrings on the prevention and diagnosis front. A contrasting view from Max Kennerly. And discussion by Andrew Sullivan and readers, “Is Big Football the Next Big Tobacco?”
Trans fat in frozen pizza class action
Trans fat in frozen pizza? You might not find that so terribly surprising, but it’s reason enough for a class action against Nestlé, makers of DiGiorno, Stouffer’s and California Pizza Kitchen, which flings around words like “toxic” to describe partially hydrogenated vegetable oils [LaMesa Patch]
Recess appointments, shmecess appointments, we’ve got the power
Although the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled its composition invalid, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) “declares that it will keep doing business as if nothing happened.” [WSJ via Fed Soc Blog]
This is by no means the first face-off between the D.C. Circuit and an agency resistant to its will: for another, see this 1981 Regulation account (PDF, scroll to page 11, “Reversing the D.C. Circuit at the FCC”) of a series of showdowns between the appeals court and the Federal Communications Commission. That one ended happily for the independent agency, but then the FCC may have been on firmer ground going to bat for its right to exercise policy discretion as an expert agency than it would have for its right to be constituted improperly through unconstitutional appointments.