Posts Tagged ‘United Kingdom’

U.K. man’s suit: church misled him “into following false beliefs”

“A retired semi-professional footballer who claims his faith ruined his chances of playing for Manchester United is suing the Baptist Church for £10 million.” Arquimedes Nganga “quit the sport aged 25 when he converted to the Baptist faith. He said: ‘I could definitely have had a long career in the Premiership'” had he not given it up. [Evening Standard]

U.K.: “Mega pig-farm could breach human rights, council warned”

Creative application #95,724 of international human rights law: maybe it turns out to ban U.S.-style factory farming. Activists are urging the Derbyshire county council in England to deny planning permission to a large hog facility on the grounds that it violates local residents’ protected right to private and family life [Guardian]

February 29 roundup

  • Jackpot justice and New Jersey pharmacies (with both a Whitney Houston and a Ted Frank angle) [Fox, PoL, our Jan. 3 post]
  • New Mexico: “Trial lawyers object to spaceport limits” [Las Cruces Bulletin]
  • Dodd-Frank: too big not to fail [The Economist] Robert Teitelman (The Deal) on new Stephen Bainbridge book Corporate Governance After the Financial Crisis [HuffPo] Securities suits: “trial lawyers probably won’t be able to defend a defective system forever” [WSJ Dealpolitik]
  • Uh-oh: U.K. Labour opposition looks at unleashing U.S.-style class actions [Guardian] “U.K. Moves ‘No Win, No Fee’ Litigation Reforms to 2013” [Suzi Ring, Legal Week]
  • More on controls on cold medicines as anti-meth measure [Radley Balko, Megan McArdle, Xeni Jardin, earlier here, here, here]
  • Recognizable at a distance: “In Germany, a Limp Domestic Economy Stifled by Regulation” [NY Times]
  • Fewer lawyers in Congress these days [WSJ Law Blog]

February 24 roundup

  • Melissa Kite, columnist with Britain’s Spectator, writes about her low-speed car crash and its aftermath [first, second, third, fourth]
  • NYT’s Nocera lauds Keystone pipeline, gets called “global warming denier” [NYTimes] More about foundations’ campaign to throttle Alberta tar sands [Coyote] Regulations mandating insurance “disclosures” provide another way for climate change activists to stir the pot [Insurance and Technology]
  • “Cop spends weeks to trick an 18-year-old into possession and sale of a gram of pot” [Frauenfelder, BB]
  • Federal Circuit model order, pilot program could show way to rein in patent e-discovery [Inside Counsel, Corporate Counsel] December Congressional hearing on discovery costs [Lawyers for Civil Justice]
  • Trial lawyer group working with Senate campaigns in North Dakota, Nevada, Wisconsin, Hawaii [Rob Port via LNL] President of Houston Trial Lawyers Association makes U.S. Senate bid [Chron]
  • Panel selection: “Jury strikes matter” [Ron Miller, Maryland Injury]
  • Law-world summaries/Seventeen syllables long/@legal_haiku (& for a similar treatment of high court cases, check out @SupremeHaiku)

February 6 roundup

  • “A 4-Page Playdate Waiver? Is This the New Normal?” [Lenore Skenazy, Free-Range Kids; our 2000 post on “Rise of the High-School Sleepover Disclaimer”]
  • Spirit Airlines sets what it calls DOTUC fee, for “Dept. of Transportation Unintended Consequences” [Stoll]
  • How fairly are fathers treated in family court? [Nina Shapiro, Seattle Weekly via Alkon]
  • “‘Insider’ Trading by the Representative Plaintiff in Shareholder Litigation” [Bainbridge]
  • “Donation controversy focuses attention on Madison County asbestos litigation” [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Chamber-backed LNL]
  • Update: Appeals court reinstates Duluth doc’s defamation claims [DNT, earlier here, here, here; “bedside manner” criticism]
  • U.K.: “‘Psychic’ Sally Morgan Sues Critics for £150,000 After Refusing $1 Million to Prove Her Powers” [D.J. Grothe, HuffPo] “She’ll be calling witnesses such as ‘an uncle, or father, or a man… with a b in his first name’.” [@thegagthief]

European roundup

  • Overseas press excoriates new FATCA tax-Americans’-foreign-earnings law; some foreign banks now turn away American customers [Dan Mitchell, Cato, Reason] “The Fatca story is really kind of insane.” [Caplin & Drysdale’s H. David Rosenbloom, NYT via TaxProf] Will Congress back down? [Peter Spiro/OJ, more]
  • Important new book from James Maxeiner (University of Baltimore) and co-authors Gyooho Lee and Armin Weber on what the U.S. can learn from legal procedure overseas: “Failures of American Civil Justice in International Perspective” [TortsProf]
  • Don’t do it: British administration mulls further move away from loser-pays rule in search of — what exactly, a yet more Americanized litigation culture? [Guardian, Law Society]
  • Apparently in Norway it’s possible to lose one’s kids by feeding them by hand [Shikha Dalmia, Reason]
  • Financial transaction tax? Ask the Swedes how that worked out [Mike “Mish” Shedlock, Business Insider]
  • Notes from conference on globalization of class actions [Karlsgodt] Related: Adam Zimmerman;
  • “Another conviction in Europe for insulting religion” [Volokh; Polish pop star] Campus secularists’ speech under fire in the U.K. as “Jesus and Mo” controversy spreads to LSE [Popehat] British speech prosecution of soccer star [Suneal Bedi and William Marra, NRO]

February 1 roundup

“Human rights court blocks Abu Qatada deportation”

British prime minister David Cameron is fuming over the latest in a long string of rulings by the European Court of Human Rights, which now has stepped in to protect a militant Islamist cleric from deportation to Jordan, where he has been convicted in absentia of plotting terrorist attacks. [Independent, Telegraph]

More: Cameron calls for reform of ECHR, says it is turning into court of “fourth instance” for general appeal of British judicial decisions [Telegraph, Guardian, New Statesman, Conservative Home]