“A Connecticut law makes it the first state to provide animals with court-appointed advocates to represent them in abuse and cruelty cases, similar to laws that provide for victim’s or children’s advocates.” [Laurel Wamsley, NPR]
Archive for June, 2017
Environment roundup
- Clean Water Act’s citizen-suit procedure can “be a huge money maker” for private groups: “Policing for profit in private environmental enforcement” [Jonathan Wood]
- “Chicago Alderman Tells Property Owners to ‘Come Back to Me on Your Knees’ or Face Zoning Changes” [Eric Boehm, Reason]
- Wetlands: “Farmer faces $2.8 million fine after plowing field” [Damon Arthur, Redding Record-Searchlight]
- Urban bike lanes are green religious monuments, writes Arnold Kling, a biker himself;
- Climate change shareholder disclosure: “Class action lawyers have become very clever at developing these cases for profit.” [Nina Chestney, Reuters]
- “Why full compensation for property owners might lead to more unlawful takings” [Ilya Somin]
“Back the Blue Act”
“The Back the Blue Act would make any assault on an officer a federal crime with a mandatory minimum sentence. But here’s the thing: assaulting a police officer is already a crime in every state and already carries strict penalties set by local legislatures.” The placing of persons under arrest inevitably generates some ambiguous or factually uncertain instances of the closely related offenses of resisting arrest and assault on a police officer, and the concept of assault itself is independent of any infliction of actual injury. Pulling broad swaths of this law, and then subjecting the whole thing to mandatory minimums, is unlikely to improve matters. (The bill has other provisions too.) [Neill Franklin, The Hill] More: Scott Shackford.
Discrimination law roundup
- Go figure: Trump executive order says “Hire American” even as federal law bans job discrimination in favor of American citizens [Jon Hyman]
- Though ADA excludes “gender identity” claims, judge green-lights suit over gender dysphoria [P.J. D’Annunzio, Law.com]
- “UC Berkeley Drops Free Online Videos In Response To Government Threat” [Jane Shaw/Heartland, and thanks for quote]
- “Hostile work environment can be created with one racial slur, 2nd Circuit rules” [ABA Journal]
- Connecticut’s CHRO attracts much higher per capita filings of workplace discrimination than comparable agency in Massachusetts, with complaints from incumbent employees a key growth area [Marc E. Fitch, Yankee Institute; Daniel Schwartz with somewhat different view]
- Missed, from December: Philadelphia could close businesses deemed to discriminate [Tricia Nadolny, Philadelphia Daily News, related earlier]
Still trying to reform New York knife law
Over opposition from some powerful elected officials, efforts continue in New York City to reform knife laws “that effectively criminalize tools that vast numbers of Americans carry with them to work as electricians, stagehands and other tradesmen – a fact that helps explain why the reforms usually enjoy union support.” [James Varney, Real Clear Investigations; Jon Campbell, Village Voice] I wrote about this crazy law for Cato in 2014, and see these related posts.
Facebook prevails in another pair of abetting-terrorism suits
“A federal judge in Brooklyn, New York, has dismissed two lawsuits that claimed Facebook should be liable for allowing terrorists to use its platform to advance violence….The plaintiffs had claimed that Palestinian terrorism organizations used the social media platform to incite and organize attacks.” [Debra Cassens Weiss, ABA Journal; Eugene Volokh (federal judge ruled “in my view quite correctly”)]
Sugar in Jelly Bellies? Who knew?
In a lawsuit seeking class action status in California state court, Jessica Gomez alleges that Jelly Belly’s “Sport Beans,” which are touted as containing electrolytes and vitamins, “contain more sugar than she thought,” and that the ingredient list resorted to the euphemism “evaporated cane juice” to describe the sweetener. [John O’Brien and Sara McCleary, Legal Newsline]
Medical roundup
- Whether or not California’s 1975 MICRA law limiting medical liability serves as a model for anything national, its results merit study by other states [H. Thomas Watson, Robert H. Wright, and S. Thomas Todd, WLF]
- No, Kaiser Health News and Scientific American, a 1-in-3 rate of post-marketing drug safety alerts does not prove FDA too lax [“Scott Alexander,” Slate Star Codex]
- Jim Hood Watch: “Mississippi AG, with the help of outside attorneys, sues pharma companies over allegedly unapproved drugs” [Jessica Karmasek, Legal Newsline]
- When deconstruction met evidence-based medicine and denunciations of “microfascism” ensued [Dave Holmes et al., International Journal of Evidence-Based Healthcare, 2006 via Nicholas Christakis]
- Sen. Joe Manchin’s “approve one opioid, yank another from market” bill to tie FDA hands is a bad idea [Jeffrey Singer, Huffington Post]
- Death by a thousand clicks: what Boston doctors can’t stand about electronic medical records [John Levinson, Bruce Price and Vikas Saini, WBUR]
More tales of motorist-beware Tenaha, Texas
From John Ross’s April 28 Short Circuit (Institute for Justice):
Readers may recall Tenaha, Tex. officials’ particularly opprobrious abuse of asset forfeiture, which got a write-up in The New Yorker. This week, the Fifth Circuit shares additional details that were news to the editorial staff: During the investigation of the city’s forfeiture practices, the city marshal bugged other officials’ offices, including the mayor. He was also stealing drugs from the evidence room and selling them.
Is it a climate of forfeiture-derived local government finance that attracts this sort of official?
I wrote up Sarah Stillman’s New Yorker piece at the time. Overlawyered coverage of Tenaha here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Whiplash and incentives, abroad
“In my first 20 years as a consultant I wrote many reports which were economical with the truth – the truth being that there was very little wrong with the vast majority of compensation claimants that I saw. I was moving with the herd.” While lawyers, insurers, and others are all complicit, writes Dr. Charlie Marks, the onus is on the medical profession to speak up against medico-legal misdiagnosis [Irish Times via Patrick Collinson, The Guardian (“Whiplash: the myth that funds a £20bn gravy train”)]