Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Freedom for Canadian wheat farmers

After decades, farmers in western Canada are finally free to decide for themselves how and to whom to sell their crop, the result of a long political campaign led by free-market prime minister Stephen Harper with key help from Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall. I’ve got a new, celebratory post at Cato giving details. Next: getting our own Supreme Court to reconsider Wickard v. Filburn, the decision that laid out a charter for federal supervision of wheat growing and so much else besides? [Name screwup fixed now]

P.S. Milk still a big problem (although the U.S. is hardly free of cartel-like regulations in that sphere).

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California’s Prop 37: Prop 65 in organic garb

After the quarter-century disgrace that is Proposition 65 litigation — run by and for lawyers’ interests, with no discernible benefit to the health of the citizenry — you’d think California voters would have learned a thing or two. But unless poll numbers reverse themselves, they’re on the way to approving this fall’s Proposition 37, ostensibly aimed at requiring labeling of genetically modified food, whose main sponsor just happens to be a Prop 65 lawyer. I explain in a new piece at Daily Caller. More coverage: Western Farm Press; Hank Campbell, Science 2.0; Ronald Bailey, Reason (& Red State).

More: defenders of Prop 37 point to this analysis (PDF) by economist James Cooper, arguing that 37 is drafted more narrowly than 65 in ways that would avert some of the potential for abusive litigation. And from Hans Bader: would the measure be open to challenge as unconstitutional, or as federally preempted?

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August 15 roundup

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Maryland roundup

I’ve been writing more lately on policy issues arising in my adopted state, such as the boat tax and Baltimore’s fight with liquor stores, and you can keep up by following my local Twitter account @walterolsonmd:

  • If you think the current federal crusade on disparate minority school discipline rates is unreasonable, check out the Maryland state board of education’s even loopier plans for racial quotas in discipline [Hans Bader and letter, Roger Clegg/Center for Equal Opportunity] “However, there’s no plan for gender balance in school discipline.” [Joanne Jacobs]
  • After the state’s high court stigmatized pit bulls as distinctively dangerous, the state legislature has (as warned of in this space) reacted by extending liability to owners of all dogs, “first bite” or not [WaPo] “The trial lawyer’s expert just testified he sees dogs as a man or woman’s ego on the end of a leash.” [Mike Smigiel]
  • A Washington Post article asks: “Is the ‘nanny state’ in Montgomery working?” (No, but it makes councilors in the affluent liberal redoubt feel good about themselves.) And even in Montgomery, councilman George Leventhal (D-At Large) spots a Laffer Curve [Dan Mitchell, Cato at Liberty]
  • Also in Montgomery, county slates vote next month on union-backed bill to require service contractors to take over employment of displaced workers for 90 days [Gazette] Leventhal is caustic: “I do not only work for SEIU 32BJ. My colleagues may feel they do.” [Rachel Baye, Examiner]
  • Despite its solicitude for the SEIU, the county’s concern for low-income workers has its limits, as when property owners seek to increase the stock of affordable housing near jobs by dividing one-family residences into two-family [Ben Ross, Greater Greater Washington]
  • “Doctors, hospitals concerned about hefty malpractice awards” [Baltimore Sun]
  • MD public pension planners whistle through graveyard [Hayley Peterson, Washington Examiner, Tom Coale/HoCoRising, Ivan Osorio, CEI “Open Market”] The state still hasn’t shaken its AAA bond rating, but Annapolis lawmakers are working to change that by unionizing more state workers [Washington Times]

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Bloomberg Law: “The End of Law Reviews?”


“Legal commentator Walter Olson sounded the battle cry in his recent post: ‘Abolish the Law Reviews!,’ arguing that most exist so students can edit them, rather than to be read by lawyers and judges.” (more)

More reactions: Scott Pryor, Faculty Lounge; Kevin O’Keefe, Real Lawyers Have Blogs (“Blogs and social media to replace law reviews? Seems likely”); more, Deborah Hackerson, Legal Skills Prof Blog; “Something tells me this would not make Walter Olson reconsider his belief in irrelevance of law reviews.” [Jacob Laksin] Earlier here, here, here, etc. Related: Dave Hoffman on what would happen if we freed up 2 million law student hours a year [ConcurOp]; Ross Davies/Journal of Law, PDF, via Bainbridge on when legal scholarship helps judges. (& Mitchell Rubinstein, Adjunct Law Prof)

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CPSC’s Buckyballs ban

Buckyballs are highly popular supermagnetic desktop toys for adults and labeled against use by kids. Nonetheless, some kids obtain the tiny balls and swallow them, with harmful or even lethal results. The Consumer Product Safety Commission has responded with an unusually aggressive show of legal muscle to force the product off the market: while suing the manufacturer, it strong-armed retailers into suspending Buckyball sales, thus cutting off the manufacturer’s revenue while a court decides whether the commission had an adequate basis in law and fact for its action. [Nick Farr, Abnormal Use; manufacturer statement; Time; ABA Journal; Michelle Malkin; Point of Law]

More: “CPSC wants to put a child-proof cap on your life.” [@radleybalko]

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Australia: “Student loses appeal over 99.95 HSC mark”

“After achieving a university entry rank of 99.95, winning fifth place in the state for chemistry and a place at the University of Sydney studying medicine, the former Abbotsleigh student Sarah Hui Xin Wong believed she could have done better in the [Higher School Certificate].” A New South Wales administrative tribunal has now turned down her complaint that she suffered disability discrimination by not being allowed further accommodations on the test, specifically a computer and extra time. But Australia does have loser-pays: “Ms. Wong has been ordered to pay some of the Board of Studies’ costs, including a proportion of the fees of the leading Sydney barrister Chris Ronalds, SC.” [Sydney Morning Herald]

In other Australia schools litigation news, a “former student who is suing Geelong Grammar School says she decided to seek damages after she failed to qualify for her preferred university course. Rose Ashton-Weir, 18, alleges Geelong Grammar gave her inadequate academic support, particularly in maths.” [Melbourne Age] More in update at The Age (“was perpetually disorganised and failed to attend classes, a tribunal has heard.”)

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Torts roundup

  • “Targeting the red plastic gas can”: how product liability bankrupted Oklahoma manufacturer Blitz [editorial, earlier]
  • Summers v. Tice, the famous “which hunter shot him?” California tort case, re-examined [Kyle Graham, Green Bag/SSRN]
  • Paul Taylor of House Judiciary makes a case for the constitutionality of broad federal tort reform [Suffolk University Law Review via Point of Law]
  • New Ken Feinberg book on compensation plans in lieu of litigation [Scheuerman, TortsProf]
  • Hot propaganda: filmmaker Susan Saladoff faces off against Victor Schwartz on “Hot Coffee” [TortsProf]
  • Studies of tort reform’s effects underestimate effects of durable reforms by mixing them in with the many that are struck down by hostile courts [Martin Grace and Tyler Leverty, SSRN via Robinette, TortsProf]
  • Membership in AAJ, the trial lawyers’ lobby, said to be on the decline [Carter Wood, PoL]

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