- By reader acclaim: “Rules in Chandler restrooms: Don’t drink from toilets” [Arizona Republic]
- Arbitration and class actions before the Supreme Court: “Misconceptions about Concepcion” [Andrew Trask]
- County commissioner candidate sues county employees, rival over election flyer [Whidbey Island, Wash. News-Times]
- Fannie’s Tammany: MacLean, Nocera on the politicized world of the mortgage GSEs [Tabarrok]
- $56 million obstetrics verdict against Westchester County, N.Y. hospital [Hochfelder]
- Legal Ethics Forum is looking for guest bloggers;
- New Federalist Society white papers on Ohio and North Carolina supreme courts;
- “When Art Imitates Life: Suing for Defamation in Fiction” [Jane Kleiner, Citizen Media Law]
Claim: touching smokers’ clothing can cause “massive” nerve damage
Accurate science, or Science For Your Own Good? [Michael Siegel]
“Father Sues District Over Reading About Slavery”
From comments: Before feeding the hungry…
…better check whether your church is licensed as a commercial 
food-preparation facility [Density Duck in comments:]
…Our local church had to shut down its Feed-The-Hungry operation (where a bunch of retired housewives cooked simple meals and froze them to give to the local soup kitchen.) The reason is that the church kitchen wasn’t certified as a commercial food-preparation facility, as one of the lawyers in the congregation helpfully pointed out to the lady in charge of the program.
We’ve covered the issue periodically before.
Forthcoming: “The Lawyer-Judge Bias in the American Legal System”
Sounds promising, from Tennessee law professor Benjamin Barton in January (via Glenn Reynolds):
Virtually all American judges are former lawyers, a shared background that results in the lawyer-judge bias. This book argues that these lawyer-judges instinctively favor the legal profession in their decisions and that this bias has far-reaching and deleterious effects on American law.
Unpleasant buzz
Patrick at Popehat is not happy with a class action settlement over consumer non-injury from the Google Buzz service:
Mason and Ram will apply for, and probably get, $2,125,000 of that [$8.5 million] common fund, for all of their hard work representing thousands of people just like me, who weren’t damaged by Google because they ignored Google’s offer to try Google Buzz, a demonstrated failure that’s used by about seven people (not all of whom are class representatives) nationwide. …
If there’s any justice, and there isn’t, the Northern District of California will award Mason and Ram a dollar for every consumer who was injured by Google Buzz. That and five hundred more dollars will cover their airfare home.
Update: Teacher who allegedly branded cross onto student’s arm drops suit
“An Ohio public school teacher accused of burning the mark of a cross on students’ arms said Friday he dropped a lawsuit over his firing because it would have interfered with a public airing of his complaint in a different venue.” [AP via Ed Brayton, earlier]
Question: what constitutes “down?”
“Top House Ethics Lawyer to Step Down” [BLT headline]
“Law Schools Overwhelmingly Hire Liberals as Law Professors”
Pretty much confirming all the other numbers out there. It’s a bit too late for me to work it into Schools for Misrule — the text of which is ready to go to the printer any day now — but it’s not as if there’s much real dispute anyway about the leftward leanings of the contemporary American law lectern. [TaxProf; James Phillips and Douglas Spencer, “Ideological Diversity and Law School Hiring”]
More poppy seed madness
“Eat a bagel, lose your baby” [Jacob Sullum, Reason] For more on the problematic legal status of the classic bagel and European-bread enhancement, see Michael Pollan’s classic 1997 Harper’s article.