Carl Malamud of public.resource.org has a guest post on Boing Boing: Liberating America’s Secret, for-pay Laws. In it, he discusses the problem of laws that incorporate copyrighted technical standards by reference. Because the standards bodies that issue them are in the private sector, anyone who wants to view the standards (to comply with the law) must pay for a copy. Those copies can be very expensive; public.resource.org spent over $7,000 for copies of the corpus.
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This Week in Opinions
Our Daily Caselaw Summary writers have served up some interesting cases this week:
In Colorado, the Supreme Court issued Air Wisconsin Airlines v. Hoeper, which found an airline was not immune from a defamation claim by an employee under the Aviation Transportation Safety Act. In that case, the employee was authorized to carry a firearem on the planes he flew, but was reported by a trainer to be “disgruntled” and that he posed a threat with a gun. The Colorado Supreme Court upheld the defamation victory, adding that the airline was not immune from suit or defamation under the ATSA and that the record supported the jury’s finding of clear and convincing evidence of actual malice.
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This Week in Opinions: Vaccine Safety, School Violence, Prison Hunger Strikes and The Jones Act
The DC Circuit released an opinion about vaccine safety this week. In Coal. for Mercury-Free Drugs v. Sebelius, the Court found that plaintiffs did not have standing to sue the FDA for failing to prohibit the use of vaccines containing the mercury-based preservative thimerosal on young children and pregnant women. The court concluded that plaintiffs were not required to receive thimerosal-preserved vaccines, they could readily obtain thimerosal-free vaccines, they did not have standing to challenge the FDA’s decision to allow other people to receive the vaccines, and plaintiffs could advocate that the Legislative and Executive Branches ban the vaccines. As a result, plaintiffs were suffering no cognizable injury as a result of the FDA’s decision to allow the vaccine, their lawsuit was not a proper subject for the Judiciary.
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Google Scholar “Cited By” Update
From our friends over at Google Scholar comes word last week of changes to the “Cited by” function within their legal opinions database. For those of you not familiar with this feature, “Cited by” appears as a link under items returned in a result set. For example, the first opinion returned after a search for “347 U.S. 483″ indicates it is “Cited by” 32,903 sources.
Clicking on the link brings up a separate page which, before last week’s changes, sorted citing documents by their prominence but which are now ranked by the the extent of discussion of the cited case. This means that cases that support, overturn, or clarify an opinion are ranked above those that just mention it.
The significance is also visually displayed by a series of horizontal bars which now display next to the case or cited source with explanatory title text, e.g., “Discusses cited case at length”, “Discusses Cited Case” and “Discusses Cited Case Briefly.”
Democratic National Committee v. Republican National Committee
Election season is upon us, and an interesting opinion came out last week. In Democratic Nat’l Comm. v. Republican Nat’l Comm., the Third Circuit upheld a consent decree between the parties that restricted voter fraud enforcement actions.
According to the facts in the case, the Republican National Committee (RNC) was sued for voter intimidation in 1981:
The RNC allegedly created a voter challenge list by mailing sample ballots to individuals in precincts with a high percentage of racial or ethnic minority registered voters and, then, including individuals whose postcards were returned as undeliverable on a list of voters to challenge at the polls. The RNC also allegedly enlisted the help of off-duty sheriffs and police officers to intimidate voters by standing at polling places in minority precincts during voting with ‘National Ballot Security Task Force’ armbands. Some of the officers allegedly wore firearms in a visible manner.
Writer’s Picks: Loughner Competency, Concealed Carry on Campus, and Government Contracts
Our Justia caselaw summary writers have suggested some interesting cases from last week’s load.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a ruling in the case concerning Jared Lee Loughner, who is accused of shooting U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords, among others. In United States v. Loughner, the appellate court upheld the trial court’s decision permitting the defendant to be involuntarily medicated. The appellate court concluded that defendant was provided with the substance and procedure demanded by the Due Process Clause before the government involuntarily medicated him: the defendant clearly suffered from a severe mental illness, he represented a danger to himself or others, the prescribed medication was appropriate and in his medical interest, and the district court did not arbitrarily deny the motion to enjoin defendant’s emergency treatment.
Justia’s Top 10 Lists for February 2012
Here is a rundown of February’s highest scoring lawyers on Justia Legal Answers, along with a look at which Justia Dockets legal filings, Tech Law blog posts, and Facebook posts readers viewed the most.
Justia Legal Answers’ Top 10 Legal Answerers for February 2012
- Nick Passe, 1,600 points, 32 answers
- Jerry Lutkenhaus, 1,011 points, 32 answers
- Andrew Bresalier, 801 points, 25 answers
- Jeffrey Moore 351 points, 7 answers
- Peter Navis, 300 points, 6 answers
- Daniel Marc Berman, 250 points, 10 answers
- William S. Adams 215 points, 5 answers
- David Philip Shapiro, 150 points, 3 answers
- Timothy Belt, 150 points, 3 answers
- Ryan P. Sullivan, 150 points, 3 answers
Justia’s Daily Summary Weekly Writer’s Picks
The selections from our Daily Opinion Summary writers are pretty varied this week covering a World of Warcraft game gone bad, a tug of war between two District Courts over Park Service limits of snowmobilers, a suit alleging negligence in the prescription of medications which led to murder, and the rights of part-owners of a dairy located in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
First up, we have Laurel’s pick, which she aptly labeled, “every mother’s nightmare.”
U.S. v. Lucas
US 7th Cir (Filed 2/29/12)
While playing World of Warcraft online, defendant requested sexual pictures of CG, a minor. CG blocked him, but reinstated him in exchange for online “currency.” Defendant again sent sexual messages; CG again blocked him. Defendant, on release following arrest for possession of large-capacity firearms, paid to obtain CG’s address, told others he planned to kill CG, dug holes in his yard, and removed the release latch from his trunk. He amassed weapons, drove 20 hours to CG’s home, and impersonated an officer to lure CG out of the house and kidnap him. CG’s mother refused to allow defendant into the house. He pointed a handgun at her face, but she slammed the door and called police. He was arrested and pled guilty to brandishing a firearm during a crime of violence, 18 U.S.C. 924(c). The district court sentenced him to 210 months’ imprisonment. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. A district court may consider a wide range of conduct at sentencing, including acquitted conduct and dismissed offenses, and the sentencing ranges for those offenses. The court rejected arguments that the court treated defendant’s psychological conditions as an aggravating factor or impermissibly considered rehabilitation.
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Timezone Database Lawsuit Dropped
In October, we blogged about a lawsuit against the editors of tz info, the time zone database for Unix. The editors were sued by a company called Astrolabe, Inc., who claimed a copyright interest in data used to populate the database.
The lawsuit was voluntarily dismissed by the plaintiff this week. It turns out the EFF got involved. According to their statement,
“In January, EFF advised Astrolabe that Olson and Eggert would move for sanctions if Astrolabe did not withdraw its complaint. Today’s dismissal followed.”
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Writer’s Picks for February 24, 2012
The 10th Circuit decided an interesting FOIA case this week. In World Pub. Co. v. United States Dept. of Justice, the Court held that Tulsa World magazine was not entitled to six mugshots under the Freedom of Information Act. For more on this case, see posts on Politico and ABA Journal.
The Maryland Supreme Court denied a negligence claim against the state for serving a peanut butter sandwich to an allergic child through the free lunch program. In Pace v. State, the court found that the National School Lunch Act simply establishes a subsidized lunch program to benefit children at participating schools and did not impose a specific statutory duty of care towards children with food allergies.
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