“Naomi Gadian, 21, from Manchester, claims that multiple choice testing discriminates against people with dyslexia” and is suing Britain’s General Medical Council and her college, the Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry in Plymouth, under the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, the U.K. equivalent of the Americans with Disabilities Act. (“Dyslexic medical student takes legal action against multiple choice exams”, Plymouth Herald, Jul. 30).
Open thread
We haven’t tried this in a while, so here goes: a thread in which you can nominate news stories, bring up ideas that don’t fit in as reactions to posts, and otherwise talk among yourselves.
Limiting docs’ work hours
The story of well-meaning regulation, part 37,281: “Is an ignorant doctor really better than a tired one?” (Sandeep Jauhar, “The Nightmare of Night Float”, Slate, Jul. 30).
Rocketboom
Andrew Baron complains (via Valleywag):
Having been completely and utterly stuck for almost two years by the courts without being able to accept any investment offers or other equitable partnerships to grow Rocketboom at all, we have since been frozen like ice… and without any additional resources to grow.
“Litigation hamstrings start-up business” is sort of a dog-bites-man story in the US, but what provides the frisson of irony here is that some of Baron’s Rocketboom legal troubles stem from being sued by his father over a $810k loan–and his father is one Fred Baron, well known to the Overlawyered crowd. Young Andrew has a happy ending; after jettisoning his original star, Amanda Congdon, and defeating her in court, he’s parlayed the loan from his daddy into a seven-digit distribution deal with Sony. Two Americas indeed. (Separately, if Rocketboom gets that sort of deal with a million views a month, I’m sure Walter and I will be happy to sell distribution rights to Overlawyered’s quarter-million monthly views for a pro-rated number of what Sony paid Rocketboom…)
Needs four days to finish bar exam
In response to his request for handicap accommodation, the West Virginia Board of Bar Examiners gave Shannon Kelly three instead of two days to complete the bar exam, “printed its examination in big type … gave him a room to himself and allowed him an extra day to complete the test”. He flunked anyway, so it’s off to federal court to demand further accommodations for what his lawyer Edward McDevitt describes as Kelly’s “severe deficits in processing speed, cognitive fluency and rapid naming”. (Above the Law, Aug. 4; WV Record, Jul. 25). We covered similar issues in the famous Marilyn Bartlett case (before federal judge Sonia Sotomayor in New York) Aug. 20-21, 2001. More: Coppelman, Workers Comp Insider.
“Securities laws are not insurance to protect against economic losses.”
Hear, hear. (In re Apollo Group, Inc. Securities Litigation (D. Ariz. 2008) via WSJ Law Blog; Bloomberg). Plaintiffs will appeal the trial court’s decision to throw out the $277 million verdict.
S.F. mayor: make food composting mandatory
Residents of San Francisco who fail to separate food scraps from general waste “would face fines of up to $1,000 and eventually could have their garbage service stopped”. Many other cities and jurisdictions in the U.S. have made recycling mandatory as to other waste categories, but apparently none has done so with food waste. (John Coté, “S.F. mayor proposes fines for unsorted trash”, San Francisco Chronicle, Aug. 1)(via Ed Morrissey).
Comcast P2P throttling, cont’d
In case you missed it, yesterday’s post on the disputes over bandwidth, cable speeds and BitTorrent has prompted an unusually rich discussion with contributions from many knowledgeable readers — I know I’ve learned a lot. Check it out here.
Pet rentals
Now banned in Boston, perhaps because of the risk that they might bring too much happiness to the humans involved. (WSJ, Newsweek, FindingDulcinea, Globe, Herald).
Regulating potato chip recipes
Readers will recall that acrylamide is a naturally occurring substance formed when many foods are browned or otherwise cooked and that (like countless other constituents of common foods) it appears to cause cancer in some animals at high dosages. California attorney general Jerry Brown has now reached a settlement with some large food companies that will require them to revise recipes for potato chips, French fries and other wares to reduce acrylamide content. Fun fact: one of the ways they may accomplish this goal is by artificially adding a chemical (OK, an enzyme) which works to neutralize acrylamide’s precursors. (Rosie Mestel, “Booster Shots” blog, L.A. Times, Aug. 4).
More: Bill Childs adds, “Oh, and the companies will pay California around $2.5 million.”