restaurants – Overlawyered

Labor and employment roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 28 Feb 2020 10:59:18 +0000

Politically effective or not, Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s debate attack on Mike Bloomberg over non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) was simplistic, and that’s putting it diplomatically [Robin Shea]
West Coast longshore union braces for bankruptcy [Richard Read, Los Angeles Times]
An issue to watch carefully: most Democratic White House contenders support labor law changes to introduce “sectoral bargaining,” which ropes employers into all-for-one industry-wide negotiations like it or not [Sharon Block and Benjamin Sachs, On Labor, approving of this idea]
“Arbitration in the MeToo Era,” Federalist Society panel discussion with Paul Clement, Alexander Colvin, Deepak Gupta, Andrew Pincus, moderated by Hon. Joan Larsen;
Chilling effect: employers fear being hit with unfair labor practices claims if they say things that 1) are true and 2) would be helpful for workers to know [Cato Daily Podcast with Ken Girardin and Caleb Brown]
“Chipotle Wants Sick Employees to Verify with a Nurse. This is a Very Pro-Employee Move.” [Suzanne Lucas, Inc.]

Tags: arbitration, Elizabeth Warren, labor unions, Michael Bloomberg, restaurants, workplace

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

Wage and hour roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 14 Feb 2020 10:55:13 +0000

Second thoughts about torpedoing one of the city’s best-known attractions? “New York Decides To Keep Restaurants’ Tip Credit” [Peter Romeo, Restaurant Business] “Sacramento Restaurants Closing Due To Imminent Minimum Wage Increase” [CBS Sacramento]
Toughened set of overtime rules, though less drastic than what the Obama administration tried to impose, went into effect January 1 [Ryan Golden, HR Dive]
U.K. Labour Party leadership contender Rebecca Long-Bailey “has called for an end to ’24/7 work culture’, where workers will be given the right to switch off digital devices outside their work hours to alleviate stress and anxiety. Journalists received the embargoed press release at 19:25 last night…” [Guido Fawkes]
“Recent historical episodes suggest that many workers experiencing an income shock treat the ridesharing platform as a short-term option.” Paper tests how Uber’s entry affects labor markets [Vyacheslav Fos, Naser Hamdi, Ankit Kalda, and Jordan Nickerson, Cato Research Brief]
“Give Me A Break: DOL Regulations Need Updating to Afford Workers Desired Flexibility” [Gregory Jacob, Michael Lotito, and Tammy McCutchen, Federalist Society Regulatory Transparency Project]
“What Bernie Sanders Gets Wrong About the Minimum Wage” [John Stossel] “How Seattle’s $15 minimum wage killed entry-level jobs.” [John Stossel and Maxim Lott] Minimum wage rests on a moral belief about the citizens and the state that is to say the least contestable [Pierre Lemieux]

Tags: Bernie Sanders, minimum wage, New York, restaurants, taxis and ridesharing, wage and hour suits

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

December 4 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 04 Dec 2019 11:01:42 +0000

Everyday orders share same griddle, but alternate cooking method is offered for vegans: “Lawsuit claims Burger King’s Impossible Whoppers are contaminated by meat” [Jonathan Stempel and Richa Naidu, Reuters]
Court orders Canadian Senate to pay $1,500 to man who complained of language rights violation from English-only push labels on Parliament Hill drinking fountains [Jackie Dunham, CTV]
Guns N’ Mootness: Supreme Court hears challenge to New York’s Kafkaesque have-gun-can’t-travel law, since repealed [Clark Neily, Daniel Horwitz, Josh Blackman, Newsy video with Ilya Shapiro, earlier and David Kopel/Randy Barnett in SCOTUSBlog symposium; Cato brief, oral argument transcript]
Some deserved national attention for the killing of Gary Willis last year by Anne Arundel County, Md. police enforcing a “red flag” gun order [Jacob Sullum, earlier]
Profile of Ken White is first time I recall seeing explanation of Popehat as blog name [Zane Hill, Outlook Newspapers]
“When the opposition is paying [an expert’s fee in litigation], no incentive at all exists to charge anything but top dollar. That’s where the courts come in.” [Jim Beck]

Tags: Canada, expert witnesses, guns, restaurants, Supreme Court

December 4 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Wage and hour roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 01 Nov 2019 10:01:45 +0000

After Target, under pressure from activists, announced a $15 companywide minimum wage, “workers say they’ve had their hours cut and lost other benefits, such as health insurance.” [Eric Boehm, Reason]
New Chicago scheduling ordinance is “the ultimate intrusion of government in the workplace.” [Chicago Tribune editorial; Allen Smith, SHRM; Fisher Phillips]
“As predicted, the $15 wage is killing jobs all across the city” [New York Post editorial; Billy Binion, Reason; Michael Saltsman and Samantha Summers, Crain’s New York letter (defenders of hike playing fast and loose with numbers) ]
The Federalist Society held a teleforum with Tammy McCutchen of Littler Mendelson on the lower courts’ reception of the Supreme Court’s decision one year ago in Encino Motorcars on FLSA interpretation [earlier]
By next year I expect Left Twitter to be asserting in the alternative that this famous Seattle restaurant 1) never existed, 2) remains open and has no plans to close, and 3) was sunk by issues unrelated to the minimum wage. [Jason Rantz, KTTH (Sitka & Spruce)] More on restaurants: Legal Insurrection (closure of West Coast chain); Tyler Cowen (NBER working paper on what kinds of restaurants are most likely to be affected);
“In the past five years, nearly two-thirds of companies have faced at least one labor and employment class action and, overwhelmingly, companies report that wage and hour matters are their top concern in this category.” [Insurance Journal, Carlton Fields Class Action Survey]

Tags: Chicago, minimum wage, restaurants, Seattle, wage and hour suits

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

Competitor’s objection stalls San Francisco falafel shop

Walter Olson — Sun, 20 Oct 2019 15:59:49 +0000

Unlike most cities, San Francisco follows a land use practice called “discretionary review,” which “allows anybody to appeal any permit for any reason (or no reason) and force a public hearing in front of the famously arbitrary Planning Commission.” A falafel shop wanted an ordinarily straightforward change of use permit to open in a vacant storefront on Castro Street, but an incumbent gyro shop on the same block filed an objection which will succeed in delaying the opening for months. The whole episode “encapsulates everything wrong with San Francisco’s permitting process.” [Dana Beuschel, Medium] Update: newcomer prevails for now, but maybe because not enough commissioners showed up at the meeting to pronounce a “no.”

Tags: competition through regulation, land use and zoning, restaurants, San Francisco

Competitor’s objection stalls San Francisco falafel shop is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

September 25 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 25 Sep 2019 10:01:55 +0000

“Small claims court for copyright” idea, now moving rapidly through Congress, could create a new business model for troll claimants [Mike Masnick, TechDirt; EFF on CASE Act] A contrasting view: Robert VerBruggen, NR;
“If Boston is weirdly NOT full of good restaurant/bar/cafes for its size, and if people don’t want to stay after they hit 26 or so, these throttled [liquor] licenses are one of the real structural reasons why.” [Amanda Katz Twitter thread]
Push in California underway to join a trend I warned of five years ago, namely states’ enacting laws to encourage tax informants with a share of the loot [McDermott Will and Emery, National Law Review]
Baltimore food truck rule challenge, single-member districts, sexting prosecution, and more in my new Free State Notes roundup;
“For years the Westchester County DA, Jeanine Pirro, now a Fox News host who opines on justice, rejected Deskovic’s requests to compare the DNA evidence against a criminal database. Deskovic was not exonerated until 2006, after he had served 16 years” [Jacob Sullum, Reason]
Come again? “Louisville judge rules Kentucky speed limit laws unconstitutional” [Marcus Green, WDRB]

Tags: alcohol, Baltimore, Boston, copyright, Kentucky, Maryland, restaurants, taxes, traffic laws

September 25 roundup 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

August 7 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 07 Aug 2019 09:58:17 +0000

“We got nailed once because someone barehanded a bag of lettuce without a glove.” Kitchen-eye tales of NYC’s restaurant inspection regime [Saxon Baird, NY Eater]
Positive reviews for new HUD regs on housing discrimination, affordability, and supply [National Review: Roger Clegg; Salim Furth]
Sony isn’t making its robot companion dog available in Illinois because its facial recognition features fall under the state’s onerous Biometric Information Privacy Act; an earlier in-state casualty was Google’s “which museum portrait is your selfie like?” service [Megan Wollerton, CNet, earlier here and here] Is there any hope of slowing down the rush of class action suits filed under the law? [Chris Burt, Biometric Update]
Victory on a-peel: “3rd Circuit rules maker of banana costume is entitled to ‘fruits of its intellectual labor'” [ABA Journal, earlier here, etc.]
D.C. Circuit “Rips ‘Legal Artifice’ in Kasowitz Firm’s Megabillions Whistleblower Case” [Dan Packel, The American Lawyer; Cory Andrews, WLF]
Congress passes a law framed as pro-veteran, doesn’t take the time to spell out quite how it works, years later we meet the (presumably unintended) losers in the form of nonprofits that employ blind and deaf workers [Julie Havlak, Carolina Journal, quotes me]

Tags: disabled rights, housing discrimination, Illinois, NYC, privacy, restaurants, whistleblowers

August 7 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Do loud restaurants violate the ADA rights of persons with hearing impairment?

Walter Olson — Thu, 25 Jul 2019 10:05:21 +0000

“High-ambient noise levels pose an access barrier, just as curbs pose an access barrier for wheelchairs,” claims “a retired Los Angeles doctor [and] noise activist” quoted in the Washington Post, speaking of restaurants, though his principle might if valid apply to other sorts of entertainment venues and businesses as well. While some activists hope his view of the Americans with Disabilities Act will prevail, others doubt that courts will go along. [Debra Cassens Weiss, ABA Journal]

Tags: disabled rights, restaurants

Do loud restaurants violate the ADA rights of persons with hearing impairment? is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Minimum wage roundup

Walter Olson — Thu, 02 May 2019 09:52:15 +0000

NYC: “Restaurateurs Are Scrambling to Cut Service and Raise Prices After Minimum Wage Hike” [M. Tara Crowl, Eater NY via Mark J. Perry, AEI, who has more] Next step for SEIU in New York: demand for laws prohibiting firing of fast food workers without “good cause” [Patrick McGeehan, New York Times, Billy Binion, Reason]
In “the popular discourse that all that matters are ‘jobs,’ as if it were 1933, not the vast range of the terms of employment — how hard you have to work, hours, tasks, flexibility, side benefits, overtime, and so forth.” [John Cochrane recommending Jonathan Meer draft via David Henderson]
As the late Paul Heyne taught, economics “contributes to questions of justice – because it imposes the constraints of reality, and because it reminds us that the ethics appropriate for a family cannot work in a commercial society (without lapsing into authoritarian paternalism).” [Nikolai Wenzel]
Treatment of tipped workers in minimum wage laws responds to political pressures [Richard Mackenzie, Regulation magazine]
Workers search more for employment at right around the time of a minimum wage increase, but the effect does not last [Camilla Adams, Jonathan Meer, and CarlyWill Sloan, Cato Research Briefs in Economic Policy]
“Do Minimum Wage Increases Raise Crime Rates?” [Ryan Bourne on NBER paper by Zachary Fone, Joseph Sabia and Resul Cesur]

Tags: minimum wage, restaurants

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