- Chicago and Cook County paid sick leave ordinances spell “major headaches” for employers [Kimberly Ross and Craig Thorstenson, Ford Harrison]
- “DoL Withdraws Joint Employer Guidance” [Kim Slowey/ ConstructionDive, Catherine Strauss and Tami Earnhart, earlier here, etc.]
- How South Dakota came to deregulate hair braiding [John Hult, Sioux Falls Argus-Leader]
- Emmanuel Macron has big plans, very much including reform of France’s deeply un-libertarian labor law [Sylvain Cypel, New York Review of Books]
- State of play at NLRB on employees’ taping things: “You can still limit recordings in your workplace, as long as you don’t ban all recordings outright.” [Janette Levey Frisch]
- Over business protests, NYC’s left-leaning council and mayor keep enacting union-backed burdens on employers [Connor Wolf, earlier; related here, here, here, etc.]
Archive for July, 2017
Judge: ADA lawsuit machine is “carnival shell game”
“A federal judge decided that nearly 100 disability lawsuits filed in New Mexico, near carbon copies of cases filed in Colorado, were malicious and abusive.” [The Denver Channel] “Lawyer Sharon Pomeranz of Santa Fe filed the 99 cases on behalf of one plaintiff, Alyssa Carton, who has spina bifida and uses a wheelchair. Carton became the plaintiff after responding to a Craigslist ad purportedly placed by a litigation funding company called Litigation Management and Financial Services. … Carton’s agreement with the funding company required her to keep the contract confidential, a provision that helped the company evade its obligation to pay filing fees by claiming Carton couldn’t afford to pay, [Chief Magistrate Judge Karen] Molzen said.” Molzen compared the arrangement to a “carnival shell game” that arranged for surplus winnings to end up in the lawyer’s rather than client’s hands. “Pomeranz also had an agreement with the funding company requiring her to reimburse it for its ‘staff work,’ including a driver who took Carton to the business sites.” [Debra Cassens Weiss/ABA Journal]
Meanwhile, Austin ADA attorney Omar Rosales “has been suspended from practice in a federal court for three years based on a finding he ‘unquestionably acted in bad faith’ in six cases.” [Weiss, ABA Journal, David Barer/KXAN, earlier here and here]
Standing in the Need of Standing
Progressive clergy in Washington, D.C. sue Coca-Cola over community obesity [Caitlin Dewey/Washington Post, in a lengthy, uncritical piece that never addresses the issue of standing]
Sheldon Silver conviction overturned, faces retrial
Because jury instructions did not correctly reflect the narrower definition of honest-services law adopted by the Supreme Court in the case of Virginia Gov. Robert McDonnell, the Second Circuit has overturned the conviction of former New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver; retrial is considered likely. [Kenneth Lovett/New York Daily News, New York Sun]
Liability roundup
- Entrepreneurs launch plaintiff’s insurance to cover costs of pursuing litigation, not quite same thing as the “legal expense insurance” commonly found in loser-pays jurisdictions [ABA Journal]
- More on the class action procedure case Microsoft v. Baker, from the just-ended Supreme Court term [Federalist Society podcast with Ted Frank, earlier]
- Why Bristol-Myers Squibb, the Supreme Court case on state court jurisdiction, “is one of the most important mass tort/product liability decisions ever” [James Beck/Drug & Device Law, earlier]
- Sandy Hook massacre: “Newtown And Board Of Education Seek Dismissal Of Wrongful Death Lawsuit” [AP/CBS Connecticut]
- Pennsylvania: “Evidence-Manipulation Claims Dog Asbestos Lawyer” [Lowell Neumann Nickey, Courthouse News] “California’s Latest Litigation Invitation: A Duty to Protect Against ‘Take-Home’ Exposure” [Curt Cutting, WLF]
- It’s almost as if trial lawyers were in the driver’s seat of these ostensibly public actions: Tennessee counties’ opioids suit also seeks to strike down the state’s tort reform law [Jamie Satterfield, Knoxville News-Sentinel]
Right to curse out one’s boss on Facebook
“It’s been two years since the NLRB determined that section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act protected an employee’s profanity laced Facebook rant simply because he ended it with a pro union message. I held out hope that the court of appeals would see the folly in the decision and send a clear message to employees and employers that such misconduct remains a terminable offense. NLRB v. Pier Sixty (2nd Cir. 4/21/17) dashed that hope.” [Jon Hyman] More: Nixon Peabody, Eric Goldman.
New Mexico addiction suit against pharmacist falls short
Plaintiffs sued a New Mexico pharmacist for selling them opioids, resulting in their addiction. One big problem, however: “the plaintiffs had conspired with a nurse practitioner to write up fraudulent prescriptions.” And New Mexico adheres to a rule followed by various states in various forms known as the in pari delicto rule. It “is based on a public policy to preclude anyone who injures him or herself in the course of criminal activity from recovering in tort for those injuries. Put another way, perhaps more appetizing for those of you who delight in legal jargon, criminal conduct is an intervening act that cuts off liability.” [Stephen McConnell, Drug & Device Law]
Spending $40K in legal fees to defend a garage
After a six-year battle that went to the Delaware Supreme Court, and spending what says was $40,000 on legal fees, car enthusiast Charles Williams has finally prevailed in a legal battle with neighbors over his construction of the garage a judge called “auto tinkerer’s Taj Mahal” [Cape Gazette]
NYC bans salary history inquiries
New York City has become the latest jurisdiction to ban asking about levels of current and past salary — an obviously rational and business-related inquiry in many cases — in hopes that maybe somehow the result will be to level female applicants’ salary offerings up (and not anyone’s down, of course.) “Nor will employers be able to search public records to discover a candidate’s payment history. (How that is enforced remains to be seen.)” [William D. Cohan, New York Times]
July 12 roundup
- Mother who gives 10 year old the run of a Lego store: Mom of the Year, or candidate for arrest? [Lenore Skenazy on Ontario County, N.Y. incident]
- Sorry to see WSJ Law Blog close. A wealth of valuable content, often first on stories, showcase for rising writers [farewell post]
- Oops! “The bill as [passed] …allows a pregnant woman to commit homicide without consequences.” [Lowering the Bar on New Hampshire measure]
- No, a court really didn’t overturn Florida stand-your-ground law. Let Eugene Volokh explain [Volokh Conspiracy] Still, the recently enacted procedural fillip the court did strike down was one of practical significance to many defendants [C.J. Ciaramella, Reason]
- In the mail: John Corvino et al., Debating Religious Liberty and Discrimination. Good opening essay [Oxford University Press]
- What one bad lawyer can do: feds chase $600 million in disability claims linked to fugitive Eric Conn [Chris Edwards, Cato]