Not an April Fool’s: we’ve covered the saga of Judge Cynthia Brim in two earlier posts. Chicago voters re-elected her to the bench despite troubles which eventuated in a successful defense to misdemeanor battery charges on the ground of insanity. [Chicago Tribune, auto-plays annoyingly]
Archive for April, 2014
California ADA claims, cont’d
The NBC affiliate in the Bay Area investigates “what some say is legalized extortion” (watch out for annoying can’t-mute, can’t-freeze auto-play ad). The report “reviewed more than 10,000 federal ADA lawsuits filed since 2005 in the five states with the highest disabled populations. More lawsuits have been filed in California than Florida, Pennsylvania, Texas and New York combined.” Among violations charged: “a mirror that was hung 1.5 inches too high, a disabled access emblem that was ‘not the correct size,’ and one that was ‘not at the correct height on a restroom door.’ …’Given the way the building codes change as often as they do, it’s virtually impossible [to be in full compliance]’ certified access specialist Christina Stevens said.”
What is so green as an official cartel?
Under an environmentalist banner, the city of Los Angeles plans a scheme to wipe family-owned trash haulers and replace them with unionized monopoly providers [L.A. Times, Scott Shackford/Reason]
Talking Toyota and the feds
Popular radio host Mike Rosen had me on his program last week to talk about the Justice Department’s aggressive use of criminal law against the Japanese automaker (earlier here). Also check out Canadian columnist Terence Corcoran’s view: “Intended media acceleration and the assault on Toyota” [Financial Post]
“Judge axes first law firm filing over missing Malaysia Air flight”
Martha Neil at the ABA Journal reports on a setback for one fast-out-of-the-gate filing over the fate of Flight 370:
“These are the kind of lawsuits that make lawyers look bad—and we already look bad enough,” Robert A. Clifford, one of Chicago’s best-known personal injury lawyers, told the Chicago Tribune earlier, calling Ribbeck’s filing “premature.”
Much more from Eric Turkewitz.
P.S. Representatives of American law firms swarm bereaved families in Peking and Kuala Lumpur, talk of million-dollar awards: “a question of how much and when.” [Edward Wong and Kirk Semple, NY Times]
Labor and employment roundup
- If you imagine the primary goal of occupational licensure is to protect consumers, think again [Donald Boudreaux, Ramesh Ponnuru]
- “U.S. Civil Rights Commissioners Take EEOC to Task on Background Checks” [Nick Fishman, Employee Screen; Seyfarth Shaw]
- Pennsylvania lawmakers consider ending union exemption from stalking laws; Illinois, Nevada and California also shelter them from liability [Washington Examiner]
- “How Disruptive Can an Aggressive NLRB Be in a Non-Union Setting? More Than You Might Think” [Michael Fox]
- “A call for the DOL to fix what is wrong with our wage-and-hour laws” [Jon Hyman]
- Restaurant Opportunities Center, known for staging employee protests, bars own employees from same privilege [Florida Watchdog via Sean Higgins]
- Conference honoring assassinated professor Marco Biagi showcases classical liberal labor law scholarship (or so one would hope) [my comment at Workplace Prof, related call for papers, earlier]
Making “goo-goo eyes” at someone
It’s no longer a specifically enumerated crime to do that on the streets of Houston in an annoying or flirtatious way [Volokh]
“We’ll Change Your Pain Into Rain”
Another survey of late-night TV lawyer ads, this time by 99 Percent Invisible at Slate “The Eye”, and some, like “We’ll Change Your Pain Into Rain,” previously unseen by us. Audio podcast (21:04) here:
And Above the Law highlights this very…. unusual video by an intellectual property lawyer in Houston:
From “Jokes and Targets”
A new book by British humor scholar Christie Davies (via Debra Cassens Weiss, ABA Journal) has a discussion of lawyer jokes, which, Davies says, surged in the 1980s in America in a way not seen in other countries:
…American attorneys in the late Twentieth Century who felt offended by lawyer jokes were trapped, because the television writers and their bosses did not care about the possible hurt feelings of individual lawyers, who for them did not matter, and lawyers’ organizations (which did have power) were only concerned with using television to manipulate public opinion about far more important questions. The rightly saw jokes as utterly insignificant by comparison. The only exception I know happened not in contemporary America but in Britain in the late 1940s, when a senior person from the Law Society was able to persuade the BBC to stop comedians from telling jokes about solicitors (attorneys) who absconded with their clients’ money. The deal was done quietly in that sly, behind-the-scenes British way, paradoxically known as a gentleman’s agreement….
[After rejecting as unreasonable the views of a Pennsylvania lawyer who finds in some American lawyer jokes an “invitation to genocide”:] Likewise, we may dismiss the thesis popular among lawyers that the jokes originated with big corporations, who had them invented to assist in their campaigns against being sued for damages…. jokes belong to the people… they cannot be created by decree, nor can they successfully be repressed…. They are not a thermostat, but they are a thermometer.
What happened in the 1980s especially that might have touched off a popular American interest in lawyer jokes? It’s a mystery! The book can be purchased here, while more about its author is here; David Conway wrote a review for Law and Liberty in 2012, as we noted. (& welcome Above the Law readers)
Equalizing the boys’ and girls’ athletic fields…
…by tearing down the newly built seating on the boys’ side, provided by voluntary parent contributions. What’s important is that things be equalized, and someone had filed a Title IX complaint. “The seating was also not handicapped accessible.” [Plymouth, Mich.; MyFoxDetroit]