I’ve now done a second post in Common Good’s symposium on education and fear of liability. Among the topics I discuss: assumption of risk, statutes of limitations, sovereign immunity, and the need for some more organized way of advocating the interests of public service entities against excessive or impractical liability demands. You can read it here.
Posts Tagged ‘statutes of limitations’
Great moments in litigation journalism
In the Harrisburg Patriot-News, Ivey DeJesus trumpets the views of a “leading legal expert,” specifically “one of the country’s leading church and state scholars” who says, contrary to a state lawmaker’s assertions, that there’s no constitutional problem with reopening lapsed statutes of limitations so as to enable child-abuse lawsuits by now-grown-up complainants. Prof. Marci Hamilton is indeed a well-known church-state scholar, and there is indeed precedent for the (perhaps strange) idea that courts will not necessarily strike down retroactive legislation as unconstitutional so long as its impacts are civil rather than criminal. But it’s not until paragraph 18 that DeJesus, after introducing the expert at length by way of her academic affiliations, bothers to add a perhaps equally relevant element of her biography: she has “represented scores of victims in the Philadelphia Archdiocese clergy sex abuse case.” Why bring that up?
Police and prosecution roundup
- “Once your life is inside a federal investigation, there is no space outside of it.” [Quinn Norton, The Atlantic]
- “Cops Detain 6-year-old for Walking Around Neighborhood (And It Gets Worse)” [Free-Range Kids] “Stop Criminalizing Parents who Let Their Kids Wait in the Car” [same]
- Time to rethink the continued erosion of statutes of limitations [Joel Cohen, Law.com; our post the other day on Gabelli v. SEC]
- “Are big-bank prosecutions following in the troubled footsteps of FCPA enforcement?” [Isaac Gorodetski, PoL]
- The “‘professional’ press approach to the criminal justice system serves police and prosecutors very well. They favor reporters who hew to it.” [Ken at Popehat]
- Scott Greenfield dissents from some common prescriptions on overcriminalization [Simple Justice]
- Anti-catnip educational video might be a parody [YouTube via Radley Balko]
- “Too Many Restrictions on Sex Offenders, or Too Few?” [NYT “Room for Debate”]
- Kyle Graham on overcharging [Non Curat Lex] “The Policeman’s Legal Digest / A Walk Through the Penal Laws of New York (1934)” [Graham, ConcurOp]
- “D.C. Council Proposes Pretty Decent Asset Forfeiture Reform” [John Ross, Reason] And the Institute for Justice reports on forfeiture controversies in Minnesota and Georgia.
- Does prison privatization entrench a pro-incarceration lobby? [Sasha Volokh, more]
Gabelli v. SEC: statute of limitations on alleged undiscovered fraud
Yesterday by a 9-0 vote the Supreme Court agreed with a Cato amicus brief that the Securities and Exchange Commission has no power to seek fines or penalties after the statute of limitations has expired on challenged conduct by arguing that it did not discover the conduct until recently. I’ve got a discussion at Cato at Liberty. (& SCOTUSBlog, which also hosts this opinion analysis by Jonathan Macey)
Prosecution and police roundup
- “‘Stand Your Ground’ task force offers no big changes to Florida law” [Orlando Sentinel, Tampa Bay Times]
- “Statutes of Limitations Apply Especially to Government Agencies” [Ilya Shapiro on Cato Institute amicus brief in Gabelli/SEC case] “The rule of lenity is violated when people go to prison for breaking ambiguous laws/regulations.” [Roger Marzulla, Federalist Society “Engage”]
- Sen. Rand Paul on the Missouri rabbit breeder case [Daily Caller]
- Mondale Act of 1974 (CAPTA) laid down basis for child abuse witch hunts [William Anderson, Agitator]
- Sententiousness vs. due process, plus a window into comments moderation at BoingBoing [Popehat] Background on State v. Fourtin [Gideon’s Trumpet first, second post]
- Massachusetts: “State’s Chemist Admits ‘Testing’ Drug Samples by Looking at Them” [Lowering the Bar]
- Plea bargaining: For Scott Greenfield, a showdown for justice at high noon turns into one of life’s little compromises [Simple Justice]
“French Demand Compensation for Plantagenet Murder”
The French town of Angers might be 500 or so years too late, though. It asks a bit hopefully for the British crown jewels as compensation. [Lowering the Bar]
July 14 roundup
- Does new Obama directive gut 1996 welfare reform law? [Mickey Kaus (“in 2008, Barack Obama didn’t dare suggest that he wanted to do what he has done today”), Bader]
- Ringling Bros. v. animal rights activists: court throws out champerty claim, allows racketeering claim to proceed [BLT]
- Iqbal, Twombly, and Lance Armstrong [DeadSpin, Howard Wasserman/Prawfs and more]
- Abuse claims: “Retain the statute of limitations” [New Jersey Law Journal editorial] Insurance costs squeeze NYC social services working with kids, elderly [NYDN]
- Court upholds sanctions vs. “staggering chutzpah” copyright lawyer Evan Stone [Paul Alan Levy, Eugene Volokh, earlier here and here]
- Court says board members of NYC apartment co-ops can be sued personally over alleged bias [Reuters]
- “FASB retreats from disastrous litigation disclosure requirement proposal” [Alison Frankel, Reuters via PoL, earlier]
December 30 roundup
- “Copyright troll Righthaven in its death throes, domain going up for auction” [Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing]
- Controversy over litigation finance continues [WaPo, NYPost]
- Presumably unrelated to above: “Unpaid Bills Land Some Debtors Behind Bars” [NPR]
- “Rent Control Violates Property Rights and Due Process” [Ilya Shapiro and Trevor Burrus, Cato, on Harmon v. Kimmel cert petition]
- Child abuse horrors result in dubious policy proposals including moves to abolish statutes of limitation, cast wider mandatory-reporting net [Howard Wasserman/PrawfsBlawg, Kyle Graham/Concurring Opinions]
- Schwab IRA class action settlement: lawyers get $500K while benefit to class is unclear [Lawrence Schonbron, Washington Times]
- “State Court Challenges to Legislatively Enacted Tort Reforms” [Andrew Cook and Emily Kelchen, Federalist Society “State Court Docket Watch”]
Texas deadline suit-filing, cont’d
After we passed along a recent report that Beaumont, Texas lawyers had filed 59 lawsuits the day before the state’s new “loser-pays” package of litigation reforms was to take effect, Texas attorney Brooks Schuelke responded on Twitter as follows (re-formatted and edited for clarity), saying that the issue wasn’t the loser-pays provision, but a separate “responsible third party” provision that set a malpractice trap for lawyers that delayed: “The responsible third party provisions allowed a defendant to name a party, and then plaintiff could join them even if the statute of limitations had expired. The law was changed to remove the ability to sue regardless of the statute of limitations. But defendant can’t name a party not disclosed in discovery. The amendment means we have to file suit long before the statute of limitations expires to send discovery asking defendant to name who it might name. So many cases nearing the statute of limitations had to be filed before the effective date of the change or else they could be victim to the amendment.”
Delayed action
White Coat sums up a recent jury verdict: “Obstetrician ordered to pay $3 million to patient born with cerebral palsy … 18 years ago.” The doctor, from Glens Falls, N.Y., “has $2 million in insurance coverage and may have to cover $1 million of the verdict himself,” according to the story. Statutes of limitations in medical malpractice actions are often “tolled” (suspended) until a child reaches the age of majority, so that it is by no means unheard-of for families to file suit a decade and a half after a medical occurrence.