Today, Public Citizen, working with co-counsel at Thomas & Solomon LLP of Rochester, N.Y., and O’Hara, O’Connell & Ciotoli of Fayetteville, N.Y., filed a petition to appeal the class certification denial in Roach v. T.L. Cannon Corp., a wage-and-hour class action. The appeal will be among the first to test the scope of the Supreme […]
Category Archives: Uncategorized
A group of organizations including the Union of Concerned Scientists, Breast Cancer Fund, and Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families yesterday sent a letter to major retailers asking them to phase out the use of more than 100 chemicals used in hundreds of products, including wrinkle-free clothes, shampoos, sofa cushions, and food packaging. The retailers include Walmart, […]
by Brian Wolfman A good bit of important congressional legislation is justified under the Constitution's so-called Spending Clause. Key programs in the environmental, education, and public benefits areas, for instance, are Spending Clause programs. The idea of much of this legislation, put simply, is that the legislation offers money to states to implement joint federal-state […]
by Brian Wolfman The Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 (CAFA) was sold to Congress in large part on the argument that state courts were abusing the class action–for instance, by certifying class actions that should not have been certified–and harming the interests of law abiding corporations that do business nationally. CAFA sought to remedy […]
A recent post explained that many federal agency health and safety regulations must be sent for review to the Office of Management Budget (OMB), where they can be delayed or die at OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). Sometimes regulations emerge from OIRA looking different from what they looked like when they arrived. […]
Last Friday, Paul Levy posted on the Michigan Court of Appeals' new ruling, Thomas Cooley Law School v. Doe, concerning the rights of anonymous on-line critics to retain their anonymity during litigation. Karen Sloan has now written this article providing more details on the ruling and quoting Paul.
Last Friday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued its 2011 National Occupant Protection Use Survey (NOPUS). The agency explains that "at any given daylight moment across America, approximately 660,000 drivers are using cell phones or manipulating electronic devices while driving, a number that has held steady since 2010. According to separate NHTSA data, more […]
by Brian Wolfman In this SCOTUSblog post, Adam Chandler has repeated a study he did five years ago of cert-stage amicus filings at the U.S. Supreme Court. Chandler took a look at every cert.-stage amicus brief filed between May 19, 2009, and August 15, 2012. He found that "the [U.S.] Chamber [of Commerce] has cemented […]
by Brian Wolfman Congress crafts the outlines of federal regulation — sometimes providing little direction and other times giving more specifics — and delegates the rest of the job to expert federal agencies, which are duty bound to protect the people's interests in health, safety, and economic well-being (taking into account feasibility, costs and benefits, […]