Nor, the complaint adds triumphantly, is Chobani yogurt even “made by Greek nationals.” It’s made in New York! Also, it’s too sweet and not very natural. [ABA Journal]
Archive for 2014
IRS scandal: the dog wiped their emails, cont’d
I’ve got an update on the fast-developing scandal of evidence destruction at the IRS in my new Cato post (earlier). If not for reading Kim Strassel and her colleagues at the Wall Street Journal, I might not have learned that Lois Lerner’s emails got wiped from her hard drive by forces unknown about 10 days after the letter arrived from House Ways & Means inquiring into targeting of political opponents.
Since the new round of disclosures in the IRS scandal broke a week ago, the WSJ has shown itself willing to dig in a way that many other prestige press institutions have not. “People used to ask how Watergate might have turned out if the press had sided with Nixon instead of against him. Thanks to the work of Strassel and her WSJ colleagues, let’s hope we never find out.”
The Economist covers the story in this commentary. Our tag on evidence spoliation and document retention — lawyers among our readers will be familiar with how very seriously these concepts are taken in the world of litigation — is here.
Welcome readers: Glenn Reynolds/Instapundit.
New Cato podcast on Washington Redskins trademark ruling
Why should trademark law ban “disparagement” in first place? Caleb Brown interviews me on the Washington Redskins case for the Cato Daily Podcast. Earlier here.
David Post has a post at the Volokh Conspiracy laying out the unexpectedly complicated relationship between the federal Lanham Act and state trademark common law. And he presents the First Amendment problem with “disparagement” doctrine head on:
…the constitutional question is also, for me, pretty cut-and-dried; this is precisely the sort of thing the First Amendment prohibits: an agency of the federal government doling out benefits on the basis of whether or not you have used a word or phrase that is ‘disparaging,’ or that “bring into contempt, or disrepute” any “institutions, beliefs, or national symbols.” … [Whether my view of the matter is in tune with current doctrine is another question entirely]
Police and prosecution roundup
- Sad and bad: “House Republicans vote to block Obama’s new pardon attorneys” [MSNBC, Jacob Sullum, my Cato take]
- Ready for sorghum-patch unrest? More than 100 U.S. Department of Agriculture agents are armed with submachine guns [Matt Welch]
- “Cop who punched Occupy Wall Street protester gets tax-free disability pension” [New York Daily News, video of punch]
- “Officials could identify just one [Bronx] prosecutor since 1975 … disciplined in any respect for misbehavior while prosecuting a criminal case.” [City Limits via Radley Balko]
- Georgia drug raid: flash-bang grenade thrown into crib badly burning toddler [Tim Lynch, PoliceMisconduct.net “Worst of the Month”]
- New book by Sidney Powell critical of USDOJ explores Ted Stevens, Enron prosecutions, has foreword by Judge Alex Kozinski [“Licensed to Lie”: Craig Malisow/Houston Press, Legal Ethics Forum, Amazon]
- Two times over the legal limit, hmm. Would it help to flash my badge? [Prosecutorial Accountability on state bar discipline against San Francisco deputy d.a.]
Man charged for holding “Turn Now” sign before DUI checkpoint
Less than a mile before a police DUI checkpoint in Parma, Ohio, resident Doug Odolecki held a sign reading “Check point ahead turn now.” Police gave him a ticket and confiscated the sign: “Odolecki was issued a ticket and forced to hand over his sign. “Parma Police tell us they can’t get into the details of the pending case but a Sergeant told me that Odolecki was obstructing officers ability to do their job. They also said that the issue was with the part of the sign that said ‘turn now.'” [WOIO via AOL]
Class action demand: $10 billion for lost GM resale value
“It may sound silly, but lost resale value is what cost Toyota a whopping $1.3 billion in claims when those suits were settled in late 2012.” And if lawyers can extract $1.3 billion in a case where there was nothing wrong with the cars, imagine how much they might extract in a case where there was. [Jalopnik]
“I made a split-second decision to run into the store. …”
“…I had no idea it would consume the next years of my life.” Another mother arrested for leaving her kid in a parked car for a few minutes, from Lenore Skenazy’s files [Free-Range Kids; related, Michael Brendan Dougherty, The Week]
Connecticut politicos to employers: please hold our coat for 8 years while we govern
“It is a truism that laws tend to be arranged for the benefit of the political class.” Even so, would you expect Connecticut law to provide that private employers must hold open the jobs of full-time elected officials for as much as eight years in case they decide to return? My new blog post at Cato has details.
June 19 roundup
- Heeding union and legacy air carriers, Congress nixes cheap flights to Europe [W.R. Mead/American Interest, Marc Scribner/CEI]
- Kneecapping the opposition: lawprof wants to yank trade associations’ tax exemption [CL&P]
- “Connecticut Supreme Court rules against man who got drunk and fell in bonfire” [Legal NewsLine]
- Making reform of big-city government a conservative cause [Scott Beyer]
- Judge: Pipe maker can sue qui tam law firm over press release calling products defective [Daniel Fisher, Forbes]
- British insurer group calls for action, says fraudulent accident claims up 18% in year [Insurance Journal]
- Long, detailed look at forces behind the madness that is the San Francisco housing market [Kim-Mai Cutler, TechCrunch in April]
PTO cancels Washington Redskins trademark as disparaging
Now that we’ll be canceling trademarks of sports teams with disparaging names, here’s one that got away. [Washington Post]