Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Say what?

Pay up, EEOC tells a cafe owner, for not taking on a hearing- and speech-impaired applicant for a cashier’s position [EEOC press release (Albuquerque’s Savory Fare Bakery and Cafe agrees to pay $20,000 and offer other relief), h/t Roger Clegg; related on cases where concern about cross-intelligibility between employee and customers leads to charges of “accent discrimination”] (& Bader, CEI; Scott Greenfield)

More: Alexander Cohen at Atlas has the complaint and answer, along with further analysis.

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Constitutional law roundup

As everyone waits for the ObamaCare ruling…

  • Justice Kennedy often votes with right half of Court on economic issues, left on social — if only there were a word for that [David Boaz]
  • SCOTUS decisions on evidence, Indian law remind us of inadequacies of “red-blue” stereotype of Court divisions [Hans Bader]
  • “Can the Government Destroy Property Values ‘Temporarily’ Without Compensation?” [Ilya Shapiro, Cato]
  • New book on how a 1987 Supreme Court decision opened up Indian gaming [James Huffman reviews Ralph Rossum, LLL]
  • “That’s Not Kosher: How Four Jewish Butchers Brought Down the First New Deal” [Steven Horwitz, The Freeman]
  • Except for, like, not demanding damages or trial or things like that? Declaration of Independence described as “founding lawsuit.” [John Goldberg via TortsProf]
  • New book reviews in Federalist Society “Engage”: Richard Epstein on John Inazu, Liberty’s Refuge: The Forgotten Freedom of Assembly, and Robert Gasaway on Michael Greve, The Upside-Down Constitution]

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Don’t

The Texas Supreme Court has sent back for further adjudication a controversy in which two newspapers had failed to win a summary judgment motion in a libel case filed against them. It took judicial notice that the trial judge in the case had taken a plea bargain on racketeering charges that included having accepted a $8,000 bribe to rule against the newspapers on the motion [ABA Journal]

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“Thanks for saving my life. That’ll cost you $5 million.”

Ellen Shane, 62, of Carteret, N.J., was taken hostage at knifepoint by a parolee at Woodbridge Center Mall and was freed only when a police officer shot the criminal dead. Now she “plans to sue the township for $5 million, claiming it failed to protect public safety and that she was injured as a result of the officer’s acts. Both Shane and her husband, Ronald Shane, ‘are suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome and both have been dramatized from this incident,’ according to the tort claim notice filed by their lawyer, David Corrigan of Eatontown’.” It alleges that the officer should “attempt[ed] to resolve the situation” by other means before shooting. [Tom Haydon, Newark Star-Ledger via AnnMarie McDonald, NJLRA, from which the headline is taken]

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Intellectual property law roundup

  • Deborah Gerhardt on the ruling in favor of an artist who paints Crimson Tide sports highlights without University of Alabama say-so [Deborah Gerhardt/Eric Goldman, earlier here, etc.]
  • Posner throws out Apple/Motorola case [Tabarrok, more]
  • Joinder of defendants allegedly violating same patent: “D.C. Court Ruling Makes Life Tougher For Patent Trolls” [Daniel Fisher, Forbes]
  • “Google, AOL Face Patent Suit Over ‘Snippet’ Search Results, Ads” [Justia]
  • “Absurd patent of the day, Apple re: wedge-shaped computers” [Tabarrok]
  • “Defensive Patent License: judo for patent-trolls” [Doctorow/BB]
  • Why are copyright terms so long? One theory [Julian Sanchez]

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A global financial-transactions tax?

United Nations experts are touting the idea as a way of redistributing money from richer to poorer countries [Global Governance Watch, Dan Mitchell/Cato at Liberty, Nile Gardiner/Telegraph] Not incidentally, it would carry a potential for greatly augmenting the power of the fledgling transnational governing class, by at last giving them a source of funds not based on individual state contributions [Jacob Mchangama & Aaron Rhodes, NRO] (& welcome Above the Law readers)

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Judge: Netflix can be sued for streaming uncaptioned films

As I note in a new Cato post, a judge ruled last week that Netflix is a “public accommodation” and can be sued for not offering closed captioning on all its streamed films for the convenience of deaf customers. (Earlier here.) If upheld, the ruling will apply not just to Netflix itself but to a much broader class of online communicators; also waiting in the wings are blind advocates who believe the law requires the addition to movies of supplementary soundtracks describing action. As I pointed out to the Boston Globe, obligatory captioning, soundtrack supplementation and the like is likely to make it uneconomic to offer streaming of many films with low expected circulation. Note, however, by way of contrary precedent, this 2010 federal court ruling that online multiplayer games are not a public accommodation. My new post is here (& Allen McDuffee, Washington Post “Think Tanked”, Alexander Cohen/Atlas Society, George Leef/John Locke Foundation, Sam Bagenstos/Disability Law.)

P.S. And this must-read post at Ars Technica from prominent Internet law blogger Eric Goldman (“a bad ruling. Really terrible.” and contrary to precedent). Bonus: “I am so sick and tired of hearing people like Olson… the Walter Olsons of the world” [Ellen Seidman, Parents mag]

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