Recent Articles

$17,000 restaurant dumpster ramp

Walter Olson
March 22, 2012 12:16

Because it’s important to keep future wheelchair-using employees in contention for the task of hauling the trash out back, and also because money spent on compliance doesn’t really count as money the way, say, an agency’s budget does. [Patterico] Tags: California, disabled...

“Judge Approves Lawsuit Against City, Cornell Over Suicide”

Walter Olson
March 22, 2012 12:12

“A federal judge Tuesday okayed a lawsuit claiming the City of Ithaca and Cornell University are liable for the 2010 death of a student.” The father of Bradley Marc Ginsburg “alleges the defendants did not do enough to prevent suicides from the [Thurston Avenue] bridge.”...

Penalty for webcam spying

Walter Olson
March 22, 2012 04:04

As Radley Balko notes, it seems to vary rather widely depending on whether the wrongdoer is a student or an educator. Tags: Pennsylvania, privacy, schools Related posts School webcams: the division of the spoils (9) Yet more on privacy/disability laws and Seung Hui Cho (2) Texting Fountain...

Hood hires Moore for Mississippi BP suit

Walter Olson
March 22, 2012 04:03

The cozy dealings between the state of Mississippi and well-connected private lawyers — especially the way the state comes to hire those lawyers on contingency fee to pursue high-ticket suits against outside defendants — have long furnished grist for this site. Now, opening a new...

Universal be not proud

Walter Olson
March 21, 2012 11:21

Veoh, like YouTube, pioneered the idea of enabling users to self-post video to the Internet. Then Universal, the entertainment company and owner of many copyrights, began a particularly aggressive campaign of litigation against it. Though Veoh Networks won a judicial decision in its favor,...

High court rejects medical-method patent

Walter Olson
March 21, 2012 10:12

A unanimous Supreme Court has struck down a patent over diagnostic methods in medicine, the latest in a series of controversies over the bounds of patentable subject matter. [Mayo v. Prometheus Labs; Marcia Coyle/NLJ, SCOTUSBlog, Timothy Lee/ArsTechnica] As I noted last fall, my Cato Institute...

March 21 roundup

Walter Olson
March 21, 2012 04:11

Shame on DoJ: “Systematic concealment” of evidence when feds prosecuted Sen. Ted Stevens [WaPo, Caleb Mason/Prawfs] NYT notes feds’ losing streak in Foreign Corrupt Practices Act prosecutions [NYT, our latest] Italy: tax officials stop luxury cars, demand drivers’...

“Wisconsin’s reforms are working”

Walter Olson
March 20, 2012 19:59

Sensible changes to the ground rules on labor relations — including the option to go around the union’s monopoly provider of health care insurance — are saving local governments hundreds of millions of dollars. [John Steele Gordon] P.S. And Bill McGurn on public employee unions...

Bring back federal common law

Walter Olson
March 20, 2012 16:31

Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins (1938) was the New Deal-era decision that directed federal courts to apply the law of the states in which they are located, and in so doing abolished a huge body of federal common law. In a new series of posts based on his book The Upside-Down Constitution, Michael...

Bloomberg: no food donations to homeless shelters

Walter Olson
March 20, 2012 16:06

“[Glenn] Richter has been collecting food from places like the Ohav Zedek synagogue and bringing it to homeless shelters for more than 20 years, but recently his donation, including a ‘cholent‘ or carrot stew, was turned away because the Bloomberg administration wants to monitor...