Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Archive for March, 2015

A minimum wage non-paradox

Obama wage-hour chief David Weil told the Wall Street Journal that leaders of the National Retail Federation approached him urging a hike in the federal minimum wage. Apparently readers are meant to infer that this policy is so obviously fair, or overdue, or beneficial to the national economy, that even big business leaders who will be paying the higher wages favor it. The anecdote is not even the tiniest bit paradoxical, however, once you realize that major national retail operators already tend to pay over the minimum and wouldn’t mind kneecapping their smaller, less-established, or lower-margin competitors who don’t [WSJ and blog, Donald Boudreaux, Tim Worstall]

Meanwhile: “More Seattle restaurants close doors as $15 minimum wage approaches” If only anyone could have predicted! [Shift WA via J.A. Cohen] But note this Seattle Times piece in which the owners of the four closing restaurants say the wage hike wasn’t the reason.

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Washington, D.C.: “Court orders man to stop smoking in his own home”

Lawyers Brendan and Nessa Coppinger moved into their row house in Washington, D.C.’s Capitol Hill neighborhood last September. They have now gotten a judge to agree to a temporary restraining order prohibiting their neighbor, Edwin Gray, from smoking or allowing anyone to smoke on his property. The Coppingers say the smoke is getting onto their premises through openings between the connected structures and “is harming them and their children”; they also want cash damages. The Gray family has owned the house next door for 50 years. [AP/ABC13 via ABA Journal; Washington Post]

Benjamin Freed at Washingtonian was kind enough to quote me at length making several points about this and similar litigation: 1) it would have been thrown out over most of the course of legal history because courts insisted that nuisance and similar claims (in this case couched as “negligence, nuisance, and trespassing”) exceed a de minimis standard and, in a claim for damages, required proof of actual harm going well beyond “you hit me with a molecule and that could kill me”; 2) smoking is uniquely disapproved nowadays which means some courts are willing to entertain de minimis claims that they would not for other common neighborhood nuisances; 3) if carcinogenic smoke drifting across property lines is to be stopped, both backyard grills and barbecues and common fireplaces are in trouble, at least if courts behaved logically — a very big if, of course. (It should be noted that the lawsuit includes some claims — such as that an unrepaired chimney at the Grays’ is contributing to the smoke problem — that might fit more readily into traditional legal categories.)

The temporary court order, incidentally, also bars the Gray family from allowing any smoking of now-legal marijuana in their house, which prompts this additional thought:

“It does make you wonder why conservative opponents of marijuana would bother to fight legalization in DC when instead they can let it go through and get rich suing over it,” Olson says.

Whole thing here.

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Supreme Court roundup

Very Cato-centric this time:

  • Perez v. Mortgage Bankers: yes, agencies can dodge notice and comment requirements of Administrative Procedures Act by couching action as other than making new rule [SCOTUSBlog and more links, earlier; Michael Greve and followup; Daniel Fisher on concurrence by Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito and related on Thomas, Alito concurrences in Amtrak case]
  • New Jersey high court is unreasonably hostile to arbitration clauses, which raises issues worthy of review [Shapiro on Cato cert petition]
  • “When Wisconsin Officials Badger Their Political Opponents, It’s a Federal Case” [Ilya Shapiro, earlier here, here, etc.]
  • Richard Epstein on King v. Burwell oral argument [Hoover, earlier]
  • With Profs. Bill Eskridge and Steve Calabresi, Cato files probably its last same-sex marriage brief before SCOTUS [Shapiro; Timothy Kincaid, Box Turtle Bulletin]
  • On Abercrombie (religious headscarf) case, Jon Hyman sees an edge for plaintiff at supposedly pro-business Court [Ohio Employer Law Blog, earlier]
  • A different view on Fourth Amendment challenge to cops’ warrantless access to hotel guest registries [James Copland on Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz brief; earlier Cato amicus]
  • “Why the Court Should Strike Down the Armed Career Criminal Act as Unconstitutionally Vague” [Trevor Burrus]

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Ray Lehmann on “Blurred Lines” case

While musical copying, and copying lawsuits, are nothing new, Ray Lehmann finds “different” and “potentially problematic” a jury’s $7.4 million verdict “against Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams, asserting the pair’s 2013 smash ‘Blurred Lines’ borrowed inappropriately from the 1977 Marvin Gaye song ‘Got to Give It Up.'” [R Street Institute] More: Ann Althouse.

P.S. Tim Hulsey commenting on Overlawyered’s Facebook page (which you’ve liked, right?): “If this decision had been in force during the 1940s, nine-tenths of ‘be-bop jazz’ would never have occurred — no ‘Donna Lee,’ no Thelonious Monk, no 12-bar blues.” And @terryteachout on Twitter: “I now see that the judge instructed the jury to go by the sheet music only. If that’s the applicable standard, the verdict will definitely be reversed.” More: David Post.

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Jury awards $150K to employee who feared scanner as “Mark of the Beast”

“An employee who refused to submit to biometric hand scanning because he feared the scanner would imprint him with the “Mark of the Beast,” was awarded $150,000 in damages by a federal jury …. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued Consol Energy on behalf of Butcher for allegedly forcing the long-time mine worker to retire because the companies’ newly installed technology violated his religious beliefs.” [Michael Stone, Patheos; Biometric Update, opinion and EEOC press release via Eugene Volokh, Jon Hyman and more (Sixth Circuit rules for employer in case where employee interprets Social Security number as mark of the Beast, because use of those numbers in hiring is mandatory under federal law)]

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Unanimous California high court overturns “Jessica’s Law” residence restrictions

In 2006 California votes approved the Sexual Predator Punishment and Control Act (a.k.a. Jessica’s Law) which, writes Jacob Sullum, “prohibits registered sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park, without regard to the nature of the crimes they committed or the threat they currently pose.” Persons are added to the registry over offenses — indecent exposure after being caught urinating at 2 a.m. outside a bar, for example — that may have nothing to do with children, force, or even sexual conduct as such. Under the sweeping terms of the California law, persons on the register were prohibited from occupying an estimated 97 percent of the apartment-zoned land in San Diego County. Sullum: “In 2007 Georgia’s residence restrictions, which mandated the relocation of sex offenders dying in nursing homes and forced repeated moves as formerly legal homes became illegal, were unanimously overturned by the state Supreme Court, which observed that ‘there is no place in Georgia where a registered sex offender can live without being continually at risk of being ejected.’

Meanwhile, in Carson, Calif., the city council has declined to amend its strictest-in-the-state law, which “prevent[s] them from going within 300 feet of day-care centers, libraries, swimming pools, and any establishment with a children’s playground or school bus stop.” [Daily Breeze]

Peter Bonilla is reminded of why “laws named after dead kids are bad for freedom,” a theme we have pursued here and here, among other places in our names of laws tag.

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Free speech roundup

  • Operator of consumer-gripe sites repels subpoena seeking identity of disgruntled consumer posters [Paul Alan Levy]
  • “ACLU: Cancellation of Redskins Trademark Was Unconstitutional” [WSJ Law Blog]
  • Islamists’ targeting of writers and intellectuals in the West for murder is happening rather too often to count as random noise [Eugene Volokh, case of Tennessee professor] American secularist blogger hacked to death in Bangladesh [Guardian]
  • “Philadelphia is the latest locale to insist that photographing police performing their jobs is a crime”; Third Circuit asked to consider First Amendment’s application [Reason]
  • Lawyers for British member of Parliament George Galloway demand £5,000 each from Twitter users over disparaging retweets [Popehat, Independent]
  • With net neutrality done, is it OK yet to talk about how far Left Robert McChesney and the grossly misnamed organization Free Press are? [John Fund, earlier]
  • Ohio judge goes wild against citizen who privately criticized him [Ken at Popehat, more, Jonathan Adler]

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For me but not for thee: Montgomery County lawn pesticide ban

I’ve got a new post at Cato at Liberty about a proposed countywide ban on common lawn and turf pesticides in Washington, D.C.’s suburban Montgomery County. The best part is that county officials are frantically maneuvering to get the county’s own playing fields exempted from the ban. The piece concludes:

Libertarians often note that the state freely bans private conduct in which it’s happy to indulge itself — federal investigators can lie to you but it’s a crime if you lie to them, adopting federal accounting practices in your own business is a good way to get sent to prison, and so forth. But the double standard asked for here could wind up being — well, to coin a phrase, as bald as a Rockville lawn.

More: From the Washington Post’s piece, quoting a retired minister who lives in Silver Spring: “My lawn is such a little fragment of American Freedom. Please respect it.” [cross-posted at Free State Notes]

More: Kojo Nnamdi Show, Euvoluntary Exchange (more on provisions of bill, including enumeration of “non-essential” pesticides to be restricted, a list that incorporates by reference lists in use in other jurisdictions like Ontario and the European Commission and grants the county executive authority to name others; links back to this county document); Gazette in October; Brad Matthews, Watchdog.

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