“An engineer who fell asleep at the controls of a Metro-North train and caused a derailment that killed four people in New York City sued the railroad… saying its negligence and carelessness led to the accident” [CBS News, Westchester County, N.Y. Journal News] Related: New York Post (he gets pension).
Posts Tagged ‘transit’
September 14 roundup
- “Conviction Overturned In Case Of Rutgers Student Whose Roommate Committed Suicide After Being Secretly Filmed” [Mike Masnick, TechDirt; earlier on Dharun Ravi and the Tyler Clementi case generally]
- Report from Denver: “Threat of Lawsuits Crimps Condo Developments” [Chris Kirkham, WSJ]
- “California bans Civil War painting from county fair because it shows Confederate flag. Artist now suing the state.” [Jacob Gershman, WSJ Law Blog; Ken White, Popehat]
- Don’t make housing discrimination law a money tree for municipal government plaintiffs [Thaya Brook Knight and Ilya Shapiro on Cato amicus brief in Supreme Court case of Bank of America v. City of Miami; earlier on municipal suits against banks here, here, here, etc.]
- Federal court: bus company not responsible for what happened to its passenger after she alit in D.C.’s Union Station [Reyen v. Jones Lang Lasalle and Megabus]
- Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and eight GOP colleagues co-sponsor bill to transfer $490 million to United Mine Workers pension fund [Diana Furchtgott-Roth, WSJ]
Great moments in public employee unionism, cont’d
“Metro is fighting its largest union, which has sued to reinstate a tunnel fan inspector who was fired after last year’s L’Enfant Plaza smoke disaster for allegedly falsifying an inspection report and later lying about his actions.” The lethal smoke incident killed one rider “and injured dozens more.” [Martine Powers, Washington Post, earlier]
Great moments in public employee unionism
“A Metro worker blamed for falsifying records about the tunnel fans that failed during last year’s deadly smoke incident near L’Enfant Plaza has been granted his job back by an arbitration panel — and Metro’s largest union has just filed a lawsuit against Metro because the worker hasn’t been reinstated yet.” [WTOP]
Public employment roundup
- Union representing Seattle school cafeteria workers threatens church for giving free pizza to students [Shift WA, KOMO]
- Portland: “Police chief, police union urge officers not to attend citizen review panel hearings” [Oregonian] “The Most Inappropriate Comment from A Police Union Yet?” [Kate Levine, PrawfsBlawg; Tamir Rice case, Cleveland] “Maryland’s Police Union Rejects ‘Any and All’ Reforms” [Anthony Fisher, Reason back in January]
- On-the-job porn habit got Wheaton, Ill. cop fired, but if he nabs psychiatric disability, he’ll draw 65% of $87K+ salary with no income tax [Chicago Tribune]
- “Why TSA Lines Have Gotten So Much Longer” [Gary Leff, View from the Wing; Robert Poole, WSJ]
- Unions are biggest beneficiaries of Congress’s transit subsidy spigot. Time to apply terms and conditions [Steven Malanga]
- “HUD Can’t Fire Anyone Without Criminal Charges, Even Interns” [Luke Rosiak, Daily Caller] “Here’s Why It’s All But Impossible To Fire A Fed” [Kathryn Watson, Daily Caller]
Bringing the attorney ad right to the accident
From Baton Rouge reporter Brian Buffington on Twitter:
CATS bus, advertising for car crash lawyers, crashes into mid-city house.. pic.twitter.com/eesvXPoXCB
— BrettBuffingtonWBRZ (@BrettBuffington) April 14, 2016
Much more at Lowering the Bar, channeling WBRZ’s coverage.
Public employment roundup
- NYPD retiree “shared his happiness at scoring the disability pension, as well as his achievements running marathons” [New York Daily News]
- Scott Greenfield on public sector unionism and Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association [Simple Justice, earlier] Pending Illinois case raises issues parallel to Friedrichs [Cato podcast with lead plaintiff Mark Janus and attorney Jacob Huebert]
- San Diego voters tried to address public employee pension crisis, now state panel says doing things by ballot initiative violates obligation to bargain with unions [Scott Shackford, Reason]
- “Staten Island Ferry deckhand who has already pocketed $600K in job related injuries sues city for $45M” [New York Daily News]
- Detroit “firefighters were paid for 32-hour days….Numerous top-level fire officials signed off on the overtime.” [Motor City Muckraker]
- “Without public worker unions, who would lobby against making it a crime to strike a pedestrian with right of way?” [Josh Barro on NYC controversy]
- “Not Even a Criminal Referral to the Dept. of Justice Can Get You Fired From the VA” [Amanda Winkler, Reason]
“CTA pays $4.3 million in wrongful-death settlement”
The Chicago Transit Authority in September “approved a $4.3 million payment to the family of a Pilsen woman who in 2009 was killed by a hit-and-run driver and then struck again by a CTA bus following the car.” The driver who struck Martha Gonzalez in a pedestrian crosswalk sped off and was never caught; the bus driver who subsequently hit Gonzalez’s body, who has subsequently retired, was not issued a traffic ticket in the incident. [Chicago Tribune, September]
January 15 roundup
- Malheur standoff: here come the self-styled “citizens’ grand jury” hobbyists [Oregonian, my two cents on this branch of folk law, earlier]
- Your egg-flipping, coffee-guzzling grandma was right all along about nutrition, federal government now seems gradually to be conceding [Washington Post]
- “Obama’s State of the Union pledge to push for bipartisan redistricting reform was a late add” [L.A. Times, Politico, American Prospect, Todd Eberly on Twitter, some earlier takes here and here]
- More Charlie Hebdo retrospectives after a year [Anthony Fisher, Reason] Another bad year for blasphemers [Sarah McLaughlin, more] The magazine’s false friends [Andrew Stuttaford; hadn’t realized that departing NPR ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos, who so curiously compared the magazine’s contents to “hate speech unprotected by the Constitution,” has lately held “the James Madison Visiting Professorship on First Amendment Issues” at the Columbia School of Journalism]
- “The Ten Most Significant Class Action Cases of 2015” [Andrew Trask]
- More from Cato on Obama’s “mishmash” of executive orders on guns [Adam Bates, Tim Lynch, Emily Ekins]
- The “worst and most counter-productive legal complaint that’s been filed in a long, long time” [Barry Rascovar, Maryland Reporter on move by ACLU of Maryland/NAACP Legal Defense Fund to challenge as racially discriminatory the decision to cancel construction of a new Baltimore subway line]
“If it’s unwanted, it’s harassment”
Public service posters on the D.C. Metro proclaim the slogan “If it’s unwanted, it’s harassment,” which must have sounded good to someone but is entirely wrong as a legal matter [David Post]