“Abby and Jonathan Weber bought their daughter Mollie a mailbox inspired by Tigger, the colorful character from the Winnie the Pooh stories….You know who didn’t appreciate the Tigger mailbox? Members of the Laurel Oaks Homeowners Association that oversees the Bucks County neighborhood that the Webers call home.” Now, three years of litigation later… [Brian Hickey, Philly Voice]
Archive for 2017
Scientist sues colleagues over renewables claims
“Stanford University professor Mark Jacobson, whose research argues the U.S. power grid could run exclusively on renewable energy by 2050, is taking his critics to court. Jacobson filed a $10 million libel lawsuit in September against Chris Clack, a mathematician and chief executive of Vibrant Clean Energy, and the National Academy of Sciences, after the Academy published an article by Clack and 20 co-authors criticizing the 2015 study. The co-authors are not named in the suit.” [Lindsay Marchello/Reason, Keith Pickering/Daily Kos, Robert Bryce/NRO] Here’s Jonathan Adler:
…Some of the arguments made in the complaint are a bit bizarre. For instance, Jacobson claims the NAS violated its conflict-of-interest disclosure policies by failing to note that some of the contributors to the Clack, et al., paper are “advocates” for various policy positions. Yet Jacobson’s own paper doesn’t list his own policy advocacy as a potential conflict of interest either.
The idea that academic researchers should turn to court when their work is criticized or contradicted by other researchers is a pernicious one, challenging the sort of robust inquiry upon which scientific research and the discovery of knowledge require. It is absolutely essential that researchers are free to posit hypotheses and subject others’ hypotheses to critique. This inevitably entails not just questioning other researchers’ conclusions, but also pointing out potential errors and mistakes. Of course it’s true that strong critiques of one’s academic work may have an effect on one’s academic reputation, but that goes with the territory. The same goes for making erroneous allegations against other researchers. If the fear of such reputational harms is compounded by the threat of litigation, academic inquiry will be chilled as researchers become more reluctant to point out the problems in each others’ work….
Like Michael Mann’s long-running defamation suit, this complaint appears to be little more than an effort to use a legal club to stifle robust critique and debate. (In that regard, it should be no surprise that Jacobson’s suit was filed in the same venue.)
Banking and finance roundup
- New research suggests “SEC rule intended to prevent conflicts of interest among staff has actually had the perverse effect of causing staff to profit from their knowledge as insiders of the SEC” [Thaya Brook Knight, Cato]
- “Federal Prohibition Left California Cannabis Farmers Without Insurance or Banks When Wildfires Struck” [Christian Britschgi]
- “Is Dodd-Frank/SOX reform dead?” [Stephen Bainbridge]
- Trial lawyers and CFPB did little to correct Wells Fargo fake-account scandal [Ted Frank WSJ letter]
- Study finds that more-cumbersome judicial foreclosure methods tend to correlate with tougher lending standards especially for poor; should constriction of home credit for poorer households be interpreted as a good? [Brian Feinstein, Chicago via CL&P]
- A different way to encourage more prudent home lending practice, scale back FDIC coverage [Scott Sumner]
Plaintiffs finally drop Subway “footlong” class action
“Plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit brought over Subway’s ‘footlong’ sandwiches have decided to abandon efforts to pursue the litigation,” two months after a Seventh Circuit panel scorchingly criticized a proposed settlement (“utterly worthless… no better than a racket.”) [Jessica Karmasek, Legal NewsLine; our earlier coverage]
In Minnesota, “Convicted, But Still Policing”
“Over the past two decades, hundreds of Minnesota law enforcement officers have been convicted of criminal offenses. Most were never disciplined by the state…. Records also show that scores of the convictions stemmed from off-duty misconduct — including brawls, stalking and domestic altercations — that raise questions about an officer’s temperament for a job that authorizes the use of force.” [Jennifer Bjorhus and MaryJo Webster, Minneapolis Star-Tribune]
The battle to overturn the NLRB’s joint employer rule
“The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill by a vote of 242-181 on Nov. 7 that would require a business to exercise direct control of another entity to be considered a joint employer. If also passed by the Senate and signed into law by the president, the Save Local Business Act would legislatively overturn the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB’s) 2015 Browning-Ferris Industries decision, which ruled that entities may be joint employers even if one exercises only indirect or potential control over the other.” [Allen Smith, SHRM] Under Browning-Ferris, “franchisors and companies that employ subcontractors and temporary staffing agencies may frequently be regarded as ‘joint employers’ of franchise and subcontractor employees” and held legally responsible for their treatment [National Right To Work, quotes me] Business, horrified by the rule, has made its overthrow a major priority [Connor Wolf/Inside Sources, Sean Higgins/Washington Examiner and more] Earlier here, here, etc.
Tracking the pace of deregulation
Brookings has a deregulation tracker here. Whether this constitutes a Trump/Republican deregulatory “juggernaut,” as some contend, will have to be left to the reader. [Matt Welch, Gerald F. Seib, WSJ]
Related: “Don’t Write Off the Congressional Review Act Yet” [Susan Dudley, Yale Journal on Regulation]
Liability roundup
- “Baseball rule” win for Yankees at appeals court: “Court Rules Against Fan in New York State Foul-Ball Case” [Zach Spedden, Ballpark Digest]
- More on the downfall of the $417 million baby powder verdict against Johnson & Johnson [Steven Boranian/Drug & Device Law, Robert H. Wright/WLF, earlier]
- Dear SCOTUS: certification of a class action should be based on admissible evidence [Andrew Grossman, Ilya Shapiro, and Meggan DeWitt on Cato cert amicus brief in Taylor Farms v. Pena]
- What could make the Florida hurricane season even costlier in this year of Irma? Giving contractors legal authority to take over claims under assignment of benefits (AOBs) [Nicole Friedman and Leslie Scism, WSJ]
- “NY’s Scaffold Law Could Add $300 Million Needlessly To The Cost of the Gateway Rail Tunnel Project” [Common Good] Letter: law hinders Habitat for Humanity [Albany Times-Union] More: editorial, Utica Observer-Dispatch;
- C’mon, New Jersey courts, get Daubert and scientific evidence screening right, it’s important considering how many pharmaceutical cases you see [Andis Robeznieks, AMA Wire; Devin Griffin/Drug & Device Law]
Burger workers class action makes Happy Meal for lawyers
Lawyers will get $858,000 of what is described as the nearly million-dollar settlement of a suit against McDonald’s franchisees in northeastern Pennsylvania that had used debit cards to compensate workers, leading to complaints of fees. “The eight employees named in the suit, or the lead plaintiffs, will receive $1,250 each plus the debit-card fees they paid, according to WNEP. All others — only a few hundred of the roughly 2,400 signed paperwork to collect — will get $100 plus fee reimbursement.” [AP/Wilkes Barre Times Leader]
Wage and hour roundup
- San Francisco, Seattle, NYC, Oregon: the new rage for predictable scheduling laws [Sara Eber Fowler, Seyfarth Shaw]
- “Montgomery County Wage Hike Will Drive Business to Virginia” [Emily Top, Economics21, Andrew Metcalf/Bethesda Beat, earlier here, here on the Maryland controversy]
- Truthfulness of plaintiff emerges as sticking point in gig-economy-threatening Grubhub suit [Joe Mullin, ArsTechnica, earlier]
- Expecting further $15/hour wage enactments, Shake Shack plans for kiosk and app ordering without traditional cashiers’ counters [Ryan Bourne, Cato] What a former McDonald’s CEO had to say last year about the minimum wage-kiosk nexus [Ed Rensi, Forbes] Related: Twitchy quoting me;
- After restaurateur Danny Meyer moves to no-tip policy favored by labor activists, many servers report drop in income [Eater NY] As USDOL rethinks, will there be an end of tip pooling cases against the hospitality industry? [Daniel Schwartz]
- “Department of Labor’s FLSA Overtime Rule: Where Is It Now?” [Eric A. Welter and Kimberly Kauffman, Welter Law Firm]