Judge Linda D. Schoonover appears to have a different concept of a “friend of the court” party. The Seminole Circuit judge has been removed from a divorce case where she tried to “friend” one of the litigants, Sandra Chace. Chace declined on the advice of counsel to be a friend of Judge Schoonover. Her lawyer says that Schoonover responded with retaliation against her in a type of “scratch a Friend find a Foe” ploy.
Category: Society
In an important decision on immunity, the United States Court of Appeal for the Seventh Circuit has ruled that a prosecutor is not protected by immunity for allegedly coercing false testimony that sent a man to death row 17 years ago. Two prosecutors were accused of egregious misconduct: Lawrence Wharrie and David Kelley. The new opinion from the Seventh Circuit is Fields v. Wharrie, 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 1333. Ironically, I just filed on qualified immunity this week in the ongoing litigation in the Sister Wives case in Utah. We are advancing some of the same arguments, though our case has distinguishable characteristics. However, today we filed the Fields case as new supplemental authority.
There are health care nightmares and then there is what happened to Eric Fergusan, 54, in North Carolina. Fergusan was bitten by a snake on the foot while putting out trash last August. He drove himself to the hospital and was given anti-venom medicine that can be purchased online for as low as $750. The bill” $89,227 bill for an 18-hour stay.
Rep. Michael Grimm (R., Staten Island) apparently wanted to unwind after the State of the Union with a little good-old-fashioned Reporter tossing from the Capitol Rotunda. A traditional form of exercise, RT (as it is called) is highly aerobic and involves throwing an adult reporter from a stationary position with no more than three paces before the launch. This is much more difficult than tossing the caber in Scottish game because the journalists tend to be odd sized and flexible. They are the second least aerodynamic of profession (after Sumo wrestlers). There is also the problem of congressional ethics rules and criminal assault concerns. However, if Grimm looked in ill-humor, it was nothing like the mood of voters.
GOP Georgia congressman Paul Broun has a slight variation on Herbert Hoover’s 1928 presidential campaign of “a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage?” Broun would like to add an AR-15 in every home or at least one home. Broun is offering a drawing to his supporters to win an AR-15 to show his unparalleled support for gun ownership.
We recently had a vigorous debate on this blog over the academic boycott of Israel that appears to be gaining steam despite threats from politicians about retaliation. Now the boycott movement will be placed front and center in the Superbowl with a controversy over a commercial by actress Scarlett Johansson who is being paid to be the new face for SodaStream International Ltd., an Israeli company that operates a factory in the West Bank settlement of Maale Adumim. Johansson has been denounced for her work on behalf of the Israeli company and now Oxfam International is considering dropping her as an ambassador for its global work against hunger and poverty. Advocates insist that the town is actually fairly secular and supplies jobs for Jews and non-Jews. Both sides will have a chance to be heard given our past experience with controversial Superbowl ads. This is the ultimate prime time exposure for the company but the debate is not likely to be over the savings of carbonating your own drinks. Update: Fox has banned the commercial but not over the international law objections but because the commercial takes digs at Pepsi and Coke (two bigger advertisers). It is not clear if the commercial will be reworked to drop the references and resubmitted. Ironically, the company may have triggered a new boycott debate and not even make it to Superbowl audience.
We previously discussed the case of Max Mosley, the ex-Formula One boss, who became infamous on the Internet after the posting of a video showing him in a sadomasochistic orgy. The story broke in the now defunct News of the World tabloid and reported the scene as a five-hour orgy with five prostitutes dressed as Nazi guards — a particularly embarrassing performance given the fact that Mosley’s father, Oswald, was the pre-war leader of Britain’s fascist “blackshirts” and even invited Adolf Hitler to his wedding. Mosley, 73, prevailed in a court action in showing that the party did not have a Nazi theme and that his privacy was violated. Now he is continuing what can only be described as a scorched Earth campaign against everyone who has carried the photos and announced a new lawsuit against Google. In a move that raises concerns over the censorship of the Internet, German court ordered the Internet giant to block photos of him at his sadomasochistic orgy.
The Chinese government has continued its crackdown on environmental and social activists this month with the shocking sentence handed down for Xu Zhiyong, a former law professor who simply campaigned for the right of children in rural areas to be educated in cities and not barred from equal opportunity.
In a devastating reversal for environmentalists, Canada’s Yukon Territory announced last week that it has decided to reverse an earlier promise to protect undeveloped Yukon territory. The reversal came after mining interests reportedly financed the Yukon Party, which came into power in the last election. The earlier plan with indigenous and environmental leaders would have protected 80 percent of the area known as the Peel watershed region which features some of Canada’s highest peaks and greatest glaciers as well as breathtaking tundra and forests.
We have an interesting defamation case out of California where Courtney Love was found not guilty of an allegedly defamatory tweet directed against her former attorney Rhonda Holmes. The increase in social media and Twitter has led to new challenges under defamation law that we have been following. Such “twibel” cases are still evolving in terms of the standards and potential liability. In this case, Love had sent a tweet reading “I was f***ing devestated [sic] when Rhonda J. Holmes esq. of san diego was bought off.”
Continue reading “Twibel: Courtney Love Cleared of Alleged Defamatory Tweet”
There is a troubling case out of Sabine Parish, Louisiana which, according to a Buddhist family, acted more like a real parish than a public school district. A Buddhist family sued Sabine Parish School Board for violating their right to religious freedom with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union. If the allegations are true, the district is engaging in astonishing levels of entanglement with religion in one of the most extreme violations of constitutional law in decades.
Continue reading “Louisiana Parish Sued For Indoctrination Of Religion By Buddhist Family”
A poll was released this month that may (or may not) surprise some people: half of sports fans believe that games are influenced by supernatural powers. This belief ranges from the idea that prayers help a team win to the belief that some teams are cursed. God is viewed by many to even intervene on individual plays if you are looking for a divine hand in that Hail Mary pass.
I previously ran a column on how it seems that no waste or lose of government money seems enough to force accountability in some areas. That column came to mind with the recent disclosure that, in the waning hours of the Administration of former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration, Montreal-based CGI was awarded a $10-million-plus contract to update the city’s non-emergency call system. That is the same company that was partially responsible for the massive failure of the Obamacare rollout and later denied renewal of its multimillion dollar contract. The company was paid roughly $100 million for the failed contract. That was just part of the $678 million spent on the Obamacare enrollment website at Healthcare.gov which is now the subject of additional contracts to fix the earlier contracts.
Submitted by Darren Smith: Weekend Contributor
Maricopa County Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio is now placing inmates suspected of desecration of flags posted inside county jails on a bread and water meal plan for two of the meals each day. Sheriff Arpaio states:
“These inmates have destroyed the American flag that was placed in their cells. Tearing them, writing on them, stepping on them, throwing them in the toilet, trash or wherever they feel,” Arpaio said in a statement. “It’s a disgrace to those who have fought for our country.”
Is this a fitting punishment for 21st Century American Corrections?
Continue reading “Arizona Sheriff Puts Inmates On Bread And Water Diet For Flag Desecration”
By Mike Appleton, Weekend Contributor
“We strongly believe that the order that let to the termination of life support is in complete contradiction to Texas law that was enacted to protect pre-born babies just like the Munoz child. The courts have failed this baby, the attorneys who should have defended Texas law has failed this baby, and the hospital has failed this baby. May this tragedy serve as a wake-up call to our society, lest others wrongly fall victim to this dehumanizing utilitarian view of life and death.”
-Operation Rescue, Press Release, January 26, 2014
“It never occurred to us that anything in the statute applied to anyone who was dead. The statute was meant for making decisions for patients with terminal or irreversible conditions.”
-Thomas Mayo, associate professor of law, Southern Methodist University School of Law (quoted in Fort Worth Star-Telegram, January 24, 2014)
When Tarrant County district judge R. H. Wallace, Jr. decided the case of Erick Munoz v. John Peter Smith Hospital, the judgment required only two paragraphs. “The provisions of Section 166.049 of the Texas Health and Safety Code,” he wrote, “do not apply to Marlise Munoz because Mrs. Munoz is dead.” Given this conclusion, it became unnecessary to consider the constitutionality of the statute, and the court declined to do so.
The court’s ruling was sane and rational. But in my opinion it was also obvious. And that raises the issue of why the hospital refused to respect the wishes of the Munoz family without a court order, despite its admission in court filings that a medical determination of brain death had been made by November 28th of last year. Continue reading “The Right to Life and the Right to Die”