Posts Tagged ‘illegal drugs’

OSHA: unlawful for employers to have rule requiring drug tests after accident

Buried in OSHA’s impending final rule on electronic reporting of workplace injuries and illnesses is this little nugget. OSHA believes that you violate the law if you require an employee to take a post-accident drug test. Let me repeat. According to OSHA, you violate the law if you automatically drug test any employee after an on-the-job accident.

Allow me to pause while this sinks in.

The agency concedes that employers might still lawfully do some post-accident testing on a case by case basis so long as they are willing to develop evidence pointing to, e.g., a given employee’s drug use as an accident cause. Of course it is precisely such effectively accusatory, singling-out testing that is most likely to provoke litigation for having unfairly cast suspicion on an individual employee.

Filed under: illegal drugs, OSHA, safety

Crime and punishment roundup

Virginia “one of a minority of states that suspend driving privileges — in most cases, automatically — for failing to pay court costs and fines arising from offenses completely unrelated to driving.” [Washington Post editorial]
D.C. Circuit “Rules DOJ Discovery Blue Book Off-Limits … For Now” [Jonathan Blanks, Cato]
“The New York Times Knows Florida’s Self-Defense Law Is Bad but Can’t Figure Out Why” [Jacob Sullum]
“We often hear that almost no one goes to prison simply for using marijuana.” But add “near a school”… [David Henderson]
A forensics roundup from Radley Balko;
“When Everything Is a Crime: The Overregulation of Ordinary Life” [Harvey Silverglate conversation with Reason’s Nick Gillespie]

Filed under: crime and punishment, Department of Justice, Florida, illegal drugs, self-defense, traffic laws

Medical roundup

“The IRS warned Obama it was illegal to pay ObamaCare subsidies to insurance companies.” They went ahead anyway. [The Week, Paul Caron/TaxProf]
Medical liability payouts back on rise after decade of decline; of top ten states per capita, all are in Northeast except New Mexico (6th) and Illinois (8th) [New Jersey Civil Justice Institute]
“Why isn’t there more telemedicine?” [Austin Frakt, NYT via Tyler Cowen]
Would Prince have fared better had law allowed easier access to anti-addiction drug buprenorphine? [Jeb Kinnison]
Down memory lane: how advocacy foundations funded Elizabeth Warren’s research on medical bankruptcy [Jon Henke]
Ways to get cheaper pharmaceuticals through competition rather than regulation [Charles Hooper and David Henderson, Regulation magazine (Cato), more from Henderson]

Filed under: Elizabeth Warren, hospitals, illegal drugs, medical malpractice, ObamaCare, pharmaceuticals

“Lawsuit against marijuana company over deadly Denver shooting could be first of its kind”

A murder following an apparent psychotic break by a man who had consumed cannabis edibles results in what may be the “first wrongful-death lawsuit against the recreational marijuana industry.” [Denver Post]

Filed under: illegal drugs, psychiatry, third party liability for crime

Massachusetts forensic labs that test drug evidence

It appears they have their own very special quality standards [Lowering the Bar, earlier here, here, etc.]

Filed under: forensics, illegal drugs, Massachusetts

Medical roundup

After residents’ access to Texas care is threatened, New Mexico passes law making clear that care given in other states is subject to those states’ laws, not N.M.’s [Texas Alliance for Patient Access, earlier]
Shkreli notwithstanding, “the big news about generic drugs is good news. Generic drug prices are falling” [Alex Tabarrok]
Party of Science? Bernie Sanders has steered federal backing to alternative medicine [Skeptical Raptor]
“There is no problem so bad that government-imposed remedies cannot make it worse, spawn new problems or both.” For instance: crackdown on opiates [Steve Chapman, Chicago Tribune/syndicated; related upcoming April 29 Cato event with Jeffrey Miron, David Murray, and Tim Lynch]
Struggle against “sanism” might push egalitarianism too far, or maybe it’s a natural [Scott Greenfield on Michael Perlin program at National Association for Public Defense]
Once again — how many times does this make? — malpractice reform proposals in U.S. Congress run aground for failure to anticipate federalist objections [The Hill, ABA Journal, Dean Clancy, my 2011 take]

Filed under: Bernie Sanders, disabled rights, illegal drugs, medical malpractice, New Mexico, pharmaceuticals, psychiatry

December 30 roundup

Federal Circuit court of appeals says government can’t deny trademark as “disparaging” just because it frowns on its expressive content, implications are favorable for Washington Redskins in their legal case [Eugene Volokh, Paul Alan Levy, In Re Simon Shiao Tam opinion, case won by past Overlawyered guestblogger Ron Coleman]
Mentally ill man walks into San Diego county recorder’s office, submits properly filled-out deed transferring major sports stadium to his name, chaos ensues [San Diego Union Tribune]
Lawsuit against prolific California class action firm includes details on how it allegedly recruits plaintiffs, shapes testimony [Daniel Fisher]
New Jersey: “Man Sues Because Alimony Checks Were Mean To Him” [Elie Mystal/Above the Law, ABA Journal]
Blustery Texan Joe Jamail, “greatest lawyer who ever lived” or not, was no stranger to Overlawyered coverage [Houston Chronicle, Texas Monthly (“We only overpaid by a factor of five, and that felt like a win”), Daniel Fisher (city should have cut down beloved oak tree in road median because “it isn’t open season on drunks”)] Jamail’s best-known case gave me chance to write what still might be my all-time favorite headline, for a Richard Epstein article in what is now Cato’s (and was then AEI’s) Regulation magazine: “The Pirates of Pennzoil.”
Hotel security camera footage may help decide whether Eloise tainted-sandwich tale will end up shelved as fiction [New York Post]
Your War on Drugs: shopping at garden store, throwing loose tea in trash after brewing combine with police goofs to generate probable cause for SWAT raid on Kansas family’s home [Radley Balko] More: Orin Kerr.

Filed under: class actions, finger in the chili, illegal drugs, Joe Jamail, Kansas, property law, San Diego, trademarks, trees

Medical roundup

Surprised this story of interstate lawsuit exposure hasn’t had national coverage: “Texas docs threaten to stop seeing New Mexico patients” [Hobbs, N.M., News]
More on the Daraprim episode and the fiasco of FDA generic-drug regulation [Watchdog, earlier here and here] More: Ira Stoll/N.Y. Sun;
Warrants, HIPAA be damned: Drug Enforcement Administration agents pose as Texas medical board to get at patient records [Jon Cassidy/Watchdog, Tim Cushing/TechDirt via Radley Balko]
Litigation finance and champerty: the reaction is under way [MathBabe, earlier on pelvic and transvaginal mesh surgery speculation]
No longer alas a surprise to see JAMA Pediatrics running lame, politicized content on topics like “youth gun carrying” [Jacob Sullum]
“Shame, blame, and defame”: in alcohol regulation as in other public health fields, government-funded research can look a lot like advocacy [Edward Peter Stringham, The Hill]
More adventures in public health: study finds dry counties in Kentucky have bigger problems with methamphetamine [Christopher Ingraham, Washington Post “WonkBlog”]

Filed under: alcohol, champerty, FDA, guns, HIPAA, illegal drugs, litigation finance, New Mexico, pharmaceuticals, public health, Texas

Rating states on legal climates

“West Virginia courts have a well-deserved reputation for favoring plaintiffs, but the state’s Supreme Court may have gone too far this year when it said drug addicts who broke the law to obtain narcotics could sue the doctors and pharmacies who supposedly fed their addiction.” Rulings like that, writes Daniel Fisher, are one reason West Virginia perennially ranks at the bottom in the U.S. Chamber’s ranking of state legal climates, and did again this year. Louisiana, Illinois, and California are other cellar-dwellers, while Alabama and Texas, despite extensive reforms and the success of business-oriented candidates in many judicial races, also languish in the lower ranks with continuing problems such as the litigation atmosphere of east Texas [Lou Ann Anderson/Watchdog Arena] More: Bob Dorigo Jones. Related, from ALEC: State Lawsuit Reform.

Filed under: Alabama, California, criminals who sue, Eastern District of Texas, illegal drugs, Illinois, Louisiana, Texas, West Virginia

“Take a Valium, Lose Your Kid, Go to Jail”

During pregnancy “occasional, small doses of diazepam (the generic name for Valium) are considered safe… But one morning a few weeks later, when Shehi was back at her job in a nursing home and the baby was with a sitter, investigators from the Etowah County [Alabama] Sheriff’s Office showed up at the front desk with a warrant. She had been charged with ‘knowingly, recklessly, or intentionally’ causing her baby to be exposed to controlled substances in the womb — a felony punishable in her case by up to 10 years in prison. The investigators led her to an unmarked car, handcuffed her and took her to jail.” [Nina Martin, ProPublica]

P.S. Expanded into a longer post at Cato at Liberty.

Filed under: Alabama, Child Protective Services, crime and punishment, illegal drugs