Law

Posted by D. Daniel Sokol Duarte Brito, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Ricardo Ribeiroz, Universidade Catolica Portuguesa and Helder Vasconcelos, Faculdade de Economia do Porto are Measuring Unilateral Effects in Partial Acquisitions. ABSTRACT: Recent years have witnessed an increased interest, by...

I have long been amazed by the rate of hospital injuries from preventable bloodstream infections. While there have been a few lawsuits, hospitals appear to have avoided liability for these preventable illnesses. Now, a study in the American Journal of Medical Quality suggests that the situation may be worse than anticipated. Not only is that not a strong litigation deterrent (my view), but this study says that hospitals are actually making a killing by making patients sick. Researchers found that an ICU patient who develops an avoidable central line-associated bloodstream infection (CLABSI) costs nearly three times more to care for than a similar infection-free patient. Here is the most amazing fact: hospitals earn nearly nine times more for treating infected patients. It is insurance companies who end up getting hit with the bill as well as patients, of course. This is not to mention those patients who become gravely ill or die from this preventable illness. Private insurers pay the most for patient stays complicated by CLABSIs — roughly $400,000 per hospital stay. That fact could add pressure to hospitals to act reasonably in avoidance of such illness. Currently, there is a surprisingly high economic incentive not to avoid such illness, even if the doctors are morally bound to do so. The CLABSI infections occur when thin plastic tubes, or central lines, are placed in ICU patients. Each year roughly 80,000 patients with central lines become infected. Now consider that hospital’s average profit margin for treating an infected patient was $54,906 in comparison to an uninfected patient of just $6,506. You do the math. That is a huge amount of income. Worse yet, the failure to avoid the contamination kills 28,000 people a year. Simple checklists at hospitals have been shown to sharply decrease such contamination. In torts, we often use the Hand formula to determine negligence: B Tens of thousands of people are dying from this preventable illness but relatively little has been done by the government to force new measures or accountability. This is why litigation is sometimes the most direct way to deterring negligence and giving an incentive to take precautionary measures in environments like hospitals. Source: Hopkins

We have all had it happen. You are sitting in a restaurant or walking on the street when you accidentally hit you phone and dial an unintended call. A friend or relative then has to sit and listen to you discussing an order or chatting with a taxi driver. Scott Simon, 24, however, may have the worst butt call story of all. Pompano Beach police say that his phone dialed 911 as he was discussing his plan to kill a man. The police tracked him down just minutes after the man was killed. A police dispatcher recorded a conversation between Simon and another man on May 5th where he discussed how he was going to follow Nicholas Romondo Walker, 33, to his home and kill him. The call was made shortly before the actual killing. Walker was turning on to the interstate when he was shot multiple times. The car crashed and caught on fire. He died of the gunshot wounds, though police do not believe that Simon actually pulled the trigger as opposed to organizing the hit. Simon’s butt call may have ended a long criminal career. He has over 15 prior arrests for everything from resisting arrest, cocaine possession with intent to sell, fraud, disorderly conduct, bad checks, and driving violations. Walker also had a long criminal record. The men apparently had gotten into an argument at a Waffle House. Now here is the truly amazing thing about this story. Just days before the Fresno Police Department nailed Nathan Teklemariam and Carson Rinehart (both 20) after a butt call to 911. The police operator actually tried to get their attention to tell them that they called the police but then heard them discussing crimes to buy “weed” and proceeded to break into a car. The two men were charged with burglary, conspiracy and possession of stolen property. You can listen to the conversation: here Source: Sun Sentinel

Rosa Brooks (Georgetown University) has posted National Security in the Information Age (ECONOMICS AND SECURITY: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES IN A RESOURCES CONSTRAINED WORLD (Newport, R.I.: Naval War College forthcoming)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: The information environment has been changing right along with the broader security environment. Today, the information environment connects almost everyone, almost everywhere, almost instantaneously. The media environment has become global, and there’s no longer such thing as “the news cycle” — everything is 24/7. Barriers between U.S. and global publics have virtual disappeared: Everything and anything can “go viral” instantly, and it’s no longer possible to say one thing to a U.S. audience and another thing to a foreign audience and assume no one will ever set the statements side by side. The Pakistani military has a very clear idea of what the Secretary of Defense tells Congress about Pakistan, for instance — and Congress has an equally clear idea of how Pakistani leaders talk about the United States to their domestic constituencies. Technological changes and lower costs have also democratized the media and information environment: Internet and cell phone access is increasingly ubiquitous, and individuals and organizations are ever more reliant on electronic communication. Today, news, commentary, and video can be produced and accessed equally by first world media producers, Washington decision-makers, Iowa housewives, Afghan shepherds, Chinese university students, Colombian insurgents, and Al Qaeda members. As with the security environment more broadly, the rapidly changing information environment creates both new challenges and new opportunities for the US government. The author emphasizes that this is true across the executive branch. All USG agencies, from Defense to State to Treasury and beyond, are struggling to adapt anachronistic programs and policies. Highly recommended.

Posted by D. Daniel Sokol The 2013 Mark T. Banner Award of the ABA Section of Intellectual Property Law has been awarded to Christina Bohannan (Iowa Law). Christina writes on IP and competition, among other topics. The Mark T. Banner...

Tessa L. Dysart (Regent University School of Law) has posted The Protected Innocence Initiative: Building Protective State Law Regimes for America’s Sex-Trafficked Children (Columbia Human Rights Law Review, Vol. 44, 2013) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Under the federal...

The Times reported earlier today on the truly disgraceful decision of Senate Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee to capitulate to Republican homophobia by withdrawing an amendment by Senator Leahy that would have allowed, in the Times's language "United States citizens to apply for permanent resident status, known as a green card, on behalf of their same-sex partners." Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York and an author of the measure, said that not including the provision amounted to “rank discrimination.” But he ultimately concluded, “As much as it pains me, I cannot support this amendment if it will bring down the bill.” Similarly, Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, said: “This is the definition of a Hobson’s choice. In my bones, I believe in equality.” But [South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham, up for re-election in 2014 and desperately afraid that he will be "primaried" by Ted Cruz and his friends] reflected the view of his Republican colleagues when he said: “You’ve got me on immigration. You don’t have me on marriage. If you want to keep me on immigration, let’s stay on immigration.” Ultimately, Mr. Leahy withheld his amendment “with a heavy heart,” though he can still bring it up on the Senate floor. Friends, now we should understand why decent people agreed to the 3/5 Clause and why FDR adamantly refused to support a federal anti-lynching bill or, for that matter, was indifferent about the non-extension of the benefits of much of the New Deal to African-Americans in the South. As Ira Katznelson demonstrates in a brilliant book, Fear Itself, on the Roosevelt and Truman presidencies, FDR needed congressional support for the New Deal, and the only way he could get it from Southern economic liberals (and former Ku Klux Klan members, like Hugo Black) was to promise that it would be, as much as possible, a "whites only" affair. And, in 1787, the only way to get a Constitution was to capitulate to slaveowners and, for that matter, to the extortionate demands of Delaware and other small states for equal representation in the Senate. As Madison said with regard to the latter, it was a "less evil" than no Constitution at all, but an evil it remained, and he was absolutely right, as was, obviously, even more the case with the aspects of the Constitution that correctly led William Lloyd Garrison to describe it as a Covenant with Death and an Agreement with Hell. But, as I myself wrote in the Times during the kerfluffle a couple of months ago about the 3/5 Clause, one sometimes has "to accept some regrettable, even “evil,” means to achieve that end. That’s the way the world works. (Think of the altogether justified alliance with Stalin to defeat Hitler.)" But, of course, this is far too facile. Most of the readers of this blog are not likely to be affected in the least by the withdrawal of the amendment, just as the whites who decided that slavery was "worth it to get the Constitution paid no price--to some extent, of course, Virginia did pay a price for submitting to Delaware's extortion). And most of those who counseled FDR to accommodate to racism paid little or no price themselves.One should not gussy up the character of the people with whom mpromises were made in 1787 or in the ;30s. At worst, Lindsay Graham is simply a bigot; a "best," he is a cowardly opportunist, scared of losting re-election, who after re-election, may "discover" that someone in his family is gay and, like Sen. Portman, suddenly realizes that that person deserves to be treated as a full member of our community. Should one be condemnatory of Shumer, Franken, or Leahy, who I assume are genuinely "heavy-hearted" about having to accommodate bigotry? Is the immigration bill worth selling out one's convictions for (at least until times are more propitious--I presume that FDR would have supported an anti-lynching bill by, say, 1948)? This is a genuine question. The answer may well be yes. The

Jorge R. Roig (Charleston School of Law) has posted Emerging Technologies and Dwindling Speech (University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, Vol. 16, 2013 (Forthcoming)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Inspired in part by the recent holding in Bland v. Roberts that the use of the “Like” feature in Facebook is not covered by the Free Speech Clause, this article makes a brief foray into the approach that courts have taken in the recent past towards questions of First Amendment coverage in the context of emerging technologies. Specifically, this article will take a closer look at how courts have dealt with the issue of functionality in the context of First Amendment coverage of computer source code. The analysis of this and other recent experiences, when put in a larger context, reflects a continuing dissatisfaction on the part of both courts and legislatures with the current Supreme Court doctrine on First Amendment coverage. From this discussion, we can also derive some meaningful normative insights regarding the interplay between emerging technologies and First Amendment coverage doctrine. Finally, this article hopes to serve as a stepping stone in a more profound and long term pursuit of a comprehensive theory of constitutional individual rights coverage issues that might serve us well as the future brings unexpected changes in our society.

We interrrupt the highbrow discussion of boilerplate and SCOTUS cases to bring you this breaking news from news.com.au that falls right within the utterly sweet spot of contracts and pop culture: YOU party at Justin Bieber's house? You tell no...

Employee Rights and Employment Policy Journal The Supreme Court's 2011-2012 Labor and Employment Law Decisions: From the Controversial to the Peripheral L. Camille Hebert Papers from the American Bar Foundation - The Labor Law Group Conference on The Proposed Restatement...