[Back story: this is adapted from an item I intended to post on Overlawyered in 2004 (!) and just now stumbled across while going over old post drafts.]

Argue & Phibbs, solicitors is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

July 19 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Whiplash and incentives, abroad is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

She was engaged in a game of chase pure and simple and, while it is most regrettable that she became unbalanced and fell, this was simply an old fashioned accident and I fail to see any liability on the part of the school for that accident.

Lenore Skenazy comments:

Score one for those of us who understand that there is NO activity, even climbing out of bed, that is always 100% safe. So if we start outlawing activities that are generally, but not 100% completely safe, we will end up outlawing any movement whatsoever.

The judge also seems to realize that something is LOST even if a modicum of safety could be gained. Are kids really safer if they do NOT run around, use their bodies, burn calories, learn to play, deal with disappointment, organize their friends, and create something out of nothing — a game?

Nope. Kids need to play.

Reports The Independent: “The school did not seek an order for costs against the girl’s mother.”

Judge in Ireland rules on playground fall is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Teens develop videogames, receive nastygram over their name is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

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

“Luckily, the two BKs were able to work out their differences” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Indeed, if the French want to memorialize those killed at Charlie Hebdo, they could start by rescinding their laws criminalizing speech that insults, defames or incites hatred, discrimination or violence on the basis of religion, race, ethnicity, nationality, disability, sex or sexual orientation. These laws have been used to harass the satirical newspaper and threaten its staff for years.

The numerous court actions brought against Charlie Hebdo by religious groups (as of 2011, organizations connected with the Catholic church had taken the magazine to court 13 times, Muslim groups once) are only the beginning:

[Other] cases have been wide-ranging and bizarre. In 2008, for example, Brigitte Bardot was convicted for writing a letter to then-Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy about how she thought Muslims and homosexuals were ruining France. In 2011, fashion designer John Galliano was found guilty of making anti-Semitic comments against at least three people in a Paris cafe. In 2012, the government criminalized denial of the Armenian genocide (a law later overturned by the courts, but Holocaust denial remains a crime). …Last year, Interior Minister Manuel Valls moved to ban performances by comedian Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala, declaring that he was “no longer a comedian” but was rather an “anti-Semite and racist.” It is easy to silence speakers who spew hate or obnoxious words, but censorship rarely ends with those on the margins of our society….

Recently, speech regulation in France has expanded into non-hate speech, with courts routinely intervening in matters of opinion. For example, last year, a French court fined blogger Caroline Doudet and ordered her to change a headline to reduce its prominence on Google — for her negative review of a restaurant.

Related: National Post and Jacob Gershman, WSJ Law Blog, on efforts to repeal Canada’s not-entirely-in-disuse blasphemy law; earlier here and here. And from Ireland, an urgent reason to repeal its own law of this sort: Muslim leader vows to “take legal advice if Irish publications …republish or tweet cartoons.” [Irish Times, Irish Examiner, Independent]

P.S. Graham Smith on Twitter: “What if every State represented in Paris today promised to repeal one law that restricts free speech?”

“In the name of equality and fraternity, liberty has been curtailed in France.” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“Drug dealer gets €11k over Tesco sacking” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Ireland: judge rebukes “compensation culture gone mad” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system