Posts Tagged ‘third party liability for crime’

May 24 roundup

  • Not the theater’s fault, says a Colorado jury, rejecting Aurora massacre suit [ABA Journal, earlier here, here, and here, related here, etc.]
  • Senate GOP could have cut off funds for HUD’s social-engineer-the-suburbs power grab, AFFH. So why’d they arrange instead to spare it? [Paul Mirengoff/PowerLine, more, earlier] Related: federal judge Denise Cote denies motion to challenge supposed speech obligations of Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino under consent decree with HUD [Center for Individual Rights; earlier here, here, etc.]
  • “Earnhardt Family Fighting Over Whether One Earnhardt Son Can Use His Own Last Name” [Timothy Geigner, TechDirt]
  • Freddie Gray charges, bad new laws on pay, the state’s stake in world trade, armored vehicles for cops, bar chart baselines that don’t start at zero, and more in my latest Maryland policy roundup [Free State Notes]
  • “You can be fined for not calling people ‘ze’ or ‘hir,’ if that’s the pronoun they demand that you use” [Eugene Volokh on NYC human rights commission guidance]
  • Despite potential for schadenfreude, please refrain from taxing university endowments [John McGinnis]

Banking and finance roundup

  • Federal judge refuses to dismiss suit against prosecutor Preet Bharara, FBI agents by hedge funder David Ganek over treatment in now-dismissed Chiasson inside trading case [Peter Henning, New York Times “DealBook”; Business Insider] SEC agrees to return $21.5 million extracted from Ganek’s Level Global Investors [BNA via Ira Stoll]
  • CFPB follies: “Government-Directed Lending Comes to America” [Ike Brannon, Cato] Agency casts its eye on marketplace, otherwise known as peer-to-peer, lending [Thaya Brook Knight, Cato]
  • SEC inspector general sides with agency against allegations of undue sway over ALJs [Reuters, earlier here, here, etc.]
  • Third party liability for crime: “HSBC Sued Over Drug Cartel Murders After Laundering Probe” [Bloomberg]
  • Former Ally Bank CEO: administration extorted race-lending settlement by threatening to derail regulatory approvals [Paul Sperry/New York Post, more]
  • Bellevue, Wash.: $213,000 award to complainant Leticia Lucero “could mean other cases where homeowners argue lenders [cause] emotional distress during negotiations.” [AP/Yakima Herald]

Restaurant found 55 percent responsible, actual attackers 45 percent

Adventures in negligent security: “A Southern California jury awarded $40 million to the parents of a man who was stabbed to death in a TGI Friday’s restaurant. The panel found [last month] that the restaurant’s operator was 55 percent responsible for the January 2009 death at a TGI Friday’s in Riverside.” The attackers, who “pleaded guilty to assault with a deadly weapon” and were sentenced to three and four years in prison respectively, “were found to be 45 percent responsible.” [Orange County Register]

Great moments in blame: prisoner cellphone access

Prison inmate orders attack on guard at guard’s home in Bishopville, South Carolina. Surviving guard Robert Johnson and wife “did not, however, sue the typical defendants – i.e., the shooter or any prison inmate or employee. Rather, the Johnsons sued several cellular phone service providers and owners of cell phone towers. According to the Johnsons, these defendants are liable for Mr. Johnson’s injuries because they were aware that their services facilitated the illegal use of cellphones by prison inmates and yet failed to take steps to curb that use.” [Fourth Circuit opinion in Johnson v. American Towers LLC, et al., affirming district court’s dismissal of claim on the merits]

“Slain basketball player’s family files suit against Dallas ISD”

“The mother of slain Wilmer Hutchins basketball star Troy Causey Jr. has filed a federal lawsuit alleging that illegal recruiting practices at Dallas ISD schools led to her son’s death a year ago. … [She] alleges that coaches visited her 18-year-old son while he was in custody at Dallas County Youth Village during an eight-month stint there following an assault arrest and convinced him to play basketball.” Subsequently, Causey died after a beating at his residence, and a roommate who also played basketball for another Dallas school was charged with manslaughter in the case. Lawyers for the mother, Tammy Simpson, said school sports officials had helped place many players in such private living arrangements and should have known they were dangerous. [WFAA]

Schools roundup

  • Many states have liberalized rules on family homeschooling, now comes the backlash from proponents of tighter regulation [NY Times]
  • Kansas Supreme Court decrees higher school spending, estimated taxpayer cost upwards of $500 million [Greg Weiner, Law and Liberty, Wichita Eagle; earlier] After all, judicially directed school munificence worked so well in nearby Kansas City, Missouri [via @David_Boaz]
  • Scaring ourselves to death: the insanity of school active shooter drills [Radley Balko]
  • University of Virginia’s resistance to assault hoax weaker than Duke’s, possibly because pressure on skeptics to shut up has intensified [KC Johnson/Stuart Taylor, Jr./Real Clear Politics] Hans Bader on curious provisions of feds’ settlement with Harvard [Examiner, earlier]
  • “Oklahoma court declines to order [high school] football game replayed for blown call” [Paul Cassell, more]
  • Ohio judge rules principals, superintendent open to being sued personally over school shooting [Insurance Journal]
  • “Wow. How fun is this? A merry go round welded stationary. So kids don’t get hurt. Way to go, New York!” [Lenore Skenazy]

Judge allows case to proceed arguing that mass theater shooting was foreseeable

A federal judge has declined to award summary judgment to Cinemark Holdings against a claim that it should have foreseen a madman’s mass shooting rampage at its Aurora, Colo. theater two years ago. [Deadline Hollywood] Ken White at Popehat corrects some media misapprehension about the difference between a summary judgment motion and disposition of the merits, but as a commenter points out, much of the practical damage is indeed done when a judge declines summary judgment in such a case, since the defendant then faces not only the substantial cost of trial but also the unpredictability of a jury faced with very sympathetic plaintiffs and a deep-pocket defendant; there is nothing either unusual or untraditional about judges’ averting these costs by ruling out particular liability theories as a matter of law.

More from Scott Greenfield: “The biggest growth job in America will be armed guard. … A theater showing a movie, even a Batman movie at midnight, is not a crazy killer magnet such that Cinemark could have possibly anticipated what would happen…. The law shouldn’t impose a duty that suggests otherwise.”

August 13 roundup

  • Texas jury awards $27 million against McDonald’s in negligent security case [Bloomberg]
  • NYC cop sues after being acquitted on rape charges, and from the difference in coverage between the NY Daily News and Slate, you might not realize it was the same case;
  • “Obamacare was no inartful compromise; it was a brutal cramdown.” [Michael Greve, Law and Liberty, on Halbig]
  • American Tort Reform Foundation nominations of “judicial hellholes” this year include Louisiana, South Florida and NYC [Abnormal Use]
  • Antitrust’s awful academics [Tom Bowden, Ayn Rand Institute]
  • New York Assembly Speaker Silver “earned up to $750,000 in 2013 working a few hours per week” at prominent tort firm [NY Daily News]
  • Europe: Gardeners with sit-on lawnmowers face buying motor insurance [Telegraph]

Torts roundup

  • Celebrated as the “most insane amusement park ever,” New Jersey’s notorious Action Park reopens, minus some of its most extreme hazards [National Post]
  • Insurance industry study finds attorneys getting into higher share of auto crash claims [IJ]
  • Medical monitoring cases, once seen as wave of future, have not fared well in court [Steven Boranian, DDL]
  • “Florida high court’s irrational ‘rational basis’ rejection of state tort reform undermines Rule of Law” [William W. Large, Washington Legal Foundation]
  • For a sense of where tort pressure is being felt, list of litigation groups at AAJ (including newly formed groups) often provides clues;
  • Los Angeles jury finds team partly liable in $14 million negligent security award for man beaten in Dodger Stadium parking lot [AP]
  • “Perhaps this is the first of a wave of hose-entanglement cases” [Lowering the Bar, Louisiana]