John Culbreath Blog

What Is a Promissory Note? When you’re thinking about providing someone with a loan that they can use to get a car or go to college, you might want to think about first creating a promissory note that will act as a kind of legal record for the loan while also making sure that you are properly repaid in the allotted time. Before you use a promissory note template to create one of these notes, you should first know more about a promissory note and what the legality of such a note is.  Breaking Down a Promissory Note Promissory notes are a type of loan agreement or note that states that the borrower of the loan promises to pay back a certain amount of the money by a specific time frame. For instance, the promissory note could state that the borrower agrees to repay a total of $5,000 over a period of four years. While this document is very similar to a basic IOU, it’s considered to be a legally binding document, which means that its terms can be enforced and are expected to be followe

“Parking enforcement officers in Saginaw, Michigan, who use chalk to mark the tires of cars to track how long they have been parked are violating the constitution, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.” [ Amanda Robert, ABA Journal ] In particular, the court found that chalking was a trespass and a search meant to obtain information that was not reasonable under a probable-cause or community-caretaker standard, nor under an exception allowing orderly regulation of road traffic, since in the court’s view it was aimed primarily at obtaining revenue rather than mitigating public hazard. Orin Kerr has more analysis at Volokh Conspiracy . Tags: Fourth Amendment , traffic laws “Chalking tires constitutes unreasonable search, 6th Circuit rules” curated from Overlawyered

My new post at Cato covers the Supreme Court’s decision to resolve three cases in which it is argued that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act bans private workplace discrimination against gay and transgender employees. I cite a 2017 Seventh Circuit showdown on the question between Judges Richard Posner and Diane Sykes: “These philosophical divides on statutory interpretation — which of course play out every term in lower-profile cases — are likely to be on the Court’s mind next fall.” More: Jared Odessky, On Labor (rounding up commentary). Tags: Richard Posner , sex discrimination , sexual orientation , Supreme Court , transgender Does existing law ban workplace bias against gays? SCOTUS will decide curated from Overlawyered

Going solo with intention and doing it the right way is going solo by design. Who better to present a jam-packed guest lecture on this subject than Gary Bauer, lawyer and Chairman of the General Practice Solo Concentration for twenty years at WMU Cooley Law School. Gary and I are kindred spirits. His information is purposeful, thoughtful and complete. Listen and learn. Written by Susan Cartier Liebel Solo By Design – Guest Lecture with Professor Gary Bauer curated from Solo Practice University®

Now unpaywalled: my WSJ opinion piece on the city of Baltimore’s outrageous move to use powers of eminent domain to seize the venerable Preakness thoroughbred horse race as well as its associated Pimlico racetrack. Earlier here and more generally here . Tags: Baltimore , eminent domain , sports , WO writings Baltimore tries to grab the Preakness curated from Overlawyered

Fueling moral panic and safety-first policies, the regularly circulated viral accounts of near-kidnapping at shopping centers and supermarkets are curiously stylized: “Inevitably, the mom congratulates herself on having had the wherewithal to figure out what was going on just in time, and bravely thwart the heinous crime by, uh, staring the guys down.” [ Lenore Skenazy ] Tags: child protection Viral near-kidnapping tales curated from Overlawyered

Internal Google pay study “found, to the surprise of just about everyone, that men were paid less money than women for doing similar work.” [ Daisuke Wakabayashi, New York Times ] “What the Data Say About Equal Pay Day” [ Chelsea Follett, Cato ; Hans Bader ] Otherwise routine on-the-job injuries can have dire consequences for those suffering hemophilia, and a manufacturing company learns its “insurance costs could spike” as a result if it employs three hemophiliac brothers. Don’t think you can turn them away for a reason like that, says EEOC [ commission press release on ADA settlement with Signature Industrial Services, LLC involving $135,000 payment and “other significant relief”] Multnomah County (Portland), Oregon to pay $100,000 settlement to black worker who says she was retaliated against after complaining about “Blue Lives Matter” flag [ Aimee Green, Oregonian ; Blair Stenwick, Portland Mercury ] “The social justice madness of college campuses is now seeping into HR depart

“We’re not interested in charging children or putting them in jail or fining them,” says a campaigner for Maryland’s “cyber-bullying” law, “Grace’s Law 2.0,” which is drafted to do exactly those things. “What we want to do is change the behavior so the internet is more kind,” says the same campaigner regarding the new law, which would encourage online users to turn each other in for potential 10-year prison terms over single instances of certain kinds of malicious, abusive speech, and is being billed as going farther than any other law in the country, as well as farther than the earlier Maryland law passed in 2013. Bruce DePuyt at Maryland Matters reports that Senate Judiciary Chair Bobby Zirkin (D-Baltimore County): said the 2013 law required that abusive comments be sent to the individual and be part of a pattern of conduct. With the rise of social media, that proved to be too high a hurdle, he said. Under the new law, “a single significant act can land you in trouble,” he told

Alabama readers: I’ll be giving a 11:30 a.m. talk to the Federalist Society chapter in Montgomery this coming Thursday at the Capital City Club in Montgomery, discussing gerrymandering and the cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. Drop by and say hello! Tags: Alabama , live in person , redistricting reform In Montgomery April 25 curated from Overlawyered

NBC picked up and ran with a study it said showed same-sex couples face mortgage discrimination — except that the study showed no such thing. My new Cato post explains . Tags: discrimination law , mortgages , sexual orientation A case of mortgage discrimination? Look more closely curated from Overlawyered

Ill-fated names: Londonderry woman sues over fall at Stumble Inn Bar and Grill [ Jason Schreiber, New Hampshire Union Leader ] After starting out as a “humanistic attorney,” lawyer in time comes to net $700,000/year “by sending San Diego workers’ compensation claimants to dirty medical providers” as part of spinal surgery scam that U.S. Justice Department said “cost insurers $500 million over a 15-year period.” [ Jim Sams, Claims Journal ] Lengthy report on creative litigation by municipalities , often done in close harness with contingent-fee private lawyers, explores ill effects and what might be done to rein the process in [Rob McKenna (former Washington State AG), Elbert Lin (former West Virginia SG), and Drew Ketterer (former Maine AG) for U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform ] “Trial lawyers are paying millions to a handful of experts necessary to push their talc cases” [ Dan Fisher, Legal NewsLine , earlier ] New York City Council Speaker: “Corey Johnson targets Scaffold

This map, made using records obtained through FOIA, shows Hudson Yards qualifies as a distressed urban area under the EB-5 program by connecting the luxury development to public housing in Harlem. https://t.co/WuqtrUKSGH (?: @markbyrnes525 ) pic.twitter.com/s4uSrSkt0t — CityLab (@CityLab) April 12, 2019 What an amazing story: “Manhattan’s new luxury mega-project [Hudson Yards] was partially bankrolled by an investor visa program called EB-5, which was meant to help poverty-stricken areas.” The far West Side of lower Manhattan, not far from Tribeca, the Village, and Chelsea, is hardly known for its poverty, but creative subsidy seekers carved out an “area” that connected the Hudson Yards site, gerrymander style, through midtown and Central Park to public housing projects in Harlem. And presto: access to benefits meant to revive high-unemployment urban areas. [ Kriston Capps, CityLab ] Reader David Link writes: It’s only bad if you think the point of the Poverty/Industrial Comple

Mar 2000: Palm Pilot IPO’s at $53 billion Sep 2006: “Everyone’s always asking me when Apple will come out with a cellphone. My answer is, ‘Probably never.’” – David Pogue (NYT)… Jun 2007: iPhone released Nov 2007: “Nokia: One Billion Customers—Can Anyone Catch the Cell Phone King?” (Forbes) A brief history of impregnable tech monopolies that were pregnable after all, from personal computers to music distribution to social media, by Geoffrey Manne and Alec Stapp [ Truth on the Market ] Tags: antitrust , cellphones , social media , technology King of the Hill (tech antitrust division) curated from Overlawyered

Luz Herrera, a professor and associate dean at Texas A&M University School of Law. Photo courtesy of Texas A&M. Before they were buzzwords, Luz Herrera was a pioneer in the world of "low bono" practice, nonprofit law firms and legal incubators. All three innovations have blossomed and spread across the country since then. For instance, the ABA Standing Committee on the Delivery of Legal Services reports there are over 60 established or planned legal incubators across 33 states and four countries. Meanwhile, according to Open Legal Services, 29 nonprofit law firms have been created in the last five years—compared with eight firms before 2014. And of those eight firms, only three predate 2004. “What I’ve really been excited about is how new graduates have taken to it,” says Herrera, a professor and associate dean at Texas A&M University School of Law in Fort Worth. “We’ve had a lot of organizations that have sprung up developing nonprofits to see how the low

I recently asked several of our claims attorneys to identify the top habits they felt new lawyers should develop from day one. Most of what they shared was what I anticipated claims attorneys would say; but one item caught my attention, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized how right they were. In short, all lawyers, not just new lawyers, need to know how to write well. Do you? Written by Mark Bassingthwaighte Oh, I Shouldn’t Have Said That curated from Solo Practice University®

Estonia introduces artificial intelligence algorithms to adjudicate small claims disputes [ Eric Niiler, Wired ] “The Connecticut Ruling: Another Attempt to Blame the Gun for Gun Crime” [ Joyce Lee Malcolm, Law and Liberty on 4-3 Connecticut Supreme Court ruling finding state consumer law not preempted by federal PLCAA (Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act)] “But will the Supreme Court allow Connecticut to circumvent federal law?” [ Scott Greenfield ] Remington will seek certiorari review at U.S. Supreme Court [ Dave Collins, AP/WTIC ] In Pennsylvania, there’s “a feeling that law firms can get judges fired” after a worker’s comp judge who angered “one of the state’s most politically connected law firms…quickly lost her job” [ William Bender, Philadelphia Daily News ] Nanny staters vs. comptroller’s moves to modernize alcohol marketing regulation, no action on Sixth District gerrymander, Angelos asbestos bill tripped up, critics are right to oppose push to abolish child-abuse

The Harlan Institute and ConSource have completed the semi-final rounds for the OT 2017 Virtual Supreme Court Competition. This year, we received a record-number of submissions on Carpenter v. United States . On Thursday, April 26, 2018, we will hold the championship round at the Georgetown Supreme Court Institute.  Zack Lori and Chris McDonnell of  Greenwich HS will represent the petitioner (from Match 1).  Joanna Boyer and Makaylia Askew of  Creekview HS  will represent the Respondent (from Match 2). Congratulations to all of the teams that participate. Here are the briefs and submissions of the twelve teams that advanced. Match 1 Petitioner: Greenwich HS (Zack Lori and Chris McDonnell) Respondent: Westover HS (Caroline Broude and Fangyi Wang)   Match 2 Petitioner: Friscoe CTE (Sasha Chuprakova and Nancy Trinh) Respondent: Creekview HS (Joanna Boyer and Makaylia Askew)   Match 3 Petitioner: Greenwich High School (James Heavey and Nick Liu) Respondent: Greenwich High

I wrote in October about “a low-profile program in which a nonprofit backed by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg places lawyers in state attorney generals’ offices, paying their keep, on the condition that they pursue environmental causes.” Now the Virginia legislature has approved a provision apparently aimed at heading off the practice in that state, the relevant provision reading: “The sole source of compensation paid to employees of the Office of the Attorney General for performing legal services on behalf of the Commonwealth shall be from the appropriations provided under this act.” Chris Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute has campaigned against the practice. [ Todd Shepherd, Free Beacon ; Charmaine Little, Legal NewsLine ] Tags: attorneys general , climate change , Michael Bloomberg , Virginia Virginia lawmakers say no to Bloomberg embeds in AG’s office curated from Overlawyered

In a Cato Podcast with Caleb Brown, John Samples discusses his new Cato policy analysis , “Why the Government Should Not Regulate Content Moderation of Social Media.” One thing that changed just lately: Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in the words of Nick Gillespie , is explicitly calling for government regulation of specifically political speech on his platform and beyond. In his quest to limit expression on social media, Zuckerberg is joined not only by progressive Democrats such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) but conservative Republicans such as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who are calling for the equivalent of a Fairness Doctrine for Twitter and similar services. For those of us who believe in freedom of expression, this is a revolting development. More: “Will a Free Press Cheer on Government Censorship of the Internet?” [ Scott Shackford , Hans Bader ] Several commentators note that having made Facebook the big success in its market, Z

Not headed to Gotham after all: “The RWDSU union was interested in organizing the Whole Foods grocery store workers, a subsidiary owned by Amazon, and they deployed several ‘community based organizations’ (which RWDSU funds) to oppose the Amazon transaction as negotiation leverage. It backfired.” [ Alex Tabarrok ] “NLRB reverses course and restores some sense to its concerted activity rules” [ Jon Hyman , earlier ] Among papers at the Hoover Institution’s conference last summer on “Land, Labor, and the Rule of Law”: Diana Furchtgott-Roth , “Executive Branch Overreach in Labor Regulation” discusses persuader, fiduciary, overtime, joint employer, independent contractor, federal contract blacklist, campus recruitment as age discrimination, and more; Price Fishback , “Rule of Law in Labor Relations, 1898-1940” on how reducing violence was a key objective of pro-union laws, anti-union laws, and arbitration laws; and related video ; Christos Andreas Makridis, “Do Right-to-Work Laws Work?

“Many Americans die every year because they need kidney transplants, in large part due to federal laws banning organ sales. …an average of over 30,000 Americans have died each year, because the ban prevented them from getting transplants in time.” [ Ilya Somin ; Frank McCormick, Philip J. Held, and Glenn M. Chertow, Journal of the American Society of Nephrology ] More: Michael Huemer (“I don’t know what ‘commodification’ is or why anyone should care about it. But it would have to be incredibly terrible to justify imposing death on people to prevent them from doing it.”); Emily Largent, Petrie-Flom “Bill of Health” (“unmet need for hearts, lungs, livers, and other vital organs” is also dire; “real-world test of regulated payments is needed”); Ike Brannon, Cato Regulation magazine (unneeded multivisceral transplants). Tags: medical “The Terrible Toll of the Kidney Shortage” curated from Overlawyered

Headline tells the story: “Parents at UC-Berkeley Easter Egg Hunt Must Sign Waivers Due to Risk of ‘Catastrophic Injuries and Death'” [ Lenore Skenazy, Reason ] Tags: recreation , schools Peter Cottontail’s paper trail curated from Overlawyered

The high cost of feel-good laws: why bans on disposable plastic grocery bags are bad for the environment [ Greg Rosalsky, NPR “Planet Money” ] Not a good move for public health either [ Hans Bader on New York’s second-in-the-nation statewide ban, following California] Enjoy your tepid pad thai: Maryland lawmakers move to ban polystyrene (Styrofoam) cups and containers for ready-to-go food [ Michelle Santiago Cortes, Refinery 21 ] A future President who declared a national emergency over climate change might unlock some far-reaching powers [ Jackie Flynn Mogenson, Mother Jones ] “Waking the Litigation Monster: The Misuse of Public Nuisance,” 48-page report on attempts to legislate by means of novel public nuisance suits [ Joshua Payne and Jess Nix, U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform ] Dim and dimmer: the Washington Post “argues that the policy of imposing energy efficiency standards on lightbulbs ‘has no downside.'” [ Peter Van Doren, Cato ; earlier ] “Appliance Standards

Over a dissent from two of its justices, the Illinois Supreme Court has struck down a law purporting to establish collectivized liability for drug overdoses: “Illinois state law allows family members of people who overdose to sue anyone within a given geographic area who sold or distributed the same kind of drug. Illinois Supreme Court: It violates due process for a plaintiff to recover a lot of money from a person who had no connection at all to the drug user. Dissent: Although the law ‘pushes the boundary of civil liability by dispensing with traditional notions of causation,’ we’re meant to be more deferential to the legislature under the rational basis test.'” [ John K. Ross, IJ “Short Circuit” on Wingert v. Hradisky (citing parallel “market share liability” doctrines; “At least 18 states and one territory of the United States have adopted the Model Act or some version of [the Model Drug Dealer Liability Act]”)] Tags: deep pocket , illegal drugs , Illinois , joint and severa

My new piece at Cato , citing Carissa Byrne Hessick and Benjamin Levin at Slate , discusses Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s proposal to lower the standard for criminal culpability in many white-collar prosecutions to simple negligence. It begins: Presidential candidate and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) wants to see more business people behind bars, and she’s not fussy about how to make that happen. In a  Washington Post  op-ed last week  she unveiled a new  Corporate Executive Accountability Act , which in her words would expand “criminal liability to any corporate executive who negligently oversees a giant company causing severe harm to U.S. families.” She says she wants top executives to know that they can be (again in her own words) “hauled out in handcuffs for failing to reasonably oversee the companies they run.” And ends: The civil courts already hear many thousands of cases seeking damages over claims that serious harm arose from industry conduct that falls short of bein

Chasing down non-paying clients is the bane of most lawyers’ existence. And when you’re already spending an additional three and a half weeks on unplanned work every year, it makes settling overdue accounts that much more frustrating. While you may not be able to avoid ever having to deal with non-paying clients, here are three things you can do throughout a case to reduce the incidence of non-payment. Written by Susan Cartier Liebel How Law Firms Can Prevent Client Non-Payment curated from Solo Practice University®

Waco biker prosecutions, a dragnet affair in which many bystanders were hit with charges, jailed and lost their jobs, end after four years with all charges dropped; many deaths resulted from police fire [ Brian Doherty, Reason ; earlier and more ] “Lawsuit: You did business with someone who did business with someone who committed a crime against me, so you’re also liable.” [ Ted Frank describing suit against SalesForce alleging that its business management software assisted sexually oriented online business BackPage; Mike Masnick, TechDirt ] “Our waterways policy is crony capitalism disguised as patriotism” [ George Will, syndicated/Atlanta Journal Constitution ] “The Jones Act Fleet: High Costs and Limited Capabilities” [ Colin Grabow, Cato at Liberty ] More on the maritime protectionism law, all from Grabow at Cato: Sen. Mike Lee introduces repeal bill ; extending the law further ? counting the costs for Puerto Rico ; production of new ship no cause for celebration . And on East

“For years [Manhattan sous-chef Joseph] Cracco had been using his Spyderco Endura 4 folding knife, the sort of tool that is sold openly by retailers in New York City and throughout the state, for mundane tasks like opening boxes and bottles. … According to Cracco and a co-worker who was with him, it took the cop four or five tries before he managed to swing the blade fully open with one hand — a feat that Cracco himself had never attempted. Cracco thus joined the thousands of New Yorkers who are arrested each year for carrying the tools of their trades or hobbies.” While New York’s gravity-knife law was upheld against earlier challenges, U.S. District Judge Paul Crotty “in a March 27 decision declar[ed] the gravity knife ban “unconstitutionally vague” as applied to Cracco.” [ Jacob Sullum, Reason , C.J. Ciaramella, Reason , earlier ] Tags: guns , NYC “Gravity Knives, Bump Stocks, and Lawless Law Enforcement” curated from Overlawyered

Our system lets trial lawyers win jackpot jury verdicts even when science is not on their side. Case in point: Roundup . “Glyphosate, the active ingredient in the world’s most widely used weedkiller, does not cause cancer. Yet, for the second time, a jury has recently sided with the plaintiff in a lawsuit alleging that glyphosate does and did cause cancer. What are we to make of this?” [ Val Giddings, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation , Genetic Literacy Project graphic on what regulators and research agencies think, earlier here and here ] Tags: agriculture and farming , junk science , pesticides A second California glyphosate verdict curated from Overlawyered

“In the banking world, with which I am familiar, the general belief has been that you disobey supervisory guidance at your peril. That sounds like law and regulation, but without the open process and accountability. Over many years it has certainly felt that way.” [ Wayne A. Abernathy , Federalist Society commentary] Some House Democrats use hearings to badger banks into cutting off clients in industry areas like guns, pipeline construction [ Zachary Warmbrodt, Politico ] New U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform papers on reforming securities litigation: “Risk and Reward: The Securities Fraud Class Action Lottery” [ Stephen J. Choi, Jessica Erickson, Adam C. Pritchard ]; “Containing the Contagion: Proposals to Reform the Broken Securities Class Action System” [ Andrew J. Pincus ] “A pot banking bill is headed to House markup with bipartisan support” [ Jim Saksa, Roll Call ] Your periodic reminder that corporate law *is* a form of public interest law [ Stephen Bainbridge quotin

This term’s win in the Excessive Fines Clause case of Timbs v. Indiana comes as the latest in a series of legal actions waged against governments’ revenue-driven pursuit of law enforcement forfeitures, fines, and fees, and more important battles lie ahead [ Scott Bullock and Nick Sibilla, The Atlantic ] Tags: constitutional law , forfeiture , law enforcement for profit , Supreme Court “The Justices strike a blow against policing for profit” curated from Overlawyered

Several Democratic candidates for President say they’re interested in adding seats to the U.S. Supreme Court, while others decline to rule out the idea. As historians point out, the number of seats on the Court did fluctuate over part of American history, with four changes between 1807 and 1869. On the other hand, points out Dan McLaughlin, “Directly related to that, we had a Civil War triggered in good part by the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision. Let’s not do that again.” [@baseballcrank Twitter thread , earlier on Court-packing] Plus: liberal critics of Court-packing heard from [ Ilya Somin ] Tags: Supreme Court Adding seats to the Supreme Court curated from Overlawyered

Stop active-shooter drills in schools: “Preparing our children for profoundly unlikely events would be one thing if that preparation had no downside. But in this case, our efforts may exact a high price.” [ Erika Christakis, The Atlantic ] “Lockdowns and active-shooter drills have led to officers firing blank rounds to simulate live fire, mock executions of teachers, and students tearfully writing out wills while hunkered down. …Last year, The Post reported an estimate that the odds of a child being fatally shot while at school any given day since 1999 was 1 in 614,000,000.” [ Jonathan Blanks, Washington Post/Cato ] After ordeal with Child Protective Services based on drug test fluke, Western New York mom “is certain of one thing, she’ll never eat a poppy seed again.” [ WROC ] Answer: no. “Should access to a public education be a constitutional right for all children?” [ Jessica Campisi, Education Dive ; Mark Walsh, Education Week , covering AEI debate on holding of 1973 Supreme Cou

“In terms of the evidence, the trial lawyers [suing Bayer and Johnson & Johnson over the blood thinner Xarelto] had a losing hand — any kind of sane judicial system would have them leaving the field of battle, a defeated army.” But they’d signed up a remarkable 25,000 clients, buying an estimated 129,000 ads seeking such business in 2016, with one law firm alone spending $20 million a year on promotion. When you’ve got that big a base of clients to throw at them, “companies settle meritless cases.” [ Joe Nocera, Bloomberg Opinion ] Tags: chasing clients , pharmaceuticals On Xarelto, plaintiff’s lawyers win by losing curated from Overlawyered

As a profession we're constantly being reminded about the importance of A2J (Access to Justice) for low income folks. We are forcing newly minted attorneys into Pro Bono work touting it as a rite of passage, an honor and a privilege to give back for earning this license. Those charged with a crime are given public defenders at no cost to protect their rights. But what about plaintiffs in difficult personal injury or medical malpractice situations where it is not about the lawyer foregoing a fee and putting in a few check marks in the pro bono column, but taking on cases that challenge an attorney to swing for the fences even if the odds are slim there will be a financial return; where the overarching goal is hopefully helping to right a significant wrong and maybe prevent future wrongs? What about that difficult personal injury case or medical malpractice case that fewer and fewer lawyers have the caring or courage or fortitude to take on because the odds are against victory, thoug

Four years after a shocker outcome on music and copyright: “The aftereffects of the “Blurred Lines” decision — which was upheld on appeal last year — have been felt most acutely by rank-and-file songwriters, who work in obscurity even as their creations propel others to stardom. The ramifications for them have been inescapable, affecting royalty splits, legal and insurance costs, and even how songs are composed.” [ Ben Sisario, New York Times ] Earlier on the case here and here . Tags: copyright , music and musicians “‘Blurred Lines’ on Their Minds, Songwriters Create Nervously” curated from Overlawyered

“Arkansas Passes Bill to Prevent Sale of ‘Cauliflower Rice'” [ Bettina Makalintal, Vice via Anthony M. Kreis (“Carolene Products of our time”, and more on that celebrated filled-milk case] Ted Frank has another case raising the cy pres issues the Supreme Court just sidestepped in Frank v. Gaos [ Marcia Coyle on rewards-program class action settlement in Perryman v. Romero] Feds recommend 12 year sentence for copyright and ADA troll Paul Hansmeier [ Tim Cushing, TechDirt ] Didn’t realize New York City still had such a substantial fur industry – much of it in the district of an elected official who’s keen to ban it [ Carl Campanile, New York Post ] “Who’s Afraid of Big Tech?” Cato conference with Matthew Feeney, Alec Stapp, Jonathan Rauch, Julian Sanchez, Peter Van Doren, and John Samples, among many others [panels one (“Big Brother in Big Tech”), two (“Is Big Tech Too Big?”), three (“Free Speech in an Age of Social Media”)] Looking forward to this one, due out from New