Matthew Heller of OnPoint News and AnnMarie McDonald of the New Jersey Lawsuit Reform Alliance have roundups on Hallowe’en litigation.
P.S. Also holiday-related: a Hallowe’en sighting of lawyers’ tongues [Robert Burns, Tam O’Shanter at Scots law blog Absolvitor via LEF]
Really, Washingtonians could do without a grandstanding politico type as chief city legal officer, argues Carter Wood at Point of Law.
A California court rules that attorneys who file unjustified suits aimed at speech or political activity can’t be made to pay the other side’s fees. If you’re a victim of such an action, you still might get lucky and collect from the client who instigated it. [Cal Attorneys Fees]
How Mayor Bloomberg’s Health Department decides how far to go in its food-scare advertising. [New York Times] I’ve got much more in a new post at Cato at Liberty.
P.S. Gothamist: “in the end, it was decided that going viral was more important than going accurate.”
Lenore Skenazy debunks the scare: there’s no evidence that any American child has ever been killed by poisoned candy from a stranger.
An “Only in America” story? Not this time: “A Brazilian court ruled this week that McDonald’s must pay a former franchise manager $17,500 because he gained 65 pounds while working there for a dozen years.” [AP/USA Today] More: Lowering the Bar.
“Citing cases dating back as far as 1928, a judge has ruled that a young girl accused of running down an elderly woman while racing a bicycle with training wheels on a Manhattan sidewalk two years ago can be sued for negligence.” [New York Times] Earlier: suit against 8 year old skier in Colorado. More: Eugene Volokh and Eric Turkewitz on the legal background.
Many employers find the practice helpfully predictive, but the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is stepping up pressure against it. [WSJ Law Blog, Hyman]
Katherine Mangu-Ward at Reason “Hit and Run” provides two snapshots of the continuing damage being done by the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008, including the rage-and-despair reaction of Rick Woldenberg (AmendTheCPSIA.com), who says that the new regulations “will jack up Learning Resources’ annual compliance costs to $15 million, FAR in excess of our profits. We have no Plan B — so we are trying to get a new government.” And a commenter points to the “Criticism” and (very partial) “List of Companies Whose Closure Is Linked To CPSIA” sections of the Wikipedia entry.
Related: “Not available because of the CPSIA“: wood-and-beeswax Selecta Spielzeug Rhonda dollhouse dining room, formerly imported from Germany. Why pay a whopping testing bill to clear an innocuous product that’s at best going to sell modestly on this side of the Atlantic? [EuroToyShop.com]