Declarations
“Dairy Queen introduced no evidence of an actual association between the two products. … If association were to occur, in all likelihood, it would have occurred by now.”
— St. Paul, Minnesota-based U.S. District Judge Susan Richard Nelson, ruling that Dairy Queen cannot stop W.B. Mason Co. from selling “Blizzard” bottled spring water, the same name the unit of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. uses for a popular ice cream product. Nelson found no evidence that consumers were confused by the Blizzards or that W.B. Mason, an office products distributor, intended to confuse anyone. Dairy Queen acknowledged W.B. Mason, which has two trademarks for Blizzard copy paper, was not a competitor, but said consumers might be confused because its U.S. restaurants sell bottled water.
“Guns kill more people than cars. Yet gun owners are not required to carry liability insurance like car owners must.”
— Democratic state Sen. Nancy Skinner stated her support for a bill that would make California the first state to require gun owners to buy liability insurance to cover the negligent or accidental use of their firearms. The state of New York is considering a similar requirement in the wake of numerous recent mass shootings and a rise in gun violence. In January, the Silicon Valley city of San Jose approved what’s believed to be the first such insurance requirement in the United States.
“It’s going to take years before people can get back to their lives. The majority of people are still at a standstill.”
— Cherie Matherne, an official for Louisiana’s Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribe, on the community’s slow recovery from the wreckage of Hurricane Ida. Only about 12 homes in the lower part of the Pointe-au-Chien community survived the storm, while farther west, where many members of the Grand Caillou/Dulac Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw live, about 20% of homes were a total loss. Native Americans have lived in the southeastern Louisiana bayou regions since long before French explorer Rene-Robert Cavelier reached the mouth of the Mississippi River in 1682.
“How is it that we look at the same constitutional violations clearly occurring based on color, and there’s not even a plan on what to do?”
— Missouri NAACP President Nimrod Chapel on a recent report that shows Black drivers are more likely to be pulled over in Missouri compared to white drivers, and the gap between how Missouri police treat Black and white drivers increased again in 2021. Differences in Black and white motorists’ interaction with police have for the most part increased in the two decades since Missouri began tracking and analyzing vehicle stops. Missouri’s population is close to 11% Black, but about 18% of all police traffic stops in 2021 involved Black drivers.
“Consumers have a right to know what information of theirs is being collected, have the ability to correct any false data that is collected, and have the right to delete that data if they don’t want it collected.
— Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, after signing into law Public Act 22-15, which provides consumers with greater ability to safeguard their personal data that is collected by online companies. The law requires companies to publicly share a privacy policy that tells consumers what data of theirs is being collected and how that data is being used, and gives consumers an option to opt out of selling or sharing that data to others. The law takes effect July 1, 2023. A provision related to a task force is effective immediately.
“The biggest issue is not what’s going on inside the pipes, but what’s going on with the insurance claims industry.”
— David Grindley, a forensic structural engineer who spoke at the Florida Defense Lawyers Association claims conference in June. He explained that while homeowners and contractors have filed an increasing number of claims on cast iron drainpipes, many of those claims are exaggerated and can be defended. Cast iron drainpipes last for decades, aren’t usually the source of a drainage problem, and can be cleaned and lined — instead of having to be replaced, he said.