- Study: doctors who use more resources are less likely to face malpractice claims [British Medical Journal]
- “Obesity is not in fact a public health problem. It may be a widespread health problem, but you can’t catch obesity from doorknobs or molecules in the air. [David Boaz, Cato]
- Contingency-fee law enforcement creates bad incentives, part MCXXXVI, health outlay recoupment division [W$J on Medicare auditors]
- Welcome to Canada, skilled one, unless your spouse is ill. What that says about the welfare state [Bryan Caplan]
- “Jury awards $16.7 million in swine flu death of pregnant Puyallup mother” [Tacoma News-Tribune]
- Doc convicted of murder after patient overdoses: “Some experts worried that a conviction would have a chilling effect on worried doctors and keep powerful painkillers from patients who need them.” [L.A. Times via Jacob Sullum]
Archive for November, 2015
Massachusetts awards $100,000 to blind barber over firing
Great moments in discrimination law: Joel Nixon, who has been diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa and is legally blind, was fired from his job at Tony’s barber shop in South Easton, Mass. He says he had been giving men’s haircuts for years to customers’ satisfaction but was fired after a 2012 incident “when he tripped over a customer’s legs. Later in the day, he tripped over a chair in the waiting room.” His former employer Tony Morales calls the allegations “a bunch of lies” but “did not appear at numerous hearings and parted ways with an attorney who was supposed to help him.” The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, the state civil rights agency, awarded Nixon $75,000 in lost wages and $25,000 for emotional distress. [Bob McGovern, Boston Herald]
“That Time a Dog Claimed $46,000 in Damages From the BP Oil Spill”
Paul Barrett, Bloomberg/Washington Post, quotes the indictment:
On or about January 16, 2013 defendant MIKAL C. WATTS submitted or caused to be submitted a ‘Presentment Form’ to BP claiming ‘costs and damages’ in the amount of $45,930.00 in the name of ‘Lucy Lu’ and claiming ‘Lucy Lu’ was a deckhand on a commercial seafood vessel. ‘Lucy Lu’ was a dog.
More from Alison Frankel, Reuters, on the Texas lawyer’s “fighting for the little guy” rhetoric: “If Watts did what he’s alleged to have done, it’s no excuse that his crimes were committed in litigation against BP.”
Campus expression roundup
- Mizzou campus cops: if you witness “hateful and/or hurtful speech…call the police immediately” [Eugene Volokh, more (ACLU of Missouri says memo runs “counter to the First Amendment”); James Taranto; earlier on Missouri and Yale episodes]
- “Amherst Students Protest ‘Free Speech,’ Demand ‘Training’ for Offenders” [Katie Zavadski, Daily Beast; Eugene Volokh; Greg Lukianoff and Robert Shibley, New York Daily News; while Vox takes a more positive view of recent rounds of racial intimidation]
- “Dear Colleague” letter, other Obama administration actions encouraged university communities to redefine speech as assault or retaliation under Title IX [Samantha Harris via Katie Barrows, FIRE] More: Ramesh Ponnuru, Bloomberg;
- And now, Claremont-McKenna: it’s not going to take many ruined careers to reduce administrations to the intended compliance. [Claremont McKenna Forum, background on controversy via @adamsteinbaugh] Recommended editorial: “We dissent.” [Claremont Independent]
- Conor Friedersdorf responds with far more patience than I would have shown to a truly awful New Yorker piece claiming that campus free speech alarms are a mere cover for racism (Jelani Cobb: “Right-to-offend advocates [are] trafficking in the same sort of [Jim Crow-era] argument for the right to maintain subordination”) [Atlantic, Noah Rothman/Commentary, earlier episode suggesting New Yorker having its collective doubts whether there is too much free speech in America]
- “Protesters Demand Firing Of Tenured Vanderbilt Law Professor Over Publication Of Op-Ed” [TaxProf; Prof. Carol Swain wrote critically of Islam]
- Pro-liberty liberals have played a hero role in past outbreaks of campus insanity. Will that happen again this time? [Paul Horwitz]
- More: What happened in the Dartmouth library [Charlie Lundquist/The Tab, Alex Griswold/Mediaite, @Popehat (“although I generally support screaming obscenities at Ivy Leaguers this seems of questionable persuasiveness”)] And Columbia [Aaron Short, NY Post (students said to be “uneasy and fearful” over social pressure to join protests)]
Collateral damage done by Bloomberg gun-check laws
David Kopel writes that “background check” laws pushed by the Bloomberg anti-gun campaign in states like Colorado and Washington have weird effects, whether intended is not entirely clear, on such topics as safe storage of firearms, the sharing of firearms during informal target shooting, and the legality of handgun possession by 18-21 year olds. This might be a sub-instance of a related problem noted by Glenn Reynolds at USA Today: “Gun-control laws have a tendency of turning into criminals peaceable citizens whom the state has no reason to have on its radar.”
In-N-Out to startup: don’t deliver our food
“Food-delivery startup DoorDash has been sued by one of the restaurants that it buys food from, In-N-Out Burger….In-N-Out lawyers make the case that DoorDash is actually violating its trademark rights with its unlicensed delivery business.” [Joe Mullin, Ars Technica]
Calorie labels and craft brewers
The Obamacare/FDA calorie-label provision, which we’ve met before, “requires chain restaurants with 20 or more locations to list calorie information for ‘standard menu items,’ including each available beer, on menus and menu boards by December 2016. Testing the nutritional content of a single beer could cost as much as $1,000, according to the Beer Institute, a trade association representing brewers.” For craft brewers, the costs of testing every variant small-run flavor can add up fast. And unless a brewer is willing to pre-emptively shell out for testing in advance at its own risk, it may miss out on the chance to make the jump into chain distribution: “Restaurants interested in carrying a craft beer may not want to wait for testing to be done and will move on to beers that already have nutritional information.” [Michelle Minton, Real Clear Policy]
“Despised lifestyles are now identified as noncontagious epidemics”
Pierre Lemieux in Cato’s Regulation magazine on the tendency of “public health” to pursue prescriptive moral reform in the guise of regulating health risks:
“In many respects,” writes [Bernard] Turnock, “it is more reasonable to view public health as a movement than as a profession.” “Public health,” the Encyclopedia of Philosophy tells us, “is focused on regulation and public policy.” Public health experts claim a jurisdiction that covers anything related to welfare, little of which consists of genuine public goods. The basic thrust of public health is to remove decisions from the domain of individual choice. For example, public health experts believe that driving is a privilege, not a right, and probably extend this characterization to any activity that they don’t like or for which they think they would easily qualify (like parenting rights).
Slippery slopes mar the whole history of public health…if one wishes softer examples, from the treatment of the insane to Prohibition, to the current harassment of smokers, and to the partial nationalization of “public” places. Despite some reversals, the slope is as slippery as it ever was.
Related, cruel but predictable: HUD plans nationwide ban on letting public housing tenants smoke in their own units [Washington Post]
About that bite mark evidence, never mind
After Steven Mark Chaney had spent 25 years in Texas prison for murder came the belated oops: never mind about that “one in a million” bite mark testimony we convicted you on. He’s out pending retrial. [Sarah Kaplan, Washington Post via Radley Balko, who adds more cases on bite mark forensics]
Labor roundup
- “NLRB: Unions have a right to know employees home phone numbers. If firms don’t have them, they must obtain them.” [@JamesBSherk summarizing Sean Higgins/Washington Examiner on Danbury Hospital case]
- Subpoenas get NLRB into redaction fight with McDonald’s [Sean Higgins/Examiner; more on joint-employer battle from International Franchise Association via Connor Wolf, Daily Caller]
- George Leef reviews Daniel DiSalvo’s book on public sector unionism, Government Against Itself [Forbes]
- “Seattle May Soon Force Uber And Lyft Drivers To Unionize” [Connor Wolf/Caller]
- Your periodic reminder that the “add union organizing to protected classes under civil rights law” formula is one of the worst ideas ever [Jon Hyman, Wolf/Caller on Workplace Action for a Growing Economy (WAGE) Act sponsored by Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.)]
- Sen. Orrin Hatch: my proposed Employee Rights Act would “allow workers a greater role in how their union represents them” [Washington Times, background at Washington Examiner]
- Philadelphia union extortion and violence episode is a reminder it’s past time to revisit 1973 SCOTUS case of U.S. v. Enmons which tended to give a green light to such things [Mark Mix, Washington Times]