A Brooklyn woman intends to pursue further levels of judicial review after an appeals court denied her damages in a breast-feeding mix-up “because the error was discovered and fixed inside the hospital and her infant didn’t get sick or injured.” [Brooklyn Paper; another breastfeeding mixup case]
April 22 roundup
- Furor as NLRB issues complaint against Boeing for planning to open S.C. plant [Wichita Business Journal, Costa/NR “Corner”, Wood/ShopFloor, more, Tom Bevan/RCP, Ira Stoll, Hirsch/Workplace Prof, Megan McArdle, Jonathan Adler]
- Perp meanwhile declared not criminally responsible and awaits release: “Jury orders Nordstrom to pay $1.6 M to Bethesda stabbing victims” [WaPo]
- Not so reliable: how eyewitness and confession testimony can result in convicting the innocent [Brandon Garrett, Slate]
- Trying to pin down who merits label of “patent troll” [Michael Risch, Prawfs, and followup] “Digital Innovators vs. the Patent Trolls” [Peter Huber, WSJ]
- Publishers as targets in pharma suits? Philadelphia product liability case names as defendant the company that put out drug fact sheet [Beck]
- Regulate-Google schemes: “If search neutrality is the answer, what’s the question?” [Manne/Wright, TotM]
- Hey, John Boehner’s tweeting about my blog post [@johnboehner]
Law schools roundup
- ABA proposes retreat from use of accreditation as leverage for faculty tenure, AALS practically passes out on floor [Caron/TaxProf, Dave Hoffman/ConcurOp and more]
- “Law professor calls for ban on Koran burning” [Volokh; Liaquat Ali Khan]
- “Are Law Profs ‘Selfless’ Teachers and Scholars Engaged in ‘Public Service’?” [Tamanaha, Balkinization]
- Behavioral law-and-econ has vanquished neoclassical economics? Not so fast, buster [Josh Wright, TotM]
- Left-tilting legal academy? Perish the thought: conference simply aims to combat “spread of laissez-faire ideology” [ClassCrits]
- Concurring Opinions symposium examines forthcoming Yale Law Journal study questioning whether clinic representation makes a difference in client outcomes [LEF, earlier] Hey, watch out, you’re giving ammunition to critics of legal services [Udell]
- Schools for Misrule has spent a lot of time in recent weeks as #1 in the Amazon category of “One-L – Legal Profession.” Thanks for your support!
“And you thought you billed a lot of hours…”
Ted Frank, who’s challenging the Cobell (Indian trust) class action fees as part of his work with the Center for Class Action Fairness, catches out a lawyer who claims to have worked for more than nine hours a day on the case for 14 years, including a 7-year stretch in which he purportedly worked “an average of eleven hours a day, every day seven days a week without a single day off.” [Above the Law, earlier]
Tonight: “Late Nights with Jim Bohannon”
I’m scheduled to join Jim Bohannon tonight on his radio show, 11 p.m. Eastern, to discuss my new book. It’s one of the best and most popular shows out there, so be sure to check local listings and tune in.
Sidewalks, ADA suits, and attorneys’ fees
According to Todd Roberson at CJAC, a federal court’s ruling in a 14-year dispute over street curbs and sidewalks in Riverside, California has headed off a potential “avalanche of lawsuits.” U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner ruled the complainant in the case “had failed to demonstrate that Riverside as a whole is inaccessible to the disabled.”
Riverside’s City Attorney, Greg Priamos, was quoted in the Daily Journal saying the suit was “about money, not accessibility…The only hangup to a settlement earlier in the case was the amount of attorney’s fees. I’m offended by that.”
“FindLaw Legal Bloggers Sue for Overtime Pay”
It’s not getting one-ten-thousandth the coverage of Mr. Tasini’s suit against the Huffington Post, perhaps because it’s not based on quite such an exotic set of legal theories. FindLaw pays staffers to write legal blogs and the suit charges that they were encouraged/allowed to work unpaid overtime. [ABA Journal] Eric B. Meyer has more (“Working through lunch may create overtime issues for employers”).
Global warming as political question
I’ve got a new post up at Cato at Liberty explaining why the American Electric Power v. Connecticut case — which was heard in oral argument yesterday before the Supreme Court — should be tossed for stating a fundamentally political rather than judicial claim.
More: Adam Chandler at SCOTUSBlog rounds up reporting on the “chilly reception” the case got yesterday before the high court and the “uphill battle” it may face in convincing the justices. As Andrew Grossman recounts, Peter Keisler had a very good day before the court representing the utilities, with Justices Kennedy and Breyer both signaling disapproval of plaintiff arguments, raising the likelihood of a lopsided or even unanimous defense victory. And Jonathan Adler recounts skeptical questioning from Kagan and Ginsburg as well. (& ShopFloor, Trevor Burrus @ Cato)
The U.N. vs. freedom of religion
While the campaign to ban “defamation of religion” appears to have lost some steam at the world body recently, continued efforts to curtail “religious hate speech” could restrict free expression in some of the same ways. [Nina Shea, NRO “Corner”; Ilya Somin, Volokh] Warns Nina Shea:
In 2009, the Obama administration had the U.S. co-sponsor with Egypt, which represented the OIC [Organization of the Islamic Conference], a non-binding hate-speech resolution in the Human Rights Council. In contrast to U.S. constitutional law, that resolution urges states to take and to effectively implement “all necessary measures” to combat any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility, or violence. It thus encourages the worldwide criminalization of religious hate speech.