Coyote offers a behind-the-scenes look at the safety-related closure of a California federal park to camping over the vacationer-heavy July 4 holiday.
August 5 roundup
- Wouldn’t it be nice if Congress lifted the ban on Internet gambling [Steve Chapman]
- Design of New Orleans shotgun houses is an adaptation to tax laws [Candy Chang]
- Lawyer-enriching Costco class action settlement draws an objection from a blogger often linked in this space [Amy Alkon]
- “Fourth Circuit slaps down N.C. attorney general’s suit against TVA” [Wood/PoL, Jackson]
- South Carolina jury’s $2.375 million award based on premise that Nissan should have followed European, not U.S. crashworthiness standards [Abnormal Use]
- City of Cleveland won’t take no for answer in dumb lawsuit against mortgage lenders [Funnell]
- Charles H. Green at TrustMatters hosts Blawg Review #275;
- Duke lacrosse fiasco: Nifong’s media and law-school enablers [three years ago at Overlawyered]
Dive into above-ground pool
It resulted in a lost product liability action against the pool maker in a recent Rhode Island case [Abnormal Use]
“A French company bribes Nigerian foreign officials…”
“…with the end result being $338 million paid into the United States treasury.” Mike Koehler reports on a cluster of enforcement actions that illustrate how the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act — now with added whistleblowing goodness — is fast turning into a cash cow for Washington, D.C. enforcers [earlier]
August 4 roundup
- “Wacky warning dept.: Steven Morris v. Harley-Davidson Motor Co.” [Wajert and Ted at PoL]
- “Are HOA Foreclosures a Necessary Tool or an Extortion Racket?” [Jurow, Business Insider]
- “Court Under Roberts Is Most Restrained in Decades” [Adler/Volokh, earlier]
- New Jersey Supreme Court confirms equestrian center’s legal protection in horseback-injury case [NJLRA]
- White-collar prosecution: Is “Conscious Avoidance” the Next “Honest Services”? [Christine Hurt, Conglomerate]
- Cy pres class action giveaways arrive in Canada [National Post]
- More on why Wal-Mart is spending big to fight a relatively low OSHA fine [Paul Greenberg, earlier]
- Older jobseekers find offers scarce? Someone should pass a law! Oh wait [four years ago on Overlawyered]
Mauch Chunk once more?
The historic town of Mauch Chunk, Pa. changed its name to Jim Thorpe, Pa. as part of a deal to honor the Native American-descended athlete. Now a lawsuit is invoking the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 (NAGPRA) to demand removal of Thorpe’s remains to Oklahoma [Never Yet Melted]
Meanwhile, scientists, universities and museums are considering their legal options in the face of new Interior Department interpretations of NAGPRA mandating “that after appropriate tribal consultation, transfer of culturally unidentifiable remains is to be made to a tribe from whose tribal or aboriginal lands the remains were excavated or removed.” [Indian Country Today, April; earlier posts on Kennewick Man controversy]
ADA: Feds intervened against college Kindles
When several universities put out word that they were considering lightening the textbook load on their student body by moving to e-book formats, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division put them under investigation for possible violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The targets soon buckled: “The schools denied violating the ADA but agreed that until the Kindle was fully accessible, nobody would use it.” [Byron York, Examiner]
Life without elevators
Could they have been introduced successfully under today’s product liability law? [Ted at PoL]
Legal academia roundup
I suppose I’ll need to make this a regular feature as Schools for Misrule gets closer to publication:
- “The Wit, Wisdom, & Worthlessness of Law Reviews” [Gerald Uelmen, California Lawyer via Law School Innovation] Maybe courts aren’t ignoring them after all? [Yung, ConcurOp]
- History as advocacy: why one scholar would never sign onto a “Historians’ Brief,” even if he agreed with its contents [Gerard Magliocca, ConcurOp]
- Will new ABA accreditation standards require law schools to affirm a particular ideological line on diversity preferences? [Bernstein, Volokh]
- New Brian Tamanaha book on formalism/realism reviewed [Stanley Fish, NYT “Opinionator”]
- University of North Texas plans: “How To Sell a Law School to Texans” [Mystal, AtL]
- Survey of (some) law professors’ salaries: Michigan seems a little high, no? [Collegiate Times via Josh Blackman]
- Fights break out over Louisiana, Maryland law school clinics: profs call tune, state taxpayers pay piper. Something wrong with that picture? [Bill Araiza, Prawfs, NLJ, NYT, Legal Profession Blog, Adler/Volokh, Steele/Legal Ethics Forum]
- Not very up to date, but still worth a look: long (and left-leaning) list of law profs who’ve joined the Obama administration [Hunter via Barnett, Volokh]
Family overnights RV in Wal-Mart lot, sues over intruder
Wal-Mart stores in many parts of the country are famous for letting motor-home travelers park overnight in their lots for free. One wonders whether that policy will last: a Florida couple is now suing the retailer over an incident in the parking lot of its Cedar City, Utah store, in which the family shot and killed a man who intruded in their parked home. They say they have suffered emotional distress and medical problems and that “store officials knew the man was loitering in the lot” but failed to act. [Salt Lake Tribune via Consumerist, where commenters haven’t been conspicuously sympathetic to the plaintiffs]