Defense to Begin Stating Its Case in Rutgers Trial

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
Superior Court Judge Glenn Berman presides over the case of Dharun Ravi, the former Rutgers University student Thursday, March 8, 2012 in New Brunswick, N.J. Prosecutors rested their case Thursday in the trial of Ravi, a former Rutgers University student, setting the stage for lawyers to begin their defense of the young man accused of using a webcam to spy on his roommate's intimate encounter with another man. (AP Photo/The Star-Ledger, John Munson, Pool)

After 10 days of testimony and more than 20 witnesses, the prosecution in the Rutgers University cyberbullying trial has rested its case. Today, the defense will have its chance to call witnesses to the stand, including investigators, other students and character witnesses.

In addition, defense lawyers attempted to get nine of the 15 charges brought against Dharun Ravi dropped. The motion to dismiss covered all invasion of privacy and bias intimidation charges. Superior Court Judge Glenn Berman outright declined to throw out five of the counts. He also said he would likely keep the other four counts, an issue he is expected to rule on this morning. The other six charges that the defense didn’t try to dismiss were all related to hindering apprehension and witness tampering.

When disputing the charge of bias intimidation, a hate crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison, Ravi’s lawyers argued that Ravi did not purposefully act to intimidate his roommate, Tyler Clementi.

“How can you have the purpose to intimidate somebody if what you’re doing is intended to be kept from the person who is the supposed target?” the attorney said.

Ravi is accused of using a Webcam to spy on Clementi engaged in intimate contact with another man on two occasions and using Twitter to encourage others to tune in and watch. Clementi, who read the tweets, committed suicide the day after the second spying attempt.

View the original article here

Editor’s Choice: Jury Awards Edition

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

 

Smoker’s widow wins $41 million against maker of Newport cigarettes

The widow of a lifetime smoker won a $41 million jury verdict against tobacco company Lorillard for the death of her husband.

Dorothy and Coleman Alexander met in high school and were married for 38 years until her husband died in 1995, at age 59, of lung cancer. He had smoked Newport cigarettes for decades. 

She sued Lorillard claiming that cigarettes are a defective and unreasonably dangerous product and that the company left important information about the health dangers of cigarettes off the packaging.

Attorney Alex Alvarez

Last week, the jury agreed that most of the reason for Coleman’s death was Lorillard’s negligence. It awarded Dorothy a total of $20 million in damages to compensate for her loss, but it also found that Coleman was 20 percent at fault for his own death, reducing the damages to $16 million.

On March 6, the jury returned and considered whether to punish the company with additional damages and awarded Dorothy another $25 million.  

“One of the most difficult things to do is to lose your husband, the love of your life, and then she went on and fought one of the largest businesses in America, and fought for justice,” said Alexander’s lawyer, Alex Alvarez, after the jury announced the punitive damages verdict.

The tobacco company had argued to the jury that it shouldn’t be punished for selling a legal product.

“Lorillard complies with all of the laws and all of the regulations that govern the manufacture, marketing and sale of cigarettes,” Lorillard’s attorney Ed Cheffy said to the jury.

The company said it plans to appeal the verdict.

Learn about product liability law or contact a lawyer to help you with your legal questions.

Doctor loses appeal of $20.5 million verdict for baby’s birth
Attorneys Jeffrey and Lynn Sare Kornblau

An obstetrician lost his appeal of a $20.5 million jury award against him for medical mistakes during the birth of a baby who didn’t get enough oxygen and now lives with cerebral palsy and blindness.

Dr. Richard Behlke asked Pennsylvania’s highest court to overturn the jury’s award and give him a new trial.

The story dates back to 2001, when Laura White, pregnant with her son, thought there was something wrong with him. According to her lawsuit, she called her regular doctor, who was unavailable. Instead, Dr. Behlke, who was not her primary obstetrician, told her to go to Community Medical Center. She was then hooked up to a fetal monitor that showed the baby was in distress. The medical center’s nurses called Dr. Behlke, but he did not arrive until two hours later, even though the baby was “getting very little oxygen,” according to the suit.

After a trial in 2008 against Dr. Behlke and Community Medical Center,  a jury awarded the parents $20.5 million and assigned 60 percent of the blame to Dr. Behlke and 40 percent to Community Medical Center. The medical center agreed to pay $6 million under an agreement it reached with the Whites after trial and was not part of the appeal.

White’s lawyers Jeffrey Kornblau and Lynn Sare Kornblau had said after the trial that almost all the money would go for the baby’s 24-hour care for the rest of his life.

Learn about medical malpractice or contact an attorney to answer questions about your legal issue.

Family of man killed by trucker high on meth wins $5.2 million
Michael Leizerman

The family of a man plowed down by a trucker coming off a crystal meth high and falling asleep at the wheel won a $5.2 million jury award.

Daniel Clarey was driving a tractor trailer for Washington Transportation, hauling bottled water for Nestle Co., when he struck and killed Kelly Linhart who was standing on the side of the road checking his brakes.

Instead of suing Clarey who is serving a sentence after pleading guilty to negligent homicide and DUI, Linhart’s family sought damages from the broker, Heyl Logistics, that hired Washington Transportation.

The Linharts’ attorney, Michael Leizerman, argued that the Heyl should have done a better job of screening the company it hired to truck the goods.

The trial revealed that Heyl Logistics hired Forrest Rangeloff, who claimed to operate Washington Transportation, a company owned by his twin brother Eric Rangeloff. In fact, Washington Transportation was not covered by insurance and didn’t have operating authority. The brothers both had their authority revoked for different violations including failing to drug test their drivers.

“This wasn’t just about money, it was about sending a message,” the family’s attorney said. “There is little government oversight of transportation brokers. Brokers are essentially middlemen that hire truck companies for shippers. But there is no regulatory watchdog to oversee brokers’ hiring practices. Right now, it’s up to the courts to keep our roads safer by providing some deterrent to careless brokers.”

Learn about personal injury  or contact an attorney for help in reviewing your legal issues.

Bank of America customer mistaken for robber wins $3.3 million verdict

A bank customer who wanted only to cash his hard-earned check at Bank of America but instead got mistaken for a robber and beaten up by police, won a $3.3 million jury verdict.

Rodolfo Valladares walked into a Bank of America branch near North Miami Beach, Fla. and asked to cash a $100 check. A nervous bank teller thought he looked like a robber and sounded a silent alarm. Police moved in, handcuffed him and kicked him in the head.

Valladares, a former mortgage loan officer who still suffers from headaches, blurred vision and post-traumatic stress disorder from the incident, sued the bank for negligence in triggering the alarm and not canceling it after they realized they had the wrong man.

At the time, bank tellers had been warned about an Hispanic man wearing a Miami Heat hat who had been robbing banks in the area. The bank issued a surveillance photo of the suspect, but the teller didn’t compare Valladares to the photo.

But according to the lawsuit, the teller had no reason to suspect Valladares, who handed over his check with his driver’s license and “displayed no weapon, made no threat and demanded no money.” He even invited the teller to a July 4th barbecue during the transaction.

As his attorneys argued, Valladares did not look like the robbery suspect in the photo, who was in his 60s and weighed about 145 pounds. Vallardares was in his 40s and weighed over 200 pounds.

“He wasn’t even wearing the same Miami Heat hat [as the suspect],” said his attorney, Mark G. DiCowden. “If Bank of America had required its tellers to keep pictures of robbers at the teller stations, this whole incident would have never happened.”

Learn about personal injury or contact an attorney for help in reviewing your legal issues related.

View the original article here

Fighting Like Cats and Dogs…Over Cats and Dogs

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Traditionally, divorce-court judges determining custody usually rule that any pets in the household will follow the children. But what happens if there are no children?

Increasingly, pets themselves are the subject of custodial disputes in divorce proceedings, according to Kenneth P. Altshuler, a Portland, Maine, divorce attorney who is the current president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. In 2006, AAML conducted a survey of its members and found that they had seen a marked increase in pet custody cases since 2001. And based on his own practice and from what he’s hearing from his peers around the country, Altshuler believes it’s become ever more commonplace since then.

Kenneth P. Altshuler

One of the reasons, he says, is the expansion of same-sex marriages, civil unions, and domestic partnerships, which are less apt to involve children and more likely to result in a fight over who gets the pets. But the advent of these new arrangements has also had an impact on how judges decide who gets what when they fall apart.

“We’ve got new fringes that the law hasn’t caught up with,” Altshuler says, “so it’s not hard for judges to think out of the box and get away from traditional ways of thinking. They’re recognizing more and more that pets are part of the family.”

And if animals are now being seen as family members, that means that if a spouse in a divorce proceeding wants to get custody of the pet they must be prepared to make an argument that goes beyond mere ownership.

“It used to be that pets were chattel (property),” Altshuler says. “Just like the living room furniture got divided up, so did pets. There was kind of this sense that they were treated as property, but not like children. But now I’m seeing a trend where pets are being treated as more than property. So my advice to clients and consumers is: You need to show the judge the emotional bond you have with this pet; you have to show that this pet is a child replacement for you, that this is your child. This is not that unusual and judges certainly understand that.”

Like many divorce lawyers, Altshuler has several amusing anecdotes about animal disputes that weren’t funny at all to the spouses and partners involved in them.

One of his favorites involved a husband and wife who battled over who would get custody of a pet python. The woman said that she loved the python and had evidence to prove it in the form of a snapshot with the snake draped around her. However, she was unable to feed the python in the proper fashion—by giving it live mice—and argued that she had friends who did it and would continue to do it.

Altshuler’s client, the husband, contended that this shortcoming proved that he deserved ownership. “He said, ‘What happens if you can’t find someone to feed the python? The python could starve to death,’” Altshuler says.

His client got the python.

Even though couples increasingly end up battling over pet custody, Altshuler says there’s no evidence to suggest that they’re aware of that prospect and including animals in either prenuptial or post-marriage agreements.

“If a client comes in to me for a prenup, that’s one of them the items on my checklist. I’ll ask, ‘Do you have a pet?’ But, for whatever reason, parties don’t seem to be too worked up about pets in prenup agreements or postnup agreements, which I think is a big mistake on their part. I’m guessing it’s because they don’t think the pet’s going to live that long. They think the relationship will outlive the pet.”

When it doesn’t, the fight is on.

View the original article here

Jurors Hear Taped Interview with Rutgers Defendant

  Dharun Ravi shares a laugh with his attorneys during a break in his trial at the Middlesex County Courthouse in New Brunswick, N.J. on Wednesday, March 7, 2012. Ravi,a former Rutgers University student, is accused of using a webcam to spy on his roommate, Tyler Clementi, intimate encounter with another man. Days later Clementi committed suicide. Ravi, 19, faces 15 criminal charges, including invasion of privacy and bias intimidation, a hate crime punishable by up to 10 years in state prison. (AP Photo/The Star-Ledger, John O'Boyle, Pool)

Yesterday, jurors heard a video admission from the defendant in the Rutgers University trial that he violated his roommate?s privacy when he secretly set up a Webcam, which caught his roommate engaged in intimate contact with another man. The taped police interview showed Dharun Ravi saying ?Yes? when asked whether he thought he had violated his roommate?s privacy. However, Ravi added, ?I didn?t realize it was something so private. It was my room, too.?

In the nearly hour-long police interview, Ravi said that he didn?t understand that when his roommate, Tyler Clementi, told him he would have a friend over that it meant he wanted privacy. He also said that Clementi?s guest, who testified earlier in the trial, did not acknowledge him when entering the room and gave him a ?bad vibe.?

Although Ravi said in the video that he stopped viewing the Webcam once he could tell the two men were kissing, he did admit to attempting to share the Webcam feed with others by advertising it on Twitter.

?You took that private information and you shared it with the public,? said investigator Michael Daniewicz. ?Is that fair to say??

?That?s fair to say,? Ravi replied.

Daniewicz went on to question Ravi about the Twitter message he sent out the day before Clementi?s death: ?Anyone with iChat, I dare you to video chat with me between the hours of 9:30 and 12. Yes, it?s happening again.?

Ravi said during the interview that he did not actually want others to tap into the video feed that night.

?I said that sarcastically, first of all,? he said. ?And I turned off my computer; I put it to sleep.?

A computer forensics expert testified the previous day at trial that Clementi had saved a copy of the tweet in question prior to killing himself. When asked whether he knew Clementi had seen the message, Ravi said he did not know, but explained that he had deleted the tweet after a dorm resident assistant informed Ravi that Clementi believed he was trying to broadcast it.

Ravi was also questioned about a text he had sent a friend that mentioned others were planning a ?viewing party? to watch the feed.

?I was joking around saying kids were going to have a viewing party,? Ravi said.

Ravi also said that he had turned the Webcam away from Clementi?s bed that night. However detectives said they had found the camera pointed directly at Clementi?s bed.

The interview ended abruptly when Ravi?s father demanded that his son have an attorney present.

In addition to the video testimony, jurors were read two text messages that Ravi sent Clementi after he had heard from a resident assistant that Clementi suspected Ravi was spying on him.

One text read: ?I want to explain what happened. Sunday night when you requested to have someone over I didn?t realize you wanted the room in private. I went to Molly?s room and I was showing her how I set up my computer so I can access it from anywhere. I turned on my camera and saw you in the corner of the screen and I immediately closed it. I felt uncomfortable and guilty of what happened. Obviously I told people what occurred so they could give me advice. Then Tuesday when you requested the room again I wanted to make sure what happened Sunday wouldn?t happen again and not to video chat me from 930 to 12. Just in case, I turned my camera away and put my computer to sleep so even if anyone tried it wouldn?t work. I wanted to make amends for Sunday night. I?m sorry if you heard something distorted and disturbing but I assure you all my actions were good natured.?

Ravi said he waited for a reply throughout the night, but none ever came.

Ravi faces 15 criminal counts, including bias intimidation, a hate crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison. In Sept. 2010, Ravi?s roommate, Tyler Clementi, committed suicide just a day after Ravi?s second attempt to capture him on Webcam and broadcast it online.

The prosecution is expected to rest its case today.

View the original article here

California Clamps Down on Jurors Using Social Media

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Jurors in California may want to leave their smartphones at home thanks to a new law passed earlier this year that bans jurors from accessing Twitter, Facebook or going online to receive or provide information about the trial. The new rule was enacted as a way to curb jurors from compromising a case. Legal experts say this rule was inevitable and will likely be adopted by other jurisdictions.

“Non-sequestered jurors are exposed to more information in today’s world,” says Mitch Jackson, a partner at Jackson & Wilson. “In the old days, all they needed to do was avoid listening to the radio, reading the newspaper or watching a couple of channels on the television. Today, jurors are exposed to an incredible amount of information simply via the homepage on their computer.”

Mitch Jackson

Strides in digital technology have made it tremendously easier for jurors to access information. Smartphones enable jurors to read the news of the day in the palm of their hands. Meanwhile, social networking platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook, make jurors more prone to stumble upon outside information as followers and friends post links and chatter about issues that may be relevant to the case.

“In limited cases, I think [texting and social media] have played a role in jurors making decisions not based on the admissible evidence, but instead based on speculation and innuendo. And that’s not a good thing,” Jackson says.

If a juror is caught relaying information or receiving information over the Internet, it could potentially compromise the whole trial, resulting in a mistrial. In fact, there are a number of incidents in which the use of Internet technology has resulted in actions against the offending juror or called the integrity of the trial into question.

In a California case called People v. McNeely, a jury foreman discussed the jury’s deliberations on his blog.In a 2008 case, a Superior Court judge presiding over a murder trial held a juror in contempt of court after he posted a picture of the weapon to his blog. No penalty was imposed.In the case People v. Ortiz, a juror was found to have blogged detailed information about the case during the trial; however, the defendant’s request for a new trial was denied.In a 2011 incident, a jury foreman in a criminal trial posted updates to Facebook. The trial court judge ordered the foreman to make the posts accessible for review. The foreman appealed, and now the case is pending.

The question remains whether the new law will actually result in jurors changing their behavior. After all, texting and using social media have become second nature to many. Legal experts believe that because the new law does carry actual penalties—a juror can be held in contempt of court —people are more likely to obey and remain logged off.

John Conway

“There will always be jury misconduct, even with a rule in place,” says John Conway, a lawyer in New York City. “You will find somebody that will go out of their way either because they can’t put it down or they want to provide insight to the media. But I think the new rule will prevent most jurors who really do want to avoid potentially tainting a trial.”

Jackson agrees. He thinks adding explicit parameters around the use of the Internet and social media as part of jury instructions provides clear guidance to jurors and will result in a decrease in jurors compromising cases.

“When jurors are read the admonition at the beginning, during and end of a trial, it will be very clear as to what is not allowed,” Jackson says. “I also believe that when jurors are advised of the very clear consequences of being punished, the proper tone is set for their proper participation as sworn jurors and maximum compliance with the new law.”

California is not the only state to have had issues with jurors and Internet technology. Just last year, a Florida man was removed from a jury after he sent a defendant a Facebook friend request because he found her attractive. Jackson believes that the California law may inspire other jurisdictions to adopt similar rules.

“I would expect most jurisdictions across the country to amend their existing jury instructions and laws to include a more detailed explanation as to what specific electronic communications are prohibited,” Jackson says “Jurors need to know that just because it’s easy for them to quickly check their smartphone doesn’t mean it is a smart thing to do.”

View the original article here

Lawsuit alleges military ignored claims of Sexual aggression

Fourteen former and current members of the United States have filed a lawsuit against the Pentagon, claiming that their reports of sexual harassment, assault and rape by other members of the service were ignored. The alleged incidents occurred worldwide, even in war zones.

Demand seeks to draw attention to an increase in allegations of sexual abuse in the army. Incident reports were up 11 percent, to 3.230 in fiscal year 2009, and Pentagon officials admit that many cases are not reported. In addition, only 25 per cent of the cases of sexual abuse reported the outcome in military trials.

The complaint alleges that the Pentagon has failed to ensure adequate investigations of those accused of sexual abuse and to prevent retaliation against those who complain. Current Defense Secretary Robert Gates, as well as his predecessor Donald Rumsfeld is named in the lawsuit.

Aggression and sexual abuse within criminal law and are serious crimes that must be reported to the appropriate authorities. You can get information on the submission of a civil suit by contact with a lawyer specialized in these cases. For information on issues related to employment as workplace harassment, discrimination in employment and unlawful termination, visit the employment law of their Legal Guide section.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 24, 2011 at 3: 01 pm and is filed in Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 source. Comments and pings are currently closed.

View the original article here

Presentations of consumer bankruptcy reach 5 years

Consumer bankruptcy filings reached a maximum of five years in 2010 and could continue to increase as consumers grapple with their debt">debts, according to a report published on Monday.

Using data from the national bankruptcy Research Center, the American Bankruptcy Institute determined that 1.53 million bankruptcy petitions were filed in 2010, up from 1.41 million in 2009. This is the largest number of bankruptcies from the millions of 2.04 presented in 2005, when consumers rushed to submit before bankruptcy more stringent standards came into force. The increase in bankruptcies is the economy continues to struggle and unemployment figures remain high.

Many people facing the possibility of bankruptcy seek the services of bankruptcy attorneys. File consumer more bankruptcy Chapter 7. You can find more information about bankruptcy laws, including important changes resulting from the prevention of the abuse of bankruptcy and Protection Act to the consumer of 2005 (BAPCPA), in its Legal Guide.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 04, 2011 at 3: 51 pm and is filed in Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 source. Comments and pings are currently closed.

View the original article here