Fat of the land

In his perennial ‘burning legal questions’ blog Bruce Carton of Law.Com’s Legal Blog Watch, latched on to this query from a concerned parent. ‘Question: My kid wants a Happy Meal with the cool toy. Isn’t this a violation of consumer protection laws, exploiting my son’s vulnerability by using toys to lure him to eat nutritionally unbalanced meals that can lead to obesity?’
Fair enough, one might respond, considering the growing problem in the US and elsewhere in the developed world of children piling on the pounds (figures from last year suggest that as many as 33 per cent of American children and adolescents are obese). Why shouldn’t a parent – worried about nutrition and what many see as large corporate purveyors of sugar-laden fast foods coaxing children to their products at ever-decreasing ages – pose a query about the legality of it all?
Big Bruce’s considered response to this perplexed parent? ‘Answer: No. Get a life.’

Purchasing power

Senior in-house lawyers around the world should be offering many thanks to the global financial crisis. For hitherto no event has given them the status and leverage in relation to the senior partnership tables of global and other large commercial law firms.
Indeed, it wasn’t so very long ago that private practice lawyers looked down their noses at general counsel, considering in-house legal departments to be a billet for the dysfunctional and/or semi-retired. But now the often unfashionable crowd has the whip hand in relation to the most important element of any lawyer’s life – the doling out and paying for instructions.
John Wallbillich, in his blog The Wired GC, commented on how well heads of legal were getting on with their new found power . ‘Do some GCs go too far in procuring legal services? Maybe. Do others push the boundaries of what is best practice in a strategic purchaser-supplier relationship? Probably. But for each of these, there are probably 100 GCs who are just in the early stages of exploring the wonderful world of purchasing leverage. And it feels mighty nice, thank you very much.
The fact is many law firms have probably been over-earning on some of their services for years. It’s pay-back time, in a way.’

Health of the nation

Nothing gets Americans overheated like the subject of health care and whether the state should have any involvement at all in its provision. There are some in the country who believe free treatment for all in casualty wards is tantamount to Stalinist socialism.
President Barack Obama’s contortions over health care reforms have been well documented, and the latest development – suggestions that the country’s Supreme Court is going to strike down the Affordable Care Act – has triggered rising blood pressure in Washington and elsewhere.
Joe Palazzolo, writing on the Wall Street Journal’s law blog, points out that Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe recently had to defend the president – who is one of his former students – as never having been in any doubt over the court’s authority in the matter.
According to Mr Palazzolo: ‘Obama has been widely criticised for remarking earlier this week that the Supreme Court would be taking an “unprecedented, extraordinary step” if it jettisoned his signature legislative achievement. The president later clarified his comments, saying he meant that the court has rarely struck down a law passed by Congress on an economic issue.’
He then quotes Prof Tribe as saying the president had simply ‘misspoke’ and that his comments had been distorted.

Hacking on and on

So febrile is the atmosphere around the newspaper ‘phone hacking scandal in the UK, that law bloggers will latch on to any element of the story – even those that are tangential  at best.
The latest case in point comes from journalism lecturer Brian Cathcart, the founder of campaigning group Hacked Off.
Mr Cathcart spends the best part of 1,000 words chewing over the recent resignation of Mail on Sunday editor Peter Wright and his replacement with former London Evening Standard top dog, Geordie Greig. By his own admission, the blogger states the move ‘may mean nothing much’.
It also didn’t stop the whole lot being reproduced by another blog from the International Forum for Responsible Media, run by British media law QC Hugh Tomlinson.
It appears there will be a gap in the blogosphere when the enquiry finally grinds to a halt.