Thrown with help from a class action law firm [Peter Beller, Forbes]
San Francisco cellphone radiation warnings
Study after study finds no health effects to worry about, but the city by the Bay wants warnings anyway. [Bruce Nye, Ted Frank/PoL]
New York cop’s $80,000 bias award
The most curious element is not the alleged fight over a Scrabble game, but Sonya Glover’s allegation that she was retaliated against by being made to “perform heavy manual tasks normally assigned to males.” Isn’t there some sort of potential discrimination suit if tasks are normally assigned to males and a female employee is not asked to perform them? [NYDN]
Christian Legal Society v. Martinez
By a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court upholds a policy at the University of California’s Hastings Law that gives short shrift to the principle of freedom of association. [Roger Pilon, Cato at Liberty] More: Eugene Volokh thinks the Court made the right call in the case, while Richard Epstein thinks it didn’t.
“New Suits Could Chill Writers’ Use of Own Experiences”
Two lawsuits filed last month claim that writers improperly based fictional characters on the complainants. [Matthew Heller, OnPoint News] A much noted case last November, in which a Georgia jury awarded $100,000 to a woman who said she had been wrongly used as the basis in part for a character in the novel “The Red Hat Club”, may have encouraged the filing of such suits.
Define “forced,” please
“We were forced to try a case against the most innocent guy of all.” — medical malpractice lawyer Daniel Buttafuoco last month, explaining why a Queens, N.Y. jury ruled against his suit blaming a surgeon for a transplant patient’s death. [NYDN via Tuteur (“Parse those sentences and you will come face to face with what is wrong with the malpractice system in this country.”)]
June 28 roundup
- Couldn’t sue the bees for stinging, but could get a $1.6 million judgment against the emergency room doc [NJLRA]
- Eurodoom: “EU to ban selling eggs by dozen” [Telegraph]
- “Oklahoma’s Unnecessary Law to Ban Citation of Sharia and International Law” [Ku/Opinio Juris, earlier]
- Shortage of generic anesthetics, and what’s behind it [Throckmorton, Great Zs, earlier]
- Hardball litigation tactics contribute to bad odor of consumer debt buyers [Felix Salmon]
- Interview with blogger Carlos Miller (Photography is Not a Crime) [Simon Owens, Bloggasm]
- Conyers “oil spill” bill would slyly expand litigation chances elsewhere [Drug and Device Law]
- Prosecutors deploy hate crimes law against… mortgage fraud? [NYT via PoL] 241 inmates serving life sentences claimed the federal homebuyer tax credit [CNBC]
Don’t you dare go broke on us
“Public interest” lawyers suing the embattled California town of Colfax over alleged Clean Water Act violations want an award of interim fees lest it go bankrupt and become unable to pay. [California Civil Justice Blog]
Italy: geologists may be charged for not predicting earthquake
“Experts who told L’Aquila city officials there was no risk of an earthquake six days before last year’s catastrophic quake are under investigation for gross negligent manslaughter, prosecutors said Tuesday.” [La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno via Megan Sever, Earth Magazine]
EPA treats milk spills like oil spills
Sounds like a parody but isn’t; I explain at Cato at Liberty.