- “Get Ready to Reclassify Workers Under Forthcoming FLSA Regs” [Stephen Miller, SHRM] Won’t be pretty: how Obama overtime edict will affect retail and restaurant sectors of economy [National Retail Federation]
- Measuring worker compensation: fringe benefits and stagnating wages [David Henderson and Arnold Kling]
- “FedEx Settles Independent Contractor Mislabeling Case For $228 Million” [Robert Wood, Forbes]
- “LA’s Minimum Wake Hike: A Teaching Moment For Those Trying To Help The Underprivileged” [Brian Doherty, Reason]
- “The Faces of $15?: Real stories of the real consequences of raising the minimum wage” [Employment Policies Institute via Mark Perry, AEI; Steve Chapman]
- Connecticut doesn’t have enough wage and hour litigation, so its legislature passes bill to double damages [Daniel Schwartz]
- Using the minimum wage to stimulate the economy “like trying to get rich by picking your own pocket” [Megan McArdle]
Posts Tagged ‘Connecticut’
Schools roundup
- Following student complaints, Northwestern Prof. Laura Kipnis investigated by her university over an essay she wrote on campus sexual politics [Jonathan Adler and more, Chronicle of Higher Ed (Kipnis cleared amid nationwide furor), Glenn Reynolds] Flashback: How NPR, the Center for Public Integrity, and federal officials fueled the campus sex assault panic [Christina Hoff Sommers, The Daily Beast, January] Harvard lawprof Janet Halley, who battles for rights of Title IX accused, is anything but conservative [Harvard Crimson] “The pretense of ‘neutrality’ … has its roots in privilege.” Popehat’s wicked satire of academia looks so real;
- Throwing Skittles on a school bus = “interference with an educational facility” [Louisiana, Lowering the Bar]
- To reduce stigma, or so it’s said, Maryland will serve free school breakfast and summer meals to more children whether they’re poor or not. Why cook for your kids when the state will do it? [my Free State Notes post]
- Will high school football still be around in 2035? “Iowa Jury Awards Injured Ex-High School Football Player $1M” [Insurance Journal]
- “Maryland’s ‘free range’ parents cleared of neglect in one case” [Washington Post, earlier]
- St. Paul, MN schools in recent years embraced latest progressive nostrums on discipline, mainstreaming, cultural difference. Results have not been happy [Susan Du, City Pages]
- “Two-Thirds of Risk Managers Say Frats Are Major Liability” [Inside Higher Ed] California trend spreads as Connecticut Senate passes affirmative consent bill for college disciplinary policies [West Hartford News/CT News Junkie]
Now, doctor, prepare to defend your actions in 1992
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.
Lawmaker seeks ban on home-insurance “breed discrimination”
Home insurance companies often charge higher premiums to homeowners whose breeds of dog have a bad loss experience, and that practice is unfair and even “ridiculous,” thinks Connecticut lawmaker Brenda Kupchick (R-Fairfield). If “breed discrimination” is banned, and insurers instead pass the uncovered losses on to owners of other dog breeds or policyholders generally, that would not be unfair or ridiculous, right? [AP/Insurance Journal; David Moran, Hartford Courant (reg)]
Great moments in foreseeability
“Kid Throws A Cinderblock Off Balcony, And Landlord May Be Liable” [Daniel Fisher, Forbes, on Connecticut Supreme Court’s ruling in Ruiz v. Victory Properties “that a landlord may be liable for allowing a 10-year-old to throw an 18-pound cinderblock from the balcony of his mother’s apartment … [because] the landlord should have known the construction materials and other junk laying around behind the building could become deadly missiles in the hands of a child.”]
February 19 roundup
- Sheldon Silver’s law firm reportedly loses its special status in courts [New York Post] “Ex-congresswoman could get payout from court tied to Silver” [same; former Rep. Carolyn McCarthy]
- “High School Teacher With Fear of Young Children Loses Disability-Bias Case” [EdWeek, h/t @aaronworthing]
- “Worth remembering that, if they had the power in the 1980s, the public health lobby would have forced us to eat a diet they now say is bad.” [Christopher Snowdon, earlier]
- Numbers confirm that AG Eric Holder’s forfeiture reform won’t directly affect great majority of cases [Institute for Justice via Jacob Sullum, earlier]
- Despite curiously thin evidence that they work, bans on texting while driving roll on, including Mississippi [Steve Wilson, Watchdog, thanks for quote, earlier here, etc.] Draft Ohio bill has numerous troubling features, including broad bar on future technologies, vague distraction ban, stiffer penalties without judicial discretion, mandatory court dates for minor offenses [Maggie Thurber, Ohio Watchdog, thanks for quote]
- Cop’s defense in sex assault of teen: he “[had] money problems and a bad guy scared [him]” [Trumbull, Ct.; Scott Greenfield, Connecticut Post]
- “Dance like no one is watching; email like it may one day be read aloud in a deposition.” [Olivia Nuzzi]
Suit seeks to blame Newtown school massacre on gun suppliers
The new lawsuit by the prominent Connecticut personal-injury firm of Koskoff, Koskoff, and Bieder [news coverage: WSJ Law Blog, CNN] seeks to get around the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act by latching on to the law’s narrow exception for “negligent entrustment.” That’s not a reasonable reading of the law, and I argue in a new post at Cato at Liberty that courts should toss attempts like these to revive gun control through litigation, all the more so because legislative attempts to overturn PLCAA (as I discussed last year) are rightfully going nowhere.
Some out there seem to think it’s okay to use litigation as a way of lashing out against opponents, whether by way of a winning case or not:
Newtown families sue gunmaker for massacre http://t.co/ZmbbAqd0lL good for them even tho may be dismd at least they take a swing at them
— Danny Wash (@danwash) December 15, 2014
More: “The Sandy Hook Families’ Lawsuit Against Bushmaster Will Fail. Here’s Why.” [Bob Adams, Bearing Arms] And Eugene Volokh’s analysis breaks down the provisions of PLCAA and its interaction with the specifics of Connecticut law, concluding that “unless there is some evidence that the defendant manufacturers and gun sellers in this case violated some specific gun regulations (judgments actually made by legislatures), plaintiffs’ claim will go nowhere — and rightly so, I think.” Yet more: Steve Chapman.
California’s workers’ comp system by far the nation’s costliest
And purported reforms in 2012 didn’t help. Connecticut’s is second most expensive. [Insurance Journal]
Disabled rights roundup
- Willingness of Connecticut courts to order accommodation of mental disorders is not limitless, as in case of “dazed and confused” teacher who “frequently reported to the wrong school or for the wrong class” [Chris Engler at Dan Schwartz’s Connecticut Employment Law Blog; Langello v. West Haven Board of Education]
- “‘Seinfeld’ diner sued for not being handicap-friendly” [NY Post] Florida lawyers descend on New Jersey to file ADA suits [N.J. Civil Justice Institute]
- “Plaintiffs want to expand lawsuit against Disney for how it treats guests with autism” [Orlando Sentinel]
- It’s “sad that we need a federal appellate court to remind us” that ADA’s protection of alcoholism does not actually immunize worker fired after repeatedly driving municipal employer’s vehicles drunk [Jon Hyman, Ohio Employer Law Blog]
- “Employers beware: EEOC appears to be stepping up disability discrimination enforcement” [Hyman] EEOC sues Wal-Mart over firing of intellectually disabled employee [Rockford Register-Star, EEOC]
- Nice crowd your ADA racket attracts, California [Modesto Bee]
- Argument: Employers that use “emotional intelligence” measurement in evaluating job applicants may be violating ADA rights of those with autism [Michael John Carley, HuffPo]
Can the forfeiture train be slowed?
In Philadelphia, the city has seized a widow’s home and car for forfeiture after her son was nabbed on charges of selling pot [Inquirer] “Minneapolis police plan to keep $200,000 seized in a raid of a tobacco shop, even though they didn’t find any evidence to merit criminal charges. Meanwhile, a former Michigan town police chief awaits trial on embezzlement and racketeering charges for allegedly using drug forfeiture money to buy pot, prostitutes and a tanning bed for his wife.” [Radley Balko] Nebraska cops seize nearly $50,000 from a Wisconsin man driving from Colorado, “a known source state for marijuana,” but a court orders it returned [same]. Connecticut police use forfeiture proceeds “to buy new police dogs, undercover vehicles, technology, fitness equipment — and to pay for travel to events around the country.” [New Haven Register]
More: Half-forgotten history of how the feds pushed the states to embrace forfeiture [Eapen Thampy, Forfeiture Reform] And for once good news: “Rand Paul introduces bill to reform civil asset forfeiture” [Balko again] And: Rep. Tim Walberg introduces a bill on the House side; video of Heritage panel today with Balko, Walberg and IJ’s Scott Bullock, Andrew Kloster of Heritage moderating.