“– which, of course, it has.” Terry Teachout on bureaucratic euphemism (Apr. 28).
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Attempts suicide on Death Row, wants $35M from jailers
Ronnie Joe Neal, who got to Texas’s Death Row by committing a particularly heinous sex murder, says Bexar County jailers didn’t act speedily enough to save him after he attempted suicide by downing 50 prescription tablets. So he wants $35 million in his civil rights lawsuit, in which he’s represented by attorney James Myart. (Ken Rodriguez, “Alamo Heights teacher’s killer wants $35 million worth of ‘justice'”, San Antonio Express-News, Apr. 21). Similar: Apr. 17.
Chicago bans foie gras
The dozen or so restaurants in town that serve the expensive French delicacy will be subject to $250 to $500 fines if they continue to do so. California has banned the production, but not the serving, of the fattened goose liver. (Fran Spielman, “City council approves foie gras ban”, Chicago Sun-Times, Apr. 26 (via Bainbridge)).
Jane Jacobs, 1916-2006
A likely winner of the Stendhal lottery — the one in which the prize is to write a book that will still be read a hundred years after it saw day — the urbanist is remembered by the Manhattan Institute’s Howard Husock at City Journal and by Tyler Cowen, Jesse Walker, Sissy Willis, Witold Rybczynski at Slate, Alan Ehrenhalt, New Haven Independent and Ann Althouse, to list just a small sampling. I put in my own laudatory two cents in a 1998 Reason symposium. More: 2Blowhards.
Forbes: “My Kingdom for a Casino”
As regular readers of this space know (Apr. 14, etc.), I’ve long taken an interest in the injustices that have been visited on innocent landowners in New York, Connecticut and many other states by lawsuits seeking to revive long-defunct Indian land claims. I’ve got a guest column in the latest Forbes (“On My Mind”, May 8, reg) briefly summing up a few of the things wrong with this litigation. A sample:
Until lately Anglo-American law sought a careful balance between the goal of restoring wrongfully taken property to its rightful owners, on the one hand, and the equally valid goal of securing everyone’s property against the danger that a claimant will show up some day to assert a speculative defect in title. Hence doctrines aimed at preventing old disputes from staying alive indefinitely: statutes of limitation, adverse possession, “acquiescence” in unchallenged political boundaries.
In a series of rulings over the past 30 years, however, the U.S. Supreme Court has decided that Indians are wholly different from other land claimants. Law professors have cheered: What cause is more romantic than that of dispossessed Indians? (Somehow owners of small farms in upstate New York never seem to merit the underdog label.) The rulings also constitute a stunning victory for a scrappy cadre of Legal Services lawyers; a few of these antiestablishment types have found themselves, over the arc of a career, gradually transmuted through their tribal connections into highly paid casino promoters, in a transformation worthy of a Balzac or Stendhal novel.
(cross-posted at Point of Law)
Safety mask litigation
Today’s W$J has an editorial about the ill consequences of the trend in recent years for lawyers prosecuting asbestos and silicosis cases to add makers of commonly used industrial masks and respirators as defendants in their suits:
The Coalition for Breathing Safety, an industry group, reports that between 2000 and 2004 plaintiffs attorneys filed more than 326,000 claims against its five members. Some of these are asbestos-related, although the recent deluge has been all silicosis. One manufacturer (which prefers not to be named lest it become a bigger target) says that prior to 2002 it faced about 200 silicosis claims a year. In 2003-4, it got hit with 29,000….The industry coalition estimates its members have spent the equivalent of 90% of their 2004 net income fighting suits in recent years.
The suits have fared poorly — none of the respirator makers have lost a case in court — but the making of industrial respirators and masks is a low-margin line of business, and companies that invest heavily in the business may simply be buying themselves legal risk. And now comes the scare over avian flu:
Respirator manufacturers are still going strong overseas, but the U.S. could find itself unable to purchase these products in a crisis. Worried about a possible flu pandemic, many governments are snapping up masks; France is acquiring 685 million. In previous disease scares (say, China and SARS), countries have blocked mask exports. Local U.S. governments and hospitals are already having a hard time finding supplies.
It might be added that the plight of respirator makers is attributable in large part to the economics of what has been called the shotgun approach to defendant-naming. It is very unlikely that lawyers would have filed 300,000 claims against mask makers, or anything approaching that number, if each suit had to be filed as a freestanding matter. However, it costs very little to add 3M or another respirator defendant when a case is already been judged to be worth filing against other, more vulnerable defendants. For more on the mask litigation, see Sept. 15, 2004 and Jan. 22, 2005. More: Point of Law, May 9.
“Rival bands clash over little-person KISS tribute”
One tribute band consisting of, er, miniature performers of KISS songs and routines has sent a cease-and-desist letter to another such tribute band. (Robert W. Welkos, “Rival bands clash over little-person KISS tribute”, LA Times, Apr. 11).
Update: CAIR using litigation to silence critics?
The Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has settled its Canadian lawsuit against the Web site Anti-Cair-net.org, the Canadian terrorism expert David Harris, writer David Frum, and the National Post. The settlement is secret, but there was no retraction of the claim that CAIR is a “terrorist-supporting front organization . . .founded by Hamas supporters” that aims “to make radical Islam the dominant religion in the United States.” David Frum has details in the April 25 National Post, and expresses optimism that free criticism of terrorism supporters can now take place.
Update: As Bob B points out in the comments, elsewhere in the blogosphere, Israpundit, LGF, and Powerline. Daniel Pipes also writes with extensive detail. It reasonably appears CAIR dropped the suit, to avoid submitting to discovery: an important lesson for every libel plaintiff. Three cheers for Greenberg Traurig LLP, which did pro bono work that was actually pro bono.
Florida legislature considering restoring free press
We’ve previously commented on how Florida courts’ interpretation of “false light” doctrine permits attorneys to litigate against newspapers for truthful reporting. The Florida legislature is considering closing the court-created loophole; the Orlando Sentinel thinks it can’t come soon enough.
Was the Garza Vioxx case fraudulent?
That’s what overwhelming evidence seems to suggest, I write in Point of Law. I ask: does anyone want to claim that the Garza case was an example of the jury system working well?
Also there: Michael Krauss and I criticize the Ninth Circuit’s command to Los Angeles that the Eighth Amendment prohibits them from arresting homeless people in Skid Row for their conduct; why you can’t believe everything you quoted from plaintiffs’ lawyers in the press; Maryland lead paint legislation; and who really outspends whom in ballot battles.