Posts Tagged ‘antitrust’

April 20 roundup

  • Lawsuit claim: MERS mortgage system is just a racket to deprive court clerks of recording fees [Baton Rouge Advocate]
  • More reporting on hospital and community drug shortages [Washington Post; my post last summer]
  • Roger Pilon: How the “judicial activism” debate changed [Cato at Liberty]
  • Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, spoken of as a future national political figure, has rather a lot of ties to trial lawyers [Political Desk]
  • Problems with DOJ e-book antitrust suit targeting Apple [Declan McCullagh]
  • One bogus campaign feeds into another: “ALEC Unfairly Demonized Over ‘Stand Your Ground’ Laws” [Bader, CEI “Open Market”]
  • New Point of Law discussion on class actions with Ted Frank and Brian Fitzpatrick;
  • Today’s best spam comment? “With all the thistledown floating almost on the net, it is rare to look over a locate like yours instead.”

March 20 roundup

  • “Lawyer Who Spotted Broker Fraud Rewarded With SEC Ordeal” [Business Week via Bader]
  • Reactions to the feds’ antitrust case against e-book publishers and Apple [Yglesias, Wright, Stoll, more]
  • NYT retrospectively backs Nixon efforts to deny tax exemption to lefty groups, or maybe ire at tea party adversaries just makes the paper less than consistent [Caron, background, more]
  • House Judiciary testimony on the evils of consent decrees binding the government to pursue regulation in certain ways [Andrew Grossman]
  • “Law Firm Claims It Had No Control Over $464 Mln Fee Request” [WSJ Law Blog]
  • “California’s ethnic identity police” [Mickey Kaus]
  • Role, economic incentives of special masters in litigation overdue for reformist attention [Ted/PoL]

Free Google Maps unfair to paid competitors, France rules

At Cato at Liberty, I find that uncannily reminiscent of a famous Bastiat parody (& IEA, Tim Worstall).

More from Coyote: “left unsaid is how they would jack up their prices when at least two other companies (Bing, Mapquest) also provide mapping services online for free.” But note that the French case arose not from Google’s furnishing of its free map service to individual end customers, but from its furnishing of its map API to businesses that typically adapt it for use in their own sites; as commenters at BoingBoing and Reddit as well as news reports point out, Google has indeed introduced fees for its largest business users of this type (which has caused some of them to adapt by switching from Google’s API to OpenStreetMap, a free wiki-based map service).

December 19 roundup

  • Too much of a stretch: US nixes copyright in yoga exercises [Bloomberg, earlier]
  • “Know your rights dealing with cops” material construed as probative of criminality [Popehat] Is Justice Scalia really an “unlikely” champion of defendants’ Constitutional rights? [LATimes, Adler] “Overcriminalization: The Legislative Side of the Problem” [Larkin/Heritage, related Meese] When feds spring false-statements trap, it won’t matter whether you committed underlying offense being investigated [Popehat] “‘Clean Up Government Act’ sparks overcriminalization concerns” [PoL]
  • Former Attorney General Mukasey on ObamaCare recusal flap [Adler]
  • American Antitrust Institute proposals might be discounted given group’s longstanding pro-plaintiff bias [Thom Lambert]
  • NYC: “The tour guide said that the way to get rich is to be a zoning lawyer.” [Arnold Kling]
  • “Obama’s Top Ten Constitutional Violations” [Ilya Shapiro, Daily Caller] In at least two major areas, “Obama has broken with precedent to curtail religious freedom” [Steve Chapman]
  • Ted Frank-Shirley Svorny med mal debate wraps up [PoL, Bader]

November 16 roundup

  • Sure, let’s subvert sound mortgage accounting in the name of energy efficiency. What could go wrong? [Mark Calabria, Kevin Funnell]
  • California: fireworks shows are “development” and coastal commission can ban ’em [Laer Pearce, Daily Caller]
  • Trial lawyers’ lobbyist: I got Cuomo to bash Chevron in Ecuador case [John Schwartz, NYT]
  • Politics of intimidation: “jobs bill” advocates occupy office of Sen. Minority Leader McConnell (R-Ky.) [ABC News] Union protesters invade Sotheby’s during big auction [NYObserver] “Occupy Denver protesters try to storm conference of conservative bloggers” [Denver Post] “What’s the matter with Oakland?” [Megan McArdle] Post-’08 downturn, not wealth of the few, at root of economic woes [Steve Chapman] “Bohm-Bawerk forget to include [Ms. Katchpole] in his commentaries on sundry theories of interest.” [Tyler Cowen]
  • New breakthroughs in abundant energy aren’t welcome to some [NYT “Room for Debate”] Is GOP wrong to make EPA an issue? [Michael Barone]
  • After extracting $450,000 settlement, employee admits falsifying whistleblower evidence in oil filter antitrust case; class action suits continue [Bloomberg, Abby Schachter/NYPost via PoL]
  • Least surprising Washington-DC-datelined story of year: “Medical malpractice reform efforts stalled” [Politico]

Medical roundup

  • View from Massachusetts General Hospital: drug shortages getting “dire” [WBUR, earlier here, here, here, etc.]
  • Medical liability roundup: Sheriff arrives at Ohio doctor’s home to enforce $9.7 million award blaming lack of Caesarean section for cerebral palsy [TribToday] North Carolina legislature overrides Gov. Beverly Perdue’s veto of liability limits [News & Observer via White Coat] Trial-lawyer-friendly Florida Supreme Court could strike down malpractice award limits in pending case [Orlando Business Journal]
  • “Antitrust rules handcuff physician-led delivery models” [American Medical News]
  • Relatedly, who was it who imagined anonymous denunciation of doctors was going to be a good idea? [Jay Hopkinson via Larry Ribstein]
  • New Medicare paperwork threat to clinical trials? [Beck]
  • Study: Elected coroners less likely to label deaths as suicide than appointed counterparts, family’s access to insurance benefits may be factor [Kevin B. O’Reilly, American Medical News]
  • “Gee, why wouldn’t Obama administration want judges and “public interest” lawyers running its new health care law?” [Mickey Kaus on New Republic report]

October 13 roundup

  • Behind the antitrust assault on Google [Jerry Brito, Josh Wright, more]
  • Rapid rise of lawsuit lenders [WSJ] And a Searle Civil Justice Institute conference on third party financing of litigation;
  • More law firms muscle into class action against e-book publishers [PaidContent] Fifth Circuit questions cy pres [Trask] And a new edition of the Federalist Society’s Class Action Watch is out;
  • When the house painters announce they’re not leaving: “Britain plans to tighten anti-squatter laws” [NYT]
  • “Courts Call Out Copyright Trolls’ Coercive Business Model, Threaten Sanctions” [EFF] “Righthaven’s Copyright Trolling is a Bankrupt Idea” [Cit Media Law] More: Vegas Inc.
  • “Twombly is the Logical Extension of the Mathews v. Eldridge Test to Discovery” [Andrew Blair-Stanek via Volokh, Frank] “Four more reasons to love TwIqbal” [Beck] “O’Scannlain says 9th Circ has adopted ‘Iqbal lite’ pleading standard, ‘Same insufficient complaints, fewer dismissals!'” [@ScottKGraham on dissent in Starr v. County of Los Angeles, PDF]
  • Florida farms sell raw milk as (wink) “pet food” [Sun-Sentinel]