Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

April 3 roundup

  • “Arkansas Passes Bill to Prevent Sale of ‘Cauliflower Rice'” [Bettina Makalintal, Vice via Anthony M. Kreis (“Carolene Products of our time”, and more on that celebrated filled-milk case]
  • Ted Frank has another case raising the cy pres issues the Supreme Court just sidestepped in Frank v. Gaos [Marcia Coyle on rewards-program class action settlement in Perryman v. Romero]
  • Feds recommend 12 year sentence for copyright and ADA troll Paul Hansmeier [Tim Cushing, TechDirt]
  • Didn’t realize New York City still had such a substantial fur industry – much of it in the district of an elected official who’s keen to ban it [Carl Campanile, New York Post]
  • “Who’s Afraid of Big Tech?” Cato conference with Matthew Feeney, Alec Stapp, Jonathan Rauch, Julian Sanchez, Peter Van Doren, and John Samples, among many others [panels one (“Big Brother in Big Tech”), two (“Is Big Tech Too Big?”), three (“Free Speech in an Age of Social Media”)]
  • Looking forward to this one, due out from New York lawyer James Zirin in September: Plaintiff in Chief: A Portrait of Donald Trump in 3,500 Lawsuits [St. Martin’s Press]

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3 Comments

  • In regards to Arkansas’s food labeling law, do they really think that people are confused about the difference between cauliflower and rice or is this, as I suspect, another case of an industry getting its knickers in a twist over the idea of competition?

  • The latter. Arkansas is home to a large rice industry.

    • By Ilya S.

  • Arkansas is not the first, and likely won’t be the last to attempt ridiculous food label laws.

    In 2018 Missouri legislators passed the Missouri Meat Advertising Law which bans use of “meat” in the names of products not derived from animals. A federal lawsuit has been filed for injunctive and declaratory relief on grounds of overbreadth and facial unconstitutionality.

    In 2016 Vermont congressman Peter Welch and 24 congressmen from dairy farming states requested that the FDA exclude plant-based milks from the definition of “milk.” They also introduced the federal “Dairy Pride Act” which would mandate a ban on labels such as “soy milk”. It did not pass.

    In 2014 Unilever sued vegan company Hampton Creek for labeling its plant-based mayonnaise “Just Mayo” because the product did not contain eggs. Mayonnaise contains eggs. Unilever lost.