The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has extracted an $85,000 settlement and other relief from Atchison Transportation Services, Inc., of South Carolina on charges that one of its managers terminated two motorcoach drivers who were 75 and 76 years old respectively. As with disability discrimination, federal law on age discrimination generally requires that termination be based only on cause-based individualized determinations of unfitness; in practice, an employer may be well advised to premise such determinations only on evidence that would stand up under legal scrutiny as objective, such as, for example, a driver’s loss of license or involvement in an accident. [EEOC press release, h/t Roger Clegg]
Archive for October, 2014
“Will Social Justice Save Law Schools?”
Pitching a civil-Gideon entitlement as salvation to economically insecure faculty and administrators in legal academia [Edward Rubin via Caron, TaxProf]
Zen Magnets’ fight with the feds
After BuckyBalls surrendered to the Consumer Product Safety Commission the Denver-based company Zen Magnets was the last standing in the tiny-recreational-magnets field, and its founder, 27-year-old Shihan Qu, isn’t planning to go quietly. [WestWord]
October 10 roundup
- NYC pols, hotel interests unite in the cause of suppressing AirBnB [CNBC, Matthew Feeney/Cato, more, NY mag]
- David Bernstein on Justice Sotomayor’s dissent in Schuette, the Michigan affirmative action case [Cato Supreme Court Review via Volokh Conspiracy, and thanks for quoting my views]
- Restaurant’s amusing response to “do you know I’m a lawyer?” [Above the Law]
- Cronyism in city governance: its enablers, consequences and possible cures [Aaron Renn, Urbanophile, first, second, third, fourth posts; Lincoln Steffens, 1905, on the evils of Rhode Island]
- N.J. toll-taker’s suit: it’s my right to tell motorists “God bless you” whether turnpike authority likes it or not [AP/CBS New York]
- “Q: What has worse terms than gym memberships and class action settlements? A: This class action over gym memberships.” [Center for Class Action Fairness on Twitter]
- US border security great at keeping out bagpipes and Kinder Eggs, not so great at keeping out Ebola [Mark Steyn, more Steyn on bagpipes and earlier on musical instrument confiscations here, here, etc.]
Carry work tools, get arrested in NYC
My new Cato piece on New York’s crazy “gravity-knife” law, picking up on an excellent Village Voice investigation by Jon Campbell. More: Scott Greenfield.
“Hyundai Must Pay $73 Million Punitive Award, Judge Says”
The story from Montana, on Bloomberg, updates our earlier report [link fixed now] including this link. Writes correspondent R.T.:
Big difference in liability theories here:
Plaintiff: Defective steering mechanism;
Defendant: The fireworks that were going off INSIDE THE CAR at the time of the crash.
Banking and finance roundup
- Corporate charter revocation, a goofy cause, naturally enjoys support of RFK Jr. [Bainbridge, more]
- Jury finds Arab Bank liable in terror finance lawsuit [Daniel Fisher first, second, third posts; Kevin Funnell first, second posts]
- “And since most cases do settle, the scope of the law is actually being determined by the DOJ rather than the courts.” [Thomas Vartanian, American Banker] “Lloyds settlement latest example of the shadow regulatory state” [James Copland, City A.M.]
- Gideon Kanner is covering the AIG trial that just started;
- Do the benefits of mandatory investor disclosures outweigh the costs? [Elisabeth de Fontenay, Regulation (PDF) via Matthew Feeney]
- Albany lawprofs on board with scheme to expropriate underwater mortgages through eminent domain and compensate just 60 percent of face value [SSRN, earlier]
- Transparency in whistleblowing: we’ll see what the SEC wants us to see [Daniel Fisher]
The difference economists have made
Tyler Cowen and Arnold Kling salute the new Robert Litan book Trillion Dollar Economists, on how economists and their ideas have contributed to the world in practical ways ranging from auction design and financial innovation to telecommunications and prediction markets.
“Blind man sues Redbox, alleges kiosks are not accessible to visually impaired”
“Because a blind or visually impaired individual cannot discern the visual cues displayed on the kiosk controls, they cannot independently browse, select and pay for DVDs at kiosks, and instead must rely upon sighted companions or strangers to assist them,” states the complaint, filed in a Pittsburgh federal court by Robert Johoda. “Further, the blind or visually impaired consumer must divulge personal information, including their zip codes, to sighted companions or strangers in order to complete a transaction at the kiosks.” [Legal NewsLine]
Judge moves to sanction pattern of deposition objections
U.S. District Judge Mark Bennett of the Northern District of Iowa, presiding over a product liability case, has asked defense counsel “to show cause as to why he should not be sanctioned for the ‘serious pattern of obstructive conduct’ he displayed” in a client’s deposition, which seemed aimed both at interruption for its own sake and at coaching the witness as to how to answer. “The attorney objected so many times that his name was found, on average, three times per page of deposition transcript.” [Nick Farr, Abnormal Use]
Rather than fine the lawyer, Judge Nelson ordered him to create and write a training video explaining the basis of the sanctions and demonstrating how to comply with the rules during depositions in state and federal court.