Carrying out its previously reported threat. [L.A. Times] More: Atlantic Wire; BoingBoing (with “fatwa” Photoshop); Lowering the Bar.
Posts Tagged ‘nanny state’
October 18 roundup
- Touchy tandem jump: “Gay Skydiving Instructor Sues Over Firing” [Legal Blog Watch]
- Bucks County, Pennsylvania, plans to ticket people who forget to lock their cars [Ryan Young, CEI]
- Soft surface contact only next time: man hit in eye by exotic dancer’s heel wins $650K [NBC Miami, evidently a different case from this 2008 hit-by-exotic-dancer’s-shoe mishap, also in Florida]
- Breyers ice cream class action settlement with $0 for class might draw objections [CCAF]
- “Who are the Top Plaintiff’s Lawyers?” [Mark Behrens and Cary Silverman via AmLaw]
- California voters mulling attorney general choice should keep in mind lawsuit abuse issues [John Sullivan, Daily Journal courtesy CJAC]
- Mine safety enforcement push bogging down in litigation [WaPo]
- Liability a concern as elementary school in Attleboro, Mass. bans game of “tag” [four years ago on Overlawyered]
U.K.: “School ‘no touch’ rules to be scrapped”
“‘No touch’ rules discouraging teachers from restraining and comforting children are to be scrapped, Education Secretary Michael Gove has said.” [BBC] And the incoming Cameron government is proceeding with a previously signaled broad effort to roll back excessive health and safety rules that discourage harmless goings-on in schools, workplaces and the community [BBC, earlier] On the other hand, the Conservatives intend to go forward with most of a package of new measures devised by the previous Labour government that would expand discrimination and harassment law in the direction of wide-open U.S.-style rights to sue [Telegraph, Daily Mail]
Annals of paternalism
Most states now require seat belt use by adults riding in the back of the car [USA Today]
“McDonald’s faces lawsuit over Happy Meals”
The horrible Center for Science in the Public Interest says it will sue unless the fast-food giant takes toys out of its meal packages. [L.A. Times] Earlier here (Santa Clara County votes to ban). More: Cal Biz Lit (predicting that CSPI faces “darned near impossible burden” proving injury in fact/loss of money or property in its claims under California’s s. 17200 statute), When Falls the Coliseum (via Gillespie). Two views from Britain: Daily Mail (CSPI’s creepy imagery); Zoe Williams/Guardian.
Shaker abstinence: FDA to regulate salt in food
The Food and Drug Administration is planning a crackdown meant to lead to “the first legal limits on the amount of salt allowed in food products,” reports the Washington Post. We’ve been warning of such developments for a while, and they come as little surprise given President Obama’s pick of hyper-regulator Margaret Hamburg as FDA commissioner.
P.S. Perhaps we should invite comment from the New York Times journalist who sternly admonished an interview subject recently: “You shouldn’t trivialize issues of health and safety by calling them nanny issues.”
NY lawmaker: ban high-fructose corn syrup
Assemblywoman Barbara Clark (D-Queens) has proposed ousting thousands of commonly encountered food products from New York’s grocery shelves. [Katherine Mangu-Ward, Reason “Hit and Run”]
“You shouldn’t trivialize issues of health and safety by calling them nanny issues.”
Finger-wagging from a New York Times interviewer [via Matt Welch, Reason “Hit and Run”]
One crazy incident = everyone’s liberty restricted
And then repeat x10,000 [Jeremy Clarkson, Times Online (U.K.) via Free-Range Kids]
Device to auto-shut-down cellphones when car starts?
Yes, that’s what Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has actually suggested. Think of what a great idea in emergencies! [Bedard/U.S. News via Radley Balko, Reason “Hit and Run”]