Terry Nichols, who did not seem notably concerned about the health of the Oklahoma City victims, has now developed an interest in healthy foodways, but a federal judge did not go along with his request to order that his diet be changed to include more whole grains and fruits. [Lowering the Bar]
Posts Tagged ‘prisoners’
July 23 roundup
- “What Really Happened To Phoebe Prince?” [Emily Bazelon, Slate, related series on “cyber-bullying”; ABA Journal]
- Obama backs so-called Paycheck Fairness Act; why business should resist [USA Today, Hyman, ShopFloor, Furchtgott-Roth] Another slant on “paycheck fairness” [AP on Bell, Calif., sequel]
- Unlinked back in February: “Doctors cut back hours when risk of malpractice suit rises, study shows” [Eric Helland and Mark Showalter, JLE, Brigham Young release via Bob Dorigo Jones]
- Also unlinked from back when: thanks for kind mention to Mark Herrmann in “Memoirs of a Blogger,” PDF [Litigation mag courtesy WSJ Law Blog, Drug and Device Law]
- Ditto: Nora Freeman Engstrom on accident-law settlement mills, “Run-of-the-Mill Justice” [Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics, SSRN, via LEF, Ronald Miller]
- Australia: “Welfare cheat wins right to IVF on jail time” [Melbourne Age]
- “The Nightmare of Legal Discovery” [Lammi, WLF Legal Pulse, related from WLF]
- Tribunal: “Mosquito” teenager-repellent device violates European Convention on Human Rights [Ku, Opinio Juris]
Australia: “Jailed mum’s rights ‘denied'”
“A jailed 45-year-old welfare cheat who wants another child claims her human rights have been breached because she has been refused access to fertility treatment. … The case is being run by six barristers and six solicitors with much of the legal bill being picked up by taxpayers.” [Melbourne Herald-Sun]
May 5 roundup
- Jury rules for Disney in case of man who said Tower of Terror theme park ride caused him to have stroke [Orlando Sentinel]
- The most dangerous place on earth is getting caught between Dick Blumenthal and a television camera.” Craigslist snipes back against demagogic Connecticut AG [Craigslist blog, Antle/American Spectator, earlier]
- U.K.: prisoner falls from bunk bed, wins £4.7m [Times Online]
- New York Times jealously guards its own sources’ right to speak with anonymity, doesn’t feel quite that way about others’ [Stoll]
- SUNY Buffalo mathematician/HuffPo blogger: why’d they let that awful Eugene Volokh into the country? [Volokh vs. Jonathan David Farley, Greenfield, background]
- College journalist won’t face criminal trespass charges after all in showdown over photographing escaped cows [Romenesko and update]
- Regulating “the American palate” — by what authority? [Healy, Examiner] More links on FDA salt regulation [Compton/CEI, ShopFloor (on CSPI), earlier here, here, etc.]
- Why one putative beneficiary decided not to file $2 claim after settlement of AT&T class action [Chidem Kurdas, Christian Science Monitor]
Complaint: inmate might be allergic to execution drug
A lawyer for a condemned Ohio prisoner says it could be illegal to execute him because he may be allergic to the anesthesia used in the lethal injection procedure. [AP/Columbus Dispatch via James Taranto, who has additional background]
“Families of slain Lakewood officers to sue for $134 million”
The [officers’] widows believe that if someone had been listening to [Maurice] Clemmons’ jailhouse phone calls, their husbands could still be alive today. …
While they were recorded, the calls from the Pierce County Jail were never monitored. No one heard them. …
[Pierce County sheriff spokesman Ed] Troyer said it was “preposterous” to think that the county could have listened to every phone call made from the jail.
“It would take over 40 people and $50 million a year to do,” he said. “Plus, we don’t even believe that it’s legal just to randomly listen to people’s phone calls on a full-time basis.”
Washington has gone farther than other states in exposing its state and local governments to exposure in lawsuits alleging failure to prevent crime.
Update: Families drop claims the next day after highly adverse public reaction [Seattle Times]
“Inmate sues Penthouse magazine for denying him subscription”
“A Florida prison inmate is suing the nudie magazine because it refused to send a subscription to him behind bars.” [Citrus Daily, Gothamist]
“Revenge of the ‘Shoe Bomber’”
“I am at war with America,” says convicted shoe bomber Richard Reid, whose inmate litigation has been enjoying more success than one might expect. Reid has argued that his freedom of religion requires prison officials to permit him access to “group prayers” with co-believers; other jihadists are also housed at the federal prison in Florence, Colorado. Now federal prison authorities are considering moving him to a different facility [Debra Burlingame, Wall Street Journal]
Prisoner suits in the U.K.
The Labor government plans a crackdown on “trivial” inmate suits, with Justice minister Jack Straw citing “imaginative” lawyers as a source of problems. Controversial cases have included a £1 million compensation bill to prisoners forced to go cold turkey on narcotics withdrawal instead of being given a heroin substitute, and “one in which a prisoner won a legal battle to have his haircuts paid for by the state while on day release”. [Times Online]
Australian prosecutors’ brief: 24,736 pages
Oz taxpayers spent more than $A1 million securing the conviction of murder defendant/jailhouse lawyer Hugo Rich, who employed many colorful and wearying tactics in his defense on charges of murdering a security guard during a holdup. [Melbourne Herald-Sun]