“If the NLRB succeeds, a federal official will command a private corporation it may not produce in one place and must produce in another. Never mind what makes business sense. … And you wonder why Ayn Rand’s novel ‘Atlas Shrugged’ is selling briskly?” [Steve Chapman, D.C. Examiner] A contrasting view: Jeff Hirsch, Workplace Law Prof.
More: George Will, Hans von Spakovsky and James Sherk, related, ShopFloor.
Well-written article about the lengthy career of one pro se litigant in Newark who has been tying up landlords and others in court for years; it took a fair bit of gumption to publish, given the tendency of many litigious persons to sue those who would expose their litigiousness to public notice. Worth careful study for the light it sheds on the difficulty our legal system so often has in bringing down the curtain on determined perennial litigants [Barry Carter, Newark Star-Ledger]
The spurned husband is demanding $10 million on behalf of his daughter; the case is attracting some media attention because its target is the Sidwell Friends School, known for educating many in Washington, D.C.’s elite. [ABC News]
Soaring prices have lately rocked the used-car market, which — I argue in a new post at Cato at Liberty — should cast even more doubt on the wisdom of some of the federal government’s recent interventions in the auto business.
Contractually stipulated arbitration works less poorly than the NYT editorialists seem to think — and lawyer-driven class action litigation not nearly as well [Daniel Fisher, Forbes, more]
“A San Diego woman has sued the company that owns the Chuck E. Cheese’s family restaurant chain, claiming that many of the games intended for children at these locations are actually illegal gambling devices — like slot machines.” [San Diego Union-Tribune, Above the Law (“Can you imagine growing up and being known as the kid whose mom sued Chuck E. Cheese?”)] For other class actions based on creative theories that something “amounts to” gambling, see this site’s reports from 1999 (Pokémon and other kids’ trading/collecting cards) and 2008 (“Deal or No Deal” TV show).
Opelousas, Louisiana: “The attorney who filed the original desegregation lawsuit against the St. Landry Parish School Board in 1965 is seeking nearly $10 million in legal fees for his work on the case over the past 46 years.” [AP/Daily World, Baton Rouge Advocate]
Gideon Kanner recalls how the forcible 1950s displacement of a modest Mexican community made way eventually (after the dropping of a public housing scheme) for the construction of L.A.’s baseball stadium. Some of the residents resisted: “Their principled fight became a footnote in the wretched history of eminent domain law which holds that once a condemnor acquires title to private property by eminent domain, it is not bound to put it to the ‘public’ uses for which it was taken.” [“The Curse of Chavez Ravine“]
In other eminent domain news, voters in the Indian state of West Bengal have ousted the long-ruling Communist party; a rival party “began to gain momentum when angry farmers erupted in protest against the Communist government in 2007 and 2008 after it seized farmland to set up an automobile factory.”
Your home no longer your castle: “Overturning a common law dating back to the English Magna Carta of 1215, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Hoosiers have no right to resist unlawful police entry into their homes.” [NWI Times] James Joyner rounds up outraged blog reaction, and Scott Greenfield has some thoughts on the gradual erosion of the right to resist.