Cases

California city uses GoFundMe.com for legal costs

May 9, 2018 By CCM Staff

The Go Fund Me page for the City of Los Alamitos legal defense.

Help with paying a dog’s veterinary bills. Funds to stage a benefit for a peanut vendor. Aid to a family recovering from a house fire. GoFundMe.com, the popular crowd-funding site, typically channels donations to individuals with specific fundraising needs.

But in California, where clashes over immigration policy continue to rage, one community has resorted to using GoFundMe.com to bankroll a legal battle involving the state and its immigration policy.

“Please help the City of Los Alamitos in our fight against Sanctuary Law and our support of the U.S. Constitution,” reads the page titled, “Mayor Edgar’s – Stop Sanctuary Law.” “Please contribute to our GoFund Me Page for the City’s legal defense. The funds will go directly to the City to pay for our legal costs.”

The Go Fund Me page indicated that in roughly a month, $21,544 had been raised toward the city’s $100,000 goal.

A FindLaw blog reported on the larger legal dispute, noting, “The city of Los Alamitos, located in Orange County, is facing a lawsuit over a recently enacted ordinance permitting the city residents and officials to disregard the state of California’s recently passed sanctuary state law. … But, in response to the Los Alamitos law, concerned residents, through the ACLU and other groups, filed a lawsuit seeking to stop the city’s law from taking effect.”

The state law faces its own legal challenges, but city officials weren’t content to wait for that litigation to play out.

“Curiously, Los Alamitos has actually set up a GoFundMe page seeking donations to fund the litigation,” FindLaw reported. “And if you thought this curious idea was the result of some social media intern on the cutting edge, it was the town’s mayor, Troy Edgar, that launched the page.”

The L.A. Times reported in April, “Los Alamitos Mayor Troy Edgar said he could not comment on the pending lawsuit but stated that it will prompt him to focus on promoting a GoFundMe page that he launched last month to help pay for legal costs.”

Filed Under: Cases Tagged With: California, California ACLU, City of Los Alamitos, crowd funding, GoFundMe, Sanctuary Law, U.S. Constitution

Courts Monitor publisher Sara Corcoran tells the tale of legal enigma in her recent Buzzfeed article

May 7, 2018 By CCM Staff

Debating the “nature of existence” is more the stuff of college dorms (and at least one recent documentary) than state appeals courts, so the legal team for a Texas journalist seeking to open a 20-year-old deposition transcript might have been taken aback when the debate arose not from the other side, but from the bench.

At issue is a deposition by a Texas attorney named Russell Budd, part of the politically connected Dallas-based firm Barron & Budd that rose to prominence, in large part, due to successfully representing asbestos victims. The Russell Budd deposition from 20 years ago reportedly addresses a “witness coaching memo” that was as controversial then as it is now.

Courts Monitor publisher Sara Corcoran tells the tale of this legal enigma in her recent Buzzfeed article, Texas Attorney General Paxton On Point To Open Mystery Testimony.

Filed Under: Asbestos, Cases Tagged With: asbestos, asbestos lawsuits, asbestos litigation, asbestos victims, Sara Corcoran, Texas attorney Russell Budd, witness coaching memo

If Supreme Court upholds President Trump’s travel ban, will it rein in district judges who have opposed it?

April 27, 2018 By CCM Staff

Photo Credit: Evan Vucci / Associated Press as reported in Los Angeles Times, 4/25/18

A travel ban that limits immigration may secure a key legal victory at the U.S. Supreme Court, based on comments from justices on April 25, a major newspaper predicts.

The L.A. Times reports, “The Supreme Court’s conservative justices sounded ready Wednesday to uphold President Trump’s travel ban, potentially giving the embattled White House a big legal victory after a series of defeats in the lower courts.”

The third version of a travel ban “bars the entry of most immigrants and travelers from Iran, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and North Korea as well as officials from Venezuela,” the L.A. Times reports.

“The justices issued a ruling in June that allowed the second version of the travel ban to take partial effect. Then, in December, with only two dissents, they set aside lower-court rulings to allow the administration to put the third version into practice, a strong indicator of where the majority was headed,” the newspaper reports.

This brings up the question about whether this ruling will override the “increasingly common practice of district judges handing down nationwide orders based on a suit brought by a handful of plaintiffs,” such as the district judge’s order in Hawaii that blocked the travel ban nationwide.

Filed Under: Cases, civil gideon Tagged With: U.S. Supreme Court

Suit spurs $6.4 million ‘revenge porn’ judgment

April 25, 2018 By CCM Staff

Elisa D’Amico, a lawyer with the Cyber Civil Rights Legal Project, as reported in the New York Times, 4/11/18. Photo credit: Jake Naughton for The New York Times.

In a relatively new area of law, a major court verdict has been handed down against a perpetrator of “revenge porn.”

This phenomenon involves the distribution of sexually explicit images or video of someone without their consent. A flurry of legislation across the United States now has culminated in a $6.4 million judgment, considered one of the largest ever.

On April 11, the New York Times reported on the case, which involved a California woman and her boyfriend. They ended their relationship in 2013, but “he began to post sexual photographs and videos of her on pornography websites and to impersonate her in online dating forums, according to court documents,” the New York Times reported. “He threatened to make her life ‘so miserable she would want to kill herself.’ … In 2014, the woman, who was listed as Jane Doe in court documents to protect her identity, sued her former boyfriend, David K. Elam II, in United States District Court in California to get him to stop. Four years passed, until the court awarded her $6.4 million on April 4, in one of the biggest judgments ever in a so-called revenge porn case.”

According to the article, “The California case was one of the first lawsuits filed by the Cyber Civil Rights Legal Project, an initiative started in 2014 by K&L Gates, a Pittsburgh law firm, to litigate against online harassment and the non-consensual posting of explicit material…”

Filed Under: Cases Tagged With: California District Court, Cyber Civil Rights Legal Project, online harassment, pornography, Revenge porn, website pornography

California court backlogs persist in civil, criminal arenas

April 9, 2018 By CCM Staff

Photo Credit: Don Bartletti, Los Angeles Times as reported on 5/10/14.

Budget cuts have contributed to delays in the processing of civil cases in California Superior Courts, a television news investigation revealed.

NBC Bay Area reported on the problem five years ago, confirming a situation covered by the state’s other major media.

And earlier this year, the news station revisited the crisis, noting that criminal cases also are caught up in the backlog.

“An NBC Bay Area analysis of state court disposition data shows thousands of felony criminal cases have been delayed for years, and sometimes even decades, in jurisdictions around California,” NBC Bay Area reported in February. “The analysis shows Santa Clara County Superior Court and San Francisco County Superior Court have some of the largest criminal court backlogs and the lowest percentage of felony cases resolved within a year in the state.”

In 2013, NBC Bay Area delved into the situation, noting, “Thousands of Californians, including residents of the Bay Area, must wait up to four times as long as normal to get their day in court. Some residents now wait five years or longer to have their civil complaints heard by a judge or jury. Some residents are dying while waiting for their day in court.”

NBC Bay Area conducted an analysis of state Superior Court data, showing delays in every one of the state’s 58 Superior Court systems.

“In all nine Bay Area county Superior Courts, the Unit found longer delays in processing and scheduling of civil cases on their calendars. … The reason: years and years of budget cuts to the court system, the third branch of government, by the state legislature in Sacramento. According to state court officials, across the state, 175 courtrooms have been closed due to budget cuts.”

In 2014, the Los Angeles Times reported on similar backlogs to civil cases.

“Civil cases are facing growing delays in getting to trial, and court closures have forced residents in some counties to drive several hours for an appearance. The effects vary from county to county, with rural regions hit the hardest but no court left unscathed,” the newspaper reported.

Filed Under: Cases, civil gideon Tagged With: Bay Area county Superior Courts, california courts backlog, california immigration court, civil cases, immigration backlog

U.S. Supreme Court clears way for Flint, Mich. class-action lawsuits

March 30, 2018 By CCM Staff

Photo Credit: AP Photo/Carlos Osorio as reported by NRDC, 3/28/17.

Two class-action lawsuits by residents of Flint, Mich., based on lead contamination of the water supply, can proceed under civil rights statutes, the U.S. Supreme Court has determined.

Reuters reported on the decision, which “left in place a July 2017 ruling by the Cincinnati, Ohio-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that revived the litigation after the lawsuits were thrown out by a lower court.”

While the Flint water contamination gained much media coverage, The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) provided a good overview of the timeline: “On April 25, 2014, officials looking to save money switched Flint, Michigan’s drinking water supply from the Detroit city system to the Flint River. This new water was highly corrosive. Because city and state officials broke federal law by failing to treat it, lead leached out from aging pipes into thousands of homes.”

A separate legal settlement requires the city and the State of Michigan to replace Flint’s lead and galvanized steel service lines within three years and $97 million to pay for the replacement of pipes, the NRDC reported.

Filed Under: Cases Tagged With: 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, aging pipes, Detroit, drinking water, Flint, Michigan, The Natural Resources Defense Council, US Supreme Court

Trump administration targets opioid manufacturers

March 26, 2018 By CCM Staff

President Trump and the U.S. Justice Department have championed lawsuits against opioid manufacturers as part of a broader push to stem the deadly rise in opioid addiction.

CNBC reported that the U.S. Justice Department launched a new task force to “target the makers and distributors of prescription painkillers who, according to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, have contributed to an epidemic of fatal overdoses from opioids by selling too much of the addictive drugs.”

Sessions said he is ordering the task force “to examine existing state and local government lawsuits against opioid manufacturers to determine if we can be of assistance,” CNBC reported.

President Trump made his first visit to New Hampshire since the 2016 election on Monday, March 19, when he rolled out a plan to curb opioid addiction.

The New York Times noted that the plan included “the death penalty for drug dealers and a crackdown on illegal immigrants.”

New Hampshire experienced the nation’s third-highest rate of deaths from overdoses, The New York Times reported. “Drug overdoses killed roughly 64,000 people in the United States in 2016, according to initial estimates from the C.D.C., and have become the leading cause of death for Americans under 50,” the newspaper reported.

In response to the President’s speech, Sessions said he assigned “a dozen experienced prosecutors in opioid hot-spot districts to focus solely on investigating and prosecuting opioid-related health care fraud.”

President Trump visited NH on 3/19/18 to speak about the opioid epidemic. Photo credit: Doug Mills/The New York Times as reported by
The New York Times
on 3/19/18.

Sessions, in a speech on Thursday, March 22, noted that the President has voiced his “strong support for the Department of Justice’s new Prescription Interdiction and Litigation — or PIL — Task Force,” which will “focus on and coordinate the Department’s efforts to investigate, prosecute or bring lawsuits against opioid manufacturers and distributors who have unlawfully contributed to this epidemic” and will review existing laws. It will also consider assisting with ongoing state and local government lawsuits against opioid manufacturers.

Filed Under: Cases Tagged With: drug abuse, drug overdoses, New York Times, opioid crisis, opioid manufacturers, Prescription Interdiction and Litigation (PIL), Trump Administration, U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Justice Department

Fertility clinic malfunction spurs Calif. lawsuit

March 19, 2018 By CCM Staff

After a tank failed, a California-based fertility clinic was confronted with a class action lawsuit due to damage to the eggs of potentially hundreds of clients.

A San Francisco woman, who was assured that her eggs would remain frozen until she needed them, brought the litigation. The case was filed in the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, San Francisco Division.

“In this first suit to be filed after a rare malfunction that remains under investigation, the woman, who remains anonymous for privacy, is seeking compensation for negligence and breach of contract from the Prelude Fertility, where she received treatment in 2016, and Pacific Fertility Center, which stored her eggs,” The Mercury News reported.

The eggs and embryos of hundreds of other patients “were stored in malfunctioning Tank No. 4 at Pacific Fertility Center’s lab on Francisco Street — and are now presumed damaged.”

The law firm, Sauder Schelkopf of Berwyn, Penn., is seeking a class action certification, “saying that at least 400 individuals may have been harmed by the incident.”

Filed Under: Cases Tagged With: fertility clinic, Pacific Fertility Center

Appeals court upholds Texas ban on ‘sanctuary cities’

March 19, 2018 By CCM Staff

Photo credit: REUTERS/Jon Herskovitz/File Photo, as reported in the article U.S. court upholds most of Texas law to punish ‘sanctuary cities’ on March 13, 2018.

A Texas ban on “sanctuary cities,” which threatens sheriffs, police chiefs and other officials with jail time and removal from office if they do not cooperate with federal immigration authorities, can take effect while legal challenges proceed, an appeals court ruled on Tuesday, 3/15.

Reuters reported, “The law was the first of its kind since Republican Donald Trump became president in January 2017, promising to crack down on illegal immigration and communities that protect the immigrants.”

While upholding the bulk of the law, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a provision “to punish local officials who endorse policies running contrary to the law.”

The New York Times explained, “The law in question — Senate Bill 4, passed by the Texas Legislature in May 2017 — requires police chiefs and sheriffs to cooperate with federal immigration officials, and allows the police to question the immigration status of anyone they arrest. It was passed in response to the proliferation of sanctuary cities, which restrict such cooperation and have gained national attention as President Trump pursues stricter immigration policies.”

Filed Under: Cases, civil gideon Tagged With: 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Federal Immigration Courts, sanctuary cities, Trump Administration

Remington mum about effects of bankruptcy on settlement

March 9, 2018 By CCM Staff

Photo credit: Reuters file photo as reported on 2/8/18.

The 202-year-old gun manufacturer Remington is not disclosing whether a pending bankruptcy filing will jeopardize a class action settlement involving its Model 700 bolt-action rifle.

“Neither Remington nor its attorneys responded to multiple emails about whether the company intends to abide by the agreement in the event of a bankruptcy filing,” CNBC reported. “While the settlement includes a guarantee that the company will meet its financial obligations under the agreement, it does not address the possibility of a bankruptcy.”

Reuters reported in February, “Remington, which is controlled by buyout firm Cerberus Capital Management LP, was abandoned by some of Cerberus’ private equity fund investors after one of its Bushmaster rifles was used in the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in Connecticut in 2012 that killed 20 children and six adults. … Remington’s sales plunged 27 percent in the first nine months of 2017, resulting in a $28 million operating loss.”

CNBC reported, “Remington has agreed to replace millions of triggers on the 700 and a dozen other models to settle allegations that, for decades, the company covered up a deadly design defect that allowed the guns to fire without the trigger being pulled.”

The company denies any cover-up or the defect, but acknowledged the fix could cost as much as half a billion dollars, CNBC reported. “There are real concerns that with the bankruptcy no guns will be fixed at all.”

Filed Under: Cases Tagged With: bolt action rifle, Bushmaster rifle, firearms, gun control, gun defects, Remington, Sandy Hook elementary school, school shootings