Deaf persons on juries

Of course they (and blind people, mentally disabled people, and persons who do not speak English well) are perfectly entitled to sit as jurors, right? Isn’t it their right not to suffer discrimination? Well, maybe not, argues New York criminal defense lawyer Scott Greenfield. For starters, “Part of the determination of whether a witness is telling the truth comes from observation of a witness’ demeanor,” tone of voice, and so forth. The empanelment of a competent jury

is not an affront to the rights of the citizens to serve, but a debt owed by society to a defendant. The ability to determine the credibility of a witness requires the use of three out of five senses minimum, as well as the absence of numerous other deficits. This may be politically incorrect, but it beats living in a fantasyland.

Philip K. Howard, “Life Without Lawyers: Liberating Americans from Too Much Law”

George Will raves about this new book by the well-known author on topics dear to this site. I’m much of the way through my review copy and I can say if you like this website, you’ll almost certainly enjoy this book. Author/lawyer Philip K. Howard (The Death of Common Sense) is also a very skillful writer, and, with his organization Common Good, a longtime friend of this site. So why not order a copy today?

P.S. Canadian law student site Law Is Cool interviews Howard. And — equal time dept.: — plaintiff’s lawyers Ron Miller, Max Kennerly, and Brooks Schuelke offer very different views.

January 12 roundup

  • Airline off the hook: “Couple drops lawsuit claiming United is liable for beating by drunken husband” [ABA Journal, earlier]
  • Why is seemingly every bill that moves through Congress these days given a silly sonorous name? To put opponents on the defensive? Should it do so? [Massie]
  • With police payouts in the lead, Chicago lays out more money in lawsuits than Los Angeles, Houston, Phoenix, Philadelphia, Dallas put together (but NYC still #1 by far) [Chicago Reader]
  • Who’s behind the website Asbestos.com? Bill Childs does some digging [TortsProf]
  • When not busy carrying out a mortgage fraud scheme from behind bars at a federal prison, inmate Montgomery Carl Akers is also a prolific filer of lawsuits, appeals and grievances [Doyle/McClatchy]
  • Alcohol policy expert Philip Cook on Amethyst Initiative (reducing drinking age) [guestblogging at Volokh]
  • Must Los Angeles put career criminals on public payroll as part of “anti-gang” efforts? [Patterico]
  • Some “local food” advocates have their differences with food-poisoning lawyer Bill Marler [BarfBlog, which, yes, is a food-poisoning policy blog]; Marler for his part is not impressed by uninjured Vermont inmates’ “entrails in the chicken” pro se suit [his blog; more from Bill Childs and in comments; update: judge dismisses suit]

Harassment — by reading a book

Readers may recall the remarkable case last year in which student employee Keith John Sampson was hauled up on university disciplinary charges at IUPUI (Indiana University) for supposed racial harassment because a co-worker had observed him reading a book about the historical struggle against the Klan. A successful campaign ensued (led by FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) to get the discipline reversed and an apology issued. Now filmmaker Andrew Marcus has produced a short documentary about the incident, viewable at FIRE’s site.

CPSIA: furor builds over toyless shelves

In our previous posts about the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), the federal law passed by Congress last year in the wake of the panic over Chinese toys with lead paint, we noted that it threatened to drive out of business a lot of small makers of wooden toys and other childrens’ products who cannot afford to spend thousands of dollars per lot to confirm the absence of lead paint (or phthalates, another banned substance) in their wares. A group called Handmade Toy Alliance has formed to call attention to the law’s burden on small manufacturers, and offers further detail at its website.

As reports in the last week make clear, however, a second economic disaster is also looming: thrift and secondhand stores around the country sell a large volume of clothing, toys and other items meant for use by those under 12, and are now exposed to stringent liability under the law. “The reality is that all this stuff will be dumped in the landfill,” predicted Adele Meyer, executive director of the National Association of Resale and Thrift Shops. Among the biggest losers if stores stop selling secondhand kids’ items: poorer parents who would have trouble dressing a growing family if they had to buy, say, winter coats new for $30 rather than used for $5 or $10. The regs are scheduled to take effect Feb. 10.

On January 8, as press coverage mounted, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) rushed out a supposed clarification of the regulations: thrift shops, eBay sellers and other second-hand retailers would not be compelled to institute testing programs on all items sold, the way manufacturers would. But the commission made clear that if the stores do wind up selling any secondhand products containing the substances — phthalates, for example, are often found in bendy plastics — they face both criminal liability and civil fines (which run up to $100,000). It isn’t required that the store know or should have known that a pre-2009 item was in violation, and of course it isn’t required that anyone be harmed by the good (the entire episode has gone on with a near-total absence of any showing that actual kids had been harmed by the products swept from American shelves).

None of which seems to faze some advocates of the new measure. At Law and More, Jane Genova quotes Sue Gunderson, executive director of an anti-lead-paint group called ClearCorps:

What thrift stores seem to be requesting [in Gunderson’s view] is for the right to expose children to health and safety hazards. “Let’s get our priorities straight,” she insists. She goes on to pose this rhetorical question: “Mmmmmm, do we want cheap, second-hand toys that could damage children?” She frames this issue as a “business” one which the thrift-store industry will have to solve just as will every other business impacted by the new act.

If you think this is all too crazy to actually be happening, wait until you read the Boston Phoenix’s piece on the law’s threat to libraries:

“We are very busy trying to come up with a way to make it not apply to libraries,” said [Emily] Sheketoff [associate executive director of the American Library Association]. But unless she succeeds in lobbying Capitol Hill for an exemption, she believes libraries have two choices under the CPSIA: “Either they take all the children’s books off the shelves,” she says, “or they ban children from the library.”

SSFC retires (as solo blogger)

SSFC (Social Services for Feral Children), whose guestblogging stint here over the holidays was very popular with readers, is shuttering his great solo blog and going back to the groupblog Popehat (”A Group Blog of Games, Politics, Humor, and Snark”) where he writes as “Patrick”. We’ve often linked to the writing of Popehat contributor “Ken” as well, so be sure to add the site to your regular reading.

“Jeweler Awarded $3.8M for Theft of Mystery Diamond”

Did the fabulous pink diamond actually exist? That was one of the issues in the legal fight — which in places reads more like a spy thriller than like a conventional business dispute — between plaintiff John Stafford, a jeweler in Miami Township, Ohio, and defendant Julius Klein Diamonds of New York. A federal jury sided with Stafford, who said he had paid $8,000 in cash for the gem from a mysterious seller in Las Vegas; the eventual verdict came in at more than 400 times that sum. (OnPoint News; Dayton Business Journal; Diamonds.net)

Overlawyered nominated in 2008 Weblog Awards

We’re among the ten nominees in the Best Law Blog category in these widely recognized awards. In fact, without even having tried to scare up votes yet, Overlawyered is not doing too badly (Volokh Conspiracy at the moment is way in the lead, but we’ll fix their wagon). In contrast to the ABA Journal blog contest just concluded, in which you were supposed to vote only once, you can vote in this one every 24 hours. So do that please! And you can vote in all the other categories from this page.

Colombian coffee association sues cartoonist

“The Colombian Coffee Growers Federation says it will sue ‘Mother Goose & Grimm’ cartoonist Mike Peters ‘for damage and harm, detriment to intellectual property and defamation.'” SSFC reprints the cartoon at issue and adds, “Only a reader whose second language is English might take this as a literal statement that Colombian coffee, like Soylent Green, is made of people.”

“A few sentimental personal items”

Those were the words of lawyers for Bernard Madoff about his sending through the mail to relatives and intimates — thus potentially spiriting away from the victims of his fraud — what turned out an estimated $1 million in jewelry and gem-encrusted watches. Eartha Kitt should have lived just a few more weeks to see it:

In retrospect, you do wonder whether she may have been getting at something with that mention of an “old-fashioned fence”.

(& welcome Andrew Sullivan readers).