“The owner of a fashionable hair salon today denied being a racist after turning down a headscarf-wearing Muslim who applied for a stylist’s job. Sarah Desrosiers, 32, told a tribunal it was vital that all her staff show off ‘flamboyant’ haircuts at the Wedge salon in King’s Cross. And Miss Desrosiers, from Hackney, said 19-year-old Mrs Bushra Noah’s headscarf was out of keeping with the ‘ultra-modern, urban, edgy and funky’ style of her business. …Mrs Noah is claiming £34,000 in compensation for religious discrimination from Miss Desrosiers, who says she faces financial ruin if she loses the case.” (“‘Headscarf doesn’t fit our funky image’ says salon owner who turned down Muslim stylist”, Daily Mail, Apr. 1). Update Jun. 18: salon owner ordered to pay £4,000 for “injury to feelings”.
Update: Wal-Mart drops subrogation claim
“Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is dropping a controversial effort to collect over $400,000 in health care reimbursement from a former employee who suffered brain damage in a traffic accident. The world’s largest retailer said in a letter to the family of Deborah Shank of Cape Girardeau County in Missouri that it will not seek to collect money the Shanks won in an injury lawsuit against a trucking company for the accident.” (AP/St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Apr. 1; WSJ law blog; Perlmutter & Schuelke; earlier here).
House Judiciary Committee hearing on 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund
The hearing is now on-line (I’m at the 55:18 mark; Maxine Waters is at the 2:10:20 mark), as is my written testimony.
Things I should’ve said: that a dictator did a good job in the past hardly means that a dictatorship is a good idea, even if you can reappoint the same dictator. But one can be dumbfounded by the stupidity of some questions.
Disbar Dickie Scruggs?
Not so fast, he says — the Mississippi Bar didn’t file a “certified copy” of his guilty plea. (Patsy R. Brumfield, “Dickie Scruggs files to dismiss attempt to have him disbarred”, Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, Apr. 1).
David Rossmiller has ten unanswered questions about loose ends in the Scruggs scandal (Mar. 24) which elicit responses in turn (and more unanswered questions) from NMC and Lotus at Folo (plus an NMC update). These latter bloggers, by the way, have shed their anonymity and stand revealed as Oxford, Miss. lawyer Tom Freeland (NMC) and retired lawyer Jan Goodrich, now of New Smyrna Beach, Fla. (Lotus), now also joined by Jane Tucker.
Is it okay for the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) to take Scruggs’s money? “It depends on what the felony is…” Chancellor Robert Khayat is quoted as saying (Folo/NMC, Apr. 1; more). Gulfport M.D. Bill Hemeter, in a letter to the editor printed in the Biloxi Sun-Herald (Mar. 19), is claiming prescience: “I sent Chancellor Khayat the book ‘The Rule of Lawyers’ by Walter Olson several years ago, with a warning not to take money from plaintiff attorneys.” Earlier, when Scruggs pled guilty, another university official was heard from:
“My initial reaction is one of sadness,” said Samuel Davis, dean of the University of Mississippi Law School, Scruggs’ alma mater. “I’ve known and been friends with Dick and Diane Scruggs almost 50 years now going back to our days in Pascagoula, and I feel a great sense of compassion for him and his family. And that’s just a very personal reaction. I haven’t really thought about the implications for the legal community or the legal profession.”
Davis, who also directs the Ole Miss Law Center, said not everybody who pleads guilty is guilty and that Scruggs might have had other reasons for the move. If that were the case, Davis said, the reasons likely were good ones.
(emphasis added by an understandably astonished Lotus @ Folo; many, many comments follow).
And from Sid Salter of the Jackson Clarion-Ledger (Mar. 19): “In spite of their insistence that there were no ethical lapses in their behavior on the tobacco suit, [former attorney general Michael] Moore and Scruggs still owe the taxpayers of Mississippi an accounting of the lawyers’ fees and expenses that accrued from that litigation.”
How trial lawyers made American pedestrians less safe
In recent decades, American state and local highway officials have built wide streets and roads designed primarily to accommodate high-speed automobile traffic. However, such high-speed streets are more dangerous for pedestrians and bicyclists than streets with slower traffic, and thus fail to adequately accommodate nondrivers. Government officials design streets for high-speed traffic partially because of their fear of tort liability. An influential street engineering manual, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials’ Green Book, has generally favored the construction of such high-speed streets, and transportation planners fear that if they fail to follow the Green Book’s recommendations, they are more likely to be held negligent if a speeding driver is injured on a street designed for relatively slow traffic.
Changes in the Green Book may ameliorate such design considerations in the future.
April 2 roundup
- Judge expresses surprise at how many law firms want in on fees in Visa/MasterCard issuer settlement [NYSun]
- Mississippi bill would require a lawyer’s presence at real estate escrow closings; so rude to cite the profession’s self-interest as a factor [Clarion-Ledger]
- Following Coughlin Stoia’s lead, Mark Lanier announces he’s expanding into intellectual property litigation [The Recorder]
- Maryland legislation would require state-aided colleges and universities to report on what they’re doing to advance “cultural diversity” [Examiner via Bader/Open Market]
- New era at UK pubs? Under new directive, “employers will risk being sued if a bar worker or waitress complains of being called ‘love’ or ‘darling’, or if staff overhear customers telling sexist jokes.” [Daily Mail]
- ACLU just sued city of San Diego and snagged $900K in legal fees, but that’s no impediment to the city’s council’s enacting a special day of tribute to the group [House of Eratosthenes]
- George Wallace, who’s guestblogged here, hosts twin editions of Blawg Review #153 at his blogs Declarations & Exclusions and A Fool in the Forest, on piratical and Punchinello themes;
- Obama won’t support lowering drinking age [Newsweek]
- Such a shame for entrepreneurial plaintiffs, post-Proposition 64 if you want to sue a California business you might actually need to have been injured [CalBizLit]
- Time mag appeals $100 million Suharto libel ruling [IHT]
- Hey, no fair enforcing that fine print disclaiming liability for sweepstakes misprints [three years ago on Overlawyered]
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Miami archdiocese liable for students’ at-home drinking party
A jury held Archbishop Coleman Carroll High School liable for $14 million on the theory that its officials knew of an underage drinking party to be held at the home of two students, but did not notify authorities. Two of the drunken revelers sped off into a single-car accident in which one was killed. (Adam H. Beasley, “School found negligent in booze party crash”, Miami Herald, Mar. 31).
James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2007
Speaking of Ground Zero dust lawsuits, I will be testifying Tuesday morning about H.R. 3543‘s proposal to reopen the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund to potentially hundreds of thousands of new claimants.
(Bumped Tuesday with SSRN link to testimony.)
State AGs vs. JuicyCampus.com
As an online phenomenon, JuicyCampus.com sounds more than a little familiar to those who followed the AutoAdmit/XOXOXTH controversy: message boards open to bathroom-graffiti anonymous posts about named fellow students. The difference this time is that the attorneys general of New Jersey and Connecticut have jumped in with legal action apparently premised on the unusual, and expansible, legal theory that the site violates consumer fraud statutes by not enforcing its own announced ground rules on posting, or at least principles that it “suggests” it will follow. (ABA Journal and again; Volokh).