The Washington Post thinks a new Insurance Institute for Highway Safety study favorable to the cause of traffic cameras should end debate about whether the cameras are a good thing. Radley Balko isn’t ready to buy it.
Sallie Mae robocall settlement
It includes a provision in which the class lawyers agree not to disparage the student lender. John Frith of the Civil Justice Association of California says that in exchange for the chance to split $4.875 million in fees, he’d probably agree to keep quiet too.
“Barminess” of UK employment tribunals
According to London Mayor Boris Johnson, writing in the Telegraph, the recent case of a man who is charging a 68-year-old female colleague with unconsented rump-slapping shows that Britain’s employment tribunal system leaves much to be desired:
This could turn out to be a ground-breaking case in the advancement of workers’ rights against the unfeeling boss class. But I sincerely doubt it. It sounds to me like a perfect indication of the levels of barminess now being attained by our system of employment tribunals. The hearing continues, it says at the bottom of the reports, and my first thought is how mad, how incredible it is that this poor man’s grievance – whatever it really is – has come to court.
The hearing continues, while across the country thousands of similar hearings drag their weary length before the matchstick-eyelid tribunals of Britain. Millions of man-hours are wasted, as business people are obliged to give evidence rather than getting on with their jobs. Huge fees are racked up by lawyers and “expert witnesses”, who are called on to pronounce on the exact meaning of an insult, and on all the unverifiable aches and pains and stresses that may constitute a disability.
The total cost of the system has been put at £1 billion for British business, and it is rising the whole time. …
Last month Prime Minister David Cameron proposed relaxing — though only slightly — the tribunals’ grip over firing, hiring, claims of harassment and other workplace matters.
“Japanese Anime Pokes Fun at America’s Legal System”
A recent anime (Japanese cartoon) portrays America as a land where pretty much any misadventure can be turned into grounds for a lawsuit. Siouxsie Law has the (funny? horrifying?) video clip, the plot line of which involves the catastrophic misuse of a microwave oven and its fictional legal consequences.
What judges do and how it’s misunderstood
Justice Samuel Alito’s Wriston Lecture before the Manhattan Institute last fall is now online.
Update: USDA overrides court’s ban on sugar-beet planting
“The Department of Agriculture said on Friday that American farmers could resume growing genetically engineered sugar beets that had been barred by a federal judge.” The ban had led to fears of sugar shortages and steep price hikes. [New York Times, earlier]
Mayor Bloomberg’s outdoor smoking ban
When you go too far even for the editorialists at the Times, you know you’ve really gone overboard.
(Still) misreporting Citizens United
At The Atlantic, civil libertarian Wendy Kaminer catches Washington Post columnist Katrina Vanden Heuvel misrepresenting the role of campaign spending in the defeat of Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold, and the New York Times — in a more appalling lapse of journalistic standards — digging in to defend gross misstatements about the high court’s opinion.
Delayed action
White Coat sums up a recent jury verdict: “Obstetrician ordered to pay $3 million to patient born with cerebral palsy … 18 years ago.” The doctor, from Glens Falls, N.Y., “has $2 million in insurance coverage and may have to cover $1 million of the verdict himself,” according to the story. Statutes of limitations in medical malpractice actions are often “tolled” (suspended) until a child reaches the age of majority, so that it is by no means unheard-of for families to file suit a decade and a half after a medical occurrence.