- ABA, NFIB protest NLRB “persuader” disclosure regulations [ABA Journal, Schwartz, earlier] Might regs place replacement workers’ home addresses in hands of unions? [Labor Union Report, Boyle, Daily Caller]
- Swiss animal welfare law is catalyst for founding of guinea pig matchmaking service [Spiegel/Cowen]
- “Jail time for overdue library books” [Lowering the Bar]
- Busybody lawprof (at a different law school) continues to sue Catholic U. demanding coed dorms [WSJ Law Blog, Mystal/AtL]
- So does air pollution cause childhood asthma, as the American Lung Association claims in its ads? [Hayward] “Obama’s Smog Standard Capitulation Enrages Environmentalists” [AW]
- A look inside the Shell Nigeria Alien Tort cases [Goldhaber, AmLaw]
- In the mail: Garner’s Dictionary of Legal Usage (Bryan Garner)
No more tax avoidance strategy patents?
The new patent reform bill may end, or at least restrict, the odd practice of asserting patents on ways to reduce tax liability. [Legal Ethics Forum, earlier here, here, etc.]
Before hiring a criminal defense lawyer…
…consider this cautionary tale [Brian Tannebaum].
Australia: “A terrible day for free speech in this country”
Popular commentator Andrew Bolt “was found guilty Wednesday of breaking Australian discrimination law by implying that fair-skinned Aborigines chose to identify as indigenous for profit and career advancement.” A judge “said he will prohibit reproduction of the offending articles,” and “Bolt and his publisher must meet with the plaintiffs to discuss appropriate court orders that would reflect the judgment.” [AP, earlier, Volokh](& Popehat)
September 28 roundup
- 3M sues prominent Washington lawyer/lobbyist Lanny Davis, says threat of bad publicity improperly used as lawsuit leverage [Above the Law, more, Legal Ethics Forum]
- House Oversight Committee report on expanding regulatory state;
- Does lefty talking-points dispensary ThinkProgress approve of silencing affirmative action critic Roger Clegg? Decide for yourself;
- Robin Fretwell Wilson and Jana Singer debate on scope of religious exemptions in law’s recognition of same-sex marriage [FedSoc Engage] New Heritage backgrounder on same topic cites my writing (in the course of disagreeing). Michael Barone on the politics of the issue, and why he supports the evolution of the law [Examiner]
- California: chefs to defy foie gras ban? [LA Weekly via Alkon, earlier on Chicago]
- “Massachusetts curbs lifetime alimony payments” [NY Times; Jennifer Braceras, Boston Herald] Many state child support formulas overstate cost of child raising [Bader]
- In the mail: new John Fonte book on transnational legal structures, “Sovereignty or Submission” [Encounter Books]
U.K.: “‘Ridiculous’ health and safety bans challenged”
“Kite flying, schoolyard games and sports day sack races have all been hit by an ‘epidemic’ of health and safety excuses, which should be challenged by the public, the Government said.” [Independent] Plus: UK school deems leather balls too dangerous for youngsters, directs use of sponge balls instead [BBC]
Class action settlements as marketing outreach
At Paid Content, Jeff Roberts reports that Wal-Mart may have found a clever way to pitch its services at Netflix’s streaming subscribers, namely by settling a class action lawsuit to which they are party:
A federal court in California late last week approved a class-action settlement that requires Wal-Mart to pay out $27.5 million. But here’s the key element of the ruling: Wal-Mart will be allowed to pay the 40 million Netflix subscribers in the form of gift cards for Wal-Mart.com—where there is prominent advertising for Vudu, which rents and sells movies a la carte.
The court ruling is a blow to Netflix, which had earlier blasted the settlement as “the equivalent of a marketing campaign that costs Walmart only 68 cents per potential customer.”
California’s CEQA, cont’d
Following up on last week’s post, Gideon Kanner calls our attention to this summer’s case of Clover Valley Foundation v. City of Rocklin. As Prof. Kanner wrote at the time in the L.A. Daily Journal:
This was a lawsuit challenging a housing project on environmental grounds some 30 years after the subject property was zoned for housing development, 20 years after the developer’s request for a permit, and after 10 years of planning and environmental review, plus a nearly one-half reduction in the number of permitted dwellings, a five-fold increase in open space, and after millions of dollars were exacted for in-lieu payments. The city approved the project in 2007.
Then the NIMBYs attacked in court. To its credit, the court in effect said “enough already” and rejected the NIMBY challenge. But the court also said that this was a case in which environmental laws “worked.” I would hate to see what it would take for their Lordships to acknowledge a case in which those laws didn’t work.
For more of a flavor of the Clover Valley case, see the write-up from the Meyers Nave law firm.
September 27 roundup
- Unauthorized practice of law (UPL) regulation tends to serve interests of lawyers, not consumers [Thomas Morgan, Gillian Hadfield and more, Eric Rasmusen, George Leef, William Henderson, all at last week’s Truth on the Market symposium; Bader/Examiner; related Greenfield on “lawyer practitioner” idea] In which I am described as a “voice of reason” on the notion of lawyer-deregulation [Greenfield, Bader/Open Market, earlier]
- Trial lawyer stimulus: Obama jobs bill requires states to waive defenses to lawsuits [Joel Griffith, Big Government]
- Because it’s done such a great job with drugs: government panel calls for heavier FDA hand in restricting availability of medical devices [Wajert, Beck, FairWarning] Better idea: “Moving to a Safety-Only [FDA] System” [Tabarrok on Boldrin/Swamidass]
- “Do we really need a breastfeeding discrimination law?” [Hyman]
- Welcome forum-shoppers: “St. Clair County [Ill.] Courthouse overflowing with out-of-towner law suits” [Madison County Record]
- Lawyers in black-farmer action deploy Cornell’s Theodore Eisenberg in quest for $90.8 million payday [BLT]
- “Ohio Man Sues Coworkers Who Won’t Share Mega Millions Lottery Win” [AOL; more on the evergreen lawsuit genre of co-worker lottery suits]
Faced with federal suit, Arizona quits monitoring teachers’ English fluency
My new Cato post points out that while this may be craziness, it’s craziness with a long pedigree:
It was way back in the first Bush administration that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) began filing lawsuits against employers for “discriminating” against employees with difficult-to-understand or heavily accented speech, the theory being that this served as an improper proxy for discrimination based on national origin. The scope for allowable exceptions was exceedingly narrow, too narrow to cover most teaching positions, as I wrote quite a while back when the issue had just come over the horizon in a Massachusetts case. Indeed, the National Education Association (I pointed out) had been prevailed on to pass a resolution “decrying disparate treatment on the basis of ‘pronunciation’ — quite a switch from the old days when teachers used to be demons for correctness on that topic.”
Read the whole thing here (& Alkon, Peter Pappas/Tax Lawyer’s Blog, Bader). Another view: Josh Hanson.