- The part of the Zyprexa story the New York Times didn’t tell you. [Point of Law; relatedly, Childs]
- 10-2 DC City Council vote: DC businesses who don’t want to hire a “rehabilitated” convicted sex offender to work with children (or DC residents who don’t want to rent a room to one) can now be sued for punitive damages. WaPo doesn’t think this worth mentioning in the newspaper. Thanks, Marion Barry, for making my Arlington condo worth more money! [Open Market blog]
- Of course, not all convicted sex offenders are equal, as the case of a 17-year-old who had consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old shows. That ten-year prison conviction (without parole) would have been a misdemeanor if he had just had intercourse and gotten her pregnant. [Bashman roundup; Volokh; Berman]
- Tradeoffs and scarcity: why medical safety isn’t as easy as it seems. [Point of Law; Kevin MD]
- Jury’s lack of smoking break not reason to undo death penalty. [AP/law.com]
- I know I stocked up on Sudafed when they changed the law. It’s worse for allergy sufferers with kids below 18. [WQAD; Fisher @ WaPo]
- Murnane on the judicial hellholes report. [Illinois Justice]
- Remember when those left-wing groups tell you about how profitable insurance companies are, and thus need more regulation? They somehow forget the most highly regulated category, Florida homeowners’ insurance. Which, not coincidentally, is high-priced, loses money, and increasingly taxpayer subsidized as private industry flees. [Risk Prof]
- “We’re trying to figure out what changes we can make, short of putting up signs saying, ‘Don’t put your baby through the X-ray machine.'” [LA Times]
- Blogger doc: $4M/breast is too high, even in Florida [Docsurg]
- No, a semicolon in your middle name doesn’t grant you magical legal properties. [Above the Law]
- Word limits and law school exams. [Above the Law]
- Milton Friedman and General Pinochet. [Reason]
- “This is the painful part,” he said. “Sometimes you do everything right in neurosurgery and the patient doesn’t do well.” No lawsuits in this story, just interesting medicine. [NYT]
- With only 17 “fascinating”s in 3.5 years, Overlawyered is more selective than Volokh or Prawfsblawg. [Still Angry]
- Overlawyered and Walter get a shout-out in an article about the top ten insurance cases of the year. [Mealey’s]
December 20 roundup
The part of the Zyprexa story the New York Times didn’t tell you. [Point of Law; relatedly, Childs] 10-2 DC City Council vote: DC businesses who don’t want to hire a “rehabilitated” convicted sex offender to work with children (or DC residents who don’t want to rent a room to one) can now be sued […]
7 Comments
The question of trade-offs in resident work hours is an interesting one. ACGME limited the number of hours to 80/week, but even that is averaged over a four week period. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I’m not convinced that marathon shifts yield a net benefit.
One thing that is perhaps missing from the scarcity question is that scarcity of residents is artificial – ACGME, as I understand it, regulates the number of available residencies. A classic case of rent-seeking?
Could we solve for at least one of the potential costs (scarcity) by removing this barrier to practice?
I cannot believe the police waste their time arresting Claritan D purchasers when there is real crime occurring! I also cannot believe that this offence is strict liability – I thought there were limits on what could be enforced with strict liability, at least to limit those laws to small matters (parking tickets) and obviously criminal endeavors (statutory rape). Unlike possessing a machine gun, I cannot believe that people should realize buying an extra pack of Claritan is a criminal matter.
Funny thing about the Sudafed laws. We passed them here in Michigan. So I can’t buy a box of cold medicine without showing ID and jumping through hoops.
But I *can* go right into a convenience store and buy a bottle of pure ephedrine without showing ID. The brilliant minds (including my own state rep) behind the Michigan law left a nice loophole for “asthma medicine” like ephedrine pills.
I’d offer to send some to you to help with your allergies, but that would probably make me a drug trafficker.
Overlawyered is spot on,too many lawyers.I am the one who got sick from product defect.I will NOT give the bastards 45% of mt settlement.
At a glance,zyprexa was promoted ‘off label’ to uses that weren’t FDA approved.This opens up a can of worms for patients like myself took it for PTSD for which it was ineffective and moreover gave me diabetes.
True,leaked documents don’t convey the ‘whole picture’ but what is compelling is that zyprexa is the 7th some say 5th largest drug sell in the world and Eli Lilly’s #1 drug sale by their own admission.
This is for a drug that won’t get you “high” cost $2.50 a pill and only indicated for less than 1% of the population.
Hello! Somebody in Lilly land is pushing zyprexa hard-Daniel Haszard
“obviously criminal endeavors (statutory rape)”
Be careful what you call “obvious”. REAL example: man at bar picks up woman at bar. She is drinking. She has an ID showing her to be 21. They go back to his place… and he is later arrested for statury rape, since she was only 15. “Obvious”?
As to the Claritin thing… Um, so if I and my wife both take it, then w each have to go to the stor and buy our own? And my children, too? How unbelievably psychotic.
Regarding the “Jury’s lack of smoking break not reason to undo death penalty” story. The Court’s opinion is actually even more interesting than how the press presented it.
First, the court states that there is no constitutionally protected class of jurors with a right to smoke. That makes sense.
But then the opinion goes on and claims that deliberating juries should never be allowed to smoke as they should never be separated from each other.
Now maybe the justices in the Ohio Supreme Court have never actually tried a jury case before, but I work as a clerk for a judge and believe me, the holding is ridiculous.
I think they have been watching too much TV. Courts do not put up jurors at hotels nor are jurors banned from going to the bathroom. They’re only deliberating when they are in the deliberation room and while in there they work at their own discretion.
In the real world, when people work on problems they take mental breaks to refresh themselves every so often, but supposedly in Ohio jurors are supposed to work straight through deliberations doing absolutely nothing else until a verdict is reached.
I’m damn glad I’m not a judge’s clerk in Ohio!
Re Florida homeowner’s insurance: Who’d a thunk there’d be a problem with insuring homes built on a big sandbar that gets hit frequently by hurricanes?