Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Archive for January, 2014

“School faces human rights complaint over student’s egg, dairy allergy”

National Post via Free-Range Kids:

A Hamilton, Ont., mother has filed a human rights complaint against her daughter’s elementary school, claiming it discriminated against the six-year-old for failing to accommodate her life-threatening allergy to eggs and dairy. The case … seeks to ban milk products and eggs from her daughter’s school.” …

Ms. Glover wants the allergens removed from the school, and school and board staff get human rights training. She wants to “bring to light the fact that children have the right to a barrier free education.”

“Anything short of that is discrimination,” she says.

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“86 fraternity members sued over Yale-Harvard game death”

Sue ’em all: “Eighty-six current and former members of a Yale University fraternity are being sued over a deadly tailgating crash at the 2011 Yale-Harvard football game. … [Lawyers] say insurance for the national Sigma Phi Epsilon organization doesn’t cover the local chapter, so they have to sue the local fraternity and its members.” That’s “have to” in the sense of “can obtain more money if they.” [Associated Press]

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Free speech roundup

  • Setback for climate scientist Michael Mann in defamation suit against critics [Jonathan Adler, Mark Steyn, earlier here and here; update, Mann wins a round] Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has taken interest on defendants’ side [Steyn] “Blogger’s Incarceration Raises First Amendment Questions” [NYT on Shuler case in Alabama, on which earlier; more]
  • Religious liberty: “When thought is a crime, no other freedom can long survive.” [Doug Bandow]
  • Nigeria’s new jail-the-gays law is brutally repressive toward speech and association. Oil-rich country gets upwards of $500 million in US foreign aid a year [Reuters, AP and followup, Al-Jazeera]
  • Members of Ramapough tribe in New Jersey sue Hollywood over “Out of the Furnace” depiction [AP]
  • “California’s New Law Shows It’s Not Easy To Regulate Revenge Porn” [Eric Goldman]
  • Catching up on the Ampersand case, where the NLRB got slapped down trying to restrict newspaper owner’s First Amendment rights [Harry G. Hutchison]
  • Video interview with noted civil libertarian Harvey Silverglate [Cato]

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Supreme Court on civil procedure: calm and unanimous

One (Hood v. AU Optronics) went for plaintiffs, the other (Daimler AG v. Bauman) for defendants, but both were unanimous, in another indication that the work of the Justices rises well above the silly caricature offered by critics like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (“wholly owned subsidiary of Big Business,” etc.) I explain at Cato at Liberty. While Justice Sotomayor in a separate concurrence took a different approach to the problems of general jurisdiction, it arrived at the same place with respect to the unreasonableness of suing Daimler in California over faraway conduct.

For more on the Warren outburst, see Ramesh Ponnuru last September. Earlier links on the AU Optronics case here and here. Similarly: Josh Blackman.

More: While concurring in the result of Daimler v. Bauman, Justice Sotomayor sharply differed on the reasoning, which resulted in some unusually strong language directed at her from Justice Ginsburg writing for the other eight Justices [Blackman] Eugene Volokh considers the foreign-law angle. (& welcome Amy Howe/SCOTUSBlog readers)

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“Newtown: The moral panic that wasn’t”

After the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary a year ago, “the president appeared comparatively restrained next to the National Rifle Association’s Wayne LaPierre, who breathlessly demanded ‘an active national database of the mentally ill’ and federally funded ‘armed police officers in every school’ or Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who proposed legislation encouraging governors to call out the National Guard for school shootings.” Fortunately cooler heads have prevailed [Gene Healy, Washington Examiner]

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Recess appointments at the Supreme Court

Explainers by Trevor Burrus and William Baude at Forbes and by Nina Totenberg at NPR . “Noel Canning” is a packaging company in Yakima, Wash., not a person like Noel Coward, but confusingly enough is represented by Noel Francisco of Jones Day, who is a person. Coverage of yesterday’s Supreme Court argument from Cato’s Ilya Shapiro, who says the argument went very badly for the administration’s claims of executive power. “At one point during argument, SG Verrilli argued for Schroedinger’s Senate: in session re 20th Am, not in session for Recess Appts Clause.” [@ishapiro] Cato’s brief in the case is here.

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California mandates gloves for all food handling

Chefs “hate” the idea of using gloves or tongs on everything, says the L.A. Times, and the epic volume of plastic disposables that will have to be run through daily will make a bad joke out of the bag bans popular in the state, but the legislature was unswayed:

Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation that made changes to the California Retail Food Code in an effort to curtail foodborne illnesses, and those changes include a law that says “food employees shall not contact exposed, ready-to-eat food with their bare hands.”

That means cooks must wear single-use gloves or use utensils when handling food such as sushi, bread, fresh fruit and vegetables and any cooked components of dishes that will be plated for customers.

Some opinions from Twitter:

P.S. Cookery writer Michael Ruhlman has more to say here (“at any busy restaurant, my experience has been that the cooks’ hands are the cleanest in the place. You’re more likely to pick up germs from the waiter’s hand that sets your plate before you — but you don’t hear the legislators clamoring for this.”)

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