- Bad Texas law requiring breweries to give away territorial rights for free violates state constitution, judge says [Eric Boehm]
- California’s identity theft statute bans so many more things than just identity theft [Eugene Volokh]
- Cato Unbound symposium on Indian Child Welfare Act/ICWA, to which I contributed, wraps up [Timothy Sandefur on sovereignty and fixes] Minnesota’s Indian foster care crisis [Brandon Stahl and MaryJo Webster, Minneapolis Star-Tribune]
- If you want to hear me translated into Arabic on bathroom and gender issues, here you go [Al-Hurra back in May]
- Asset forfeiture: “New Mexico Passed a Law Ending Civil Forfeiture. Albuquerque Ignored It, and Now It’s Getting Sued” [C.J. Ciaramella] “IRS Agrees to Withdraw Retaliatory Grand Jury Subpoena Against Connecticut Bakery” [Institute for Justice] “California Asset Forfeiture Reform Heading to Approval” [Scott Shackford]
- Evergreen: “‘I never thought leopards would eat MY face,’ sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.” [Adrian Bott]
White House panel questions validity of criminal forensics
“Much of the forensic analysis used in criminal trials isn’t scientifically valid, according to a draft report by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. The report… raises questions about the use of bite-mark, hair, footwear, firearm and tool-mark analysis routinely used as evidence in thousands of trials annually in state and federal courts.” [Gary Fields and Kate O’Keeffe, WSJ]
Medical roundup
- FDA to dental consumers: you can’t handle the tooth [New York Times via Alex Tabarrok]
- “How lawyers scare people out of taking their meds” [Lisa Rickard (U.S. Chamber), Washington Post]
- Lawsuits fail to bring improvements to nursing homes [ABA Journal]
- “Everything,” new Institute for Justice short film about costs of regulating bone marrow donation, has upcoming screenings in D.C. area, Breckinridge, Colo. and elsewhere;
- Aetna pulls out of most ObamaCare exchanges, and the acrimony flies [WSJ editorial] “Did the Medicaid expansion limit labor force participation?” [Tomas Wind via Tyler Cowen]
- Posting will be slower in coming weeks as I conduct my own in-person investigation of the state of America’s medical system. Thanks for bearing with me!
“Lawyers recruited on Craigslist were unwitting ‘front men’ in phony law firms, Florida AG says”
Seems legit [ABA Journal]:
The lawyers recruited via Craigslist are told the law firm drafts all pleadings using form templates, does all the electronic filing, and has all the client contact, according to Bondi’s complaint. The lawyers’ names and bar numbers are used without their authorization on retainer agreements, letterhead, pleadings, corporate filings and boilerplate pleadings, the complaint says.
“When the contract attorney realizes something is amiss,” the complaint says, “the enterprise quickly moves on to the next unsuspecting and often brand-new lawyer.”
Labor Day and forced labor
The Venezuela regime of strongman Nicolas Maduro has issued a decree providing that, to quote CNBC, “workers can be forcefully moved from their jobs to work in farm fields or elsewhere in the agricultural sector for periods of 60 days.” It’s shocking, yet as I note in a new post at Cato, “in fact elements of forced labor have cropped up in socialist experiments even in nations with strong track records of constitutional government and civil liberties, such as postwar Britain.” Happy (free and unbound) Labor Day!
“Buy your design classic now – it’s about to rocket in price”
At least if you’re in Britain or Europe: “Mid-century design classics, such as Charles Eames chairs, Eileen Gray tables and Arco lamps are set to rocket in price [in Britain and Europe], following EU regulations which came into force this week that extend the copyright on furniture from 25 years to 70 years after the death of a designer.” Low-cost knockoffs of Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona chair, for example, will be banned until 2039, 70 years after his 1969 death. [The Guardian] Alex Tabarrok has some thoughts on why consumers might rightly be seen as getting the short end, and notes this (via Daily Mail): “Companies which publish design books may have to get numerous licences to reproduce photos because designs have come under copyright.”
“Hot Coffee Karma: The Day Was Bound To Happen”
After years in which his blog Abnormal Use has led the way in coverage of hot-coffee-spill liability cases, it finally happens to Nick Farr: he spills some on himself.
Audio: I discuss Gawker case on Sirius with Matt Welch
I joined guest host Matt Welch and journalist Michael Tracey (Vice) for a discussion of Gawker litigation on Sirius XM Insight’s “Tell Me Everything” show, with Matt subbing for host John Fugelsang. You can listen here. A little earlier, I joined morning host Ray Dunaway on Hartford’s WTIC to talk about some Overlawyered posts.
Academic opinion turning cooler toward free speech
If the climate among students on campus has turned markedly less favorable toward free expression in recent years, perhaps that is but a symptom of a deeper problem: academic opinion itself in relevant fields has turned less friendly toward free speech, which it is replacing with new concepts of speech-as-violence, speech-as-discrimination, and speech-as-scientifically-perilous-“denialism.” Each of these concepts invites the suppression of large categories of expression disapproved of by authorities. [Daniel Jacobson, Cato Policy Analysis No. 796] The paper also sheds light on how Yale law professor Robert Post might have come to write approvingly of government investigation into wrongful climate advocacy.
Florida voters oust Angela Corey
Florida primary voters have ousted state’s attorney Angela Corey, whose unprofessional conduct as prosecutor in the Martin/Zimmerman case and elsewhere has been a regular target of ours at Overlawyered. “The election caps a dizzying rise for [unknown challenger Melissa] Nelson and an equally shocking fall for Corey, one of the most polarizing political figures in Jacksonville history who generated national attention and enormous criticism for her prosecutions of George Zimmerman, Marissa Alexander, 12-year-old Cristian Fernandez and many others. Corey will depart office in the first week of January as the first incumbent state attorney in modern history to lose a contested election.” [Jacksonville Times-Union, Scott Shackford]