- As Brooklyn changes, so do its juries: “more sophisticated people… they don’t believe [plaintiffs] should be awarded millions of dollars for nothing.” [NY Post quoting plaintiff’s lawyer Charen Kim]
- Richard Epstein: Massachusetts buffer zone statute “should have been upheld, not struck down” [Hoover Institution, earlier on McCullen v. Coakley, my related comment]
- “Runners” as in client-chasing for injury work: “Arkansas AG Files Suit Against Chiropractic ‘Runners'” [AP]
- Fox, henhouse: 2012 law says local transit agencies must sit on boards helping set their own funding [Randal O’Toole, Cato]
- No-good, terrible, really bad idea: occupational licensure for software professionals [Ira Stoll]
- More proliferation of legally required video surveillance [Volokh; guns, cellphone sales]
- How do you expect the IRS to back up headquarters emails when we throttle its IT budget down to a mere $2.4 billion? [Chris Edwards, Cato]
Posts Tagged ‘NYC’
NYC official impounds car used to transport cancer patients to hospital
The Taxi and Limousine Commission functionary ignored the volunteer driver’s protests that the vehicle was not operating unlawfully for hire but was rather being provided as a free charitable service. After all, as someone might have put it, stealing the car of a volunteer driving cancer patients to the hospital is just another name for the things we do together. [NY Daily News, New York Post, earlier this month]
Labor and employment roundup
- “NLRB Could Ease Unionization of Franchisees” [Bill McMorris, Washington Free Beacon]
- Wait, you mean self-harm is something you can overdo? “Can the Minimum Wage Be Too High?” [NYT “Room for Debate”] “Correcting Harold Meyerson’s Math On The Minimum Wage” [Tim Worstall]
- Lawyers can help ascertain when lip-licking in workplace rises to level of harassment [Fox Rothschild]
- Pending bill in Illinois would do away with workers’ comp’s longstanding immunity for safety consultants [Kevin Martin, State Journal-Register]
- Best and worst states legally for staffing business [Leslie Stevens-Huffman, Staffing Industry]
- “You can have your strong public employee unions, ‘prevailing wages’ and restrictive work rules, or you can have nice infrastructure. New Yorkers have (perhaps unknowingly) made their choice.” [Scott Sumner via Arnold Kling]
- Does time spent driving to employer-mandated anger-management courses count as compensable “hours worked” under FLSA? [Bryan Symes, Ruder Ware]
Police and prosecution roundup
- Sad and bad: “House Republicans vote to block Obama’s new pardon attorneys” [MSNBC, Jacob Sullum, my Cato take]
- Ready for sorghum-patch unrest? More than 100 U.S. Department of Agriculture agents are armed with submachine guns [Matt Welch]
- “Cop who punched Occupy Wall Street protester gets tax-free disability pension” [New York Daily News, video of punch]
- “Officials could identify just one [Bronx] prosecutor since 1975 … disciplined in any respect for misbehavior while prosecuting a criminal case.” [City Limits via Radley Balko]
- Georgia drug raid: flash-bang grenade thrown into crib badly burning toddler [Tim Lynch, PoliceMisconduct.net “Worst of the Month”]
- New book by Sidney Powell critical of USDOJ explores Ted Stevens, Enron prosecutions, has foreword by Judge Alex Kozinski [“Licensed to Lie”: Craig Malisow/Houston Press, Legal Ethics Forum, Amazon]
- Two times over the legal limit, hmm. Would it help to flash my badge? [Prosecutorial Accountability on state bar discipline against San Francisco deputy d.a.]
NYC rental housing regulations
New York City’s homeowner registration requirements — a paperwork stage distinct from any rent regulation as such — are burdensome enough that neither Mayor Bill de Blasio nor Public Advocate Letitia James have succeeded in complying for the properties they own themselves. The registration requirement “also drives out smaller landlords, and provides a convenient way for bad tenants to get away without paying rent.” [DNAInfo New York, NY Renters Alliance via Future of Capitalism]
“Inclusionary” zoning
It squeezes some New Yorkers hard in order to provide what can be a $90,000-a-year windfall for a few [Josh Barro, New York Times] How has the policy worked in Washington, D.C. and nearby Montgomery County, Maryland? [Emily Washington, Market Urbanism]
More: Lots of goodies financed by taxpayers get thrown into the subsidy mix too, says Jim Epstein at Reason.
Former Brooklyn D.A. charged with misuse of funds
Critics of asset forfeiture have warned for years that it not only warps the priorities and incentives of law enforcement agencies, but creates a slush fund ripe for abuse by sidestepping the appropriations process. Now investigators accuse longterm Brooklyn D.A. Charles Hynes of using forfeiture funds to pay more than $200,000 to a P.R. consultant whose labors were largely devoted to advancing Hynes’s campaign. The consultant’s firm was paid more than $1 million over a decade. [New York Times]
Schools roundup
- California voters thought they’d reined in don’t-hurry-on-English “bilingual” instruction methods, but legislators have other ideas [Steven Greenhut, San Diego Union-Tribune]
- “Report: Too Much Regulation Is Hurting Scientists” [Inside Higher Ed via Instapundit; two earlier federal surveys “found principal investigators spend 42 percent of their time on administrative tasks”]
- This should end well: Mayor de Blasio hands keys to NYC school system over to teacher’s federation [NY Daily News]
- “How the Media Again Failed on the Duke Lacrosse Story” [KC Johnson and Stuart Taylor, Jr.]
- Chicago: “Teacher Shows Kids Carpentry Tools, Gets Suspended on ‘Weapons’ Charge” [Lenore Skenazy, Free-Range Kids]
- On school discipline and zero tolerance, Eric Holder draws the wrong lessons [Hans Bader, CEI “Open Market”] “Prior problem behavior accounts for the racial gap in school suspensions” [Wright et al., Journal of Criminal Justice, PDF]
- “The little secret of public higher ed: it’s a massive transfer of wealth from lower to upper classes” [Roger Pilon, 2Paragraphs]
Free speech roundup
- How the Progressive movement changed thinking on free speech [David Bernstein]
- More “bullying” legislation: “A crime for teenagers to excoriate their unfaithful or abusive lovers on Facebook?” [Eugene Volokh on pending Colorado bill] “Crime to spread rumors about under-25-year-olds, to send ‘hurtful, rude and mean messages’ about them, or to make fun of them online?” [same; pending ordinance in Carson, Calif.]
- “First Amendment protects Internet search results: N.Y. judge” [Alison Frankel, Reuters]
- Wisconsin + other states too: “Last week, the enlightened citizens of Shorewood, Whitefish Bay and several other communities voted to repeal the freedom of the press and of the free speech rights of organizations ranging from the NAACP to the National Rifle Association.” [Rick Esenberg, Shark and Shepherd]
- NYC comptroller Scott Stringer, posing in investor hat, demands that Texas firm Clayton Williams Energy Inc. explain its political giving [AP]
- Look before you leap: some proposals billed as criminalizing revenge porn appear to criminalize far more than that [Scott Greenfield]
- Consumer secretly videotapes allegedly unneeded repairs at Missouri Chevrolet dealership, litigation ensues [Popehat]
Discrimination law roundup
- Mayor de Blasio settles firefighter bias suit on terms sympathetic to plaintiffs [City Journal: Dennis Saffran and Seth Barron]
- One way to dodge some Culture War fights: roll meaning of “public accommodation” back to travel, lodgings, places of public amusement, etc. [Andrew Kloster, Heritage] As original/creative expression goes, florists and cake-bakers sometimes outdo NYT’s Greenhouse [Ann Althouse] From Dixie Chicks to Hobby Lobby, few escape hypocrisy when commerce collides with convictions [Barton Hinkle]
- Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights investigating Florida’s popular Bright Futures college scholarship program [Orlando Sentinel]
- Do EEOC mediators overstate risk of legal action to extract big settlements from employers? [Bloomberg BNA, Merrily Archer on survey] New Colorado expansion of employment liability bad news for large and small employers alike [Archer]
- “Religious exemptions — a guide for the confused” [Eugene Volokh]
- Washington Post columnist repeats myth that Lilly Ledbetter “did not know she was being paid less than male counterparts” until after statute of limitations had run; Hans Bader corrects [letter to editor]
- If helping out local people was one reason your town decided to back public housing, you might have been played for suckers [AP on DoJ suit against Long Island town over local preference]