Bondsman in Seminole County – Civil Legal Services Hearing to be held at College of Law

Source     : Daily Orange
By            : Bridget McAllister
Category : Bail Bondsman in Sanford, Bondsman in Seminole County

Civil legal services hearing to be held at College of Law

The Chief Judge of New York, Jonathan Lippman, will preside over a public hearing on civil legal services in New York state at Dineen Hall Wednesday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. The hearing, which will be open to the public, will also be presided over by Chief Administrative Judge Lawrence Marks, President of the New York State Bar Association David Miranda and Presiding Justice Henry Scudder. Nina Brown, a professor of communications law in Syracuse University’s College of Law, defined civil legal services as assistance to middle- and low-income families with serious legal problems, which provide the public with necessities such as employment, healthcare, housing, government benefits and educational services. “Civil legal aids are critical in order to ensure equal justice under the law,” Brown said. “Laws that help people access basic necessities … are meaningless unless it’s possible for those who need them to access the law and the courts.”

The hearing will involve oral and written testimonies from concerned parties regarding a variety of related public legal issues, ranging from unmet needs in education, state housing and healthcare to state-wide funding and access to legal services, particularly in rural areas. Professor Suzette Meléndez, director of the Children’s Rights and Family Law Clinic, said there has been a greater push to get representation for parents who are advocating for their children within the city of Syracuse’s public school system. “A lot of it comes from a study that was done by a major California university that established that Syracuse issued disciplinary measures pretty severely in our school system, particularly for children who are of color or have special needs,” Meléndez said. “I’m hoping there will be more detail with regard to representation that those parents will receive that have consequences for their kids’ educational experiences.”

In regards to the issue of housing, Melendez said civil legal lawyers can help their clients with issues in housing by educating their clients and teaching what is and is not legitimate in establishing business relationships, such as issues with warranty or security deposits. In addition to receiving testimony, the hearing — one of a series of four — also hopes to reach solutions to issues like insufficient access to services and under-funding through updates in technology, expansion of the availability of private attorneys and involvement from volunteers and law school students, according to a notice of public health from the New York Courts website. Mary McNeal, a professor of professional legal responsibility in the College of Law, said there is a law firm at the College of Law in which law students provide free legal services.

McNeal said the hearing is an opportunity for students to observe the New York State Court of Appeals and its efforts to provide assistance to low-income people who can’t always afford a lawyer. “It stresses for students the importance of providing assistance throughout their career for people who can’t otherwise afford an attorney,” she said. McNeal said there is a need for more civil service attorneys because there are not enough lawyers to provide free legal services for low-income people, who can potentially be evicted and “lose all kinds of things” if they do not get a lawyer. The court system will grant oral testimony by invitation only to certain individuals and organizations that reach out to the court system in advance with prepared statements no more than 10 minutes in length, according to the notice.

Read More : dailyorange.com/2015/09/civil-legal-services-hearing-to-be-held-at-college-of-law/

Sanford Bail Bond – Alabama Just Made Its First Legal Whiskey in 100 Years

Source      : Munchies Vice
By             : Alex Swerdloff
Category : Sanford Bail Bond , Bail Bond Sanford

Alabama Just Made Its First Legal Whiskey in 100 Years

Alabama is probably not the first state you would say is ahead of the curve when it comes to trends. But when it came to Prohibition—the US Constitutional ban on the sale, production, and importation of alcoholic beverages, implemented nationwide in 1920—Alabama was in the fun-hating  vanguard. Whiskey production in the state came to an early end in 1915, when local politicos ran the producers of Jack Daniels out of the state. One hundred sad, dry, whiskey-production-free years followed. Sure, you’ve been able to buy or drink whiskey since the repeal of Prohibition,, but there was no legally produced Alabaman whiskey made there—until now.
John Emerald Distilling Company, located in Opelika, Alabama, has released the first legal whiskey distilled in Alabama in a century. And you won’t believe why it took so long. Apparently, Alabama’s liquor laws are so convoluted and complicated that no one dared to take a chance on making whiskey there—at least not state-sanctioned whiskey—even though Prohibition came to an end with the ratification of the Twenty-First Amendment in 1933. Seriously. Jimmy Sharp, son of John and a co-owner of the John Emerald Distilling Company explains: “The way the laws are written, it’s written and it’s written over, and over-written, and over-written . . . it’s real difficult to discern for the average person who doesn’t speak legalese to understand you can [legally distill whiskey in the state].”

Apparently no one in Alabama has spoken this brand of “legalese” for 100 years. It took a sit-down with—and long explanation from—the head of enforcement for the Alcoholic Beverage Control in Alabama to convince the Sharps that they could distill whiskey there. Jimmy Sharp says, “Initially, we didn’t think we could have it ,but actually the head of enforcement for ABC was the guy that told us we could. He actually went and highlighted the laws, and said, ‘Here’s how you do it.’”

It took some mighty fine legal wrangling to make sense of the law: “It was like, you had to read this, you had to go over here and read this, and it kind of cryptically said, ‘This is the exception to that,’ and you have to go to G-4 over here to look. And you’re like whoa, eight pages apart from each other, and it was tough to figure out.” Evidently, no one had tried to figure this all out before. But now that the law has been elucidated, several companies have begun the process of producing legal, 100-percent Alabaman whiskey.

But John Emerald Distilling Company got to market first. Their John’s Alabama Single Malt Whiskey hit shelves in June. Sure, in the rush to get their whiskey into stores as quickly as possible, the distillery may have taken a few shortcuts: “We use these small, five-gallon barrels as well as temperature control that helps simulate seasons and gives us a mature product in a short period of time. I believe others here trying in the state are using traditional techniques where they’re just going to have to wait probably a minimum of three years,” said Jimmy Sharp. But it’s the non-traditionalists who tend to make history, isn’t it? Jimmy Sharp is confident that with a little more aging, his product will get better and better. Still, life is good for the first Alabaman distillers in the 21st century. Sharp describes the rollout this summer: “People were buying it before we were trying to sell it, basically, which was good. We were happy with it then, but it will also get a lot better. We sell out of it constantly. The first four cases sold out in 45 minutes. Of course, there was some anticipation with that.” No surprise that the product launch was a success. Alabama, after all, has been waiting for homegrown whiskey for a very long time.

Read More : munchies.vice.com/articles/alabama-just-made-its-first-legal-whiskey-in-100-years

Bail Bond Sanford – Legal woes mounting for Volkswagen as criminal cases loom

Source     : Boston Globe
By            : Michael Biesecker and Eric Tucker
Category : Sanford Bail Bond , Bail Bond Sanford

Legal woes mounting for Volkswagen as criminal cases loom

Who knew about the deception, when did they know it, and who directed it?

Those are among the questions that state and federal investigators want answered as they plunge into the emissions scandal at Volkswagen, which has cost the chief executive his job, caused stock prices to plummet, and could result in billions of dollars in fines. Legal experts say the German automaker is likely to face significant legal problems, including potential criminal charges, arising from its admission that 11 million of its diesel vehicles sold worldwide contained software specifically designed to help cheat emissions tests. The Environmental Protection Agency has accused VW of installing sophisticated stealth software that enabled ‘‘clean diesel’’ versions of its Passat, Jetta, Golf, and Beetle models to detect when they were being tested and emit less-polluting exhaust than in real-world driving conditions. The agency says the ‘‘defeat devices’’ allowed those models to belch up to 40 times the allowed amounts of harmful fumes in order to improve driving performance.

The Justice Department says it’s ‘‘working closely’’ with EPA investigators. ‘‘If there is sufficient evidence to show that Volkswagen intentionally programmed its vehicles to override the emission control devices, the company and any individuals involved could face criminal charges under the Clean Air Act, and for conspiracy, fraud, and false statements,’’ said David M. Uhlmann, a former chief of the Justice Department’s Environmental Crimes Section who is now a law professor at the University of Michigan. He called criminal charges ‘‘almost certain.’’ But Uhlmann cautioned that hauling the executives involved into a US courtroom could be challenging, because much of the conduct at issue probably occurred overseas. While the United States has an extradition treaty with Germany, European regulators also are investigating and could claim first dibs on prosecuting company officials. It’s not the first time that Volkswagen has been accused of cheating on emissions testing by the EPA. In July 1973, the agency found that VW had installed temperature-sensitive devices that turned off emissions controls on about 25,000 Fastback, Squareback, and bus models. The company agreed to remove the devices and eventually settled with the Justice Department, paying a $120,000 penalty.

Chief executive Martin Winterkorn resigned on Wednesday, and Volkswagen announced it would set aside $7.3 billion to cover the cost of the scandal, but even that may not be enough. The company has apologized, but has not yet detailed who was responsible for the defeat devices. German media reported Sunday that Volkswagen had received warnings years ago about the use of illegal tricks to defeat emissions tests. Bild am Sonntag said VW’s internal investigation has found a 2007 letter from parts supplier Bosch warning Volkswagen not to use the software during regular operation. Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung said a Volkswagen technician raised concerns about illegal practices in connection with emissions levels in 2011. The Clean Air Act allows for fines of up to $37,500 for each of the 482,000 suspect VWs sold in the United States, potentially totaling more than $18 billion. Attorneys general for nearly 30 states and the District of Columbia have announced a coordinated investigation and said they are issuing subpoenas for company records.

There’s also a high likelihood of class-action lawsuits by angry VW owners. ‘‘They’re facing a tsunami of possible state and federal enforcement actions, and a potential large number of violations — including administrative, civil, and criminal,’’ said William Carter, a former federal prosecutor in Los Angeles who specialized in environmental crimes and served as general counsel of the California Environmental Protection Agency. Investigators will almost certainly look for any false statements made to the EPA and for signs that VW has tried to conceal wrongdoing or obstruct regulators. Fraud charges could be considered if evidence emerges that company executives used the Internet or the mail system to carry out the deception. And money laundering allegations will be explored if investigators suspect that VW sent illicit proceeds overseas.

‘‘If a software package such as this were intentionally designed to defeat the emissions testing, there may well be e-mail traffic, meetings, records that would establish that intent,’’ said Gregory Linsin, a former environmental crimes prosecutor at the Justice Department. But Linsin said he expected the Justice Department also to take into account the multiple investigations likely to take place worldwide, and to not punish the automaker in a way that jeopardizes its ability to stay in business. The problems at VW come as the Justice Department faces growing pressure to prosecute individual executives and employees for corporate misdeeds. The last two major criminal investigations against auto companies — Toyota and General Motors — yielded massive fines over car safety problems but have resulted in no prosecutions of executives. Those outcomes dismayed consumer watchdog groups and grieving victims’ relatives, who demanded better accountability for failure to disclose vehicle defects.

A memo this month by Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates sought to reaffirm the Justice Department’s commitment to prosecuting employees and executives, directing among other policy mandates that corporations pushing for credit for cooperating with the government must first turn over evidence against individuals. ‘‘Volkswagen has a fundamental choice to make,’’ said Uhlmann, the former prosecutor. ‘‘That is whether it intends to cooperate and seek leniency, or whether it wants to fight the charges. Every indication over the last several days from Volkswagen is that it intends to cooperate.’’ Asked whether that meant he expected company executives to voluntarily come to the United States to stand trial, he laughed. ‘‘Absolutely not,’’ he said.

Read More : bostonglobe.com/business/2015/09/27/facing-tsunami-legal-trouble-emissions-scandal/vWsc8yAvQgqtzSxPtCT1sJ/story.html

Bail Bondsman in Sanford – Trade secrets fueling legal battle in Austin restaurants

Source    :  KVUE
By            :  Kris Betts
Category :  Bail Bonds Sanford, Bail Bondsman in Sanford

Trade secrets fueling legal battle in Austin restaurants

There’s a legal battle brewing in Austin’s restaurant scene revolving around trade secrets and recipes two different people claim to have created. Ava Lahara is suing for damages from Habana Cuban Restaurant on South Congress after she was fired for allegedly conspiring to take Habana’s recipes and teach them to her daughter, who was working at a new Cuban restaurant in South Austin. Ron Flores, the owner of Habana, tells KVUE the recipes were created by a Cuban chef from Miami. Several of his employees went to work at the new Cuban restaurant, Guantanamera. “When we found that out we realized we had several employees who were going to work for him, the menu is all the same. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck: it’s probably a duck,” said Flores.

Flores also claims Lahara intended to work for Guantanamera part-time when she wasn’t working at Habana. Lahara told Flores that was not her intention. “She was telling several of our employees what her intentions were. Now suddenly that has slipped in the cracks. That will come out in trial if we have to go to trial,” said Flores. Lahara tells a different story, however. She said when she started working in the restaurant, the owners used her skills learned in Cuba to help create a menu, and therefore didn’t steal trade secrets from Habana. “It really hurts me because I’ve been part of them for 14 years and they just let me go with no reason,” Lahara said through tears.

After she was fired, Lahara started working with her daughter at Guantanamera in South Austin. Soon after, the owners of Habana filed a lawsuit over alleged misappropriation of trade secrets. As part of a settlement in the lawsuit, the owners of Guantanamera had to agree to keep Lahara out of the kitchen. Lahara was fired, and now she’s fighting for damages. “She’s 75 years old, all she knows how to do is be a cook in a Cuban restaurant,” said Scott Hendler with Hendler Lyons Flores and is handling her case for free. “When I learned about the facts I became apoplectic that someone like Habana and their lawyers would go after someone so vulnerable as a 75-year-old grandmother earning $12 an hour, working 30 hours a week,” Hendler said. Flores paints a different picture. “She’s not an innocent old lady that was deprived of work. I never meant for her to be out of work. She’d be working for me today if she hadn’t done what she did.” Lahara is asking for $200,000 dollars in damages. Flores said he can’t and won’t pay that kind of settlement, so it will be up to a Travis County judge to decide.

Read More : kvue.com/story/news/local/2015/09/23/accusations-over-trade-secrets-in-austin-restaurant/72716594/

Sanford Bail Bond – Texas Boy’s Family Hires Legal Counsel to Get Clock Back

Source     : NBC News
By            : Elizabeth Chuck
Category : Sanford Bail Bond, Bondsman in Seminole County

Texas Boy’s Family Hires Legal Counsel to Get Clock Back

The family of the 14-year-old Muslim boy who was led out of school in handcuffs has hired attorneys to get back the homemade clock that administrators mistook for a bomb. Ahmed Mohamed was suspended after showing his clock to a teacher at his Irving, Texas, high school last week. His case sparked an outcry on social media and attracted the attention of President Obama and a number of tech companies who invited Ahmed to visit. His family said in a statement Wednesday that it had pulled Ahmed and his two siblings out of the Irving school district “because of religious persecution,” and had decided to home-school the kids.

Two Dallas attorneys, Thomas Bowers and Reggie London, have been hired “to pursue Ahmed’s legal rights and regain his science project from the Irving Police Department,” the statement added.  Bowers has handled high-profile cases before, including a sexual assault allegation against Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and a family dispute between billionaire T. Boone Pickens and his son Michael.

The family said it is suing because Ahmed has been “severely traumatized,” and they hope no one else will experience what he did. The Irving Independent School District confirmed to NBC News that the family withdrew Ahmed on Tuesday afternoon. “All along we had said he was certainly welcome to stay in our school. We believe he can receive a quality education here in Irving,” Lesley Weaver, director of communications for the district, said. “But we certainly respect the family’s right to withdraw him.” No charges were filed against Ahmed, who on Tuesday visited Google’s campus and this weekend will go to a United Nations summit. He also has been invited to the White House.

Read More : nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ahmed-mohamed-family-boy-arrested-clock-hires-legal-counsel-n432366

Bondsman in Seminole County – Legal settlement with Armenian church lets Getty Museum keep prized medieval Bible pages

Source     : LA Times
By             : Mike Boehm
Category : Bail Bondsman in Sanford, Bondsman in Seminole County

Legal settlement with Armenian church lets Getty Museum keep prized medieval Bible pages

The Getty Museum will keep eight brilliantly illustrated table of contents pages from a 750-year-old Armenian Bible after settling a long-running lawsuit brought by an American branch of the Armenian Apostolic Church. The church contended they had been illegally separated from the rest of the book amid the Armenian genocide during World War I. The Getty and the Western Prelacy of the Armenian Apostolic Church of America jointly announced the settlement Monday. Both sides said they were happy with the outcome, but for very different reasons. The Getty gets to keep the art, and the church gets recognition that all along it has been the rightful owner of the pages, which were separated about 100 years ago from a complete Bible called the Zeyt’un gospels.

The rest of the book is at the Matenadaran, a museum and library for manuscripts in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. The Getty bought its pages in 1994 from an Armenian American family for $1.5 million in today’s dollars. Under the settlement, attorneys said, the church will donate the eight pages, known as a “canon table” that prefaces the rest of the Bible, to the Getty on Jan. 1, 2016. The Getty will pay all legal expenses from the suit the church had brought in 2010 – a sum attorneys for the two sides declined to disclose. “It’s a resolution both sides are equally happy with, a win-win,” said Timothy Potts, director of the Getty Museum. “It’s an acknowledgment of their ownership, but maintains the work as an integral part of the collection here.” Potts said that the Getty will keep custody of the manuscript pages until it officially takes ownership. They were created during the mid-1200s by a renowned Armenian artist, T’oros Roslin, but were separated from the rest of the Zeyt’un Bible sometime during the upheaval caused by the Armenian genocide of 1915 to 1918. It claimed the lives of about 1.2 million Armenians under the Ottoman Empire, which became the modern republic of Turkey. The Turkish government disputes that a genocide took place.

Lee Boyd, the attorney for the Armenian church, said its main objective was not to wrest the pages from the Getty, which it feels has been a good custodian and offers continuing access to a Southern California public that includes a large number of Armenian Americans. The foremost goal, she said, was to set the historic record straight and draw attention to the fact that there is much unfinished legal business for heirs of Armenian families or institutions that lost property during the genocide. “This is the first restitution of an artwork from the Armenian genocide,” Boyd said. “I hope it’s not the last. The case was brought to acknowledge the ownership of the church and [establish] recognition that they were taken during the Armenian genocide. It had devastating effects felt for generations, including much loss of cultural patrimony, particularly of the Armenian church.” Before the settlement, according to court files, the church had sought the pages’ return, along with damages of at least $35 million. But both sides would have been on unpredictable legal terrain had the case proceeded, complicated by what Potts described as “lots of gray areas and facts we don’t know” relating to the manuscript pages’ whereabouts during and immediately after World War I.

According to court documents, the Zeyt’un Gospels were housed at a church in a traditionally Armenian area of what’s now Turkey. As chaos broke out, members of the Armenian community removed the prized Bible from the church for safe keeping. At some point the front pages with the most beautiful art were separated from the rest. They wound up in possession of an Armenian man who immigrated to the United States in 1923, settling in Massachusetts. That family handed them down through generations until the Getty bought them more than 70 years later. The pages became a highlight of the Getty’s collection of illuminated manuscripts. The materials – paint on vellum, a parchment made from calf’s skin — are too fragile and light-sensitive to be on permanent or frequent display, Potts said. But as delicate medieval manuscripts go, the Zeyt’un canon tables have been in heavy rotation, with one or more pages displayed in 11 exhibitions since 1997 – 10 at the Getty and one at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

They will have been out of view for 19 months when two of the pages go back on display Jan. 26 in the Getty’s exhibition “Traversing the Globe Through Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts.” For the record, Sept, 21, 2:40 p.m.: an earlier version of this post incorrectly said that all eight of the Getty’s Armenian bible pages would be displayed in its upcoming exhibiiton of manuscripts. The church’s legal position got a boost in December 2013 from a ruling in another art-restitution case brought against a Spanish museum, involving California heirs of a family that lost a painting by Camille Pissarro during the Holocaust.

The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals refused to declare unconstitutional a special 2011 California law that extends the statute of limitations for claims to recover allegedly stolen works held by museums and art dealers. That took away some of the Getty’s legal ammunition. But Boyd, the Armenian church’s attorney, said that pushing forward rather than settling the suit would have meant fighting additional procedural battles over whether the church had waited too long to sue. In court documents the Getty had pointed to articles published in 1943 and 1952 that showed church officials were fully aware that the family in Massachusetts possessed the canon tables, and did not take action to get them back. Also important to the settlement, Boyd said, was the knowledge that the Getty can give the artworks the best scholarly attention and technical care. “The Matenadaran has expanded its preservation abilities, but [Armenia] is still an emerging economy and the resources are not there as they are at the Getty,” she said. Boyd said “there are hopes this resolution will forge a relation between the Getty and the Armenian church” in which the Getty, which has an international program for art conservation, would take on projects in Armenia. Potts said that “it could happen…but that hasn’t been a part of the [settlement] agreement.” The museum director said another future possibility is a joint exhibition in which the Getty would loan its pages to the Matenadaran for an exhibition of the entire Zeyt’un gospels in Armenia, and in turn the full book would be shown at the Getty. More likely in the near term, Potts said, is a ceremony to mark the church’s donation of the art to the museum. “It’s an important moment for both parties, and we would love for there to be some such event,” he said.

Read More : latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-armenian-church-settles-with-getty-museum-20150918-story.html

Bail Bondsman in Sanford – Will Artificial Intelligence Favor Conservative Legal Theorists?

Source     : Bell Street News
By            :  Gabe Friedman
Category :  Bail Bonds Sanford, Bail Bondsman in Sanford

Will Artificial Intelligence Favor Conservative Legal Theorists?

If computers replace human lawyers anytime soon, it is more likely to benefit politically conservative legal philosophies, such as the one embraced by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, than liberal philosophies – purely due to idiosyncrasies in the way the dominant technology works, a new paper argues. That’s one of the ideas put forward in a draft version of “Incomplete Innovation and the Premature Disruption of Legal Services,” written by Brian Sheppard, an associate professor at Seton Hall University School of Law. “My argument is that if lawyers are going to be replaced by computers … some of the more conservative [legal] theories may become more popular again because computers can do them quite well,” he said in an interview with Big Law Business. By legal philosophies or theories, Sheppard said he meant the different principles of adjudication that lawyers use when interpreting the law and the Constitution. His paper doesn’t identify any one philosophy with a political leaning, but Sheppard told Big Law Business that generally speaking, some conservative theories will likely be easier for computers to emulate because they are more black-and-white, with little subjectivity.

One of the best-known philosophies, Originalism, holds that the meaning of the U.S. Constitution was fixed at the time of its enactment, and is now closely identified with Scalia, Sheppard said. While it’s often viewed as conservative, it could also be viewed as a liberal bent under certain circumstances, he added. “There’s no philosophical reason why these theories are conservative,” Sheppard said, about Originalism, adding, “Liberals would love Originalism if the country had been on a steady conservative slide since the day it was founded.” The bulk of the paper is devoted to Sheppard’s theory that bespoke legal services — such as negotiation, the creation of high-stakes legal documents and advocacy — will be more scarce in the future as a result of what he calls “premature disruption,” caused by technological innovation, business model innovation or both. In explaining that theory, Sheppard devotes a chunk of his paper to “natural language processing,” the technology used in various artificial intelligence tools including Google, Apple’s Siri, and IBM’s Watson, and which he believes will play a critical role in any disruption that occurs.

Loosely defined, natural language processing is the interaction between computers and human language, such as a computer’s ability to conduct textual analysis or understand speech. A particular branch of this technology, called the syntactical approach, has progressed the furthest, according to Sheppard. Used in Siri and other products, the syntactical technique “is agnostic as to meaning; it essentially searches for matching sequences of characters and sorts based on distance between matching sequences within documents or based on match frequency,” the paper explains. Thus, it struggles with “elementary interpretative tasks,” but it can parse texts and extract meaning. He situates various legal philosophies along a curve based on how easily they can be emulated using syntactical natural language processing. At the bottom of the curve, the legal philosophy that could be most easily emulated with existing technology is Naïve Textualism, or the idea that statutes can be understood by looking up their words in a dictionary.

Further along the curve, already partially available for automation, Sheppard placed the legal philosophy known as Originalism, most famously embraced by Scalia, which holds that the U.S. Constitution’s meaning was fixed at the time it was enacted. To the extent that Originalism envisions the law as having a fixed meaning in the past, Originalism can be more easily automated, the paper states. But Originalism also calls for an understanding of “the intent” of the people who wrote the Constitution, and thus requires a computer to understand complex contextual dimensions, such as the “perceived problems, goals, hopes or ideals” of original legislators, which makes it difficult to fully automate with the current technology. Living Constitutionalism, which involves evaluating principles according to their practicality, how well they promote democratic legitimacy and the evolving values of the present time, sits at the highest spot on the curve and is the least computer-friendly, the paper states. Eventually, natural language processing could emulate such philosophies, with more gray areas, but that technology is still years, if not decades away from being deployable, according to Sheppard.

Read more:  bol.bna.com/will-artificial-intelligence-favor-conservative-legal-theorists/

Sanford Bail Bond – Legal Expertise ‘Vital For Businesses’

Source    :  Maktoob News
By            :  Arab News
Category :  Sanford Bail Bond, Bondsman in Seminole County

Legal expertise ‘vital for businesses’

The Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry (JCCI) has urged public and private businesses to attend the upcoming legal forum in the city to help improve the skills of industry workers and executives. The forum will be held at the Jeddah Hilton on Oct. 14 and 15 and is expected to be the largest event of its kind in the Arab world, said Yasin Khalid Khayat, the chairman of the JCCI’s lawyers’ committee.

“The forum’s goal is to help society as a whole and lawyers in particular to establish the principles of justice in society,” he said. Preparations are going according to plan, he said. He explained that the forum would have working committees consisting of legal experts. “The cooperation between the lawyers’ committee and the Administrative Creativity Group translates into collective work that aims to ensure the highest levels of success,” he told Arab News.

Khayat said that the two-day event would include judges, lecturers, trainees and lawyers from the Kingdom and abroad, and representatives from human rights bodies. The aim is to further develop a culture of justice in the country. Mohammed Darwish Salama, the forum’s secretary-general, said discussions would focus on the public and private rights of people. It was an opportunity to gain from the experience of many legal experts, he said.

The forum targets all individuals interested in legal issues including lawyers and legal advisers, owners and managers of commercial companies, banking and financial institutions’ employees, workers in insurance and investment companies and chambers of commerce, and legal advisers at various public and private entities.

Read more:  en-maktoob.news.yahoo.com/legal-expertise-vital-businesses-053838874–finance.html

Bail Bond Sanford – White House Campaign Urges Legal Immigrants to Become (Voting) Citizens

Source    : NewYork Times
By            : JULIA PRESTON
Category : Sanford Bail Bond , Bail Bond Sanford

White House Campaign Urges Legal Immigrants to Become (Voting) Citizens

White House officials announced the start of a nationwide campaign on Thursday to encourage legal immigrants to become American citizens, which could add millions of voters to the electorate in time for the presidential election next year. With about 8.8 million legal residents in the country who are eligible to become citizens, White House officials said they were trying to make it easier to complete the final steps to citizenship. The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, the federal agency in charge of naturalizations, will offer practice tests on cellphones for the civics exam that immigrants must pass, but which many find daunting, and will hold preparatory workshops in rural areas. Applicants will also be able to pay the fee, still a hefty $680, with a credit card.

The White House is working with regional immigrant groups to organize more than 70 citizenship workshops and about 200 naturalization ceremonies in the coming week alone. Four citizenship ambassadors have been named, including Fernando Valenzuela, the Mexican-born former pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers who recently became an American citizen after many years in the United States.

Also in the works are local initiatives to make immigrants feel more welcome, and a revision of Justice Department regulations that would make it easier for people who want to help immigrants naturalize to obtain credentials to provide basic volunteer legal assistance. The officials said they had started the campaign this week because Thursday is Citizenship Day. But the White House is also aware of federal figures showing that about 60 percent of immigrants eligible to naturalize are Latino and about 20 percent are Asian, both groups that voted overwhelmingly for President Obama. Nearly a third of legal permanent residents eligible to naturalize are Mexican. The campaign, which includes a blitz of television ads with a welcoming message for immigrants, gives Mr. Obama a chance to set up a contrast with Republicans vying to succeed him. In the Republican debate on Wednesday night, Donald J. Trump, the real estate magnate who has been leading the polls among the Republican candidates, returned to his hard-line proposals that include building a wall along the length of the southern border. “We have a lot of really bad dudes in this country from outside,” Mr. Trump said, claiming that undocumented immigrants include many gang members and drug dealers. “First day, they’re going,” he said, referring to Baltimore and Chicago as places where deportations of criminals would begin.

Mr. Trump said he would deport all 11 million undocumented immigrants, then selectively allow some to return. Ben Carson, the pediatric surgeon in the Republican race who has seen a recent rise in the polls, also said he would consider mass deportation of all immigrants in the country illegally. “If anybody knows how to do that, I would be willing to listen,” Mr. Carson said. “I think it’s worth discussing.” The debate also highlighted the divide among Republicans themselves, with former Gov. Jeb Bush and Senator Marco Rubio, both of Florida, arguing against mass roundups and in favor of some path to legal status. Some Republicans said they were concerned about political overtones in the campaign.

“I think it’s healthy for a democracy for people to become citizens,” said Alfonso Aguilar, executive director of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles. “Sadly, I think the administration went overboard. A full-fledged campaign from the White House telling people to become a citizen, I think it is politicizing the naturalization process.” Mr. Aguilar, a Republican, was head of the citizenship office at the immigration agency for six years under the administration of President George W. Bush. He urged Congress to keep an eye on the campaign to make sure it did not go beyond civics education.

Mr. Obama’s citizenship campaign is part of a package of executive actions first announced in November. The most ambitious of them, a plan to provide protection from deportation and work permits to about five million undocumented immigrants, was challenged in a lawsuit by 26 states and has been blocked in the courts. For now, White House officials have turned to the citizenship drive, which offers nothing for immigrants without legal status. To be eligible for naturalization, immigrants must have been legal permanent residents for at least three years and, in most cases, five years. The officials insisted the effort was nonpartisan. Many groups collaborating with the campaign on training workshops are advocates who seek citizenship for undocumented immigrants as well, and who have been alarmed by the tough tone of the Republican campaign. “We want to build off the negative energy,” said Tara Raghuveer, policy and advocacy director for the National Partnership for New Americans, a coalition of immigrant groups that is holding dozens of events during the campaign. “People are hearing the hate and racist xenophobia on the national stage from the presidential candidates. They are angry, and this is an opportunity for us to organize.”

Read more: nytimes.com/2015/09/18/us/white-house-campaign-legal-immigrants-citizenship.html

Sanford Bail Bond – Legal Considerations in Businesses’ Disaster Planning

Source     : Nat Law Review
By             : Nicholas E. Williams
Category : Sanford Bail Bond , Bail Bond Sanford

Legal Considerations in Businesses’ Disaster Planning

In the last decade, Disaster Recovery (“DR”) and Business Continuity Planning (“BCP”)have become “hot” topics, as companies attempt to deal with disasters and the associated business risks. “Force majeure” is a legal concept that excuses a party’s performance under a contract on account of wide-scale, unpredictable, and devastating events, such as hurricanes, wars, national strikes and other similar occurrences. These common contractual provisions allocate the risk associated with non-performance because of a catastrophic, unpredictable event (for simplicity, let’s refer to these as disasters). But the legal implications in disaster planning extend beyond force majeure clauses.

The wide reach of disasters can create business risks with equally broad consequences. Imagine the “butterfly effect” in business caused by flooding in northern California or civil unrest in an oil-producing country. As an initial point, disasters may force manufacturers in a directly affected region to close their doors and “weather the storm.” Of course, lost production probably means lost profits. A closure also probably means disappointed business partners, suppliers, and customers. As a result, many large companies require suppliers to maintain business continuity plans to mitigate the risk of disruption.

Contracts play an important role in BCP and DR

For example, insurance contracts warrant careful analysis due to their complexity and nuances. Business interruption insurance, which covers the loss of income suffered by a business after a disaster, plays an important part in disaster planning. So, if business interruption insurance is a part of your manufacturer’s BCP or DR plan, be sure to understand the scope of applicable coverage, exceptions, and limitations.

Additionally, information technology contracts should be considered carefully. While many manufacturers use third-parties for technology solutions, other manufacturers host some, or all, of their own software solutions. These manufacturers typically engage third-parties for DR services, including backing up data and providing hardware in case of an emergency. In these circumstances, contracts should address the manufacturers’ expectations for returning to an acceptable operating level.

A related issue is the notification required in the event of a cyber-security breach or compromised data. Different industries face different requirements of different regulators. Thus, manufacturers that contract with utilities may be subject to different requirements than manufacturers who supply the Department of Defense.

Proper BCP and DR Can Limit Certain Legal Exposure

Unfortunately, many businesses that close their doors as a result of a disaster do not reopen. For those that do, without proper DR preparation, insurmountable setbacks, such as the loss of data, equipment, and personnel, may cripple or ultimately end a manufacturer. Those consequences, combined with the rise in BCP and DR, may put directors and officers on the “hot seat.” They may be accused of breaching their fiduciary duties for failing to implement BCP and DR initiatives. The applicable duty of care for fiduciaries duty standard is measured by one of reasonableness. Thus, directors and officers should evaluate their manufacturer’s preparedness for and exposure due to a disaster. Furthermore, business continuity plans should account for maintaining compliance with all relevant regulations, such as workplace safety and data security. Be careful not to create liability by overlooking these possibilities.

Legal issues and business risks go hand-in-hand, and BCP and DR are no exceptions. The above are just a couple common examples. Each manufacturer’s concerns vary based on a number of facts, including geography, industry, and size. Accordingly, it is crucial to consult with counsel while developing and implementing business continuity and DR plans.

Read more: natlawreview.com/article/legal-considerations-businesses-disaster-planning#sthash.OridRVtJ.dpuf