Sanctions have a role to play in managing litigation, and are probably under-used in the American courtroom, but this would seem to go too far. Saudi Arabia: “The Ministry of Justice plans to introduce tough new legislation to penalize malicious litigants, which would include fines, prison and lashes.” [Arab News via Crossroads Arabia]
State versions of the False Claims Act
The Chamber has been tracking this major engine of contingency-fee litigation as it jumps from federal practice to the realm of similar state laws vigorously lobbied for by the plaintiff’s bar. I have an opinion piece in the Baltimore Business Journal on the Maryland version, which 1) nearly passed this year, 2) would go further than the federal law in some vital respects, and 3) has become an issue in a closely watched primary contest.
Flashback: when the FDA banned Mimolette
A year ago the Cato Institute interviewed Jill Erber, of Northern Virginia cheese shop Cheesetique, after the FDA decided to ban the traditional French cheese Mimolette. More on the FDA and cheese here, here, here, etc.
More: Baylen Linnekin at Reason on why the FDA hasn’t really backed off its latest on wooden shelving (“You dine at the pleasure of the FDA. Enjoy it while it lasts.”); also at Reason, Elizabeth Nolan Brown. And some of the reassurances we heard at the time about FSMA being no big deal are here and here.
Detroit’s city government can’t prevent crime
So instead it will require private businesses to invest in security measures. I explain in a new Cato post. In January I noted an unsuccessful bill in the Maryland legislature to require gas station owners to maintain videocamera system.
This is bound to end well: tax hikes by decree
Obama urged to raise taxes unilaterally on disfavored groups by regulation if Congress won’t act:
Out of deference to Congress, the Treasury Department has traditionally avoided making policy in areas where the legislative branch may act. “But when the legislative process is as broken as it has become today,” said Daniel N. Shaviro, a law professor at New York University, “it’s simply inevitable that administrations will care less about such comity, and be more willing to advance their policy views in controversial areas through the unilateral exercise of regulatory authority.”
That’s the ticket. We’ll call it “simply inevitable”! [Victor Fleischer, NYT “DealBook” via TaxProf; earlier on pen-and-phone executive orders here, etc.]
Woman dies in jail after failing to pay truancy fine
Last week I did a Cato podcast about how nickel-and-dime fines and fees arising from low-level law enforcement can spiral to the point of overwhelming poor persons’ lives. Now take a look at this appalling AP story from Pennsylvania [via Brian Doherty, Reason]. “More than 1,600 people have been jailed in Berks County alone — where Reading is the county seat — over truancy fines since 2000.”
Labor roundup
- “Coming to Your Workplace Soon? Union Organizing Efforts Via the Company’s Email System” [Daniel Kaplan, Foley & Lardner]
- “Pennsylvania Unions Still Exempt from Harassment [Law], Continue Harassing with Impunity” [Trey Kovacs, Workplace Choice, earlier here, here, here]
- Music production gravitates to right to work states attract in part because union musicians less afraid of discipline for taking gigs there [Variety on union’s dispute with videogame-composer member]
- New definition of “nationwide strike”: protesters show up at a few Wal-Marts, few workers pay attention [On Labor]
- Presently constituted NLRB and U.S. Department of Labor are zealous union partisans, not impartial arbiters [Alex Bolt]
- “Workers filing wage-and-hour lawsuits under Labor Act at record pace” [Crain’s Detroit Business]
- “Despite repeated failures, Card Check still top Big Labor priority” [Sean Higgins, Washington Examiner]
Dismissed workers’ comp arbitrator presses disability claim
An Illinois state employee “was dismissed in 2011 from her $115,000 per year job as an arbitrator for the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission after a series of stories in the News-Democrat concerning more than $10 million paid to prison guards who complained that turning keys and operating locks caused them to be injured.” The investigation indicated that the arbitrator tried to hide from the press a disability application by a former state trooper convicted of causing highway deaths, and allegedly used her position in an unsuccessful attempt to pressure state officials to speed up her own claim, commenting that she had ‘two mortgages’ to pay.” After her departure from the arbitrator job she “found work training others for the very job from which she was fired,” and now is endeavoring to collect a “pending $25,000 settlement for a disability primarily attributed to typing,” which the state is resisting. [Belleville, Ill., News-Democrat]
On GM, Toyota, politics, and the neglect of safety
I was a guest Tuesday on the Roger Hedgecock program at the San Diego Union-Tribune, discussing the way Washington, D.C. seems to have come down at least as hard on Toyota as on General Motors, maybe harder, even though the safety shortcomings falsely attributed to Toyota appear actually to be present in the GM case.
One striking feature of the GM story is the extent to which a culture of putting as little as possible on paper appears to have undermined GM’s capability to grasp the scope of the safety problem with the flimsy ignitions and their relationship to nonfunctional airbags. Bill Vlasic of the New York Times reports:
To the legal department at General Motors, secrecy ruled. Employees were discouraged from taking notes in meetings. Workers’ emails were examined once a year for sensitive information that might be used against the company. G.M. lawyers even kept their knowledge of fatal accidents related to a defective ignition switch from their own boss, the company’s general counsel, Michael P. Millikin.
As I’ve often noted, organizations gripped by fear of legal consequences or hostile oversight often develop a “put as little as possible on paper” mentality, even though such a mentality regularly proves counterproductive to the organization’s mission by fostering ignorance and lack of coordination and allowing bad practice to take root.
June 12 roundup
- John McGinnis: As information technology disrupts the legal profession, will lawyers’ clout decline? [City Journal]
- Law schools, especially of the more leftward persuasion, collecting millions of dollars in cy pres lawsuit diversions [Derek Muller]
- Who’s still defending embattled medical examiner Steven Hayne? Mississippi attorney general Jim Hood, for one [Radley Balko, earlier here, here, here]
- Life in America will become more drab if Campaign for Safe Cosmetics gets its way [Jeffrey Tucker via @cathyreisenwitz, earlier on “CPSIA for soap”]
- LSAT settled with DoJ demands re: disabled accommodation back in 2002 and again just now, and the differences between the two settlements tell a story [Daniel Fisher, earlier] Some prospective students will be losers [Derek Muller]
- “‘Swoop and Squat’: Staged car accidents, insurance fraud rise in L.A.” [Los Angeles Times]
- Toughen duty for California psychiatrists to inform on dangerous patients? Awaiting backfire in three, two, one… [Scott Greenfield]