Asking M.D.s to lecture their patients on the hazards of climate change. [Popehat, Steyn/NRO]
Posts Tagged ‘climate change’
“Lawsuits put global warming on more dockets”
Big win for global-warming litigators
A Second Circuit panel, reversing the district court judge, says a suit against utilities can go forward characterizing carbon dioxide as a nuisance. [American Lawyer, Point of Law first, second, third posts]
U.K.: Strongly held views on climate change may trigger job-bias coverage
Religious discrimination is prohibited, the logic goes, and the views in the case at hand were intense enough to count as akin to religion. Critics are said to fear a “flood of litigation” on behalf of other workers whose strongly held beliefs bring them into conflict with co-workers or employers. [Guardian]
“British Government Pays Lobbyists to Lobby It on Climate Change”
It’s wonderfully circular, and not all that different in practice from the “advocacy” and “law reform” funding that has at various times been doled out by our own federal and state governments through legal services, community action and public health programs, tobacco settlement kitties, and so forth. [Iain Murray, CEI “Open Market”]
July 14 roundup
- Is it OK if Boulder County prosecutor Tweets the murder trial while in progress? [Colorado Daily]
- Pierce O’Donnell terms his gigantic Katrina/New Orleans lawsuit a “crapshoot” [Hiltzik, L.A. Times]
- Massachusetts hospital not responsible for third-party injuries from just-released colonoscopy patient’s auto accident [Ronald Miller]
- Controversial “citizen suit” provision was removed from environment bill as one of the compromises to obtain House passage [Global Climate Law Blog and more, earlier] More: Coyote.
- “I was shocked at the number of cases the neurologist, radiologists, and especially the neurosurgeon had against them.” [ER Stories with a first-person lawsuit tale]
- I liked Dole Food better when it was a victim of the litigation system rather than an aggressor [L.A. Business Journal, NLJ, L.A. Times “The Envelope” on company’s suit against Swedish documentary filmmaker; underlying banana-worker pesticide litigation scandal; CJAC]
- Virginia Postrel on kidney donation, altruism, and policy [The Atlantic]
- Grown kids appear in court to exonerate dad who spent nearly 20 years in prison on false charges of abusing them [The Columbian, Wash., via Obscure Store] More: Coyote.
More on the “national building code”
Waxman-Markey’s Easter eggs (earlier).
Federal override of local building codes
Apparently there are a lot of hidden surprises in this Waxman-Markey “cap and trade” energy/environment bill we’ll be hearing about in coming weeks [Washington Post via Virginia Postrel].
Citizen-suit provision in climate bill
The Washington Times reported on Friday on what it says is a little-noticed provision in draft cap-and-trade legislation (PDF) authored by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.): new authorization for “citizen suits” to challenge government inaction on climate change. The bill would confer such standing, according to the article, on anyone “who has suffered, or reasonably expects to suffer, a harm attributable, in whole or in part,” to such inaction. However — in an apparent concession made some time ago to Republican lawmakers — the article also says that total payouts by the government would be limited to the comparatively minor amount of $1.5 million per year. Attorneys’ fees payable to prevailing plaintiffs, however, will presumably be subject to no such limit. More: Carter Wood also discovers new litigation powers for state AGs tucked into the bill; Marlo Lewis, CEI “Open Market”; Deputy Headmistress.
U.K.: “Jury decides that threat of global warming justifies breaking the law”
“The threat of global warming is so great that campaigners were justified in causing more than £35,000 worth of damage to a coal-fired power station, a jury decided yesterday. In a verdict that will have shocked ministers and energy companies the jury at Maidstone Crown Court cleared six Greenpeace activists of criminal damage.” (Michael McCarthy, Independent (U.K.), Sept. 11).