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The Courts, Criminal Justice & Tort Archive

Saturday

15

August 2009

0

COMMENTS

Honda Sued Over Window Broken By Tornado

Written by , Posted in The Courts, Criminal Justice & Tort

The moron is also suing his wife:

A family demands $10 million from Honda, claiming a side window shattered and injured them when a tornado picked up their Honda Odyssey, which “remained airborne for a few seconds before plummeting to the ground and landing on all four wheels. Upon impact, the driver’s side passenger window shattered and glass flew into the car.”

Two girls suffered eye injuries from the glass and three other family members suffered face, chest and head lacerations, the family says in Prince George’s County Court. One girl lost her left eye and another one needed eye surgery.

The father says he warned his wife – a defendant – not to go to the “back to school night” because there was a tornado warning, but she “was upset at the program for not properly caring for her child and decided it was necessary to drive her children to the program. … A few minutes after her departure, defendant Achumba felt a shove from the rear of the Odyssey, and it was lifted into the air.”

The Achumba family says the tempered glass Honda uses in side windows to reduce costs is not strong enough. They say Honda should use laminated glass, as it does for windshields.

Frivolous lawsuits are out of control.  We desperately need a loser pays system, though even that won’t solve the mess itself, as many of these frivolous lawsuits are rewarded by idiotic juries.

Hat-tip: Overlawyered

Thursday

6

August 2009

0

COMMENTS

Sotomayor Confirmed

Written by , Posted in The Courts, Criminal Justice & Tort

The Senate confirmed Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court by a vote of 68-31.  All Democrats voted yes, while most Republicans voted no.

Although I have serious problems with her performance before the Judiciary Committee (her obfuscation bordered on rank dishonesty), I’m not going to chastise those who decided to vote for her, as there are legitimate debates over the appropriate constitutional role of the Senate when it comes to their responsibility of “advice and consent.” Should they merely enforce a basic level of competence and independence for judges, or should they use their own judicial philosophy as a criteria? I don’t know the answer.

I can see the merits of both sides. On the one hand, Sotomayor is a competent, albeit unimpressive, judge. Her decisions paint her as a mainstream left-liberal on the bench, which is exactly what one would expect the elected left-liberal president to appoint.  It seems to be what the people wanted. From this school of thought, there is little reason to oppose her nomination absent evidence that she would be incapable of acting independently of the other branches, particularly the executive that appointed her.

On the other hand, being a mainstream member of the left-liberal school of jurisprudence still places her well out-of-whack compared to the original constitutional understanding. The constitution is not subject to popular vote, and drifting public opinion that runs counter to its meaning need not, and ought not, be mindlessly heeded.

But that debate never really mattered in this confirmation vote, because only one side was interested in it.  The  other provided a predictable rubber stamp for the President and more than enough to pass her through without any need for honest answers on her part. She will be a predictably liberal vote for the court, but won’t significantly change its make-up.

Sunday

26

July 2009

0

COMMENTS

Nannies Sue Denny's Over Salt

Written by , Posted in The Courts, Criminal Justice & Tort, The Nanny State & A Regulated Society

Stephen Gardner of the Center for Science in the Public Interest hysterically declares, “Denny’s: Public Health Enemy # 1”

The Center for Science in the Public Interest filed suit today in the Superior Court of New Jersey in Middlesex County, seeking to compel Denny’s to disclose on menus the amount of sodium in each of its meals and to place a notice on its menus warning about high sodium levels. CSPI is working with the New Jersey firms of Galex Wolf, LLC and Williams Cuker Berezofsky.

The great majority of Denny’s meals is dangerously high in sodium, putting its customers at greater risk of high blood pressure, heart attack and stroke.

…

The plaintiff, Nick DeBenedetto, is a 48-year-old resident of Tinton Falls, NJ, who has eaten for many years at Denny’s restaurants in East Brunswick and Brick, NJ. Nick takes a prescription medication to control his high blood pressure and at home does not cook with salt or use the salt shaker. Some of his favorite Denny’s items, such as Moons Over My Hammy or the Super Bird turkey sandwich, contain far more than 1,500 mg of sodium—even without soup, salad, fried onion rings, or other side dishes.

“I was astonished—I mean, literally floored—to find that these simple sandwiches have more salt than someone in my condition should have in a whole day,” Nick says. “It’s as if Denny’s is stacking the deck against people like me. I never would have selected those items had I known.”

Here’s an idea.  If a customer wants to know something and it isn’t stated on the menu, they can ask.  If they don’t get an answer, then don’t eat the food.  If you choose to eat it anyway, then you’re saying that knowing that piece of information just isn’t all that important to you as a customer.  If CSPI has a problem with people eating food without knowing every single ingredient in its exact proportions, they should encourage people to demand such information as a condition for their purchases, not force it through frivolous lawsuit and nanny-state regulations.

Another problem with these nannies, despite their fundamental distaste for freedom, is that they can’t get their stories straight.  Salt has gone from good to bad to good to bad so many times it will make your head spin.  As such, I’d take hysterical proclamations about its dangers with, well, a grain of salt.

Tuesday

14

July 2009

0

COMMENTS

Sotomayor Rejects Obama's Judicial Philosophy

Written by , Posted in The Courts, Criminal Justice & Tort

What’s going on here?

Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) asked Sonia Sotomayor if she agrees with something Barack Obama said as a senator when deciding to vote against John Roberts as chief justice of the Supreme Court.

At the time, Obama said: “In those cases, adherence to precedent and rules of construction and interpretation will only get you through the 25th mile of the marathon. That last mile can only be determined on the basis of one’s deepest values, one’s core concerns, one’s broader perspectives on how the world works, and the depth and breadth of one’s empathy.”

… “He has to explain what he meant by judging,” Sotomayor said. “Judges can’t explain what’s in their heart — the job of a judge is to apply the law. It’s not the heart that compels conclusions in cases, it’s the law.”

According to Obama, Sotomayor was everything he was looking for in a judge, which means she met his empathy standard.  Now, speaking at her confirmation hearing (under oath?), she has rejected this standard.  Was Obama wrong in his evaluation of her?

No, he was not.  What we are seeing now is a hustle.  Sotomayor knows that Obama’s position, and her own chosen philosophy, is at odds with the proper role of the judiciary.  She knows it and yet continues to put it into action anyway because she doesn’t care about the proper role of the judiciary; she cares about getting to the desired liberal outcomes.  Lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee is just one more step down that road, no more significant to her than her frequent willingness to twist and bend the law to serve a radical ideology.

Tuesday

14

July 2009

0

COMMENTS

Whatever Happened To Property Rights?

Written by , Posted in The Courts, Criminal Justice & Tort

The title is, quite obviously, rhetorical.  I know what happened to property rights.  FDR and the Progressives wrote them right out of the constitution without the need for so much as a single amendment.  Decisions like this just always drive home the loss:

Pharmacists are obliged to dispense the Plan B pill, even if they are personally opposed to the “morning after” contraceptive on religious grounds, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

In a case that could affect policy across the western U.S., a supermarket pharmacy owner in Olympia, Wash., failed in a bid to block 2007 regulations that required all Washington pharmacies to stock and dispense the pills.

Family-owned Ralph’s Thriftway and two pharmacists employed elsewhere sued Washington state officials over the requirement. The plaintiffs asserted that their Christian beliefs prevented them from dispensing the pills, which can prevent implantation of a recently fertilized egg. They said that the new regulations would force them to choose between keeping their jobs and heeding their religious objections to a medication they regard as a form of abortion.

…Although the courts have yet to pronounce judgment on other aspects of the lawsuit, the unanimous ruling on the free-exercise clause could portend further judgments, as the case moves forward, that a patient’s right to timely medication supersedes a pharmacist’s personal convictions.

Of course someone shouldn’t be forced to sell something in their store that they find violates their religious beliefs.  That, however, misses the point.  They shouldn’t have to sell something in their store that they don’t want to sell, no matter the reason.  That liberty is a simple extension of one of our most fundamental human and natural rights: the right to dispose of our property (which includes our bodies, among other things) as we see fit.

There is, on the other hand, no individual right to walk into any given store (pharmacy) and find a specific product (Plan B pill).  Nor is there any right to “timely medication,” whatever that means.  “Rights” such as those, which place positive burdens on others, are not rights at all.

Wednesday

1

July 2009

0

COMMENTS

Will Free Speech Make A Comeback?

Written by , Posted in The Courts, Criminal Justice & Tort, The Nanny State & A Regulated Society

Along with the Ricci decision, there was more important news that came out of the Supreme Court on Monday. Rather than issuing a decision in Citizens United v. FEC, the court invited new oral arguments with the question: “For the disposition of this case, should the Court overrule either or both Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, and a part of McConnell v. FEC, which addresses the facial validity of Section 203 of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002?”

People who know much more about this sort of thing than I have weighed in on what this means.

Institute for Justice:

The Court has set up a blockbuster case about Americans’ First Amendment rights to join together and speak freely about politics.  A majority of the High Court appears to recognize the grave threat to free speech posed by both the electioneering communications ban in McCain-Feingold and the ban on corporate political speech.  This case could mark a significant advance for First Amendment rights and will have major implications for state laws nationwide.

Cato@Liberty:

Justices Kennedy and Scalia, both current members of the Court, wrote dissents in Austin. Justice Thomas has called for Austin to be overruled in other contexts.  Neither Justices Roberts nor Alito is likely to vote to uphold Austin (or the relevant parts of McConnell v. FEC for that matter). But it would seem that either or both of them were unwilling to strike down a precedent without a formal hearing. That hearing will come on September 9 with a decision expected by Thanksgiving.

Almost six years after the Court utterly refused to defend free speech in McConnell v. FEC, the Roberts Court may be ready to vindicate the First Amendment against its accusers in Congress and elsewhere.

Monday

29

June 2009

0

COMMENTS

It's Not Hard To Understand

Written by , Posted in Identity Politics, The Courts, Criminal Justice & Tort

The New York Times, unsurprisingly, has thrown out a sob piece regarding the Ricci decision to prohibit government racism.  The poor local governments simply don’t know what to do.  How can they pander to leftist identity groups if they aren’t allowed to make racist, anti-white decisions? First I should dispel some falsehoods:

With the court’s ruling making it harder for cities and other employers to throw out tests they conclude are unfair, employers are expected to work harder to make sure their written tests — indeed their entire selection process — are fair.

This is a lie.  The New Haven test was not demonstrated to be unfair.  No specific question was determined to be racist in any way.   Rather it was concluded that, merely because they did not meet some racial quota, the results could be disregarded.  Any claim that the test was racist just because no black candidates scored high enough to earn promotion is based on faulty logic.

In fact, the city did work very hard to ensure “the entire selection process” was fair.  What some people can’t seem to get through their thick skulls is that a fair process does not guarantee, or even make more likely, equally distributed success.  Unequal distributions, then, are not evidence of unfair processes.

But on with the crying:

“We don’t see clear, bright-line guidance here,” said Lars Etzkorn, a program director with the National League of Cities. “This is going to be good for employment lawyers.”

Really? No clear guidance?  For the racially obsessed, let me make it real simple.  This is advice any local government idiot can follow. Are you ready? Ok, here it is:

Disregard all irrelevancies like race or sex and hire or promote the most qualified candidates!

That bright enough for you?

Tuesday

9

June 2009

1

COMMENTS

Rethinking Judicial Activism

Written by , Posted in The Courts, Criminal Justice & Tort

Jeff Rowes has an excellent Op-ed in the WSJ explaining why “judicial activism” is not the real problem with the courts.

The growing dispute between conservatives and liberals over the Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor obscures a more troubling point of agreement: The government should almost always win.

Many conservatives who think of themselves as proponents of limited government would be surprised to discover that conservative judges begin their constitutional analyses in almost every context by placing a thumb firmly on the government side of the scale. It’s called “judicial deference.” Many liberals, who take pride in being “empathetic,” would be surprised to learn that liberal judges also subscribe to judicial deference.

…The time-honored justification for judicial deference is that when courts refuse to enforce property rights and allow economic liberties to be trampled by legislatures they are showing respect for the democratic process. But this notion is not faithful to the duty of the judiciary. The Constitution’s framers understood that legislatures are as much nests of vice as of virtue. That is why they went to such lengths to define the limits of government, set forth our rights broadly, and create an independent, co-equal branch of government to protect those rights.The absence of meaningful constitutional limits on the power of government over property and the economy has had consequences that should cause both liberals and conservatives to rethink the wisdom of sweeping judicial deference. For example, last fall Congress enacted the Troubled Asset Relief Program, putting hundreds of billions of dollars at the personal discretion of the secretary of the Treasury. This grant of authority — which violates the basic constitutional duty of Congress to control the purse laid out in Article I, Section 8 — transformed the secretary into the most powerful unelected official in American history. Such power, once acquired, is rarely relinquished.

Many of the worst court decisions involve allowing other branches of government to get away with extra-constitutional behavior.   We need a judiciary that avoids activism when it entails adding new passages to the Constitution, but we need a judiciary that embraces it when other branches try to work outside the document’s authority.

Tuesday

9

June 2009

0

COMMENTS

Supreme Court Declines To Look At Chrysler Sale

Written by , Posted in The Courts, Criminal Justice & Tort

In a disappointment to the handful of people left who believe in the U.S. Constitution, the Supreme Court has lifted its stay on the impending sale of Chrysler to Fiat.

The U.S. Supreme Court last night declined to hear an appeal from opponents of the sale of Chrysler’s assets to Italian automaker Fiat, clearing the way for the government-backed transaction to take place immediately.

The order capped a hectic week in which creditors, dealers and others raced to block a deal that now appears destined to become a template for a similar bankruptcy involving General Motors.

SCOTUSblog says ‘not so fast’ to the White House’s claim of unconditional victory:

In what may have been an excess of exuberance, the White House issued a statement about the Chrysler deal Tuesday night. Attributed to an unnamed White House official, it included this assertion: “We are gratified that not a single court that reviewed this matter, including the U.S. Supreme Court, found any fault whatsoever with the handling of this matter by either Chrysler or the U.S. Government….” There are some problems with that, and they are not mere legal technicalities.

The state of what might be called “bailout” law has not been reviewed at all by the Supreme Court, except at a somewhat speculative level of whether there was a chance the Court would rule against the deal if it did rule on the merits. It was not convinced, at this stage, that it would do so if that time came.

Fundamental constitutional issues surround the use of federal funds in the Chrysler bailout, as do a host of questions about using the bankruptcy laws as they were in this case.  They were raised in the papers filed at the Court this week, but they were not answered in any final way.

OpenMarket has a good rundown for further reading.

Monday

8

June 2009

0

COMMENTS

Ginsburg Halts Chrysler Sale To Fiat

Written by , Posted in Economics & the Economy, Labor Unions, The Courts, Criminal Justice & Tort

Supreme Court Halts Chrysler Sale to Fiat

The Supreme Court on Monday granted an emergency appeal asking it to halt the impending government-backed sale of Chrysler to Italian automaker Fiat.

The order stops for now Chrysler’s sale, which the company claims could scuttle the deal.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg signed the order, but it may be only temporary.

A federal appeals court in New York had earlier approved the sale, but gave opponents until 4 p.m. ET Monday to try to get the Supreme Court to intervene. Ginsburg issued her order just before 4 p.m.

The complaint stems from the administration’s decision to favor unsecured debtors (and unions) over secured debtors, who bankruptcy and contract law grants the first place in line.  It remains to be seen whether the five Supreme Court members necessary to sign off on hearing the case will act or the temporary halt will expire, but for now we can praise justice Ginsburg for at least feigning an interest in the importance of rule of law and economic rights.

SCOTUSblog on what the stay might mean:

* Ginsburg may have decided to share the decision on what to do with her eight colleagues, and they needed more time to think or talk about it.

* Members of the Court may have decided that they wanted to give some explanation, or perhaps some may have decided to dissent and wanted a chance to prepare a statement saying so.  In the meantime, it was her task, as the Circuit Justice, to impose a limited stay.

* Ginsburg or the Court may be waiting to see how the Second Circuit explains its decision to uphold the terms of the sale.  The Circuit Court issued no opinion on Friday, indicating that such an explanation would come “in due course,” although the expectation was that one or more opinions would emerge from those judges on Monday.

The wording of Ginsburg’s order — “stayed pending further order” — is the conventional way by which a Justice or the Court carries out an action that is expected to be short in duration, and not controlling — or even hinting at — the ultimate outcome.  Any speculation that her order meant the Court was leaning toward a further postponement would be unfounded.

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About Me

profileI serve as Vice President of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, a non-profit think tank dedicated to preserving tax competition and free markets. This site features my personal views, which are not reflective of CF&P.

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