- Metro-North train crash spurs calls for mandatory crash-prevention devices. Think twice [Steve Chapman]
- BP sues attorney Mikal Watts [Insurance Journal] Exaggerated Gulf-spill claims as a business ethics issue [Legal NewsLine]
- Pot-war fan: “Freedom also means the right not to be subjected to a product I consider immoral” [one of several Baltimore Sun letters to the editor in reaction to my piece on marijuana legalization, and Gregory Kline’s response]
- Aaron Powell, The Humble Case for Liberty [Libertarianism.org]
- Allegation: lawprof borrowed a lot of his expert witness report from Wikipedia [Above the Law]
- Frivolous “sovereign citizen” lawsuits on rise in southern Jersey [New Jersey Law Journal, earlier]
- Star of Hitchcock avian thriller had filed legal malpractice action: “Tippi Hedren wins $1.5 million in bird-related law suit” [Telegraph]
Archive for December, 2013
Health and safety regulators vs. Danish pastry
Two of my enduring interests — excessive government regulation and the quest for truly scrumptious cinnamon buns — intersect here in a single story from Denmark. [Guardian]:
…scientists have now discovered that too much of the most commonly used type of cinnamon, cassia, can cause liver damage thanks to high levels of coumarin, a natural ingredient found in the spice.
The EU has accordingly decreed that coumarin levels must be kept below 50 mg per kg in “traditional” or “seasonal” foodstuffs eaten only occasionally, and 15 mg per kg in everyday “fine baked goods.”
Last month, the Danish food authority ruled that the nation’s famous cinnamon swirls were neither traditional nor seasonal, thus limiting the quantity of cinnamon that bakers are allowed to use, placing the pastry at risk – and sparking a national outcry that could be dubbed the great Danish bake strop.
The president of the Danish Bakers’ Association, Hardy Christensen, said: “We’ve been making bread and cakes with cinnamon for 200 years. Then suddenly the government says these pastries are not traditional? I have been a baker for 43 years and never come across anything like this – it’s crazy. Using lower amounts of the spice will change the distinctive flavour and produce less tasty pastries. Normally, we do as we’re told by the government and say OK, but now it’s time to take a stand. Enough is enough.”
Meanwhile: Anonymous informant shuts down school bus cookie lady in Minneapolis suburb of Chanhassen, Minn. [MPR, AP]
Mayor Bloomberg, in valedictory, warns of “labor-electoral complex”
The phrase “evoked the ‘military-industrial complex’ about which President Dwight Eisenhower famously warned the nation in a speech days before he left office in 1961.” [Times-Union]
“NYC Council Bans Public Vaping…”
“…Because It Looks Too Much Like Smoking.” The invention and rapid spread in popularity of e-cigarettes might be seen as a sort of lab experiment to test the proposition: when you banned smoking, were you mostly concerned about the spillover effects on third parties or mostly being paternalistic toward tobacco users? [Jacob Sullum, Reason]
Drunk driver will recover $6.6 million from two Pennsylvania bars
“Two Northeastern Pennsylvania bars have settled for a combined $6.6 million with a man who became quadriplegic after driving drunk and crashing his car into a tree.” Jason Mercado sued two East Stroudsburg, Pa. bars on the theory that they had inexperienced bartenders and staff who should have known better than to serve him. Attorney Robert Sink, who represented Mercado, said the case was not without its difficulties: “if the jury found the drunk driver was more than 50 percent at fault, then he would have gotten nothing” under Pennsylvania law. The insurers defending the case decided that the risk of a verdict otherwise was worth $6.6 million. [Legal Intelligencer]
P.S. Redditors discuss.
Ireland: judge rebukes “compensation culture gone mad”
A court has awarded costs against a Dublin family that sued a restaurant for not warning that if they allowed their two-year-old to put her finger down the metal lid of a sugar dispenser, she might have trouble pulling it out again. The balky lid had to be cut off at a hospital. [Mirror]
Banking and finance roundup
- Presumed-reliance (“fraud on the market”) theories, which SCOTUS is likely to reconsider in Halliburton, aren’t just confined to securities litigation, but crop up in various other areas of litigation including third-party payer drug suits [Beck, Drug and Device Law; more background]
- Why restrict alienability?, pt. CLXXI: Neil Sobol, “Protecting Consumers from Zombie-Debt Collectors” [NMLR/SSRN]
- Will Congress step in to curtail fad for eminent domain municipal seizure of mortgages? [Kevin Funnell, earlier here and here]
- More commentary on J.P. Morgan settlement [Daniel Fisher, Michael Greve, earlier here, here, and here]
- Judge Jed Rakoff: Why have no high level execs been prosecuted over financial crisis? [Columbia Law School Blue Sky Blog]
- Treasury Department’s Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) turns its sights to investment advisers. The logic being…? [Louise Bennetts, Cato/PJ Media]
- Property-casualty insurer association challenges new HUD disparate-impact rules [Cook County Record]
Holman Jenkins: Will Tort Law Kill Driverless Cars?
It’s behind a paywall, but the WSJ columnist looks into a question touched on repeatedly in this space and connects it to the unpredictability with which juries may credit expert testimony, as an Oklahoma jury recently did in Toyota litigation:
Toyota had been vigorously fighting hundreds of complaints that its cars are prone to unintended acceleration. Now it’s moving toward a global settlement as a consequence of a single Oklahoma lawsuit that appears to establish that Toyota can’t prevail if it can’t prove a negative—that its software didn’t go haywire in some untraceable and unreplicable manner. …
The Bookout jury was apparently impressed by the testimony of software expert Michael Barr. He said a single “bit flip” (the smallest instance of data corruption) could cause uncontrolled acceleration when the driver had been using cruise control, stopped using cruise control, then resumed using cruise control to let the car accelerate back to its selected speed. …
The connection to Ms. Bookout’s crash, which didn’t involve cruise control and took place on an exit ramp? None, except Mr. Barr claimed that “software failure is consistent with the description of the [Bookout] accident” and “more likely than not” a factor.
Jenkins notes, as have others, that if some mysterious and unreplicable bug is causing Toyotas to accelerate suddenly while disabling the brakes, it seems to differentially appear in cars being driven by elderly drivers, which are greatly overrepresented in the crash statistics.
More: Kyle Graham on whether vaccine liability limits make a plausible precedent for limits on liability for driverless cars.
Deck the halls, but first read the cord
“I guess you can never be too careful with your Christmas lights.” — @doctorwes
A few other highlights of Overlawyered Christmas coverage past:
- Claim: “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” promotes bullying [2011]
- “Cease this shouting!” cried Grinch, “From all Yule din desist!” But he’d Moved To The Nuisance and so, case dismissed [Art Carden 2010, original link]
- “Law firm offers divorce vouchers for Christmas” [U.K., 2009]
- Under the Christmas tree? Authorities penalize child care center in North Carolina after discovering plastic soldier figures on the premises, “reflect stereotyping and violence.” [2001]
- “As you know, the eight maids-a-milking concept has been under heavy scrutiny by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. A male/female balance in the workforce is being sought…….The two turtle doves’… romance during working hours could not be condoned. The positions are therefore eliminated.” [“Restructuring at the North Pole,” 1999]
Free speech roundup
- After Rolling Stone interview comments on race in America, Bob Dylan hit with hate speech proceeding in… France? [Popehat]
- “The Buckyballs Guy Is Suing the Feds Over Free Speech” [Bloomberg BusinessWeek]
- “Reconsidering Citizens United as a Press Clause Case” [Michael McConnell, YLJ via Volokh] “Freedom for the Press — Protection for an Industry/Profession, or for All Users of a Technology?” [Eugene Volokh, more]
- Liability for content posted by third parties? “Ex-cheerleader’s defamation suit puts Internet giants on edge” [CBS News]
- Forced expression tramples freedom: Cato asks SCOTUS to review ruling against New Mexico wedding photographer [Ilya Shapiro, earlier here, etc.] Related: Mike Masnick questioning why the ACLU is on the wrong side, a topic I’ve covered here too;
- “Three puzzling things about NYT v. Sullivan” [Len Niehoff, Communications Lawyer]
- “Why can’t we admit we’re scared of Islamism?” [Nick Cohen, Spectator]