- Wisconsin lawyer pressing bill to allow punitive damages against home resellers over claimed defects [Wisconsin State Journal] More: Dad29.
- Longer than her will? NY Times posts ten-page jury questionnaire in Brooke Astor inheritance case [“City Room”] “Supreme Court: No Constitutional Right to Peremptory Challenge” [Anne Reed]
- Georgia’s sex offender law, like Illinois’s, covers persons who never committed a sex crime [Balko]
- “The lawsuits over TVA’s coal ash spill have come from all over Roane County – except the spots closest to home.” [Knoxville News]
- Bootleg soap: residents smuggle detergents after enactment of Spokane phosphate ban [AP/Yahoo]
- UK: Elderly Hindu man in religious-accommodation bid for approval of open-air funeral pyre [Telegraph]
- No DUI, no one hurt, but harsh consequences anyway when Connecticut 18 year old is caught buying six-pack of beer [Fountain]
- Only one or two not covered previously at this site [“12 Most Ridiculous Lawsuits”, Oddee]
Posts Tagged ‘Connecticut’
Milford does not believe in hugs
Actually, the principal of East Shore Middle School in that Connecticut municipality has banned not just hugs but high-fives, horseplay and “physical contact” of any sort, per WCBS-TV.
Don’t think you can beat that DUI rap so easily
Just because you never actually drove the car. The Connecticut Supreme Court has upheld the conviction of a man who “started his car remotely and sat in the driver’s seat drunk, but didn’t drive anywhere.”
March 23 roundup
- Probate court in Connecticut: bad enough when they hold you improperly in conservatorship, but worse when they bill you for the favor [Hartford Courant]
- Does “Patent Troll” in World of Warcraft count as a character type or a monster type? [Broken Toys]
- 102-year-old Italian woman wins decade-long legal dispute, but is told appeal could take 10 years more [Telegraph]
- “This Cartoon Could Be Illegal, If Two Iowa Legislators Have Their Way” [Eugene Volokh]
- David Giacalone, nonpareil commentator on attorneys’ fee ethics (and haiku), has decided to end his blog f/k/a. He signs off with a four-part series on lawyer billing and fairness to consumers/clients: parts one, two, three, four, plus a final “Understanding and Reducing Attorney Fees“. He’s keeping the site as archives, though, and let’s hope that as such it goes on shedding its light for as long as there are lawyers and vulnerable clients. More: Scott Greenfield.
- Even they can’t manage to comply? Politically active union SEIU faces unfair labor practice charges from its own employees [WaPo]
- Judge in Austin awards $3 million from couple’s estate to their divorce lawyers [Austin American-Statesman]
- “Keywords With Highest Cost Per Click”, lawyers and financial services dominate [SpyFu]
CPSIA on the radio: WTIC “Morning Show with Ray Dunaway”
I’m scheduled to be a guest on Ray Dunaway’s Morning Show (WTIC 1080 AM, Hartford) circa 7:20 a.m. to discuss CPSIA. For a quick introduction to the law, follow our links for the problems with thrift stores, motorbikes, libraries and books, kids’ garments, and general problems with the law.
P.S. WTIC, the news/talk Connecticut station, has been great on crediting Overlawyered over the years, and host Ray Dunaway said on the air that he gets a lot of story ideas for the show from this site. Thanks!
Connecticut divorce: $43 million post-nup isn’t enough
Marie Douglas-David, wife of former United Technologies CEO George David, “says the money isn’t enough to maintain her $53,000-per-week living expenses”. [Chicago Sun-Times, Hartford Courant]
Department of weird coincidences
Greenwich, Ct. lawyer/businessman Tom Gallagher, the main force pushing for the bad bill in the Connecticut legislature that would compel the Roman Catholic Church to submit its parishes to the control of layperson boards, also figured in these columns (though not by name) last year in the locally famous “wiffle ball field” controversy; he was the homeowner complaining about the property used by local kids to play wiffle ball. (Stamford Advocate via Fountain).
Where that Connecticut Catholic bill came from
I posted yesterday over at Secular Right about the origins of that strange, deplorable proposal in the Connecticut legislature to prescribe control of the Roman Catholic Church by boards of laypeople. The proposal is just as bad and unconstitutional as it has been rumored to be, but its origins are rather different than you might think from reading some conservative publications.
March 9 roundup
- “Attack on Inflatable Easter Bunny Might Be a Hate Crime” [Obscure Store; Westchester County, N.Y. Journal-News]
- Unclear on the concept? Judge resigns from Ethics Commission and backdates her letter doing so [Hartford Courant]
- Stephen Spruiell, Health Care Is Not a “Right” [NRO “Corner”]
- Christopher Fountain: Proud to have switched from lawyer to realtor, at least I escaped being in the same profession as those Seattle water class-action guys [For What It’s Worth]
- Why include Facebook as defendant in teenage “cyber-bullying” case? Ron Coleman has a theory [Likelihood of Confusion]
- Bill protecting Good Samaritans from lawsuits passes California Assembly Judiciary committee [California Civil Justice]
- Author/labor lawyer Tom Geoghegan had all the good writers on his side, so of course he lost big in replace-Rahm primary [Mickey Kaus, earlier]
- Three pro wrestlers thrown out of court in employment suit against World Wrestling Entertainment [Daniel Schwartz, earlier]
CPSIA chronicles, March 2
Reading from the weekend:
- At the American Spectator, Quin Hillyer says his co-thinkers “need to really get up
in arms about” changing the law, and has kind words for a certain website that is “the single best place to track all its devastation”. At The New Criterion, Roger Kimball finds that the threat to vintage children’s books provides a good instance of the dangers of “safety”. And commentator Hugh Hewitt is back with another column, “The Congress Should Fix CPSIA Now“. - Numerous disparaging things have been said of the “mommy bloggers” who’ve done so much to raise alarms about this law. Because, as one of Deputy Headmistress’s commenters points out, it’s already been decided that this law is needed to “protect the children”, and it’s not as if mere mothers might have anything special to contribute about that.
- Plenty of continuing coverage out there on the minibike/ATV debacle, including Brian O’Neill, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (office of local Congressman Mike Doyle, D-Pa., says most members think, dubiously, that ban “can be fixed without new legislation”); Lebanon, Pa. (“Ridiculous… It’s closed an entire market for us”), Waterbury, Ct. (“The
government does stupid things sometimes without thinking”), and, slightly less recent, Atlantic City, N.J. (“I would’ve had three sales this weekend, so they stomped us”). Some background: Off-Road (agency guidance in mid-February told dealers to get youth models “off their showfloors and back into holding areas”); Motorcycle USA (“With right-size models being unavailable to families, we may see more kids out on adult ATVs and we know that this leads to crashes”). To which illustrator Meredith Dillman on Twitter adds: “Just wait until someone gets hurt riding a broken bike they couldn’t get replacement parts for.” - One result of CPSIA is that a much wider range of goods are apt to be subject to recalls, but not to worry, because the CPSC recall process is so easy and straightforward.