“Defence chiefs are fighting to prevent the Army’s tanks being stopped in their tracks by the introduction of a European directive on vibration and noise at work. The Control of Vibration at Work Regulations and the Control of Noise at Work Regulations have left officers scrambling to discover if the military’s armoured vehicles break the rules.” The Ministry of Defence intends to invoke an “opt-out” provision to escape compliance; “If you are in a combat situation then clearly it will be difficult to bring in these regulations,” explained a spokesman for the health and safety executive, another government agency which is implementing the directive. (Thomas Harding, “‘Noise at work’ rules threaten to knock out Army’s tanks”, Daily Telegraph, Sept. 2). In the past, British defense officials have expressed alarm that the noise of gunfire during infantry training and even military brass bands could violate EU noise-at-work rules: see Dec. 22-25, 2000.
Author Archive
A Boies cookie jar
Famed attorney David Boies “champions himself as an advocate of honest corporate governance,” notes Tom Kirkendall (Aug. 31), so it’s more than a little piquant that Boies “just resigned as special counsel for Adelphia for violating the Bankruptcy Code and Rules by failing to disclose to the Adelphia Bankruptcy Court that members of his family indirectly own a substantial interest in a document management services company that did between $5 and $10 million of business with Adelphia. Apparently, other clients of Mr. Boies’ firm also have paid substantial sums to the document management company without knowing of the affiliation to Mr. Boies’ family members.” Larry Ribstein also comments (Aug. 30) and notes (Aug. 31) that the W$J story that broke the news “also notes that a former Boies associate, [William F.] Duker, who headed the firm [document management firm Amici] was sentenced to 33 months in prison in 1997 for ‘falsely inflating legal bills to the federal government.’ (Ironically, the same person helped Boies sue Mike Milken in 1990.) The current Amici CEO, ‘when asked if Mr. Duker had a consulting contract or office at the company this year’ said ‘I don’t know how to describe that relationship.’ Wonder if Boies’ clients knew about that when they approved use of Amici.” (Laurie P. Cohen and Robert Frank, “More Boies Clients Used Family Firm”, Aug. 31). Update: Larry Ribstein has more (Sept. 12).
Gasoline prices spike
You’d think one advantage of electing a Texas oil guy as president would be that, when prices at the pump react to a genuinely massive supply disruption as supply and demand predict they will, he’d know better than to direct public anger toward the ill-defined offense of “price gouging”. Apparently you’d be wrong, though:
“I think there ought to be zero tolerance of people breaking the law during an emergency such as this -– whether it be looting, or price gouging at the gasoline pump, or taking advantage of charitable giving or insurance fraud,” Bush said. “And I’ve made that clear to our attorney general. The citizens ought to be working together.”
(Adam Nossiter, “More National Guardsmen are sent in”, AP/San Diego Union-Tribune, Sept. 1). More: Mark Kleiman got there first (Sept. 1)(via Julian Sanchez). See also Dan Mitchell of Heritage at C-Log (Aug. 31). And Don Boudreaux, after thanking Hawaiian pols, wonders (Aug. 29):
Would it make sense to haul before Congress a group of real-estate agents, or a few homeowners, or some home-builders to accuse them publicly of causing the recent surge in real-estate prices?
Yet more, this time from Jane Galt (Sept. 1): “Prices of everything rise after a disaster, and a good thing too, since that encourages people and material to flood into the damaged area, where they’re needed most.”
Patent law reform
Backers of the bill, intended to reduce litigation and move the U.S. closer to other advanced nations’ practices on intellectual property, were (as of last month, at least) hoping that it would emerge from a House subcommittee after Labor Day. (Peter Geier, “Bill in Congress to Overhaul Patent Law Seeks to Quell Suits”, National Law Journal, Aug. 19; Mark Scarsi, “Sweeping Changes to the U.S. Patent System? Don’t Bet on It!”, Law.com, Jul. 5). See Jun. 22, May 31, May 9 and other entries on our tech law page. And InHouseBlog (Aug. 15) notices a Slashdot thread on a company named EpicRealm that “apparently has patent filings with claims covering ‘dynamically generating a web page in response to the request.’ That basically describes the entire Web these days.”
Opportunistic legal marketing
Hawaiian tribal recognition
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Katrina relief efforts
Glenn Reynolds is updating a list of relief charities. There’s a Hurricane Katrina Help Wiki modeled on the one created after the Asian tsunami. Michelle Malkin rounds up other useful things that can be done. And Terry Teachout has compiled this comprehensive list of Katrina blogs.
“Law and lawyers post-Katrina”
Among its other horrific effects, the hurricane is going to pose a perhaps unprecedented challenge to the resilience of a state legal system, by inundating or otherwise destroying the records of many of Louisiana’s busiest courts, law firms and other participants in the legal process. Prof. Bainbridge has details (Aug. 31). More: Texas Lawyer reports that the administrators of the Fifth Circuit courthouse in New Orleans prudently had staffers bring some files up to the second floor as the storm approached.
“Supersized nanny state”
The San Francisco Chronicle’s Debra Saunders is no admirer of California AG Lockyer’s new lawsuit (see Ted’s Aug. 29 post) charging that restaurants have broken the law by failing to post announcements that french fries and other common foods contain naturally occurring acrylamides (Aug. 30). More: Jonathan Wilson posts here and here.