By reader acclaim: great moments in “targeted disabilities”

The federal government is seeking applicants who are mentally ill, mentally retarded or both to work as lawyers in the Justice Department. Specifically, a job announcement for “up to 10 experienced attorneys for the position of Trial Attorney in the Voting Section in Washington, D.C.” contains the following language:

The Civil Rights Division encourages qualified applicants with targeted disabilities to apply. Targeted disabilities are deafness, blindness, missing extremities, partial or complete paralysis, convulsive disorder, mental retardation, mental illness, severe distortion of limbs and/or spine. Applicants who meet the qualification requirements and are able to perform the essential functions of the position with or without reasonable accommodation are encouraged to identify targeted disabilities in response to the questions in the Avue application system seeking that information.

[via Eugene Volokh and many others]

Filed under: disabled rights, public employment

NYC’s unfireable “rubber room” teachers

How bad do these stories get? This bad. More: Radley Balko on a Hoboken cop; and commenter VMS criticizes the linked New York Post report.

Filed under: New Jersey, NYC, police, public employment, teacher tenure

Pension costs, litigation bankrupt a Southern town

Prichard, Alabama can’t seem to get any luck. [Mobile Press-Register]

Filed under: Alabama, public employment, taxpayers

Around the web, September 16

Online game purveyor Evony threatens to sue UK critic in Australian court [GameSetWatch, Ken at Popehat, Patrick at Popehat]
106: number of (counted) cases filed since 2005 that blame errant grapes for slip-fall injuries [ABA Journal]
Bayonne, N.J.: “Connolly suing county for $1M over job switch” [Jersey Journal; background (city councilman took six months off from job as coordinator of 9/11 emergency call center; “doctors won’t let him go back because it’s too stressful.”)]
“Lessons from Andrew Sullivan’s pot bust” [Sullum, Reason] More: Patrick at Popehat.
“The Appraisal Debacle: How Not to Regulate” [Jack Guttentag, Yahoo Finance, via Fountain]
Bizarre: “Paralegal Guilty in Fake-Libel-Suit Scam That Briefly Won $3M” [ABA Journal]
Idea for immigration reform: “Let the smart people in”. [Farhad Manjoo, Slate, via Alkon] More: “Free the H-1Bs, free the economy” [Vivek Wadhwa, TechCrunch]
Academic finds that depending on whom you ask, “It’s not about the money” or maybe it is [Relis, SSRN/Pittsburgh 2007, via Burch, Mass Tort Lit]

Filed under: Australia, food safety, forum shopping, immigration law, libel slander and defamation, mortgages, New Jersey, not about the money, public employment, slip and fall, videogames

“Author of Racist Email About Gates Sues to Keep His Job”

We haven’t weighed in on the Henry Louis Gates vs. Cambridge police affair, but it looks as if at least one really choice employment-law suit is going to come out of it. [WSJ Law Blog, Boston Globe]. The cop, Justin Barrett, is suing for intentional infliction of emotional distress, among other harms. Elie Mystal, Above the Law: “I. Just. Love. America.“

Filed under: Boston, police, public employment

Canadian guards: securing border is too stressful

Most of the 37 guards who work at the Cornwall Island, Ontario border crossing have notes from doctors saying that tensions arising from relations with the local Mohawk Indian tribe make it too stressful to work there and could result in harmful health effects. [CanWest/Vancouver Sun]

Filed under: Canada, public employment

June 16 roundup

Legal hazards of beachcombing: “Keeping bald eagle feather could result in a $100,000 fine and year in prison” [BoingBoing; our Sept. 1999 post]
“E.U. Condemns America’s Online Gambling Crackdown” [Sullum, Reason “Hit and Run”]
Much-loved Stockton, Calif. eatery Chuck’s Hamburgers is menaced by ADA serial litigator, and friends rally to save it [Stockton Record, 4000-member Facebook group]
Doomed AF Flight 447 had multiple connections with France (airline, aircraft maker) and Brazil (takeoff, many passengers’ nationality), so of course some American lawyers are hoping to get resulting suits heard in U.S. courts [Bloomberg]
Sure takes a lot of lawyering to bring a movie like “Bruno” to the screen [Althouse, WSJ Law Blog, Legal Ethics Forum]
Form vs. substance: U.K. historic-preservation edict saves increasingly impractical Victorian bell frames, at expense of 650-year-old bell ringing tradition [Telegraph via Never Yet Melted]
All in a day’s (double) work: take city retirement or even disability, then come back in second job [Al Tompkins, Lowell (Mass.) Sun]
Can it be? In just about another two weeks your favorite source of legal consternation will turn ten years old [nine years and eleven months or so ago on Overlawyered]

Filed under: ADA filing mills, aviation, endangered species, forum shopping, gambling, historic preservation, public employment, United Kingdom

April 20 roundup

Boy fatally shoots stepbrother at home, mom sues school district as well as shooter’s family [Seattle Post-Intelligencer]
Problem gambler sues Ontario lottery for C$3.5 billion [Toronto Star]
Cop declines training in which he’d be given Taser shock, and sues [Indianapolis Star]
Ultra-litigious inmate Jonathan Lee Riches scrawls new complaint linking Bernard Madoff, Britney Spears [Kevin LaCroix]
Just to read this update feels like an invasion of privacy: “Judge to Hear Challenge to $6M Herpes Case Award” [On Point News, earlier]
“Best criminal strategy: join the Spokane police” [Coyote Blog] More: Greenfield, Brayton.
Will mommy-bloggers be held liable for freebie product reviews? [Emily Friedman, ABC News, earlier]
Update: “Fifth Circuit says no bail for Paul Minor” [Freeland]

Filed under: advertising, Canada, Federal Trade Commission, Indiana, Jonathan Lee Riches, lottery, Paul Minor, police, public employment, schools, Washington state

Chicago: Parks worker overhears woman spanking her nephew in bathroom

Before you click the link, guess: who wins the $200,000? Was your guess right? Were other guesses just as plausible? And where does race fit in?

More: Coyote (“Here is a real journalistic triumph — the story of a multi-party conflict in which I immediately dislike absolutely everyone in the story on all sides of the conflict, up to and including the jury and the third parties quoted.”) And Scott Greenfield.

Filed under: Chicago, discrimination law, public employment, sued if you do, taxpayers

Fit for a foot chase?

Dismissing a police officer for being out of shape is one thing, making it stick in court is another.

Filed under: Nebraska, obesity, police, public employment