Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Kinder Surprise chocolate-covered toys

We’ve reported before (related) on the federal government’s ban on Kinder Surprise chocolate-wrapped toys, considered innocuous in many other countries but deemed an illicit choking hazard here. They’re back in the news [Lenore Skenazy, Katherine Mangu-Ward] with the key paragraph in the CBC’s report indicating how very frequently the candies are seized from bewildered travelers:

The U.S. takes catching illegal Kinder candy seriously, judging by the number of them they’ve confiscated in the last year. Officials said they’ve seized more than 25,000 of the treats in 2,000 separate seizures.

Filed under: ,

High Court declines to hear Gulf Coast-climate change case

Having agreed to hear a different global warming case this term, the Supreme Court has declined to review the dismissal of a case blaming thirty energy companies (via greenhouse gas emissions) for Hurricane Katrina damage. [NOLA.com, earlier here and here] The case had reached a curious procedural posture following the recusal of half the judges on the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. My Cato colleague Ilya Shapiro has details on that and other cases that notably won’t be appearing on the Supreme Court’s docket this term.

Filed under: , ,

January 12 roundup

Filed under: , , , , , ,

California’s new online-impersonation ban

Liability is predicated on “intent to harm, intimidate, threaten, or defraud another person – not necessarily the person you are impersonating.” [Michael Arrington, TechCrunch] Despite talk of using the statute against stalkers, Choire Sicha predicts a somewhat different application: “harm as in ‘brand dilution’ — that is what will be prosecuted. Of course there is no carve-out for playful, political or non-murderous uses of online impersonation.” The bill’s text, notes Arrington, doesn’t address such free speech issues as satire and parody, though it does restrict itself to impersonations that are “credible.” Compare: much-demonized Koch Industries goes to court to identify originators (apparently political critics) of website imitating its own [Web Host Industry Review]

Filed under: , ,

“If I notice an employee becoming increasingly unstable, what can I do about it?”

The Americans with Disabilities Act requires employers to accommodate mentally disabled employees, but makes an exception for those who pose a “direct threat” to co-workers or others. Trouble is, to invoke the narrow “direct threat” exception, an employer may need to be prepared to prove that it has based its decision either on “a reasonable medical judgment that relies on the most current medical knowledge” or “on the best available objective evidence” — a much tougher evidentiary standard than is required for the making of many other workplace, governmental and medical decisions. [Jon Hyman, Ohio Employer’s Law Blog]

Filed under: ,

Settlement consumed in fees

A man says that he secured a $900,000 settlement from the Roman Catholic church over his abuse by a priest, but “alleges that attorneys who represented him in the case managed to claim $877,000 of the settlement, leaving him with no more than $23,000.” The man switched attorneys 2 1/2 years into the case and subsequently lost a case filed by the first attorney saying he had been deprived of his rightful fee. His new suit contends that he was wrongly advised to fight the first lawyer’s suit every step of the way. [Oregonian]

Filed under: ,