- I’m in today’s NYT Book Review reviewing “Foundation,” Peter Ackroyd’s new book on English history up to the Tudors [NYT]
- Stanford Law School launches religious liberty clinic [Karen Sloan, NLJ] AALS panel on “The Freedom of the Church” [Rick Garnett, Prawfs]
- Party in breach, nasssty thief, we hates it forever: lawyer parses Hobbit’s Bilbo-dwarves contract [James Daily, Wired]
- To pay for roads, vehicle-mile fees > gas tax, but either > general sales tax, argues Randal O’Toole [Cato at Liberty]
- Steven Teles on the high cost of opaque, complex and indirect government action [New America via Reihan Salam]
- I’ve given a blurb to Mark White’s forthcoming nudging-back book on behavioral economics, “The Manipulation of Choice: Ethics and Libertarian Paternalism” [Amazon]
- “Internet-Use Disorder: The Newest Disability?” [Jon Hyman]
Posts Tagged ‘roads and streets’
“Motorcyclist who hit Florida panther sues state over warning system”
“The [Florida] DOT had hired TransCore months earlier to install a wildlife warning system along the stretch of eastern Collier County road, infamous for being deadly for the endangered wildcats, to test whether the system would reduce the number of collisions between panthers and vehicles. It didn’t help [motorcyclist Kenneth] Nolan,” who ran into a panther and is now suing over the consequent injury. [Eric Staats, Naples News via Julie Meadows-Keefe]
Claim: smart meter wi-fi caused ear infection
A local woman says wi-fi emanations from new “smart” parking meters in Santa Monica, Calif., have caused her various health injuries including tightness in her neck and an ear infection that took antibiotics to heal. She wants $1.7 billion: “I know it seems a little big,” [Denise] Barton said, “but they can’t do things that affect people’s health without their consent. I think that’s wrong.” [Santa Monica Daily Press, LAist]
December 12 roundup
- Liability suits bankrupt manufacturer of gasoline cans [Tulsa World]
- Faces life imprisonment: “Greece’s statistics chief faces criminal probe” for “not cooking the books” [FT via @OlafStorbeck]
- Man injured by runaway car can sue county on grounds bus shelter was built too close to street [Seattle Times]
- Title IX trips up track teams [Saving Sports: Delaware, West Virginia, Maryland]
- “‘Not gay enough’ softball players settle suit” [SF Chron]
- Now it’s the Obama administration that’s upset with ABA over ratings of judicial nominees [Whelan]
- Lawyer kiosks in UK newsstands [Knake, LEF] Lawyers open kiosk at Florida mall [ABA Journal]
Street signs, mandated in D.C.
I’ve got a new post at Cato at Liberty on a truly DoTty local mandate, and the contractors’ lobby that has been hoping to reap some of its benefits.
“Diane Schuler’s husband suing state, brother-in-law over wrong-way Taconic crash”
“Daniel Schuler, whose wife, Diane Schuler, killed herself and seven others in a wrong-way crash on the Taconic State Parkway is suing the state and his brother-in-law, whose three daughters were victims. Daniel Schuler filed a lawsuit Monday against the state in the New York Court of Claims, arguing that the highway was poorly designed and lacked proper signs.” [White Plains, N.Y. Journal-News] More on the catastrophic crash, which is the subject of a new HBO documentary by Liz Garbus: Bloomberg.
Update: “Judge Bars Woman From Suing Over Faulty Google Map”
“Finding that Google has no duty to provide accurate content on its website, a Utah judge has thrown out the novel case of a woman who claimed that faulty walking directions on Google Maps caused her to be hit by a car.” [OnPoint News, earlier here, etc.] The same post, updating another story we’ve noted, reports that a bill to make guidebook publishers liable for some injuries to tourists has died in the Hawaii legislature.
“Acrophobic bridge worker protected by ADA”
The Seventh Circuit said a bridge worker with fear of heights can proceed with his suit contending the Illinois Department of Transportation should have done more to accommodate his wish to work only on those bridge maintenance tasks that did not leave him in an overly exposed position. It also said a jury could reasonably find IDOT was improperly eager for the plaintiff to depart because it regarded him as “annoying” and because he had had frictions with other employees, as when he said of one co-worker, “Sometimes I would like to knock her teeth out.” [Pat Murphy, Lawyers USA; Joe Lustig; Miller v. IDOT, courtesy Law.com]
Little-used Pennsylvania ADA ramps
Federal design standards have changed, so many little-used ADA sidewalk ramps in Berks County, Pa. and elsewhere will be torn up at great expense and replaced with new little-used ramps. “The borough [of Lyons, Pa.] has only a few sidewalks — with most yards running right to the street — so the ramps generally lead to areas that would seem difficult for wheelchairs to cross.” [Reading Eagle, h/t Tad DeHaven] More: Chris Fountain.
Sidewalks, ADA suits, and attorneys’ fees
According to Todd Roberson at CJAC, a federal court’s ruling in a 14-year dispute over street curbs and sidewalks in Riverside, California has headed off a potential “avalanche of lawsuits.” U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner ruled the complainant in the case “had failed to demonstrate that Riverside as a whole is inaccessible to the disabled.”
Riverside’s City Attorney, Greg Priamos, was quoted in the Daily Journal saying the suit was “about money, not accessibility…The only hangup to a settlement earlier in the case was the amount of attorney’s fees. I’m offended by that.”