Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘endangered species’

On the Gibson Guitar raid

Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz, WSJ, excerpted at PoliceMisconduct.net:

In America alone, there are over 4,000 federal criminal offenses. Under the Lacey Act, for instance, citizens and business owners also need to know – and predict how the U.S. federal government will interpret – the laws of nearly 200 other countries on the globe as well. Many business owners have inadvertently broken obscure and highly technical foreign laws, landing them in prison for things like importing lobster tails in plastic rather than cardboard packaging (the violation of that Honduran law earned one man an eight-year prison sentence). Cases like this make it clear that the justice system has strayed from its constitutional purpose like stopping the real bad guys from bringing harm.

Harvey Silverglate says that while Juszkiewicz is right as far as he goes, he’s seeing only part of the picture. Earlier on the Gibson raid and Lacey Act here, here, etc.

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Don’t “possess” it or “sell” it — but do pay $29 million in taxes on it

…there is one item in the collection [of the late New York dealer Ileana Sonnabend], a work by Robert Rauschenberg that cannot be sold. It contains a stuffed bald eagle and under the terms of the 1940 Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and the 1918 Migratory Bird Act, it is a felony to “possess, sell, purchase, barter, transport, import or export any bald eagle — alive or dead.” The estate, advised by three experts, including one from Christie’s, therefore, valued the work at zero. The IRS decided it was worth $65 million, and is demanding $29.2 million in taxes and $11 million in penalties because the heirs “inaccurately” stated its value.

[John Steele Gordon, Commentary on NYT reporting; Popehat]

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May 22 roundup

  • Lacey Act madness: might Feds be empowered to disrupt summer concerts by seizing musicians’ Gibsons? [Bedard, DC Examiner; earlier; recent Heritage Foundation work; reworded to reflect comment from “Density Duck,” below]
  • Contributors to new “Privatization Blog” include friend of this blog Coyote, e.g. here and here;
  • “Big Government Causes Hyper-Partisanship in the Judicial Appointment Process” [Ilya Shapiro] Fuels Culture War, too: “The faster the state expands, the more likely it is to violate your values” [Matt Welch]
  • Demagogy on expatriates: Schumer proposal for stiff tax on emigrants may have read better in original German [Ira Stoll, Roger Pilon/Cato, Paul Caron/TaxProf]
  • Georgia high court considers $459 million fax-spam verdict [AJC, AP, my take] “Hot fuel” class actions enrich the usual suspects [PoL]
  • New rebuttal to trial lawyer/HBO movie “Hot Coffee” [Victor Schwartz et al, auto-plays video] Ted Frank crossed swords with Litigation Lobby on the movie in January, particularly on the question of coffee temperature and the Liebeck case [PoL]
  • Overlawyered “will become the first [law] blog teenager this summer” [Bruce Carton, Legal Blog Watch] “I’ve been a fan of Walter Olson’s Overlawyered blog for years.” [Amy Alkon, Advice Goddess] Thanks!

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Showdown: Protected birds vs. protected fish

“Oregon officials … want federal approval to shoot a sea bird that eats millions of baby salmon trying to reach the ocean. Oregon needs federal approval to start shooting double-crested cormorants because the birds are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.” The state has previously attempted to protect the salmon fry by paying for speedboats and firecrackers to harass the cormorants, but “harassment has ‘proved insufficient.'” [East Oregonian via Balko]

P.S.: Meanwhile, “Federal prosecutors hope to use an obscure law to punish two recreational pilots whose low flying may have disturbed thousands of resting migratory birds in Iowa.” [h/t Baylen Linnekin]

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Annals of overcriminalization: whale watching biologist

The 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act bans feeding protected dolphins, seals and whales. A grand jury has now indicted licensed marine biologist Nancy Black, who sought to record the behavior of killer whales by rigging attachments to some killed prey that the predators were in the process of eating. Black’s attorney says she also faces a charge of lying to federal investigators because when asked to turn over evidence she gave them footage of the incident that she had already edited for reasons unrelated to the investigation. [The Economist]

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Environmental law roundup

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September 16 roundup

  • House Judiciary holds hearing on asbestos-claim fraud and abuse, with Prof. Brickman headlining [Main Justice, Legal NewsLine, WSJ law blog, PoL, Brickman testimony]
  • Endangered species habitat in Nevada: “Elko County wants end to 15-year-old trout case” [AP]
  • “Why is the Eastern District of Texas home to so many patent trolls?” [Ted Frank/PoL, more] Tech giants say multi-defendant patent suits place them at disadvantage [WSJ Law Blog] Plus: “Patent company has big case, no office” [John O’Brien, Legal NewsLine]
  • Lawsuit settlement and the lizard brain [Popehat]
  • “U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Looks Into Eminent Domain Abuses” [Kanner, Somin] U.K.: “Squatters could be good for us all, says judge in empty homes ruling” [Telegraph]
  • Madison mob silences Roger Clegg at news conference where he releases new study of UW race bias [ABA Journal, Althouse]
  • Life in Australia: “Another motorized-beer-cooler DUI” [Lowering the Bar]

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Mountain lion struck by SUV near NYC

Given that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has declared the Eastern mountain lion extinct, Connecticut environmental officials are assuming the animal killed by a motorist in Milford “may have been released or escaped from a local handler.” [Greenwich Time] Or was it? Chris Fountain: “There’s an idea floating about, going back at least fifteen years, that the Eastern Mountain Lion is not extinct but has been declared so so as to avoid the annoyance and inconvenience of complying with the Endangered Species Act.”

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April 27 roundup

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November 20 roundup

  • Judge finds Army Corps of Engineers negligent in Katrina levees suit [WSJ Law Blog, Krauss/PoL]
  • Feds raid the Gibson guitar factory in Nashville on an exotic-woods rap [The Tennessean] Eric Scheie has a few things to say about what turns out to be a remarkably comprehensive federal regulatory scheme on trade in wood enacted with little public discussion as part of the 2008 farm bill [Classical Values]
  • In the mail: Amy Bach’s new book Ordinary Injustice: How America Holds Court, very favorably reviewed by Scott Greenfield not long ago (AmLaw Daily interview with author);
  • Pension tension: link roundup on CALPERS mess [Reynolds]
  • Maine passes very sweeping law banning marketers from collecting or using wide array of information about minors, but state acknowledges that much of the law probably wouldn’t pass constitutional muster and won’t be enforced [Valetk/Law.com, Qualters/NLJ]
  • StationStops, which provides a mobile app for NYC commuter schedules, seems to have survived its legal tussle with New York’s MTA and thanks those who helped call attention to the story, with generous words for a certain “great blog”;
  • Lawsuits cost Chicago taxpayers $136 million last year [Fran Spielman, Sun-Times]
  • Blawg Review #238 is from Joel Rosenberg and bears the title, “Celebrating the International Day of Tolerance … and the NRA’s Birthday” [WindyPundit]

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