April 4 roundup

  • The wages of addiction: former basketball star Roy Tarpley settles his $6.5 million ADA lawsuit against NBA and Dallas Mavericks [Randy Galloway, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Sports Law Blog]
  • One result of litigation-fed “vaccines cause autism” scare: parents turn to dangerous quack treatments [Arthur Allen, Slate; in-depth coverage at Kathleen Seidel’s and Orac’s sites]
  • Julie Hilden on First Circuit “true statements can be defamatory” ruling [FindLaw, earlier here and here]
  • More coverage of conviction of Kentucky lawyers for grabbing much of fen-phen settlement [Louisville Courier-Journal, earlier]
  • Judge dismisses most counts in lawsuit against Richard Laminack of Texas’s O’Quinn law firm [Texas Lawyer, earlier; FLSA overtime claims remain]
  • All but three of the outstanding 9/11 airline suits due to settle for $500 million [AP/NorthJersey.com]
  • One needn’t make the Community Reinvestment Act a scapegoat for unrelated credit woes to recognize it as an ill-conceived law [Bank Lawyer’s Blog]
  • U.K.: Woman who plays classical music to soothe horses told she must pay for public performance license [Telegraph]

Reused axles in manufactured homes

Despite some objections by class members to the resulting class action settlement, its approval is consider likely; class lawyers are set to bag $15 million while class members will get mostly vouchers unless they care to take delivery of the actual (generally useless to them) axles and wheels used to transport their manufactured homes. [SE Texas Record; Texarkana, Keil & Goodson, Nix Patterson & Roach, Crowley Norman, W.H. Dub Arnold]

CPSIA and paper goods: it’s not just books

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In a plea for relief from the law, the printing industry reminds us that the world of printed material for children is a big and diverse one: any exemption narrowly drawn to cover bound books alone will expose to the law’s full and often prohibitive rigor a whole world of paper and paperboard wall posters, party invitations, thank-you cards, educational pamphlets and supplements, puzzles, leaflets, Halloween and Thanksgiving decorations, writing pads, folders and other back-to-school supplies, stickers, origami paper, Sunday school collection envelopes, mazes, score-keeping tallies, tracts, calendars, maps, home-school kits, Valentines, sticky notes, napkins and placemats, trading and playing cards, and much more. (Update: more from PIA).

Relatedly, Valerie Jacobsen narrates “a teacher’s dilemma”:

This teacher said that if she brought her own classroom into compliance, she would lose most of her carefully collected library and many more educational supplies that she finds very helpful. She said, “I guess our whole shelf of microscopes would have to go, too.”

This teacher is working to give her students a rich, well-rounded education and she finds older books very useful in her classroom. Meanwhile, her experience confirms my own: children just don’t eat books.

Jacobsen wonders whether Henry Waxman has talked to many teachers about the law, and whether it would change his mind if he did.

Another group hit by the law, many of whom sell in smallish quantities not well suited to amortize the costs of a testing program, are the suppliers of equipment for school science programs. Is there a “Teachers Against CPSIA” group yet? And if not, why not?

Breaking: Guilty verdict in Kentucky fen-phen criminal retrial

You may recall the earlier trial of the Kentucky fen-phen attorneys who had stolen tens of millions of dollars from their clients ended in a mistrial for two and an acquittal for their third compatriot. This time around, a federal court jury, after ten hours of deliberation, found William Gallion and Shirley Cunningham Jr. guilty of eight counts of fraud and one count of conspiracy. A streamlined prosecution case no doubt helped make a difference; defense attorneys sought to blame the matter on Stan Chesley, who negotiated the underlying settlement and received millions more than he was contracted to receive, and it remains mysterious why he was not charged. [Courier-Journal]