Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

EU demand: Americanize those cheese names

“As part of trade talks, the European Union wants to ban the use of European names like Parmesan, feta and Gorgonzola on cheese made in the United States.” Having achieved some success in negotiations with Canada and Central American nations, Europe may seek to restrict marketing of U.S.-made cheeses such as Asiago, fontina, Muenster, and Neufchatel.

And it may not be just cheese. Other products could include bologna, Black Forest ham, Greek yogurt, Valencia oranges and prosciutto, among other foods.

No word on renaming French fries. [AP]

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Overtime scheme more dangerous to economy than minimum wage hike

So says Coyote, and I agree with him (earlier here).

…companies will quickly restructure their work processes to make sure no one works overtime. And since their new hires are working just a straight 40 hours (with mandatory unpaid lunch break time in CA), they will likely pay less. If I am paying $40,000 a year for someone who will work extra hours for me, I am not going to pay that amount to someone just punching a time clock. And the whole psychological relationship is changed – a salaried person is someone on the management team. A person punching a timeclock may not be treated the same way. …

…for those who think schools assign too much homework, this could well be the end of homework. The most dangerous possible thing with hourly workers is to give them the ability to assign themselves unlimited overtime. Teachers could do this at home with grading papers. If I were a school, I would ban teachers from doing any grading or schoolwork prep at home — after all, it’s hourly and probably overtime and they could work unlimited hours at home and how would you get it under control? The only way to manage it would be to ban it entirely.

He marches through some of the implications, all bad, for employee travel (why allow it except for the direst company needs if every hour on the road is going to be paid at time and a half?), ObamaCare incentives, and the erosion of a minimum pay guarantee for those whose salary now provides one. (On the homework issue, incidentally, teachers are exempt under current FLSA rules; grading papers at home would only be dangerous assuming a change in those rules.)

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Brother at wheel in accident, recovers $18 million

Pennsylvania: “According to police, Kyle Piper, then 17, lost control of his car on a wet Route 422 in Union Township and struck a steel pole.” His 15-year-old brother Stephen, a passenger, was catastrophically injured. “At the time of the accident, according to court documents, the family was insured through Erie Insurance Exchange and believed $200,000 in uninsured motorist benefits and another $100,000 in liability coverage was available for Stephen.” Several legal twists later, Erie has agreed to pay $18 million. [New Castle (Pa.) News]

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Medical roundup

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Obama’s new overtime decree

Here comes a more regimented, polarized, lawsuit-ridden workplace with less upward mobility — at least if the President gets his way. I deplore some of the likely effects, unintended or otherwise, in a new Cato post: “Increasingly, Obama’s binge of executive orders and unilateral decrees to bypass Congress is coming to resemble a toddler’s destructive tantrum.” More: Daniel Schwartz, Daniel Fisher. Our wage and hour law category has more than 80 posts.

More from Scott Shackford, Reason, from Brett Logiurato at Business Insider on organized business opposition, and from the WSJ. And from George Leef, John Locke Institute:

The Fair Labor Standards Act is the federal statute that imposes the minimum wage along with other intrusions into what ought to be matters of contract between the parties.There is no real constitutional authority for the federal government to dictate the terms of labor contracts. During the New Deal, Congress relied upon the notion that if anything might have any possible effect on interstate commerce, then it’s fair game for federal control. That idea stretches the concept of interstate commerce far beyond its intended meaning.

Yet more: Welcome Andrew Sullivan, Washington Times readers. And see followup post (why this could do much more damage to economy than minimum wage hike)

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Unwed dads in court

A New Jersey judge has ruled that a mother-to-be doesn’t have to notify the estranged unwed father that she is going into labor or let him into the delivery room [ABA Journal] Meanwhile, a suit filed on behalf of unwed fathers is challenging Utah’s adoption laws, which they say improperly enable mothers from out of state to visit Utah for purposes of depriving unwed fathers of rights of notification or objection they would otherwise enjoy under their home state’s law [Salt Lake Tribune]

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Mark your calendars: Mar. 27, “Why Government Fails So Often”

why-government-fails-so-oftenI’m particularly pleased to have played a role in bringing so many terrific authors to speak at Cato this year, including Virginia Postrel and Lenore Skenazy (I helped a bit with Megan McArdle too). Next up, on Mar. 27: Peter Schuck of Yale Law School, “militant moderate” whose magnum opus on how government fails is forthcoming from Princeton. Commenting will be Arnold Kling. Register now! (or make plans to watch live online). Event description:

Featuring the author Peter Schuck, Professor of Law Emeritus, Yale Law School; with comments by Arnold Kling, Economist and Adjunct Scholar, Cato Institute; moderated by Walter Olson, Senior Fellow, Center for Constitutional Studies, Cato Institute.

From the doctor’s office to the workplace, the federal government is taking on ever more responsibility for managing our lives. At the same time, Americans have never been more disaffected with Washington, seeing it as an intrusive, incompetent, wasteful giant. In this book, lawyer and political scientist Peter Schuck lays out a wide range of examples and an enormous body of evidence to explain why so many domestic policies go awry. Economist David Henderson, research fellow at the Hoover Institution and coeditor of EconLog, lauds the book as full of “gems” and “juicy” insights: “Schuck does a beautiful job of laying out all the problems with government intervention.” But can the state get better results by pursuing more thoughtfully conceived policies designed to compensate for its structural flaws? Schuck believes it can. Many libertarians will disagree — and that debate will enliven our discussion.

A sampling of the book’s argument is here.

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