- I dreamed someone sabotaged the memory care unit by switching Rosa DeLauro’s name tag with Rosa Luxemburg’s [Fox; Raising Hale, Labor Union Report with more on alleged nursing home sabotage and the Connecticut pols that enable it]
- New York’s Scaffold Law will inflate cost of Tappan Zee Bridge rebuild by hundreds of millions, according to Bill Hammond [NYDN]
- “In Michigan, a ballot measure to enshrine union rights” [Reuters, WDIV]
- Massachusetts voters rejected unionizing child care providers, but legislature decided to do it anyway [Boston Herald]
- SEIU flexes muscle: “Surprise strike closes SF courtrooms” [SFGate, NBC Bay Area]
- If it goes to arbitration, forget about disciplining a Portland police officer [Oregonian via PoliceMisconduct.net] Boston police overtime scandal [Reason] Related, San Bernardino [San Diego Union-Tribune]
- Louisiana teacher union furor: “Now There’s A Legal Defense Fund For Schools The LAE Is Threatening To Sue” [Hayride, earlier]
- As unions terrorize a Philadelphia construction project, much of the city looks the other way [Inga Saffron, Philadelphia Inquirer, PhillyBully.com; via Barro]
Posts Tagged ‘Connecticut’
Politics roundup
- Vice President Biden raises at least hundreds of thousands of dollars at AAJ annual convention in Chicago [PoL] Romney’s law and legal policy team [Brian Baxter, AmLaw Daily]
- Law star Ted Cruz advances toward Senate [David Lat, AtL]
- Can Republicans make hay out of Democrats’ platform endorsement of same-sex marriage? New Pew poll, as well as May polling round, offers reasons to doubt that [my new post at Maryland for All Families]
- “Why Citizens United Has Nothing to Do with What Ails American Politics” [Ilya Shapiro, The American, more]
- Bridgeport mayor Joseph Ganim, of gun-suit fame, a step closer to getting law license back after serving 7-year prison term for corruption [Courant] Eight more indictments as the Connecticut corruption scandals roll on [Conn Post]
- Rob McKenna’s star on rise in Washington; he’s pursued public-liability reform as the state’s attorney general [Daily Caller, earlier]
- Bypassing public financing, West Virginia judicial candidates pour their own injury-law fortunes into races [Richie Heath, Charleston Daily Mail]
- “How hot is it in DC today? Congressman Paul is using a paper money substitute because his actual money melted.” [Tim Carney]
Labor and employment roundup
- Why is the U.S. Department of Labor funding Restaurant Opportunities Center United (ROC), a group that stages protests in front of restaurants and has “harassed” patrons? Rep. Darrell Issa wants to know [Chamber-backed Legal NewsLine, Daily Caller]
- Connecticut public workers who wrongly took food stamps get their jobs back, and no, you can’t read the arbitration decisions [Raising Hale]
- Michael Fox’s pioneering employment law blog turns 10;
- “Why Defending Employment Lawsuits Can Be So Expensive” [Daniel Schwartz]
- What lawprofs are up to: proposal to gut the employee-misconduct defense [Pandya, Workplace Prof]
- Hans Bader of the Competitive Enterprise Institute explains why he sees no contradiction in opposing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act [ENDA] while supporting gay marriage. Related: Jacob Sullum;
- Hyper-regulation of employment in Italy cries out for reform [John Cochrane, Tom Smith, one deterrent]
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]
July 2 roundup
- Thank you, San Francisco rent control, for our almost-free Nob Hill pied-a-terre [Nevius, SF Chronicle]
- Switzerland: be sure the preschoolers have a nice saw to play with [Suzanne Lucas]
- DOT regulation forbids workaround that could end drivers’ “blind spot” [Technology Review via Stoll]
- CFAA madness: “How a federal law can be used to prosecute almost anyone who visits a website” [Jacob Sullum]
- “Judge halts Facebook fishing expedition before it can grow into a suit” [Daniel Fisher]
- Finding too many of us subsidy-resistant, Feds pursue ad campaigns hawking food stamps [Veronique de Rugy, NRO]
- Yoo-hoo, Institute for Justice: State regulation restricts competition for moving van service in Connecticut [New London Day via Raising Hale]
Labor and employment law roundup
- Connecticut: “Medical Marijuana Bill Includes Restrictions For Employers” [Daniel Schwartz, my take earlier]
- More on Montgomery County Maryland police-disability scams [WaPo editorial, earlier] California cop-pension backlash [Greenhut]
- Highest rate of per capita EEOC charges is in Deep South [David Foley, Labor Related]
- Are unpaid internships immoral? Illegal? [David Henderson/Econlog, more]
- NLRB memo launches assault on common language found in personnel manuals [Daniel Schwartz]
- Year’s most embarrassingly awful dispute over whether employee misconduct was within scope of employment [Lowering the Bar, adult content]
- Ominously, Canadian Supreme Court has read labor union rights into the nation’s constitutional Charter, most recently in Fraser case [Workplace Prof on new book; CFLR; Roy Adams/SocialPolicy.org]
June 4 roundup
- “Man cited for littering after cash to panhandler hits ground” [USA Today]
- AIG and sunshine: “Spitzer’s Loose Public Talk and Private Emails” [Lawrence Cunningham, Concurring Opinions]
- Mississippi attorney took 45 percent contingency fee, but “all the contracts came up missing from [his] office” [Insurance Journal] When it comes to billing disputes, California state bar seems keen on protecting lawyers against clients [Lawrence Schonbrun, Recorder]
- Philip K. Howard on NPR [TED Radio Hour]
- About that “Constitution in Exile” bogeyman [Barnett, Bernstein]
- Come the revolution, comrade, you will gladly pay your Connecticut taxes: Gov. Dannel Malloy approves $300K for ultra-left New Haven People’s Center [CT News Junkie via Zachary Janowski, Raising Hale] Update: Governor reverses stance.
- New law keeps many homemakers from qualifying for credit cards [Sheryl Nance-Nash, Diane Katz/Heritage]
“McMahon’s wrestling company threatens JI with libel lawsuit”
World Wrestling Entertainment executive Linda McMahon is again running for a Connecticut seat in the U.S. Senate, two years after she won the Republican nomination for the state’s other Senate seat but then lost badly to Democrat Richard Blumenthal. Chris Powell of the Manchester Journal-Inquirer, a prominent commentator on Connecticut politics, expressed scathing opinions on the type of entertainment purveyed by WWE under McMahon’s leadership, deeming it a “business of violence, pornography, and general raunch.” On Friday a WWE vice president, in a letter sent to news media throughout the state, “threatened the Journal Inquirer with a libel lawsuit.” In response, the newspaper contends that “The programs were issues in the Senate election two years ago and, by distributing its libel lawsuit threat throughout Connecticut’s news media, the McMahon campaign aims to prevent them from being mentioned this year.” [via Jared Eberle](& Rick Green, Hartford Courant)
But there’s no more room to cut the budget
“There are plenty of charities that do good work without including Weather Underground co-founders on their boards of directors and openly praising prison rioters on their websites.” [National Review’s Robert VerBruggen on $400,000 in U.S. Department of Justice grants to the W. Haywood Burns Institute, its board adorned by Northwestern lawprof Bernardine Dohrn; more, Chicago Sun-Times] Speaking of gruesome austerity in public expenditure, there’s clearly no room left to cut the state of Connecticut’s budget either [Chris Powell on $300,000 for the New Haven People’s Center]
Chimp mauling victim wants to sue state
A Bridgeport attorney for Charla Nash says the attack could have been avoided had Connecticut been tougher in enforcing its regulations. [WCBS]