- Part III of Radley Balko series on painkiller access [HuffPo]
- “Note: Add ‘Judge’s Nameplate’ to List of Things Not to Steal” [Lowering the Bar]
- California’s business-hostile climate: if the ADA mills don’t get you, other suits might [CACALA]
- Bottom story of the month: ABA president backs higher legal services budget [ABA Journal]
- After string of courtroom defeats, Teva pays to settle Nevada propofol cases [Oliver, earlier]
- Voting Rights Act has outstayed its constitutional welcome [Ilya Shapiro/Cato] More: Stuart Taylor, Jr./The Atlantic.
- Huge bust of what NY authorities say was $279 million crash-fraud ring NY Post, NYLJ, Business Insider, Turkewitz (go after dishonest docs on both sides)]
ADA: Everyone out of the pool
Unless hotels have moved to install expensive and cumbersome wheelchair lifts, they face new fines and litigation exposure under new Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) regulations taking effect today. I explain why many pools will close as a result — and trace some of the ideological background — in my new post at Cato at Liberty (& Adler, Alkon, Frank, Adam Freedman/Ricochet (“the regulators have truly gone off the deep end,”) George Leef/Locke).
More: Notwithstanding my comments about Congressional Republicans being unhelpful, Sen. DeMint has filed a bill that would prevent the regulations from taking effect on their March 15 date. [Daily Caller] And Prof. Bagenstos defends the regulations in a way that I much fear will mislead newcomers to the topic. He emphasizes, for example, that hotel payouts resulting from federally mandated damages to complainants are for the moment unlikely. But as we know, the incentive of (one-way) attorneys’ fees has all by itself been enough to fuel a sizable volume of ADA complaint-filing, while in states like California the availability of piggyback damages under enactments like the Unruh Act turn many nominally zero-damage federal cases into highly profitable extraction propositions. As for the limitation of exposure to what is “readily achievable,” the USA Today report illustrates how uncertainty over the meaning of that term can leave pool operators exposed to risky and high-cost litigation. In the real world, fixes that wipe out the economic viability of a given pool (or the facility of which it is a part) are indeed asserted by advocacy groups to be “readily achievable.” That makes it cold comfort that some facilities can stave off liability for the moment by pledging to install the equipment by some future date.
Canada: lender’s inspection may create liability to third parties
A British Columbia court has allowed a suit to proceed arguing that a government lending program which included inspection of the property to be renovated could incur a duty to third persons who might later fall on a staircase whose faults allegedly would have been detected had inspection not been negligent. [Erik Magraken; Benoit v. Banfield]
Class action: Apple’s Siri doesn’t live up to hype
The class action firm of Robbins Geller, representing some client or other, is demanding damages from Apple on behalf of a class of people disappointed by the iPhone 4S voice-activated assistant, Siri. Reviewers have complained that the program often fails to comprehend users’ speech, returns illogical answers, and when asked “Play some Coltrane,” has been known to respond that it doesn’t know any “coal train.” [Mat Honan, Gizmodo; Jason Gilbert/Huffington Post] “When asked her whether her makers exaggerated her worth, Siri told Law Blog, ‘We were talking about you, not me.’” [Joe Palazzolo/WSJ Law Blog]
“Hobbit pub in Southampton threatened with legal action”
Sad, inevitable, or both? “I can’t fight Hollywood,” says the mistress of the pub and music venue in the south of England, which has operated for 20 years and has now drawn a legal threat from a California firm that owns many Tolkien rights. [BBC]
International law roundup
- Supreme Court orders rebriefing in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum case, could address extent of permitted extraterritoriality in Alien Tort Statute [Kenneth Anderson/Volokh quoting John Bellinger, Point of Law featured discussion, Ilya Shapiro on Cato brief]
- UN “food rights” official: trade, investment pacts should not go forward without “human rights impact assessments” [De Schutter; his paternalist food-policy agenda] UN panel reviews Canada’s record on race, lectures on need for more multiculturalism [OHCHR]
- Courts still reluctant to restrain parents’ physical discipline of kids, but UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, for which ratification push is expected in the U.S. this year, could change that [Elizabeth Wilson, ConcurOp]
- Golan v. Holder: “Copyright Case May Have Profound Effect on Treaty Power” [Ilya Shapiro, Jurist]
- Web accessibility litigation spreads to UK [Disability Law, related on role of U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, earlier and background]
- New tone under Ambassador Joseph Torsella: “Obama Comes Around on U.N. Reform” [Brett Schaefer, NRO]
- Reviewing new John Fonte book Sovereignty or Submission, Temple lawprof Peter Spiro contends that trend toward transnational governance isn’t “reversible…. It’s mostly wishful thinking to suppose that we can stick to the vision of the Founders.” [OJ, earlier here, etc., and see chapters 11-12 of Schools for Misrule]
- Dante’s Divine Comedy “offensive and should be banned,” per UN anti-discrimination consultancy [Telegraph]
Reducing discovery costs
Famed Texas lawyer Stephen Susman has a bunch of ideas. [Dan Fisher, Forbes](& Miller)
“Dear 16-year-old me… law school can be prevented”
Making the rounds:
March 13 roundup
- “Are Courts Dragging Out the Housing Crisis?” [Mark Calabria, Cato] “Boom-Era Property Speculators to Get Foreclosure Aid” [Bloomberg News via Bader, CEI] Community organizing groups expect to cash in on state AGs’ robosigning settlement [Neil Munro, Daily Caller, earlier] As does NAAG itself [Daniel Fisher] More: Kevin Funnell.
- “Non-standard explanation offered for bugging wife’s bedroom” [Lowering the Bar]
- Chris DeMuth on James Q. Wilson [Weekly Standard, earlier] I wrote about Wilson’s work on at least two occasions: the Baltimore Sun had me review a book of his on “abuse excuses” and other difficulties of psychiatric testimony in court, a good book if a mere foothill in the mountain range of his overall scholarship; on another occasion in Reason I challenged his uncharacteristic backing of a “family policy” proposal ripe with potential for unintended consequences;
- Boston city councilor: make valet kid at restaurant responsible if patron drives off drunk [NPR via Alkon]
- “Texas is being stiff armed by the EPA at every turn” [Munro/DC quoting Texas attorney general Greg Abbott] NYT’s “modest” offshore drilling restrictions: “I hate to think what immodest restrictions would look like” [John Steele Gordon]
- “The Southern Poverty Law Center Is Now Writing About Pickup Artists as Hate Groups” [Mike Riggs]
- SFO rental car garage offers a whiff of Prop 65 absurdity [Stoll]
“Uncle Sam: If It Ends in .Com, It’s .Seizable”
Despite protests from online entities based abroad, “the U.S. government … says it has the right to seize any .com, .net and .org domain name because the companies that have the contracts to administer them are based on United States soil, according to Nicole Navas, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman.” Unease abroad about aggressive use of such powers by the American government could heighten pressure for a U.N. takeover of the domain name system, potentially a frying-pan-into-fire move from the standpoint of web freedom and due process. [David Kravets, Wired “Threat Level”]
P.S. Extradition, too.