Deterrent effects of this site

Prof. Stephen Bainbridge, writing at his site the evening before last:

I had a slip and fall at a restaurant tonight after Christmas Eve dinner. (No. It’s not what you’re thinking. I had only had two beers. It was dark and the step was hard to see.) The manager freaked and then double freaked when I mentioned I was a lawyer. My first thought was “payday!” Mega-settlement baby.

But my second thought was that it was just a scraped knee and injured pride. And then my third thought was about all those nasty things I’ve said about trial lawyers over the years. And then my fourth thought was that I’d end up as a story on Walter Olson’s Overlawyered blog! And my final thought was I’d never be able to hold my head up around my tort reform pals again!

So I’m just going to put some ice on it and forget about it.

Filed under: about the site, on other blogs

Food and beverage roundup

Why British pubs are in decline [new Institute of Economic Affairs report from Christopher Snowdon]
After legal battle with chicken chain, Vermont man wins “Eat More Kale” trademark [AP, earlier here, etc.]
“Why D.C. Breweries Say They’re Drowning In Red Tape” [Rebecca Sheir, WAMU] Pennsylvania: “Cops Seized Couple’s $160,000 Wine Collection – And Want to Destroy It All” [Baylen Linnekin]
More on FDA calorie-labeling mandate for restaurants and food servers [Sarah Kliff, Vox (“way more aggressive than expected”); Steve Chapman, Jacob Sullum, Danny Vinik, New Republic on the lack of evidence in their favor; Jason Stverak, Providence Journal on the costs; Cass Sunstein via Althouse in favor; earlier here, etc.]
Opponent seeks sanctions over attempt to turn “meritless snack food labeling action into the Second Peloponnesian War” [Daniel Fisher]
“A Trademark Year in Wine and Beer: Our 2014 Holiday Buyer’s Guide to Disputed Beverages” [David Kluft, Foley Hoag]
Roundup of reactions (including ours) to Boston professor’s fateful tussle with Chinese restaurant [National Post, earlier]

Filed under: alcohol, beer and brewers, eat drink and be merry, FDA, obesity, Pennsylvania, trademarks, United Kingdom, Washington D.C.

Christmas highlights of Overlawyered past

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate! You can read some highlights from past Overlawyered coverage of the holiday here.

Filed under: best of, Christmas and other holidays

Can regulators insist that a company fire its CEO?

In New York that’s getting to be a regular pattern in the settlement of charges against financial firms; although Eliot Spitzer, known for creative methods of corporate decapitation, may have departed office, Spitzerism lives on. I explain in a new Cato post on the state’s Ocwen Financial pact.

Related: Tactics the federal government used to seize control of insurer American International Group (AIG) away from Hank Greenberg, now made public despite years spent resisting disclosure [Gretchen Morgenson, New York Times]

Filed under: corporate governance, Eliot Spitzer, New York, prosecution

Santa’s surveillance

…the Federal Bureau of Investigation approached Santa Claus to enlist his cooperation in a new surveillance program. FBI agents advised Santa that his extensive knowledge regarding “bad” children, and failure to disclose this information to the government, likely made him guilty of millions of counts of misprision of a felony. But, the agents added, perhaps a deal could be arranged.

Relax, it’s not real, it’s just Prof. Kyle Graham’s annual Christmas card couched in the form of a criminal procedure final exam. (Last year’s was a constitutional law final exam).

Filed under: humor, law schools, surveillance

Judge throws out home-care overtime regs

A “thinly-veiled effort to do through regulation” what Congress had refused to do, according to federal district judge Richard Leon, who struck it down in a victory for the interests of elderly and disabled persons in need of care, not to mention the interests of taxpayers and liberty [Bloomberg Business Week] Earlier on the regulations here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, etc.

Filed under: medical, wage and hour suits

Best of Overlawyered — April 2014

“Chicago judge ruled legally insane wants to be restored to bench,” and voters don’t seem to mind that;
New Kevin Underhill book on odd laws, The Emergency Sasquatch Ordinance, review and interview by Jim Dedman;
Music rights organization BMI sues Cleveland bar over one night’s performance by a cover band, seeking up to $1.5 million;
It’s rash to assume you can fire an employee caught working another job while on FMLA leave from your workplace. And the Chicago transit union’s contract provides that a train operator can be dismissed if caught sleeping at the controls twice “within a short period of time.”
In more than 2,000 seizures, border agents confiscated more than 25,000 prohibited Kinder Egg chocolate-covered toys during one recent year;
Bernie Marcus of Home Depot recalls how dropping a lawsuit enabled him to focus on what was important in life;
“This guarantee does not cover shark bite, bear attack or damage by children under five.”

Filed under: best of

“Sony Threatens to Sue Twitter Unless It Removes Tweets Containing Hacked Emails”

“Sony’s lawyer [David Boies] has threatened Twitter with legal action if the social networking company doesn’t ban accounts that are sharing the [hacked] leaks, according to emails obtained by Motherboard.” [Jason Koebler, Vice.com “Motherboard”]

Filed under: social media, Twitter

New idea: invite cops to search your home for guns

The program, in the town of Beloit, Wisconsin, drew few takers and much ridicule; it was quickly called off [Lowering the Bar]

Filed under: guns, police

Monticello’s brush with ruin-by-litigation

Myron Magnet has a new article in City Journal on how George Washington’s country seat at Mount Vernon and Thomas Jefferson’s at Monticello were saved from war, insult, neglect, and legal hazard. From his discussion of Monticello:

What had happened to the house in the meantime was what happens to any property tied up in litigation: it fell once more into a Dickensian state of ruin. As the suits dragged on, Uriah Levy’s old overseer, Joel Wheeler, “took care” of Monticello and sometimes lived in it. While he grew increasingly blind, paint peeled, glass broke, shutters and gutters disappeared, grime deepened, and the roof and terraces rotted. Wheeler dug up the lawn for a vegetable garden on one side and a pigpen on the other. Cattle wintered in the cellars, and Wheeler winnowed grain on the parlor’s parquet floor. On his watch, judged Wheeler’s successor, Thomas Rhodes, Monticello “was wantonly desecrated.”

Whole thing here.

Filed under: historic preservation, Virginia