Posts Tagged ‘New Mexico’

Booster clubs and bake sales

The anti-obesity campaign isn’t the only policy initiative that’s leading to regulatory scrutiny of high school bake sales. There’s Title IX and its state equivalents, too:

Controversy in New Mexico continues over booster club funding and Title IX implementation as discussion heats up over the state’s Schools Athletics Equity Act. The issue remains whether private donations raised by parents through bake sales and working concession stands, or whether philanthropic contributions by private businesses, should be pooled together and distributed among all boys and girls teams under the guise of Title IX equality — and regardless of which parents/teams raised what.

Not surprisingly, many expect volunteerism to droop if the chance to raising funds for your team’s road trip or new equipment is replaced by a new rule prescribing that you can only raise money for school sports generally and hope that some fraction gets passed through to your team. [Deborah Elson, Saving Sports; earlier on booster clubs]

Filed under: New Mexico, schools, Title IX

(Litigious) life in academia

Lawsuits fly in various directions arising from almost implausibly colorful fact patterns (“professor-dominatrix”) at the University of New Mexico English department [Chronicle of Higher Education]

Filed under: colleges and universities, hostile environment, New Mexico

March 19 roundup

Plaintiff in case alleging defective clown shoes “does not want any additional publicity” [N.Y. Post via Lowering the Bar]
Santa Fe’s anti-wireless activists [The New Mexican, earlier]
Law vs. vaccines, cont’d: “Judge Declines to Upset $22.5 Million Jury Award in Polio Case” [NYLJ]
Arizona high court launches probe of Maricopa County prosecutor Andrew Thomas [Coyote, earlier]
“Innumerable histronics” but no conspiracy: litigation over 1996 Filegate scandal fizzles out [Althouse]
More boosts in regulators’ budgets [Roger Clegg, NRO, OFCCP employment regulation at federal contractors; Koehler, FCPA Professor] Obama’s putting in regulatory hardliners at many agencies; a clue to his politics? [Bainbridge, Judis/TNR]
If only they’d confine themselves to suing the actual bad actors in FACTA (credit-card-slip) and junk-fax litigation [Bart T. Murphy, Chicago Business Ledger; my ’06 take]
So may bullies ever fare: sanctions set against company that sued BoingBoing for libel [“MagicJack” case and more]

Filed under: Arizona, Bill Clinton, FACTA, libel slander and defamation, New Mexico, sanctions, vaccines

By reader acclaim: “Wi-Fi foe sues neighbor for using electronics”

We’ve previously encountered Arthur Firstenberg of Santa Fe, N.M., and his anti-wi-fi litigation. Now the self-reported sufferer from electromagnetic sensitivity “is suing his next-door neighbor for refusing to turn off her cell phone and other electronic devices,” saying his efforts to avoid the fields threatens to render him homeless. He also thinks neighbor Raphaela Monribot should pay him $530,000. He’s represented by lawyer Lindsay Lovejoy Jr. [Santa Fe New Mexican, The Register, DSL Reports]

More: alt-paper SFreeper (which seems to have been on the story first) reports that attorney Lovejoy “is a graduate of Harvard and Yale, as well as a former Assistant New Mexico Assistant Attorney General who has argued cases alongside now-US Sen. Tom Udall, D-NM.” (via Chris Fountain)

Filed under: cellphones, New Mexico, technology

Utility not liable for rescuers’ emotional distress after explosion

Albuquerque Journal, last month: “After deliberating for less than four hours, a Roswell jury decided that El Paso Natural Gas Co. is not liable for the emotional distress firefighters and emergency personnel suffered while responding to a pipeline explosion that killed 12 people, many of them children, in 2000.” Two years ago the New Mexico Supreme Court had allowed the suit to proceed, chipping away at the “firefighter’s rule” which traditionally barred recovery by rescuers against those who caused the accidents to which they were responding.

Filed under: firefighters rule, New Mexico

Compelled expression and the New Mexico photographer case

A New Mexico court has upheld state-levied fines against a photographer who refused a job taking pictures at a same-sex wedding (Elane Photography v. Willock). Eugene Volokh, who has written about the case previously, now has a series of posts on the implications of the court’s effort to force creators to “create speech that they don’t want to create.” He also adds posts on the religious accommodation angle, the inevitable what-about-racists objection, and the role of state laws prohibiting “discrimination” against customers based on their political beliefs. More: Timothy Kincaid, Box Turtle Bulletin (“time for New Mexico to change its law. …ultimately what kind of freedom will we have won to live our lives as we see best if it costs the freedom of others to do the same?”).

Filed under: art and artists, discrimination law, free speech, New Mexico, religious discrimination

August 20 roundup

Federal judge rejects lenient plea deal for two judges in Luzerne County, Pa. judicial scandal [ABA Journal, Scott Greenfield] More: allegations of extensive abuses including “rampant case-fixing and payoffs” [Hank Grezlak and Leo Strupczewski, Legal Intelligencer] Charges of impropriety in handling defamation case handed down against Wilkes-Barre newspaper [Strupczewski, same] Improprieties in that libel case denied [ABA Journal] Should juvenile convictions by Judge Mark Ciavarella Jr. be vacated? [ABA Journal]
Law and a banana: Page-one Wall Street Journal treatment of fruit pesticide litigation fraud [yesterday’s paper, PoL] Further: Cal. Civil Justice (“trained like a parrot”, “super lawyer”), L.A. Times and more, earlier.
“Can it be true that some Girl Scout camps FORBID climbing trees?” [Skenazy, Free Range Kids]
Katy Perry (U.S. pop singer) vs. Katie Perry (Australian fashion designer) trademark lawsuit [Bryan Quigley, Institute for Legal Reform] Suit has now been dropped [Katie Perry website, h/t @lenejohansen]
Emergency room blogger White Coat wraps up his malpractice-suit saga [collected posts]
“Automated shakedown racket sends legal threats, demands cash” [BoingBoing; copyright infringement demand letters]
More coverage of New Mexico baseball-hit-into-stands liability ruling [Hochfelder/PoL, Stossel, earlier]
Do not anger Texas criminal defense law blogger Mark Bennett. Just don’t [Popehat]

Filed under: banana pesticide litigation fraud, baseball, copyright, Luzerne County judicial scandal, medical malpractice, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Texas, trademarks, trees

Baseballs hit into the stands

A New Mexico appeals court says the stadium can be sued. [AmLaw Daily]

Filed under: assumption of risk, baseball, New Mexico

New at Point of Law

If you’re not reading my other legal site, Point of Law, here’s some of what you’re missing:

Taft-Hartley and the secret ballot in union-representation elections, part of a new category on labor law;
Also, a new category on international law and international human rights law with coverage of such topics as the Harold Koh nomination, other lawprofs joining the Obama administration, the Alien Tort statute, the proposed Spanish prosecution of Bush administration lawyers, and piracy and international law;
One form of executive pay they don’t care to limit: Senate rejects proposed $50 million ceiling on bounties paid to informants (“relators”) in federal whistleblowing suits;
Pay-for-play in state drug-recoupment litigation: Pennsylvania, New Mexico furors just the start of much more to come;
We’ve heard the line, “Want less litigation after the fact? Then support more regulation before the fact.” Here’s one of many reasons to take that with a grain of salt;
“File case in Texas. Take plaintiff deposition. Dismiss case, and refile in California.” Asbestos litigation has some of the best forum-shopping gamesmanship;
Plaintiff’s lawyers in California spent more than $4.1 million in that state’s 2007-2008 election cycle;
Miranda warnings for company counsel?

Filed under: asbestos, attorneys general, California, forum shopping, international human rights, international law, labor unions, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, politics, prosecution, whistleblowers

Microblog 2008-11-25

Why real estate agents make you sign 1,000 silly forms [Christopher Fountain] Michigan requires acknowledgment that nearby farms “may generate noise, dust, odors” [Land Division Act h/t Sean Fosmire]
Albuquerque police take out want ad seeking snitches [AP]
“A prez must know S of S has no agenda other than his own” Chris Hitchens flays the Hillary pick [Slate]
Not all British nannies are charming: U.K. regulators may ban “happy hour” in bars [AP h/t Jeff Nolan]
As Georgia “sex offender” horror stories go, Wendy Whitaker case may outdo Genarlow Wilson’s [Below the Beltway; more on Wilson case]
U.K. juror polls her Facebook friends to help decide on case [AllFacebook h/t @lilyhill and @Rex7; Greenfield]
Looking for political conservatives on Twitter? Here’s a long list [Duane Lester, All American Blogger; and I have a comment on ways to use Twitter]
New page of auto-feeds from leading Canada & U.S. law & politics blogs [Wise Law Reader]
Bailout’s a lot bigger than you think, try $7.8 trillion with a “t” [John Carney]. Claim: with $ sunk since ’80, GM and Ford could have closed own plants and bought all shares of Honda, Toyota, Nissan and VW [David Yermack, WSJ via Cowen]. What if Citi gives up Mets naming rights? Gary’s Bail Bonds Stadium just doesn’t quite have the same ring to it [Ray Lehmann]
Australian class action could derail because overseas funders didn’t register as investment managers [The Australian h/t @SecuritiesD]

Filed under: agriculture and farming, alcohol, Australia, autos, Canada, Crisis of 2008, Facebook, Georgia, juries, New Mexico, police, real estate, restaurants, sex offender registries, Twitter, United Kingdom