Free Republic

For a marketplace to function properly, a legal system must incentivize good behavior and punish bad behavior. Lawsuits exist to make the wrongly injured financially whole by the injurer. If the wrong party is required to pay for an injury, justice is not served. Likewise, if an individual is awarded a windfall of overcompensation for an injury, justice is not served. These scenarios are just as problematic as if a defendant were to not compensate the injured for an injury they legitimately caused. Lawsuit Reform for Competitive State Economies, a new report from the Task Force on Civil Justice, translates...

Controversial rights for multinational corporations to sue states, likely to be included in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), are causing a political headache for EU and US negotiators, but may also set a precedent for future trade agreements, notably with China. The TTIP currently being negotiated includes so-called “investor-state” dispute clauses empowering EU and US-based corporations to lodge private legal cases directly against governments.The European Commission’s proposal for investor-state dispute settlement under the TTIP would enable US companies investing in Europe to bypass European courts and directly challenge governments at international tribunals, whenever they find that laws in...

Judicial Watch is mobilizing resources for the fight over election integrity — the organization has just announced the hiring of former Department of Justice Voting Section Deputy Chief Robert Popper. This is very bad news for vote fraudsters, vote deniers, and organizations (including Eric Holder’s Justice Department) that stand in the way of election integrity. Popper worked with me on the New Black Panther case at the Justice Department. This means that three of the four lawyers who worked on that case have left DOJ, and are now on the side of preventing lawlessness in voting rather than aiding and...

Years before skyscrapers, when New York City’s tallest building was still the 281-foot spire of Wall Street’s historic Trinity Church, state lawmakers passed the Scaffold Law, which made property owners and contractors liable for most “gravity-related” injuries to workers on construction sites. … Some New York government agencies and contractors say the cost of the insurance, which can often be double that of other states, is hitting a crisis point that could soon suspend work on bridges, schools and the recovery from Superstorm Sandy.“It increases the cost of doing business and decreases what we are capable of doing in New...

A Plattsmouth woman's widower has sued Wal-Mart and the maker of its plastic bags, alleging an overfilled bag given to her at a Bellevue store broke, and, in a strange twist, led to her death. William Freis of Plattsmouth said his wife, Lynette, went grocery shopping April 16, 2010, at the Wal-Mart Supercenter on 15th Street and the cashier gave her one plastic bag for two 42-ounce cans of La Choy and a 2-pound bag of rice. On her way to the car, the bag broke and one of the cans of La Choy fell on her right foot, breaking...

And, the odds are much better in discrimination lawsuits. Most everyone has heard of the Pigford Case, where over 18,000 black "farmers" (even those who farmed no more than a potted plant) were offered  up to $62,000 each from a class action lawsuit via President Obama's signature. Without a whole lot of evidence, it was determined that the U.S. Department of Agriculture discriminated against minorities when implementing certain farmer financing programs. These sort of stories are reminiscent of the infamous New York "Ghost Riders," - people who would jump on buses involved in accidents - after the accidents, and, thereby, were...

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed a lawsuit against Bank of American over the BOAMS 2008-A securitization of a pool of adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs). Here is the complaint filed by the SEC. The theme of the complaint is “fraud.” Let’s take a look inside the deal. Here is the prospectus supplement for BOAMS 2008-A dated January 25, 2008. The BOAMS 2008-A was a senior-subordinated, structured finance securitization. boams2008atr The pool of mortgage underlying BOAMS 2008-A were mostly from California, 100% were ARMs originated or refinanced in 2007, boams2008acollatcomp 83.1% of the loans had borrowers with FICO scores of...

Move would allow Obama administration to institute policies that would better integrate communities The Department of Housing and Urban Development has proposed a new plan to change U.S. neighborhoods it says are racially imbalanced or are too tilted toward rich or poor, arguing the country's housing policies have not been effective at creating the kind of integrated communities the agency had hoped for. The proposed federal rule, called "Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing," is currently under a 60-day public comment period. Though details of how the policy would specifically work are unclear, the rule says HUD would provide states, local governments...

Last year, the city of St. Paul paid the largest amount in lawsuits alleging police misconduct -- about $1 million in total costs -- in at least 17 years. One case, settled for $400,000, involved a woman left with serious burns when St. Paul police used a flash-bang distraction device while executing a search warrant at her home. In another case, a man who ran from police wound up with a skull fracture, gashes on his head that required 21 staples to close and burns to his face caused by chemical spray. The city settled his lawsuit, which alleged that...

Joe Carr believes a day is fast approaching when pastors will be charged with hate crimes for preaching that homosexuality is a sin and churches will face lawsuits for refusing to host same-sex weddings. “It’s just a matter of time,” said Carr, the pastor of Waynesville Missionary Baptist Church in Georgia. “What’s happening in Europe – we’re going to see happen here and we’re going to see it happen sooner rather than later I’m afraid.” And that’s why the congregation will be voting next month to change their church bylaws – to officially ban the usage of their facilities for...

California Senate Bill 131, which is ostensibly about protecting victims of child sex abuse, forces private schools to defend claims of sexual abuse as far back as 40 years ago, but exempts public schools from such claims. Because of the Democratic super-majorities in both houses of California, there is no way to stop the passage of the bill. As Valerie Schmalz wrote in Catholic San Francisco: The California state Senate narrowly approved a waiver of the statute of limitations for child sex abuse damage lawsuits – a bill that could have a devastating effect on nonprofits including Catholic Charities and...

... Senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and who was a primary sponsor of the 2011 law, said he backs the president’s effort to suppress patent trolls. “The United States patent system is vital for our economic growth, job creation, and technological advance,” Mr. Leahy said in a statement. “Unfortunately, misuse of low-quality patents through patent trolling has tarnished the system’s image.” ...

In a ruling that is being compared to the case that led to free agency in baseball, a federal judge in California upheld an arbitration panel’s decision to release talk-radio host Michael Savage from a contract with his former syndicator, Talk Radio Network. Savage’s lawyer, Dan Horowitz, called it a landmark case for talk radio. “Michael is to talk radio what Curt Flood was to Major League Baseball,” Horowitz told WND, referring to the player who challenged baseball’s reserve clause, which kept a player bound to his team even after fulfillment of his contract. Savage told WND the ruling “should...

Four Pittsburgh firefighters are suing seven companies that manufacture fire trucks or sirens, claiming they've lost hearing due to the blaring sirens. (snip) They're claiming that Mack Trucks Inc., Seagrave Fire Apparatus LLC and five other firms "knew or should have known the products ... were inherently dangerous, defective and hazardous to human hearing." The men claim they've suffered irreversible hearing loss "due to exposure to the intense noise." The firefighters are seeking unspecified monetary damages

Summary: According to a new, comprehensive report by Lex Machina, more than half of all patent lawsuits in the US now come from patent trolls.Patent lawsuits are used as weapons in business wars between companies such as Oracle vs. Google and Apple vs. Samsung. Behind the intellectual property (IP) headlines, however, Lex Machina, a Silicon Valley startup, has found that patent troll lawsuits have increased from 24 percent of cases filed in 2007 to 56% in 2012. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a "patent troll uses patents as legal weapons, instead of actually creating any new products or coming...

Totalitarianism is brewing in the heartland. An Indiana inmate is now serving two years for voicing his online opinions against a judge who took away his child-custody rights during a divorce case. I know the custody case pretty well having written about it in 2009. But I'm convinced that the free speech case that is brewing in its aftermath heaps an even greater injustice upon an existing one. And I'm convinced it is showing the darker side of a dangerous man who needs to be stopped. Dan Brewington is justifiably angry because James Humphrey took his kids away from...

The mayor of a Washington town has directed pastors to stop invoking the name “Jesus Christ” in city council invocations. Don Jensen, the mayor of Longview, Wash., told the Kelso-Longview Ministerial Association that prayers mentioning Christ were not acceptable because they could expose the city to a lawsuit. The decision has sparked controversy in the city – located about 50 miles north of Portland, Ore. Mark Schmutz, who pastors the Northlake Baptist Church, said if they can’t speak the name Jesus Christ, association ministers will no longer provide the invocation. “We need to be able to speak Jesus’ name,”...

If the banking industry had a “biggest losers” award, Bank of America Corp. (B of A) would win – and that’s not a good thing. B of A comes by its image problem honestly, and this may be the only way that “honesty” and “Bank of America” can be paired in a sentence without prompting laughter from bystanders. The company’s sins have been widely reported. B of A essentially crafts laws, much to the chagrin of its customers and taxpayers in general, that are protected in court by well-funded trial lawyers and enforced by the politicians they help keep in...

The legal challenges over religious freedom and the birth control coverage requirement in President Barack Obama's health care overhaul appear to be moving toward the U.S. Supreme Court. Faith-affiliated charities, hospitals and universities have filed dozens of lawsuits against the mandate, which requires employers to provide insurance that covers contraception for free. However, many for-profit business owners are also suing, claiming a violation of their religious beliefs. The religious lawsuits have largely stalled, as the Department of Health and Human Services tries to develop an accommodation for faith groups. However, no such offer will be made to individual business owners....

Twice, I have had the unpleasant task of assisting school districts in the aftermath of school shootings. First, Columbine, and then in 2006, an intruder took a classroom hostage in Platte Canyon just west of Columbine, and killed a student. The news from Newtown, Conn., last week was both sickening and infuriating. Everyone, including the gun industry, acknowledges that a risk of catastrophic loss is created when irresponsible persons are given access to firearms. The industry's response is that we can negate this risk by placing more guns in the hands of responsible persons. It's a nice piece of marketing,...