Free Republic

Among the many blessings granted us by ObamaCare (PPAHCA), a new one will be coming soon, starting in January 2014. We will acquire "standing." Legally, the word standing refers to the "ability to initiate a lawsuit." There are three requirements for Article III (tort code) standing: (1) demonstrable injury in fact, not in the future, not hypothetical or conjectural; (2) proof of a causal link between the injury and the challenged conduct or specific legislation (when suing the government); and (3) "likelihood that the injury will be redressed by a favorable [Court] decision."Despite all the weeping and wailing on every...

Imagine that you run a grocery store with your daughter, a store you have owned for thirty years. Imagine that just last year the IRS found no violations in an audit of your store. Now imagine that, despite continuing your sound business practices, you awake one day to find the IRS has seized your entire bank account. The IRS has used a technique called civil forfeiture against you and you find your Constitutional guarantee of innocence until proven guilty has been completely reversed. That is the nightmare that Terry Dehko and his daughter Sandy Thomas found themselves in on January...

A few days ago an article the LA Times announced LA Times More legal trouble for Affordable Care Act. The Affordable Care Act proposes to make health insurance affordable to millions of low-income Americans by offering them tax credits to help cover the cost. To receive the credit, the law twice says they must buy insurance "through an exchange established by the state." But 36 states have decided against opening exchanges for now. Although the law permits the federal government to open exchanges instead, it does not say tax credits may be given to those who buy insurance through a...

In finding the Affordable Care Act (ACA) constitutional, 5 justices of the Supreme Court literally ignored the statutory language of the law and the wishes of Congress. In fact, Chief Justice Roberts rewrote portions of the Act in order to bring its substance into line with his own politically motivated preferences. In May, the IRS also ignored the will of Congress as expressed in the ACA. The law specifically states that subsidies and tax credits provided to certain ObamaCare enrollees may be awarded ONLY by “a governmental agency or nonprofit entity [ObamaCare exchange] that is established by a state.”(My emphasis)...

A New Jersey judge’s contorted and nonsensical decision that the state is responsible for the federal government’s failure to recognize same-sex marriage highlights the irrationality that permeates the campaign for “marriage equality.” One of the most striking features of the campaign for same-sex marriage has been the prominence of its assault on reasoning itself. The logical relations of legal categories with one another, as those categories represent persons, their interactions, and their rights and duties, are at the heart of all legal decision-making and ideally inform legislative and administrative policymaking as well. But the impulse to redefine marriage so that...

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been hit with two suits this week, one demanding information on his anti-gun campaign, and the other targeting his soda and fat bans. Both are Freedom of Information lawsuits from Washington groups that charge the mayor's office with delaying release of critical information about his efforts to start a national campaign to limit guns and boost the health value of food sold in cities. The public watchdog group Judicial Watch on Thursday filed their suit demanding emails between Bloomberg's office, his group Mayors Against Illegal Guns and Vice President Biden. The group charges that...

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