- Paradox of Jones Act: by jacking up shipping costs from mainland, it can give goods made overseas artificial price advantage [Cato Daily Podcast with Colin Grabow] Trade wars are immensely destructive, hurting producers and consumers alike, and the latest is no exception [Reuters on China retaliation]
- Joel Kotkin-Michael Greve exchange on localism at Liberty and Law [Kotkin, Greve]
- Government demands for encrypted data pose threat to digital privacy [Erin Dunne, D.C. Examiner]
- “New York’s transportation establishment will not reduce prices to world standards as long as it can demand quintuple the world standard and get away with it” [Connor Harris, City Journal]
- “The Fair Housing Act prohibits ‘making, printing, or publishing’ any ‘notice, statement, or advertisement’ with respect to ‘the sale or rental of a dwelling’ that indicates any racial preference or discrimination. Does this mean that Ohio county recorders violate the law when they maintain property records that contain unenforceable, decades-old racially restrictive covenants? Sixth Circuit: No need to answer that question, because the plaintiff doesn’t have standing.” [John Kenneth Ross, IJ “Short Circuit”, on Mason v. Adams County Recorder]
- Trademark-go-round: “Monster Energy Loses Trademark Opposition With Monsta Pizza In The UK” [Timothy Geigner, TechDirt] “Disney Gets Early Loss In Trademark, Copyright Suit Against Unlicensed Birthday Party Characters” [same] “Two Georgia Sausage Companies Battle Over Trademarked Logos That Aren’t Particularly Similar” [same]
“More Comic Conventions Change Their Names After Crazy SDCC Attorney’s Fees And Injunction Ruling”
Following a lawsuit for trademark infringement by the San Diego Comic Con against the Salt Lake Comic Con that resulted in a jury award of $20,000 — accompanied by a $4 million attorneys’ fee award and broad injunction — other comics conventions around the country are scrambling to change their names. [Timothy Geigner, TechDirt, more]
The governor’s fateful feather
“Andrew Cuomo, who illegally collected an eagle feather, shouldn’t be punished for accidentally breaking the law, and neither should anyone else.” [Jacob Sullum, Reason; earlier on the legal pitfalls of found or traded eagle feathers here, here, etc.]
Liability roundup
- $101 million in Texas could be biggest trucking damages award in history; crash victim had “told the responding police officer he was not injured and continued on with his journey” [John Kingston, FreightWaves]
- “Lawyers For Texas Counties In Opioid Cases May Not Have Valid Contracts” [Daniel Fisher, earlier on Texas scramble here, here, here, and especially here]
- Arbitration defended [Ross A. Marchand, Economics21]
- “Madden NFL 19 Jacksonville shooting victim sues Electronic Arts, claiming negligence” [Cyrus Farivar. ArsTechnica]
- “Prosecutors Are Said to Issue Subpoenas Over Pelvic-Mesh Surgery Financing” [Matthew Goldstein and Jessica Silver-Greenberg, New York Times, earlier and more]
- Federal courts split on whether SCOTUS’s Bristol-Myers Squibb limits on personal jurisdiction apply to class actions [Bradley, Akin Gump, Carlton Fields]
Can landlords opt out of the Section 8 rental program?
The Section 8 federal housing voucher program was conceived as one in which owners of rental properties participate voluntarily, but that may be changing. One straw in the wind: the push for “source of income discrimination” laws prohibiting landlords from turning away Section 8 tenants. Another: a new Third Circuit decision declaring that the owner of a unit converted to market-rate could not refuse to renew a lease even after the original tenant died. I look at Hayes v. Harvey in my new post at Cato.
(Some) conservatives for social media regulation
“It was quite something to hear Republicans sounding like Elizabeth Warren on a trust-busting bender, but it is difficult to take seriously the proposition that what’s at work here is concern about monopoly power, Supreme Court precedents, or anything of the sort: This is about friends and enemies, and Republicans have decided that Silicon Valley is the enemy.” [Kevin Williamson, National Review] “Trump allies propose nationalizing Facebook, Google data” [Jason Tashea, ABA Journal] And see John Hinderaker, PowerLine, on a tape showing Google employees disappointed by the results of the last election (“Break them up under the Sherman Act? Turn them into regulated public utilities, with public employee-level salaries and no stock options? Those are all possibilities.”) Related: Thomas Hazlett, “Making the Fairness Doctrine Great Again,” Reason, March.
Banking and finance roundup
- Critique of political-spending provisions of Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s proposals on corporate governance [Prof. Bainbridge] Plus, some WSJ letters on her plan [same; earlier here, here, and here]
- “The Impact of the Dodd-Frank Act on Small Business” [Michael D. Bordo and John V. Duca, Cato Research Briefs in Economic Policy]
- Something to keep in mind in New York Attorney General races: “The Martin Act Gives New York Politicians Way Too Much National Power” [Jeff Patch, Real Clear Markets, and thanks for quotes]
- Through its Charities Bureau the New York AG’s office can also make life difficult for private nonprofits of whose ideology it disapproves; Democratic nominee Letitia (Tish) James says she intends to use the power to go after crisis pregnancy centers and NRA [Zach Williams, City And State NY]
- Treasury based a list of supposed Russian oligarchs on Forbes mag list of wealthy Russians. Now a 79-year-old laser scientist faces sanctions who’s been a U.S. citizen for 10 years and says he isn’t friendly with Putin [Steven Mufson, Washington Post]
- “Why California’s Gender Quota Bill [for corporate boards] Is More Likely To Be Unconstitutional Than California’s Pseudo-Foreign Corporation Statute” [Keith Paul Bishop, California Corporate & Securities Law (Allen Matkins)]
Elizabeth Warren’s proposals on business organization
Schemes like a government mandate of worker representation on corporate boards (an element of German “co-determination”) are not new, and scholars have studied their track record in Europe for years. In particular, they tend not to provide robust incentives for risk-taking and dynamism; that’s aside from their interference with the contractual liberty of all parties to adopt alternative governance methods agreed to by all parties. I talk with Cato’s Caleb Brown about that and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren’s other ideas for revamping how large companies are run. Earlier here and here.
Opponent claims multi-line class action shop compensated plaintiffs
A Southern California class action firm “is accused of bribing cash-strapped 20-somethings to serve as lead plaintiffs and submit false testimony.” The firm, Newport Trial Group, is active in many categories of litigation readers of this site may find familiar, including suits over alleged food and cosmetic mislabeling, slack fill, and failure to advise customers that their phone calls were being recorded, and its founder has also been listed as counsel in multiple suits against large corporations over web accessibility and claims of patent infringement by non-practicing entities. [Jenna Greene, American Lawyer Litigation Daily courtesy Texans for Lawsuit Reform]
Ironically, the complicated and protracted litigation that led to the new setback arose not from the numerous suits the law firm or its founder filed against household-name national companies, but from one against a purveyor of nutritional items and supplements such as colloidal silver. Excerpt:
The district court judge, James Selna, explained his reasoning in a June 12 decision that does not bode well for the firm.
Natural Immunogenics, he wrote, “has put forth sufficient evidence to support its contention that defendants operated a fraudulent scheme to manufacture litigation.”
“Specifically, NIC has established that in camera review may reveal evidence that defendants have a pattern of manufacturing litigation, which involves the [Newport Trial Group] defendants identifying companies vulnerable to false advertising or wiretap litigation, recruiting individuals to serve as lead plaintiffs, instructing the individuals on exactly what steps to take to give them the appearance of having suffered actionable injuries, and concealing and misrepresenting the contrived nature of the lawsuits from the courts.”
September 12 roundup
- Peer-to-peer car sharing platforms could reduce the costs of car usage, unless elements of rental car industry manage to strangle it through regulation [Jonathan M. Gitlin, ArsTechnica on Illinois Gov. Rauner’s veto of a bill to cripple startups] Are we headed toward a legal requirement that cars be designed to sense that a driver has high blood alcohol and not function then? Does it matter whether the car is self-driving? [Nicole Gelinas]
- “11th Circuit rages against ‘incomprehensible’ shotgun complaint, concludes lawyer’s intent was delay” [ABA Journal]
- Quackery and bluster define the lawsuit filed by NY, MD, NJ, and CT attorneys general against Congress’s curtailment of state and local tax (SALT) deduction [Reilly Stephens; more, Howard Gleckman, Tax Policy Center]
- “Conservative/Libertarian Faculty Candidates Are Hired By Law Schools Ranked 12-13 Spots Lower Than Equally-Credentialed Liberal Applicants” [James Cleith Phillips via Paul Caron/TaxProf]
- Coming next week: I’m set to host and moderate a Sept. 20 forum at Cato in D.C. on the Indian Child Welfare Act. Featured are three lawyers who have been involved in high-profile ICWA litigation, Timothy Sandefur of the Goldwater Institute, Matthew McGill of Gibson Dunn, and Charles Rothfeld of Mayer Brown and Yale Law School [details and registration; event not livestreamed, but video to be posted later]
- And now for something completely different: “Charles Evans Hughes and Chevron Deference” [Gerard Magliocca]