Cato’s Robert Levy critiques California’s proposed ban on smoking while beachcombing.
(Does anyone get the 1961 jazz reference in the title of this post?)
State AGs on drugs
Those who follow the activities of state attorneys general know of their interest in the pharmaceutical industry. Last week, Vermont AG William Sorrell was named president of the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) for 2004-05. In his presidential address, Sorell announced that “the issue of drug pricing” would be NAAG’s “particular focus” during his tenure. Sorrell raised the following questions:
“What drives our high drug prices? Is it true that the pharmaceutical industry is the most profitable industry in this country? Is it true that our national spending on prescription drugs more than tripled from 1990 to 2001? Do research and development costs explain the prices we pay? What are the effects of advertising and other forms of marketing on demand for prescription drugs and the amounts we pay for them? If it is true that industry direct-to-consumer advertising expenditures increased seven times between 1995 and 2001, why has this been so and how are prices affected by these increases?
“What about conduct by companies that have violated state and federal antitrust, consumer protection and other laws? Is this another cost driver? And how transparent is the prescription drug marketing and distribution system? Why are cheaper generic equivalents neither prescribed by more doctors nor desired by more patients?”
There is a NAAG meeting scheduled for Chicago in January on this subject.
For more on this subject, go to this post on Point of Law.
Latest newsletter
The latest installment of our free periodic newsletter went out this afternoon to its c. 2300 subscribers, covering the last few weeks’ worth of postings in telegraphic, even punchy style. It’s a great way to keep up with items you may have missed; you can even forward the email to friends to let them know about the site. Sign up today, right here.
On the importance of secure property rights
“Everyone knows” the institution of private proprety is important to a society, but proving just how important has, somewhat surprisingly, been tricky. A new paper by Daron Acemoglu (MIT), Simon Johnson (MIT), and James Robinson (Berkeley), makes the case that “differences in economic institutions appear to be the robust causal factor underlying the differences in income per capita across countries.” (Emphasis added.) The authors define good “economic institutions” as including “enforcement of property rights for a broad cross-section of society so that all individuals have an incentive to invest, innovate and take part in economic activity.” Additionally, there must be “some degree of equality of opportunity in society, including such things as equality before the law, so that those with good investment opportunities can take advantage of them.” In an earlier paper, the authors coined the term “institutions of private property” to cover this idea, and the term “extractive institutions” to cover situations where “the rule of law and property rights are absent for large majorities of the population.”
The paper, Institutions as the Fundamental Cause of Long-Run Growth, makes fascinating reading, even for a non-economist. It is available for purchase from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER subscribers can download it for free). A less-than-final draft, dated April 29, is also available on Professor Acemoglu’s webpage.
Hyundai wins one in Alabama
Lowndes County, Alabama, has a reputation for being a rather plaintiff-friendly jurisdiction. On Tuesday, however, a jury there returned a verdict in favor of Hyundai Motor Co. in a wrongful death suit. In 1999, Christine Graham was killed “when her 2,300-pound Hyundai Excel was struck by a 79,000-pound Freightliner 18-wheeler going more than 60 miles per hour. Attorneys for the Graham family argued that a faulty seat belt and door latch design contributed to her death in the accident. Hyundai attorneys said the seat belt and door latch met all safety standards and the sheer force of the accident caused the woman’s death.” The case had been tried once before, in July 2002, ending in a hung jury that voted 10-2 in Hyundai’s favor. (Michael Tomberlin, “Hyundai prevails in crash lawsuit,” Birmingham News, June 24).
It’s interesting to note that Hyundai is building its first US assembly plant in adjacent Montgomery Country. When opened in 2005, the $1 billion facility will employ 2,000 people. I’ll leave it to others to divine whether this had any effect on the outcome of Hyundai’s case.
PointOfLaw.com now open
Point Of Law, the new site that the Manhattan Institute is launching with my assistance, has now opened its doors. There’s a lot to explore including a series of top-drawer reprints of great law review articles of the past. The center attraction, however, is a new weblog on which both Ted Frank and I will be posting, along with Jim Copland of the Manhattan Institute and some players to be named later. We’ve been putting up experimental posts for a couple of weeks now so there are dozens of them there now which have never appeared on this site; recent topics of discussion include the controversy over Judge Calabresi’s remarks at the American Constitution Society (posts by Jim Copland one, two); a report on the introduction of trial by jury into Japan; and tag-team coverage of New York Timesman Bob Herbert’s ineffably lame recent diatribes on medical malpractice (Frank, Copland, Olson).
Beyond that, we’ve enriched the site with selected highlights from the Overlawyered archives, including Ted’s must-save discussion of the Stella Liebeck versus McDonald’s hot coffee case. Many more features to come, and Prof. Bainbridge has already given the site a nice welcome, as have Prof. Grace, Prof. DeBow and “How Appealing”‘s Howard Bashman. Why don’t you give it a look/link now too?
P.S. In response to reader inquiries: no, I have no plans to scale back (let alone discontinue!) Overlawyered. PointOfLaw is separate and additional. (expanded and bumped 6/24).
Muslim trucker: you can’t make me haul beer
In Nashville, Tenn., Ibrahim Barzinji has sued his former employer, Arkansas-based J.B. Hunt Transport Inc., on the grounds that asking him to transport alcoholic beverages violated his religious beliefs. Barzinji, who is representing himself in the case, “said he had just trucked a load of auto parts from Clarksville to St. Louis on June 26 last year when he was asked to pick up a return load at the Anheuser-Busch plant.” He informed his supervisor that he was refusing to handle the cargo, and was dismissed. “A local labor and employment attorney said that, to prove his case, Barzinji would have to convince a judge or jury that asking to be assigned a different load was reasonable and would not cause undue hardship on the company.” The issue has come up before in a somewhat different context: “Muslim cab drivers at the Minneapolis airport several years ago began refusing to pick up passengers who carried duty-free alcohol, said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group.” (Anita Wadhwani, “Fired Muslim truck driver sues employer”, The Tennessean, Jun. 23).
ABA study of criminal punishment released
The American Bar Association today released the report of the so-called “Justice Kennedy Commission.” Its bottom line: “America’s criminal justice systems rely too heavily on incarceration and need to consider more effective alternatives.” The report’s long list of recommendations — including the repeal of mandatory minimum sentences — will be taken up by the ABA House of Delegates at the annual meeting in Atlanta in August. (The full text of the report can be downloaded here.)
Texas lawyers fall victim to scam
In Texas, to name one state, it’s perfectly legal for lawyers pursuing personal injury claims to advance money to their clients to cover living expenses. (At common law, the practice was banned under the rubric of “maintenance”.) So when Kelvin Johnson came around with a story about how he and a friend had been injured on an oil rig and how the friend was lying in a coma and had been offered a hefty settlement, it seemed like pretty much a sure thing to slip him some money. Trouble is, Johnson was pulling the scam with numerous lawyers under various names. A Corpus Christi practitioner explained why he was suspicious of what seemed the “perfect case”: “I didn’t think it likely that his friend could be in a coma 10 months without some lawyer signing him up.” Johnson has been sentenced to 20 years. (Rick Casey, “Selling lawyers a lucrative tale”, Houston Chronicle, Jun. 22) (via Texas Law Blog).
Avoiding a Florida-type controversy this November
The American Enterprise Institute held a conference on this subject yesterday:
“For better or worse, the battle over the 2000 Florida election still remains with us. Billions of dollars are being spent by states to change their voting-machine systems in order to correct the perceived problems experienced in Florida. Yet much debate still exists over exactly what went wrong in Florida and whether the changes in voting machines will solve the problems or ensure an even worse disaster this November. The conference will feature experts in charge of instituting the new voting machines, academics that have studied these issues, and those responsible for the media recounts.”
Copies of the papers presented and a video of the event are available online, here.