- “Furniture company founder files federal chair-collapse suit against rival manufacturer” [ABA Journal]
- Wrangling over Pennsylvania tobacco settlement aftermath “a never-ending buffet for attorneys” [Allentown Morning Call] Florida $27 million smoking award upheld [Daily Business Review]
- Autonomous cars and tort liability [Kyle Colonna, Case Western RJLTI/SSRN]
- Asbestos: Death of single fiber theory [Sean Wajert, Pa.] Radiologist Herron says he did nothing wrong [W.V. Record]
Peculiar tale of Russian asbestos-mining town [Foreign Policy] More: Lester Brickman on smokers’ asbestos cases [Chamber-backed LNL] - From the defense side, Beck chooses favorite and least-favorite drug and medical-device decisions of 2013;
- One can always hope: Will 3-D printing end product liability litigation as we know it? [Nora Freeman Engstrom, SSRN] “Philadelphia Becomes First City To Ban 3D-Printed Gun Manufacturing” [Zenon Evans] Once again on the vacuous but oft-repeated “NRA is a front for gunmakers” line [Tuccille]
Posts Tagged ‘Pennsylvania’
Drunk driver will recover $6.6 million from two Pennsylvania bars
“Two Northeastern Pennsylvania bars have settled for a combined $6.6 million with a man who became quadriplegic after driving drunk and crashing his car into a tree.” Jason Mercado sued two East Stroudsburg, Pa. bars on the theory that they had inexperienced bartenders and staff who should have known better than to serve him. Attorney Robert Sink, who represented Mercado, said the case was not without its difficulties: “if the jury found the drunk driver was more than 50 percent at fault, then he would have gotten nothing” under Pennsylvania law. The insurers defending the case decided that the risk of a verdict otherwise was worth $6.6 million. [Legal Intelligencer]
P.S. Redditors discuss.
Procedure and administrative law roundup
- “Venue matters.” Enough to double value of med-mal case if filed in Baltimore city rather than suburbs? [Ron Miller] Mark Behrens and Cary Silverman on litigation tourism in Pennsylvania [TortsProf]
- “Maybe [depositions] are like what some people say about war — vast periods of boredom interrupted by brief moments of terror.” [Steve McConnell, Drug and Device Law, also see Max Kennerly]
- Centrality of procedure in American legal thinking dates back to Legal Realists and before [Paul McMahon, U.Penn. J. of Int’l Law/SSRN via Mass Tort Prof]
- Company sues to challenge CPSC’s dissemination of unproven allegations about it in new public database: should judicial proceeding keep its name confidential? [Fair Warning]
- Thesis of new Jerry Mashaw book: administrative state in U.S. long predated Progressive Era [Law and Liberty: Joseph Postell, Mike Rappaport] Relatedly, hallmark of administrative state said to be “prerogative,” i.e., power to make binding rules without new legislation [Michael Greve]
- Lorax standing humor: even the Ninth Circuit might not have been able to help [Howard Wasserman, Prawfs]
- “Formalism and Deference in Administrative Law” [panel at Federalist Society National Lawyers’ Convention with Philip Hamburger, Kristin Hickman, Thomas Merrill, and Jide Okechuku Nzelibe, moderated by Jennifer Walker Elrod]
Driver sped through work zone into one-car crash
And has now been awarded $18 million on the theory that although there was some warning signage, there should have been more. The 23-year-old driver was traveling “admittedly 15-20 miles per hour over the speed limit” when he encountered a rough patch of roadway at a resurfacing project. The claimant’s attorney, Gerald A. McHugh Jr., “a current nominee for U.S. district judge on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, declined to comment on the case.” [Philadelphia, Legal Intelligencer]
Free speech roundup
- Arizona water utility sues customer over criticism [Popehat, which also has a free-speech-themed Blawg Review tribute and the year in blasphemy law]
- Harvey Silverglate, “The Slow Death of Free Speech at Harvard” [Minding the Campus] Cato’s Free Speech Week coverage includes video of recent Jonathan Rauch panel [Tim Lynch]
- Arrest warrant issued after Connecticut man tells Facebook readers he plans to take toy guns into school to prove point [Volokh]
- In Florida, it’s illegal for two or more people to join together and spend more than $500 on a state ballot issue [Ilya Shapiro; Jacob Sullum on other grassroots-activist chill effects] Brad Smith on the fight at the Supreme Court between Shaun McCutcheon and the FEC [WSJ]
- “Florida Condo Developer Sues Residents Over Website” [IJ]
- Lawmaker to introduce anti-SLAPP bill to curb vexatious plaintiffs in Pennsylvania, and no state needs it more [Philly Law Blog; cf. Michigan which also could use a hand]
- Will measures to criminalize revenge porn erode Section 230, the provision that shelters online media operators from liability for user-added content? [Mark Bennett, Scott Greenfield] At European Court for Human Rights, notice-and-takedown policy not enough to insulate Estonian website from liability for racist user comments [Stanford CIS]
Free speech roundup
- University of Montana professors who refuse Title IX training to be reported to federal government [FIRE, more, Missoulian] Professor yanked from public-university classroom over offensive out-of-class tweet [Popehat, Peter Bonilla/FIRE]
- Preacher/historical fantasist/horrible human being Scott Lively has probably accomplished more actual evil in life than the picketers of the Westboro Baptist Church, yet it raises disturbing First Amendment questions to let him be sued in U.S. court for having urged foreign governments to be more oppressive [NBC News]
- Speaking of wacky preachers, Florida sheriff says Terry Jones arrested for unlawful fuel transport and open gun carry, not because anyone disagreed with his speech [Orlando Sentinel, Volokh]
- Critical speech annoys elected officials and that’s one reason we keep having to fight about campaign regulation [Barton Hinkle, Brad Smith on McCutcheon case, Ilya Shapiro on Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus]
- Minnesota: “Ban on ‘Advis[ing or] Encourag[ing] … Another’ to Commit Suicide Violates First Amendment” [Eugene Volokh] Pennsylvania: “Crime to ‘Disparag[e]’ an Under-18-Year-Old ‘With Intent to Harass’?” [same] Liking Facebook page presumptively protected speech [same] Veto override fails, so Missouri won’t enact proposed ban on publishing names of gun owners or concealed carry permit holders [same, followup]
- Danish-Iranian artist convicted of “racism” after critical comments re: Muslim men [Copenhagen Post via @ClaudiaHajian]
Public employment roundup
- “Retirement benefits cost Connecticut more than half of payroll” [Raising Hale] Jagadeesh Gokhale, “State and Local Pension Plans” [Cato] “In the report Krugman cites, the researchers note (repeatedly) that the trillion-dollar figure is very likely a dramatic understatement of the size of the unmet liability.” [Caleb Brown]
- California: “Bill would reinstate state workers who go AWOL” [Steven Greenhut]
- Eyebrow-raising federal salaries at unaccountable-by-design CFPB [John Steele Gordon, Commentary]
- “North Carolina Ends Teacher Tenure” [Pew StateLine]
- Not all states would benefit from a dose of Scott Walkerism, but Massachusetts would [Charles Chieppo, Governing]
- “Prison Ordered to Hire Back Guards Fired over an Officer’s Murder Because Everybody Else Was Awful, Too” [Scott Shackford]
- “New York State Lags on Firing Workers Who Abuse Disabled Patients” [Danny Hakim, New York Times] NYC educators accused of sex misconduct can dig in for years [New York Daily News]
- “Pennsylvania’s GOP: Rented by Unions” [Steve Malanga, Public Sector Inc.] NYC’s Working Families Party expands into Connecticut [Daniel DiSalvo, same]
Nanny state roundup
- “Sneaky public-health messaging appears to be on the upswing across the country” [Baylen Linnekin, NY Post; earlier here, here, etc.]
- Scotland: “Parents warned they could face court for lighting up at home in front of kids” [The Sun] And Sweden: “Law professor calls for ban on parents drinking” (in presence of kids) [The Local via @FreeRangeKids]
- Speaking of tobacco: “Former German Chancellor Stays One Step Ahead of European Nannies, Hoards Cigarettes” [Matthew Feeney on Helmut Schmidt]
- Speaking of alcohol: ObamaCare slush fund bankrolling anti-booze advocacy in Pennsylvania [Mark Hemingway, earlier]
- To fix the nation’s weight problem, socially discourage processed foods. Right? Wrong [David Freedman, Atlantic]
- Mark Steyn on federal regulation requiring emergency bunny plan for magicians [NRO, more, earlier]
- Run for your life! It’s a falling toilet seat! [Free-Range Kids]
A Pennsylvania judicial ethics controversy
An attorney for a Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice denies that there was anything improper about personal injury referral fees paid to the judge’s wife, who has also served as his chief aide over much of his time on the bench. Eight law firms are reported to have paid the judge’s wife referral fees; although most of the amounts have not been disclosed, one that was disclosed amounted to $821,000. Legal ethics expert Geoffrey Hazard said the judge “should not have participated in any case involving a firm that had been a source of referral fees for his wife. However, Bruce Ledewitz, professor of law at Duquesne University, said he did not think McCaffery was under an obligation to tell litigants about the referral fees.” An attorney for the judge “said the newspaper had engaged in a ‘slanderous campaign’ to pry into ‘Ms. Rapaport’s legitimate and proper legal business relationships with her colleagues.'” and said the law firm responsible for the large fee noted above had not had a case before the court. [Philadelphia Inquirer via Milan Markovic, Legal Ethics Forum; PhillyMag]
Great moments in litigation journalism
In the Harrisburg Patriot-News, Ivey DeJesus trumpets the views of a “leading legal expert,” specifically “one of the country’s leading church and state scholars” who says, contrary to a state lawmaker’s assertions, that there’s no constitutional problem with reopening lapsed statutes of limitations so as to enable child-abuse lawsuits by now-grown-up complainants. Prof. Marci Hamilton is indeed a well-known church-state scholar, and there is indeed precedent for the (perhaps strange) idea that courts will not necessarily strike down retroactive legislation as unconstitutional so long as its impacts are civil rather than criminal. But it’s not until paragraph 18 that DeJesus, after introducing the expert at length by way of her academic affiliations, bothers to add a perhaps equally relevant element of her biography: she has “represented scores of victims in the Philadelphia Archdiocese clergy sex abuse case.” Why bring that up?