“I think I can safely say this is a very unusual claim,” said City Clerk Shari Moore, referring to Megan Campbell’s “claim against the city seeking $1,600 to $1,900 from public coffers for damage caused to her personal vehicle by a city worker — herself.” [St. Paul Pioneer-Press; Lowering the Bar]
Archive for 2014
Labor and employment roundup
- EEOC investigating claim that personality tests for job applicants discriminate against mentally ill [ABA Journal]
- Many “living wage” ordinances contain a sneaky provision that encourages unionization [Maxford Nelsen, WSJ]
- Sixth Circuit agrees to rehear case suggesting employees can demand telecommuting as accommodation [Jon Hyman, earlier; EEOC v. Ford Motor]
- Should employers give informative references? [Daniel Schwartz, Evil HR Lady]
- EEOC will abuse conciliation process unless judges exercise oversight [Merrily Archer]
- Here is how Politico proposes to cover labor issues as “straight news right down the middle” [The Weekly Standard, RiShawn Biddle/Rare]
- Study: extended jobless benefits prolonged labor market’s woes [Karahan, Kapon, Satar, New York Fed via Tuccille]
California’s workers’ comp system by far the nation’s costliest
And purported reforms in 2012 didn’t help. Connecticut’s is second most expensive. [Insurance Journal]
Update: false accuser liable to school district in Brian Banks case
After Wanetta Gibson falsely accused Brian Banks of rape (earlier), her family won a settlement in a civil suit against the Long Beach, Calif. schools; Banks himself, a former prep football star, served more than five years in prison. Now the school district has obtained a $2.6 million default judgment against Gibson, whose whereabouts are unknown. “According to the school district, the judgment recoups a $750,000 settlement paid to Gibson and also includes attorney’s fees, interest and $1 million in punitive damages.” [Long Beach Press-Telegram] Earlier accounts had erroneously reported that Gibson had been paid $1.5 million.
The (surprisingly durable) Henry Ford worker-as-customer myth
Megan McArdle is the latest to refute the notion that Ford’s high-wage policy was meant to put workers in a position to buy his products [Bloomberg View] We linked Marc Hodak on the same subject in July.
Excessive zeal for bus passengers’ safety discouraged
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has extracted an $85,000 settlement and other relief from Atchison Transportation Services, Inc., of South Carolina on charges that one of its managers terminated two motorcoach drivers who were 75 and 76 years old respectively. As with disability discrimination, federal law on age discrimination generally requires that termination be based only on cause-based individualized determinations of unfitness; in practice, an employer may be well advised to premise such determinations only on evidence that would stand up under legal scrutiny as objective, such as, for example, a driver’s loss of license or involvement in an accident. [EEOC press release, h/t Roger Clegg]
“Will Social Justice Save Law Schools?”
Pitching a civil-Gideon entitlement as salvation to economically insecure faculty and administrators in legal academia [Edward Rubin via Caron, TaxProf]
Zen Magnets’ fight with the feds
After BuckyBalls surrendered to the Consumer Product Safety Commission the Denver-based company Zen Magnets was the last standing in the tiny-recreational-magnets field, and its founder, 27-year-old Shihan Qu, isn’t planning to go quietly. [WestWord]
October 10 roundup
- NYC pols, hotel interests unite in the cause of suppressing AirBnB [CNBC, Matthew Feeney/Cato, more, NY mag]
- David Bernstein on Justice Sotomayor’s dissent in Schuette, the Michigan affirmative action case [Cato Supreme Court Review via Volokh Conspiracy, and thanks for quoting my views]
- Restaurant’s amusing response to “do you know I’m a lawyer?” [Above the Law]
- Cronyism in city governance: its enablers, consequences and possible cures [Aaron Renn, Urbanophile, first, second, third, fourth posts; Lincoln Steffens, 1905, on the evils of Rhode Island]
- N.J. toll-taker’s suit: it’s my right to tell motorists “God bless you” whether turnpike authority likes it or not [AP/CBS New York]
- “Q: What has worse terms than gym memberships and class action settlements? A: This class action over gym memberships.” [Center for Class Action Fairness on Twitter]
- US border security great at keeping out bagpipes and Kinder Eggs, not so great at keeping out Ebola [Mark Steyn, more Steyn on bagpipes and earlier on musical instrument confiscations here, here, etc.]
Carry work tools, get arrested in NYC
My new Cato piece on New York’s crazy “gravity-knife” law, picking up on an excellent Village Voice investigation by Jon Campbell. More: Scott Greenfield.