Phoenix: “Robert Jaeger says his brothers and sisters persuaded their mom to revise her will to cut him out. He is seeking more than $1 million in punitive and compensatory damages, far more than English’s home is worth.” His mother, Patricia English of Scottsdale, is very much alive and opposes the suit. (Arizona Republic).
Tomorrow (Wed.): CPSIA blogging day
I’m not sure who came up with the idea (maybe these people at Etsy?), but tomorrow, Wednesday, January 28, has been nominated as CPSIA blogging day, and I expect hundreds of bloggers will be taking part, looking at different aspects and consequences of this immensely destructive new law. My posts on it can all be found here, and the two Forbes pieces I’ve written recently are here and here. While you’re here, why not enjoy all of Overlawyered? You can start on the front page, or browse by tag to find posts on topics of interest to you.
In the mean time, check out Forbes’s latest piece about the law, in which Paul Rubin, former chief economist at the Consumer Product Safety Commission, explains why CPSIA would flunk any imaginable cost-benefit test.
Update: Passalaqua v. Kaiser Foundation Hospitals
I got an email asking me what happened to the case in the following post:
While his wife, Jeanette Passalaqua, was giving birth, Steven fainted in the delivery room, fracturing his skull and dying two days later. This is, says the family, the fault of Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and Southern California Permanente Medical Group Inc. “‘This avoidable tragedy was a direct result of Kaiser’s ordinary negligence in failing to exercise reasonable care to prevent foreseeable injuries to Steven,’ according to the suit, which was filed last week in San Bernardino County Superior Court.” So if your maternity ward is rubber-padded next time you go there, you know why.
So I looked it up in the San Bernardino County Superior Court docket database: the case settled almost immediately. The docket does not report the amount of the settlement, which could conceivably have been for a token amount, but one can infer that there was some substantial money involved, because the settlement required proof of the purchase of annuities for the two plaintiff minors, which normally wouldn’t be worth the transactions costs if the sums were tiny. But that inference may be incorrect. If ever I find myself in San Bernardino, maybe I’ll check the paper record to see if there’s more public detail.
Annals of overlooked photo permissions
Uh-oh: it appears the most famous American political artwork to come along in decades, Shepard Fairey’s Obama poster, was made without notice to or permission from the photographer who snapped the original image on which it was based. (Prawfsblawg, A Photo Editor).
iPod nano scratch settlement
Class action lawyers and Apple have reached a deal to settle claims that early versions of the pocket-sized device have an exterior that scratches too easily. Apple will offer $25 each to some users and the lawyers will cart away more than $9 million. (Ars Technica; settlement site; earlier here and here).
Denied post as legal writing professor, sues
Teresa Wagner claims the University of Iowa Law School denied her the appointment because of her conservative views. (TaxProf, WSJ Law Blog, Somin @ Volokh).
Dives into river on dare, jury awards $76 million
“Timothy D. Hoffman broke his neck when he sprinted down a dock and slammed headfirst into the bottom of the shallow river. Good luck collecting, though: The defendant, C&D Dock Works, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy because of the incident.” According to those present, Hoffman jumped in on a dare to win money from co-workers; the owner of the dock works said there had been a rail at the dock’s edge. [Obscure Store; Orlando Sentinel]
More: commenters, and John Hochfelder, point out the bankrupt defendant’s effective failure to mount a defense. And Jacob Sullum has a post at Reason “Hit and Run”.
CPSIA links
Away from my desk for three days, and just catching up with the flow of commentary on the issue:
- Too much reporting in local press sources to round up, but check out, e.g., the Knoxville News-Sentinel, Fredericksburg (Va.) Freelance-Star, Arizona Republic, and Nashville Business Journal. Carter Wood at ShopFloor links to excellent coverage in, among other places, the Grand Rapids, Mich. (Jennifer Ackerman-Haywood, “Running with Needles”) and Portland, Maine newspapers.
- Law compared to “an anvil on a onesie” [Small Things Considered; more; via]. Crafts-market site Etsy has an interesting thread on vintage sellers and the law, among many other valuable forum discussions.
Mami Mobile rounds up many links from affected bloggers. More: Daily Grind of a Work at Home Mom, Eve Tushnet (scroll to Jan. 15), Kim’s Play Place with many updates, and Evolving Excellence. - Until only weeks ago, Henry Waxman and his allies were blasting the beleaguered leadership of the CPSC for not being tough enough on producers of kids’ goods; now Waxman seeks to reposition himself as favoring deregulatory steps that the Commission has unaccountably failed to implement. Some appear to be taken in by this imposture, but not blogger Common Room, who has been doing a series of posts documenting why Waxman and his Congressional colleagues were and are the key decision-makers and ought not to be allowed to shift the responsibility to others;
- Who’s dug in to the “great law, no need to change, only evildoers oppose it” position? Well, there are the trial-lawyer-allied, student-fee-funded PIRG groups (Seattle Times), and, even more stridently, the trial-lawyer-defense outfit Center for Justice and Democracy (The Pop Tort). Eric Husman and Common Room have taken a look at the law’s supporters as well. But note an exception: InjuryBoard, the large online trial lawyer site, just ran a surprisingly open-minded interview with anti-CPSIA activist Kathleen Fasanella of Fashion Incubator;
- “[T]he only feasible alternative is for Congress to delay implementation. Many in Congress will not agree to this, in part, because of pressure from the consumer groups ….However, Congress may do something this week or next to either clarify the law, give further guidance on legislative intent to the CPSC, or maybe even delay implementation.” [Ross/Product Liability Prof Blog]. More from the law and policy blog world: Prince/PLProf; Bader/CEI “Open Market”; Bill Childs, TortsProf.
Philip Howard, “Life Without Lawyers”, cont’d
The popular author is in today’s WSJ with an op-ed summarizing his new book, which was also the subject of a nice piece in The Economist the other week (our earlier coverage). American Courthouse also comments, while Carter Wood at ShopFloor observes that George Will’s column at the Washington Post giving the book a rave was bedecked with ads for you-know-who.
Construction defect litigation, rated X
“In what may be the first case of a sexually explicit construction defect, the owner of a historic Kansas City, Mo., hotel is alleging that ‘graphic markings’ left by a contractor on unfinished sheetrock walls have ‘bled through’ vinyl wall covering, causing ‘significant damage’ to the hotel’s reputation.” [OnPoint News]