May 7 roundup

Teacher tenure: “Failure gets a pass”

Having been critical of the Los Angeles Times yesterday, let me accord all due credit to the paper for its investigative series on the near-impossibility of firing teachers in L.A. The district has spent more than $2 million, for example, trying to get rid of Matthew Kim, a special ed teacher accused of harassing teenagers and colleagues who has been collecting full salary for seven years without actually teaching. One underlying problem: “Kids don’t have a union.” Bloggers react: Ken @ Popehat, Mickey Kaus, Amy Alkon, Brian Doherty. Meanwhile, reports Seyward Darby in the New Republic (via Nick Gillespie), “About 1,400 teachers in New York City are receiving full salaries and benefits even though they don’t have permanent jobs. Two hundred and five of them have been without full-time work for three years. And they can continue receiving payments indefinitely even if they never secure new positions.” It’s called the Absent Teacher Reserve.

The Chrysler haircut

Larry Ribstein has some pertinent comments about the rolling reinvention of debtor-creditor law going on as the Administration redistributes bankruptcy priorities away from traditional creditors and toward the UAW. And Mickey Kaus credits me with perhaps more prescience than I actually possess about the union role (not that I always venture the cynical prediction…)(cross-posted from Point of Law). More: Michael Barone, Ken Silber.

P.S. Joe Weisenthal is reminded of an episode of lawlessness that I wrote about a few months back: “Before The Chrysler Mess, There Was Republic Windows”. Incidentally, those who wonder what sort of signals the incoming Administration was sending last December about the illegal Chicago plant occupation may be interested to learn that late last month Vice President Joe Biden and Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin paid a visit to the reopened Republic Windows plant, a visit which from a news account sounds as if it might fairly be described as “triumphal” in tone.

May 6 roundup

  • Eeeeuw! Missouri woman’s suit says she was groped by Chuck E. Cheese mascot [Heller/OnPoint News] Parade of other bad things that can happen at theme enterprises and amusement parks [Lemondrop.com]
  • “The Doctor Will Sue You Now”: why chapter about scientist-turned-vitamin salesman and his relations with African-leader “AIDS dissidents” is missing from book by British writer Ben Goldacre [BoingBoing]
  • Just trying to make an honest living? “A former federal prosecutor who became one of New Jersey’s brashest and best-known criminal defense lawyers pleaded guilty today to helping run an exclusive Manhattan call-girl ring.” [Newark Star-Ledger via ABA Journal]
  • “Perez Hilton Sends DMCA Takedown Over Anti-Gay-Marriage Ad” [Citizen Media Law]
  • How not to get excused from jury service [Lowering the Bar; Montana, via Smoking Gun, etc.]
  • Multiplied vexation: “Stopping a serial suer” [SE Texas Record]
  • If exhortation does any good: “Judge Exhorts Class Action Lawyers to Forestall Feeding Frenzy Over Fees” [Henry Gottlieb, NJLJ]
  • More on bodega raids by rogue Philadelphia narcotics unit [Radley Balko, earlier here and here]

Banana worker suit scandal, cont’d

California Civil Justice Blog calls attention to some further details on that remarkable litigation claiming mass injury from pesticides which led presiding Judge Victoria Chaney to remark, “… if you took all the bad cases I’ve read and put them together, they don’t even come close to what’s happened here.” (earlier coverage: Mar. 30, Apr. 23, Apr. 27).

Nicaraguan lawmakers got the ball rolling with a legislated assumption that anyone who worked on a banana farm got poisoned. Nicaraguan judges, lawyers, and heavy-handed client “recruiters” rolled the ball into perhaps 10,000 class action plaintiffs. Some California lawyers took over and pitched it into an L.A. courtroom.

CCJB also catches lead attorney Juan Dominguez making what in retrospect might seem an incautious boast on his website: “I oversee the legal work by all lawyers [in the pesticide case] both here in the United States and in Central America.”