The Supreme Court, 8-1 with Sotomayor dissenting, agrees with a Cato Institute brief (earlier) and disagrees with the government: the feds can’t conjure away landowners’ rights as part of the “rails-to-trails” program. Trevor Burrus explains.
Archive for 2014
“Colorado Man Could Sue Divers Who Saved Him From Submerged Car”
“A Colorado man, despite acknowledging that he’s lucky to be alive after being trapped in a submerged car, has filed an intent to sue his rescuers for half a million dollars.” Roy Ortiz says “he needs help paying medical bills,” and his attorney Ed Ferszt adds, perhaps not entirely helpfully, “It’s unfortunate to have to try and cast liability and responsibility for this act of God on the men and women who risked their own lives.” [ABC, CBS Denver, The Denver Channel, Broomfield Enterprise]
Schools roundup
- The price of yielding to demands for “trigger warnings” in college curricula, discussions [Jenny Jarvie/TNR, Jill Filipovic/Guardian, Laurie Essig/Chronicle of Higher Ed, Philip Wythe/Rutgers Daily Targum (trigger warning needed on Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway”?)]
- A sleeping giant awakes? Asian-Americans oppose attempt to restore racial preferences in Calif. higher ed [Pasadena Star-News]
- Coming soon: huge expansion in school feeding program as feds fund meals for all students in schools where >40% qualify [Baylen Linnekin] More: fiasco unfolds in new school lunch regs [Jason Bedrick]
- Kansas Supreme Court seizes control over school spending [my new Cato post, earlier here, here, and here, more background]
- More coverage of Sen. Diaz’s scheme in New York to require parents of school-age kids to take parenting classes [Deseret News and thanks for quote, earlier here and here]
- Staff at Minnesota school, worried about following rules, “opted to simply let the girl freeze” [Jason Bedrick/Cato]
- College discipline furor: Can she consent to sex after drinking? [Margaret Wente, Cathy Young]
- Infant fell through bleachers at soccer game, Yakima, Wash.-area school district to pay $6.9 million [Insurance Journal]
Please, NYT, show appreciation
Fifty years ago yesterday the Supreme Court handed down its greatest tort reform decision — just for you. [Related 2003 Baseball Crank post on federalism.]
Now online: “Quit Bubble-Wrapping Our Kids!”
Lenore Skenazy’s incredibly funny talk last Thursday, with me commenting and moderating (and even at one point giving my impression of a 3-year-old losing a cookie), is now online. Several people have told me this was one of the most entertaining and illuminating Cato talks they’ve seen.
Lenore’s blog is Free-Range Kids and you can buy her book of the same name here. Some links on topics that came up in my remarks: Harvard researchers call for yanking obese kids out of their homes; authorities in Queensland, Australia, plan use of satellite data to spy out noncompliance with pool safety rules; courts reward helicopter parents in custody battles; charges dropped against mom who left toddler sleeping in car while she dropped coins in Salvation Army bucket; proposals to cut kids’ food into small bits and discontinue things like peanuts and marshmallows entirely; authorities snatch kids from homes after parents busted with small quantities of pot.
P.S. Direct video link here (h/t comments).
“Cash-register justice” in a Florida town
Speed traps paved the way to corruption in tiny Hampton, Fla., critics say [CNN] More: Lowering the Bar.
Schaden, meet freude
“Obamacare Call Center Faces Unpaid Wages & Overtime Class Action Lawsuit” [BigClassAction.com]
Frontiers of lawyerly fraud
One has to hope this kind of thing doesn’t happen often [press release, Office of the U.S. Attorney, District of New Jersey]:
A former attorney in the Haddonfield, N.J., office of a firm specializing in toxic tort litigation today admitted that he falsified defendants’ names in more than 100 asbestos suits filed in New York State courts in order to increase business and his standing in the firm, U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman announced.
Arobert C. Tonogbanua, 44, of Sicklerville, N.J., pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Noel L. Hillman in Camden federal court to an information charging him with one count of wire fraud. During the proceeding, Tonogbanua admitted that he fraudulently inserted the names of his former law firm’s clients into legitimately filed asbestos suits and charged the clients more than $1 million in attorney’s fees, costs and settlements to defend them.
[via Legal NewsLine; South Jersey Times] For a retrospective on the Lynn Boyd Stites/”Alliance” scam of years ago, in which a circle of defense lawyers in Los Angeles used manufactured litigation to harvest fees, see clips here, here, here, and here.
First female law firm opens in Saudi Arabia
Its members will pursue women’s rights; big tasks ahead of them [Arab News, with striking picture]
Most outrageous video lawyer ad ever?
Pittsburgh criminal defense lawyer Daniel Muessig has set the bar high [Deadspin] More: Scott Greenfield, and yet more about whether criminal defense lawyers really do those things.