People come up with the same joke independently from each other all the time. What to do when someone insists he has been stolen from? Late-night host Conan O’Brien: “This saga ended with the gentleman in San Diego and I deciding to resolve our dispute amicably. I stand by every word I have written here, but I decided to forgo a potentially farcical and expensive jury trial in federal court over five jokes that don’t even make sense anymore. Four years and countless legal bills have been plenty.” [Variety; Mike Masnick, TechDirt]
Liability roundup
- Oakland jury tells Monsanto to pay $2 billion over claim that Roundup caused non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, though the consensus among scientists is that it doesn’t [Tina Bellon, Reuters, earlier] Both sides in glyphosate trial bombarded Bay Area residents with local paid messaging; did Monsanto use geofencing to run ads on phones inside the courthouse itself? [Scott Greenfield, ABA Journal] Was judge in previous Bay Area glyphosate case swayed by P.R. campaign aimed at her? [Daniel Fisher, Legal NewsLine]
- “Police say Rodriguez was looking at her phone while walking across tracks” [AP/KOIN; Oregon woman suing rail companies over injury]
- Liability reform in Florida, so often stymied in the past, may have clearer road ahead with arrival of new state high court majority [John Haughey, Florida Watchdog]
- Not just mesh, either: “Top 5 Eyebrow-Raising Provisions in Mesh Attorneys’ Retainer Agreements” [Elizabeth Chamblee Burch]
- What is a Maryland General Assembly session without a special fast-track bill to hot-wire money to the benefit of asbestos lawyer Peter Angelos? But this year’s ran aground [Josh Kurtz, Maryland Matters; John O’Brien, Legal NewsLine]
- Car accident scam in eastern Connecticut reaped estimated $600,000 from as many as 50 staged crashes [AP/WTIC]
Illinois legislation would mandate corporate board quotas
The Illinois House has passed a bill “to require every publicly traded corporation headquartered here to include at least one woman and one African-American on its board of directors. The Senate version calls for a Latino as well. Corporations that fail to meet the quota would be fined up to $100,000.” Terrible bill, as well as a good way to discourage businesses from headquartering in Illinois. University of Chicago law professor Todd Henderson expects that if the bill passes courts will strike it down as unconstitutional [Chicago Tribune editorial] More: Hans Bader.
London police gather kitchen knives for destruction
Yesterday we conducted weapons sweeps,dealt with a person injured from a van reversing on them, reported a burglary and collected all these from @scope charity shop who diligently didn’t want them to get into the wrong hands & disposed of correctly & safely pic.twitter.com/GNfxZd6iGd
— Regents Park Police (@MPSRegentsPark) May 14, 2019
From a verified police account in London, a city that’s been pursuing an anti-knife campaign. Note the foil (or is it an épée?), the spoon, and enough chef’s, paring, bread, and steak knives to get a half-dozen households launched on a lifelong mission of eating well.
May 15 roundup
- “Banana Costume Copyright Assailed at Third Circuit” [Emilee Larkin, Courthouse News, earlier]
- In a new piece for The Bulwark, I sort through some comments by presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg critical of identity politics;
- Supreme Court’s decision in Apple v. Pepper, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh joining four liberals, takes a little nick out of Illinois Brick doctrine limiting antitrust suits [my new Cato post]
- Ninth Circuit will soon hear case in which judge ordered Idaho prison system to provide inmate with transgender surgery; I’m quoted saying lower court decision amounted to battle of the experts [Amanda Peacher, NPR/KBSX, plus followup piece (“medical necessity” not a fixed standard, definitions of cruel and unusual punishment hitched in some ways to public opinion) and NPR “Morning Edition”; audio clip]
- “The Moral Panic Behind Internet Regulation” [Matthew Lesh, Quillette] “A Single Global Standard for Internet Content Regulation Is a Recipe for Censorship” [Jacob Mchangama, Quillette] And Jonah Goldberg on right-wing rage at social media platform moderation;
- Some politicos in Britain engage in “‘karaoke Thatcherism’, preaching low-tax, low-regulation mantras divorced from new challenges or detail,” then falling for truly bad ideas like laws to assure real estate tenants indefinite tenure against owners’ wishes [Ryan Bourne]
Judge: holding “Cops Ahead” sign to warn motorists may be protected speech
“The cop actually hauling him to the station [for warning motorists that there were cops ahead] was more to the point, telling the man he was arresting him for ‘interfering with our livelihood,'” according to the complaint in the subsequent lawsuit. [Tim Cushing, TechDirt; Stamford, Ct.] We covered a similar ruling in Florida in 2012.
Not a generic headline
“Judge Dismisses Incomprehensible, Pointless Pile of Papers” [Lowering the Bar; creative Detroit litigant]
Medical roundup
- Why is insulin so expensive? [Tyler Cowen] “People Are Clamoring to Buy Old Insulin Pumps” [Sarah Zhang, The Atlantic via Ted Frank (calling it “an amazing story …about a problem created by overregulation and fear of tort liability, words that never appear in the article”)]
- Opioid litigation might be working to let the policy offenders in government get away [Jeffrey Miron and Laura Nicolae, Real Clear Policy/Cato; Jeffrey Singer, Cato; Charles Fain Lehman, National Review] A contrasting view: Nicolas P. Terry, Petrie-Flom “Bill of Health”;
- Read and marvel: Critical Dietetics, a social justice health movement [James Lindsay on Twitter]
- How HIPAA, the health privacy law, impedes potentially life-saving research into health records [John Cochrane]
- Uh-oh: Pennsylvania Supreme Court move could reopen forum shopping for medical malpractice lawsuits [David Wenner, Penn Live]
- “Transparent Medical Pricing and the $89,000 Snake Bite” [Cato Podcast with Eric Ferguson]
In Kentucky, a blank check for child snatching
“Kentucky social workers are failing to have courts properly scrutinize and approve the drastic step of taking some children from their homes, relying instead on blank removal orders with pre-signed judges’ signatures, which is illegal according to several attorneys and judges.” The practice, now ended following an investigation by local broadcaster WDRB, was rationalized by the state Cabinet for Health and Family Services as a way to speed things up on evenings and weekends when family court judges are not sitting, although on-call judges are supposed to be available during those times to review removal orders. The practice raises grave due process concerns, since it means that judges had not (and perhaps would not have) signed off on removal orders after individualized review, and if need be questioning, of the underlying allegations. It also permits allegations to be filled in after a child is taken, perhaps tailored to whatever household conditions were or were not discovered during the seizure. “In addition, cabinet workers have allegedly called judges after hours and told them about the need to remove one child from a home, but then used multiple copies of pre-signed emergency custody orders to take more than one juvenile.” [Jason Riley, WDRB via Robby Soave, Reason]
A national cap on consumer interest rates?
Two politicians with whom I regularly disagree have proposed a national cap on credit card interest of 15% a year. Because they are well known figures, the proposal is likely to get some attention.
Per one reporter, the current median card interest rate of 21.36% breaks down to 17.73% for high credit scores and 24.99% for people with low credit scores. Who do you think will be denied credit altogether under a 15% cap? Are they better off with an option of 24.99% credit, or with no option of credit at all?
Since the idea of interest caps is anything but new, economists have had a long time to study this issue, as I noted in this earlier post. One recent study looked at Arkansas, a state with a throwback constitutional provision capping allowable interest rates at 17 percent. The effect is to keep some otherwise common financial products from being offered in the state, as a result of which many Arkansans “drive to neighboring states to take out small-dollar installment loans.”
Why think that the government can set price ceilings well below market clearing levels without causing shortages of the affected good or service? More fundamentally, why should the government stand between two parties in a willing transaction? More: Steve Horwitz.
P.S. Did someone bring up postal banking?