The crisis tally so far: about 4.7 million completed foreclosure sales from July 1 2007 through 2012 (extrapolating the 4th quarter), and more than 12 million foreclosure starts. Adding short sales brings the total home losses to well above 5 million. If we define the shadow inventory as mortgages presently more than 90 days delinquent […]
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Earlier this month, Professor Margaret Jane Radin put out a new book called Boilerplate: The Fine Print, Vanishing Rights, and the Rule of Law. Publisher Princetion University Press describes Professor's Radin's argument as follows: Margaret Jane Radin examines attempts to justify the use of boilerplate provisions by claiming either that recipients freely consent to them […]
We told you last June that a panel of the D.C. Circuit had largely upheld the Environmental Protection Agency's greenhouse gas rules issued after the Supreme Court's decision in Massachusetts v. EPA demanded regulatory action on greenhouse gases. The panel's 82-page opinion, written by Judge Per Curiam (Sentelle, Rogers, and Tatel), was pretty comprehensive. Yesterday (nearly […]
We posted yesterday about a recent decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit that authorized non-class members to intervene for the purpose of objecting to a district court's certification and settlement of a class action that might affect their interests. Class action lawyer Rob Bramson has made an interesting comment on […]
Today, the Washington Post reported on a new study quantifying how often surgeons make "never" mistakes, i.e., mistakes that should never happen, such as leaving an object in a patient, performing the wrong procedure, or performing the procedure on the wrong body part. Apparently, between 1990 and 2010, about 500 "never" events were reported to […]
by Paul Alan Levy The death of Robert Bork today has revived the old debate about the defeat of his nomination to the Supreme Court, but I am sorry to see many of the ordinarily reliable sources missing the boat in their discussions. The New York Times, for example, talks about how liberals opposed him […]
Read this article on that topic by Stephanie Greene and Christine O'Brien. Here is the abstract: If you spend time at work checking Facebook or shopping online you might be violating your employer’s computer policy. But you might also be committing a federal crime. For the past decade or so, courts have disagreed over the […]
This NYT story, though published in October, seems increasingly relevant as the fiscal cliff talks grind on without resolution. The takeaway: a 2007 tax break to exempt mortgage debt relief from being taxed as income is about to expire. Like everything else in the budget, its fate is at stake in the current fiscal negotiations.
Ever make a plane reservation well in advance, try to pick a seat on-line (which the airline suggests that you do), and find out that the only "free" seats are a few crappy middle seats? All the others are "grayed out," indicating that they have already been reserved. Hmm. That's funny, I just bought that […]
by Paul Alan Levy Earlier this month, Brian Wolfman and I both wrote about an impending preliminary injunction hearing in a libel suit over a consumer's review of a local contractor who, she said, had botched his work on her home. The trial judge largely denied relief, but orally ordered the homeowner to revise her […]