Ethics roundup

Megan McArdle on retroactive lead paint liability

With a widely watched case filed by California local governments reaching trial, the plaintiffs’ claims are in the news. “Even with quotes cherry-picked to make paint manufacturers sound awful, however, [Mother Jones’s] case seems weak.” The columnist quotes my book The Rule of Lawyers on the enormous cumulative changes in the American liability regime, which have made it thinkable (at least to some governments and lawyers) to impose retroactive liability today for business decisions in the 1920s that were clearly lawful at the time. [Bloomberg; more on the history of lead paint use from the defense side).

Foreclosures and housing recovery

A natural experiment: Virginia law allows foreclosures to happen rapidly, Maryland law delays them. Which state has bounced back more smartly from the housing crash? [Michael Schearer, earlier, related (couple spends five years in million-dollar Maryland home without making mortgage payment), update (more links in roundup: Maryland “hobbled by nation’s slowest foreclosure process”]

With the FATCA deadline looming…

..a surge in U.S. citizenship renunciations by expatriates [Bloomberg] The United States is “the only nation in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that taxes citizens wherever they reside,” a departure whose disincentive effects are magnified now that Congress is insisting on regulating foreign financial institutions that deal with Americans. Earlier on FATCA here. More: Dan Mitchell, Cato.

Fair housing complaint over “bachelor pad” ad gets retrial

An Ohio jury found in 2011 that an apartment owner “had not violated federal law in running the Craigslist ad that read: ‘Our one-bedroom apartments are a great bachelor pad for any single man looking to hook up.'” Now an appeals court has ruled that the judge gave improper jury instructions and that the nonprofit Miami Valley Fair Housing Center, which claimed the ad violated the rights of families and women, can get another trial. [Associated Press]

What the US can learn from Canada’s approach to law

More coverage for the Frank Buckley-edited new book on overlegalization, The American Disease [Richard Reinsch/Library of Law and Liberty, Alejandro Chafuen/Forbes] Here’s Buckley in the National Post:

If litigation rates are four times smaller in Canada than the United States, this should not occasion surprise: Subsidize something and you get more of it; penalize it and you get less of it.

Differences in legal ethics matter, too. In America, more than elsewhere, lawyers are encouraged to advance their client’s interests without regard to the interests of justice in the particular case or broader social concerns. American lawyers’ professional culture is unique in permitting and implicitly encouraging them to assert novel theories of recovery, coach witnesses, and wear down their opponents through burdensome pretrial discovery.

Canada: “Man ordered to pay panhandler $8,000 for discrimination”

“A Montreal man has been ordered to pay $8,000 to a panhandler after an email he wrote complaining about her presence outside a liquor store was deemed discriminatory by the province’s human rights commission. … The SAQ [Quebec provincial liquor store operator] then made the decision to share the letter with the woman, who was advised by the police to file a complaint with the commission.” [CBC]