Jim Copland in Crain’s New York: the notorious Martin Act, wielded by New York’s attorney general, “creates a risky climate for companies by putting too much power in the hands of a single politician.”
Archive for December, 2015
Literary corner: “Today and Tomorrow in Tom Wolfe’s New York”
Few books of our own era would make it onto my desert island list; one is Tom Wolfe’s Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers. While I’m late getting to Michael Lewis’s new profile of Wolfe, it’s reason enough to renew a Vanity Fair subscription, especially the priceless story of how Wolfe rewrote his dissertation on status jockeying among 1930s literary leftists after Yale turned it down as “tendentious” and “disparaging” to its oft-lionized subjects.
Early in my time at the Manhattan Institute, after Wolfe’s New York novel The Bonfire of the Vanities had made a gigantic popular success, I put together a roundtable on “Today and Tomorrow in Tom Wolfe’s New York” with Terry Teachout, Richard Vigilante, the late Walter Wriston, and others. MI published it as an envelope stuffer one-off with, if memory serves, a cover letter in which Wolfe himself mentioned observations the various participants had made, but in his own words. Not to say I was awe-struck at this, but for the next few days I wandered the streets of New York talking to the trees.
Bill of Rights Day — and the return of the general warrant?
December 15 marked Bill of Rights Day, and Tim Lynch rounds up ways in which most of the constituent amendments in the Bill of Rights are under pressure from government today. And in a Cato Daily Podcast, Caleb Brown interviews Georgetown Law’s Laura Donohue of Georgetown Law School on the history of general warrants, important in the development of the Fourth Amendment, which many assumed we abolished but may be making a comeback.
Back to an “assault weapons” ban?
Just as polls show that American public opinion has turned against a ban on so-called assault weapons, comes a push from Democrats on Capitol Hill and gun-control forces to reintroduce such a ban. I’ve got a post at Cato at Liberty with many links on why the shift in public views is backed by solid evidence.
Bounty-hunting lawyer collects Illinois taxes nationwide
Wineries that ship to customers nationwide are among the latest targets of a Chicago attorney who has developed a lucrative freelance enforcement niche. Steven Diamond and his firm of Schad, Diamond and Shedden “have filed hundreds of suits against various companies in industries such as cookware, flowers and motorsports” and more recently beverage makers under “an Illinois law that requires businesses to collect sales taxes for the state, not only on what they sell, but on shipping-and-handling charges. A whistleblower rule allows anyone within the state to sue in the name of Illinois and collect any recovered funds.” [Wine Spectator] While a number of other states also tax shipping charges, Illinois authorities, unable to agree on how to interpret a relevant decision by their state’s high court, have given conflicting guidance on when taxes are owed. [Wines and Vines, Tom Wark, Schiff Hardin, WTAX]
P.S. Related on the practice of tax farming in the Roman Empire and pre-Revolutionary France, and latter-day parallels, here, here, and here.
“Should Plaintiffs Lawyers Get 94% of A Class Action Settlement?”
The Eleventh Circuit approved the settlement of a class action suit over Duracell batteries: “The four plaintiffs law firms that brought the case were together awarded $5.7 million, while the 7.26 million class members they represented divvied up just $345,000 between them.” Ted Frank, well known to our readers, is asking the Supreme Court to review the case, which presents, among other issues, a chance to offer guidance about the cy pres diversion of settlement money to charities and good causes. [Roger Parloff, Fortune, earlier]
Free speech roundup
- Venezuela files suit in U.S. against American website, Dolar Today, that is critical of its currency policies [George Selgin]
- Michigan: “Felony prosecution for distributing pro-jury-nullification leaflets outside courthouse” [Eugene Volokh, earlier here, here, etc.] More: Judge tosses Denver D.A.’s attempt to jail jury nullification pamphleteers [Jacob Sullum, earlier]
- Federal agencies should not get to decide for themselves whether they’re violating the First Amendment [Ilya Shapiro, Cato on cert petition in POM Wonderful v. Federal Trade Commission]
- “After all, a wall can be built around many things, but not around the First Amendment.” One election lawyer’s response to cease/desist letter from Donald Trump [Chris Cillizza/Washington Post, letter courtesy Politico]
- Court in Turkey considering a doctor’s comparison of Turkish President Erdogan with “Lord of Rings” character Gollum, and the results are preciousss [Sarah McLaughlin, Popehat]
- Update on climatologist Michael Mann’s defamation suit, still in progress [Jonathan Adler, earlier]
- Attacks on the right to speak one’s mind are multiplying. Would better civics education help? [George Leef, Forbes]
Claim: dealer should have scraped off decals before reselling his car
A Texas businessman “is suing a Ford dealership for more than $1 million in financial losses and damages to his company’s reputation after a pickup truck he once owned ended up with Islamic militants fighting in Syria’s civil war.” According to Mark Oberholtzer, he got “thousands of harassing phone calls” after an image went viral of a truck bearing the marks of his plumbing company in the possession of Syrian insurgents. [CNN]
“Suffers memory loss, vertigo and seizures as a result of the injury…”
“…but was able to complete the 280-day world cruise.” Charges fly following a $21 million October jury verdict over a cruise mishap, as Holland America says a former personal assistant to the winning plaintiff stepped forward to tell a colorful tale of evidence concealment, email deletion, and witness tampering. [Seattle Times]
December 16 roundup
- Judge Jed Rakoff reviews new book by Columbia lawprof John Coffee on future of class actions [New York Review of Books]
- About that “vaping could cause popcorn lung” scare: “All conventional [cigarette smoke] contains… levels of diacetyl… a lot higher than those produced by e-cigarettes.” [Michael Siegel]
- A peek inside Kinder Surprise eggs, global candy favorite that cannot lawfully be brought into the U.S. [Business Insider, earlier]
- Man’s suit against New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art as “too white” raises eyebrows [New York Post, ArtNet]
- Courageous: in Saudi Arabia, lawyer Waleed Abulkhair, who has represented blogger Raif Badawi, imprisoned for doing his job [Scott Greenfield]
- Lawyer’s advice: bosses face legal risk if they let their employees join in #ElderlyChristmasSongs Twitter levity [Jon Hyman]
- Current food labeling standards “provide a big nudge for people to eat less saturated fats and more carbohydrates,” contrary to what many doctors now advise [Ike Brannon, Cato]