- “City to pay $22.5 million to bipolar woman released in high-crime area” [Chicago Sun-Times, Greenfield]
- On Medicaid settlement clawback evasion, Obama acts in line with wishes of both plaintiff’s and defense sides, though against interests of federal Treasury [Ted Frank] Michael Greve on Delia v. EMA, the Medicaid recoupment case before SCOTUS [Law and Liberty]
- From Sasha Volokh, a Glee-ful Torts exam [Volokh]
- Congrats to Abnormal Use, repeat winner in Torts category of ABA Journal Blawg 100;
- UK: personal injury firms say they’ll need to lay off workers if government carries through on reform of civil suits [Law Gazette]
- “How the First Amendment affects tort law” [Beck, Drug and Device Law]
- Bummer: after involuntary pot brownie incident, lawsuit names club where incident took place [NJLRA]
Archive for 2013
“Gun control’s Potemkin village”
“The agenda includes mostly measures that will have little or no effect on the problems they are supposed to address. They are Potemkin remedies—presentable facades with empty space behind them. … The assault weapons ban was irrelevant to fighting crime before, which is no reason it can’t be irrelevant again.” [Steve Chapman, Chicago Tribune/syndicated] The Washington Post interviews Bob Levy, chairman of the Cato Institute and a key mover of the Heller v. D.C. individual-rights litigation, on what types of gun controls he sees as consistent with the Second Amendment as explicated in Heller. And don’t assume the gun debate breaks down along lines of urban vs. rural, liberal vs. conservative, or individualist vs. communitarian; it often doesn’t [David Kopel, NYT “Room for Debate”]
More from Cato: Tim Lynch on what happened to gun crime in D.C. after Heller, and on the civil rights history of “Deacons for Defense”; Trevor Burrus on New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s move to toughen the state’s already widely evaded gun laws; video with Tim Lynch and Caleb Brown on the Obama gun agenda. And from Damon Root, commenting on an Akhil Amar article, some surprising (and at times Cato-mediated) connections between gun rights and gay rights [Reason]
“A Risk of Relapse Is a Disability, Court Rules”
“A federal appeals court on Thursday ruled that insurance companies can be required to pay long-term disability benefits to a recovering drug addict if the person would face a significant risk of relapse by returning to work.” The First Circuit parted company with the Fourth, which has ruled the opposite way. [Jacob Gershman, WSJ Law Blog, subscription; Colby v. Union Security Insurance, PDF]
“A helpful reminder…”
“…Video game consumption is not correlated with gun violence” [Maggie Koerth-Baker, BoingBoing]
Also: on which same general subject, a helpful reminder that Ralph Nader is still an idiot [Erik Kain, Forbes; Gamespot]
Alternative (really alternative) dispute resolution
January 20 roundup
- I’m in today’s NYT Book Review reviewing “Foundation,” Peter Ackroyd’s new book on English history up to the Tudors [NYT]
- Stanford Law School launches religious liberty clinic [Karen Sloan, NLJ] AALS panel on “The Freedom of the Church” [Rick Garnett, Prawfs]
- Party in breach, nasssty thief, we hates it forever: lawyer parses Hobbit’s Bilbo-dwarves contract [James Daily, Wired]
- To pay for roads, vehicle-mile fees > gas tax, but either > general sales tax, argues Randal O’Toole [Cato at Liberty]
- Steven Teles on the high cost of opaque, complex and indirect government action [New America via Reihan Salam]
- I’ve given a blurb to Mark White’s forthcoming nudging-back book on behavioral economics, “The Manipulation of Choice: Ethics and Libertarian Paternalism” [Amazon]
- “Internet-Use Disorder: The Newest Disability?” [Jon Hyman]
Lance Armstrong as litigant
The disgraced cyclist, like quite a few celebrities (and non-celebrities), had filed defamation actions against persons over statements he had good reason to know were true. That’s not just a violation of his adversaries’ rights, but an inherently sanctionable use of the courts [Michael McCann/Sports Illustrated via Turkewitz; Emily Bazelon/Slate (“Armstrong ‘sued so many people that by his own admission he can’t remember their names'”)]
“I learned not to have kids…It will make you go broke”
The Miami Herald profiles a child support lawyer who says her clients regularly fall victim to computer mistakes:
A lot of [Chantal] Suttle’s time representing dads is spent cleaning up errors on behalf of the state, which can take away a dad’s driver’s license or passport, or seize his bank account, for supposed non-payment. And it can be done without ever even going to court — the state lets fathers know with just a letter in the mail.
“I have about six clients right now who have paid on time and perfectly for over a decade, and still their driver’s license has been suspended and/or their bank account has been seized,” she said.
“Failing Law Schools” at Cato
Here’s the video of our Wednesday event at which author Brian Tamanaha (Washington U.) discussed his book Failing Law Schools. Neal McCluskey (Cato) and Paul Campos (Colorado) commented, and I moderated. We’ve had lots of appreciative comments from those who’ve watched, and I wholeheartedly endorse the book, which is persuasive in both its analysis and its recommendations.
More: After the panel, Megan McArdle of Newsweek/Daily Beast interviewed Prof. Campos on the latest bad numbers for law schools. Other comments include Paul Caron/TaxProf, Stephen Diamond of Santa Clara University (disapproving of Cato and the panelists) and Constitutional Daily here, here and here (differing sharply with Diamond).
And: Cato Daily Podcast (audio) with Prof. Tamanaha.
Lawyer billed client “for time they spent having sex”
The ultimate Overlawyered story? Minnesota: “An Eagan lawyer is suspended indefinitely after having an affair with a client whom he represented in a divorce, then billing her for time they spent having sex. … At various points, Lowe billed the woman for legal services on the dates of their sexual encounters, coding the time as meetings or drafting memos. … [He] won’t have a chance for reinstatement for at least a year and three months after the decision… by the Minnesota Supreme Court.” [St. Paul Pioneer-Press]