Attorney General appeals ruling on stricken 2013 petition law

Attorney General Dustin McDaniel has appealed the ruling by Circuit Judge Mary Spencer McGowan striking portions of Act 1413 of 2013. As I reported here, Judge McGowan ruled that the Act was an unconstitutional infringement on the right of the people to petition. The appeal will likely be expedited, as the appeal transcript has already been picked up. 

This appeal will affect, for better or worse, the very first right guaranteed by the Arkansas Constitution — to petition the government for changes in laws. I've helped several counties through the local option initiative process, and the counties currently running these types of elections are watching closely. 

Judge invalidates 2013 changes to petition laws

Yesterday, a Circuit Judge in Pulaski County invalidated changes made in Act 1413 of 2013 to the Arkansas laws about petition drives. As I reported here when the lawsuit was filed, two individuals representing groups filing petitions in 2012 challenged the law as unconstitutional and unclear. Circuit Judge Mary Spencer McGowan agreed, stating:

The effect of the new provisions, especially the sections which fail to define the use of the words, disability, anything of value, material defect, etc., will mean that the citizens of the State of Arkansas will lose their ability to propose legislative measures and laws directly to the people.

While the goals of stamping out fraud, forgery and false statements are laudatory, and appear to have been met in 2012 by the Secretary of State, the effects of Act 1413 are crushing to the citizens who wish to bring their issues directly to the people. The effects of Act 1413 seem to impact the citizens rather than the special interests who always seem to have the money to further their goals.

Judge McGowan went on to enjoin the Secretary of State from enforcing certain sections of Act 1413 applicable to statewide petition drives. This is good news for Arkansans, as it preserves the right to freely petition the government. However, the Attorney General and Secretary of State have said they will appeal Judge McGowan's ruling. Most appeals take at least several months.

A hurdle remains, however, for citizens working on local option elections. A separate act, Act 1432 of 2013, passed laws creating the exact same burdens on local option elections as Act 1413 did for statewide initiatives. This initiative has yet to be challenged in Court. Whether the Arkansas Supreme Court sides with Judge McGowan will likely determine the outcome for Act 1432 as well. Those interested in local option elections will be watching.  

From GTOs to mud tires: what's your brand, and does it matter anymore?

A recent article in the New Yorker suggested that brands are in decline. That begs the question: what's a brand?

A brand is simply a name or symbol that indicates source. It has another name — a trademark. In days past, as the New Yorker article observes, a brand (or trademark) was a shorthand way of determining quality. In 1969, the brand "Judge" referred to a souped up American muscle car with a distinctive paint job, retractable headlights, and optional 370 hp. (Full disclosure: in 1998, I negotiated for a week or so with a judge in New York who was trying to sell his cherry '69 GTO Judge on eBay. It didn't happen, but I sometimes regret not pursuing it further).  When you went to the dealer and asked for that car in 1969, you knew you'd be getting a classic American muscle car. However, you might not have known about "an internal GM policy limiting all cars except the Corvette to no more than one advertised horsepower per 10 lb of curb weight," which served to limit performance.

Now that the Internet has been around a while, Amazon and other online companies provide tons of information on the quality of goods. Anymore, we don't have to rely upon brand names as shorthand for quality. We can research any item we want to buy, whether it is a soft-shell jacket, a set of tires, or a beard trimmer. We can immediately compare product specifications (which set of mud tires has the best wear rating?), as well as scores of customer reviews about any product under the sun (how do those same tires fare with road noise?). For instance, I've worn about half the tread off my 285/75R16 BF Goodrich KM2's after 26,000 miles, and I've only been stuck once (thanks Dr. J — UPDATE: photos of getting stuck).

The New Yorker article cites some statistics about how we rely upon brand names a lot less than we used to as a result of the availability of this type of information. So, trademarks are less an indicator of quality, and more an indicator of source (which is the traditional definition anyway). Brands are now a starting point for as an indicator of quality, rather than the final word. I think that's a good thing for consumers. In the past, brand = quality = price. Now, since the comparison of cost versus quality is much easier to make; brand might still equal price, but consumers can pretty well figure out if the quality justifies the price.

As an example, when I bought my KM2s, the Nitto Mud Grappler was a more expensive and much more popular alternative. However, I'd had Michelin tires before (Michelin owns BF Goodrich) and never had a flat after having too many with Firestone, Cooper, and Kelly tires. So, my comparison was based on what I saw on the street and also on experience with several brands. I did a lot of research on tirerack.com (which no longer carries the Nittos). I wound up going with the KM2s after reading not-so-great treadwear reviews of the Nittos, which were about 10% more expensive. I also considered the Bridgestone mudders, since that's what Dad and a property manager for a local timber company both ran. However, the Bridgestone's treadwear ratings were about 15% worse than the KM2s, which justified paying about 10% more for the KM2s. I still like my choice because I rarely feel like I'm going to get stuck, even if I'm in the middle of the Ouachita River. Another review dealt with road noise: with the KM2s, I can still hear myself think, even on the interstate.

So, what does this means for brands? I agree with the New Yorker article that it's a mixed bag. Consumers still might lean one way or the other due to prior experience, but now they have the option of easily researching purchases on the Internet. Sometimes that will sway opinions, sometimes not. But it's nice to have choices.

State Farm case filings skyrocket in Arkansas and the U.S.

I've got a couple of underinsured motorist ("UIM") cases pending against State Farm. One of the allegations in the cases is that State Farm denied my clients' claims because they were following a national policy to force claims into court.

Several books have been published about how insurance companies aggressively revamped their claims departments for maximum profit in the mid 1990's, which was a shift away from fairly paying claims. One such book is called Delay, Deny, Defend. The documents showing how this shift was designed call it a "zero sum game," meaning that where the insurance companies win, the insured people must lose. Of course, artificially lowering claim payouts regardless of merit is bad faith on an institutional level.

In connection with my cases, I've done some research on lawsuits involving State Farm in state courts in Arkansas and in federal courts around the country. Here's the chart of the number of State Farm cases in Arkansas over the past 20 years:  

 The trend holds true generally for national cases involving State Farm:

This case filing information is proof that State Farm has ramped up its litigation department in keeping with the delay, deny, defend strategy used by State Farm and other insurance companies.

These are just cases where State Farm was a named party. State Farm is involved in vastly more cases where State Farm stays in the shadows and defends cases against people who caused accidents. It's difficult to determine which insurance companies are involved in these types of cases, since the Arkansas Administrative Office of the Courts and its federal counterpart, Pacer, don't keep track of the identity of insurance companies in these "third party" cases. This prevents the public from identifying trends about which insurance companies are bogging down court systems across the country.

It sure seems like we need to change our laws to shine more light on these insurance company tactics. At the Chaney Law Firm, we fight to expose bad faith insurance tactics, one case at a time.

Enabling mcrypt for PHP

When working on database-intensive projects, like Intelection, I sometimes use phpMyAdmin. It's capable of using mcrypt, which is cryptographic software. However, after upgrading to Mac OS X Mavericks, my mcrypt installation was broken. I kept getting an error on printed SQL reports, and the following image would appear on each screen:

Here's how to fix it. First, install command line developer tools so that the proper PHP libraries are in place. Use this command:

xcode-select --install

Then, download and install autoconf, which is required to install the PHP extension for mcrypt:

cd /tmp
curl -O http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/autoconf/autoconf-latest.tar.gz
tar -zxvf autoconf-latest.tar.gz
cd autoconf-2.69/
./configure --prefix=/usr/local
make
sudo make install

Next, install libmcrypt. You can download it from sourceforge.net here. Use these commands to install:

cd /tmp
mv ~/Downloads/libmcrypt-2.5.8.tar.gz ./
tar -zxvf libmcrypt-2.5.8.tar.gz 
cd libmcrypt-2.5.8
./configure
make
sudo make install

The next step is to install the PHP mcrypt extension. In order to do that, you'll need to download the correct PHP that you have installed on your system. To figure this out, run these commands:

which php --(mine showed /usr/bin/php)
/usr/bin/php -v

Go to PHP's historical website and download the correct version. Mine's 5.4.17. Then, install the extension:

cd /tmp
mv ~/Downloads/php-5.4.17.tar.gz ./
tar -zxvf php-5.4.17.tar.gz
cd php-5.4.17/ext/mcrypt/
phpize
./configure
make
sudo make install

Next, PHP must be configured to use the mycrpt extension. This is done by editing the php.ini file, as follows:

sudo vi /etc/php.ini

Use the following regular expression in vim to find the extension part of the file:

:/^;extension

Add this line to the file:

extension = mcrypt.so

Finally, restart the web server to commit the changes:

sudo apachectl restart

With that, mcrypt is working properly again with phpMyAdmin.