Australia – Overlawyered

About that oh-so-French workers’ comp case

Walter Olson — Tue, 24 Sep 2019 04:05:59 +0000

As has been widely reported, “a French court has ruled that an employee who died while having sex on a business trip was the victim of a workplace accident.” [Local France, ABA Journal] While some commentators have ooh-la-la’ed it up about this supposedly being an especially Gallic ruling, longtime Overlawyered readers realize that the issue has previously arisen in places other than France. Our 2013 post reported this from Australia: “Update: Oz high court reverses sex-injury comp award”

Tags: Australia, France, workers' compensation

About that oh-so-French workers’ comp case is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Banking and finance roundup

Walter Olson — Sun, 08 Sep 2019 15:58:44 +0000

Neat trick: banks can get Community Reinvestment Act credit for lending in “low-income census tracts” even when that means extending $800K mortgages to gentrifiers [Diego Zuluaga, Politico, related policy analysis and Cato podcast]
Sen. Elizabeth Warren has a plan to regulate private equity. It’s not good [Steven Bainbridge] When you’ve lost veteran liberal columnist Steven Pearlstein… [Washington Post]
Speaking of terms with ugly histories, maybe it’s time for Sens. Warren and Sanders to retire the metaphor of the financial sector as vampires or “vultures” engaged in “sucking” or “bleeding” [Ira Stoll, related]
Volume of securities litigation is on sharp upswing, policy remedies needed [Kevin LaCroix/D&O Diary and more, Chubb “Rising Tide” report] Rising in Australia too [Nicola Middlemiss, Insurance Business Australia]
Unconstitutionality of CFPB structure hasn’t gone away and neither has the need for the Supreme Court to tackle the issue [Ilya Shapiro on Cato certiorari amicus brief in Seila Law LLC v. CFPB] Appointment process for Puerto Rico financial oversight board under PROMESA law is of doubtful constitutionality [Shapiro on Cato amicus brief in Financial Oversight & Management Board for Puerto Rico v. Aurelius Investment, LLC]
In an age of professional consultants, why does the law continue to require corporate governance to be delivered by way of individual board members? Firms specializing in board services could offer attractive alternative [Todd Henderson, Charles Elson, Stephen Bainbridge, Federalist Society Forum]

Tags: Australia, banks, Bernie Sanders, CFPB, corporate governance, Elizabeth Warren, securities litigation, Wall Street

Banking and finance roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Land use and property roundup

Walter Olson — Mon, 12 Aug 2019 09:56:35 +0000

When does a taking of land occur? The wrong answer would let the government push around owners in disputes over rails-to-trails projects [Trevor Burrus on Cato Institute amicus brief on Federal Circuit case of Caquelin v. U.S.]
Though the federal government can’t successfully manage the Western lands it already has, it will soon extend its grip over more. This time Republicans are responsible [Chris Edwards, Cato]
“Sydney’s rental prices are declining because it’s seeing a building boom. The size of Sydney’s apartment market has doubled in two years, and landlords have had to drop rents in order to get tenants.” [Scott Shackford, Reason]
To make NYC’s public housing towers a better place to live, throw Le Corbusier off the balcony [Howard Husock, New York Post]
Economist Robert H. Nelson, R.I.P. [Jane Shaw, Cato Regulation Magazine]
Update: Baltimore eminent domain case against owner of Preakness Stakes race and Pimlico track dropped for now, but remains as bludgeon in closet [Ilya Somin, earlier here, etc.]

Tags: Australia, Baltimore, eminent domain, land use and zoning, NYC

Land use and property roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

International free speech roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 12 Jul 2019 09:58:18 +0000

Singapore law restricting so-called fake news “could force companies to tell the government what websites users have viewed” [Jennifer Daskal, New York Times] Ruling People’s Action Party “is notorious for its practice of bringing lawsuits against opposition members,” sometimes “for defamation upon criticizing the PAP,” while blog authors are “often pressured to register as members of political bodies if their posts touch upon national issues.” [Sally Andrews, The Diplomat]
Australian federal police raid national broadcaster, seize files over story exposing alleged killings of unarmed civilians by special forces [Matthew Lesh, Spiked]
U.K.: “Man investigated by police for retweeting transgender limerick” [Camilla Tominey and Joani Walsh, Daily Telegraph; Jack Beresford, Irish Post; Ophelia Benson followup on “Harry the Owl” case; earlier here, here, etc.]
From President John Adams’s time to our own, rulers around the world have used alarms over fake news as excuse for measures against political opponents [J.D. Tuccille, Reason]
“In a world first, Facebook to give data on hate speech suspects to French courts” [Mathieu Rosemain, Reuters, Jacob Mchangama on Twitter]
Michael Jackson fan clubs sue sex-abuse complainants “under a French law against the public denunciation of a dead person,” good example of why laws like that are a bad idea [AP/GlobalNews]
Turkish “Academics for Peace” initiative of 2016: “Of the petition’s more than 2,000 signatories, nearly 700 were put on trial and over 450 were removed from their posts by government decree or direct action from their own university.” [Brennan Cusack, New York Times]

Tags: Australia, Facebook, France, free speech, hate speech, libel slander and defamation, Turkey, United Kingdom

International free speech roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Campus speech roundup

Walter Olson — Mon, 29 Apr 2019 09:59:50 +0000

At UCLA as elsewhere, pledges and obligatory statements about diversity threaten academic freedom [Robert Shibley, Minding the Campus, Paul Caron/TaxProf, Christian Schneider, New York Post, earlier]
2019, 1673, whatever: By calling ourselves “inclusive,” Cambridge explains, we mean “there is no place here for” those who fail to accept key tenets of faith and morals [Robby Soave] He “had just chosen to move from Australia, the country where he earned his degrees and spent most of his career, to China. Why? Because, as a researcher, he has more freedom in China.” [Peggy Sastre, Quillette] Heresy hunts in American academia aren’t exactly new, consider what happened fifty years ago to once-lauded “culture of poverty” anthropologist Oscar Lewis [Bryan Caplan]
Remarkable glossary of terms “intended to structure and referee conversations on campus” circulates at Amherst College, whose Office of Diversity and Inclusion has a staff of 20, more than one for every hundred of the institution’s 1800 students [Rand Richards Cooper, Commonweal via Christina Sommers] University of Michigan has at least 82 full-time diversity officers at payroll cost of $10.6 million, a sum would cover full in-state tuition for 708 students [Mark Perry on Twitter] At the University of Texas, diversity-related staffers cost $9.5 million annually [Derek Draplin, College Fix]
Some conservatives do their bit to undermine academic freedom when they try to get professors fired for bad speech unrelated to teaching and scholarship [David French, Robby Soave]
Law schools debate whether to be even more ideological, although the product of the academy is supposed to be knowledge rather than activism [John McGinnis responding to Samuel Moyn] Outcry after Emory Law School suspends professor who had uttered racial slur in context of critically describing others as using the slur [Paul Caron/TaxProf, more]
Rhode Island student drummed out of state college for not advancing “value of social and economic justice” can take his case to a jury, rules state’s high court; Cato Institute had filed amicus brief on his behalf [Ilya Shapiro and Patrick Moran]

Tags: Australia, colleges and universities, diversity oaths, free speech, law schools, Michigan, political correctness, Rhode Island, Texas, wrong right

Campus speech roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

January 2 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 02 Jan 2019 10:56:45 +0000

Extended look at problems of the adult guardianship program in New York [John Leland, New York Times, earlier]
“‘Professional Speech’: a Distinction without a Difference” after the NIFLA case [Cato podcast with Caleb Brown and Robert McNamara of Institute for Justice]
New York enacts law imposing stiff new tax on opioid makers and wholesalers while forbidding them to recoup it by raising prices for buyers in other states. That won’t fly under the Dormant Commerce Clause, rules federal judge [Nate Raymond, Reuters/Insurance Journal]
Should courts uphold laws grounded in part on hostility to a religious group, though rationalized on some other basis? Both right and left have trouble staying consistent [Ilya Somin]
“Oxford University Gets Opposition To Its Attempt To Trademark ‘Oxford’ For All The Things” [Timothy Geigner, TechDirt]
Australian corrections officials keep bringing the wrong Peter Brown to court as murder defendant [Lowering the Bar]

Tags: Australia, New York, opioids, religious liberty, trademarks, wills and trusts

January 2 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Australian legal ethics (and police) scandal

Walter Olson — Tue, 11 Dec 2018 10:59:19 +0000

In more than 300 cases, a defense attorney in the Australian state of Victoria acted as a police informant to undermine her clients’ interests [Chris Vedelago, Cameron Houston & Tammy Mills/Sydney Morning Herald, Houston, Mills & Vedelago/Melbourne Age followup, Rohan Smith/news.com.au on Informer 3838 affair]

Tags: Australia, ethics, police

Australian legal ethics (and police) scandal is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Banking and finance roundup

Walter Olson — Tue, 10 Jul 2018 09:58:37 +0000

Federal judge Preska of Southern District of New York rules structure of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau unconstitutional, creating split with D.C. Circuit which upheld CFPB structure;
“Australia Attempts to Fight Tobacco Black Markets by Banning Large Cash Transactions” [Scott Shackford]
“Restoring Accountability to the Business of Banking” [John A. Allison and Lydia Mashburn, Washington Examiner]
NAM is among backers of Main Street Investors Coalition that will push back against corporate governance and shareholder activism forces on Left [Bainbridge; Alicia McElhaney, Institutional Investor]
Supreme Court agrees to hear SEC enforcement action case on scope of liability for false statements [Greg Stohr, Bloomberg; Peter J. Henning, New York Times DealBook; Lorenzo v. Securities and Exchange Commission]
“Why the Fall in IPOs Is a Threat to Popular Capitalism” [Diego Zuluaga, Cato]

Tags: Australia, banks, CFPB, corporate governance, Securities and Exchange Commission, tobacco

Banking and finance roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Banking and finance roundup

Walter Olson — Tue, 06 Mar 2018 10:49:03 +0000

SCOTUS by 9-0, Ginsburg writing, agrees with Cato amicus (and disagrees with Sen. Grassley amicus) that Dodd-Frank doesn’t cover “whistleblowers” who never told the SEC [Digital Realty Trust v. Somers: Ilya Shapiro/Harvard Law Review, Joel Nolette/Least Dangerous Blog, earlier]
Claim: “rolling back bank regulations is a good way to trigger a financial meltdown.” How much truth in that? [George Selgin, Cato]
Crosstown hypocrisy: a closer look at the cities who tell judges and bond investors as needed that their infrastructure will or won’t face future destruction owing to climate change [Dan Walters, CalMatters; Jay Newman, Wall Street Journal, earlier]
Mortgage systems in Canada, Germany appear to operate with less risk and lower default rates. Would Americans accept the trade-offs? [Arnold Kling]
Tag-along private suits following regulatory action, familiar in US courts, now crop up in Australia [Kevin LaCroix]
Regrettable Lovenheim ruling turned liberal shareholder groups into boardroom players [Prof. Bainbridge] The law of corporate social responsibility and shareholder accountability [same]

Tags: Australia, banks, climate change, corporate governance, Dodd-Frank, mortgages, securities litigation, whistleblowers

Banking and finance roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Free speech roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 23 Feb 2018 11:05:18 +0000

You don’t have to think porn’s OK, or that speech never does harm, to see that Ross Douthat’s censorship ideas will fall flat on their face [Rick Garnett/Prawfs, Taylor Millard/Hot Air quoting me, Elizabeth Nolan Brown, Tyler Cowen]
Group libel theory meets nationalism in Europe’s censorship creep: “Poland Passes Bill Criminalizing Claims Of Its Complicity In The Holocaust” [Colin Dwyer/NPR, Eugene Volokh, Jacob Sullum]
“Arizona Bar Accuses Libel Lawyers of Suing Fake Defendants” [Eugene Volokh; related Paul Alan Levy]
First Amendment should protect t-shirt shop that refused to print gay pride message [Ilya Shapiro on Cato amicus in Hands-On Originals case, involving Lexington, Ky. anti-discrimination law; earlier here, etc.]
Federal judge rules Electronic Frontier Foundation need not obey an Australian court order directing it to take down a “Stupid Patent of the Month” blog post, finding the order “repugnant to the United States Constitution.” [Kurt Opsahl, EFF]
“First Amendment Watch is a project of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University. Our mission is to document threats to the First Amendment freedoms of speech, press, assembly, and petition, all rights that are critical to self-governance in a democratic society….First Amendment Watch is an online news and educational resource for journalists, educators and students.”

Tags: Australia, First Amendment, free speech

Free speech roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system