…try opening a wood-fired pizza restaurant just off the gritty Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in Brooklyn [Ira Stoll]
Posts Tagged ‘NYC’
Schools roundup
- Disabled kids and their parents among chief losers in NYC school bus strike [Richard Epstein]
- “School District to Spend $2.4 MILLION on Guards? A Mom Protests” [Free-Range Kids, N.C.] “Our Schools Are Safe Enough: A Movement to Stop Overreacting to Sandy Hook” [same] Shame that NRA would decide to push big government mandate at taxpayer expense [Brian Doherty]
- LSAC challenges new California law banning flagging applicants’ extra time on LSAT [Karen Sloan, NLJ]
- One year on job, 13 years in rubber room for NYC teacher accused of sexually harassing students [NY Post]
- Missouri lawmaker introduces bill criminalizing failure to report gun ownership to child’s school [Caroline May, Daily Caller]
- Suing for edu-bucks: “Court says Kansas must increase school funding, slams tax cuts” [Reuters, Severino/NRO]
- “Yay for Recess: Pediatricians Say It’s as Important as Math or Reading” [Bonnie Rochman, Time]
“Brooklyn attorney disbarred for ‘severe and gross’ violations”
“A Brooklyn attorney was disbarred Wednesday for a range of misconduct, from fabricating court orders to making misrepresentations to secure third-party litigation funding. … ‘The severe and gross violations committed by the respondent fully merit the special referee’s conclusion that the respondent is “morally corrupt and intellectually bankrupt,”‘ the appellate court wrote in a per curiam opinion.” [Reuters; Mr. Tanella’s happier, award-winning days]
Baleful brownstones: serial ADA complainant hits Upper West Side
Wheelchair-riding Linda Slone, 64, is suing 39 shops in her neighborhood for not being handicapped-accessible.
The legal crusade is netting her thousands, but Slone, who cannot walk because of polio, insists she is simply championing the rights of the disabled.
“If you think this is a money-making scheme, you’re dead wrong,” said Slone, a speech pathologist.
The Florida-based Weitz Law Firm, which represents Slone, “also represents Zoltan Hirsch, a Brooklyn double amputee who The Post revealed last year filed 147 suits citing the Americans with Disabilities Act.”
Scott Greenfield wonders what the brownstones of Columbus Avenue will look like by the time the shopowners and landlords somehow manage to completely ADA-proof them.
Hurricane Sandy recovery and occupational licensing
To get your power turned back on in the Rockaways, according to a spokesman for the Long Island Power Authority, you’re going to need a pre-inspection for your house not just from a licensed electrician, but from one licensed in NYC — nearby Nassau County, or upstate, won’t do. If occupational licensure makes any sense at all — and Milton Friedman had a thing or two to say about that — it certainly needs to be reconsidered under conditions of public emergency and disaster recovery, or so I argue in my new post at Cato at Liberty.
For more background on the Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) as a political football, by the way, check out Nicole Gelinas in the New York Post. Also on disaster recovery, why this might be a good time to rethink municipal ordinances barring property owners from removing old trees [Chris Fountain]. And: “Can customers sue power companies for outages? Yes, but it’s hard to win” [Alison Frankel, Reuters]
Feds launch ADA lawsuit campaign against NYC eateries
The opening target, in what is expected to become a series, is Rosa Mexicano. “The restaurant is the first ‘most popular’ Zagat pick to be sued for ADA non-compliance after the U.S. Attorney’s office launched an initiative targeting the guide’s 50 most beloved eateries last year.” [NY Observer]
Seawalls for New York City?
Liability fears and environmental-review holdups would be sure to enter into the calculation. [Megan McArdle; see also NYT “Room for Debate”]
Giuliani speaks on litigation reform at Chamber summit
C-SPAN has the speech here. From Blog of Legal Times coverage:
Giuliani said at the Chamber’s Legal Reform Summit that almost every year he was mayor, the city’s tort bill for hospitals was $300 million because of all the malpractice lawsuits. “I would have to say without even worrying about being contradicted that half of that and more was just absolutely phony claims because we have a tort system in new York that is completely unfair, completely biased,” he said. …
As an example, Giuliani cited the case of a man who was fleeing from the police when he tripped on a pothole and became paralyzed. The man recovered a $70 million dollar settlement, he said. The number was reduced to $4 million–but it still made him the richest man his prison, he said.
Schools roundup
- “Background Checks for School Volunteers: Helpful or The Opposite?” [Lenore Skenazy, Free-Range Kids] And Kennedy interviews anti-helicopter mom Skenazy at Reason.tv;
- NAACP asks Department of Education to strike down entrance exam used by NYC for selective high schools [Roger Clegg, NRO]
- Even as feds restrict school lunch calories, they pump up new breakfast program. Both ways their power grows [James Bovard/USA Today, Ira Stoll] And here comes an expanded federal program of afterschool, weekend and holiday meals, relieving parents even further of responsibility [FRAC]
- If fiscal stringency is destroying U. Calif., you’d never guess from the diversity end of it [Heather Mac Donald, City Journal] Ilya Shapiro op-ed on Fisher v. University of Texas [Jurist, background] Why not let universities run themselves? [Richard Epstein]
- NYC: “Interesting that this all happened at the High School for *Legal Studies*.” [Ann Althouse]
- Bill vetoed by California Gov. Brown would require state university professors seeking tenure to engage in “service.” Research, teaching don’t count? [John Leo, Minding the Campus; history]
- After Tucson’s ethnic “solidarity” curriculum [New York Times via @NealMcCluskey]
Do as NYC says
Guess how big a soda is offered for sale by the concessionaire in Mayor Bloomberg’s own park system? I answer that question (with thanks to Ira Stoll) in my new Cato post.