- Golfer’s ball bounces off yardage marker and hits him in eye, and he sues; not the Florida case we blogged last month, this one took place in New Hampshire [Manchester Union-Leader]
- Who needs democracy, much easier just to let the Litigation Lobby run things: elected Illinois lawmakers keep enacting limits on med-mal awards, but trial-lawyer-friendly Illinois Supreme Court keeps striking them down, third round pending at the moment [Peoria Journal-Star, Alton Telegraph, Illinois Times, Reality Medicine (ISMS)]
- “A sword-wielding, parent-killing psychopath can be such a help around the house.” [we have funny commenters]
- Brooklyn lawyer Steven Rondos, charged with particularly horrendous looting of incapacitated clients’ estates [earlier], said to have served the New York State Bar Association “as vice president of its guardianship committee” [NYPost]
- Updated annals of public employee tenure: Connecticut state lawyer who assumed bogus identity to write letter that got her boss fired drew a $1000 fine as well as a reprimand — and then got a raise [Jon Lender/Hartford Courant and more, earlier here and here]
- Judge Bobby DeLaughter indicted and arraigned as new chapter of Dickie Scruggs judicial-corruption story gets under way in Mississippi; Tim Balducci and Steve Patterson, central figures in Scruggs I, each draw 2-year sentences [NMC/Folo and more, more, YallPolitics, more, earlier on Balducci, DeLaughter]
- Disney “Tower of Terror” ride not therapeutic for all patrons: British woman sues saying she suffered heart attack and stroke after riding it several times [AP]
- Convicted of torching his farm, Manitoba man sues his insurance company for not making good on policy [five years ago on Overlawyered]
Posts Tagged ‘public employment’
Denied post as legal writing professor, sues
Teresa Wagner claims the University of Iowa Law School denied her the appointment because of her conservative views. (TaxProf, WSJ Law Blog, Somin @ Volokh).
Fat is the New Black
Progressive members of the City Council of Binghamton New York have expanded the boundaries of civil rights in their fair city to include protection for citizens on the basis of sexual orientation, nothing shocking in a university town. What is surprising is that the law also protects Binghamton citizens from discrimination in employment, housing, education, and public accommodation on the basis of height and weight. Presumably in the future, Binghamton bean poles will have to yield to their shorter peers for slots on basketball teams, and the horizontally expansive will be able to demand wider doors and sturdier seats in restaurants and shops.
According to the law’s chief proponent, Binghamton Council member Sean Massey, it is a “sad fact” that a law protecting the undertall or the overweight is necessary, and even if it isn’t, “It’s simply the right thing to do. … It is the human thing to do.”
While it’s not at all clear to me, from a simple google search, that Binghamton was experiencing a tide of discrimination against the short, the tall, the fat, or the cadaverous before the passage of this law, it’s also unclear how this law will in fact promote its author’s vision of Harrison Bergeronlike equality of outcome for people of nonstandard body configuration. Will morbidly obese firemen be able to sue the city for discrimination if they are not provided assistance in climbing ladders and carrying victims? Will students whose body mass makes them unappealing by conventional standards of good looks now demand appointment as homecoming kings and queens on the ground that they are denied a fair shot in student elections? And how, exactly, will the city determine that someone was denied housing on the basis of height or weight? While one assumes that signs reading “Fat people need not apply” are being removed from apartments all over Binghamton, apart from that what does this accomplish, other than making the Binghamton City Council feel good? Gannett: “Council Passes Rights Law”, Weekly Standard: “The Politics of Fat”, thanks to dispatches from TJICistan for the pointer.
Annals of public employee tenure, cont’d
Assume a false identity and file a bogus misconduct complaint that gets your boss fired. Claim whistleblower protection and transfer to a nice job in another department. When the imposture is discovered, the state won’t be able to do more than slap your wrist. That’s been the happy experience of a lawyer with Connecticut’s state ethics bureau (!) in a case provoking considerable, though apparently futile, outrage in the Nutmeg State. (Point of Law, Nov. 25; Dan Schwartz, Nov. 17).
Welcome New York Post readers
I’m quoted in a sidebar about colorful or long-shot employment litigation, and mention the Rachael Ray anorexic employee suit and the Milwaukee cop who got disability for the stress of being fired over roughing up a suspect. On the latter case, by the way, rather than saying that the cop’s disability payments continue “to this day”, I should have used a phrase like “at last report”. (Brian Moore, “Tort Stories”, New York Post, Nov. 3; revised slightly to clarify final point).
October 21 roundup
- Hey, that Jon Bon Jovi baseball anthem sounds familiar, make the check out for $400 billion please [Boston Herald]
- Cyrus Sanai, known for dogged campaign against Judge Kozinski, is back with a new 80-page complaint which also names “10 other district court and 9th Circuit judges who have been assigned to his family’s case at one time or another.” [NLJ]
- More on English “no barbed wire on allotments” rules: “I am replacing the glass in the windows of my house with tissue paper, so that burglars — poor lambs — will not cut themselves while breaking and entering.” [Dalrymple, City Journal]
- Ethical alarms should go off when criminal defense lawyers’ marketing hints at insider pull or former-prosecutor clout [Greenfield]
- Annals of public employee tenure: firing a cop in Chicago sure isn’t easy [TalkLeft, FOI files on Gerald Callahan and William Cozzi cases at Chicago Justice Project]
- Gigantic government database of cellphone users planned for U.K. [Massie]
- Babies only, please: Nebraska backs off from its dump-a-teen “safe haven” parental abandonment law [Althouse, earlier]
- Some Israelis may be overly cheery in welcoming presumed benefits of consumer class actions [Karlsgodt citing Jerusalem Post editorial]
After Setting Fires, Firefighter Wants Job Back
In 1997, Erie, Pa. hired its first female firefighter. Nearly a decade later, she was quietly fired after setting fire to her father’s house as part of a suicide attempt. In fact, the Erie Civil Service Commission wrote at the time that: “Her setting a fire … is the single most significant act a fire fighter may not commit. The act of establishing a fire in a residence is wholly incompatible with the role of the fire fighter, despite the mitigating circumstances of [her] psychological state.” Now, she has brought her appeal public in a filing in local courts earlier this year. (GoErie.com, 3/24)
Is It In the Job Description?
And you thought you had a tough day at work.
Apparently, that pales in comparison to the day that one undercover cop had from Texas. His job was so rough, he claims that he had to have sex with a prostitute during a sting operation. Unfortunately for him, his superiors didn’t think it was required. After being suspended, he’s brought suit challenging his discipline. At trial, here is his, ahem, money quote: “If you are asking if I had an orgasm, yes. It was a job, sir,” the cop said. “I didn’t have pleasure doing this. I was paid to do it.” (Beaumont Enterprise, 8/21)
Great moments in public employee tenure
“Early in his career, officials found that Lieutenant [William] White had planted white powder on a suspect in a drug arrest, which cost him his job — though he won it back with the help of the police union.” White, who has headed the narcotics squad in the New Haven, Ct. police force, is now at the center of a widening corruption scandal. (Jennifer Medina, “For Connecticut Officer Charged With Theft, a Career of Ups and Downs”, New York Times, Mar. 15; “Bail set at $2 million for New Haven officer caught in sting”, AP/WTNH, Mar. 14; Mary E. O’Leary, “Ortiz: More arrests likely” (bail bonds angle), New Haven Register, Mar. 15).
Cop who snatched body part wins reinstatement
Annals of public employee tenure, this time from Norwalk, Ct.: “The city will not appeal a state Labor Department ruling to reinstate police Officer Liam Callahan, a nine-year veteran fired last fall for taking a skull fragment from the scene of a May 2005 accident. ‘The laws in the state are such that it’s extremely difficult to overturn a ruling,’ Deputy Corporation Counsel Jeffry Spahr said yesterday after discussing the matter in executive session with the Norwalk Police Commission.” According to numerous press reports, co-workers of Callahan’s said he planned to use the skull fragment as an ashtray. An investigation concluded that Callahan’s statement after being confronted that he had intended to return the fragment was not credible. (Created Things (Jeff Hall), Jan. 16; Brian Lockhart, “City officer in skull-fragment case reinstated”, Stamford Advocate, Oct. 24). And on the sued-if-you-do, sued-if-you-don’t front, note well: “Callahan and the city still face a civil lawsuit from [victim Alfred] Caviola’s family.” Unless Callahan personally turns out to provide a deep pocket, it appears the longsuffering taxpayers of Norwalk may find themselves on the hook for who knows what sort of payout — juries in other cases have expressed outrage at mishandling of decedents’ remains — even as the city is unable to sever the actual perpetrator of the act from its payroll.