- Popehat’s Ken to the rescue after Maine lawyer/lawmaker assists naturopath in bullying critical blogger [Popehat]
- Newt’s “patriotism made me stray” among highlights of the year in blame-shifting [Jacob Sullum]
- Nifong sidekick, now in a spot of legal bother himself, hits back with lawsuit [K C Johnson, Durham in Wonderland]
- Shareholder action: “Delaware approves $285 Million in Plaintiffs’ Lawyers’ Fees” [Bainbridge, WSJ Deal Journal, WSJ Law Blog]
- “Even one death is too many — WE MUST BAN NETI POTS!” [NYDN via Christopher Tozzo]
- Debatable premise of Joe Nocera analysis on Stephen Glass case: bar admission turn-down = “rest of his life … destroyed” [NYT, Howard Wasserman/Prawfs, earlier]
- Who says Connecticut never reforms liability? Towns won protection last year from some recreation-land tort exposure [CFPA, earlier here, here]
Tagged as:
bar associations,
bloggers and the law,
Connecticut,
Delaware,
Duke lacrosse,
recreation,
safety
“A man who overdosed on stolen drugs he ingested at a party in 2007 has settled his lawsuit with a pharmacy, several guests, the party’s host and the host’s mother for $4.1 million. … [Scott] Simon sued the pharmacy for not taking proper precautions to avoid the theft of drugs. He also sued several guests, the party’s host and the host’s parents, who were away for the weekend.” [AP via NJLRA, Schepisi & McLaughlin]
Tagged as:
illegal drugs,
New Jersey,
personal responsibility,
pharmaceuticals,
social host
“An Austrian appellate court has upheld the conviction of Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, a Viennese housewife and anti-Jihad activist, for ‘denigrating religious beliefs’ after giving a series of seminars about the dangers of radical Islam.” [Soeren Kern, Hudson New York via Volokh]
Tagged as:
Europe,
hate speech
Some of Newt Gingrich’s curious ideas about the role of the judiciary are nowhere to be found in the constitution, observes my Cato colleague Roger Pilon [Philadelphia Inquirer] Related, Damon Root: “The Left-Wing Origins of Newt Gingrich’s Attack on the Courts” [Reason]
Tagged as:
constitutional law,
Newt Gingrich
How often does Los Angeles County throw people in jail due to mistaken identity? In some years “an average of once a day.” [L.A. Times]
Tagged as:
Los Angeles,
police
My new podcast at Cato discusses the American Psychiatric Association’s ongoing project of redefining and often loosening the criteria for diagnosing mental illness, and some of its legal implications in fields like disability law (earlier).
Tagged as:
disabled rights,
psychiatry
Listicles and award contests from around the blawgosphere: Popehat on censorious clowns, Legal Ethics Forum, Trask on class action cases and articles, White Collar Crime Law Prof, Heritage on worst federal regs, Greenfield on best criminal law blawg post (and winner), Faces of Lawsuit Abuse (Chamber) on most ridiculous lawsuits, Balko on worst prosecutor (and finalists).
P.S. From The Week, “8 craziest lawsuits of 2011.” This in turn prompted a NYC personal injury attorney named David Waterbury, taking up valuable real estate at Eric Turkewitz’s, to write a counter-article saying the cases weren’t so bad, which involved me in the comments section after I observed Waterbury spreading the trial lawyer-favored line that the “Kara Walton” series of bogus lawsuit stories was a purposeful political fabrication.
Tagged as:
on other blogs,
urban legends about lawsuits
“Rights-bearing individuals do not forfeit those rights when they associate in groups” argue my Cato colleagues Ilya Shapiro and Caitlyn McCarthy in the John Marshall Law Review [SSRN via Cato at Liberty]:
Much of the criticism of Citizens United stems from the claim that the Constitution does not protect corporations because they are not “real” people. … This essay will demonstrate why the common argument that corporations lack rights because they aren’t people demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of both the nature of corporations and the First Amendment.
Meanwhile, Virginia blogger/attorney Doug Mataconis [via the much missed Larry Ribstein] analyzes a constitutional amendment advanced by a number of Democratic representatives and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) which would, among other provisions, propose to abolish the constitutional rights of incorporated businesses, with the possible exception of rights held by “the press.” The measure would also impose a constitutional prohibition on (not just authorize official regulation of) such businesses’ engagement in “expenditures,” such as buying newspaper ads expressing their views, during initiative and referendum campaigns as well as elections for office.
Along with abolishing incorporated businesses’ rights, the Sanders proposal contains a further provision of high importance (flagged by Eugene Volokh) that would abolish the constitutional rights of any and all non-profits and similar private entities that are “established … to promote business interests,” and would impose on them the same constitutionally mandated silence during initiatives, referenda and the like. Note the results of this language, which we must presume are intentional: in, say, a fight over a ballot measure that would increase some business tax, the citizens’ committee organized to agitate against the tax would be forbidden to expend money upon a determination that it had been “established … to promote business interests.” Such a private group would also be deemed to have no constitutional rights of any other sort — rights against, say, having its meetings stormed and broken up by police. Meanwhile, the citizens’ committee organized to agitate for the tax would retain not only its rights to speak and to spend money on behalf of its views but also all its other constitutional rights. Rarely do politicians, in this country at least, make it so clear in advance that their intent is to silence their opponents.
Who are the lawmakers who would propose such a measure? The House version was introduced by Rep. Theodore Deutch [FL] and its co-sponsors are Reps. Steve Cohen [TN], John Conyers, Jr. [MI], Peter DeFazio [OR], Keith Ellison [MN], Sam Farr [CA], Barney Frank [MA], Marcia Fudge [OH], Raul Grijalva [AZ], Alcee Hastings [FL], Sheila Jackson Lee [TX], “Hank” Johnson, Jr. [GA], Rick Larsen [WA], John Larson [CT], Barbara Lee [CA], Carolyn Maloney [NY], Jim McDermott [WA], Frank Pallone, Jr. [NJ], Chellie Pingree [ME], Charles Rangel [NY], Betty Sutton [OH], Chris Van Hollen [MD], and Peter Welch [VT].
Tagged as:
constitutional law,
free speech,
U.S. House of Representatives
Brad Plumer in the Washington Post summarizes the provisions of the bill as well as the state of play on it in Congress as of mid-month. Although much commentary has assumed that persons determined to visit blocked sites could readily find ways around the SOPA restrictions, David Post notes that the draft bill authorizes the Attorney General to seek injunctions against persons who assist in circumventing the law, which might include websites that publish “here’s how to evade SOPA blocking” information. Timothy Lee at ArsTechnica notes growing opposition to the bill among conservatives, while Joshua Kopstein at Motherboard reviews a comic markup session. Meanwhile, “Gibson Guitar & Others On SOPA Supporters List Say They Never Supported The Bill” [Mike Masnick, TechDirt] Earlier here and here.
Tagged as:
copyright,
online speech,
RIAA and file sharing
- But don’t call it quotas: “New Proposal May Force Federal Contractors to Hire More People with Disabilities” [Diversity Journal]
- Wow: SEIU local advertises job described as “Train/lead members in … occupying state buildings and banks” [Instapundit]
- $174K/year annual pension, collected for several decades? “Public retirement ages come under greater scrutiny” [AP] “Report makes ‘progressive’ pension-reform case” [Steven Greenhut, Public Sector Inc.] “Retired Cops and Firefighters in RI Town Accept Pension Cuts in Bankruptcy Deal” [Debra Cassens Weiss/ABA Journal, earlier] New York officials move to cut off public access to information about who’s getting what [NY Post]
- In end run around Congress: “Obama instating labor rules for home-care aides” [LAT]
- Artificial “take home pay” rule helped some highly paid Connecticut public workers qualify for emergency food stamps [Hartford Courant, more]
- Lawyers, business groups alarmed at Department of Labor’s proposed “labor persuader” regulations [ABA Journal, earlier]
Tagged as:
Connecticut,
disabled rights,
labor unions,
New York,
public employment
Canada: The British Columbia Supreme Court has found “that a claim for damages for a break-up of a relationship following a collision is too remote for liability.” It accepted the plaintiff’s contention that the car crash had aggravated his pre-existing problems of back pain, but said the subsequent break-up of his romantic relationship was “too remote” a consequence to give rise to liability given that the couple appeared to have been at odds over “fundamental and deep-seated issues.” [Erik Magraken]
Tagged as:
Canada,
damage theories
