- Federalist Society annual convention (which I attended) included panels on anonymity and the First Amendment, judicial recusals, many other topics;
- Nomination of R.I.’s McConnell to federal bench could soon reach Senate floor [ProJo]
- “Why U.S. Taxpayers Are Paying Brazilian Cotton Growers $147 Million” [NPR via Popehat]
- “Litigation Governance: Taking Adequacy Seriously” [Trask, Class Action Countermeasures]
- “Family” groups vs. a family, cont’d: Vermont Supreme Court upholds Miller-Jenkins custody ruling [Volokh, BTB]
- OSHA allows more comment on what could be an extremely expensive mandate against noise in the workplace [ShopFloor]
- Cops who inform on cops are often left to twist in wind [Balko]
- Interview with Mark Zaid, collector of comic book art with law/legal themes [Abnormal Use]
Posts Tagged ‘police’
Chicago’s hard line on police-misconduct claims
A year ago the city of Chicago announced a change in its litigation posture in claims against police: it would refuse to settle claims it did not consider strong and would prepare for trial instead. “In the past, the city often settled ‘defensible’ cases because the city’s legal expenses could far exceed the cost of a settlement.” Now the city law department is claiming “astonishing” success for the policy, citing a 50 percent project drop in claims against police. Plaintiff’s lawyers say their clients are handicapped before juries because they often have police records and that “the door has been slammed shut.” [Frank Main, Chicago Sun-Times]
October 5 roundup
- “Mark Lanier, Marie Gryphon and Ted Frank debate if a free market can protect consumers as well as lawyers.” [John Stossel’s Fox Business show last week; Point of Law (Lanier has kind words for loser pays); Bob Dorigo Jones]
- Corner-cutting document prep proves costly to mortgage lenders at foreclosure time [NYTimes; related, Felix Salmon and more] Connecticut AG Blumenthal orders 60-day halt to all foreclosures, whether or not paperwork-impaired, conveniently carrying him through Election Day [WaPo]
- High court grants cert on a bunch of business cases [Beck, WLF, WSJ Law Blog, Fisher, PoL on Scalia stay in tobacco class action]
- The myth of the sabotaged streetcar system [Market Urbanism]
- Another big Title IX casualty: Cal Berkeley kills varsity rugby [Saving Sports and various followups; gymnastics; related on Boston Globe coverage]
- “N.J. Bill Proposes Use of Screening Panels to Thwart Frivolous Suits Against Public Entities” [NJLJ]
- Cop informs on cop’s misbehavior, what happens next isn’t pretty [Greenfield; Kansas City, Kansas]
- There’s money in glass-eating, son [three years ago on Overlawyered]
September 28 roundup
- Senators and their Constitutional duties: Christine O’Donnell 1, Dahlia Lithwick 0 [Bernstein/Volokh, Shapiro/Cato, Garnett/Prawfs] More: Ted at PoL.
- 15-year-old sentenced to 20 years for killing dog, family says that isn’t long enough [USA Today]
- “Fla. man settles McDonald’s suit over hot sandwich” [AP, earlier]
- “Blasphemy laws by the back door” [Stuttaford, Secular Right, on UK Koran prosecution] “A Defense of Free Speech by American and Canadian Muslims” [The American Muslim]
- “15 new legal blogs prove the blawgosphere is alive and kicking” [Ambrogi, Law Technology News; reactions, Greenfield and Balasubramani]
- A video on your right to videotape cops [David Rittgers, Cato; Greenfield, Balko]
- “My Lie: Why I Falsely Accused My Father” [Meredith Maran interview, Salon]
- “Judge-Mandated Racial Quotas For Plaintiffs’ Law Firms” [Krauss, PoL]
Convicted in double-fatality crash, trooper wants compensation
“Former Illinois State trooper Matt Mitchell is asking the state to compensate him for injuries from a crash in which he hit and killed two Collinsville sisters at triple-digit speeds.” Mitchell pleaded guilty to reckless homicide after the incident, in which, headed for an accident scene, he “was driving 126 mph in busy day-after-Thanksgiving traffic on Interstate 64 near O’Fallon while sending and receiving e-mails and talking to his girlfriend on his cell phone.” “People get hurt at work all the time,” said Mitchell’s lawyer, Kerri O’Sullivan of St. Louis’ Brown and Crouppen. “It’s our job as lawyers to help people with the difficult and complicated administrative process of worker’s compensation.” [Belleville News-Democrat]
Not really hurt by cop’s negligence
He’s basically fine and so is his bike after being doored by the NYC officer, but friends advise suing anyway. Should he? New York Times ethicist Randy Cohen fields the question. [NYT Magazine]
“Requiring Fitness for Duty Exam for Erratic Behavior Did Not Violate ADA”
“In Brownfield v. City of Yakima, the Ninth Circuit held that the City did not violate the ADA by requiring a police officer employee to undergo a fitness for duty exam following several incidents of erratic behavior by the employee.” [Robin Weideman, California Labor and Employment Law Blog]
“German police officer earns extra week’s holiday for getting dressed”
The test case in the city of Muenster has German municipal officials worried about busted budgets. [Guardian, Telegraph] So-called “don/doff” lawsuits have been a pretty big deal in our own employment law in recent years, although, as our 2008 report from Arkansas indicates, they don’t always have the support of the putative victims.
July 6 roundup
- “Kagan refused to identify anything the government couldn’t do under its Commerce Clause power” and “consciously left herself plenty of breathing room to cite foreign law inappropriately” [Ilya Shapiro, more]
- Multiple civil/criminal hats? “The odd responses of the attorney general to the oil spill” [WaPo editorial]
- Phillies Phanatic, “‘Most-Sued Mascot in the Majors’ Is Back in Court” [Lowering the Bar, which also hosts Blawg Review #271 this week]
- Federalist Society has a new blog;
- California will pay $20 million to woman abducted for nearly two decades [AP]
- Charges dropped against teen who tried to help lost kid in shopping mall [Lenore Skenazy, earlier]
- Two libertarians arrested after videotaping police in Greenfield, Mass. [Balko, earlier here and here]
- “‘Ambulance Chaser’ Lawsuits Hound Apple Over iPhone 4” [Atlantic Wire]
New York cop’s $80,000 bias award
The most curious element is not the alleged fight over a Scrabble game, but Sonya Glover’s allegation that she was retaliated against by being made to “perform heavy manual tasks normally assigned to males.” Isn’t there some sort of potential discrimination suit if tasks are normally assigned to males and a female employee is not asked to perform them? [NYDN]