Okay, it’s time for me to stomp my feet, grab my ball and storm off this playground in a huff…
Thanks to Walter for the invitation. Thanks to Ted for keeping it interesting. And thanks to all those who left feedback to my posts.
Once again, my blog is A Stitch in Haste. The RSS feed is here. You can email me here.
Thanks again.
“It turns out the trans fat secrets Colonel Sanders is keeping from his customers—information so arcane even a medical specialist cannot reasonably be expected to know it—is contained in a ‘Nutrition Guide’ on KFC’s Web site and on big, conspicuous posters in KFC outlets.” (Jacob Sullum, “The Fried Logic of Food Police”, Reason.com, Aug. 18). See Jun. 14, Jun. 20.
Here is a summary of the posts from my own blog, A Stitch in Haste, that I did not cross-post here at Overlawyered…
Peace Corps Quotes of the Day
–Serving in the Peace Corps is an entirely selfish endeavor.
George Allen’s “My-Ca-Ca” Apology
–Allen is under the false impression that he is running for President in 2008.
“Afghan” — It’s Not Just Rugs and Dogs Anymore
–Hey U.S. Government, how that’s War on Drugs going?
NYC-TV = W-T-F-?
–Why does the City of New York own a commercial television station?
Shall We See a “Defense of Solar System Act”?
–Damn activist astronomers legislating from the telescope!
The Road to Bigotry is Paved With…
–Thomas Sowell gets pulled over for speeding down the Highway to Hell.
Terrorists, Wal-Mart, Whatever…
–Biden is under the false impression that he is running for President in 2008.
Town “Drug” Into Football “Deer Decoy” Scandal
–No wonder these kids think theft and reckless endangerment are no big deal.
Feel free to stop on by!
Most smoke detectors are ionization detectors; they effectively detect fast-moving high-temperature fires. But if a fire is a smoldering fire from, say, dropping a cigarette on a couch, cheaper smoke detectors do not do as good a job detecting it; for this, one needs a more expensive dual-detection device that also detects photoelectronic signals from such fires. The Hackert family of Schenectady owned two of the cheaper smoke detectors (and disabled one of them), were not woken by a smoldering fire on May 31, 2001, and two members of the family died. Their lawyers, of course, blamed the smoke detector manufacturers, though the smoke detector design was approved by Underwriters Laboratory and did not suffer from a manufacturing defect. A jury agreed, holding the manufacturers 65% responsible (the Hackerts were held 35% responsible for disabling one of their two smoke detectors) for not making a better detector.
A judge reduced the jury’s $6 million pain-and-suffering damages by half, finding that six minutes of pain and suffering wasn’t worth that much, but only highlighting the inherent arbitrariness of non-economic damages. (John Caher, “Judge Finds Three Minutes of Suffering in Fatal Fire Does Not Equal $3M in Damages”, New York Law Journal, Aug. 18).
The Times Online (U.K.) publishes a steady stream of in-depth coverage about the law in Great Britain and worldwide, aside from my own periodic commentaries on the wild world of American law. Did you know that you can subscribe to the paper’s weekly law update for free here? (cross-posted from Point of Law).
Regarding Walter’s post below, I’d just like to point out that the judge probably had no choice in declining to dismiss the lawsuit. Indeed, the plaintiffs may very well win.
What is often overlooked (but not by Walter) is that California has a monstrous law called the “Unruh Act” that specifically authorizes such a cause of action for what most people consider harmless, de minimis gender-based discrimination.
I’ve heard that there are California law firms that specialize in Unruh claims. I can remember back in high school watching Judge Wapner of “The People’s Court” arbitrate an Unruh claim over a “Ladies’ Night” at a California bar — the male plaintiff won.
So, we are dealing here not with a frivolous lawsuit, but with a frivolous law. Passed by frivolous politicians.
To whom, for some reason, judges are supposed to show great deference. Go figure.
An Orange County, Calif. judge has refused to dismiss attorney Alfred Rava’s lawsuit (May 11, May 23) claiming that the baseball Angels and a game sponsor “discriminated against men by giving tote bags to only women during a Mother’s Day baseball game”. (“Judge refuses to dismiss discrimination suit against Angels”, AP/San Francisco Chronicle, Aug. 17). P.S. More from the Boston Globe, Aug. 22.
In Part One, I proposed the following heuristic regarding paternalism:
To summarize, although it is not a proper function of government to proscribe “bad” decision making, perhaps a few isolated, objectively defensible carve-outs can be allowed in which the government makes it just a little bit harder to make a bad decision. Perhaps. Stated differently, a paternalist exception that actually proves the libertarian rule should probably be embraced and not shunned.
But does this qualify as such an exception?
In a payday loan transaction, the lender makes a small advance (typically $100-$500) to its customer, agreeing to hold a personal check for the loan amount plus a fee until the customer’s next payday. … The borrower receives cash immediately. Fees charged can range from $15 to $30 on each $100 advanced, although the typical fee is at the lower end of that range.
The fee may seem modest when presented as a dollar amount, but when calculated as an annual percentage rate (APR), the cost is relatively high. A charge of $15 to borrow $100 for 14 days amounts to an APR of 391%. A survey by consumer advocates found APRs on 14-day payday loans ranging from 390% to 871%.
No fewer than five separate bills were introduced in this session of Congress to limit or even ban payday loans. No fewer than four federal financial regulatory agencies, including the Federal Reserve, have launched investigations of the practice. Not to mention the states.
Orin Kerr and others in the Volokh Conspiracy, Jack Balkin, and Bryan Cunningham have a variety of perspectives on Judge Taylor’s NSA opinion. Orin Kerr’s December 19 post on the subject is essential.
President Bush has signed H.R. 4, the Pension Protection Act of 2006, into law.
The bill is mostly sound and fury, signifying nothing. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation will be “saved,” even though we were repeatedly assured until now that there was in fact nothing to “save” it from. Private employers will be required, over time, to go from 90% funding to 100% funding of their pension plans — which is nothing more than hollow accounting gimmickry. And the real volcanoes under the city — public employee pensions — are not addressed at all. Neither of course is the Social Security crisis.
But one afterthought of the bill is worth looking at:
Employers can encourage their workers to save by automatically enrolling them 401(k) retirement accounts.
This proposal has been bouncing around for years. A good primer on the subject is available from the Congressional Research Service.