I’ve written often on the surreal world of “structuring” law, in which keeping bank deposits or withdrawals below a reporting threshold is a federal crime whether or not you are aware of the structuring law and whether or not the underlying money flow is for or from any illegal activity or intended to evade any law. Of particular interest, I’ve written about who can get away with structuring (Eliot Spitzer) and who can’t (you). The law, along with a separate charge of lying to federal investigators, appears to have tripped up former U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Dennis (“Denny”) Hastert in what a federal indictment suggests were hush money payments over misconduct before he arrived in Congress. I’m quoted in Francine Kiefer’s coverage for the Christian Science Monitor. More commentary: Ken White, Popehat.
Overtime mandate for after-hours work phone calls
If the Obama administration follows through as expected with its new overtime edict, expect more employers to bar staff from using company email after hours; also, there will be fewer company-provided phones, a perk some may miss. [ABA Journal, Jon Hyman]
Poll: plurality of U.S. respondents would ban “hate speech”
Most depressing poll of the year? A majority of Democrats and 37% of Republicans say they favor banning so-called hate speech, which would squarely contradict the free speech jurisprudence of the U.S. Supreme Court and thus would implicitly at least call for rolling back the First Amendment to the Constitution. The YouGov numbers favoring such a ban have risen, perhaps influenced by confusion or worse in elite journalistic and academic circles [Edward Morrissey/Fiscal Times, Charles Cooke]
As Ken at Popehat notes in a piece on censors’ tropes: “In the US, ‘hate speech’ is an argumentative rhetorical category, not a legal one.” Related on recent controversies: Paul Berman, Tablet (“it was the Charlie staffers, and not Marine le Pen, whose arrival in New York stirred a protest.”); Art Spiegelman, Time; Mark Steyn (“‘There Is No More Molly.’ Or Luz.”); Erik Wemple, Washington Post (American media’s “crouch of cowardice and rationalization” after Garland attack).
More from commenter DensityDuck:
Given the modern attitude of “anything I don’t like should be illegal”, this isn’t surprising.
When Bradbury wrote “Fahrenheit 451?, he wasn’t suggesting that the government would censor ideas it didn’t like; in his story, it was the people themselves who called for censorship of bad, scary, offensive ideas. Someone who writes of microaggressions and triggers and hate speech would be the bad guys in F451.
A Michigan forfeiture pattern
After crooks sell bogus insurance coverage to credulous Michigan auto owners, cops swoop down and seize/forfeit victims’ cars for having been operated without insurance. Crooks and cops, stronger together! [Juan Thompson, The Intercept]
Also on forfeiture: if you’re in the D.C. area mark your calendar for June 26 when I will be appearing at a Right on Crime panel discussion of the subject in downtown D.C. along with Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform and Jason Pye of FreedomWorks, with John Malcolm of Heritage moderating. You can register and see more details here.
Update February 2016: Note added correction from The Intercept observing that the work of reporter Williams on other stories has come under question; they indicate, however, that the essentials of this story do check out.
Liability roundup
- Home lab butane cannabis fatality: “The Hash Oil contributory negligence lawsuit you’ve all been waiting for” [Elie Mystal, Above the Law]
- With Sheldon Silver out of the speaker’s chair, New York has better chance at reducing sky-high litigation costs [Manhattan Institute, earlier on scaffold law]
- Per Norton Rose Fulbright annual business survey, responding companies more than twice as likely to be facing five or more lawsuits if based in U.S. than if based elsewhere [Norton Rose Fulbright, Bob Dorigo Jones]
- “Hearing: H.R. 1927, the “Fairness in Class Action Litigation Act of 2015” [April House Judiciary Committee with John Beisner, Mark Behrens, Alexandra Lahav, Andrew Trask]
- Legal outlook for Illinois defendants deteriorates as Madison County sees resurgence in suits and Cook County remains itself [ICJL]
- Brown v. Nucor Corp.: did Fourth Circuit just try to gut Wal-Mart v. Dukes rules against combining bias plaintiffs in dissimilar situations into class action? [Hans Bader/Examiner, Derek Stikeleather/Maryland Appellate Blog]
- No wonder New York City consolidation trials are so popular with asbestos lawyers if they yield average of $24 million per plaintiff [Chamber-backed Legal NewsLine] Information in eye-opening Garlock asbestos bankruptcy (allegations of perjury, witness-coaching, etc.) now unsealed and online [same, earlier]
FIFA: “Use of an American bank”
The federal government is bringing charges against the leadership of FIFA, the international soccer association, and Switzerland has arrested them in accord with American wishes. But are the jurisdiction of U.S. courts and U.S. criminal law really proper for this alleged international wrongdoing? David Post:
…ask yourself: if you think that the “use of an American bank” is a sufficient basis for the exercise of US jurisdiction over foreign nationals residing and conducting business abroad, then presumably you’re OK with being hauled into court in Singapore because you have used, say, a Singaporean bank, or into a Mexican court because your money found its way to a Mexican mortgage broker, or into a Danish court because you have at times used a Danish Internet Service Provider. Yes? When you look at it that way it becomes a little more difficult to applaud wholeheartedly – shouldn’t we have been able to count on the Swiss, within whose jurisdiction FIFA undoubtedly lies, to do something?
If they choose our dues, low pay’s OK
“Labor leaders, who were among the strongest supporters of the citywide [$15 and indexing] minimum wage increase approved last week by the Los Angeles City Council, are advocating last-minute changes to the law that could create an exemption for companies with unionized workforces.” [Los Angeles Times] What’s more, these union “escape” clauses keep coming up in minimum wage statutes, as the U.S. Chamber has documented in a lengthy report. It’s almost as if these campaigns are run for unions’ benefit rather than that of their ostensible beneficiaries!
Related: Tim Sandefur, 2011, on a Los Angeles ordinance
that forces businesses that buy grocery stores to retain certain employees on their payroll for three months, even though they don’t want to. There’s an exception in the law for companies that have a collective bargaining agreement with a union. Thus the ordinance is little more than a tax on non-union employers — a restriction that exists for no other reason than to make it more expensive to operate a non-union grocery store.
Police and community roundup
- Not just motorists: revenue-hungry St. Louis County municipalities mulct residents and homeowners with tickets over toys in yard, missing shingles, overgrown trees [St. Louis Post-Dispatch]
- So hard to convict: six officers from notorious Philadelphia narcotics squad acquitted in federal “dangled over balconies” case [Inquirer]
- Strictly non-business: Mayor of Campo, Colo. “asserted the ticketing …is strictly about public safety and not to generate revenue.” [KUSA, autoplays]
- Texas legislature: “Bill to limit filming of police activity is dropped” [Allison Wisk, Dallas Morning News]
- “I remember getting mocked as a nutty libertarian when arguing that primary seat belt laws would be used to profile.” [@radleybalko on CBS Miami report]
- “Breaking Down the Cost of Jaywalking: Where Does Money from a $190 Ticket Go?” [L.A., 2010, BlogDowntown via Amy Alkon discussion, earlier, Timothy Kincaid on Twitter] “A traffic fine should not devastate folks living paycheck to paycheck. [Cal.] Senate working to fix this” [Mariel Garza, L.A. Times]
- On the need for independent prosecutors in police misconduct cases [Jacob Sullum]
Restoring credibility to forensics
Kick out the pseudo-science and fix the broken incentives for witnesses and information gatherers, advises Radley Balko, which happens to be good advice on the civil forensics/expert witness side as well. More from Balko: “A brief history of forensics” and some thoughts on the lessons learned, or mostly not-learned, from the satanic sex abuse cases of the 1990s. And from Ed Pilkington at The Guardian: “Thirty years in jail for a single hair: the FBI’s ‘mass disaster’ of false conviction,” earlier on that here and here.
Wheelchair icons head off in different directions
Last year a new law went into effect in New York requiring businesses to signal ADA accessibility with a new and more progressive-flavored wheelchair icon that suggests forward motion as opposed to plain old static sitting. (It also bans any use of the word “handicapped” on accessible signage, because controlling language is something we want government to do.) New York businesses still have to comply with federal icon display requirements, however, and if they do not want to display two icons at once — which would likely mislead many users into assuming that some distinction in meaning between the two must be intended — they will have to hope to be covered by a catch-all in federal law that allows “alternative” compliant designs provided they offer “substantially equivalent or greater accessibility and usability,” an undefined phrase in this context. [John Egan, Seyfarth Shaw ADA Title III blog]