Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Update: South Mountain Creamery settles structuring charges

In news that reached me after my Baltimore Sun op-ed yesterday was already in print, owners Randy and Karen Sowers of Middletown, Md. have settled the federal charges against their South Mountain Creamery over “structuring” of bank deposits. They “will get back a little more than half of $62,936 seized by the government earlier this year, according to court documents filed late Tuesday. … ‘I didn’t do anything wrong, but we had to settle because we had no other choice,’ Sowers said.” [Courtney Mabeus, Frederick News-Post; earlier here, etc.]

P.S. And welcome Don Boudreaux/Cafe Hayek readers (no, I’m not related to Mancur Olson); Coyote.

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D.C.: regulating secondhand shops as pawnshops

Used and vintage dealers in Adams-Morgan and other in-town Washington, D.C. neighborhoods are aghast at city regulations that would require secondhand dealers “to submit to MPD’s [the Metropolitan Police Department’s] pawn unit a detailed list of goods acquired each time they make a purchase. Additionally, MPD wants the stores to hold items for 15 days for police inspection before they can be sold.” Whether or not such regulations make sense as applied to traditional pawnshops, dealers in vintage apparel, records and books say it would make their business uneconomic or drive them to the suburbs. [Prince of Petworth, DCist]

Update: Via Twitter, the D.C. government says after talking with business owners it is proposing to exempt book, record and apparel resellers from having to get a secondhand goods license; they would need only a general business license. It also says the regulations to the contrary are not new but have simply gone unenforced before now (via Alexander Cohen, Business Rights Center).

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Feet hurt from “repetitive walking?” Claim compensation

Illinois: “If you are a state employee and your feet hurt, you could be in line to receive medical care, including surgery, paid time off plus a tax-free disability settlement that might exceed your annual salary — all paid for by taxpayers. You also would keep your job.” Arbitration awards for trauma inflicted by “repetitive walking” and other seemingly common workplace stresses have caused enough concern that state attorney general Lisa Madigan has called for tightening up causation standards. [Belleville News-Democrat]

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Food law roundup

  • Bloomberg’s petty tyranny: NYC plans ban on soft drink sizes bigger than 16 oz. at most eateries, though free refills and sales of multiple cups will still be legal [NBC New York]
  • Will Michigan suppress a heritage-breed pig farm? [PLF] NW bakers cautiously optimistic as state of Washington enacts Cottage Food Act [Seattle Times]
  • Hide your plates: here comes the feds’ mandatory recipe for school lunch [NH Register] School fined $15K for accidental soda [Katherine Mangu-Ward] Opt out of school lunch! [Baylen Linnekin]
  • Losing his breakfast: court tosses New Yorker’s suit claiming that promised free food spread at club fell short [Lowering the Bar, earlier]
  • Amid parent revolt, Massachusetts lawmakers intervene with intent to block school bake-sale ban [Springfield Republican, Boston Herald, Ronald Bailey]
  • Interview on farm and food issues with Joel Salatin [Baylen Linnekin, Reason]
  • “Nutella class action settlement far worse than being reported” [Ted Frank]
  • Under political pressure, candy bar makers phase out some consumer choices [Greg Beato] Hans Bader on dismissal of Happy Meal lawsuit [CEI, earlier]

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Hey, EEOC….

… can we have a heart-to-heart talk about some of what’s wrong with your new guidelines restricting employers from asking about job applicants’ criminal records? [Robin Shea] More: Diane Katz/Heritage, Ted Frank, Federalist Society podcast with Maurice Emsellem, Dominique Ludvikson and Dean Reuter, Brian Wolfman/Public Citizen (favorable to rules). Amy Alkon rounds up several more links, regarding which it should be noted that the EEOC has traditionally conceded an employer’s right to consider an embezzler’s rap sheet when filling a bookkeeping job — but not necessarily an axe-murderer’s rap sheet, since that’s not demonstrably “job-relevant.” Don’t you feel reassured now?

In related news, Roger Clegg reports that the House has passed a provision blocking EEOC enforcement of the guidance, which is encouraging as a preliminary matter; the Senate, however, is very likely to take a different position, and the rider will have no effect if the Senate view prevails. [NRO]

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“A trap for small business”: Welcome Baltimore Sun readers

I’m in the paper with an opinion piece on federal prosecutors’ assault on small business for bank deposit “structuring.” My posts on the South Mountain Creamery case, in which federal authorities seized the bank account of a Middletown, Maryland dairy which had allegedly been depositing farmers’ market proceeds in installments of less than $10,000, are here and here. Van Smith of the Baltimore City Paper deserves particular credit for breaking the structuring story with reports here and here. Update: South Mountain case settles.

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Environment roundup

  • “A loose coalition of eco-anarchist groups is increasingly launching violent attacks on scientists.” [Nature]
  • “Jury Blames ‘Erin Brockovich’ Doc For His Patient’s Illness, Not Defendants” [Daniel Fisher, Forbes]
  • “Judge declines to toss Chevron RICO case against lawyer over $18bln award” [Reuters, Folkman/Letters Blogatory] Videos tell Chevron side of story in hotly disputed Ecuador Lago Agrio dispute [“Amazon Post“]
  • NGOs’ bag of tricks: Greenpeace helped pack International Whaling Commission thirty years ago by paying dues for small states to join [Skodvin/Andresen via Spiro/OJ]
  • Distinguishing the areas of clear vision from the blind spots in Chicago Tribune’s flameproofing series [Coyote, earlier]
  • Wilderness regs prevent town of Tombstone, Ariz. from rebuilding water pipes destroyed in fire [Daily Caller]
  • Look! Over that factory! It’s a plume of (shudder) … water vapor! [Coyote]
  • National Science Foundation grantee: “Tort actions may impel industry to … redesign chemical molecules … to be less toxic.” [David Oliver, Ted Frank]

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Employee “loses track of time” due to disability

Trying to let the mentally disabled employee go from its store in Woodland, Calif., though, proved costly to retailer Target Corp., which has agreed to pay $275,000 to extricate itself from her wrongful termination claim under the Americans with Disabilities Act. [Sacramento Bee] The worker had found employment at Target with the assistance of a nonprofit organization that works with mentally disabled workers, and which had supplied her with a “job coach.” It remains to be seen whether employers like Target will continue to accept such placements with enthusiasm as the perceived legal risks of doing so keep rising.

P.S. Thanks to commenters for drawing out this point: yes, Target’s ultra-stringent employee discipline policy for failure to take timely lunch breaks does look like a lawyer-driven adaptation to its high legal exposure (especially in California) to class action suits claiming that employers permitted work during designated breaks. See, for example, this post and this one. Note that in each case the company feels constrained to fire the workers because they are putting in too much work, not too little.

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