Baltimore – Overlawyered

Police misconduct roundup

Walter Olson — Mon, 24 Feb 2020 10:59:32 +0000

Crime victims’ rights enactment: “Florida cops who use force keep names secret with Marsy’s Law” [Tony Marrero, Tampa Bay Times, I’m quoted; earlier]
Sergeant’s Benevolent Association in NYC declares “war on” Mayor Bill de Blasio and I have something to say about that on Twitter;
Jeepers: “The chief also said Tuesday that someone forged his signature on Kidd’s 2015 agreement, which lowered his punishment from termination for cowardice to a 65-day suspension.” [George Hunter, Detroit News] “How San Antonio’s Worst Cops Get Their Jobs Back” [Zuri Davis]
“Nobody was physically injured in the Looking for [Guy] Who Was in Prison incident, but the plaintiff does allege that the grenades terrified her and her children, [who] also did not enjoy having assault rifles pointed at them by screaming officers.” [Kevin Underhill, Lowering the Bar]
Philly cop misconduct files rarely made public but here’s an exception [William Bender and David Gambacorta, Philadelphia Inquirer] Three links on Baltimore police misconduct [my Free State Notes post]
Deputy was drinking and crashed twice, but kept his job and county owes him $16K [Elizabeth Doran, Syracuse Post-Standard, related editorial]

Tags: Baltimore, Florida, Philadelphia, police, police unions

Police misconduct roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

December 18 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 18 Dec 2019 11:01:56 +0000

Examples ranging from eminent domain and free speech to racial and religious discrimination contradict Attorney General’s suggestion that it’s unusual for modern courts to scrutinize motives behind government action [Milad Emam, Institute for Justice; Ilya Somin]
Article deems it “unusual” that lawyer trying to get money out of Facebook on lurid sex-trafficking theories is a personal-injury specialist who’s pursued car-crash and insurance claims. Doesn’t take much to surprise the New York Times, does it? [Jack Nicas, New York Times]
“We learned very quickly that it was a numbers game — the more people you come in contact with, the greater your chances of getting a gun.” How Baltimore’s Gun Trace Task Force went “hunting” among city residents [Justin Fenton, Baltimore Sun this summer, earlier]
“Politically Incorrect Paper of the Day: The United Fruit Company was Good!” [Alex Tabarrok on Esteban Mendez-Chacon and Diana Van Patten paper]
“I’ve often noted to people that [lawyers who] are unethical at the start of representation are not likely to be ethical later as their interests are directed to the self and not the client” [Eric Turkewitz on NYPD 911-call-injury-referral scandal, earlier]
“The Color Magenta, Or How T-Mobile Thinks It Owns A General Color” [Timothy Geigner, TechDirt]

Tags: Baltimore, chasing clients, Facebook, guns, trade dress

December 18 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Section 8 Landlording Should Be Voluntary

Walter Olson — Thu, 31 Oct 2019 04:05:00 +0000

It’s the strings: landlords should have a right to decide for themselves whether to shoulder the Section 8 program’s only-too-real regulatory burdens, I argue in my new Cato piece, reacting to a Baltimore Sun opinion piece. Baltimore County is the scene of a long-running controversy over whether to force landlords to participate in the federal housing voucher program. Earlier here.

Sidelight: A new San Diego ordinance that took effect August 1 “orders violators to pay three times the advertised monthly rent to eligible plaintiffs who saw the ad, plus punitive damages, as well as a plaintiff’s attorney fees and costs if a judge so orders. Even after the offending ad is taken down or changed, exposure to liability from anyone who saw the illegal ad lasts for a year.” Soon thereafter enterprising attorney Christian Curry filed more than 50 lawsuits under the ordinance and has obtained many settlements, although critics suspect his clients weren’t always intent on living in properties with challenged ads; they also say some ads were targeted that were written before the law changed and not intentionally left online afterward. A spokeswoman for a property group “likened the new Section 8 cases to ‘drive-by’ lawsuits over violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act.” [Ashly McGlone and Jack Molmud, Voice of San Diego]

Tags: ADA filing mills, Baltimore, housing discrimination, San Diego

Section 8 Landlording Should Be Voluntary is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

September 25 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 25 Sep 2019 10:01:55 +0000

“Small claims court for copyright” idea, now moving rapidly through Congress, could create a new business model for troll claimants [Mike Masnick, TechDirt; EFF on CASE Act] A contrasting view: Robert VerBruggen, NR;
“If Boston is weirdly NOT full of good restaurant/bar/cafes for its size, and if people don’t want to stay after they hit 26 or so, these throttled [liquor] licenses are one of the real structural reasons why.” [Amanda Katz Twitter thread]
Push in California underway to join a trend I warned of five years ago, namely states’ enacting laws to encourage tax informants with a share of the loot [McDermott Will and Emery, National Law Review]
Baltimore food truck rule challenge, single-member districts, sexting prosecution, and more in my new Free State Notes roundup;
“For years the Westchester County DA, Jeanine Pirro, now a Fox News host who opines on justice, rejected Deskovic’s requests to compare the DNA evidence against a criminal database. Deskovic was not exonerated until 2006, after he had served 16 years” [Jacob Sullum, Reason]
Come again? “Louisville judge rules Kentucky speed limit laws unconstitutional” [Marcus Green, WDRB]

Tags: alcohol, Baltimore, Boston, copyright, Kentucky, Maryland, restaurants, taxes, traffic laws

September 25 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Feds: Maryland county improperly screened cops for logic, reading ability

Walter Olson — Tue, 24 Sep 2019 10:02:56 +0000

Sentences worth pondering, from coverage of the U.S. Department of Justice’s employment-practices suit against Baltimore County: “The exams tested reading, grammar, logic and other skills that the suit alleges are not related to the job of being a police officer or police cadet.” Critics take heart, however: “County Executive Johnny Olszewski Jr. issued a statement saying the police department has discontinued the test.” [Pamela Wood and Wilborn P. Nobles III, Baltimore Sun]

Tags: Baltimore, Department of Justice, disparate impact, Maryland, police, testing

Feds: Maryland county improperly screened cops for logic, reading ability is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

August 29 roundup

Walter Olson — Thu, 29 Aug 2019 09:59:44 +0000

“We’re not asking for the Wild West. We’re asking for cookies.” New Jersey is the last state without a law legalizing at least some cottage food sales [Amelia Nierenberg, New York Times]
Reversing district court, Fifth Circuit panel upholds Indian Child Welfare Act against constitutional objections; dissent by Judge Owen finds a commandeering problem [Brackeen v. Bernhardt, earlier]
“The Larsens’ videos are a form of speech that is entitled to First Amendment protection.” Eighth Circuit panel rules [correctly, in my view] for videographers who wish to craft wedding videos only when the ceremonies accord with their religious beliefs [Telescope Media Group v. Lucero; Eugene Volokh]
“Innocent man spent months in jail for bringing honey back to United States” [Lynn Bui, Washington Post/MSN]
Preakness, Peter Pan Inn, relocating USDA jobs, Baltimore and Abell Foundation in my new Free State Notes roundup;
Pushing back against the argument, much circulated lately, that eviction is a major factor in causing poverty [John Eric Humphries, Nicholas Mader, Daniel Tannenbaum, Winnie van Dijk, Cowles Foundation]

Tags: Baltimore, Indian tribes, landlord tenant law, Maryland, New Jersey

August 29 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Medical roundup

Walter Olson — Mon, 26 Aug 2019 09:59:05 +0000

Wild scandal of Malibu rehab-center guru charged with alleged $176 million insurance fraud has roots in the artificial conditions imposed by federal law [Chris Edwards, Cato]
“A new Trump executive order on kidneys could save thousands of lives” [Dylan Matthews/Vox via Alex Tabarrok]
Advocates have long campaigned to change the law so as to allow medical malpractice suits by service members against the U.S. military. Are they getting close? [Roxana Tiron and Travis J. Tritten, Bloomberg Law; James Clark/Task & Purpose] New study of defensive medicine, extrapolated from data reflecting military immunity, finds “suggestive evidence that liability immunity reduces inpatient spending by 5 percent with no measurable negative effect on patient outcomes.” [Michael Frakes and Jonathan Gruber, American Economic Journal via Scott Sumner]
Meanwhile, said to be new record: Baltimore jury awards $229 million in claim of obstetric brain injury that Johns Hopkins says is “not supported by the evidence” [Tim Prudente, Baltimore Sun via Saurabh Jha (“My guess is that this verdict won’t reduce the frequency of C-sections in the US”)] “Best & Worst States for Doctors” [John S. Kiernan, WalletHub]
It might not always improve outcomes in a hard science like medicine to rethink every issue through an “equity lens.” Case in point: differing male and female rates of heart disease [Anish Koka, Quillette]
“Medical Malpractice Reform: What Works and What Doesn’t” [W. Kip Viscusi, forthcoming Denver Law Review]

Tags: Baltimore, defensive medicine, medical malpractice, military, obstetrics, sex discrimination

Medical 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

May 29 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 29 May 2019 09:57:32 +0000

Lawyer don’ts: Don’t steal your client’s book advance [Rebecca R. Ruiz, New York Times on Michael Avenatti indictment]
“This isn’t science, it’s witchcraft”: latest verdict against Bayer/Monsanto in Roundup weedkiller/non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma case rests on ultra-loose standards of causation [David Bernstein, related video, earlier]
Blazing sunset: Idaho legislature fails to reauthorize state’s code of more than 8,000 regulations, which expire. Between now and July 1, Gov. Brad Little “gets to pick and choose which ones to reinstate as emergency regs until legislature meets again.” [James Broughel, Mercatus]
News blackout on STEM Charter School shooting (Highlands Ranch, Colorado) has judicial origins: entire court file in murder case against older of the two shooters “is ‘suppressed’ from public inspection. This even over the express request of the prosecutor” to have the judge unseal most records [Eugene Volokh]
Baltimore corruption and development, red flag law, Montgomery Countyites for private toll lanes, Yuripzy Morgan show and more in my latest Maryland policy roundup;
A point I’ve been making for years about the Electoral College: one of its underrated benefits is in bolstering election integrity by much shortening the list of jurisdictions in which a material chance of fraud might throw overall result into doubt with consequences for legitimacy [Stephen Sachs and followup]

Tags: Baltimore, don't, Idaho, junk science, Maryland, regulation and its reform

May 29 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Baltimore tries to grab the Preakness

Walter Olson — Tue, 23 Apr 2019 10:01:46 +0000

Now unpaywalled: my WSJ opinion piece on the city of Baltimore’s outrageous move to use powers of eminent domain to seize the venerable Preakness thoroughbred horse race as well as its associated Pimlico racetrack. Earlier here and more generally here.

Tags: Baltimore, eminent domain, sports, WO writings

Baltimore tries to grab the Preakness is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system