Trial lawyers in Connecticut push a bill that would keep the medical malpractice statute of limitations from beginning to run until a plaintiff reaches age 21, a rule already in effect in many other states [Daniela Altimari, Hartford Courant] Background: Cheryl Harner, Gonzaga Law Review 2013.
Posts Tagged ‘statutes of limitations’
Crime and punishment roundup
- “Felony murder: why a teenager who didn’t kill anyone faces 55 years in jail” [Ed Pilkington, Guardian]
- Crime largely missing from urbanist discussion but might actually be more important than streetcars [Urbanophile]
- “So when you read ‘she pioneered the use of John Doe indictments to stop clock on statutes of limitation’, think about your alibi for 1983.” [@ClarkHat on Twitter]
- “Kern County, a jurisdiction with a long unfortunate history of putting the wrong people in prison” [Radley Balko, Glenn Reynolds/USA Today on People v. Efrain Velasco-Palacios]
- What did prisoners do to get locked up? [Robert VerBruggen/Real Clear Policy] Role of sentencing policy in growth of prison population [Dara Lind, Vox]
- In the United Kingdom, claims of mass ritual child abuse are back [Matthew Scott, Barrister Blog; Barbara Hewson, The Justice Gap]
- New York City bus drivers have a point: not every traffic injury implies a legal wrong [Scott Greenfield]
Update: suit claiming pancake credit falls flat
Update: Social Security still trying to collect decades-old parental debts
“The Social Security Administration, which announced in April that it would stop trying to collect debts from the children of people who were allegedly overpaid benefits decades ago, has continued to demand such payments and now defends that practice in court documents.” Robert Vogel, an attorney for clients whose refunds were seized, charges: “Their intention was to get the press off their backs and then go back to collecting their money. It’s just shocking that they believe that when someone turns 18, they automatically assume a crushing debt that was incurred by someone else.” [Marc Fisher, Washington Post; earlier here and here]
Statutes of limitation and the pancake box
The R.T. Davis Milling Co.’s Aunt Jemima brand of self-rising pancake mix was a big hit at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, thanks in part to the efforts of Nancy Green, the first of a series of women hired (after auditions) to promote the established brand, which had been named after a vaudeville tune of the day. (It is now owned by Pepsico’s Quaker Oats subsidiary.) Green’s popularity in the role won her a lifetime contract with the company which ended with her death in 1923, but now, reports the Louisville Courier-Journal]:
a lawsuit claims that Green’s heirs as well as the descendants of other black women who appeared as Aunt Jemima deserve $2 billion and a share of future revenue from sales of the popular brand.
If courts are to take statutes of limitation seriously, it is hard to see why such a suit does not deserve sanctions. If on the other hand courts are to begin ignoring statutes of limitation, Quaker might want to check into the packaging on its round box of breakfast oats, lest the heirs of William Penn (1644-1718) get any ideas. (& Debbi Baker, San Diego Union-Tribune; Amy Alkon, Advice Goddess)
And rights of the accused be damned
Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis wants to abolish the statute of limitations on sex assault charges [Scott Greenfield, Dallas News, Houston Chronicle]
Victory! Social Security suspends stale-debt collection program
Huge win for justice and good sense: facing a mounting public furor, “The Social Security Administration announced Monday that it will immediately cease efforts to collect on taxpayers’ debts to the government that are more than 10 years old.” [WaPo] Credit goes above all to the Washington Post and its reporter Marc Fisher for exposing the most outrageous features of the IRS’s refund-interception program last week, as recounted in this space; I like to think I helped as well by beating the drum early and repeatedly since then with Cato’s help. Overlawyered’s Facebook post on the subject has been seen by more than 60,000 people and shared more than 700 times in the past few days. (Have you liked us yet?)
The next step should be to establish for the public record how the provision in question got slipped into the farm bill, and at whose behest. Congress’s refusal to be forthcoming on this topic speaks volumes about its lack of a felt sense of responsibility toward the people it represents.
And a theme I’ve been repeating for almost as long as I’ve been writing about law: statutes of limitations developed in civilized legal systems for a reason. They protect us not only from cost, uncertainty, and the misery of legal process, but from injustice of a hundred other kinds, and they protect society itself from spiraling into a legal war of all against all. Stop trying to abolish them!
More: Ed Morrissey, Megan McArdle. And here’s a Cato podcast just out on the subject in which Caleb Brown interviews me on the topic:
Banking and finance roundup
- “You can’t prove that favoritism influenced FDIC” in going easy on brass at Chicago bank [Kevin Funnell]
- Securities and Exchange Commission won’t give up bid for more power in stale cases despite 9-0 SCOTUS loss [my new Cato Institute]
- Is JP Morgan paying an enforcement price for Dimon’s outspoken criticism of regulators? [Prof. Bainbridge; WSJ (reporting claims that “it took Mr. Dimon too long to shed a combative stance with regulators… In April the bank’s two top regulators told Mr. Dimon and his board that they had lost trust in management.”)] More on Standard & Poor’s claims that it was targeted for retaliation by federal government [Peter Henning, NYT DealBook, earlier]
- Judge rules against law passed by Chicago on bank-owned vacant buildings [Chicago Real Estate Daily]
- Post-merger derivative claims: “Delaware refuses to feed the sharks” [Bainbridge]
- Payday lending fight pits New York regulator against some Indian tribes [Funnell, Native American Financial Service Association]
- Stay on the line to learn more about the Verizon/Vodafone deal, or just press the star key to sue now [Daniel Fisher, Forbes]
June 28 roundup
- Record-setting tenure of bullying Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) “nothing to celebrate” [Dan Calabrese, Detroit News] Compare: “How to shut down a restaurant in Mexico” [Rob Beschizza]
- How far does discrimination law go? Bill Baldwin interviews John Donohue [Forbes, and thanks for further-reading link]
- Claim: bonding company responsible for actions of criminal after tracking failed [Insurance Journal, S.C.]
- Memo to California legislature: don’t abolish statute of limitation on abuse claims [Prof. Bainbridge]
- Here Come the Other “Happy Birthday” Lawsuits [Lowering the Bar, earlier]
- SCOTUS story someone should cover: Christian-right legal groups backed “right to advocate prostitution” brief in AID case [Volokh, earlier]
- “A TSA employee spotted [the beautiful jeweled lighter] and I swear his eyes lit up.” [David Henderson]
War — what is it good for?
If you’re the federal government, one thing it’s good for is to turn a losing claim — losing because filed too late — into a possible winner. It works through something called the Wartime Suspension of Limitations Act (WSLA), enacted by Congress in 1942 as the U.S. entered World War Two, and I explain it in this guest column for Jurist.