A recent California Court of Appeal decision, briefed in large part by yours truly, gave Larry Agran and his cronies a good lashing and ordered them to pay my attorneys' fees. OC Register article on the case here.
UPDATE: Here is Frank Mickadeit's article on the case, including some choice language from the opinion. Here is a synopsis of the case by Ben Pugh, the lead attorney on the case.
This recent post from E.D. Klain points out one of the subtle yet critical flawed assumptions about conservatism: that distrust in government means placing trust in markets. In a way, the assumption is natural, and perhaps in some ways correct. Certainly, we have to put our "trust" somewhere, in the sense that public choices have to be made in one place or another. But markets are not to be preferred to government on the basis that they yield better results. They certainly do in some areas, and we hope for the best in others. The real reason we ought to prefer markets, however, is because markets are fair. Fair as in blind, anachronistic, non-empathetic. Process-oriented rather than ends-oriented. Markets produce a brand of fairness as close as possible to the sort produced by nature itself. Thus, markets will harm you in near the same way as a tornado will. It's nothing personal. And in either case, you are about as likely, and have about as much cause, to shake your fists at the sky than at some person.
The real problem, of course, is not that liberals make this erroneous assumption (i.e., that markets somehow possess some superior ability to produce substantive fairness), but that conservatives do. When we begin to think that we can have our heaven on earth, whether through a centralized government or through an idealized "market" that will give us our hearts' desire, we are headed for disappointment.
John Derbyshire shares the details of a few of New York's 1,325 six-figure pension recipients:
From the looks of it, CEO's and public servants might soon be passing each other in their government-controlled compensation elevator ride.• James Hunderfund, an employee of Commack school district, will retire September 1 with a monthly pension of $26,353.75. (Nothing hunderfunded about his pension plan, ho ho.)
• Richard Brande of Brookhaven-Comsewogue will also be heading for the golf course September 1 with a monthly pension of $24,222.43.
• William Brosnan cleans out his desk at Northport-East Northport July 1, and for the rest of his life will trouser a monthly pension of $19,058.80.
No offense to these guys — well, not much offense — but they are small-town education bureaucrats. Not only will they be getting annual pensions in the quarter-million-dollar range for the rest of their naturals, they are getting these numbers by law. If New York State's pension-fund managers goof on the investments, or the market craters, we taxpayers have to make up the difference.
It's not just edbiz either, though of course edbiz exhibits the greatest outrages. (Can't we please just GET RID OF PUBLIC EDUCATION?) Local-gummint seat-warmers are on the same gravy train.
• Dvorah Balsam of Nassau [County] Health Care Corp., annual pension $191,380.32
• Stanley Klimberg of Long Island Power Authority: $191,380.32.
• Gerald Shaftan, Nassau Health Care Corp. again, $181,457.76.
These folk are all, as no doubt they would be proud to tell you, "public servants." The idea behind that phrase is that they are like butlers or housemaids, placing themselves willingly at the beck and call of us, the sovereign public. So how come we, the sov. pub., spend our twilight years clipping coupons in rusting trailers in the Ozarks while our servants enjoy the beach condo in Maui?
The Senate has unanimously passed a resolution apologizing for slavery and racial segregation in the U.S. and sent the measure to the House.
The resolution passed Thursday includes a disclaimer saying that nothing in it supports or authorizes reparations by the United States.Oh, you mean the apology was all a stunt. That makes sense. Apologize away, so long as it doesn't cost anything.
“A cascade of mistakes and missed opportunities” over decades led to the present problems, the president said. “It was easy money, while it lasted.” But, he added, “These schemes were built on a pile of sand.”But who knew it was a "pile of sand"? Surely, there were those who thought it was too good to be true, that the gravy train would end at some point. But who was going to tell willing lenders and willing borrowers not to transact, not to keep driving the economy up, not to increase homeownership, based on some wonk's grumpy prognostications? Certainly not politicians. Indeed, lenders would have been called worse names were they to have imposed some arbitrary normative notions about risk to justify turning down loans. The math, best as anyone could tell, was solid enough. The market, according to our then-best understanding of how it worked, determined what happened. We now understand that the market doesn't hold up under the fancy math that seemed to work so well. But we didn't know that then. We kept playing what our best understanding indicated was the smart bet. We doubled down on eleven and split aces and happily collected our winnings. Now that it's turned out there were jokers in the deck, we'll have to rethink our strategy. That will happen the same way every other wealth-generating idea has occurred: through the market. The market ferrets out cracks in economic systems and recalibrates itself towards efficiency. We don't need government to find holes in economic theories any more than rain needs it to find holes in a leaky roof.
On Friday, the California Supreme Court gave vexatious wheelchair litigants their groove back in Munson v. Del Taco, Inc., overturning an earlier 2006 decision in Gunther v. Lin that required a showing of intent in order to qualify for the minimum $4,000-per-infraction awards. Gunther had held that California's Unruh Act, the California civil rights law, required a showing of intentional discrimination: the mere fact of disparate impact on a suspect class was not enough. However, in 1992, the Legislature amended the Civil Code to make violations of the ADA also a violation of the Unruh Act. Thus it happened that, when serial plaintiff David Gunther paid a visit to Lin's Jack-in-the-Box restaurant, he experienced the following violations of his newly incorporated civil rights: uninsulated pipes under the bathroom sink, and a mirror mistakenly left by an employee (without Lin's permission) higher than the required specifications.
As the Santa Ana Court of Appeal noted, ADA violations are hyper-technical, and practically impossible not to violate at some point or another:
Other ADAAG's [ADA Architectural Guidelines], however, do not implicate any intentional conduct at all, such as the requirement that the pipes underneath the sink in a public restroom be wrapped with insulation, or the remarkable requirement that any visual alarms be exactly 80 inches above the highest floor level within the space or exactly six inches below the ceiling, whatever is lower. For example, a customer using a wheelchair who entered a public restroom before a contractor had finished working on a remodel of it and had gotten around to wrapping insulation on the pipes under the sink would find a restroom in “violation” of the ADA even though the owner was remodeling the restroom precisely in order to ensure that wheelchair customers had equal access to its toilet facilities.In fact, the ADA itself does not even permit private litigation. That would seem, well, stupid. And so the court charitably declined to impute such stupidity onto our own Legislature.
And it was precisely because it was so easy for businesspeople—particularly small businesspeople—to inadvertently violate the ADA that Congress limited the circumstances under which they might be sued for such a technical violation. Under the ADA, a private individual suing a businessperson has no right to damages absent intentional discrimination. . . .Indeed, in Gunther, there was no intentional discrimination. Gunther even conceded as much.
By contrast with the federal ADA, California's section 52 allows private parties to seek damages, and in fact even provides for an automatic minimum penalty—now up to $4,000—when the statute is triggered.
. . . .
To interpret what is now subdivision (f) of section 51 to provide for automatic penalties for even the most technical violations of the ADAAG's would contravene the rule that no statute should be interpreted so that it becomes redundant, in this case the statute made redundant being section 54.3. . . .
. . . .
Private enforcers of the ADA are presented with a choice between the strict liability regime of section 54.3 or the regime requiring intentional discrimination of section 52. The alternative interpretation, as a number of federal courts have already indicated (e.g., Doran v. Del Taco, Inc. (C.D.Cal. 2006) 2006 WL 2037942), has led to unconscionable abuses.
There is also no question that defendant Lin never intended to violate the ADA. In his answer to Gunther's complaint Lin claimed that Gunther had entered the restroom “before our handyman had finished his work” of wrapping insulation around the pipe under the sink. Moreover, normally the restroom never has mirrors for anybody (because the mirror was subject to vandalism); an employee simply hung one by mistake.The Supreme Court noted that Gunther's reading of the statute was a reasonable one.
As a purely linguistic matter, therefore, another reasonable interpretation of section 51, subdivision (f) is that it makes all violations of the ADA violations of section 51 but, together with section 52, authorizes a private action for damages under the Unruh Civil Rights Act only for ADA violations involving intentional discrimination. This is the reading embraced by the Gunther courtBut Gunther's reading was not the one most likely to jibe with the Legislature's likely intent. Instead, the Court delved deep into the legislative history and tracked the various changes over the past decades to glean the Legislature's intent in incorporating the ADA into California's civil rights regime. The Court concluded that, while there were several reasons suggesting that the Legislature intended plaintiffs to base their claims on Civil Code section 54.3, which would require a showing of intent, the better supported conclusion was that the Legislature purposely overlapped the statutes--even though this meant that no litigant in his right mind would go forward with a claim that required a showing of intent when he could choose to plead one that didn't.
Most pertinent here, the new legislation (applicable to claims filed on or after January 1, 2009 (§ 55.57)) restricts the availability of statutory damages under sections 52 and 54.3, permitting their recovery only if an accessibility violation actually denied the plaintiff full and equal access, that is, only if ―the plaintiff personally encountered the violation on a particular occasion, or the plaintiff was deterred from accessing a place of public accommodation on a particular occasion‖ (§ 55.56, subd. (b)). It also limits statutory damages to one assessment per occasion of access denial, rather than being based on the number of accessibility standards violated. (Id., subd. (e).)Munson at 21.
(a) Statutory damages under either subdivision (a) of Section 52 or subdivision (a) of Section 54.3 may be recovered in a construction-related accessibility claim against a place of public accommodation only if a violation or violations of one or more construction-related accessibility standards denied the plaintiff full and equal access to the place of public accommodation on a particular occasion.Ah, yes. That will send those serial plaintiffs packing. I'm sure they will be quite at a loss wondering how in the world they might try to convince a jury that a poor chap in a wheelchair sustained sustained "difficulty, discomfort, or embarrassment." Handy work indeed.
(b) A plaintiff is denied full and equal access only if the plaintiff personally encountered the violation on a particular occasion, or the plaintiff was deterred from accessing a place of public accommodation on a particular occasion.
(c) A violation personally encountered by a plaintiff may be sufficient to cause a denial of full and equal access if the plaintiff experienced difficulty, discomfort, or embarrassment because of the violation.
In pushing his health care agenda, Obama responded to Republican opposition as follows:
“Right now a number of my Republican friends have said, ‘We can’t support anything with a public option,’ ” he said. “It’s not clear that it’s based on any evidence as much as it is their thinking, their fear, that somehow once you have a public plan that government will take over the entire health care system.”Two thoughts: First, perhaps folks wouldn't be so worried about Obama's government "tak[ing] over the entire health care system" if he wasn't already taking over everything else.
But forget the money, the deficit, the debt, the big numbers with the 12 zeroes on the end of them. So-called fiscal conservatives often miss the point. The problem isn't the cost. These programs would still be wrong even if Bill Gates wrote a check to cover them each month. They're wrong because they deform the relationship between the citizen and the state. Even if there were no financial consequences, the moral and even spiritual consequences would still be fatal.Health care is indeed a problem. And unchecked human greed is at the root of much of it. Greedy people are the source of a lot of the world's problems (and a lot of the world's successes). Of course, government is nothing more than the legitimized exercise of will by a small group of people. And while we at least know that CEOs are in it for the money, we can never be quite sure what in the world a politician has his eye on. In that way, while greedy, unscrupulous individuals are bad, we can be certain that politicians are much, much worse.
The Weekly Standard reports that the Obama Justice Department has ordered FBI agents to read Miranda rights to high value detainees captured and held at U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan. While one could hardly complain about spreading the United States' gold standard of criminal justice, this practice seems like it could become problematic. Miranda informs suspects that they "have a right to remain silent," and that they "have a right to an attorney." Actually, they probably don't have such rights, as they are non-citizens outside of the United States. But once the government tells someone they can expect something, it has the practical effect of becoming a right vested for all eternity. See, e.g., welfare.
H/T Bart DePalma
An online spat between NRO's Ed Whelan and a formerly anonymous blogger, now outed as South Texas College of Law professor John Blevins (see links here, here, here, and here), got me thinking about the subject of anonymous blog posting. I never thought about doing it here, and I got nervous for a bit after considering Blevins' reasons for seeking to maintain anonymity. Perhaps it's a good idea -- I'm a practicing lawyer, and it's possible my views on things could create professional discomfort or even conflicts. And as I noted at one point in discussing gay marriage, I always fear one of my gay friends will misinterpret my legal and political views as imputing some sort of personal intolerance, which could not be further from the truth.
On the other hand, knowing that my name will be attached to my posts adds significant motive to more closely scrutinize my own thoughts and analysis, and to edit and tailor my language to more precisely reflect my ideas. Due to my work schedule, I do much of my writing in the evenings, sometimes just before I turn in for the night. There have been instances when I woke up the next morning in a panic about about whether something unintentionally inflammatory had slipped past me the night before. This has made me much more careful to jump into sharp criticism or hot-button topics. For the better, I think.
So I'm with the guys over at Power Line when they blame anonymity in part for the "dismally low level of discourse that generally prevails online." Not to condone Whelan's outing of Blevins (for which he subsequently apologized), but a fake person has little grounds to complain when he is outed by a real person. Better to just write what you mean, mean what you write, and own up to your ideas.
The other day, a co-worker and I were discussing "memory movies"--Memento, Total Recall, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Matrix. Movies that play on the mind/matter dichotomy, that question whether there is a world outside the mind. It had been a while since I watched Memento, so I put in the DVD over the weekend. The plot of the movie is hard to recall because the whole story moves backwards, showing one five-minute scene, and then the five-minutes that happened before that, and so on. It produces a destabilizing effect that helps the viewer empathize with the protagonist, a man with a condition that prevents him from forming any short term memories, but who nonetheless plods ahead, scribbling notes and "facts" for himself, in his quest to find his wife's murder.
The movie gives a thoroughly existential account of human nature. Stripped of the comfort of our stabilizing memories, life simply moves by us, objects in the world impress upon our senses for a short while, and we occupy ourselves always with some present task, but never with any security that it will produce a meaningful consequence. Memory provides a means to anchor the otherwise meaningless torrent of experiential data by giving us the ability to engage in puzzles that require the accumulation and manipulation of information acquired over long periods of time. In this way, an otherwise meaningless present task can have meaning in its place in the larger puzzle. But mustn't we still ask, what is the point of the larger puzzle? Perhaps we simply must learn to stop asking questions of purpose; we make and solve puzzles, and that is all.
Memento also asks, as The Matrix does, how do we come to know anything that is outside the mind? And how can we communicate anything that is out there? How would we ever know that others might believe the same things that we do? We are full of biases, some universal among humans, but perhaps all slightly different. Reason is our only conduit, but it cannot bear the strain: words already truncate their writers' ideas, which thus may never be truly made known to others; and the ideas' full context can never be expressed, whether due to the writers' inability to account for it, or the listeners' attention span. Perhaps, then, we are foolish to believe that we can live in big societies held together by the slim cord of reason. We instead must rely on the mere coincidence of our agreement on things simply because they resonate in the right brain, not because they are approved by the left.
After sounding like a realist in his Cairo speech, Obama goes right back to calling for healthcare utopia in his radio address today:
Any health care reform must be built around fundamental reforms that lower costs, improve quality and coverage and also protect consumer choice."NY Times reports:
Who could disagree with this? All upside and no downside. Somehow, I'm reminded of the project engineer's expression: "good, fast, and cheap -- pick two."Just how he plans to achieve that remains up in the air; the address was long on broad goals and short on specifics. Mr. Obama said that he had made it clear to Congress that health reform should not add to the budget deficit.
“We’ll work with Congress to fully cover the costs through rigorous spending reductions and appropriate additional revenues,” Mr. Obama said. “We’ll eliminate waste, fraud and abuse in our health care system, but we’ll also take on key causes of rising costs — saving billions while providing better care to the American people.”
Alexis de Tocqueville once remarked on the unique character of America to achieve great things through its individualism:
[The American] makes known his plan, offers to execute it, calls individual forces to the assistance of his, and struggles hand to hand against all obstacles. Often, doubtless, he succeeds less well than if the state were in his place; but in the long term the general result of all the individual undertakings far exceeds what the government could do.Of course, that was written before "too big to fail" entered the lexicon, and 31-year old wunderkinds were tougher to come by.
There is some great discussion on this question at Positive Liberty. In my opinion, commenter Braxton Thomason gets the better of the argument. If marriage is opened up to be merely the recognition of a romantic relationship of consensual adults, it will be tough-going to find a principled exception to polygamy. Once we have a few more TV shows like Big Love, it might not sound so exotic and weird. At that point, anecdotal arguments against polygamy will no longer be persuasive, and we'll start demanding some hard empirical data, just like we do now in the debate over same sex marriage.
In 20 years, Jason Kuznicki's arguments might subject him to the kinds of accusations of bigotry that SSM opponents incur today. Just like 20 years ago, one could probably win an argument against gay marriage by suggesting the "absurd" scenario of two men raising a baby. It goes to show that, until the minority group in question has reached a critical mass (e.g., once we can all point to a friend or family member who is a member of that group, thus stirring up some empathy), we don't need very strong arguments to justify discriminatory attitudes towards that group.
Thus, if you're pro SSM but anti polygamy, ask yourself whether the arguments against polygamy would hold up if you knew some really devoted polyamorous people who were really sweet and otherwise normal and just wanted to live their lives and overcome struggles without all the highfalutin rhetoric from people who have no business imposing their values on them. If you're a consistent libertarian, I think you'd have to dismiss the idea of making an exception, and hold that marriage must embrace polygamy. If you can't get over that there's something just wrong about it, well, you might soon be the target of a "you might be a redneck if..." joke.
John Hasnas his this wonderful op-ed at the Wall Street Journal:
As important as compassion and empathy are, one can have these feelings only for people that exist and that one knows about -- that is, for those who are "seen."H/T Stephen Bainbridge
One can have compassion for workers who lose their jobs when a plant closes. They can be seen. One cannot have compassion for unknown persons in other industries who do not receive job offers when a compassionate government subsidizes an unprofitable plant. The potential employees not hired are unseen.
One can empathize with innocent children born with birth defects. Such children and the adversity they face can be seen. One cannot empathize with as-yet-unborn children in rural communities who may not have access to pediatricians if a judicial decision based on compassion raises the cost of medical malpractice insurance. These children are unseen.
One can feel for unfortunate homeowners about to lose their homes through foreclosure. One cannot feel for unknown individuals who may not be able to afford a home in the future if the compassionate and empathetic protection of current homeowners increases the cost of a mortgage.
In general, one can feel compassion for and empathize with individual plaintiffs in a lawsuit who are facing hardship. They are visible. One cannot feel compassion for or empathize with impersonal corporate defendants, who, should they incur liability, will pass the costs on to consumers, reduce their output, or cut employment. Those who must pay more for products, or are unable to obtain needed goods or services, or cannot find a job are invisible.
The law consists of abstract rules because we know that, as human beings, judges are unable to foresee all of the long-term consequences of their decisions and may be unduly influenced by the immediate, visible effects of these decisions. The rules of law are designed in part to strike the proper balance between the interests of those who are seen and those who are not seen. The purpose of the rules is to enable judges to resist the emotionally engaging temptation to relieve the plight of those they can see and empathize with, even when doing so would be unfair to those they cannot see.
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