A Brooklyn school safety officer sued New York City, saying it discriminated against her religious beliefs for her to have to wear a city ID card that she considered possessed and the “sign of the Beast.” A judge ruled in her favor at an earlier stage in the proceedings, but a second judge has now awarded her just $1 damages. [NY Post]
Capsized by CPSIA
Dallas entrepreneur Phebe Phillips tells in this speech (PDF) why she had to get out of her successful plush animal business:
Then in 2008 and 2009 the U.S. economy tanked … retail dwindled and a new toy regulation was enacted in response to the poor quality and mass quantity oversights by some really big toy companies.
This new law raises the testing price for each product and in some cases, doubles or triples the costs. For some small companies, it can cost one year of total revenue just to meet the requirements of this law. The law is for any product marketed to a child age twelve and under and for any product made anywhere…even here. It has frozen many small and midsize companies leaving the companies that caused the problems in the first place as some of the only companies that can afford to stay in business. Financially, it caused me to temporarily halt my business…I changed!
Via Amend the CPSIA, which had this report on Phillips in December; earlier on CPSIA and stuffed animals here and here.
Consumer Product Safety Commission member Anne Northup has also been blogging about some of the law’s ongoing damaging effects on sellers of dolls, kids’ furniture and apparel imports.
PUBLIC DOMAIN IMAGE from Honor C. Appleton, The Bad Mrs. Ginger (Frederick A. Stokes Co., 1902), courtesy ChildrensLibrary.org.
“Any idea that’s 100 years old will probably offend someone or other”
I have a bit more to say about the “warning label on the U.S. Constitution” story in Diane Macedo’s FoxNews.com report today, which is getting a lot of readership. Original posts here and here (& welcome KTRH, Lars Larson listeners). Update: statement from Wilder Publications courtesy Distaff View of the World.
Speaking of warnings, Bob Dorigo Jones has picked the finalists for his 13th annual Wacky Warning Labels Contest (on a go-cart: “This product moves when used”) and I’ve got a post on that at Cato at Liberty.
June 10 roundup
- Compensation awards to soldiers in the UK: £161,000 for losing leg and arm, but £186,896 for sex harassment? [Telegraph]
- Judge in banana pesticide fraud case says threats have been made against her and against witnesses [AP, L.A. Times]
- Teacher plans to sue religious school that fired her for having premarital sex [Orlando Sentinel]
- Now sprung from hoosegow, class-actioneer Lerach on progressive lecture circuit and “living in luxury” [Stoll, Carter Wood at PoL and ShopFloor (Campaign for America’s Future conference), San Diego Reader via Pero]
- Connecticut law banning “racial ridicule” has palpable constitutional problems, you’d think, but has resulted in many prosecutions and some convictions [Volokh, Gideon]
- Gone with the readers: newsmagazines, metro newspapers facing fewer libel suits [NY Observer] More: Lyrissa Lidsky, Prawfs.
- Having Connecticut press comfortably in his pocket helped Blumenthal turn the tables against NY Times [Stein/HuffPo] Must not extend to the New Britain Herald News, though;
- Interview with editor Brian Anderson of City Journal [Friedersdorf, Atlantic] I well remember being there as part of the first issue twenty years ago.
The high (copyright) cost of “Glee”
How do you know the popular TV show is fiction? Because if a real-life high school glee club in Lima, Ohio were actually basing its performances on contemporary material without employing a small army of rights-clearers and paying heftily in royalties, it could face copyright damage demands approaching a million dollars:
Defenders of modern copyright law will argue Congress has struck “the right balance” between copyright holders’ interests and the public good. They’ll suggest the current law is an appropriate compromise among interest groups. But by claiming the law strikes “the right balance,” what they’re really saying is that the Glee kids deserve to be on the losing side of a lawsuit. Does that sound like the right balance to you?
[Christina Mulligan, Yale Law School Information Society Project via Katherine Mangu-Ward, Reason] More: Legal Blog Watch, A Foolish Consistency.
Blagojevich’s “vigorous debate” defense
Doesn’t really impress Kevin Underhill at Lowering the Bar:
His lawyers filed a motion prior to opening statements arguing that [former Gov. Rod] Blagojevich had the right to say the things that he was recorded saying because, far from misusing his office for personal gain, he was just talking politics. Blagojevich had “the right,” the motion argues, “to vigorously debate about different options for appointments and different fundraising strategies.” And because “[t]he marketplace of ideas is critical to Democracy [sic],” the prosecution “violates fundamental free speech.”
I just wonder if “marketplace” was the best metaphor to use in association with Rod Blagojevich.
Let’s see — so, when Blagojevich met with a lobbyist in 2008, mentioned that he was about to announce a $1.8 billion construction project and said “I’ve got Lon going to Construction Executive and asking for $500,000 . . . . I could have made a larger announcement but wanted to see how they perform by the end of the year. If they don’t perform, f— ’em,” he was simply engaging in vigorous debate about a fundraising strategy. See United States v. Blagojevich, No. 08 CR 888, Government’s Evidentiary Proffer, p. 55 (filed Apr. 14, 2010).
Or, when told that Children’s Memorial Hospital (which was hoping for a rate increase) was not returning calls about political contributions, Blagojevich said “Screw them,” then called the deputy governor, asked “Where are we on the money to Children’s Memorial Hospital? . . . . Hold it up,” that was an even more vigorous debate about fundraising. See id. at p. 62.
Sues town after ticketed for parking in handicapped space
A Massachusetts woman isn’t getting a huge amount of local sympathy after suing the town of Danvers over the $300 ticket its officers wrote her for briefly parking her Mercedes SUV in a handicapped zone. She says the ticket was soaked by the rain and she was sort of disabled that day anyway, having her arm in a sling and being on medication following surgery. [WHDH]
Is government better than business at avoiding short-term thinking?
Coyote looks at a tax collection ploy in Arizona — as well as cash-for-clunkers — and suspects not.
“David Carradine’s Widow Files Wrongful Death Suit”
“A year after ‘Kung Fu’ actor David Carradine died from a dangerous sex practice, his wife has filed suit, claiming he would still be alive if he hadn’t been left alone in a hotel that night.” California attorney and Overlawyered favorite Mark Geragos is representing Anne Carradine. [ABC News]
“Are Canadian Law Schools ‘Psychotic Kindergartens?'”
An emeritus University of Western Ontario law professor by the name of Robert Martin is nothing if not outspoken about his view “that Canadian law schools are far too focused on teaching niche legal issues and being politically correct.” [Brian Baxter, AmLaw Daily]