Calvin Morrill Says Managers Must Quell Workplace Gossip

Workforce Management, March 2010 by Jeremy Smerd
http://www.workforce.com/section/09/feature/27/11/43/index.html

Managers must first have access to the gossip. This requires informal relationships with workers across a company’s hierarchy as well as a cadre of workers who are confidants, says Calvin Morrill…. “If you don’t have those ties, you can’t access people,” Morrill says. “I think that’s one of the hallmarks of a potentially disastrous managerial regime.”

Daniel Farber Discusses BP Oil Escrow Account

-PBS NewsHour, June 14, 2010 by Ray Suarez
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/environment/jan-june10/oil2_06-14.html

I think BP is facing a situation where there is enormous distrust about its capability for dealing with this, about its good faith, on the part of a lot of people inside the U.S. government and among the public. I think setting up a fund like this would be very helpful for them, in terms of showing good faith, of assuring people that they are going to take responsibility for what happened. So, I see a lot of reasons for them to do it. Whether they have to do it, though, is something that’s less clear.

-WorkersCompensation.com, June 14, 2010 by Jon L. Gelman
http://www.workerscompensation.com/compnewsnetwork/blogwire/designing_a_bp_oil_spill.html

Daniel Farber, director of the environmental law program at the University of California, Berkeley’s Law School highlighted some of the design failures of the past in Federal programs when he stated, “Well, I don’t know if we need a custom-built scheme for BP, but I think that this has shown a genuine problem, both here, but also with other kinds of environmental disasters, with public health disasters, which is that we have a very long litigation process, and people may need help right away.”

Holly Doremus Criticizes Delta Rulings that Weaken Endangered Species Law

Contra Costa Times, June 14, 2010 by Mike Taugher
http://www.contracostatimes.com/environment/ci_15282537?nclick_check=1

“It doesn’t make any sense to do environmental analysis on the back end when you’re trying to help the environment,” said Holly Doremus, a professor at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law. “What he’s saying is the agencies have to find absolutely the least burdensome way to save the species.”

Franklin Zimring Finds Weapon, Not Intent, Leads to Homicide

The Washington Post, June 13, 2010 by Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/11/AR2010061103259.html

But in a groundbreaking and often-replicated look at the details of criminal attacks in Chicago in the 1960s, University of California at Berkeley law professor Franklin Zimring found that the circumstances of gun and knife assaults are quite similar: They’re typically unplanned and with no clear intention to kill. Offenders use whatever weapon is at hand, and having a gun available makes it more likely that the victim will die.