2007 June

Seen on the AP wire:

A man with a penchant for speedy driving has come up with an unusual tactic for beating speeding tickets — raise the limit. So far this year, Larry Lemay has been ticketed four times for speeding.

Rather than slow down, Lemay is suing the state Department of Transportation to study traffic and speed limits across New Hampshire, to see whether limits could be raised. Lemay’s lawsuit, filed in Strafford County Superior Court, also asks a judge to order the Transportation Department to pay for his legal fees and the cost of the study, an estimated $1,853.

Lemay said he believes many speed limits are set intentionally low so the state can cash in on drivers.

I can believe that frequently speed limits are set more as a result of politics or local whims, rather than via surveys and engineering studies.  I can also believe that on occasion, a local entity might use creative speed limit designations to augment municipal revenues.   However, something tells me that suing the state DOT might not be the most successful legal tactic ever concocted to fight a speeding ticket.

Sometimes the law is the law, even when it’s arbitrary or just plain silly.

The BBC has a story that could be taken as a warning that drivers in the U.K. apparently have no right to keep silent.

The situation described arose when a couple of men challenged tickets for speeding generated by photo-radar devices. British law holds the owner of the vehicle responsible for offenses committed with the vehicle, unless the driver can document the identity of the actual driver, or unless the owner had no reasonable way of knowing who would be driving. So, when these two individuals challenged the speeding tickets, they were asked to disclose the identity of the actual driver, and they took the British equivalent of the Fifth. They were fined, legal processes began, and the case found its way to the EU Court of Human Rights

The BBC reports on the outcome:

Judges acknowledged that both men had been faced compulsion to provide information, but threw out their claim that the right to remain silent and the right not to incriminate oneself are “absolute rights”.

Their judgement noted that people “who choose to keep and drive cars” have implicitly “accepted certain responsibilities” under UK law.

The freedom from self-incrimination is one of those rights that the U.S.’s founding fathers deemed to exist regardless of what a government might claim. It’s a shame that the EU CHR doesn’t agree.

As someone who occasionally likes to play at being an amateur photographer, particularly when taking a break during business travel, this article in the New York Times troubles me:

New rules being considered by the [New York City] Mayor’s Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting would require any group of two or more people who want to use a camera in a single public location for more than a half hour to get a city permit and insurance.

The same requirements would apply to any group of five or more people who plan to use a tripod in a public location for more than 10 minutes, including the time it takes to set up the equipment.[...]

[ACLU attorney] Dunn suggested that the city deliberately kept the language vague, and that as a result police would have broad discretion in enforcing the rules. In a letter sent to the film office this week, Mr. Dunn said the proposed rules would potentially apply to tourists in places like Times Square, Rockefeller Center or ground zero, “where people routinely congregate for more than half an hour and photograph or film.”

The article does report that the measure is intended to apply only to professionals; that tourists and amateurs would generally not be impacted.   However, given that some of my favorite subjects are transportation-oriented, and those of us with similar interests were a bit stung by post-9/11 bans on photographing bridges and transit facilities, I have to confess to feeling a bit concerned by an apparent toughening up of photography rules in the city.

“Party discipline requires you to make decisions based on what’s good for the party rather than what the merits are of the piece of legislation before you,” he said.

Said by Bloomberg (via USA Today), when criticizing both the Democrats and the Republicans for a relatively unproductive season in Congress. And yes, he’s still denying he’s running for President.

In case you haven’t heard already, the Supreme Court handed down a ruling today that has been said to partially overturn Brown v Board of Education. Quoting a Washington Post article on the subject:

Chief Justice John Roberts asserted in his majority opinion that by classifying students by race, the school districts are perpetuating the unequal treatment the Brown decision outlawed. “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” Roberts said.

I’ve been under the impression that explicit consideration of a student’s skin color was tolerable when setting out plans to reverse decades of racial segregation in school systems, due to the lack of other ways to accomplish the goal.  If and when segregation was unlikely to to reemerge, at that time it would be appropriate to drop race-based considerations.

This form of reverse discrimination still sucked…although I might be a bit biased because of the headaches my family had to go through to get me into a good high school within the Memphis City Schools system, rather than the troubled school I was zoned to.   However, it did make sense in an environment where segregation was deemed inherently bad.

Today, though, you have to wonder whether that is still considered true.  Involuntary discrimination is evil, regardless, and it would be entirely inappropriate to see a return to the bad old days of “white only” schools.   However, we have had had public discussions of the potential value of tolerating public schools focused on a particular culture or for particular genders, to provide a certain level of guidance that might be valuable in overriding local social challenges.

I’m not convinced of that, but as long as the opportunity afforded is equal… then maybe there’s some sense there.

In Justice Kennedy’s opinion, agreeing in part and disagreeing in part with the plurality, he pointed out that race and other demographic attributes could still be used when deciding where to locate new schools to facilitate diversity.

But perhaps it could be argued that society has advanced to the part where considering race is no longer the best tool to combat institutional racism.

I realize that there are a number of folks who are in a tizzy over the ultra-conservative Roberts Court having the gall to overturn Brown v. Board of Education… but I tend to disagree with that assessment.  I’m cautiously optimistic that we may have matured enough to quit being so hung up about skin color, and instead look towards how best to address local challenges in educating children…even if those challenges may be correlated to certain demographic traits.

Seen in Insurance Journal

Allstate Insurance Co. has agreed to a mass settlement of claims by a group of Mississippi policyholders who sued the insurer over damage to their homes from Hurricane Katrina, a company spokesman and a lawyer for the homeowners said.[...]

Terms of the agreement were not disclosed, and both sides refused to specify how many policyholders could participate in the settlement.

However, a lawyer from the Scruggs Katrina Group, the legal team that negotiated the settlement with Allstate, said last month that it represents about 280 Allstate policyholders who sued the company.[...]

Considering how vicious Scruggs has been towards State Farm, and considering the legal climate down in southern Mississippi these days, I think it’s entirely understandable that Allstate might be willing to pay a bit extra to resolve the cases.  And, it should be welcome news to claimants who have been waiting a seemingly interminably long time to reach resolution.

Seen on the news wires:

Gov. Charlie Crist said Wednesday he was “pretty close” to calling a special legislative session to seek renewal of the state’s no-fault automobile insurance system, which is set to expire Oct. 1.

The article contains the usual background information — PIP is fraught with fraud.  However about a quarter of the folks coming into hospital ER’s after car wrecks lack medical insurance beyond that which is afforded under PIP.  Hospitals fear cutbacks in service due to the increased drag from uninsured crash victims, etc.

If it wouldn’t be a bureaucratic nightmare to implement, you’d almost wonder if it would make sense to allow drivers to waive PIP if they can provide proof of health insurance coverage for themselves and their family members.

The AP wire features a story on a California bill that would require almost all pets to be spayed or neutered. From the wire service story

The bill — sponsored by Assemblyman Lloyd Levine, a Democrat from Southern California who is also pushing to phase out the incandescent light bulb — would require pet owners to sterilize their dogs and cats by the time they are 4 months old, or face a $500 fine.

Licensed breeders of purebreds would be exempt. But the law does not spell out which dog and cat breeds would be covered, and breeders wanting an exemption would have to apply for one from their local animal control authorities. The bill leaves it up to counties and cities to set the price.

Professional breeders complain that the measure would do little to curb “backyard breeders,” that it would drive up their costs and entangle them in bureaucracy, and that it would amount to social engineering for animals.

While I agree that more pet owners should be responsible for their charges, there are a couple of issues I have with the concept behind the bill:

First, why would licensing of breeders be limited to purebreds?  I can understand the idea that breed-specific breeders tend not to be irresponsible puppy-mill operators, but, well, what about those of us who are fond of mutts?  Our Amy, for example, is a hodgepodge of who-knows-how-many different breeds, and is one of the greatest dogs I’ve ever known.

Also, such a measure would tend to limit the development of new breeds, if I’m not mistaken.  I seem to recall that developing and strengthening a new breed generally involves outcrossing with other breeds to expand the gene pool and bring in desirable qualities.

My other big issue: why four months?  I realize that there’s a wide range of opinions on when kittens and puppies should be spayed or neutered, but the rule of thumb my vets seem to have operated under is spaying/neutering at six months.

The article notes that the American Kennel Club is not amused by the measure, and is threatening to pull a major show from the state if the measure passes.

Several folks in the industry have expressed concern about the wisdom of Florida’s property insurance reform, which has seemingly been to declare coverage by fiat, charge a rate that many thing is inadequate, and worry about how to fund losses from a major storm (or multiple storms) after the fact.

Someone spoke with the voice of reason, and suggested that the state look into acquiring some cat cover for its newfound exposure. However, as Insurance Journal reports, Florida has learned that reinsurance for property coverage in that state is very expensive:

The state catastrophe fund that pays damage claims when home insurers cannot is “leaning against” buying additional backup coverage for itself, because the cost would outweigh the need, Florida’s chief financial officer said Monday. [...]

“I think it would be something that would be, maybe, nice to have to protect ourselves against a big, bad one but … we don’t need it in order to maintain the financial well-being of our state,” Sink said in an interview.

With that sort of willingness to gamble with voters’ future money, you’d think that the state would be at least would be a bit proactive in funding that future storm by taking a portion of the surplus they’re accumulating, and “investing” that at the tables in a Biloxi casino.

Last week saw a couple of entertaining developments in the war of Dickie Scruggs versus State Farm.  First, State Farm sought to have Scruggs disqualified from participating in a Katrina suit over misconduct arising from their handling of confidential files from State Farm.  Then, we learned of Scruggs’  new tactic of pursuing RICO action against State Farm, due to the alleged thuggishness of the Good Neighbor’s claims handling (or some other slightly less wacky rationale).

Scruggs group’s blog has finally caught up to recent events in its latest post.  While the bulk of the post is standard-issue “argue the case before the court of public opinion” blather, worth reading nonetheless if you’re amused by the spectacle as I am… there is one passage that merits highlighting:

Ironically, State Farm and its Commissioner for Insurance George Dale have been saying for the past year and a half that these claims are “settled” and “closed”; I guess they forgot to tell the 200 new Plaintiffs who just filed suit. I find it ridiculous that State Farm, Commissioner Dale, and the rest of the industry are commenting that 99% of cases have been settled, when they know this is not true. (See Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood’s description of State Farm’s use of misleading statistics here.) They wrongfully classify a claim as “settled” and “closed” once a denial letter is sent to the policyholder, regardless of whether anything is actually paid (in most people’s case nothing was paid).

On this point, it’s entirely likely that both sides are correct.

I can easily believe that the industry has officially closed 99% of its Katrina claims.  However, “officially closed” doesn’t necessarily mean that the case has been resolved to the satisfaction of the policyholder; it just means that a determination has been made of no coverage, or payment has been made to the point that the insurer feels its obligations have been satisfied, and the insurer feels there’s no outstanding coverage questions or threat of suit to justify holding the file open, expending resources to maintain the file, etc.

That “closed” doesn’t imply “resolved to the claimant’s satisfaction” opens the door to the phenomenon blogged about, the number of suits arising from officially closed files.

Often I think that the industry’s PR machine leaves a lot to be desired.  There seems to be a tendency to lock on to a good-sounding statistic without considering how the metric can be shot down.  It would be a far more powerful message to be able to say that xx% of Katrina claims have resolved in the minds of the claimants, if such a statistic were available (say, via phone survey).

My gut says that the “xx” value of resolution is still a fairly large number.  However, given the tremendous number of claims filed in the wake of Katrina, even a small fraction of claims can lead to a large number of suits.