- “Banks push back against lawsuits that target fee-warning signs on ATMs” [NYT via PoL]
- Crash fraud and clinic fraud: organized crime gangs eye insurance money [Dennis Jay, PC360]
- Maryland pit bull ruling endangers dogs that have harmed no one [Wash Times editorial, ABA Journal, earlier] New Jersey town bans dog and cat sales at new pet stores [Asbury Park Press; Brick, N.J.]
- “Cato is mentioned roughly equally by both Republicans and Democrats in Congress.” [Caleb Brown]
- “Futile remedies for mass shootings” [Steve Chapman, Reason]
- “After Awful Tragedies, The Campus Bureaucracy Expands” [Harvey Silverglate, Minding the Campus]
- “Delaware judges mean it: Don’t file derivative suit pre-investigation” [Alison Frankel, Reuters]
Posts Tagged ‘Maryland’
No, Mayor Menino…
In a free country you can’t keep out a restaurant because you dislike its owner’s politics [Boston Herald on Chick-Fil-A controversy, more on death through regulatory delay as a city tactic, mayor’s letter in PDF; good discussions at Amy Alkon and Popehat/Ken] Comments: “Inclusion. He gives this as justification for excluding someone.” [Ken R at Alkon] “Also, has Boston ever been ‘at the forefront of inclusion’?” [@thad_anderson]
For a powerful vignette of what can happen in certain big cities when the ruling government nomenklatura comes to view the local merchantry as there by sufferance, see John Kass’s recent Chicago Tribune column, recalling the struggles of his Greek immigrant grocer father, via David Zincavage.
P.S. Speaking of taking outspoken stands on same-sex marriage, Chris Geidner of BuzzFeed covers a (very successful!) fundraiser I helped throw over the weekend for like-minded folks in Maryland and D.C. If you’d like to donate as part of the event, you can do so here.
July 20 roundup
- Congress, HUD face off on “disparate impact” in housing and housing finance [WSJ edit, Clegg/NRO] Wells Fargo says it didn’t base loans on race but will pay $175 million to end federal probe [Reuters]
- Maryland vs. Virginia: if only there were a government that was consistent about favoring liberty [John Walters, Maryland Public Policy Institute]
- British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal levies $3000 against husband-and-wife owners of bed-and-breakfast who canceled reservation of gay couple based on religious objections [Religion Clause, The Province] UK: “‘Gay flatmate wanted’ ads break equality laws” [Telegraph] See our earlier coverage of the Ninth Circuit Roommate.com case here and here.
- “Lifeguard fired for saving drowning person — outside his designated zone.” [NBC Miami via @commongood]
- “Do you want to be informed about the constant, infuriating corporate welfare for professional sports owners? Follow FieldOfSchemes.com” [Matt Welch]
- Negligent entrustment lawsuit against parents who let 33 year old daughter drive car yields $1.2 million in Tennessee [Knoxville News]
- Pretrial and discovery: “New York state bar recommends federal litigation reforms” [Reuters]
Torts roundup
- Dixon v. Ford Motor Company: “The Best Causation Opinion of 2012” [David Oliver] “Any exposure” causation: “Pennsylvania Supreme Court delivers significant asbestos ruling” [Point of Law]
- Maryland high court may consider pro-plaintiff shift from contributory negligence to comparative fault [Sean Wajert]
- In last-minute ploy, Albany lawmakers extend time limits for suing local governments [Torch via PoL, Times-Union]
- Mental diagnoses: what to do when courtroom experts armed with DSM-5 shoot from the hip [Jim Dedman, Abnormal Use]
- California appeals court, legislature decline to go along with trial lawyers’ crusade against Concepcion and class arbitration waivers [WLF, CL&P]
- Critics challenge legality of Louisiana AG’s use of contingency lawyers [Melissa Landry, Hayride]
- To curb client solicitation, NJ mulls withholding crash reports from noninterested parties for 90 days [NJLRA]
Cameras and contradictions
The other day we relayed a report from CBS Baltimore about the town of Westminster’s having disconnected most of its traffic cameras on the ground that they were causing more accidents than they were preventing. However, a Baltimore Sun report contradicts that assertion and quotes town officials saying the cameras had reduced speeding and accidents; it also contradicts assertions in the earlier article on the cameras’ cost.
Maryland town de-activates cameras after crashes increase
“Westminster is putting a stop to most of their red light cameras. Police say they may have been causing more accidents than they were preventing.” [CBS Baltimore]
But see: a report in the Baltimore Sun (h/t reader Gitarcarver) directly contradicts the CBS Baltimore account on the town’s reasons for removing the cameras: it quotes a town official as “saying the cameras had, by and large, done their job in helping reduce accidents and red light runners.” It also describes the town’s cost of running three of the cameras as “$137,831 from spring 2011 to spring 2012,” far lower than the number cited in the CBS Baltimore account.
Did Maryland farmer pay a price for criticizing federal prosecutors?
Readers will remember from this series of posts in April and May how the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Maryland brought and then settled charges against Randy and Karen Sowers of Middletown, Md., over “structuring” of bank deposits, that is, the conscious holding of transactions under $10,000 to avoid triggering paperwork and federal scrutiny. Now Van Jones of the Baltimore City Paper, who has led the coverage of the story, has some unsettling new allegations:
Randy Sowers is not the only Maryland farmer recently targeted by federal money-laundering investigators for illegally depositing cash his business earns in increments of $10,000 or less, in order to avoid triggering bank-reporting requirements. But Sowers, whose South Mountain Creamery (SMC) dairy farm in Middletown, near Frederick, is a popular fixture at Baltimore-area farmers markets, is the only one to exercise his First Amendment rights and talk to the press about it.
For that, Sowers’ lawyers say, the Maryland U.S. Attorney’s Office (USAO-MD) has made him pay—an assertion that U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein denies, despite an e-mail sent to Sowers’ attorney by the chief of Rosenstein’s asset forfeiture and money laundering section, Stefan Cassella, that appears to state exactly that.
David Watt and Paul Kamenar, attorneys for Sowers, say during negotiations over a deal to settle the charges, Watt asked Cassella why the government was insisting on particular concessionary language it had not obtained in the settlement of similar charges against a farmer named Taylor on the Eastern Shore. Cassella sent back a one-line email that read: “Mr. Taylor did not give an interview to the press.” In an e-mail to U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein, Cassella has stated that the Sowers settlement was “not a punishment for exercising his First Amendment rights.”
Maryland pit bull ruling: careful what you ask for
Last month Maryland’s highest court, adopting what is known as a “breed-specific” standard, declared pit bulls inherently dangerous and subject to strict liability for their owners. Humane and rescue activists were alarmed at the prospect of insurance-rate pressure on pit owners and an influx into animal shelters of surrendered pets who, even if well-behaved, might prove unadoptable and end up euthanized. They should have been careful what they asked for. A panel of the Maryland House of Delegates headed by Del. Curt Anderson (D-Baltimore) has now taken up the issue and apparently plans to address the complained-of breed disparity by proposing to extend strict liability to all breeds of dog, abolishing the longstanding “one-bite” rule that shields owners from responsibility where a pet has not previously been known to cause trouble. Why is it somehow not surprising that in Annapolis the views of attorneys would hold more sway and those of dog-rescue folks less? [AP, Julie Scharper/Baltimore Sun, more background: Miller.
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]
Update: South Mountain Creamery settles structuring charges
In news that reached me after my Baltimore Sun op-ed yesterday was already in print, owners Randy and Karen Sowers of Middletown, Md. have settled the federal charges against their South Mountain Creamery over “structuring” of bank deposits. They “will get back a little more than half of $62,936 seized by the government earlier this year, according to court documents filed late Tuesday. … ‘I didn’t do anything wrong, but we had to settle because we had no other choice,’ Sowers said.” [Courtney Mabeus, Frederick News-Post; earlier here, etc.]
P.S. And welcome Don Boudreaux/Cafe Hayek readers (no, I’m not related to Mancur Olson); Coyote.