- Driver on narcotic painkillers crashes car, lawyer says pharmacists liable [Las Vegas Review-Journal]
- Who’s that cyber-chasing the Buffalo Continental Air crash? Could it be noted San Francisco-based plaintiff’s firm Lieff Cabraser? [Turkewitz]
- Axl Rose no fan of former Guns N’ Roses bandmate or his royalty-seeking attorneys [Reuters]
- Cheese shop owner speaks out against punitive tariff on Roquefort, now due to take effect April 23 [video at Reason “Hit and Run”, earlier]
- Too many cops and too many lawsuits in city schools, says Errol Louis [NY Daily News]
- Law professor and prominent blogger Ann Althouse is getting married — to one of her commenters. Congratulations! [her blog, Greenfield] Kalim Kassam wonders when we can look forward to the Meg Ryan film “You’ve Got Blog Comments”.
- “Louisiana panel recommends paying fees of wrongfully accused Dr. Anna Pou” (charged in deaths of patients during Hurricane Katrina) [NMissCommentor]
- U.K.: “Privacy Group Wants To Shut Down Google Street View” [Mashable]
Posts Tagged ‘schools’
CPSIA Blog Day #5: “Laptop for every child” campaign
You guessed it: hitting a CPSIA snag (Digital Journal).
Expelled from Miss Porter’s — but it was the Oprichniki’s fault
The family of Tatum Bass of South Carolina has filed a federal lawsuit over her dismissal from Miss Porter’s, the all-girls private school in Farmington, Connecticut. The suit “acknowledges that Bass was suspended from school this fall for cheating on a test. But the lawsuit contends that Bass only cheated because she was frazzled by” belittlement and bullying from a clique of other girls who are said to have called themselves the “Oprichniki,” after the secret police in czarist Russia. (Vanessa de la Torre, “Miss Porter’s School Sued Over Expulsion”, Hartford Courant, Dec. 10).
Peanut allergies
Lively discussion of the policy aspects by commenters at Volokh (Nov. 11).
November 10 roundup
- Time for another aspirin: Harvard Law’s Charles Ogletree, key backer of lawsuits for slave reparations, mentioned as possible Attorney General [CBS News, BostonChannel WCVB, Newsweek; earlier speculation about post as civil rights chief]
- Calif. law requires supervisors to attend sexual harassment prevention training, a/k/a sensitivity training, but UC Irvine biologist Alexander McPherson says he’ll face suspension rather than submit [AP/FoxNews.com, On the Record (UCI), Morrissey, Inside Higher Ed, OC Register; ScienceBlogs’ Thus Spake Zuska flays him]
- Fan “not entitled to a permanent injunction requiring American Idol singer Clay Aiken to endorse her unauthorized biography” [Feral Child]
- Local authority in U.K. orders employees not to use Latin phrases such as bona fide, e.g., ad lib, et cetera, i.e., inter alia, per se, quid pro quo, vice versa “and even via” [via — uh-oh — Zincavage and Feral Child]
- Participants in 10th annual Boulder, Colo. Naked Pumpkin Run may have to register as sex offenders [Daily Camera, Obscure Store]
- Joins drunk in car as his passenger, then after crash collects $5 million from restaurant where he drank [AP/WBZ Boston, 99 Restaurant chain]
- Election may be over, but candidates’ defamation lawsuits against each other over linger on [Above the Law, NLJ]
- School nutrition regs endanger bake sales, but they’ll let you have “Healthy Hallowe’en Vegetable Platter” instead [NY Times]
“Community service”? Yep, mandatory (Update: they’ve revised)
Well, that didn’t take long. Coyote spots language on the Obama transition site that seems to make explicit what was left studiously vague during the campaign:
Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year.
Update 12:15 a.m. Saturday: After my post was linked by Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit (thanks!) and began drawing thousands of visitors, the Obama website administrators at change.gov silently replaced the “require” language with something new and different:
Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by setting a goal that all middle school and high school students do 50 hours of community service a year and by developing a plan so that all college students who conduct 100 hours of community service receive a universal and fully refundable tax credit ensuring that the first $4,000 of their college education is completely free.
Robert Bidinotto noted the switch and Mike LaSalle saved the original page as a PDF for those who didn’t see it the first time. Glenn Reynolds did a second post taking note of the substitution and quoting the witty comment of reader Nancy Anne Potts: “Looks like the change.gov site is true to its title – it changes!” More: Acre of Independence. Update Monday: transition yanks entire “Agenda” from web, this section and others.
“‘Bong Hits 4 Jesus’ student nets $45,000”
“The Juneau-Douglas (Alaska) School District and former student Joseph Frederick have reached a settlement in the ‘Bong Hits 4 Jesus’ case …. The school district will pay Frederick $45,000, [and] it is ‘required to hire a neutral constitutional law expert to chair a forum on student speech’ at its high school at a cost of up to $5,000.” (DRJ @ Patterico, Nov. 6; earlier).
P.S. And, yes, to clarify in response to commenter Melvin, the student lost his high-profile case last year before the U.S. Supreme Court. Imagine what the school would have had to pay if he’d won.
Anonymous school-bullying snitchline
The innovation might itself prove to be quite an effective weapon for use in tormenting hapless victims (Feral Child, Oct. 14; Ki Mae Heussner, “Calling Out Bullies Incognito: New Site Lets Students Report Bullying, Harassment Anonymously”, ABC News, Oct. 16; more on snitchlines here, here, and here).
September 29 roundup
- Watch where you click: “Kentucky (secretly) commandeers world’s most popular gambling sites” [The Register/OUT-LAW]
- Erin Brockovich enlists as pitchwoman for NYC tort firm Weitz & Luxenberg [PoL roundup]
- U.K.: “Millionaire Claims Ghosts Caused Him to Flee His Mortgage, I Mean Mansion” [Lowering the Bar]
- Prosecution of Lori Drew (MySpace imposture followed by victim’s suicide) a “case study in overcriminalization” [Andrew Grossman, Heritage; earlier; some other resources on overcriminalization here, here, and here]
- Exonerated Marine plans to sue Rep. John Murtha for defamation [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]
- Snooping on jurors’ online profiles? “Everything is fair game” since “this is war”, says one jury consultant [L.A. Times; earlier]
- Allentown, Pa. attorney John Karoly, known for police-brutality suits, indicted on charges of forging will to obtain large chunk of his brother’s estate; “Charged with the same offenses are J.P. Karoly, 28, who is John Karoly’s son, and John J. Shane, 72, who has served as an expert medical witness in some of John Karoly’s cases.” [Express-Times, AP, Legal Intelligencer]
- School safety: “What do the teachers think they might do with the Hula-Hoop, choke on it?” [Betsy Hart, Chicago Sun-Times/Common Good]
September 17 roundup
- Jones Day catching more flak over heavy-handed trademark lawsuit against BlockShopper real estate news service [Levy/CL&P, Ambrogi/Legal Blog Watch, earlier; more, EFF, Plain Dealer]
- California state bar ethics complaint against serial ADA lawyer Thomas Frankovich, mostly over Jarek Molski cases [ABA Journal]
- When suing your community college professor, it’s not a good idea to include death threats [KSAT, Strange in San Antonio]
- Australia: school bans cartwheels, handstands on playground [Oz-ABC via Common Good]
- Myron Levin, whose L.A. Times journalism was known to induce hair-pulling at this site, turns up among plaintiffs in Joe Cotchett lawsuit seeking to eject Chicago meanie Sam Zell from paper’s ownership; and did you know co-plaintiff Henry Weinstein’s a founding faculty member of Chemerinsky’s new ideologically charged UC Irvine law school? [Editor & Publisher Fitz and Jen, Portfolio, PaidContent.org via Class Action Blawg; Forbes]
- Well-known Manhattan criminal defense lawyer arrested on charges of trying to “eliminate” and “neutralize” witnesses against drug dealer client [NYLJ, Greenfield]
- More coverage of Pearson pants appeal [Legal Times “BLT”]
- Swiping Nicole Black’s content and running it without credit on a splog is an ill-advised way to boost NYC services of attorney Michael Rehm [Sui Generis, Greenfield, viaTweet @nikiblack]
- Update on Barnstable harbor dredging blogger defamation suit [Cape Cod Today, earlier]
- “Ten things your lawyer won’t tell you” [five years ago on Overlawyered]