- Supreme Court agrees to review CRST Vans Expedited v. EEOC (Eighth Circuit) on standard for prevailing-party fee awards in EEOC cases, could mean help for defendants against overzealous government lawyering (and thanks for quote) [Sean Higgins, Washington Examiner, earlier here and here]
- 6-3 win for arbitration and freedom of contract in DirecTV case [Deborah LaFetra/PLF, Daniel Fisher, ABA Journal] WSJ editorial: Bravo to Justice Breyer for upholding as precedent what he’d earlier dissented from on substance [Texans for Lawsuit Reform reprint]
- OK to choke off legal defense by freezing all assets before trial, even if not criminally obtained? [Radley Balko]
- South Carolina $124 million penalty against Risperdal maker should be recognized as violating Excessive Fines clause [Ilya Shapiro and Randal John Meyer, Cato]
- “Supreme Court will review state laws making it a crime to refuse blood-alcohol tests” [ABA Journal, Reason]
- Helpless against the administrative state: revisiting SCOTUS’s awful 1944 Yakus case [James Conde and Michael Greve, SSRN via Michael Greve, Law and Liberty]
- New Akron Law Review symposium on class action jurisprudence of Roberts Court [Paul Karlsgodt]
Posts Tagged ‘DUI’
Return of “Texas Law Hawk”
Bringing a restrained and tasteful approach to your DUI case:
Not a drunk driver? Prepare to shell out anyway
Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-NY) wants alcohol interlocks to be made mandatory on all new cars. Rice, a former prosecutor, “recently received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD),” which has pushed the expensive interlocks-for-everyone notion. Earlier here, here, here, here, etc.
June 17 roundup
- Skull and crossbones to follow: San Francisco pols decree health warnings on soft drink, Frappuccino billboards [Steve Chapman]
- Judge criticizes feds’ punitive handling of AIG rescue as unlawful, but says no damages are owed to Hank Greenberg [Bloomberg, Thaya Knight/Cato, Gideon Kanner who predicted outcome, W$J]
- Congress resisting Obama/HUD scheme to force communities to build low-income housing [Jonathan Nelson/Economics21, Marc Thiessen, Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing or AFFH]
- California, following New York, proposes 50 hours of mandatory pro bono work for prospective lawyers [John McGinnis]
- Five part Renee Lettow Lerner series on historical role and present-day decay of juries [Volokh Conspiracy, introduction, parts one, two, three, four, five] Related: Mike Rappaport and follow-up on Seventh Amendment, Liberty and Law.
- Latest Scotland drunk-driving blood threshold: Drivers “warned that having ‘no alcohol at all’ is the only way to ensure they stay within the limit” [Independent via Christopher Snowdon]
- How not to argue for bail reform: Scott Greenfield vs. NYT op-ed writer [Simple Justice]
“Roanoke County police launch ‘No Refusal’ sobriety checkpoints”
“During this weekend’s St. Patrick’s Day festivities, motorists in Roanoke County who are suspected of driving while impaired and refuse breath tests could be ordered to submit to blood tests. … According to state law, anyone who operates a motor vehicle on a road has consented to have samples of blood, breath or both taken for a test to determined the level of alcohol or drugs in his blood.” [Roanoke Times; earlier on “no refusal” blood tests for drivers here, here, here, etc.]
“New York Woman Sues Police for Not Arresting Son”
“A Long Island woman says in a lawsuit that her 29-year-old son died in a drunken driving crash because police decided not to arrest him on DWI charges earlier that night…. Restaurant chain Ruby Tuesday’s is also named in the lawsuit, because [the late Peter] Fedden was drinking there before the two crashes, according to [Fedden family lawyer Harry] Thomasson.” [NBC New York, auto-plays]
Schools roundup
- Oklahoma school district agrees to pay survivors of teen who drove drunk [Tulsa World]
- “The Evidence on Universal Preschool” [David Armor, Cato]
- Things you can hit with a Title IX complaint for doing: fighting academic boycott of Israel [Ben-Atar, Tablet]
- “It may take the fun and spontaneity out of sex, but I don’t care. That’s for the kids to worry about.” [Ron Kuby quoted in WSJ via Hans Bader; earlier on affirmative consent]
- Jason Bedrick on lawsuits against school choice [Cato]
- “The Left/Right Alliance That Legalized Homeschooling” [Jesse Walker, Reason]
- Kid safety mania: “I suggest just keeping children in large jars until they’re 40.” [Amy Alkon]
“Iowa Troopers Steal $100,000 in Poker Winnings From Two Players Driving Through”
Jacob Sullum traces how a gambling jackpot magically became a forfeiture jackpot (also from him, a history of how forfeiture law got so bad). The Washington Post followed up last month on its multi-part, front-page exposure of forfeiture law (Tim Lynch and Scott Shackford summarize some of its findings) with an op-ed from two former DoJ officials calling for abolition of the program they once helped run; Scott Greenfield has commentary on that as well as more generally on the costs of defense in forfeiture cases and on Nassau County, N.Y.’s resumption of the seizure of cars being driven by persons arrested for drunk driving, whether or not owned by those persons.
From today’s Washington Post: “Activists and Hill staffers meet to discuss curbs to asset-forfeiture laws”. And George Leef writes in Forbes: “Time For Civil Asset Forfeiture Laws To Meet The Same Fate As Jim Crow.”
Man charged for holding “Turn Now” sign before DUI checkpoint
Less than a mile before a police DUI checkpoint in Parma, Ohio, resident Doug Odolecki held a sign reading “Check point ahead turn now.” Police gave him a ticket and confiscated the sign: “Odolecki was issued a ticket and forced to hand over his sign. “Parma Police tell us they can’t get into the details of the pending case but a Sergeant told me that Odolecki was obstructing officers ability to do their job. They also said that the issue was with the part of the sign that said ‘turn now.'” [WOIO via AOL]
Police and prosecution roundup
- Stop and bleed: Tennessee rolls out “no refusal” blood-draw DUI driver checkpoints, which already go on in Texas [WTVF, Reddit, Tom Hunter/Liberal America, Charles “Brad” Frye (Texas practice)]
- Issues raised by growing practice of placing government “monitors” inside businesses to police compliance [Veronica Root, Prawfs]
- “Faulty Justice: Italian Earthquake Scientist Speaks Out against His Conviction” [Scientific American]
- California: suit could probe patterns of harassment against Orange County officials who’ve resisted police union demands [Krayewski, earlier]
- Illinois “[makes] it a felony to flick cigarette butts onto streets for the third time” [Gideon’s Trumpet]
- Before making laws intended to benefit sex workers, take time to listen to them [Popehat via Maggie McNeill]
- Report: state of Florida investigating Zimmerman prosecutor Angela Corey over sacking of alleged whistleblower [Washington Times, earlier] “A Visitor’s Guide to Florida’s Most Notorious Law Enforcement Agencies” [Mike Riggs, Atlantic Cities]