Category Archives: Uncategorized

Federal workers’ shutdown-based wage claims to proceed

A judge on the U.S. Court of Federal Claims has ruled that the government violated the Fair Labor Standards Act by waiting until after the fall 2013 government shutdown was over to pay federal workers. Plaintiffs' counsel estimates that up to 1.3 million workers could be affected, the Post reports. Read the opinion, largely denying […]

Internet shames New York hotel into removing non-disparagement clause fining wedding couple for their guests’ reviews

We all know weddings can get expensive, but here's something most couples do not budget for: fines charged by the hotel if a wedding guest leaves a negative review online. Astonishingly, that's what the website of the Union Street Guest House in Hudson, N.Y., promised guests the hotel would do, according to this story in […]

How to design a mass-disaster compensation fund

Law prof Linda Mullenix addresses that issue in Designing Compensatory Funds: In Search of First Principles. Here is the abstract: The World Trade Center Victims’ Compensation Fund of 2001 ushered in a new age of fund approaches to resolving claims for mass disasters in the United States. Since then, numerous funds have been created following […]

The relationship between the concept of the lawyer as economic parasite and access to justice

Teresa Schmid has written The Lawyer-Rent Seeker Myth and Public Policy. Here is the abstract: Two enduring fallacies in public policy are that lawyers are rent seekers who impair rather than stimulate the economy, and that there are too many of them. While lawyers may disagree with the first premise, they tacitly accept the second. […]

The CIA did, in fact, hack the Senate committee overseeing it

Remember in March, when Senate Intelligence Committe Chair Dianne Feinstein took to the floor of the Senate to accuse the CIA of having hacked the computers of the committee, which was at the time investigating CIA abuses in the war on terror? At the time, CIA director John Brennan vehemently denied the charge. But this […]

Consumerist on candy-filled pill bottle for kids

Check out this troubling idea for an ad campaign: giving kids fake pill bottles filled with candy. Probably not encouraging the right associations. When confronted with this observation, the company, to its credit, agreed and stopped distributing the bottles. Consumerist has the story. A testament to the power of consumer speech to change minds and […]

More on the D.C. Circuit’s country-of-origin meat labeling decision

by Ted Mermin (guest blogger — pictured to the right) Just a quick follow-up on Allison Zieve's post on the country-of-origin-labeling case decided yesterday by the DC Circuit. As Allison notes, the case addresses the constitutional standard under which government-mandated disclosures should be reviewed. In particular, the decision will affect the manifold federal administrative regulations […]