The LAW & LAWYERS Blog

The nearly-20-year-old oil spill in Alaska’s Prince William Sound by the Exxon Valdex supertanker has once again grabbed national headlines, as the Supreme Court stepped in yesterday to change a lower court’s ruling on its penalty of punitive damages for the spill.   Originally, the oil giant was responsible for $507 million in compensatory damages to natives of Alaska, landowners and commercial fisherman whose lives and livelihoods were ruined by the 1989 incident, as well as a massive $5 billion penalty in punitive damages.

A California appeals court later reduced the punitive damages in half to $2.5 billion, before yesterday’s decision to match the punitive damages to the compensatory damages at $507 million.  Individuals will be compensated at roughly $15,000 each in this new settlement amount.

Justice David Souter, in writing the opinion of the 5-3 majority, stated that a one-to-one ratio is appropriate in maritime cases.  His wording left some doubt among legal experts as to whether or not the “one-to-one” ruling is applicable outside maritime law.

For more on recent and past Supreme Court decisions, visit the Total Lawyers news and articles section.

Via Techdirt, a CNet report/update on Real ID, the humdinger of an ID solution that’s supposed to be “anti-terrorism,” according to the Department of Homeland Security.  But with 45 states requesting waivers and the other 5 just not complying, DHS might have found the limit at which citizens will refuse to exchange civil rights for national security.  DHS touts the 45 states requesting waivers as progress, but it sounds more like they’re just biding time.

To refresh, the Real ID not only has bar-coded information like SSN and birth information on it, but it also connects to a single citizen database to cross-reference for suspected terrorists.  A lot of people think it sounds like one-stop shopping for identity thieves, which has cooled DHS’s enthusiasm.  The states could lead on this one, and it sounds like they’re firmly against it.

More on REAL ID at Total Lawyers.

In Tennessee, it is apparently becoming harder and harder to seat a jury. Under state law, jurors must be sober, and that seems to be one of the problems.

Anyone who is a habitual drunkard or who has been recently intoxicated is exempted from jury duty, and courts are finding that this is excluding many people and causing the jury pools to become tiny.

So now lawmakers in Tennesse are considering the possibility of maybe letting drunks serve on juries after all. This should turn out well, don’t you think?

You can read more about the drunk jurors in Tennessee in the legal articles section, right here at Total Lawyers.

I thought that would get your attention…

Officials in the city of Duncanville, Texas have moved to ban parties at the home of one of Duncanville’s residents, one Jim Trulock, for a host of complaints lodged by neighbors against the traffic and noise that these soirees generate. Currently, the town has a ban on sex clubs in residential areas, and has defined Trulock’s regular gathering as a “live sex business.”

Why, you might ask? The group naked activities that take place there, of course. Trulock has sued the city, claiming that they are unconstitutionally targeting his lifestyle and his right to be naked with dozens of his friends.

Read more about your constitutional right to play Naked Twister, only at Total Lawyers!

Former NYPD counterterrorism detective Anthony Chiofalo has filed a lawsuit in an attempt to get his job back after being fired.

Chiofalo was fired in August from the New York Police department after he failed a random drug screening. He denied using drugs and demanded a hearing and investigation.

During the investigation, Chiofalo’s wife was questioned. She confessed that she wanted for her husband to retire so badly, that in July 2005 she secretly put enough marijuana for about six cigarettes into meatballs that she fed her husband. She had hoped that he would fail a drug test and it would force him to retire.

Well, Chifalo, a 22-year veteran, isn’t ready to retire. He is asking the court to find that his firing was unreasonable and unconstitutional and he wants to be reinstated. He says that the hair sample that got him fired was improperly taken. His lawsuit also seeks back pay with interest, benefits and his seniority back.

According to court documents, Chifalo and his wife have both taken polygraph tests which concluded that they were telling the truth about the marijuana-spiked meatballs.

Chifalo says that his wife had used marijuana to relieve nausea caused by pain medication that she was taking.

Chifalo has support. An administrative judge has recommended that he be reinstated, however, police Commissioner Raymond Kelly rejected the recommendation and a department spokesman said “The officer’s excuse was not credible.”

Here at Total Lawyers, we’ve recently reported on possible constitutional rights violations perpetrated by public servants in the welfare industry in San Diego. Consider also the recent disclosure that NYC firefighters have been trained by the Department of Homeland Security in anti-terrorist tactics, some of which includes racial profiling and all of which can be described as “spying.”

But now we’ve got EMTs on the lookout for terrorists? A recent Conde Nast Traveler blog post by a New York state EMT named Stephan Wilkinson offers an overview and a sound opinion on the matter. And you can find the original article to which he is referring online.

Isn’t this all getting a little out of hand? What’s next, elementary school teachers handing over names of students who draw stick figures with guns? Oh yeah, I forgot.

In Topeka, Kansas, a man who agreed to be a sperm donor for a long time friend who wanted to have a baby is now fighting for parental rights to the twins he fathered.

Daryl Hendrix is a gay man who is in his 40s, and says decided that since he is mature and now financially able to support children, he agreed to provide his friend,  Samantha Harrington, with his sperm so that she could become pregnant.

According to Hendrix, Harrington assured him that they did not need a written agreement and that since she is a lawyer and they had been friends for 10 years, he believed her.  He says that on the second try, Harrington became pregnant and called him to say, “Congratulations Daddy.”

When the babies were born in May, 2005, Hendrix says that he got a nasty surprise when he attempted to go see the children at the hospital.  He was turned away and not allowed to see the newborn boy and girl.  He was then informed that sperm donors have no legal rights without a written agreement.  Harrington also filed legal documents asking that Hendrix have no legal rights to the children.

In October, the court upheld the 1994 Kansas law that denies Hendrix parental rights to the children in the absence of a written agreement.

Hendrix is appealing to the state Supreme Court and says that he will take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary.

During warehouse raids in Nashville and Lynchburg, Tennessee where Jack Daniels whiskey is made, officials seized 2,400 bottles of the whiskey.  Some of the bottles that were snatched in the raids are over 100 years old, and may not see another year.  It’s set to be poured right down the drain.

Fans of the historic whiskey are protesting the planned disposal of the Jack Daniels whiskey.

No one has been arrested, but officials say that some of the whiskey could have been stolen from the distillery and they suspect that it was being sold by someone without a license.

In Tennessee, the law dictates that whiskey that can not be legally sold must be destroyed.  That means that any bottles seized with labels designed for sale overseas and all of those with broken seals will be poured out.  Some of the bottles may be able to be sold at auction.

The estimated value of all the liquor seized is around $1 million.  Some of the antique bottles are now collector’s items.

One of the bottles is dated from 1914, and the seal on this bottle is unbroken.  That makes its worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $10,000.

In a striking victory for constitutional rights, a recent court decision has made it clear that First Amendment rights protect a writer operating under a pseudonym.

The New York State Supreme Court recently struck down a request in a lawsuit against Google to reveal the name of a blogger who writes under the name “Orthomom.” Lawrence County Schoolboard Trustee Pamela Greenbaum filed the suit against Orthomom, claiming that comments on her blog at orthomom.blogspot.com were “defamatory.”

According to reports, Greenbaum claimed that the writer of Orthomom called her a “bigot” and an “anti-semite.” In her decision, Judge Marcy Friedman first noted that the comments attributed to Orthomom were in fact posted by other bloggers and readers in the comments section of her blog, and then ruled that, regardless, the statements made were protected opinions, not defamatory comments.

More generally, Judge Friedman saw Greenbaum’s attempt to reveal the blogger’s true identity as an assault to constitutional rights. In her own words, she writes, “The relief sought by Greenbaum, on the eve of a school board election, would have a chilling effect on protected political speech.”

As Orthomom herself pointed out in a recent column in the Jewish Star, the Constitution has protected writers using pen names throughout U.S. history, including the writers of the Federalist papers, one of the most famous examples of American political critique.

With all of the confusion and outrage over the constitutional legitimacy of surveillance, wiretapping and torture that American governmental officials have been disclosing in recent months, it’s good to know that in some corners of the American legal landscape, the United States Constitution still remains unquestionable.

According to lawyers who have filed a lawsuit in Baltimore County Circuit Court against the Maryland State Police, some of their training documents contain inexcusable racial stereotypes about Hispanic people.

One of the documents in question reportedly says that “Hispanics generally do not hold their alcohol well.  They tend to drink too much and this leads to fights.”  The document apparently also notes that Hispanic men are raised to be “macho and brave”, but that hispanic females are trained to be “subservient”.

Other racial stereotypes said to be included in the police training documents include that Hispanics are reluctant to learn English and that their weapon of choice is a knife.

The head attorney for the Maryland State Police says that the documents in question were not part of the formal training manual for police officers and that there is no evidence that this material was ever given to the state troopers in Maryland.