obesity – Overlawyered

“Woman Upset She Didn’t Lose Weight Loses ‘Diet’ Dr Pepper Lawsuit Appeal”

Walter Olson — Sun, 05 Jan 2020 17:01:06 +0000

The Ninth Circuit has “refused to reinstate a class-action lawsuit by a woman who argued that the makers of Diet Dr Pepper committed fraud.” “No reasonable consumer would assume that Diet Dr Pepper’s use of the term ‘diet’ promises weight loss or management,” wrote Judge Jay Bybee. The unanimous three-judge panel also declined to accept of lawyers for named plaintiff Shana Becerra that the depiction of “attractive, fit models in the ads implies that Diet Dr Pepper will help its consumers achieve those bodies.” [AP/NBC Los Angeles; opinion in Becerra v. Dr Pepper/SevenUp at Court Listener]

Also: “Woman sues Blue Buffalo dog food company for making her pooch fat” [Emily Saul, New York Post]

Tags: animals, class actions, obesity, soft drinks

“Woman Upset She Didn’t Lose Weight Loses ‘Diet’ Dr Pepper Lawsuit Appeal” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Disabled rights roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 23 Aug 2019 09:58:46 +0000

Housing authority in Meeker, Colorado, population 2,250, will pay nearly $1 million to settle suit over limits on emotional support animals [Niki Turner, Rio Blanco Herald-Times, Kathleen Foody, Associated Press/Colorado Sun, Stina Sieg, Colorado Public Radio]
Volume of web-accessibility suits continues to climb [Seyfarth Shaw; John Breslin, Florida Record] More on growth of this litigation [podcast with Karen Harned, NFIB, for Federalist Society Regulatory Transparency Project (earlier on pool lifts)] “DOJ Says Failure to Comply With Web Accessibility Guidelines is Not Necessarily a Violation of the ADA” [Minh Vu, Seyfarth Shaw, from last October] Second Circuit dismissal of web-access complaint in Diaz v. Apple, Inc. could be helpful to defendants [Joshua Stein and Shira Blank, National Law Review]
Report on ADA filing mills in Rochester and vicinity [Berkeley Brean, WHEC: first, second, third (colleges), fourth, fifth]
And more on New York mass filing operations: Inveterate suer of restaurants reaches Staten Island [Pamela Silvestri, SI Live] Finger Lakes wineries targeted [Jane Flasch/WHAM in February; Michael J. Fitzgerald, Finger Lakes Times] “Finkelstein has gone on a lawsuit-filing spree since getting his law license back in New York state in 2016,” and among his 50 ADA suits are some the named plaintiff says he didn’t know about [Julia Marsh, New York Post]
In EEOC-land no one can hear you honk [press release on EEOC lawsuit against limo service that declined to hire deaf driver]
“Washington Supreme Court Says Obesity Is a Disability” [Ben McDonald, and thanks for quote; earlier]

Tags: Colorado, disabled rights, EEOC, New York, New York state, obesity, pools, restaurants, service animals, web accessibility

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

Nanny state roundup

Walter Olson — Mon, 06 May 2019 09:58:58 +0000

London ban on transit ads depicting “bad” foods winds up nixing images of Wimbledon strawberries and cream, bacon, butter, cheese, jam, honey, and Christmas pudding [Scott Shackford]
And more: British medical journal The Lancet wants to do some highly non-consensual poking and jabbing at your midsection, with the aim of making you lose weight; highlights include funding activist campaigns, cutting business out of policy discussions, and routing policy through the least accountable international organizations [Christopher Snowdon, The Spectator; more from Snowdon on state-subsidized anti-food advocacy in Britain; Nina Teicholz]
Pushing back on the Lancet panel’s guideline that each person be allowed no more than one egg and less than 3.5 ounces of red meat a week [Mark Hemingway]
“The Problem With Nudging People to Happiness” [Randy Barnett reviews Cass Sunstein’s On Freedom]
“Pharmaceutical Freedom: Why Patients Have a Right to Self Medicate”, Cato Daily Podcast with Jessica Flanigan and Caleb Brown;
“Proposed Anti-Soda Bills in California Would Ban Big Gulps, Mandate Warning Labels on Vending Machines” [Christian Britschgi] “Medical Groups Endorse New Taxes and Marketing Restrictions on Soda — For the children, of course” [Baylen Linnekin]

Tags: nanny state, obesity, pharmaceuticals, public health, soft drinks, United Kingdom

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

San Francisco law requiring warnings in sugary-drink ads struck down

Walter Olson — Tue, 05 Feb 2019 10:55:36 +0000

“A federal appeals court on Thursday blocked a San Francisco law requiring health warnings on advertisements for soda and other sugary drinks in a victory for beverage and retail groups that sued to block the ordinance.” The ruling, by a unanimous 11-member en banc panel of the Ninth Circuit, found that thelaw violates First Amendment rights of commercial speech. [AP/BakersfieldNow; American Beverage Association v. City and County of San Francisco]

Tags: advertising, First Amendment, Ninth Circuit, obesity, San Francisco, soft drinks

San Francisco law requiring warnings in sugary-drink ads struck down is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Food and paternalism roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 25 Jan 2019 10:59:52 +0000

“Sandwiches and main meal salads will be capped at 550 calories, ready meals will be capped at 544 calories and main courses in restaurants will be capped at 951 calories.” Guidelines from Public Health England aren’t mandatory yet, but expect U.K. government pressure on supermarkets and restaurants [Christopher Snowdon, Baylen Linnekin, Scott Shackford, Ryan Bourne]
“We are not saying they can never give children a chocolate or biscuit ever again,” says the Public Health England official. “But it cannot be a daily occurrence.” And more from “2018: The [mostly U.K.] nanny state year in review” [Snowdon]
Research paper on Philadelphia soda tax: cross-border shopping completely offsets in-city reduction in beverage sales, “no significant reduction in calorie and sugar intake.” [Stephan Seiler, Anna Tuchman, and Song Yao, SSRN via Caron/TaxProf] More: owner blames tax for closure of Philly supermarket [Eric Boehm]
Alternative headline: feds act to curb food waste by giving local schools more freedom to offer lunches kids will willingly eat [Jaden Urbi, CNBC]
“Los Angeles councilmember Paul Koretz [has] introduced a bill that, if passed, would require entertainment and travel venues around town to put at least one vegan dish on their menus.” [Clint Rainey, Grub Street; Scott Shackford]
“Dollar stores are the latest target of advocates who want to improve food offerings by limiting them” [Baylen Linnekin]

Tags: eat drink and be merry, Los Angeles, nanny state, obesity, Philadelphia, school lunch, soft drinks, United Kingdom

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

December 5 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 11:01:11 +0000

“An important win for property owners”: Supreme Court rules 8-0 that protected species habitat doesn’t include tracts containing no actual dusty gopher frogs and not inhabitable by them absent modification [Roger Pilon, George Will, earlier on Weyerhaeuser v. U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Cato Daily Podcast with Holly Fretwell and Caleb Brown (“The Frog Never Had a Chance”)]
Proposed revision of federal Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) would expand definition of domestic violence to include nonviolent “verbal, emotional, economic, or technological” abuse. Vagueness only the start of the problems here [Wendy McElroy, The Hill]
Bad ideas endorsed by the American Bar Association, part 3,972: laws requiring landlords to take Section 8 tenants [ABA Journal; earlier on “source of income discrimination” laws]
Minneapolis “Healthy Foods Ordinance” drives up costs for convenience stores, worsens food waste, pressures ethnic grocers into Anglo formats [Christian Britschgi]
New York Attorney General-elect Letitia (Tish) James has been zealous about suit-filing in recent years, quality another matter [Scott Greenfield]
“Plaintiff wins $1,000 in statutory damages for technical violation of Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. (Debt collector illegally used the words ‘credit bureau’ in its business name.) After plaintiff’s lawyers seek $130k in fees, district court awards them the princely sum of $0. Fifth Circuit: Just so. While fees are ordinarily mandatory, ‘special circumstances’ obtain here: The record suggests that the plaintiff colluded with her lawyers to generate this ‘outrageous’ fee-heavy lawsuit in Texas instead of in her home state of Louisiana.” [John Kenneth Ross, IJ “Short Circuit” on Davis v. Credit Bureau of the South]

Tags: bar associations, debtor-creditor law, domestic violence, endangered species, Fifth Circuit, housing discrimination, obesity

December 5 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

U.K.: “Pizzas must shrink or lose their toppings under Government anti-obesity plan”

Walter Olson — Sun, 14 Oct 2018 15:58:55 +0000

From the U.K. — and a Conservative government, at that. “Pizzas must shrink or lose their toppings under Government plans to cap the calories in thousands of meals sold in restaurants and supermarkets. Pies, ready meals and sandwiches will also be subject to the new proposed calorie limits…. Under the draft proposals, a standard pizza for one should contain no more than 928 calories – far less than many sold by takeaways, restaurants and shops.” For the moment the restrictions would not be mandatory, but in a parallel initiative concerning sweet foods failures to meet the targets “have prompted warnings from ministers that tougher steps may be taken.”

The best place to fight coercive paternalism is on principle, before it gets this far. [Laura Donnelly, Telegraph (U.K.)]

Tags: nanny state, obesity, United Kingdom

U.K.: “Pizzas must shrink or lose their toppings under Government anti-obesity plan” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

September 27 roundup

Walter Olson — Thu, 27 Sep 2018 10:01:50 +0000

It works if your court is in Maine: “Motion to Continue Because of Moose Attack” [Lowering the Bar]
“John Bolton is Right About the International Criminal Court” [Jeremy Rabkin, Weekly Standard, earlier]
No kidding. “Unintended Impact: Detroit Crackdown on Landlords Could Boost Rents” [Deadline Detroit; Violet Ikonomova, Metro Times]
Advocacy groups “were focused on food deserts ‘because access was a social justice issue. It wasn’t based on evidence because there wasn’t any evidence.'” [Tamar Haspel, Washington Post]
“Good moral character” prerequisites for holding licenses are vague and subjective even in ordinary times, and should not be pressed into surrogate use against political foes [Jonathan Haggerty and C. Jarrett Dieterle, R Street Institute]
California fisheries and Chevron deference: “An Otter Travesty by the Administrative State” [Ilya Shapiro on Cato cert amicus petition in California Sea Urchin Commission v. Combs]

Tags: administrative law, Detroit, international human rights, landlord tenant law, Maine, obesity, occupational licensure

September 27 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Medical roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 17 Aug 2018 09:58:18 +0000

“Researchers from Duke and MIT… found that the possibility of a lawsuit increased the intensity of health care that patients received in the hospital by about 5 percent — and that those patients who got the extra care were no better off.” [Margot Sanger-Katz, New York Times]
Cato Policy Analysis and podcasts (with Caleb Brown) by Terence Kealey: “The Feds’ Demonization of Dietary Fat” and “Why Does the Federal Government Issue Damaging Dietary Guidelines?” Related: Britain’s “food supply is being taxed, regulated and reformulated – on the pretext of a lie” [Christopher Snowdon, Spectator (U.K.)]
New Jersey, a key state because of its volume of pharmaceutical liability litigation, joins national trend by adopting Daubert standard on expert evidence [Colleen O’Dea/N.J. Spotlight, Beck, John O’Brien/Legal NewsLine]
“Criminal prosecution for violating HIPAA: an emerging threat to health care professionals” [Anne M. Murphy, Laura B. Angelini, and Jared Shwartz, STAT]
Do-it-yourself workarounds for obtaining compounds blocked or restricted by FDA/pharma regulation, albeit entangled with IP issues. With bonus code-as-speech angle [Daniel Oberhaus, Vice Motherboard]
“Hotels do want to tell you the real price. Until hospitals do too, they will find their way around disclosure regulations” [John Cochrane; related Cochrane on lack of price competition among air ambulances]

Tags: Daubert, defensive medicine, FDA, HIPAA, hospitals, medical malpractice, New Jersey, obesity

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

June 27 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 27 Jun 2018 10:03:34 +0000

Judge orders Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach to take CLE lessons as sanction for disclosure and discovery missteps [Lowering the Bar, Jonathan Adler]
In 7-2 decisions, Supreme Court of Canada finds it “proportionate and reasonable” limitation on religious liberty for Ontario and British Columbia to refuse rights of legal practice to grads of conservative Christian law school which requires students to agree to refrain from sex outside heterosexual marriage [Kathleen Harris, CBC, Caron/TaxProf, Trinity Western University v. Law Society of Upper Canada, Jonathan Kay/Quillette, earlier on Trinity Western]
“Gratiot County, Mich. officials foreclose on 35-acre parcel worth $100k over unpaid $2k tax debt. They sell the property for $42k and keep $2k to cover the tax bill—and keep the other $40k as well. District court: ‘In some legal precincts that sort of behavior is called theft.’ Motion to dismiss denied.” [John Kenneth Ross, “Short Circuit” on Freed v. Thomas, United States District Court, E.D. Michigan]
UK: “Obese people should be allowed to turn up for work an hour later, government adviser recommends” [Martin Bagot, Mirror]
“Law Schools Need a New Governance Model” [Mark Pulliam, and thanks for mention]
“Until 1950, U.S. Weathermen Were Forbidden From Talking About Tornados” [Cara Giaimo, Atlas Obscura]

Tags: Canada, law schools, obesity, religious liberty, sanctions

June 27 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system