Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘Vermont’

“Five train wrecks of information disclosure law”

That was the title of the talk I gave Friday at a panel on food and product labeling law as part of a stimulating symposium put on by the Vermont Law Review at Vermont Law School in South Royalton, Vt. I drew on a number of different sources, but especially two relatively recent articles: Omri Ben-Shahar and Curt Schneider, “The Failure of Mandated Disclosure,” U. Penn. Law Review (2011), and Kesten C. Green and J. Scott Armstrong, “Evidence on the Effects of Mandatory Disclaimers in Advertising”, Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, Fall 2012. I was able to bring in examples ranging from patent marking law to Prop 65 in California to pharmaceutical patient package inserts, as well as the durable phenomenon of labels, disclosures, and disclaimers going unread even by very sophisticated consumers.

My talk was well received, and I think I might adapt and expand it in future into a full-length speech for audiences on failures of consumer protection law.

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Why New Jerseyans, Vermonters can’t enter NatGeo photo contest

Because, as the magazine explains, “Those states do not allow operation of a skill contest that requires an entry fee.” Which results in the following rather awesome disclaimer (via Petapixel):

CONTEST IS VOID IN CUBA, IRAN, NEW JERSEY, NORTH KOREA, THE PROVINCE OF QUEBEC, SUDAN, SYRIA, VERMONT AND WHERE PROHIBITED.

Rubbing it in a bit about the unfreedom, no?

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Sorry, locavores

We know you’re looking for small-scale, locally produced meat, but it’s been marginalized thanks to regulation among other causes:

The state [Vermont] has seven operating slaughterhouses, down from around 25 in the mid-1980s, [state meat inspection official Randy] Quenneville said. One is a state-inspected facility, meaning that meat inspected there cannot be sold over state lines. …

Mr. Quenneville said a number of small, family-owned slaughterhouses started closing when strict federal rules regarding health control went into effect in 1999.

Not entirely unrelatedly, here’s an article on underground restaurants in Boston, a trend that has spread from Portland, Ore.

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August 17 roundup

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January 12 roundup

  • Airline off the hook: “Couple drops lawsuit claiming United is liable for beating by drunken husband” [ABA Journal, earlier]
  • Why is seemingly every bill that moves through Congress these days given a silly sonorous name? To put opponents on the defensive? Should it do so? [Massie]
  • With police payouts in the lead, Chicago lays out more money in lawsuits than Los Angeles, Houston, Phoenix, Philadelphia, Dallas put together (but NYC still #1 by far) [Chicago Reader]
  • Who’s behind the website Asbestos.com? Bill Childs does some digging [TortsProf]
  • When not busy carrying out a mortgage fraud scheme from behind bars at a federal prison, inmate Montgomery Carl Akers is also a prolific filer of lawsuits, appeals and grievances [Doyle/McClatchy]
  • Alcohol policy expert Philip Cook on Amethyst Initiative (reducing drinking age) [guestblogging at Volokh]
  • Must Los Angeles put career criminals on public payroll as part of “anti-gang” efforts? [Patterico]
  • Some “local food” advocates have their differences with food-poisoning lawyer Bill Marler [BarfBlog, which, yes, is a food-poisoning policy blog]; Marler for his part is not impressed by uninjured Vermont inmates’ “entrails in the chicken” pro se suit [his blog; more from Bill Childs and in comments; update: judge dismisses suit]

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Update: Virginia high court on Miller-Jenkins

Toldjah so: The Virginia Supreme Court has unanimously ruled against Lisa Miller of Winchester, who has been ignoring a duly issued Vermont court order providing her former lesbian partner Janet Jenkins with rights of visitation to the child they had been raising together. Miller’s defiance of the law had been backed by Liberty Counsel, the ironically named pro bono group headed by the dean of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University School of Law, as well as other conservative religious figures such as Chuck Colson. Despite misreporting to the contrary in some quarters of the conservative press, the case had nothing to do with recognition of the former couple’s Vermont civil union, nor did it eventuate in an award of custody (as distinct from visitation) to Jenkins. (AP/Newport News Daily Press; Ed Brayton and more; our earlier coverage).

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Lost ski areas

There are more than 1,000 documented nationwide, including 113 in Vermont alone. The “1970s were hard times for operators of ski areas. There was an energy crisis, which not only cut down leisure driving by potential customers but saddled areas with higher energy prices. At the same time, liability insurance costs spiked. The histories of dozens of small ski areas end with the conclusion that it could not reopen one winter because the owners could not afford their insurance premiums.” (Bill Pennington, “Vermont’s Forgotten Trails and Frozen Lifts of Winters Past”, New York Times, Jan. 25).

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