“Mom whose tot started deadly Bronx fire sues for $1B from stove maker, city” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

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

From the Post’s Christmas Day story:

After his release in 2009, he has settled back in the Roanoke area with his family. The day McAuliffe called to tell him of his exoneration, Roberta Bondurant said, he was coordinating a volunteer project.

“He’s at a place and time in his life where he’s at peace with himself,” she said. “It doesn’t help him at all in the time he has left on this planet to hold bitterness for anyone who made a mistake along the way.”

Roanoke man pardoned on arson conviction is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Keeping firefighters busy is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

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

Grim toll of faulty arson forensics is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Here’s a Texas Monthly article (linked a while back) on the unsettling history of arson forensics over many years, in which the use of accelerants was deduced from dubious evidence in such a way as to shift many fires from the “likely accidental” to the “deliberate” category, with dire legal consequences for family members and others on the scene. Earlier on the Willingham case, including pro-prosecution links, from five years ago. More: Jonathan Adler.

An execution, ten years after is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

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

Sweden: hotel made of ice ordered to install smoke alarms is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Unfortunately, according to the Tribune series, the supposedly flameproof furnishings 1) aren’t necessarily very good at reducing fire risk and 2) are doused with chemicals that one might not want rubbing off on one’s family and pets. That’s aside from the regulations’ obvious cost in making furnishings more expensive and narrowing consumer choice by excluding producers unable or unwilling to use the chemical treatments. Whether or not you accept the series’ interpretation in all respects — the authors tend to taken an alarmist line, for example, on the chemicals’ environmental dangers — it’s useful as reminder #83,951 that government regulation often is driven by motives quite different from those advertised, and in particular by business lobbies whose interest is frequently squarely opposed to laissez-faire.

On Sunday, Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, criticized lately in this space for his views on supposed Big Beer responsibility for Indian reservation alcoholism, addressed the flameproofing story in his column. After reciting the controversy — laying a particular emphasis on chemical alarmism, long a specialty of his — Kristof concludes as follows:

This campaign season, you’ll hear fervent denunciations of “burdensome government regulation.” When you do, think of the other side of the story: your home is filled with toxic flame retardants that serve no higher purpose than enriching three companies. The lesson is that we need not only safer couches but also a political system less distorted by toxic money.

Which affords James Taranto of the WSJ’s “Best of the Web” this response:

The guy is so blinded by ideology that he fails to notice he has just given an example of burdensome government regulation.

The trouble with Nicholas Kristof, cont’d is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system