- Car dealers sue Tesla for selling direct to customers [NPR via @petewarden]
- Had the measure been “fatalities per 100,000 miles driven above urban speeds” this story might have been a good bit less “amazing” [Fair Warning]
- No GOPers want to take away anyone’s contraception? Maybe Sen.-elect Cruz means no elected GOP officials [my new Secular Right post]
- Trial lawyers, FDA, New York Times continue hot on trail of caffeinated energy drinks [Jacob Sullum, Abnormal Use, earlier]
- Lawsuit aims to strike down SEC’s resource extraction disclosure rules [Prof. Bainbridge]
- Quebec language muscle: “After series of fire-bombings, Second Cup coffee shops added the words ‘les cafes’ to signs” [Canadian Press]
- The CPSIA effect, cont’d: more makers of kids’ apparel drop out rather than cope with CPSC rules [Nancy Nord] More: Katherine Mangu-Ward, Reason.
Posts Tagged ‘Canada’
Neighbors’ trees block his view
In Clyde Hill, Wash., a retired Seattle Mariners baseball player has won a ruling from the town that his neighbors must remove two trees that block what would otherwise be an “amazing view of Seattle’s skyline” from his property. “An appraiser hired by John and Kelly Olerud said their $4 million home would be worth $255,000 more if the rare Chinese pine and the Colorado spruce across the street were cut down and replaced with smaller plants. The Chinese pine’s value is estimated at more than $18,000.” [Seattle Times, Ilya Somin] In other tree removal news, an Ontario mother “is fighting to have oak trees removed near her child’s school, fearing that acorns could pose a deadly threat to students with severe allergies.” Local officials say it is unlikely the acorns would prove allergenic to a child unless eaten, which rarely happens given their extreme bitterness. The mother also says acorns “can also be used to bully and torment children.” [Toronto Star via Lenore Skenazy]
Ontario court: man’s 120 lawsuits are enough
Canada: “It started with a car crash in 1988 that sparked a court case and, last month, three judges suggested it was time to end; in between, Ural Direk launched more than 120 lawsuits, filed thousands of pages of documents, filled a trailer full of evidence, sought secret hearings to unveil dark campaigns against him, and linked the outcome of his cases to a Jewish conspiracy.” Mr. Direk prevailed in his original lawsuit, but considered the $34,984 damages awarded unsatisfactory and filed a losing appeal whose ramifications have continued to this day. A judicial panel has now recommended that he be declared a vexatious litigant. [National Post]
Ontario: “Neighbor wants $25,000 for compensation over noise of boy playing basketball in his driveway”
Canada: “A woman in Peterborough, ON is demanding $25,000 in compensation from her neighbour because her teenage son is playing basketball too loudly in his driveway. … [Her] lawyers said in a letter she is a professional writer who requires peace and quiet to earn her living and there’s a growing body of evidence that suggests environmental noise is linked to cardiovascular disease.” She has unsuccessfully sought to involve police, fire, and even the province’s environmental commissioner against the playing. [Sun]
Varieties of “you lack jurisdiction” eccentricity
Durable as a matter of folk law though carrying no weight at all within most courts as actually constituted, various widely circulated theories (“free man,” “sovereign citizen,” etc.) purport to establish a right of litigants to escape courts’ ordinary jurisdiction; sometimes it’s also alleged that tax laws and other longstanding enactments are flawed and of no binding effect. Last month a Canadian jurist by the name of J.D. Rooke handed down an opinion anatomizing different varieties of “Organized Pseudolegal Commercial Argument” [“OPCA”] seized on as a basis for vexatious litigation [Meads vs. Meads, Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta, Sept. 18]
P.S. A glimpse of the “sovereign citizen” scene in the U.S., h/t Lowering the Bar.
Law enforcement and prosecution roundup
- Small favors dept.: police chiefs group supports use of drones, but concedes they probably shouldn’t be armed [USA Today; more on drones, Michael Kirkland, UPI, Paul Enzinna, PoL]. Earlier here, here, and here.
- Gibson Guitar settlement with feds controls what it can say about the case. Dangers in that, no? [Harvey Silverglate, earlier here, here, etc.]
- “Mission Creep Leads TSA to Racially Profile in Pursuit of Non-Terrorists to Arrest” [Virginia Postrel]
- Guestblogging at The Agitator, William Peterson outlines doubts about prosecutions that include the pursuit of Victoria Sprouse on mortgage-fraud charges in North Carolina, abuse accusations relating to the Creative Frontiers school near Sacramento, and the conviction of Courtney Bisbee at the hands of Maricopa County D.A. (and Overlawyered favorite) Andrew Thomas in Arizona;
- Canada: “Pay your dog license on time or we’ll arrest your wife!” [Sherwood Park News via @derekjamesfrom]
- “Overcriminalization, the comic” [Ted at PoL; plus videos from NACDL]
- “Police enlist young offenders as confidential informants. But the work is high-risk, largely unregulated, and sometimes fatal.” [Sarah Stillman, New Yorker]
Freedom for Canadian wheat farmers
After decades, farmers in western Canada are finally free to decide for themselves how and to whom to sell their crop, the result of a long political campaign led by free-market prime minister Stephen Harper with key help from Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall. I’ve got a new, celebratory post at Cato giving details. Next: getting our own Supreme Court to reconsider Wickard v. Filburn, the decision that laid out a charter for federal supervision of wheat growing and so much else besides? [Name screwup fixed now]
P.S. Milk still a big problem (although the U.S. is hardly free of cartel-like regulations in that sphere).
Claim: recitation of prayer at public meetings caused Ontario man $5,000 damages
Peter Ferguson says the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer at Grey County meetings not only violated the national Charter, but caused him “anguish, discrimination, exclusion, rejection and loss of enjoyment of life” to the tune of C$5,000. [National Post]
Torts roundup
- House Judiciary passes measure (FACT Act) promoting transparency of asbestos trusts, could preserve assets for honest claimants by curbing n-tuple dippers [Harold Kim/US Chamber, Ted Frank] “$48 million jackpot justice asbestos award for 86-year-old” [Frank]
- Canadian court: car crash caused chronic cough [Magraken]
- Push in Connecticut legislature to ease expert testimony threshold, thus enabling more med-mal suits [Zachary Janowski, Raising Hale]
- Georgia court: residents on notice of wild alligators, golf club not liable for elderly woman’s demise [Daily Report]
- “NYT is inconceivably shocked that NYC defends itself in lawsuits instead of blindly writing multimillion $ checks.” [@tedfrank]
- Arizona court declines Third Restatement’s invitation to gut duty prerequisite in tort law [David Oliver]
- Vintage insurance fraud: “The Slip-and-fall Queen” [Brendan Koerner via @petewarden]
- Relaxation of fault in auto cases: “Richard Nixon’s Torts Note” [Robinette, TortsProf] “Reforming the Reform: No-Fault Auto Insurance” [same]
From the Globe and Mail
The Toronto Globe and Mail prints my letter to the editor correcting some misrepresentations of U.S. labor law by Canadian Auto Workers union economist Jim Stanford. The text of the letter as it ran, slightly abridged, in the paper:
Jim Stanford says that in the 23 states with “right to work” laws, unions are “effectively prohibited; indeed, in right-to-work states, private-sector unionism is virtually non-existent” (Wisconsin’s Disease Crosses The Border – July 3).
This would come as a surprise to millions of employees in those 23 states who join and are represented at their workplace by unions. In Alabama, for example, which has had a right-to-work law since 1953, 183,000 workers (about 11 per cent of the labour force) are represented by unions, including 84,000 workers in the private sector. (source)
Emboldened or otherwise, Republicans in the states have no authority to alter the 1935 Wagner Act or other federal laws. In states like Wisconsin, they have sought to alter laws prevailing in about two-thirds of states that prescribe collective bargaining by public employees; these laws are of much more recent vintage than the New Deal, often dating to the 1960-85 period. Given Franklin Roosevelt’s well-documented skepticism toward collective bargaining by government employees, it is no surprise that he did not see fit to build any such element into his New Deal.
Walter Olson, senior fellow, the Cato Institute, Washington