Anti-mobbing scholars prepare for 2nd N.Y. conference; proposals due May 1; register for in-person by June 1

Colleagues, higher ed students, researchers, and practitioners across disciplines: The 2025 Niagara Conference on Workplace Mobbing, July 21-23, 2025, is open for proposals, due May 1, and registration, due June 1 for in person, or later for virtual.

Here is an invitation letter, circulated since March, by my dear friend and colleague, Dr. Qingli Meng, who superintends the conference on the ground at Niagara Falls.

Read more about mobbing at The Savory Tort.

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Dear Colleague,

We warmly invite you to join us, either in person or virtually, for the hybrid 2025 Niagara Conference on Workplace Mobbing (NCWM), taking place Monday to Wednesday, July 21–23, 2025, at Niagara University, Niagara Falls, New York, USA.

Workplace mobbing is a serious issue in the work environment that was first identified in the 1980s. However, its existence and impact were not widely acknowledged by the public. Instead, it is often referred to as workplace bullying, leading to semantic confusion.

Mobbing is a form of psychological terror in which individuals gang up on a target. As Leymann (1990) described, "It occurs as schisms, where the victim is systematically stigmatized through various injustices, including violations of their rights. Over time, this can result in the individual being unable to secure employment in their field. Those responsible for this tragic outcome can be either colleagues or management."

The 2024 NCWM marked a significant milestone in establishing workplace mobbing as a comprehensive scholarly discipline. See the following YouTube link for the 2024 NCWM presentation videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQ7OwOYUlXM&list=PLZGaVSbKSiyNcB5AwAA8Xhp9srGIrKGAe 

We are thrilled to announce that Niagara University has received generous gift donations to support workplace mobbing initiatives. This funding has made it possible to:

• Make the Niagara Conference on Workplace Mobbing (NCWM) an annual event
• Launch a workplace mobbing journal 
• Establish the World Association for Research on Workplace Mobbing (WARWM)
• Deliberate on creating the Niagara Institute for Research on Workplace Mobbing (NIRWM)

While we encourage in-person attendance to facilitate networking and knowledge exchange amidst the scenic beauty of Niagara Falls, we understand that time and financial constraints may prevent some from traveling. Therefore, we are continuing with a hybrid format, offering both in-person and virtual participation.

Registration Information

• In-person participants: $150
• Includes lunches, coffee, fruit, and snacks on July 21–22, 2025
• Sit-down dinner at the DoubleTree Hotel ballroom on Tuesday, July 22, 2025
• Complimentary tour of Niagara Falls attractions on Wednesday, July 23, 2025

• Virtual participants: $75
• Access to all presentations, including opportunities to ask questions, provide feedback, and join discussions
• Receive a 2025 NCWM Attendance Certificate.

Important Deadlines

• May 1, 2025 – Deadline for abstract submissions (for those wishing to present)
• July 1, 2025 – Deadline for in-person conference registration ($150)
• No deadline for virtual conference registration ($75)

Conference presenters are invited to submit their papers for publication in the Journal of Workplace Mobbing (currently in development).

For more details and registration, please visit the conference website: https://www.niagara.edu/workplace-mobbing-conference/.
 

Accommodation: Niagara Falls offers a variety of hotels, motels, and inns. As July is peak tourist season, we strongly encourage in-person participants to book accommodations early. For the conference hotel (DoubleTree), please use the following link for reservations ($152 per night plus tax): https://group.doubletree.com/igabhd.

For questions and inquiries, please contact the conference Registrar, Dr. Qingli Meng, at qmeng@niagara.edu.

With collegial regards,
Qingli Meng

Qingli Meng, Ph.D.
Niagara University
Registrar, Niagara Conference on Workplace Mobbing (NCWM)

Tree falling on house invites court to parse 'discretion' in ruling city vulnerable to tort liability

Google Gemini CC0

A straightforward case in the Massachusetts Appeals Court last week helps to clarify the meaning and purpose of discretionary function immunity from tort liability for both state and federal governments.

A tree fell on the plaintiff's house. The tree was on city property and under the care of the tree warden, yes that's a thing, of the city of Chicopee, Massachusetts. The plaintiff alleged that the warden, and thereby the city, was negligent for failing to remove the tree or otherwise abate the threat to property. The plaintiff proffered evidence to show that the city had reason to know the tree was not healthy.

Discretionary function immunity, provided for by both the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) and the Massachusetts Tort Claims Act (MTCA), draws a fine line between ordinary accidents which the legislatures sought to compel the governments to answer for in the courts, and matters of policy. 

The plaintiff-pedestrian struck by a car driven by a government worker may sue. But the voter disgruntled over climate policy should seek a remedy at the ballot box, not in the courts. In this way, discretionary function immunity polices the very boundary between distributive justice and corrective justice, that is, the provinces of the political branches and of the judiciary, respectively.

The courts under both statutes have developed similar two-part tests. A federal court must ask, first, whether the government action involved an element of choice, or judgment, and second, critically, whether that judgment implicates public policy, that is, social, economic, or political considerations. The Massachusetts courts, under MTCA section 10(b), make the same inquiry with slightly different language, asking whether the government action involved "policy making or planning."

A perennial problem with discretionary function immunity is the name of the thing. It sounds like the exercise of discretion should trigger the immunity. But that's an oversimplification. It's really about the exercise of policy discretion. The government driver who runs a red light might be said to have exercised discretion when she put her foot on the gas. But it's unlikely that that exercise implicated public policy. Now had government officials decided not to install a traffic light at that intersection at all, having weighed the costs and benefits of injury and infrastructure, that would be a policy choice, immune from challenge in tort law.

The meaning of "discretionary" was precisely the hang up in the present case. Complicating matters, a Chicopee city ordinance expressly dedicated tree removal to "[t]he discretion and sound judgment of the Tree Warden alone" (my emphasis). The Appeals Court correctly reasoned that the discretion of the ordinance was the broader sort; the MTCA refers specifically to a "subset" of discretion involving "policy making or planning." In other words, the tree warden was driving the car, not planning the traffic lights.

The case is Citation Insurance Co. v. Chicopee, No. 24-P-309 (Apr. 9, 2025) (Justia). Justice John C. Englander wrote the unanimous opinion of the panel, which also comprised Justices Henry and Desmond.

Buzz surrounds Bobi Wine: docko, presidential rerun

Bobi Wine: Presidential material?
VOA public domain photo via Wikimedia Commons

Podcast Snap Judgment talked to director Moses Bwayo in March about his Bobi Wine documentary, the first ever Oscar nominated film from Uganda, and Bobi Wine will run again for president of the East African nation.

I wrote in February 2024 about Bobi Wine: The People's President (2022) (IMDb) and Brooke Gladstone's interview with Wine and Bwayo for WNYC's On the Media. According to Snap Judgment, the documentary "received a ten minute standing ovation at its premier[e] at the Venice film festival." The film is being distributed by National Geographic and is streaming on platforms including Disney+.

Last week, Wine said he will run again for the presidency in Uganda in the quinquennial election in January 2026, and he believes that the Ugandan youth vote can push him to victory. "We cannot just give the election to General Museveni," Wine told The Guardian.

For a time it was thought that the six-term hegemony of President Yoweri Museveni would transfer to his son, General Muhoozi Kainerugaba. But Kainerugaba dropped out of the race late last year and endorsed his father—not a given (VOA). Museveni will turn 81 in September.

USAID cuts meanwhile have hit the Ugandan LGBTQ community hard. Museveni has been "intensifying [a] crackdown," The New York Times reported, since 2023 passage of laws threatening life imprisonment for same-sex relations; up to 10 years for attempt; and the death penalty for same-sex relations with minors or disabled persons. The Times explained:

The United States provides more than $970 million annually in development as well as humanitarian and security assistance to Uganda. In 2023, about $440 million was spent on health programs, followed by emergency relief, agriculture and education services, according to U.S. government data.

For years, the United States supported L.G.B.T.Q. groups in Uganda through U.S.A.I.D.-funded initiatives, offering H.I.V. treatment, legal training and resources for activism. Previous U.S. governments also condemned human rights violations against gay Ugandans, imposing trade and travel restrictions in response.

Oddly enough, Kainerugaba urged the Trump administration to restore aid for HIV treatment, according to the Times. Kainerugaba, who commands the military, had threatened Wine on social media. Wine himself has had a controverted record on LGBTQ rights.

Bar comprises haves, have nots; ABA chooses haves

Yesterday I submitted the following open letter to the leadership of the International Law Section (ILS) of the American Bar Association (ABA). I note that it is not possible for law professors at ABA-accredited schools not to be members of the ABA; the schools pay for group memberships, on top of hefty accreditation fees. At present, the ABA is empowered with government-sanctioned accreditation authority over legal education in the United States.

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To the leadership of the International Law Section of the American Bar Association.

$895, the registration fee for academics for the ILS annual, is beyond the pale. I note that I might not have been able to go this year anyway, because of a conflict. But I write because this is a persistent problem. Last year I complained about the fee, which I think was $795. I was told I was heard. Apparently heard and dismissed.

Ten years ago, I registered for the ABA ILS for $295. That's a cumulative inflation rate of 203%. The U.S. 10-year inflation rate generally is about 25%.

The ABA must think that all academics are the same. So let me be plain. My annual salary, after about 30 years in academics and holding the highest academic rank on my public-sector faculty is about $193,000. My budget for professional development is $5,000 this year. It was $5,000 10 years ago. It was $5,000 15 years ago. Every year, working in public service, I must do more with less. As that's impossible, that means dipping deeper into my own pockets, which are not getting deeper fast enough to keep up with the ABA.

The starting salary, with no experience, for a law professor in the Boston market ranges from $185,000 to $213,000. The high end of the law-school teaching scale in the market comes in at about double what I make. (Salary.com.) I don't know what the benefits are, but I bet they've grown faster than mine.

I speak of my own experience here, because that is what I know. But to be fair, I make decent money, relative to the American labor market. I know that and try not to take it for granted. What is more worrisome about ABA's economic exclusion is its impact on both new and practicing lawyers who have committed their labors to public service.

The ABA sends the unequivocal message that persons in public service are not welcome in ILS--that internationalism in law is only for the well off, or worse, that professional association per se, beyond compulsory licensing, is only for the well off. My students graduating in public service careers--NGO registration fees are the same as academic--will be lucky to start out at a third of my pay and might not reach my pay in the course of a career.

Accordingly, I have, for some time, stopped advising students to join ABA. Now I will advise them affirmatively not to waste their time and money. I steadfastly sang the praises of ABA membership for more than 25 years, including 10 years on the TIPS Task Force on Outreach to Law Students. The most important advantage of ABA for me and for new lawyers, I long asserted, was conference programming and networking. I see that the ABA now intends those benefits to be exclusive to big money makers in the private sector.

Yesterday I participated in an ILS committee meeting. You will hear soon from that committee that no one volunteered to move into any leadership role beginning next year. No one includes me.

Sincere farewell,
Rick Peltz-Steele

Peltz markets music, med tech

Back in 2023, my brother Spencer Peltz was first assistant director on Hannah Ellis's "Wine Country" video, while he was working in marketing out of Texas. I'm belatedly enjoying his work and congratulating the marketing genius on a new job he started in 2024 with Arthrex medical device manufacturing. More on Ellis, wine, and country at Food and Wine. More on hip arthroscopy to come.... 🍷

Big Law cowardice calls legal licensure into question

The WAMU podcast 1A put on an excellent show Monday on the White House threats against law firms.

The show featured Princeton University Professor Deborah Pearlstein, Politico reporter Josh Gerstein, and Elias Law Group Chair Marc Elias.

Highlights for me:

• Pearlstein questioned the ethics of the firms that have caved to Administration pressure. How can a client trust Paul Weiss to provide zealous representation, she asked, when the firm so readily caves to political pressure?
• Elias called the deals struck by Paul Weiss and Skadden, inter alia and respectively $40 million and $100 million payoffs in legal services, "cowardly" and "obscene" and questioned whether the practice of law should continue to be protected by the exclusivity of licensing.

Agreed and agreed. I suggest moreover that the weakness of the legal profession and its willingness to sell out for the bottom line has been the American way already for decades. That Big Law has locked down the profession and lobbies anti-competitively to keep it that way—thereby denying access to legal services, legal education, and legal careers to ordinary Americans, while building and bolstering an anti-democratic corporatocracy—is nothing new to those of us who toil away on the hamster wheels beneath the status ceiling.

It's simply Trump's shameless gambit that has exposed the rot.

In the less cowardly vein, Perkins Coie, WilmerHale (Court Listener), and Jenner & Block (Court Listener) are litigating against the executive orders targeting law firms. I anticipate signing on to an amicus brief of law professors in support of the plaintiff motion for summary judgment in the Perkins Coie matter in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Update, Apr. 3: Law Professors' Amicus Brief in Perkins Coie v. DOJ (D.D.C. filed Apr. 3, 2025).

'No Other Land' scores with human story, mesmerizing cinematography, surprising cameos of law

A Palestinian-Israeli collaboration yielded the Academy Award-winning documentary No Other Land, which is well worth the price of admission.

No Other Land plays the Avon in Providence, R.I.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

I disclaim: it was neither paroxysm of wokeism nor Oscar allure that drew me and my wife to an actual theater last weekend for No Other Land (2024) (IMDb). Rather, I was enticed by news that the film failed to secure mainstream distribution in the United States, for fear of protests, and, accordingly, that its debut at the independent O Cinema South Beach drew threats of retaliation.

I'm a sucker for a free speech story. That, and our favorite Indian restaurant is across the street from the independent Avon Cinema in Providence, Rhode Island. I did not expect No Other Land to live up to its Rotten Tomatoes perfect score. It did, and then some.

No Other Land is the product of four co-directors, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, and Rachel Szor. A Palestinian activist and Israeli journalist respectively, Adra and Abraham are featured in the film, which intimately depicts the slow battle between residents and the Israeli army over the villages of Masafer Yatta in the southern West Bank. The film covers 2019 to 2023, when Adra lived in Masafer Yatta and Abraham visited there to write about the army's destruction of homes in an effort to evict Palestinians from the land.

No Other Land does not try to relate other than the Palestinian side of the story. But it also doesn't try to hit you over the head as a polemic; I had been worried about investing 90 minutes in that vein. The beauty of the film—and it is beautiful, worth time in front of the big screen, despite the tragic subject matter—is in the depiction of human relationships in the face of profound adversity: within and between the families of Masafer Yatta, in how the Palestinians relate to Abraham as an outsider, and, at the heart of it, in the sometimes awkward but deepening friendship of Adra and Abraham.

Law figured in No Other Land in some surprising ways. On the face of it, the tragedy of Masafer Yatta was precipitated by Abu ‘Aram v. The Minister of Defense, a 2022 ruling of the Israeli Supreme Court, sitting as the High Court of Justice, green-lighting the eviction of Palestinian residents for the purported purpose of creating an Israeli military training zone. 

Notwithstanding realist accusations of naked partisanship, the court rested its ruling on the classification of the land, by prior agreement, as under Israeli security control. Civil society the world over decried the ruling as inconsistent with human rights law concerning occupied territories. For more, here's an informative commentary by Yaël Ronen, a law professor in Jerusalem, writing at the time for the West Point Lieber Institute's Articles of War.

Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham receive film award in Berlin.
Martin Kraft (photo.martinkraft.com) via Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 4.0

The law figured also into the story at the more intimate level. The film surfaced the fact, which I had not learned from any of the hype, that Adra trained as a lawyer, not as a filmmaker or journalist. Here is an exchange in the film between Adra and Abraham.

ABRAHAM: Nothing on mainstream news about the demolitions. As if it happened, but also, it never happened.

ADRA: We'll keep filming everything. And we have to think how to reach more people in different ways. That would be excellent I think.

ABRAHAM: Why are you on your phone all day?

ADRA: It's from stress. Stress, stress, stress.

ABRAHAM: You're afraid something will happen?

ADRA: Yes, but also I'm stressed because I have nothing to do.

ABRAHAM: What do you mean?

ADRA: I don't know.

ABRAHAM: What?

ADRA: What can I do besides being on my phone? Huh? I have nothing else, only my phone.

ABRAHAM: What would you like to do?

ADRA: Anything else.

ABRAHAM: But you studied law, can't you practice it?

ADRA: That's something I lost hope in. Students like me studied so hard for a law degree. But our economy is ruined. You can find work only in Israel.

ABRAHAM: What work?

ADRA: Construction. No other option. Like you never went to university. What do you think? If you were in my place, what would you think?

The scene captures the utter despair of Palestinians in Masafer Yatta. And at the same time, Adra smiles intermittently. His indomitable spirit is irresistibly charming.

The conversation is revealing, too, of a mesmerizing cinematographic device at work in No Other Land. Adra is on his phone a lot; the phone, in fact, or smartphone videography, almost becomes a character itself in the narrative.

There are two kinds of video in the film. First, there is smartphone video, often the very same clips that Adra and others upload to social media in the online battle of public relations playing out for the world. Second, there is the high-quality video of the movie camera.

Adra and other Palestinians, as well as Israeli soldiers and civilian authorities, are seen constantly wielding smartphone cameras. The film in fact is bookended with older personal video from Adra's childhood. In the conflict, Palestinians use their smartphones as witnesses, for example, announcing to a soldier, "I am filming," in an effort to deter violence. These videos bring raw and jarring urgency to the big screen.

At the same time, movie cameras never stop rolling, and for them, the fourth wall never breaks. When the smartphones are turned off, the movie cameras continue to capture the mundane but moving interludes that constitute life between exigencies: Adra left alone at night when Abraham drives off to the security of his home; the tears of a mother left to care for a dying son.

No Other Land is art and reality at once. It deserves its accolades, and it should be seen. If it tells only part of a story, so be it. It bears truths that must be reckoned with nonetheless if ever there can be a way forward in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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Kadai chicken, Rupee Basmati Rice Lager, and chicken madras at Kabob and Curry, Providence, R.I.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 with no claim to underlying mouthwatering presentation

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