- “Farm Free Or Die! Maine Towns Rebel Against Food Rules” [NPR on “food sovereignty” ordinances]
- “How much sense does it make for Detroit to be worrying people will open restaurants without enough parking?” [@mattyglesias]
- Report: undercover cop co-wrote anti-McDonald’s leaflet that resulted in famous UK libel suit [Guardian]
- Quizzed on food policy, post-Bloomberg NYC mayoral hopefuls offer many bad ideas; Republican John Catsimatidis, grocer, proposes regs “that would require new buildings to rent to grocery stores.” [Edible Geography]
- Spontaneous consumer discontent over labeling? No, lawyer-driven: consortium of law firms has sued more than 30 food cos. in single federal court [WLF]
- Private GMO labeling a wave of the future? [Baylen Linnekin]
- “Eight toxic foods: a little chemical education” [Derek Lowe, Corante “Pipeline”, schooling BuzzFeed]
- Obamacare calorie-count display mandate likely to curb menu variety [Liz Thatcher, RCP, earlier]
Archive for July, 2013
Texas steakhouse “known for letting patrons throw peanut shells on the floor”
Now a slip and fall litigant wants a million dollars from the Harlingen, Tex. eatery. [AP/El Paso Times]
“UC Davis Pepper Spray Cop Seeks Workers’ Comp”
“A former University of California, Davis police officer who was fired after pepper spraying a group of students staging a protest in 2011, and whose actions went viral on the internet, is seeking workers’ compensation settlement, claiming the incident left him psychologically injured.” [ABC News]
July 27 roundup
- Authorities arrest woman they say obtained $480,000 by falsely claiming injury from Boston Marathon bombing [CNN]
- More on the buddy system by which Louisiana officials pick private-practice pals for contingency contracts [WWL, The Hayride, Melissa Landry/La. Record; earlier on levee district’s new megasuit against oil industry]
- “Why would the President meet with the IRS chief counsel rather than his own counsel at OLC, and without the IRS commissioner present?” [Paul Caron, TaxProf] “The IRS as microcosm”: government lawyers lean left politically [Anderson, Witnesseth]
- California county lead paint recoupment case finally reaches trial, judge jawbones defendants to settle [Mercury-News, Chamber-backed Legal NewsLine]
- The insanity of film production local incentives, Georgia edition [Coyote]
- Questioning NYT’s underexplained “Goldman aluminum warehouse scam” tale [Yglesias, Stoll, Biz Insider]
- Yes, government in the U.S. does do some things to accommodate Islam, now don’t get bent out of shape about it [Volokh]
Imagine what a genuine malfunction might have cost
The bogus Toyota sudden-acceleration scandal, fed by credulous media and hungry lawyers, has now cost the Japanese automaker upwards of one billion dollars on paper in settlements, despite the lack of an actual mechanical basis for the claims. (The “on paper” is a necessary qualifier because class action settlements typically fall short of transferring the actual sums declared) Yet many more lawsuits remain unsettled, including one nearing trial alleging that the automaker was negligent in not installing a system that cuts off accelerator power when the brake pedal is depressed. Whatever their value as a gesture of reassurance, such systems are of no help whatsoever in the actual sudden-acceleration accidents that typically make it to court, in which drivers mistakenly believe themselves to be pressing the brake when their foot is actually on the accelerator. [L.A. Times, whose coverage as usual disappoints]
P.S. National Law Journal coverage of pending trial:
“The heart of the mass tort was always the electronic throttle control. The fact that the first trial is going and not bringing that theory is interesting,” said Byron Stier, a professor at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles who specializes in mass tort litigation. “Look how far that is from the original panic of this.”
After an error is pointed out…
…the New Republic corrects its Zimmerman piece in a way that preserves its misleadingness. [Michelle Meyer, Faculty Lounge]
P.S. Before proceeding to scrub the error entirely after it had begun to attract widespread attention. [Meyer update] Latest, and presumably last, update: TNR has now added a correction that does address the three points and regrets the error. [Adler]
EU considers harmonizing class action rules
The various member countries have very different traditions as to “collective redress” of legal claims, and while some have liberalized the procedures recently, none is anywhere near as liberal as the United States in permitting lawyers to assert class actions. That’s not going to change, according to Monique Goyens, director general of the European consumer organisation BEUC, which has pushed for new collective redress rules: “The key safeguards against exorbitant awards are in place. So we are not importing US class actions.” [Euractiv] More specifically:
The safeguards include swiftly ending unfounded cases and avoiding national systems where lawyers’ fees are calculated as a percentage of the compensation awarded, like current systems in the US and, to a lesser extent, in some European countries. The Commission also advises countries to avoid punitive measures, inflicted on top of actual damage and compensation for victims.
Maybe one of these days we could get some of those safeguards over here.
Law schools roundup
- “How To Fix Law School” symposium at New Republic with David Lat, Paul Campos, Mike Kinsley etc. follows up on Noam Scheiber article on erosion of BigLaw business model, which in turn drew semi-rebuttal from Mark Obbie at Slate;
- “So the poor defendants have to spend thousands on legal fees, while law students get their ‘practice.'” [John Stossel]
- Brian Tamanaha vs. Simkovic and McIntyre “law degree worth a million bucks” study [Balkinization, response here, Adler, Caron]
- Amid crisis, tone-deaf ABA “actually in the process of trying to make it harder for accredited law schools to fire professors and control their costs” [Elie Mystal]
- Foundation case studies include Carnegie 1921 report on legal education, Olin support for law and economics, and some others related to law schools [J. Scott Kohler and Steven Schindler, Philanthropy Central]
- “Shifts in law professors’ views” [Kyle Graham]
- Bring on the strong verbs, and not just in legal writing [Ross Guberman] In recent Nike shoe case, Chief Justice Roberts wrote rings round Justice Kennedy [same]
Scant state interest in rolling back Stand Your Ground
Although Eric Holder, Barack Obama and a long list of liberal publications and organizations have lately pressed the cause, states recognizing “stand your ground” principles of self-defense show little inclination to overturn them [Annie Yu, Washington Times last week, quoting me; AP] “The substantial majority view among the states, by a 31-19 margin, is no duty to retreat.” [Eugene Volokh] Barack Obama’s voting record on related issues in the Illinois state senate may surprise some readers [Jacob Sullum, who has been giving the issue thorough coverage] “Blacks benefit from Florida ‘Stand Your Ground’ law at disproportionate rate” [Patrick Howley, Daily Caller] Some more thoughts from Mark Bennett at Defending People. Bonus: what it’s like to be mounted in a fistfight (alleging that bare hands and feet have been responsible for 4,028 deaths since 2007, more than rifles and shotguns combined).
Apple loses e-book antitrust ruling
After taking it on the chin in a lengthy opinion by federal district judge Denise Cote, “Apple may be more cautious about entering into other markets with the same zeal.” [Macworld] George Priest, distinguished antitrust specialist at Yale, isn’t on board with the action against Apple: “When firms come up with new pricing schemes that force other companies to adopt new schemes, that’s a good thing” [Daniel Fisher, Forbes] Nor is Geoffrey Manne, who points out that authors have expressed alarm at the prospect of seeing the e-book market thrown back into Amazon’s hands. Ira Stoll wonders whether a presumption is being created that outsider firms should denounce incumbent monopolies to the government rather than disrupt them through vigorous market entry, while Wayne Crews says that by finding a clear Sherman Act violation, the government is merely showing how useless the law is. A different view from Bill Dyer: “Apple is going to have a very tough row to hoe on appeal.”