It’s probably not a type of claim that employers should worry about too much, says Jon Hyman…. at least, not yet. “If nothing else, it shows just how broad the ADA has become in potentially covering a wide breadth of physical and mental health issues. “
Archive for June, 2015
Children and schools roundup
- L.A.: “school police estimated they would need 80 new officers to protect students walking home from school with iPads.” [Annie Gilbertson/KPCC]
- “Md. officials: Letting ‘free range’ kids walk or play alone is not neglect” [Donna St. George/Washington Post, earlier]
- Foes of education vouchers turn to argument that private schools not obliged to accommodate disabled kids, but it’s complicated [Rick Esenberg]
- U.K.: “Children banned from doing handstands and cartwheels at Plymouth primary school” [Plymouth Herald]
- Florida officials remove kids from home after 11 year old found playing alone in yard [Lenore Skenazy posts one, two, three, plus a Chicago case (“Family Defense Center”) and overview]
- In left-meets-right campaign to beat up on “deadbeat dads,” right seems more gung-ho at the moment [Connor Wolf/Daily Caller, my earlier Cato]
- North Carolina high schoolers’ alarm-clocks-go-off-in-lockers prank annoyed school administrators. Felony-level annoyance? [Uproxx]
Ground Zero responder litigation, cont’d
“A 9/11 law firm tried to take $866,414 in what a judge found ‘unreasonable’ and improper expenses from money meant for sick Ground Zero responders, records show.” Worby Groner Edelman & Napoli Bern had already reaped some $200 million in fees and expenses from “a $700 million mass settlement between 10,000 Ground Zero workers and the city.” [New York Post]
Related: federal judge approves $53.8 million in settlements for 82 members of Laborers Union local “which represents asbestos, lead and hazardous waste handlers in New York City, Long Island and New Jersey” and who alleged that Ground Zero cleanup, as opposed to other hazards they might have encountered on jobs, was to blame for “respiratory and digestive diseases, psychological injuries and cancer” they suffered; building owners and contractors were the defendants [Reuters] Earlier on Ground Zero responder litigation here, here, etc.
Copyright hazards of letting musicians play in your restaurant
A Shelton, Ct. restaurant has paid $18,000 to settle a lawsuit over the playing of nine copyrighted songs on its premises; an owner says he thinks a private party played them. “If a band plays a cover song for which the bar has no license, the bar is legally liable, according to BMI and ASCAP,” the two musicians’-rights consortiums that make a practice of suing venues. [Hartford Business]
Free speech roundup
- Reason subpoena: “There’s no case here, and the Justice Department knows it.” [Kevin O’Brien, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Mike Godwin/R Street Institute, earlier]
- “Judge: Arresting Man For Criticizing Alton Selectmen Was ‘Pure Censorship'” [New Hampshire Public Radio]
- Billboard images of women “smiling for no reason” are now disallowed on grounds of sexism in Berlin’s Kreuzberg-Friedrichshain district; also, “Adult women — featured alone or not — must not be shown ‘occupied in the household with pleasure.'” [Anthony Faiola, Washington Post]
- Free speech, trademark law intersect in NAACP suit over critical parody [Paul Alan Levy]
- Without leeway for anonymous campaign speech, it’ll be hard to oust the retaliation-happy likes of Joe Arpaio [Robert Robb, Arizona Republic via Coyote]
- Legal blogger in court: “Partial Victory In Patterico’s Free Speech Case Before Ninth Circuit” [Ken at Popehat]
- European court: website liable for reader comments [ArsTechnica UK, Stanford CIS, Article 19, Delfi AS v. Estonia]
California regulators: Uber driver is employee
And there goes the Uber business model, if the ruling is upheld and extends to other drivers. Coyote predicts that if subject to the burdens now heaped on employers, ride-sharing services will have a hard time of it.
Or, to put it differently: yes, the authorities are prepared to kill any and all innovations that threaten their New Deal fantasy of perfect control. More: Matthew Feeney, Cato; Megan McArdle (“‘Employee’ Label Would End Uber as We Know It”); Timothy Lee [slightly edited Wednesday to reflect clarification in news reports]
We’re from the federal government, trust us with your data security
I joined host Ray Dunaway yesterday on Hartford’s WTIC 1080 to discuss the OPM hack (earlier on which) and schemes to extend federal regulatory control over private data security. You can listen here.
And from yesterday’s House hearing on the subject: “OPM chief ducks blame for data breach, pins it on ‘whole of government'” [Washington Examiner]
Trans fats banned! Now make way for palm and coconut oil, GMOs…
Pushed by a lawsuit, the Food and Drug Administration has followed through and banned the use of trans fats in processed food: producers have three years to phase out the substance. I’ve got a new piece at Cato making a few basic points: the move is sheer paternalism, it’s setting a precedent (against voluntary consumer assumption of even small risks) that activists are eager to roll out against other ingredients like salt and sugar, it’s not popular with the public (this poll finds a plurality, not majority, going along, while this one finds majorities opposed). And voluntary consumer adjustments (trans fat consumption is down by an estimated 85 percent) have already cut Americans’ average daily intake to half of what the American Heart Association recommends.
Then there’s the sadly ironic history of the whole subject: trans fats were avidly promoted at the time by the same sorts of public health activists and government nutritionists who now push for a ban. CNN:
Dr. Steven Nissen, the chair of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, praised the FDA for its “bold courage” and said it “deserves a lot of credit” for taking this “enormously important” move.
“In many ways, trans fat is a real tragic story for the American diet,” Nissen said. “In the 1950s and ’60s, we mistakenly told Americans that butter and eggs were bad for them and pushed people to margarine, which is basically trans fat. What we’ve learned now is that saturated fat is relatively neutral — it is the trans fat that is really harmful and we had made the dietary situation worse.”
Or as my colleague Scott Lincicome puts it, “Food tyranny didn’t fail. It just needed better managers”
Now make way for the most popular, and still legal, substitutes for trans fats: tropical palm and coconut oils, each with problems of its own. And an even better prospect — the next panic? –is GMO-derived high-oleic soybean oil.
My Cato piece is here. And I made the WSJ’s Notable & Quotable today on this subject, which is always nice.
June 17 roundup
- Skull and crossbones to follow: San Francisco pols decree health warnings on soft drink, Frappuccino billboards [Steve Chapman]
- Judge criticizes feds’ punitive handling of AIG rescue as unlawful, but says no damages are owed to Hank Greenberg [Bloomberg, Thaya Knight/Cato, Gideon Kanner who predicted outcome, W$J]
- Congress resisting Obama/HUD scheme to force communities to build low-income housing [Jonathan Nelson/Economics21, Marc Thiessen, Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing or AFFH]
- California, following New York, proposes 50 hours of mandatory pro bono work for prospective lawyers [John McGinnis]
- Five part Renee Lettow Lerner series on historical role and present-day decay of juries [Volokh Conspiracy, introduction, parts one, two, three, four, five] Related: Mike Rappaport and follow-up on Seventh Amendment, Liberty and Law.
- Latest Scotland drunk-driving blood threshold: Drivers “warned that having ‘no alcohol at all’ is the only way to ensure they stay within the limit” [Independent via Christopher Snowdon]
- How not to argue for bail reform: Scott Greenfield vs. NYT op-ed writer [Simple Justice]
Eastern District of Texas branches out
Marshall, Texas, famed as patent plaintiffs’ forum of choice, returns a $663 million False Claims Act verdict against Trinity Industries in guardrail supply case [Insurance Journal; earlier on the unique qualities of the Eastern District of Texas, earlier on the Trinity litigation here and here]
And more Marshall fun: Texas patent holding company files 49 lawsuits in a week, isn’t listed on own office building’s directory [Legal NewsLine]