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High court will hear appeal over illegal threats
Legal News |
2014/06/17 18:02
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The Supreme Court will consider the free speech rights of people who use violent or threatening language on Facebook and other electronic media where the speaker's intent is not always clear.
The court on Monday agreed to take up the case of an eastern Pennsylvania man sentenced to nearly four years in federal prison for posting online rants about killing his estranged wife, shooting up a school and slitting the throat of an FBI agent.
A federal appeals court rejected Anthony Elonis' claim that his comments were protected by the First Amendment. He says he never meant to carry out the threats. He claims he was depressed and made the online posts in the form of rap lyrics as a way of venting his frustration after his wife left him.
At his trial, the jury was instructed that Elonis could be found guilty if an objective person could consider his posts to be threatening. Attorneys for Elonis argue that the jury should have been told to apply a subjective standard and decide whether Elonis meant the messages to be understood as threats.
Elonis' lawyers say a subjective standard is appropriate given the impersonal nature of communication over the Internet, which can lead people to misinterpret messages. They argue that comments intended for a smaller audience can be viewed by others unfamiliar with the context and interpret the statements differently than was intended. |
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Coast Guard cadet won't be court-martialed
Legal News |
2014/06/13 19:33
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A U.S. Coast Guard Academy cadet accused of entering a classmate's room and touching her leg will not face a court martial, the academy said Thursday.
Its superintendent agreed with the recommendations of an investigating officer that reasonable grounds did not exist to support the charge of abusive sexual contact against cadet Alexander Stevens. The superintendent, Rear Adm. Sandra Stosz, also agreed with a recommendation to impose nonjudicial punishment on Stevens for unlawfully entering a cadet barracks room while drunk and touching another cadet on the leg, Coast Guard officials said.
The academy did not disclose details of the punishment, citing Stevens' privacy rights. Nonjudicial punishment may include a reprimand, arrest in quarters for up to 30 days, pay forfeiture or expulsion from the academy.
"The academy has remained committed to providing all needed support to the victim, ensuring a full and fair proceeding in compliance with the Uniform Code of Military Justice and holding those who commit misconduct accountable for their actions," said Capt. James McCauley, the commandant of cadets.
In September, Stevens said, he went into the fellow cadet's room by mistake, believing it was his girlfriend's room, an investigator testified.
He was drunk at the time and made a mental mistake, Lt. John Cole, who represented Stevens, said during a pretrial investigation at the academy in April.
The classmate testified that a man entered her room in the middle of the night, touched her on her thigh and moved his hand up her leg before she screamed and kicked him. The cadet said she found it hard to sleep and concentrate after the encounter, and her grades suffered. |
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Court won't stop BP oil spill claims payments
Legal News |
2014/05/29 16:40
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BP PLC must resume paying claims while it asks the U.S. Supreme Court to review its settlement with businesses over the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, a federal appeals court panel said Wednesday.
The 2-1 judgment said the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will not put a stop to payments while BP appeals the court's earlier ruling that businesses, under the settlement, don't have to prove they were directly harmed by the spill to collect money.
BP asked the Supreme Court to review Wednesday's ruling, saying that otherwise "countless awards totaling potentially hundreds of millions of dollars will be irretrievably scattered to claimants that suffered no injury traceable to BP's conduct."
The high court is likely to hear the case because it deepens a split among federal appeals courts about whether courts can approve of a group of people who say it was wronged by the same action, which is called a class, "even when it includes vast numbers of members who were not injured by the defendant's conduct." Six appellate courts have said no; the 5th Circuit is one of two that have upheld certification of such classes, the attorneys wrote.
It said the claims administrator has approved "$76 million to entities whose entire losses clearly had nothing to do with the spill, such as lawyers who lost their law licenses and warehouses that burned down before the spill occurred." He has approved another $546 million to people and companies far from the coast whose businesses have no logical connection to the spill, according to the appeal. |
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Court weighs securities fraud class-action cases
Legal News |
2014/03/05 22:50
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The Supreme Court is considering whether to abandon a quarter-century of precedent and make it tougher for investors to band together to sue corporations for securities fraud.
The justices hear arguments Wednesday in an appeal by Halliburton Co. that seeks to block a class-action lawsuit claiming the energy services company inflated its stock price.
A group of investors says it lost money when Halliburton's stock price dropped after revelations the company misrepresented revenues, understated its liability in asbestos litigation and overstated the benefits of a merger.
Justices threw out the company's first attempt to block the lawsuit in 2011. But Halliburton is now urging the court to overturn a 25-year-old decision that sparked a tidal wave of securities-related, class-action lawsuits against publicly traded companies and has led to billions in settlements.
The court's 1988 decision in Basic v. Levinson says shareholders who claim they were defrauded by false statements in securities filings don't have to prove they actually relied on the statements. Rather, the court reasoned that any misrepresentation would be reflected in the current stock price. Even if investors are not aware of the misstatements, they are presumed to be aware of them because they affect the stock price.
This presumption, known as the "fraud-on-the-market theory," has become the driving force for modern class-action securities cases. But some economists have questioned whether this theory makes sense anymore, saying it doesn't account for the sometimes random and arbitrary nature of stock trading. |
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Ohio courts must report mental health info
Legal News |
2014/01/06 19:41
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Courts in Ohio must now report certain mental health information about people convicted of violent crimes for inclusion in a law enforcement database.
A rule approved by the Ohio Supreme Court requiring that notification took effect Jan. 1. The court devised the form to be submitted to law enforcement after legislation was approved last year.
The law requires judges to report ordering mental-health evaluations or treatment for people convicted of a violent crime or approving conditional release for people found incompetent to stand trial or not guilty by reason of insanity.
The legislation was introduced after a Clark County sheriff's deputy was fatally shot in 2011 by a man with a criminal history who was conditionally released from a mental health institution. |
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Gay couples wed in Utah after judge overturns ban
Legal News |
2013/12/23 20:38
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Elisa Noel rushed to the county clerk's office with her partner immediately after learning that a federal judge overturned Utah's ban on gay marriage. They waited in line for a wedding license and were married in an impromptu ceremony punctuated with Noel giving the officiant a high-five.
"I can't believe this is Utah," Noel said moments after a ceremony that took place about 3 miles from the headquarters of the Mormon church.
Others had a similar reaction after a ruling by U.S. District Judge Robert J. Shelby that declared Utah's voter-approved ban on gay marriage unconstitutional. The recent appointee by President Obama said the ban violates the constitutional rights of gay couples and ruled Utah failed to show that allowing same-sex marriages would affect opposite-sex marriages in any way.
The ruling prompted a frenzy of activity by lawyers and gay couples. The Republican governor blasted the ruling as going against the will of the people. Gay couples rushed to the Salt Lake County Clerk's office en masse to secure marriage licenses, waiting in line by the dozens and getting married on the spot by the mayor and ministers. |
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Canadian court strikes down anti-prostitution laws
Legal News |
2013/12/23 20:33
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Canada's highest court struck down the country's anti-prostitution laws Friday, a victory for sex workers who had argued that a ban on brothels and other measures made their profession more dangerous. The ruling drew criticism from the conservative government and religious leaders.
The court, ruling in a case brought by three women in the sex trade, struck down all three of Canada's prostitution-related laws: bans on keeping a brothel, making a living from prostitution, and street soliciting. The ruling won't take effect immediately, however, because the court gave Parliament a year to respond with new legislation, and said the existing laws would remain in place until then.
The decision threw the door open for a wide and complex debate on how Canada should regulate prostitution, which isn't in itself illegal in the country.
Robert Leckey, a law professor at McGill University, said the court found that the law did nothing to increase safety, but suggested in its ruling that more finely tailored rules might pass constitutional scrutiny in the future. |
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