As promised earlier: “Two Canadians injured in car collisions with moose in Newfoundland have filed a class-action lawsuit against the province, claiming it has not properly controlled the animal’s numbers.” [BBC]
Author Archive
A class action named plaintiff revolts
Mutiny of the figurehead? One of the two lead plaintiffs in a computer-printer class action says he wasn’t adequately told what he was agreeing to, and is now objecting to the settlement. Class counsel in the settlement counter that the objector has been influenced by a lawyer pressing a rival class action. [Ted at PoL]
Kinder Surprise chocolate-covered toys
We’ve reported before (related) on the federal government’s ban on Kinder Surprise chocolate-wrapped toys, considered innocuous in many other countries but deemed an illicit choking hazard here. They’re back in the news [Lenore Skenazy, Katherine Mangu-Ward] with the key paragraph in the CBC’s report indicating how very frequently the candies are seized from bewildered travelers:
The U.S. takes catching illegal Kinder candy seriously, judging by the number of them they’ve confiscated in the last year. Officials said they’ve seized more than 25,000 of the treats in 2,000 separate seizures.
High Court declines to hear Gulf Coast-climate change case
Having agreed to hear a different global warming case this term, the Supreme Court has declined to review the dismissal of a case blaming thirty energy companies (via greenhouse gas emissions) for Hurricane Katrina damage. [NOLA.com, earlier here and here] The case had reached a curious procedural posture following the recusal of half the judges on the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. My Cato colleague Ilya Shapiro has details on that and other cases that notably won’t be appearing on the Supreme Court’s docket this term.
Jilted bride sues ex-groom
Should the damages be confined to the unrecoverable costs of the planned wedding, or extend beyond that? [Today Show]
Koons vs. balloon dog bookends
Although balloon dogs existed long before artist Jeff Koons began doing showy steel replicas of them for museum installations, his lawyers have sent a cease and desist letter to a gallery over its sale of resin bookends in the form of the canine inflatables [L Magazine]
January 12 roundup
- Merger objections: “First Comes the Deal Announcement, Then Comes the Lawsuit” [WSJ Law Blog]
- Harvey Silverglate on campus “anti-bullying” bill [Forbes]
- Anna Nicole Smith case could empower bankruptcy judges, encourage forum-shoppers [Michael J. Wade, Examiner]
- “Family Business Wins Same Lawsuit Twice, Now Faces It For the Third Time” [Mike LePage, U.S. Chamber ILR]
- “I’ll Never File Another Asbestos Case in Texas” [Oliver]
- Financial whistleblowing rules a potential “gold mine”? [WSJ Law Blog, Wood/PoL, Robert Shattuck on SEC comment process]
- “Device lag at the FDA” [Tabarrok]
- Cheyenne-Arapahoe tribes file land claim that includes city of Denver, but they’ll trade it for casino rights [five years ago on Overlawyered]
Brits to make it easier to hire/fire workers
Hey, that might work here too! It’s the subject of my new Cato Institute post, which also mentions today’s news of a big jump (to record levels) in federal employment discrimination cases, fueled by the 2008 ADA Amendments Act.
California’s new online-impersonation ban
Liability is predicated on “intent to harm, intimidate, threaten, or defraud another person – not necessarily the person you are impersonating.” [Michael Arrington, TechCrunch] Despite talk of using the statute against stalkers, Choire Sicha predicts a somewhat different application: “harm as in ‘brand dilution’ — that is what will be prosecuted. Of course there is no carve-out for playful, political or non-murderous uses of online impersonation.” The bill’s text, notes Arrington, doesn’t address such free speech issues as satire and parody, though it does restrict itself to impersonations that are “credible.” Compare: much-demonized Koch Industries goes to court to identify originators (apparently political critics) of website imitating its own [Web Host Industry Review]
“If I notice an employee becoming increasingly unstable, what can I do about it?”
The Americans with Disabilities Act requires employers to accommodate mentally disabled employees, but makes an exception for those who pose a “direct threat” to co-workers or others. Trouble is, to invoke the narrow “direct threat” exception, an employer may need to be prepared to prove that it has based its decision either on “a reasonable medical judgment that relies on the most current medical knowledge” or “on the best available objective evidence” — a much tougher evidentiary standard than is required for the making of many other workplace, governmental and medical decisions. [Jon Hyman, Ohio Employer’s Law Blog]