- Wal-Mart spending millions to fight $7,000 OSHA fine? Not so paradoxical when you think about it [Coyote]
- Proliferation of product recalls, as with warnings, can result in consumer fatigue and inattention [WaPo via PoL]
- Settlement said to be near between casino and gambler who lost $127 million [WSJ, UPI, earlier]
- “Think Globally, Sue Locally: Out-of-Court Tactics Employed by Plaintiffs, Their Lawyers, and Their Advocates in Transnational Tort Cases” [study, PDF and press release; Jonathan Drimmer for US Chamber, related WSJ]
- “End of an Era? Another Crunch Berries Case Dismissed” [Lowering the Bar, California Civil Justice, earlier on “froot” cases here, here, etc.]
- New Jersey: “School legal costs are a killer” [Rayner, Daily Record]
- ABA Journal profiles Ted Frank;
- We’re the ones who write the laws around here, not you legislators: Washington Supreme Court strikes down med-mal notice law [SeattlePI.com]
Posts Tagged ‘schools’
June 20 roundup
- Happy Father’s Day! Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy proposes criminal penalties for parents who skip parent-teacher conferences [WJBK via Welch, Reason]
- Plaintiff’s bar takes to online marketing in big way, Boston’s Sokolove firm has 20-employee team [WSJ Law Blog]
- Stuart Taylor, Jr., “The Myth of the Conservative Court” [The Atlantic]
- Happy Father’s Day, cont’d: that “sex offender” neighbor could turn out to be this poor guy [Stephen Mason, Psychology Today via Alkon]
- Libertarians debate anti-discrimination law [David Bernstein and others, Cato Unbound]
- Despite trial lawyer lobbying push, Congress declines for now to create “aid and abet” securities-fraud liability [Bainbridge] “Overcriminalization in the Financial Reform Legislation” [David Rittgers, Cato]
- As international “human rights” proliferate, they’re being applied for businesses’ benefit too, to some advocates’ displeasure [Bader, Examiner]
- Happy Father’s Day, cont’d: Virginia Supreme Court rules child can sue dad after traffic collision for not strapping her properly into car seat [OnPoint News]
$1 million for study on schools, ads and kids’ food
Want to get a local potato chip company to sponsor the scoreboard at your high school athletic field? Washington may soon be making that decision for you. Adam Cassandra of CNSNews.com quotes me in this piece on the federal government’s deepening involvement in school food issues, and the price it brings in local control.
June 18 roundup
- “When the country went cold turkey”: Tyler Cowen reviews Last Call, Daniel Okrent’s history of Prohibition [Business Week]
- Phrases never to put in email, e.g., “We Probably Shouldn’t Put This in Email” [Balasubramani, SpamNotes]
- “My biggest wish was that I would get a cease and desist from the company that publishes Marmaduke” [Walker, Reason “Hit and Run”]
- California proposal to jail parents for kids’ truancy [Valerie Strauss/WaPo via Alkon] Parents arrested on charges of forging doctor sick note to excuse third grader [Glenn Reynolds, Dan Riehl]
- UK judge: NHS need not fund transsexual’s breast enlargement [Mail]
- “Charitable Foundation Leader Alarmed by Government Intrusions into Philanthropy” [WLF Legal Pulse]
- Missed earlier: “Stalking Victims’ Duty to Warn Employees, Lovers, Visitors, and Others?” [Volokh]
- “Overturning Iqbal and Twombly Would Encourage Frivolous Litigation” [Darpana Sheth, Insider Online]
Those Texas curriculum standards
Has the Washington Post paraphrased them fairly? Ann Althouse suggests not; Jonathan Adler at first agrees, then finds reason to alter his view. (Updated/corrected to reflect Adler’s findings). More: Greenfield.
Can’t make ’em up dept.
Germany: “Teacher with rabbit phobia to sue 14-year-old for drawing bunny.” The educator “says she was traumatized by the drawing, and claims the girl knew it would terrify her.” [Telegraph]
March 29 roundup
- “Teen beauty queen portrayed as spoiled brat on ‘Wife Swap’ files $100M lawsuit” [NY Daily News]
- “Viva el cupcake!” NYC parents and kids protest the Bloomberg administration’s anti-bake-sale rules [Philissa Cramer, GothamSchools] Bill in Congress would thrust federal government much more deeply into school food issues [Al Tompkins, Poynter]
- For improved disabled access to online resources, look to technical advance, not regulation [Szoka, City Journal]
- “Ministry of Justice Rolls Out New Measures to Reform U.K. Libel Law” [Legal Week/Law.com] “Success Fees in U.K. Libel Cases to Be Slashed by 90 Percent” [same]
- “They’re overlawyered. They’re poisoned by lawyers.” (Markopolos critique of SEC, cont’d) [Gordon Smith, Conglomerate]
- A sentiment open to doubt: Prof. Freedman contends that lawyers’ ethics are higher than doctors’ [Legal Ethics Forum]
- Quotas for women executives in boardroom and top corporate posts spread in Europe. Maybe someday here too? [NYT “Room for Debate”]
- Yes to better indigent criminal defense, no to a court order taking over the subject [Greenfield]
March 24 roundup
- Jury orders Dutchess County, N.Y. school district to pay $1.25 million for not adequately addressing classmate harassment of “very dark skinned” half-Latino student; district protests that it had extensively pursued diversity/sensitivity programs [Poughkeepsie Journal]
- More unwisdom: “Oklahoma House of Representatives Proposes Ban on Use of Foreign Law in Oklahoma Courts” [Volokh, earlier on Arizona bill]
- Update: California environment czars won’t ban black cars, but watch out for what reflective-layer window mandates might do to cellphones and tollgate transponders [ShopFloor, earlier]
- “Firm Sanctioned for ‘Perfect Storm’ of Improper Practices in Debt Collection” [NYLJ]
- Critic of lie detector technology says U.K. libel law has silenced him [Times Online] Science journalist Simon Singh says fighting chiropractors’ libel suit is so draining that he’s quitting his column for the Guardian [Guardian, Citizen Media Law]
- Florida: father who lost wife, son in murder/suicide at gun range drops lawsuit against the store [Orlando Sentinel]
- Appeals court declines to overturn Mary Roberts sextortion conviction [MySanAntonio.com, opinion, related, earlier]
- Corporation for Public Newspapering? Stimulus bucks go to “public-interest investigative journalism” [SFWeekly]
“No Brownies at Bake Sales, but Doritos May Be O.K.”
Surreal notes from the frontiers of food paternalism in the New York City school system:
“It’s unrealistic to say a young adult can’t make a decision about whether they can eat something,” said David Greenblatt, 18, a senior at the High School of American Studies at Lehman College. “Soon I’ll be in college, and I won’t have Mommy or Daddy or Chancellor Klein sitting right next to me saying, ‘Hey David, don’t eat that, its too high in calories.’”
Coming soon to a school system near you. [Sharon Otterman, NYT “City Room”] A roundup of reactions: Gail Robinson, Gotham Gazette “Wonkster”.
February 18 roundup
- Math curriculum wars in Seattle school district head for court [Seattle Times]
- Stuart Taylor, Jr. reviews new Abigail Thernstrom book on the Voting Rights Act [New Republic]
- Gail Wilensky: Dems could’ve gotten GOP votes for health care reform if they’d compromised on medical liability [The Hill]
- Erin Brockovich swoops down on Florida cancer cluster [Fumento/CEI, more, also on Florida case]
- Barry Goldwater was right: right-leaning bloggers favor lifting military gay ban by 62-37 margin in National Journal bloggers poll;
- Jim Copland vs. Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter [Point of Law, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, more]
- Why is there no iPod or iPhone equivalent for automobiles? Regulation might have something to do with it [Ryan Avent and more via Sullivan; McArdle and more (commenter: “Motorcycles would never, EVER be approved by NHTSA if they were invented today.”)]
- So reassuring: for now FTC says it’s “unlikely to actually investigate individual bloggers” [Lewis, NYLJ] More from late last year on commission’s semi-retreat on blogger freebies [Publisher’s Weekly, GalleySmith, GalleyCat, Reason “Hit and Run”, William S. Galkin] Icons to make disclosure easy [Louis Gray]