Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

NHTSA: no electronic flaws in Toyotas

It’s basically the same message that leaked out seven months ago. In a new post at Cato at Liberty, I raise some questions about why it took so long to release the study results.

More: Jalopnik, Coyote, Marc Hodak, Rick Woldenberg/AmendTheCPSIA, Dan Fisher/Forbes, Dan Bigman/Forbes (LaHood: “no defect, but we’ll regulate the industry anyway”); Carter Wood/ShopFloor and more, Ted Frank/PoL (class action over loss of resale value continues), New York Times, Leonard Evans/AOL. My March 2010 National Review piece “Exorcising Toyota’s Demons” is here. And welcome readers from Instapundit, Charlie Martin/PJ Tatler, Pejman Yousefzadeh, Roger Donway/Atlas Society, Ira Stoll/Future of Capitalism.

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Shaken-baby syndrome: the doubts

In dozens of prosecutions each year, parents or caregivers are charged after infants who died under their care have been found to display supposedly infallible indicators of abuse — in particular, subdural and retinal hemorrhage with brain swelling. Many convicted defendants stoutly maintain their innocence all along; others are sent to prison on the basis of equivocal “confessions”. Even when (as is common) there is no pattern of previous child abuse, it often happens that authorities remove other children from an alleged abuser’s home as legal action proceeds. Has the hope of using cutting-edge forensics to identify abusers wound up leading the authorities and courts to inflict new injustices? [Emily Bazelon, New York Times Magazine] More: Balko.

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Artisan cheese, Mark Bittman and Michelle Obama

I’ve got a food policy roundup at Cato that tries to answer such questions as:

* Has FDA’s regulatory zeal finally met its match in the foodie zeal of cheese-makers and -fanciers who are beginning to insist on their right to make and enjoy cheeses similar to those in France, even if they pose a nonzero though tiny bacterial risk?

* How annoying is it that Mark Bittman would stop writing a great food column in the NYT in order to start writing an inevitably wrongheaded politics-of-food column?

* Is Wal-Mart secretly smiling after First Lady Michelle Obama publicly twisted its arm to do various things it was probably considering anyway, along with some things it definitely wanted to do, such as opening more stores in poor urban neighborhoods?

Related: Led by past Overlawyered guest-blogger Baylen Linnekin, Keep Food Legal bills itself as “The first and only nationwide membership organization devoted to culinary freedom.” 11 Points has compiled a list of “11 Foods and Drinks Banned in the United States.” And GetReligion.org has more on the “shadowy community of outlaw Amish and Mennonite dairy farmers” portrayed in several recent press reports.

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Redskins owner sues Washington City Paper

“Indeed, the cost of litigation would presumably quickly outstrip the asset value of the Washington City Paper,” wrote one Redskins official in a lawsuit-threatening letter to an investor in the alternative weekly. Not that owner Dan Snyder is a bully trying to silence his critics or anything! [letter from City Paper editor Amy Austin; Romenesko, TBD]

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February 7 roundup

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Criminal charges for spitballs in school

Most striking part of this Spotsylvania County, Va. story:

Capt. Liz Scott [of the] Spotsylvania Sheriff’s Office says while Mikel’s punishment [and misdemeanor assault charges] may be controversial, “assault is assault is assault.”

“There were three victims that were involved in this, and I think the public needs to remember that,” Scott told FoxNews.com.

Scott said those victims, two females and one male, complained of feeling a “pinch” or “sting” when they were hit with the pellets and one even had a welt on her arm as result.

Perpetrator Andrew Mikel II is 14 years old. In other school and zero-tolerance news, police in Hammonton, New Jersey have charged a 7-year-old for bringing a Nerf-style toy gun to class [NBC Philadelphia] A lawmaker in Hawaii is proposing to ban the sale of squirt guns to minors [Free-Range Kids] A St. Lucie County, Florida kindergartener who was “voted out” of his classroom by fellow students at his teacher’s suggestion has won a $350,000 settlement. [TCPalm/Orlando Sentinel] And lawsuits by parents against school districts over alleged bullying of kids are said to be burgeoning in Florida [Orlando Sentinel]

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