Afternoon Roundup: Court Shoots Down Passenger Rights; More

[WSJ Law Blog]

Flight Delayed? Too bad! Last year, New York lawmakers passed the nation’s first so-called “bill of rights” for air passengers after severe winter weather left some travelers stranded on board planes for hours on the tarmac at JFK. Nice try, New York!

Under the banner of federal preemption, the Second Circuit threw out the laws, which required airlines to provide food, water and clean toilets to travelers who are delayed on-board a plane for more than three hours. The three-judge panel held that the Airline Deregulation Act preempts states from regulating activities by the nation’s air carriers. Here’s the story.



Can Female Lawyers Learn from Hillary? Kathleen Wu, a partner at Andrews Kurth in Dallas, published a piece today on Hillary’s lessons for women attorneys. Given the daily criticism she gets, Wu writes, “to be able to get up every morning and convince herself that not only does she deserve to be a U.S. senator but that she also has every right to be president is, frankly, awe-inspiring. . . .That’s something women attorneys should remember the next time they feel shortchanged by a colleague or don’t get deserved appreciation.” Clinton’s other lessons, writes Wu, range from the behavioral (”a bit of femininity doesn’t hurt”) to the attitudinal (”Fear not the B-word”) to the sartorial (”well-made, flattering suits = good; figure-hugging, cleavage-showing suits = not so good”).



KPMG, On Appeal: Meanwhile, LB colleague Amir Efrati was at the Second Circuit today, listening to prosecutors’ arguments that Judge Lewis Kaplan’s controversial ruling in the so-called KPMG criminal-tax case should be overturned. Judge Kaplan had dismissed indictments against 13 former execs of the accounting firm after finding that the government violated their constitutional rights to counsel and due process by pressuring the company not to pay the individuals’ legal costs. In Tuesday’s hearing, the government was appealing that decision.

According to Efrati, two judges on the three-judge panel expressed skepticism about the government’s postion (the third was quiet). Here’s his report.