Job applicants wouldn’t do that on purpose, would they? At least not unless they were following the advice of a EEOC staff lawyer interviewed for a Wall Street Journal article. According to McGuire Woods attorney Lou Michels, writing in the new-to-us blog Suits in the Workplace, “what the EEOC attorney appears to be proposing is simply outrageous” and “reeks of gamesmanship”. (Oct. 11).
Picking Texas judges
Tom Kirkendall has some thoughts on the state’s “utterly unsupportable system” of judicial selection (Nov. 14).
Coming up: Overlawyered hosts Blawg Review #33
Next Monday, November 21, this website will be hosting Blawg Review #33, the thirty-third weekly carnival of the best postings about legal matters from around the blogosphere. A different site hosts the roundup each week; last week’s Blawg Review #32 was hosted in honor of (U.S.) Veteran’s Day by JAG Central, which covers the world of military law.
You can help assemble the material for Blawg Review #33 by following the instructions at the Blawg Review site. If you’re a website proprietor, you should nominate your favorite post from the past week or so from your own site. And any reader can nominate a favorite recent post from any weblog on a legal topic (the weblog needn’t be one that specializes in legal issues). (Sorry, we can’t guarantee that all nominations will be used.) All submissions are due in by this Saturday night, but earlier submissions are greatly appreciated to reduce the last-minute editing duties.
R.I. paint case: defense moves for mistrial
According to the Providence Journal: “Lawyers for defendant lead-paint companies called for a mistrial [Tuesday], after the state asked a witness if any of the companies had ever paid any money to help clean up lead paints in Rhode Island. The question had been put to former state Health Director Patricia Nolan. It immediately drew objections from the defense, and she was not permitted to answer.” (Peter B. Lord, “No decision yet on request for lead-paint mistrial”, Nov. 15) (sub-only). Jane Genova continues to blog the trial with posts on Nolan’s earlier testimony here, here and here. See Nov. 1. Update Wed. afternoon: no mistrial, judge orders curative instructions to jury; see Genova blog.
Kazakhstan threatens to sue HBO comedian
On his popular HBO show, comedian Sacha Baron Cohen portrays various outrageous characters among them “Borat”, supposedly a TV personality from the (real) former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan. Now “Kazakhstan’s Foreign Ministry is threatening to sue him for portraying the central Asian state in a ‘derogatory way.'” (Buck Wolf, “Kazakhstan Not Laughing at ‘Ali G'”, ABCNews, Nov. 15).
Bulletin and other site matters
Yesterday afternoon our periodic newsletter went out to subscribers, in shorter-than-usual format due to time overcommitments. If you haven’t subscribed yet, you really ought to; sign up here (requires Google registration).
The site was down for about half an hour yesterday, which may or may not have had something to do with our meat-packing post getting Fark’d, bringing in a big surge of visitors. In general, traffic on the site has been up markedly since the redesign/rehosting a month and a half ago. Could be the more search-friendly URLs, could be the experiment with comments on some posts, could be increasing numbers of RSS/XML users — hard to tell exactly.
The comments experiment notwithstanding, the letters to the editor feature should be restarting before long. There are many good reader letters in the pipeline.
Shaw v. Jain
It’s not just plaintiffs’ attorneys who attempt to distract juries with irrelevancies. A Florida court of appeal has reversed a medical malpractice defense verdict in a case where the defense attorney made repeated reference to the plaintiff’s marijuana use—even though there was no evidence that that usage affected her injuries, treatment, or recovery. (Shaw v. Jain, No. 1D04-4178, Fla. App. Oct. 20, 2005 (via Conigliaro)).
Condition critical? A medical liability debate
Point of Law’s latest “Featured Discussion” is between Bill Sage, professor of law at Columbia and a prominent researcher on issues of medical liability, and the Manhattan Institute’s Jim Copland, discussing the Institute’s recent “Trial Lawyers Inc. — Health Care” report. It’s scheduled to run all week and should not be missed by anyone interested in malpractice issues (more).
Meatpacker to pay $3m for using strength test
At the Armour Star meat packing plant in Fort Madison, Iowa, run by a subsidiary of the Dial Corporation, workers are expected to engage in “repetitive lifting of a 35-pound rod of sausages to a height of approximately 65 inches.” Concerned about a high rate of worker injuries, the company foolishly thought that it could introduce (in 2000) a physical test which “required the repeated lifting of 35 pounds to a height of 65 inches.” Wrong: sued by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the company is now going to be paying out $3 million for its troubles. The EEOC argued, and a court agreed, that the test had “disparate impact” on women because 97 percent of men but less than 40 percent of women passed, that it appeared some applicants who failed the test might nonetheless be able to handle the job duties (by standing on tiptoe while heaving the weights, for example, which the test did not permit), and that the company had not shown a “business necessity” to use the test since it could take other measures to improve safety. According to the EEOC, “52 women who were rejected for entry-level production jobs because they had failed a strength test will be offered jobs at Dial and will share approximately $3,390,000.”. (EEOC press releases, Feb. 8 and Sept. 29) (via George’s Employment Blawg)(& welcome Fark readers).
“Ontario mom faces $2M libel suit over website”
“SLAPP” suits sighted in Canada, too: Activa Holdings Inc., a large developer in the Waterloo, Ont. area, is suing stay-at-home mother Louisette Lanteigne for C$2 million because of a website she has put up complaining of allegedly hazardous environmental conditions. The company charges defamation. (CP/CTV, Nov. 14; Mike Oliviera, CP/Macleans, Nov. 13)(Slashdot thread)(cache of her now-overloaded site).