“A New Jersey couple does not have to pay — for now — for their 18-year-old daughter’s college education, a judge ruled Tuesday evening.” [CBS New York, ABC News, NY Daily News, AP]
Archive for March, 2014
Judge: Ecuador verdict against Chevron “obtained by corrupt means”
“U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in New York said he found ‘clear and convincing evidence’ that attorney Steven Donziger’s legal team used bribery, fraud and extortion in pursuit of an $18 billion judgment against the oil company issued in 2011.” [Reuters, Bloomberg, 485-pp., 1842-footnote opinion; SFGate, Kevin Williamson, Quin Hillyer, Ira Stoll (New York politicians including Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli roped in as allies of Donziger)] We’ve been covering the story for years.
March 5 roundup
- U.S. Commission on Civil Rights commissioners Gail Heriot, Peter Kirsanow: Administration’s new policy on race and school discipline likely to make schools more chaotic [Robby Soave, Daily Caller, 2011 related, earlier here, etc.]
- French court: fan club members suffered legally cognizable emotional damage from Michael Jackson’s death [Lowering the Bar, earlier]
- “The Newkirk incident demonstrates why cameras in the courtroom are a bad idea” [James Taranto, includes bonus New York Times disgrace]
- Claim: advocates stymied firearms research over most of past two decades. Accurate? [Fox News]
- Another look at the CPSC’s war on former Buckyballs CEO Craig Zucker [Jim Epstein, Reason, earlier]
- Chris Christie use of monitorships in white-collar prosecutions draws renewed scrutiny [New Republic, earlier]
- In which I am included in a list with George Will and Heather Mac Donald, all very flattering etc. etc. [Charles C. W. Cooke, NRO]
- D.C.: disbarred lawyer sat for years as workers comp judge [Washington City Paper]
- “German home-school family won’t be deported” although Supreme Court declines to hear asylum appeal [AP; discussion in comments earlier]
“Caution! Non-edible baby inside this cake”
Photo via David Boaz. We’ve been covering the Mardi Gras King-cake-figurine-liability issue at Overlawyered for years.
When AGs decline to defend state laws
Caleb Brown interviews me for this new Cato podcast on a knotty question: when should a state attorney general decline to argue in court in defense of a law he thinks unconstitutional? On the one hand, the legal profession’s norms strongly favor giving every client and cause its day in court, and practical dysfunction might result were cases routinely handed over to others to defend or dropped entirely. On the other hand, attorneys general like other officials take an oath of office to the constitution, which calls in doubt whether they should (or even may) use their skills on behalf of unconstitutional measures. Complicating matters: how should unconstitutionality be assessed, by way of the AG’s own judgment, by way of predicting how the highest relevant court would rule, or by some other method? What kind of difference should it make whether the assessment appears certain, very probable, or more ambiguous than that?
In recent weeks about a half-dozen Democratic AGs around the country have declined to defend their states’ bans on same-sex marriage, on the grounds that they are inconsistent with the Supreme Court’s Windsor decision of last year, while other AGs both Republican and Democratic have argued in defense of those laws. (Today, Kentucky’s attorney general announced that he will not appeal a federal court ruling requiring the state to recognize out-of-state marriages, although the state’s governor is stepping in to do so.) Finding either liberals or conservatives who have preserved entirely consistent positions on the issue, though, is not always easy. Former attorney general Ken Cuccinelli, a strong conservative, declined to defend a state education reform law last year, while in 2011 Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen declined to defend a state domestic partnership registry they deemed unconstitutional. In a case like the latter it was liberals who tended to criticize the refusal to defend a law, and conservatives who applauded — patterns that to some extent have been reversed this time around.
Debo Adegbile nomination
It must not have been easy to find an appointee even farther left than the departing Thomas Perez to head the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, but the search eventuated with apparent success in the Obama Administration’s naming of former NAACP Legal Defense Fund official Debo Adegbile. While his confirmation is a foregone conclusion under the Senate’s new simple-majority Harry Reid rules, Republicans may still make an issue of Adegbile’s backing of the EEOC in its controversial campaign to require employers to hire felons and limit the use of criminal background checks before employment. [Byron York, Washington Examiner] Update: nomination fails narrowly in Senate, opposition driven substantially by nominee’s involvement in public efforts on behalf of convicted Philadelphia cop-killer [Politico]
Lenore Skenazy at Cato on Thursday
Should parents helping their child’s teacher put on a short class party have to submit to a background check first? Is it child endangerment to leave your toddler in the car for a few minutes on a mild day while you run into a shop? If your child gets hurt falling off a swing, is it potential child neglect not to sue every solvent defendant in sight? Should police have arrested a dad who walked into school at pickup time rather than wait outside for his kids as he was supposed to?
Author Lenore Skenazy has led the charge against the forces of legal and societal overprotectiveness in her book Free-Range Kids and at her popular blog of the same name. This Thursday, March 6 – rescheduled from a weather-canceled event originally set for last month – she’ll be the Cato Institute’s guest for a lunchtime talk on helicopter parenting and its near relation, helicopter governance; I’ll be moderating and commenting. The event is free and open to the public, but you need to register, which you can do here. You can also watch online live at this link. (cross-posted from Cato at Liberty)
Allstate Insurance Co. v. Jacobsen: SCOTUS should review Montana class-action dodge
The rules for class actions seeking injunctive relief against unlawful conduct are looser in key respects than those for actions in which monetary relief is the object, in part because the consequences for absent class members are less serious. But what happens when shrewd counsel institute an action that is injunctive on its face, but actually crafted to tee up an entitlement to class damages? The Montana Supreme Court approved such a maneuver in a case now called Allstate Insurance Co. v. Jacobsen; now Cato has filed a brief seeking certiorari review of that decision, which raises important issues of class action fairness and practicality leading on from such recent high court decisions as Wal-Mart v. Dukes and Comcast v. Behrend. Read a summary here and the full brief here. More: Legal NewsLine (on Washington Legal Foundation brief).
Torts roundup
- Tasteless lawyer TV ads, yet another helping with some new to us [Above the Law, more, Daily Caller]
- “Study Says N.Y. ‘Scaffold Law’ Drives Up Construction Costs, Causes Injuries” [Insurance Journal, study, Cornell] Foes of NY’s liability-friendly Scaffold Law have videos on YouTube [sponsor]
- What can we conclude about the efficiency of liability rules in markets where nearly every provider tries to disclaim liability? [Bryan Caplan] “Regulation through Boilerplate: An Apologia” [Omri Ben-Shahar, SSRN]
- Stephen Yeazell on the declining political salience of the tort reform issue [SSRN]
- The “record of the elite defense bar with regard to the law of expert testimony… not a happy history” [David Bernstein, more] “The Misbegotten Judicial Resistance to the Daubert Revolution” [same] Acronym new to me: “SWAG,” short for “Scientific Wild-A**ed Guessing” [Paul Barrett, Business Week]
- “Turning litigation into a business is corrosive” [Philip K. Howard on lawsuit finance and champerty]
- Will health insurers be the ones to pull back the curtain on the asbestos bankruptcy trusts? [Daniel Fisher]
Funniest amicus brief ever
It’s actually on a serious subject: can a state (Ohio) purport to ban false, exaggerated or “truthy” speech about candidates, or does that impermissibly chill speech protected by the Constitution’s First Amendment? My colleagues Ilya Shapiro, Trevor Burrus and Gabriel Latner co-authored it on behalf of political humorist/Cato fellow P.J. O’Rourke in the pending SCOTUS case of Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus. Read it here, alongside Ilya Shapiro’s summary, and here’s David Lat of Above the Law calling it the “Best Amicus Brief Ever.“