The LAW & LAWYERS Blog

A woman in Alaska slipped on ice in a parking lot.  You’d have to imagine this kind of thing happens a lot, right?  It’s cold in Alaska and a reasonable person might expect ice.  You either be careful, or you could fall.

Well, this woman sued.  And to my surprise, a U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that she can sue the federal government for failing to remove the snow and ice.  In Alaska.  Where she fell and sustained a personal injury.

Carol Bolt fell outside her U.S. Army apartment at Fort Wainwright, Alaska in April, 1999.  She broke her ankle in the fall and has been permanently disabled ever since.

Lawyers for the federal government have argued that they are not liable, because the U.S. Army base has the has the same status as all other Alaskan municipalities.  Towns and cities in Alaska can not be sued for failing to remove snow and ice that naturally accumulates because, you know, it’s Alaska.

The three judge appeals panel disagreed and ruled that the federal government is basically the landlord in Alaska and therefore they should be required to keep common areas free of the ice and snow there.   Therefore, Bolt’s lawsuit againt the federal government can go forward.

This is a contest that no one wants to win, and no one really wants to see someone win either.  It is, however, a strong message about drunk driving and it comes at a time when people do need a reminder.

In Maryland, St. Mary’s newspaper has run an ad, and as tacky and tabloid-looking as it seems, the message is sobering.  Or so they hope.

The newspaper is having a custom coffin built and they will give it away free to the first person to kill themselves this holiday season by driving drunk.

The editor of the paper, Ken Rossignol, is a crusader against DUI.  Each week he publishes a list of those who have been arrested for DUI in the community.  He still feels that the message is just not getting through to people, so he came up with the coffin giveaway to raise awareness this holiday season.

Rossignol’s brother was killed in a drunk driving accident in 1975.  He hopes that no one claims the contest coffin.

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.

On Wednesday, OJ Simpson appeared in a Las Vegas courtroom to find out whether he would have to stand trial for allegedly robbing a sports memorabilia dealer at gunpoint.

After a four day preliminary hearing and hearing testimony from three of Simpson’s co-defendants, Justice of the Peace Joseph Bonaventure deliberated for about four hours. Bonaventure decided that Simpson and two of his accomplices, the ones who have not accepted plea deals, will stand trial on twelve criminal charges including robbery, conspiracy, assault with a deadly weapon, kidnapping and burglary.

Prosecutors in the trial have not made any comments about the case, but there are many questions that for now, go unanswered. We will all have to wait to see if a jury in this trial will be able to forget the “trial of the century” 12 years ago when Simpson was accused of murdering his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman.

There is also the matter of shady witnesses in the case. One of Simpson’s co-defendants admitted that his testimony could have been bought for the right price and he would have changed his story to testify for Simpson. He and other witnesses were portrayed as pimps, liars and con-artists by the defense lawyers.

Some legal experts following the trial have said that a plea deal for Simpson might not be out of the question. However, if no deal comes through for Simpson he will stand trial for these serious charges against him.

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.

Amy Fisher, the “Long Island Lolita” has sued a porn company that has plans to release a sex tape featuring her, for copyright infringement.

Fisher filed the lawsuit in New York Federal Court alleging that the sex tape was shot in private and her husband, Louis Bellera, had no right to sell the couple’s private home videos to Red Light District.

Bellera, a former police officer, allegedly made an agreement with Red Light District to distribute the tape without Fisher’s permission while the couple were separated.

In the ongoing custody battle between divorced couple Britney Spears and Kevin Federline, the court orders seem to just keep on coming.  Unfortunately, very few seem to be in Spears’ favor.

Court documents reveal that Federline has spent $160,000 in attorneys’ fees in the custody battle, and he requested that the court order Spears to pay up.

The paperwork submitted to the court say that Federline is self employed as a performing artist and has no income.

The judge dealt a blow to Spears, which I’m sure she is used to by now, and ordered her to pay $120,000 of her ex-husband’s legal expenses.

Six men who were on their way home after completing a Marines training exercise on Iraqi culture for the U.S. military at Camp Pendleton say that they were detained and humiliated by employees of American Airlines.

The men, who are of Iraqi descent, have sued American Airlines in the U.S. District Court in Detroit, Michigan, alleging racial discrimination.

In the lawsuit, the men claim that their flight from San Diego to Chicago on August 28 was grounded and they were detained as possible security risks after another passenger on the flight voiced concerns about them.

Some of the men are U.S. citizens, but after  a woman on the plane heard them speaking Arabic she alerted the airline that she was suspicious of them.

After the flight was grounded, the men were detained and they say they were treated like terrorists.

The men took a flight to Chicago on American Airlines the next day without incident.