- “But the questions of fairness are real and seem to be bolstered by the S.E.C.’s win/loss record in its home court versus its performance in district courts.” [Gretchen Morgenson, New York Times, earlier here, etc.]
- With Greece as with subprime crisis, same regulators who messed up credit markets will probably ask for and get more power [Arnold Kling]
- “In fact an AIG-and-taxpayer bailout of Wall Street firms engineered by government officials and Wall Street professionals with deep and ignored conflicts of interest” [Lawrence Cunningham, National Interest via Bainbridge]
- CSR by way of SEC? “Disclosure Rules Are the Wrong Way to Push Social Change” [Thaya Knight, American Banker/Cato]
- “Supreme Court Blasts Maryland Taxman’s Double-Dipping” [Elizabeth BeShears, Heartland on this year’s Supreme Court decision in Comptroller v. Wynne, I’m quoted]
- Dodd-Frank: “Are State Regulators A Source of Systemic Risk?” [Mark Calabria, Cato]
- Feds’ latest round of mega-settlements against banks prompts usual demands to jail execs. Is it really that simple? [Scott Greenfield]
Archive for 2015
“Jury Clears Mascot In Hot-Dog-Flinging Case”
A legal risk, if not a thrown food item, is successfully dodged in Kansas City. [Lowering the Bar, earlier]
“No laws were broken”
At least the police chief in Wallingford, Ct. seems to have a grip on Civics 101 following someone’s decision to call the cops on discovering that merchandise with Nazi and Confederate insignia was for sale at a flea market [WTNH]
Carrying your medications around in a substitute container
A unanimous appellate panel in New York has ruled that Sephronia Bravo, 39, of the Bronx, is allowed to sue police after being “arrested [at a bus stop] for not having her prescribed medications in their original containers”:
Bravo said she refused to give consent, but the officers searched her purse anyway and found a single bottle containing her daily regimen of prescription medications and vitamins. …She was told she was being arrested for violating Public Health Law §3345, which prohibits possessing prescription medication “outside of the original container in which it was dispensed,” except for “current use.” …No illegal drugs were found and all charges were dropped at her first court appearance.
Police “later claimed they had seen her [at the bus stop] ‘exchanging small objects with another individual.” [New York Law Journal via author Benjamin Bedell, who adds, “Is there any normal day in which you could NOT be arrested for something?”] Earlier on legal hazards of seven-day pill boxes and the like.
Executive suites and social justice at the NYT, one draft at a time
Get me rewrite! The New York Times’s initial story on the departure of interim chief executive Ellen Pao from social media community Reddit lacked egregious bias, so the paper went back to insert some. (More: Twitchy, citing my Twitter contribution.) Amid widespread mockery of the second version’s opinionated tone, the paper then published yet a third version pulling back from some of its friskier social justice pronouncements. Pao, as readers may recall, was the plaintiff in an earlier Silicon Valley suit over alleged gender discrimination and retaliation, a suit that failed before a jury but drew much favorable coverage along the way in the NYT and elsewhere.
Viral junk and the Culture War: think before you share
Can sober correction ever catch up with viral junk about legal cases on the internet? Two new instances, one from the right and one from the left, leave me wondering.
I’ve now updated this 2008 Overlawyered post on a convict’s hand-scrawled, soon-dismissed “ban the Bible” lawsuit to reflect the story’s re-emergence in recent days as a much-shared item at mostly conservative social media outlets, which have passed on the story as if it were a new and significant legal development, typically omitting its date, circumstances, and disposition.
Meanwhile, Raw Story has now corrected a post in which it claimed that Oregon cake bakers Melissa and Aaron Klein were fined for supposedly “doxxing” (maliciously revealing personally identifying information about) their adversaries. (It credits a Eugene Volokh post for flagging the error.) But the source on which Raw Story based its report, blogger “Libby Anne” at Patheos Atheist, still hasn’t corrected her deeply flawed account, which has now had more than 252,000 Facebook shares.
Please think before you share.
Legal uncertainty is a bummer
“Lloyd’s Stops Insuring Marijuana Firms Due to U.S. Law Conflicts” [Insurance Journal] Related: “Bipartisan Senate Bill Would Protect Banks That Do Business With Marijuana Merchants” [Jacob Sullum, Reason]
“Civil Asset Forfeiture: Undue Process”
The video is now up of the Right On Crime panel on civil asset forfeiture at which I joined Grover Norquist, Jason Pye and moderator John Malcolm. It was followed by a second panel with Derek Cohen, Robert Frommer, Evan Armstrong, and forfeiture victim Joseph Rivers. Further discussion here at Right on Crime, earlier on the panel; our forfeiture tag.
Judge strikes Washington Redskins trademark
A bad decision that ignores the likely application of the First Amendment, seizing valuable intellectual property without compensation essentially because the government disapproves of its content. [Ilya Shapiro, USA Today, earlier on Redskins trademark battle, another pending case on “disparaging” trademarks and more]
Obama unveils overtime regs
“Well, they did it. The Obama Administration has proposed a new rule that everyone has to punch a time clock unless they are paid at least $921 a week. … This is a law written by salaried professionals telling younger and lower-paid workers that they have no right to be … salaried professionals.” [Coyote, who also has a few words on the arbitrariness of the Department of Labor’s threshold calculations, and on how DoL implicitly realizes that employers will adjust payroll practice to employees’ detriment, the biggest losers being upwardly mobile strivers.] Short-term benefits for some workers will melt away as employers redesign jobs to avoid overtime, reduce base pay, or lay off staff [Jeffrey Miron, Cato] “Unfortunately, it appears that the White House has given up on economic growth” [Douglas Holtz-Eakin] More: Iain Murray, National Review; Marianne Levine, Politico; W$J; Doug Hass/Wage Hour Insights; Detroit News editorial. My two cents earlier here and generally here.