Ben Sheffner at Copyrights & Campaigns, Michael Krauss at Point of Law and Karen Sloan at the NLJ have details on a pro se suit filed by University of Miami lawprof Donald Marvin Jones.
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Chronicling the high cost of our legal System
Chronicling the high cost of our legal system
When you hear a judge praised for his literary skill in writing opinions, remember the fate of Carrie Buck [Terry Teachout]
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Yet another interesting food that may never be the same following a safety crackdown, in this case by the Los Angeles health department [L.A. Times via Katherine Mangu-Ward, Crispy on the Outside]
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- American Federation of Teachers backs off earlier aggressive trademark stance against critical website [AFT Exposed via Ron Coleman, earlier]
- Unintended but ever-so-predictable consequence of cash-for-clunkers: cheap used cars now a lot less cheap [Coyote]
- Strange that Pat Robertson doesn’t seem to know hate-crime laws cover crimes motivated by religious bias [Neiwert]
- Court rules against New York law firm’s debt collection practices [ABA Journal]
- Trouble amid the Lamborghinis: rumors swirl of financial defalcations at prominent south Florida law firm [WSJ Law Blog and more]
- Ohio: “Man dressed as a Breathalyzer for Halloween is arrested for DUI” [Obscure Store]
- Blawg star Mark Herrmann (Drug & Device Law) writes a brief in Supreme Court case on (unrelated) topic of prosecutorial immunity for misconduct [Scott Greenfield]
- Administration’s task force on medical liability reform meets amid signs it won’t accomplish much [Wood, ShopFloor; related, Stanley Goldfarb/Weekly Standard]
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Seems to pass for
acceptable practice in Massachusetts. [Jennifer
Levitz, WSJ, via Amy Alkon,
who by the way has a new book coming out momentarily called I See Rude People -- for the benefit of the FTC,
I should say I've neither seen nor requested a free copy.]
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Tampa: “When medical malpractice lawyer Michael J. Trentalange asked St. Joseph’s Hospital for every ‘adverse incident’ report made since the hospital opened in 1934, the hospital pushed back hard. In July, the hospital sued him, and Trentalange sued right back, the Web site Health News Florida reported.” (AP/Sarasota Herald Tribune via White Coat).
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[Bumped Monday a.m. for readers who missed it over the weekend]
The piece appears in the
business section of Saturday’s Times, and it’s a perfectly good one as far
as it goes. It starts off with a wooden toy maker in Ogunquit, Maine, who estimates that
it would cost him $30,000 to secure testing for the 80 items he makes, using such
materials as maple, walnut oil and local beeswax. It touches on the strains between large
and small manufacturers, 
as
well as the thrift-store and vintage-book angles. Overall, it’s really not a bad
piece of its sort.
Aside from its timing, that is. The Times has now gotten around to covering some of the
harm done by this law ten
months after the Washington Post and other media had begun
reporting the basic outlines of the story; nine and a
half months after a furor had built to national proportions, prompting both
members of Congress and the CPSC to hurry out supposed clarifications; nine months after
hundreds of bloggers were on the case, the law’s effects on thrift stores were making headlines
from coast to coast, and the Times’s continuing failure to report on the law’s
effects had commentators noting its “weird blind spot”
on the issue; eight
and a half months after a deeply clueless
Times editorial assailed
critics of the law who 
“foment needless
fears that the law could injure smaller enterprises like libraries, resale shops and
handmade toy businesses”; seven and
a half months after protests by minibike
dealers began drawing wide national coverage; seven months
after critics rallied on Capitol Hill, and the Washington Post joined
in reporting on the law’s dire
effects on vintage (pre-1985) kids’
books; and so on to the present.
Okay, so the Times was — well, not a day late and a dollar short, but more like 300 days late and many billions of dollars in overlooked costs short. Still, let’s be grateful: the paper’s news side has now implicitly rebuked the editorial side’s fantastic, ideologically blinkered dismissal of “needless fears that the law could injure smaller enterprises”. And the Times’s belated acknowledgment of the story can serve as permission for other sectors of the media dependent on Times coverage — including some magazines and network news departments — to acknowledge at last the legitimacy of the story and begin according serious attention to the continuing CPSIA calamity. When they do, they will find much to catch up on. (& welcome Handmade Toy Alliance, Chris Fountain readers)
PUBLIC DOMAIN IMAGE from Ethel Everett, illustrator, Nursery Rhymes (1900), courtesy ChildrensLibrary.org.
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- Worst, most dangerous legal trend of the moment: trial lawyers continue big Capitol Hill push to overturn Supreme Court’s valuable Iqbal and Twombly decisions on lawsuit procedure [Point of Law and more, Thomas Dupree/WLF, Beck & Herrmann and more, earlier]
- Lawyers rush to courthouse to beat deadline for new Oklahoma limits on liability suits [Tulsa World]
- Spokesman for Attorney General Jerry Brown admits he’s taped reporter conversations without their consent, seeming violation of California law [SF Chronicle]
- UK: motorist could face prosecution for splashing kids by driving through puddle, at what she says was kids’ request [BoingBoing]
- “Is the pay czar unconstitutional?” [Bainbridge on McConnell, WSJ; Ribstein on link to PCAOB case]
- More “deceptively named fruity cereal” suits in California [Lowering the Bar ("I still think this is like claiming emotional distress because you just learned 'The Hobbit' isn't a true story,") Ken at Popehat ("Froot of the Poisonous Tree of Litigiousness"), earlier here, here, here, here, etc.]
- A city of stool pigeons: Chicago to pay those who inform on tax cheats [NBC Chicago]
- Ill-fated stint as pole dancer leads to lawsuit against Arizona bar [Above the Law]
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Don Boudreaux has some thoughts on that. [Cafe Hayek]
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One is co-written by Alan Lange of YallPolitics blogging fame. [Freeland] More: Joe Palazzolo, “Scruggs Prosecutor Writes Tell-All Book”, Main Justice.
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The House of Lords will back its long-overdue abolition. [Guardian]
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Hallowe’en legal humor [Carbolic Smoke Ball]
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And now police have charged mom with a felony. [AP/Hartford Courant]
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Commentary’s Jennifer Rubin
notices:
A friend points out a little nugget of absurdity and political mendacity in the Pelosi health-care bill. Remember Obama’s effort to try a “test” for tort reform? (We don’t actually need a test, since it has worked to lower medical malpractice coverage and help increase access to doctors in states that have tried it.) Well, Pelosi’s bill has an anti-tort-reform measure. On pages 1431-1433 of the 1990-page spellbinder, there is a financial incentive for states to try “alternative medical liability laws.” But look — you don’t get the incentive if you have a law that would “limit attorneys’ fees or impose caps on damages.”
In other words, Congress is providing a financial incentive to uncap damages. Marvelous.
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Concern is raised over bisphenol-A (BPA) in printed cash register receipts [Gordon Gibb, Lawsuits and Settlements] Adds reader Rogers Turner: “Brilliant…what does almost every single person in the U.S. touch multiple times a day?”
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A Sacramento jury has told a radio station to pay $16.6M in the “Hold your wee for a Wii” contest death [Radio Online, earlier here; via Bill Childs, TortsProf].
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Boston lawyers recall a very strange sexual harassment lawsuit in which the defendant’s CEO “wore a different Halloween costume to each day of his [six-day] deposition”. [Zach Lowe, AmLaw Daily]
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Point
of Law- Schwab
v. Reilly Overview
I have thrown together a few thoughts about the Schwab v. Reilly case, which will be argued before the Supreme Court tomorrow, over at PrawfsBlawg. This case could have significant ramifications for how consumer debtors claim exemptions in bankruptcy and... […]
S. Todd Brown
- Apropos
Philadelphia trial lawyers
In the anti-Chevron movie, "Crude," New York trial lawyer Steven Donziger brings an Ecuadorian attorney and an activist to Philadelphia to meet with Joe Kohn of Kohn, Swift and Graf, the firm financing the litigation. They're there to make the... […]
Carter Wood
- A
most important election Tuesday: Pennsylvania Supreme Court
Updated and reorganized at 12:53 p.m.: The outcome of Tuesday's election in Pennsylvania will determine the philosophical balance of the seven-member state Supreme Court. Two Superior Court judges are challenging one another: Joan Orie Melvin, Republican endorsed, versus Democrat-endorsed Jack... […]
Carter Wood
- Smoking
bans and overnight cardiac improvements
The federal government isn't playing straight with the evidence, charges Jacob Sullum.... […]
Walter Olson
- Blawg Review #236
Is on a Hallowe'en theme, at Eric Turkewitz's.... […]
Walter Olson
- Schwab
v. Reilly Overview
-
Volokh
- IJ’s
Bone Marrow Case: History of NOTA
Yesterday, I sketched the legal theory behind the Institute for Justice’s challenge to the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984 in which our clients seek to strike down the provision that makes it a serious crime to compensate bone marrow donors. Today, I’d like to explain the history of NOTA and why the inclusion of bone marrow in the statute i […]
jeffrowes
- An
Advance in Criminal Law Theory
“A throng of naked people with jack-o-lanterns on their heads is, by definition, an alarming sight, Chief Beckner says. Therefore, it’s illegal.” UPDATE: On a serious note, Chief Beckner threatened to arrest harmless naked Halloween revelers as sex offenders, which is no laughing matter, an abuse of authority, and should be grounds for his dismissal. […]
David Bernstein
- Reply
to Farrell, Part n
Henry Farrell replies to my replies. International Law and Rational Choice Theory. I agree with Henry’s discussion of the limits of rational choice theory and so don’t understand why he thinks I commit the fallacies that he describes. It would be one thing if I said that states’ compliance with treaty X is consistent with rational [...] […]
Eric Posner
- Law
Professor Sues Above The Law
Ben Sheffner has the story, with legal analysis, over at Copyrights & Campaigns. […]
Orin Kerr
- Jones
v. Harris Blog Symposium
The Conglomerate is hosting an interesting blog symposium about Jones v. Harris, a Supreme Court case argued today. The Question Presented: Whether a shareholder’s claim that the fund’s investment adviser breached its fiduciary duty by charging an excessive fee – more than twice the fee it charged to funds with which it was not [...] […]
Orin Kerr
- IJ’s
Bone Marrow Case: History of NOTA