A more balanced treatment than some we’ve seen in the press, including a video interview with Colorado baker Jack Phillips. [New York Times; earlier on forcing small business owners to service weddings against their beliefs here and here].
Archive for 2014
“When We Tell You to Do Something, Do It”
No need for reformers like Will Wilkinson to make the case against police unions when guys like this make it so eloquently. More: Radley Balko (MSNBC on video versus police-union account of Tamir Rice shooting in Cleveland); Cleveland Plain Dealer (woes of officer in earlier police job). “If you work in private sector, it can be mind-blowing to see mistakes you can make and still be employed as a cop” [@conor64]
Just one more story for now, from the Akai Gurley case in New York: “Instead of calling for help for the dying man, [sources told the newspaper, the NYPD officer who fired the shot] was texting his union representative.” [New York Daily News] “If there’s one thing that will turn liberals against public sector unions, it’ll be stuff like this.” [@timfernholz] Update: Flint Taylor, In These Times, gives one view from the left.
Liability roundup
- From the Manhattan Institute “Trial Lawyers Inc.” project, “Wheels of Fortune” (PDF), twin report on lawyers’ exploitation of SSDI (Social Security Disability) and ADA cases;
- Theodore Dalrymple on the flaws of the US litigation system [Liberty and Law]
- Testimony: “after he inquired about the 40 percent fee charged by [co-counsel] Chestnut, [Willie] Gary threatened to ‘tie up [client] Baker’s money in the courts for years so he would never live to see it.'” [Gainesville Sun]
- ATRA takes aim at rise of asbestos litigation in NYC [“Judicial Hellholes” series, Chamber-backed Legal NewsLine, New York Daily News (“national scandal”)]
- Another reminder that while plaintiff’s lawyers conventionally assail pre-dispute employment arbitration agreements, they routinely use them themselves [LNL]
- New U.S. Chamber papers on litigation trends: “Lawsuit Ecosystem II“; state supreme courts review;
- Changes ahead for class action rules? [Andrew Trask]
Eminent domain to seize “The Interview”?
It’s being suggested, in the wake of widespread outrage over the yanking of the film under threat, but please: let’s not run the whole country like the state of Maryland.
Also on the Sony affair, from @conor64: “Failure to release The Interview is less a sign of corporate cowardice than overbroad liability laws that would let people sue after attack.”
“New York Woman Sues Police for Not Arresting Son”
“A Long Island woman says in a lawsuit that her 29-year-old son died in a drunken driving crash because police decided not to arrest him on DWI charges earlier that night…. Restaurant chain Ruby Tuesday’s is also named in the lawsuit, because [the late Peter] Fedden was drinking there before the two crashes, according to [Fedden family lawyer Harry] Thomasson.” [NBC New York, auto-plays]
Update: Social Security still trying to collect decades-old parental debts
“The Social Security Administration, which announced in April that it would stop trying to collect debts from the children of people who were allegedly overpaid benefits decades ago, has continued to demand such payments and now defends that practice in court documents.” Robert Vogel, an attorney for clients whose refunds were seized, charges: “Their intention was to get the press off their backs and then go back to collecting their money. It’s just shocking that they believe that when someone turns 18, they automatically assume a crushing debt that was incurred by someone else.” [Marc Fisher, Washington Post; earlier here and here]
Sen. Sanders and energy prices
A question for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.): “Is it your position that market forces are the primary reason that oil and gas prices fall, but speculation and energy market manipulation are the primary reasons that oil and gas prices rise?” [Mark Perry, AEI] But see: Arnold Kling (capitulation by upside speculators could cause price collapses).
“Large corporations are crushing smaller ones …”
“… because of the economy of scale they have in managing such compliance issues.” [Coyote, in a letter to the dean of the Harvard Business School taking off on the Edelman case]
Best of Overlawyered — February 2014
- The one piece on bar fight litigation to read if you’re going to read only one;
- “Family sues Bronx Zoo after child swallows souvenir penny;”
- U.K.: “Policeman who smashed up pensioner’s car receives £400,000 compensation”
- “New car smell” blamed for fatal accident;
- U.S. Department of Justice: bar examiners improperly discriminate among applicants on grounds of sanity;
- “Just make it up”: undercover investigation exposes fraud in the asylum-request branch of immigration law;
- Fire department, Mennonites among recipients of quilt pattern cease-desists.
Brian Aitken at Cato
In several 2010 posts we covered the story of Brian Aitken, who was imprisoned by the state of New Jersey simply for carrying unloaded guns and ammo in his trunk (really, that was the extent of the crime). Last week Cato hosted Aitken to talk on his new book The Blue Tent Sky: How the Left’s War on Guns Cost Me My Son and My Freedom. Tim Lynch of Cato moderated, and I gave comments. Event description:
In 2009 Brian Aitken, a media consultant and web entrepreneur, ran afoul of New Jersey’s draconian gun laws when he was arrested while transporting two handguns unloaded and locked in the trunk of his car. Despite the fact that Aitken owned the guns legally and had called the New Jersey State Police for advice on how to legally transport his firearms, he found himself sentenced to seven years in prison.
In 2010 New Jersey governor Chris Christie commuted Aitken’s sentence. But Aitken’s experience, like that of other law-abiding gun owners who’ve faced long prison sentences for honest mistakes, raises troubling questions about gun-law overreach, prosecutorial discretion, and judicial abdication.
I recommended the book as a riveting and outrageous read, yet leavened with hope because of the story of the strong public movement that formed to protest the injustice of his incarceration. In my comments, I mentioned the feds’ heavily armed raid on an Indiana antiquities collector. More on that story here.