At Cato today at noon, with John Fund, Armand Thieblot, John Samples, and moderator Chris Edwards, and watchable online. Wish I could attend, but I’m not in Washington at the moment.
Author Archive
Passenger sues over crying toddler on flight
Qantas settled the American passenger’s complaint, so we never got to hear the battle of the experts about whether the 3-year-old’s screaming really caused blood to issue from her eardrum as alleged. [Suzanne Murray/CafeMom via Stoll and many readers]
Slowing down the copyright trolls
How to respond to the emergence of assembly-line copyright-suit filers without undermining the right of content owners to stop unauthorized reprints that go beyond fair use? Max Kennerly raises the possibility of steering rights owners into agency complaints or arbitration as an alternative, or at least precondition, to court action. That might slow down the business model of groups like RightHaven, which has demanded in terrorem sums from mom-and-pop bloggers and other infringers and even asked courts to order seizure of the domains of otherwise legitimate target websites.
“…one of the unheralded heroes of our time”
That Mr. Stossel certainly says some nice things.
Peter Henning on SEC whistleblowing
As I’ve been warning: under the new Dodd-Frank provisions, companies “should expect at least some of their employees to report to the government first rather than relying on internal disclosure mechanisms.” [NYT “DealBook”, earlier here, here, etc.] More: various perspectives on FCPA whistleblower bounties [Koehler]
July 28 roundup
- “N.J. High Court to Review Drunken Drivers’ Right to Sue Bars That Served Them” [NJLJ]
- Recipe for Oakland-style public unionism: “Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act” pending on Capitol Hill would impose public-service collective bargaining and labor arbitration on local governments nationwide [Cavanaugh/Reason, more, effects on police misconduct accountability]
- iPhone class action of doubtful benefit to consumers [Hahn & Passell, Regulation 2.0]
- U.K.: “Fired Top In-House Lawyer Testifies She Was Bullied by Underling” [ABA Journal]
- Due this fall: Norma Zager book “Erin Brockovich and the Beverly Hills Greenscam” [Pelican Publishing] Weitz firm invokes Brockovich association to drum up Gulf spill business [Michael Daly, NYDN]
- Paperwork nightmare: “Health Care Reform’s Terrible, Tiny Tax” [Megan McArdle]
- Three views of Sherrod fiasco [Rick Esenberg, Radley Balko, John Derbyshire]
- This time the feds look serious about foisting low-flow showerheads on unwilling consumers [Heritage Foundry]
Welcome Lars Larson listeners
I was on the Oregon-based radio show Tuesday evening to discuss the legislative battle over the DISCLOSE Act and the case of the passenger bumped by Southwest Airlines to make way for the second seat needed for an obese teen.
ADA’s anniversary, cont’d
Among reactions and links to my Cato piece yesterday: David Frum, Brian Doherty/Reason “Hit and Run”, Richard Epstein/Ricochet, LoTempio Law Blog/Blawg Review #274, John Stossel/Fox Business (with kind words), Steve Bussey (ditto, with a historic-preservation-related reader comment).
In other news, a Ninth Circuit panel (Friedman, Nelson, Reinhardt) has ruled that the “Chipotle Experience” at Chipotle Mexican Grill, in which customers can watch their food being made behind a glass partition, violates the ADA “because the restaurants’ 45-inch counters are too high. The company now faces hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages.” [AP, Reuters, decision in Antoninetti v. Chipotle courtesy Leagle]. More: Ted at PoL and my followups here and at Cato at Liberty.
California high court OKs public contingency fees
Ted at Point of Law has a post mortem on a decision that’s pretty bad, but not as bad as it might have been. More: Legal Ethics Forum, John Sullivan/Civil Justice Association of California, Wood/ShopFloor. Thanks, by the way, to CJAC for citing my writing in their amicus brief (PDF, see p. 10).
Canadian gambler: you let me lose C$330,000
“An admitted gambling addict claims the British Columbia Lottery and two casino companies let her gamble away hundreds of thousands of dollars after she signed a voluntary self-exclusion program for problem gamblers.” [Courthouse News via Legal Blog Watch; similar] Meanwhile, another man is claiming the government-owned lottery did finally enforce its exclusion order — and, per its rules, refused to pay him — when he won a $42,000 jackpot. [Globe and Mail]