- Kentucky: “The day before the deal was offered, prosecutors also indicted Card’s wife, mother and father. If Card gave up the cash, the written plea offer said, the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office would drop their charges, too.” [Jacob Ryan, WFPL] Same state, different case: “Conviction Or Not, Seized Cash Is ‘Cost of Doing Business’ In Louisville” [Jacob Ryan, Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting]
- Judge in New York: “Suffolk County may not charge $80 to resolve a $50 red light camera ticket.” [The Newspaper]
- “Civil Forfeiture Disenfranchises the Poor” [Cato Daily Podcast with South Carolina lawmaker Alan Clemmons and Caleb Brown] “Class-Action Lawsuit Challenges Detroit’s Asset Forfeiture Racket” [C.J. Ciaramella, Reason]
- “Father and adult daughter sue feds over confiscated life savings” [Theresa Braine, New York Daily News]
- “Free to Drive: States punish poverty by suspending millions of driver’s licenses for unpaid fines and fees” How about reserving license suspensions for instances of actual unsafety? [advocacy site with maps and more; related, Tachana Marc, Florida Policy Institute; New York state advocacy site]
- “Missouri Cops Used Federal Loophole To Seize $2.6 Million From Drivers Who They Never Charged With Crimes” [Zuri Davis]
Posts Tagged ‘Detroit’
Law enforcement for profit roundup
- “A Louisiana DA will let you out of your community service obligation — if you donate to his nonprofit” [Radley Balko; Calcasieu Parish, La.]
- New study of law enforcement fines and fees finds they bear more heavily on rural residents and have high costs of collection. Also makes a case for periodic forgiveness of mostly-uncollectible balances of old debt [Matthew Menendez, Michael F. Crowley, Lauren-Brooke Eisen, and Noah Atchison, Brennan Center/Texas Public Policy Foundation/Right on Crime]
- Oakland County, Mich. “Says Seizing Home Over $8.41 Tax Debt Was OK Because Counties Need Money” [Eric Boehm, Reason first and second posts] “The Unsung Scourge of Home Equity Theft” [Cato podcast with Christina Martin and Caleb Brown]
- Georgia: “Doraville Homeowners Win Round One in Lawsuit Challenging City’s Overzealous Ticketing Scheme” [J. Justin Wilson, Institute for Justice]
- Here’s a revisionist (though only partly so) account of the Luzerne County, Pa. cash-for-kids judicial scandal, to which we devoted multiple posts at the time [Roger DuPuis, Wilkes-Barre Times Leader]
- “Forty-four states have policies of suspending driver’s licenses over unpaid fines, fees or court debts.” Time to rethink [Jenny Kim, WSJ/Koch]
“Bye, bye General Motors Poletown Plant”
A landmark in debates over the use of eminent domain takings for private development, the General Motors Hamtramck facility is now slated for closure. [Gideon Kanner, Ilya Somin]
September 27 roundup
- It works if your court is in Maine: “Motion to Continue Because of Moose Attack” [Lowering the Bar]
- “John Bolton is Right About the International Criminal Court” [Jeremy Rabkin, Weekly Standard, earlier]
- No kidding. “Unintended Impact: Detroit Crackdown on Landlords Could Boost Rents” [Deadline Detroit; Violet Ikonomova, Metro Times]
- Advocacy groups “were focused on food deserts ‘because access was a social justice issue. It wasn’t based on evidence because there wasn’t any evidence.'” [Tamar Haspel, Washington Post]
- “Good moral character” prerequisites for holding licenses are vague and subjective even in ordinary times, and should not be pressed into surrogate use against political foes [Jonathan Haggerty and C. Jarrett Dieterle, R Street Institute]
- California fisheries and Chevron deference: “An Otter Travesty by the Administrative State” [Ilya Shapiro on Cato cert amicus petition in California Sea Urchin Commission v. Combs]
“Local Governments and Occupational Licensing Absurdity”
“The proliferation of state licensing requirements is already bad enough. There’s no need for cities to pile their own mandates on.” Detroit, which requires licenses for at least 60 occupations, is among the worst offenders. [C. Jarrett Dieterle, Governing]
Also in Michigan: “Shampooing Hair And Piloting Commercial Airliners Require Same Number Of Training Hours In Michigan” [Michigan Capitol Confidential]
“Detroit just banned Airbnb without anyone knowing it”
Infuriating: Detroit says it will take a pause for legal review before enforcing a new zoning ordinance that would ban homeowners through much of the city from accepting AirBnB rentals. The ordinance would interpret rentals as home-based businesses, which are disallowed in residential zones, and on its face appears to prohibit taking in even friends or relatives to share quarters if the person pays rent. Following a public outcry, the city council put out word that it does not intend to ban AirBnB and will amend the ordinance if necessary to avoid that. [Tom Perkins/Metro Times, Robin Runyan, Curbed Detroit, Deadline Detroit]
Detroit Free Press investigates crash-claim abuse
“Detroit drivers face the highest average auto insurance rates in the country, often more than $3,000 a year for a single vehicle,” while residents of Michigan as a whole pay the third highest rates of any state. A Detroit Free Press investigation by J.C. Reindl and others “finds that runaway medical bills, disability benefits payouts and lawsuits under Michigan’s one-of-a-kind, no-fault insurance system play a key role in driving up costs.” One key difference: of the twelve states that mandate no-fault insurance, only Michigan provides for unlimited lifetime benefits.
Some findings from the series:
* “Ambulance chasing” and solicitation thrive notwithstanding laws intended to curb those practices. Despite privacy rules governing police reports and hospital admissions, for example, those involved in crashes are often solicited within hours, then signed up with law firms that later disavow any knowledge of solicitation. And how did an accident treatment clinic in suburban Detroit come to be owned by a California and Florida plastic surgeon noted for appearing on “The Real Housewives of Orange County” who seldom visited?
* While crashes in Wayne County (Detroit) declined from 72,227 to 50,548 between 2003 and 2015, “first-party” lawsuits — against one’s own insurance company for no-fault benefits — increased from 1,699 to 6,327 and negligence suits against other drivers from 2,527 to 3,435. Many “first-party” claims, of course, are paid without anyone filing suit, which is how no-fault law contemplated would be normal practice;
* Auto insurers have launched racketeering lawsuits aimed at proving forms of collusive fraud. Unlike many states, Michigan has no official watchdog charged primarily with combating auto claims fraud.
* “Defenders of the current system include the powerful Coalition Protecting Auto No-Fault, made up of trial lawyers, medical clinics, disability advocates and, until recently, the state’s hospital lobby.”
* Other states’ approaches to containing no-fault costs.
Shoveling snow off Detroit sidewalks for pay? Get a license
“Detroit licenses about 60 occupations, imposing extra fees and requirements on top of existing Michigan licenses for about half of these occupations. The other half of the occupations that Detroit licenses are not licensed by the state at all.” Window washers (who must pay $72 per year), sidewalk shovelers, dry cleaners, and furniture movers are all licensed. Because Detroit piles such hefty fees and additional regulations on plumbers beyond those of Michigan, “there are only 58 licensed plumbers in the whole city.” The system squeezes workers for cash, excludes newcomers, and harms consumers. But it’s not inevitable: “Last year, Wisconsin passed a bill that stopped local governments from creating new occupational licenses or levying additional fees.” [Jared Meyer on Jarrett Skorup Mackinac Center study]
Liability roundup
- “Torts of the Future: Addressing the Liability and Regulatory Implications of Emerging Technologies” [U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform]
- “After paying out millions, Detroit pushes new law protecting cities from claims over bad sidewalks” [WXYZ]
- Fire doors at U.N. cut and repurposed to make cabinets, court rules original manufacturers not liable for failure to warn of asbestos dust risk should doors be cut up [Lynn Lehnert, Asbestos Case Tracker]
- Woman sues bar that served her over her later drunk driving accident and injuries allegedly suffered in police custody [Penn Record]
- Can members of a class action be identified? Supreme Court should resolve circuit split on the important class-action-certification issue of “ascertainability” [David E. Sellinger and Aaron Van Nostrand, WLF]
- Federal court in the Eastern District of New York gets lots of food marketing lawsuits [Emily Saul and Danika Fears, New York Post, Elizabeth Nolan Brown]
Public employment roundup
- NYPD retiree “shared his happiness at scoring the disability pension, as well as his achievements running marathons” [New York Daily News]
- Scott Greenfield on public sector unionism and Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association [Simple Justice, earlier] Pending Illinois case raises issues parallel to Friedrichs [Cato podcast with lead plaintiff Mark Janus and attorney Jacob Huebert]
- San Diego voters tried to address public employee pension crisis, now state panel says doing things by ballot initiative violates obligation to bargain with unions [Scott Shackford, Reason]
- “Staten Island Ferry deckhand who has already pocketed $600K in job related injuries sues city for $45M” [New York Daily News]
- Detroit “firefighters were paid for 32-hour days….Numerous top-level fire officials signed off on the overtime.” [Motor City Muckraker]
- “Without public worker unions, who would lobby against making it a crime to strike a pedestrian with right of way?” [Josh Barro on NYC controversy]
- “Not Even a Criminal Referral to the Dept. of Justice Can Get You Fired From the VA” [Amanda Winkler, Reason]