The court ruled a while back that an elderly Claysburg, Pa.-area couple, Donald R. and Janet Burket, are legally obliged to hook into the Greenfield Township water system. “They have done that and they are paying the standard monthly rate for township water, but the Burkets contend that while they are hooked into the system, they should not be required to actually use the water for daily living purposes.” Janet Burket says the chlorine bothers her, and the township has gone back to court in search of a court order compelling them to use public water “for all human consumption in the residence,” on pain of contempt fines. [Altoona Mirror, editorial; mediator assigned]
Expansion of hate crimes laws
States have begun to add the homeless as a protected group. Hans Bader offers a critique.
“Birther-In-Chief Orly Taitz Loses Again”
“Among other things, Taitz has had trouble proving that she has standing to pursue these cases, mainly because she doesn’t.” [Lowering the Bar]
61 year old Briton cops to possessing Swiss Army knife
Rodney Knowles, who says he used the device to cut up fruit on picnics with his wife, ran afoul of Britain’s stringent anti-knife laws. [Daily Mail]
FTC blogger regs skewered in Harvard Law Review
As unconstitutional (PDF). Incidentally, this may mark the first time Overlawyered (as distinct from my other writing) has been cited in the HLR — see footnotes 25 and 28. But I’m not really sure.
Tim Sandefur on “honest services fraud”
The law is dangerous because it’s vague (via Damon Root/Reason “Hit and Run”).
“The Dangers of Copyrighting Fashion”
Eduardo Peñalver (Cornell) and Sonia Katyal (Fordham) discuss at the American Constitution Society’s ACSblog. Earlier on the Design Piracy Prohibition Act here and here.
Salt reactions
- The report in the Washington Post that the Food and Drug Administration intends to work toward mandatory limits on salt in processed food provoked some negative public reaction, and now the agency has issued a public statement not exactly denying the story, but complaining that it “leaves a mistaken impression that the FDA has begun the process of regulating the amount of sodium in foods. The FDA is not currently working on regulations nor has it made a decision to regulate sodium content in foods at this time.” Emphasis added to point out the cagey phrasings: there is no denial that the agency’s leadership intends to do all these things in the future, exactly as the Post reported.
- In what is known as coordinated publicity, the trial balloon, if a trial balloon it was, was sent up to coincide with the release of a large National Institute of Medicine report pushing for salt reductions. More: WSJ Health Blog;
- In more coordinated publicity, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Ct.) and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Ia.) held a conference call with reporters demanding that the agency move faster to regulate salt. “I don’t want this to take 10 years. … This is a public health crisis,” said DeLauro (via Carter Wood at ShopFloor, who comments and in a separate post points out some CSPI lawyer angles);
- Welcome listeners from Ray Dunaway’s morning show on WTIC Hartford, where I discussed these issues this morning.
- And here’s an apparently new group calling itself “My Food, My Choice” that has come up with a good epithet for NYC Mayor Bloomberg’s squad of food regulators: “bland-lords“.
- More: Stanley Goldfarb, Weekly Standard.
Too late
Sorry, says the West Virginia high court, but renewing your lapsed auto insurance policy the day after your crash won’t fly [WV Record] The decision reversed a lower court ruling ordering Progressive Insurance to pay the claim, which had been filed not by the driver but by a bank and car dealer.
Baltimore vs. Wells Fargo, cont’d
The city is trying to keep alive its litigation blaming urban decay on mortgage lenders. The Baltimore Sun quotes the tart response of Andrew L. Sandler, an attorney representing the bank, who notes that plaintiff’s attorney John Relman has filed a similar action in Memphis:
“One year, they file a suit saying that the lender didn’t make enough loans in minority communities: redlining. The next year, they file a suit saying that they made too many loans in minority communities: reverse red-lining,” Sandler said. “This is just a commercial enterprise for these lawyers. … The same lawyers have been shopping the same complaint to various municipalities for two years.”
(cross-posted from Point of Law).