Google Wins Appeal Decision On Scanning Copyrighted Books

October 16, 2015 By
Google has won an appeals decision on its controversial book-scanning practice. New York based U.S. Circuit Court Judge Denny Chin ruled that the practice is “transformative” and does not violate copyright. The Google case hinges on not making the books totally available online. Rather, it allows the material to be searched and provides “snippets.” Thus, the argument goes, the practice is protected by the same “fair use” provisions that allow a book reviewer to use snippets in their reports.
 
NPR’s report on the decision notes that “… Google began scanning books back in 2004. Many of the works were by living authors. The Authors Guild took legal action against Google, demanding $750 for each book it scanned. Google estimated that it would have cost the company $3 billion.” Google also predicts the service could make older and out-of-print books more relevant.
 
An appeal to the U.S. Supreme court is promised by the authors and others seeking to protect their work. They argue that, because Google sells ads next to those “snippets” of books, it profits from their work without compensating the copyright holders. See the NPR report here: Judge: Google’s Book Copying Doesn’t Violate Copyright Law
Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget, National Tagged With: , , ,

Texas To Rule On Civil Fees Issue

October 13, 2015 By
The Texas Supreme Court is expected to hear a case this week that might clarify when local courts can force poor plaintiffs to pay fees. The Texas Tribune news website explains that”… in 2012, six plaintiffs from Tarrant County sued the local district court clerk for charging them court fees even after they filed affidavits of their indigent status — also known as ‘pauper petitions’ — when they filed for divorce. But the clerk says final divorce decrees require that each party pay its share of the court costs.” 
 
The Tribune report also placed the issue in some context: “… court costs and fines surfaced as one of the more pressing criminal justice issues in the aftermath of the police shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014. While a grand jury cleared the officer, Darren Wilson, of criminal wrongdoing, a subsequent U.S. Department of Justice report revealed how the police department in Ferguson wrote more tickets for mostly poor African Americans than any other ethnic group. Following the shooting of Brown, federal investigators found that Ferguson relied on municipal ticketing and fines as a revenue generator for the city’s budget.”
 
Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget, National Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

NY Mayor Predicts Legal Right To Civil Lawyers

October 8, 2015 By
The Wall Street Journal reported (9/29/15) that New York Mayor Bill de Blasio sees "a day not too far away when indigent defendants have a legal right to a lawyer in civil cases."

The Wall Street Journal reported (9/29/15) that New York Mayor Bill de Blasio sees “a day not too far away when indigent defendants have a legal right to a lawyer in civil cases.”

He admits that local jurisdictions will need federal help to make it happen, but New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is predicting that he can “see the day” when indigent defendants have a legal right to a lawyer in civil cases. The mayor was speaking at one of  a series of hearings led by New York’s chief appeals judge on the topic of civil legal services. His comments illustrate that New York continues to lead the nation in providing civil attorneys for life-changing cases like eviction and child custody disputes.
 
The Wall Street Journal is among those reporting on the civil Gideon effort, backgrounding that “… in the landmark 1963 case Gideon v. Wainwright, the Supreme Court recognized an indigent defendant’s right to an attorney in a criminal trial. But the high court has never extended the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of counsel to civil cases. The story quotes New York State Court of Appeals Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman, who has led the conversation: “We are talking about the necessities, or essentials, of life… we mean the roof over someone’s head, we mean their physical safety, their livelihoods, the well-being of their families, entitlement issues.”
 
Filed Under: Border Kids, National, Profiles, Refugee Children Tagged With: , , , , ,

Florida Is Facing Its Civil Justice Challenges

October 7, 2015 By
 
Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Jorge Labarga (Photo: floridasupremecourt.org)

Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Jorge Labarga (Photo: floridasupremecourt.org)

When Florida Chief Justice Jorge Labarga organized a statewide commission to study civil justice access issues, it was suspected that one benefit might be to at least create conversation around the issue. While other progress might be slow in coming, you can at least point to ongoing discussion as a success. A case in point is a recent Gainesville Sun newspaper editorial getting picked up around the state.
 
The piece notes that when “… someone faces a legal problem with a landlord, a family law issue or other civil disputes, finding and affording the right lawyer can be a challenge. The World Justice Project ranked the United States 65th out of 99 countries in accessibility and affordability of civil justice… the problem is particularly bad in Florida. An estimated 60 percent of residents can’t afford an attorney to address their legal need, but don’t qualify for legal aid, according to officials with The Florida Bar.”
 
The editorial addresses the idea of matching young lawyers with clients via technology and reports on a bar association push-back on using a dues increase to fund improvements. Clearly, it continues the civil justice conversation that other states should be having. Read more here.
Filed Under: Community Tagged With: , , , , ,

AZ Case Shows How Little Border Patrol Fears Courts

October 6, 2015 By

Anyone looking for an example of Border Patrol officials basically ignoring the U.S. courts might check out a southern Arizona case. Migrants there have long complained about dirty and overcrowded cells, explains the Arizona Republic newspaper, and about being held in frigid cells deprived of adequate food and water, not to mention denied medical care. The ACLU and other groups sued, and the Republic explains that “… a federal judge then ordered the Border Patrol to save all video surveillance tapes dating back to June 10 at the eight holding facilities in the Tucson sector, one of the nation’s busiest, in response to a request from the ACLU seeking evidence to prove its case.”

But it turns out the Border Patrol has since “willfully” destroyed video recordings in direct violation of U.S. District Court Judge David C. Bury’s order, the newspaper says. Government officials say it was a technical problem. The judge issued sanctions (no doubt strongly worded!) but otherwise there seem few consequences to defying the court.” See the story here.

Filed Under: Border Kids Tagged With: , , , ,

Most Immigration Judges Can Retire Now If They Want

October 5, 2015 By
With a Sept. 30 deadline passed, more than half of the United States 247 immigration judges, staffing 58 courts nationwide, are eligible to retire. This as the nation faces an immigration courts backlog of more than 450,000 cases. The Los Angeles Times offers a truly alarming look at the situation, starting with outlining that some judges – who are not actually federal judges but employees of the Justice Department – preside over thousands of cases.
 
The LAT also notes that “… the U.S. attorney general appoints immigration judges. Officials have already started ‘an aggressive hiring process,’ said Kathryn Mattingly, an immigration court spokeswoman. They have hired 18 judges, five more will start this fiscal year, and they plan to hire an additional 67, she said. Last fiscal year, about 100 judges were eligible to retire, but only 13 did, she said.” But the paper quotes current judges lamenting how much more difficult working conditions have become.
 
Filed Under: Border Kids, Courts Budget, National Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Huffington Post Documents How Bad Civil Courts Rationing Is

October 1, 2015 By
Rationing justice, civil and criminal, begins with overburdened courts. And Huffington Post just released well-researched report on just how bad it’s become on a federal level, with more than 60 judgeships going unfilled and pleas for more help being ignored by the U.S. Congress. In some cases, judges are handling hundreds more cases than “normal” while pushing cases further and further away, threatening anyone’s hopes of achieving justice.
 
The report explains: “The Huffington Post talked to half a dozen federal judges about how court vacancies and the lack of new judgeships affect their workloads. All of them said they feel like they’re underwater and desperately need more judges, but at the same time, they aren’t comfortable calling out Congress for failing to do its job. Many didn’t feel it appropriate for a judge to weigh in on legislative or political matters. So their situations don’t change.”
 
It includes: “For the most part, we’ve just resigned ourselves that this is our fate and there’s nothing we can do about it,” said Judge Morrison England Jr., the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, which includes O’Neill’s Fresno division. “We’ve complained. We’ve begged. We’ve cajoled. We’ve done everything you can humanly do to try to get additional judgeships.” Yahoo adds that the Fresno division is among the hardest hit in the country, and even getting the allotted judges would not meet caseload demand.
 
 
Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget, National Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

VICE News Looking Hard At Migrant Family Lockups

September 30, 2015 By
The VICE media network has made a living off covering stories under-reported by mainstream (or, more accurately, “more mainstream”) media, and it is focusing on American jails this week. Mostly that is going to involve criminal lockups, but the VICE News is reporting on the family lockups facing a federal judge’s order to release families – and how the government is likely to work around that order.
 
The report notes what other have missed: “With tens of thousands of migrants flooding into Europe in recent months, it’s easy to forget that the US faced its own refugee crisis last summer when scores of children and mothers bolted from Central America amid heightened gang and drug violence. Desperate for a safe haven, the families mounted buses and trains through Mexico and then poured across the Texas border, seeking political asylum.” To that we would add: Last summer? How about now?
 
VICE gives some context: “… to combat the influx, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) launched an “aggressive deterrence” strategy last July designed to discourage more people from coming. The solution, DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson announced, was to lock up Central American moms and kids as they fought their asylum cases in court. Previously, DHS did not detain such families, but rather allowed them to pay a small bond as an assurance they would show up to their court dates.
 
The new DHS strategy spawned a massive, long-term family detention system for Central American people seeking asylum in the US. The agency contracted the nation’s two biggest private prison companies to open facilities in southern Texas that hold about 3,000 people combined and cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars to operate. Many families have spent seven or eight months in detention while awaiting their day in court.”
 
Check out what very likely is going to happen next here.
Filed Under: Border Kids, Courts Budget, National Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Charter Schools Efforts Play Out In Courts

September 29, 2015 By
Dan Walters, the Sacramento Bee columnist who is picked up by other papers statewide, has noted the ongoing school reform battles that usually end up in civil court. In the context of state officials handing off to local jurisdictions, he noted that they “… haven’t succeeded in persuading judges that they can wash their hands of responsibility, most recently in a suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of high-risk students, alleging that they hadn’t received the attention state and federal law require.”
 
“A state cannot abdicate its supervisory responsibilities by ignoring credible evidence of persistent or significant district noncompliance,” Los Angeles Superior Court Judge James Chalfant declared in a recent 45-page decision. “If districts fail to provide services and the state has notice of this failure, the state has a duty … to take reasonable action.”
 
Faced with that, writes Walters, state officials backed down and agreed to monitor what districts are doing for high-risk kids. The writer does not make this point, but the column offers an example of how much civil courts have become policy-setting bodies. Read the story here.
Filed Under: Cases, Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: , , , ,

As Government Delays, Civil Lawsuits Set Pot Policies

September 28, 2015 By
As California considers a sweeping regulatory changes in how it handles marijuana use, the civil courts continue to define how laws will actually be applied. A good recent example, covered by NBC in San Diego, involves a “… couple whose home was raided by agents with guns drawn” who has filed a lawsuit against San Diego law enforcement, alleging their rights as medical marijuana patients were violated.
 
The report points out that “… the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court is the latest example of the ongoing debate over the rights of medical marijuana patients in California – how their treatment is regulated and how, according to their attorney, these type of cases are perceived by law enforcement.” This particular couple had previously arrested and put on trial for marijuana infractions, but found innocent.
Filed Under: Cannabis in the Courts, Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: , , , , ,
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