Bondsman in Seminole County – U.S. Supreme Court ruling could affect Connecticut credit card law

Source     : Yankee Institute News
By             : Marc E. Fitch
Category :  Bail Bondsman in Sanford , Bondsman in Seminole County

U.S. Supreme Court ruling could affect Connecticut credit card law

The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overturned Wednesday a New York law that prevented businesses from charging an extra fee for credit card purchases. The ruling could affect a nearly identical law in Connecticut. Merchants in Connecticut and nine other states can only offer customers a “discount” for using cash but can not charge a “surcharge” for using a credit card. Whether or not the practice is legal depends on how the merchant describes the difference in price, which turned the case into a freedom of speech case.

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Expressions Hair Design v. Schneiderman determined that New York’s law “does regulate speech” and remanded the case to the Court of Appeals to determine whether or not the law is unconstitutional. The ruling could have ramifications for Connecticut’s law regulating surcharges and discounts. According to Connecticut state statute, “no seller may impose a surcharge on a buyer who elects to use any method of payment, including, but not limited to, cash, check, credit card or electronic means, in any sales transaction.” However, the statute also said that a discount is fine; “Nothing in this section shall prohibit any seller from offering a discount to a buyer to induce such buyer to pay by cash, debit card, check or similar means rather than by credit card.”

The practice is most commonly seen at gas stations which list one price for credit card purchases and a second for cash purchases. Businesses pay a 2 to 4 percent processing fee to credit card companies for every purchase a customer makes using a credit card. Credit card companies contractually prohibit merchants from applying a surcharge to customers but this practice has been repeatedly challenged in court on antitrust grounds. In the court’s decision, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that state laws which mimicked and extended these contract provisions invited scrutiny because the antitrust suits have “created uncertainty about the legal validity of such contractual surcharge bans.”

The implication is that these state laws were designed to protect credit card companies in case their contractual prohibitions are ever ruled illegal. The case originated out of New York when a lawyer noticed a sign at Expressions Hair Design that informed customers they would be charged an additional fee for payment by credit card.

Read more here: yankeeinstitute.org/2017/03/u-s-supreme-court-ruling-could-affect-connecticut-credit-card-law/

Seminole County Bail Bonds – Supreme Court orders new look at ‘swipe fees’ law

Source     : CNBC News
By             : Press Release
Category : Bail Bonds in Sanford , Seminole County Bail Bonds

Supreme Court orders new look at ‘swipe fees’ law

The Supreme Court is ordering a lower court to take a new look at a New York law that prohibits businesses from imposing fees on credit-card purchases.

The court ruled unanimously Wednesday in a case about fees that merchants pay to credit-card issuers each time a customer charges a purchase. The fees typically range from 2 percent to 3 percent and generate more than $50 billion a year.

The issue before the justices was whether the measure violates merchants’ free-speech rights. The federal appeals court in New York that upheld the law concluded that it regulated conduct, not speech. The justices said the law deals with speech and ordered the appeals court to re-evaluate it.

Read more here: cnbc.com/2017/03/29/supreme-court-orders-new-look-at-swipe-fees-law.html

Bail Bond Seminole County – Supreme Court Considers Why Patent Trolls Love Texas

Source     : NewYork Times News
By             : ADAM LIPTAK
Category : Bail Bond Seminole County , Bail Bondsman in Sanford

Supreme Court Considers Why Patent Trolls Love Texas

More than 40 percent of patent lawsuits are filed in a federal court in East Texas with a reputation for friendliness to plaintiffs. That curious fact was the backdrop for a Supreme Court argument on Monday over whether the court should halt what many big technology companies say is pernicious forum shopping in patent cases. In recent years, a single judge based in Marshall, Tex., oversaw about a quarter of all patent cases nationwide, more than the number handled by all federal judges in California, Florida and New York combined. The Texas court is a favorite venue of patent trolls, or companies that buy patents not to use them but to demand royalties and sue for damages. Many tech companies filed supporting briefs in Monday’s case, TC Heartland v. Kraft Foods Group Brands, No. 16-341, urging the Supreme Court to limit the places where defendants in patent cases may be sued. But a few companies urged the justices to retain the current rules, saying there was a value in letting cases be considered by courts that have developed expertise in patent matters. And some pharmaceutical companies said they should be able to sue the makers of generic drugs all at once in a single court.

The case heard Monday concerns low-calorie sweeteners made by TC Heartland, which is based in Indiana. Kraft sued it for patent infringement in Delaware, which also has a high concentration of patent suits. TC Heartland sought to move the case to Indiana, but lower courts refused, relying on a 1990 decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, a specialized court that handles patent appeals. That decision said defendants in patent cases, as in other cases, may be sued essentially anywhere they do business. On Monday, Justice Elena Kagan noted a curiosity about the 1990 decision: It was at odds with a 1957 Supreme Court precedent. She sounded surprisingly sanguine about this state of affairs. “For 30 years the Federal Circuit has been ignoring our decision, and the law has effectively been otherwise,” she said.

Justice Kagan also reflected on what the case had in common with one argued earlier on Monday about pension plans. “Sometimes we have accidental theme days at the Supreme Court,” she said. “So today’s accidental theme is: When 30 years of practice goes against you, what happens?” The 1957 decision interpreted a federal law about where patent suits may be filed. The law said that “any civil action for patent infringement may be brought in the judicial district where the defendant resides.” The court said that meant where the defendant was incorporated. The patent law has not changed, but a more general one on where suits may be brought has gone through amendments. Kraft argued that those changes effectively revised the law on patent cases.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the court’s 1957 decision was exceptionally narrow. Corporations are often incorporated in one place and have headquarters in another, she said, with both states counting for many purposes. But the 1957 decision focused only on the state of incorporation. The argument was almost over before the justices discussed the question of forum shopping at length. William M. Jay, a lawyer for Kraft, said any complaints about the court in East Texas should be addressed directly and not through a decision on where suits may be filed. “They tend to be complaints about how the cases are managed, how discovery takes place, how motions practice is handled, and so on,” he said. “And those complaints, if they are valid, would be valid even when venue is indisputably proper over a Texas defendant. They are problems that should be dealt with on their own terms.” That did not seem to satisfy Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. Do “generous jury verdicts enter into this, or is that something we shouldn’t think about?” he asked.

Mr. Jay said the data on verdicts and other matters was inconclusive. In any event, he added, Congress — not the Supreme Court — should address the issues. A court ruling, he said, would be precipitous. “If you adopt the rule that my friends on the other side are proposing,” he said, “you will shift more than half of all cases from the district where they now are into other districts.” That could lead to overcrowding in the federal court in Delaware, he said, given the large numbers of corporations incorporated in the state. Justice Stephen G. Breyer said he was inclined to ignore the controversy over forum shopping, focusing instead on what Congress had meant to achieve in the statutes before the court. The supporting briefs, he said, were “filled with this thing about a Texas district which they think has too many cases.”“As far as I can see,” he told James W. Dabney, a lawyer for TC Heartland, “if we’re supposed to decide what’s good or bad, maybe you’d lose. But I don’t know whether that’s good, bad or indifferent.”

Read more here: nytimes.com/2017/03/27/business/supreme-court-patent-trolls-tc-heartland-kraft.html

Bail Bondsman in Sanford – Legal Test Of School’s Responsibility In $41.5 Million Hotchkiss Case

Source     : Courant News
By             : JOHN C.P. GOLDBERG, BENJAMIN C. ZIPURSKY
Category : Bail Bondsman in Sanford , Bondsman in Seminole County

Legal Test Of School’s Responsibility In $41.5 Million Hotchkiss Case

The Connecticut Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Munn v. Hotchkiss, a tragic personal injury case. The court will be sorely tempted to make bad law in Munn. It must resist that temptation. Cara Munn, 15, was bitten by a tick while hiking on a mountain in China during a summer trip organized by The Hotchkiss School, her private school. The tick transmitted encephalitis, which has left her permanently unable to speak. Cara and her parents sued Hotchkiss in a federal court, arguing that the school was negligent for failing to warn them that the trip might bring her into contact with disease-bearing insects and for failing to take steps to ensure that she used insect repellant, wore proper clothes while walking in forested areas and checked herself for ticks. A jury awarded her $10 million in economic damages and $31.5 million in noneconomic damages.

Hotchkiss appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Unsure about how to apply Connecticut tort law (as it is required to do), the Court of Appeals invited the Connecticut Supreme Court to provide it with guidance on two questions: (1) whether a private school owes a duty of care to students when they participate in school trips, and (2) whether the jury’s damages award was excessive. Tort cases that seem to present simple legal issues often in reality are hiding complex ones. Not so with Munn, at least with respect to the first question. Hotchkiss is urging the court to rule that schools do not owe their students on field trips a duty to be careful to protect them from dangers. This is as preposterous in tort law as it is in common sense. The very able lawyers for Hotchkiss seem to have convinced the Second Circuit that the existence of this legal duty is an open question, but it is not. Under the law of Connecticut and probably every other American jurisdiction, schools owe a common law duty of care to 15-year-old students under their custody.

A much more difficult question is whether Hotchkiss fulfilled its duty: Was Hotckiss really careless in failing to provide Cara with sufficient warning of and protection from insect-borne illnesses? A jury concluded that the school was careless, but was the jury right? The correctness of that conclusion, however, is not before the state’s high court. Indeed, this is why Hotchkiss’ lawyers are going for broke by arguing that the school had no duty at all to be careful. It is also argued on behalf of Hotchkiss that the $41.5 million verdict is excessive, and that damage awards like this could overwhelm even wealthy schools, let alone those that are strapped. The award is so large, the school’s lawyers claim, as to demonstrate that the jury was inflamed by anger or prejudice and hence vastly exceeded any plausible notion of fair compensation.

On the damages issue, Hotchkiss has a far stronger argument. While Connecticut courts have upheld large verdicts in the past, and while the computation of damages is normally for the jury, this award is so large that the state Supreme Court would be entitled to instruct the Second Circuit that Connecticut law does not require deference to the jury in this case. Indeed, it would be within its rights to recommend that the damages be substantially reduced or even that a new trial be ordered. Although we have suggested that Munn’s duty question is easy, we understand why the Second Circuit may have thought the case was sufficiently challenging to pass onto the Connecticut Supreme Court. A young woman losing her capacity for speech because of her school’s carelessness is horrific and tragic. Even if a $41.5 million award is too high, it is hard to say why it is too high (or what an appropriate award would be) and it is hard to say whether an order requiring the parties to start all over with a new trial after years of litigation would be fair. These are the difficult judgments in Munn, and the court will be tempted to finesse them altogether by embracing the defendant’s legally unsupportable “no duty” argument. The court must stand firm on the duty question and do its best to provide the Second Circuit with a legally tenable framework for reducing damages.

Read more here: courant.com/opinion/op-ed/hc-op-goldberg-hoctchkiss-liability-case-key-questions-0326-20170324-story.html

Bail Bonds Sanford – Should Supreme Court justices have unlimited tenure?

Source      : Wacotrib News
By              : LORI A. RINGHAND PAUL M. COLLINS JR.
Category  : Bail Bonds Sanford , Seminole County Bail Bonds

Should Supreme Court justices have unlimited tenure?

Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch took the hot seat and offered testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. If confirmed, he will be one of only 113 people to sit on the high court since it was established in 1789. Why have so few people had this honor? Because the Constitution effectively grants life tenure to justices. The Constitution states that justices “shall hold their office during good behavior” and that they can be removed only by impeachment. In the 228-year history of the Supreme Court, only one justice has been impeached (and he was not removed); the others have served until their voluntary retirement or death. The United States is rare among the world’s constitutional democracies in granting unlimited tenure to unelected high court judges. The system does have some advantages. It protects justices from the influence of ordinary politics and allows them to focus on constitutional duties without considering any decision’s effects on future career opportunities. Nonetheless, legal scholars and political scientists increasingly question whether life tenure remains a good idea. While scholars disagree about the exact numbers, our Supreme Court justices are serving longer and longer terms; presidents have incentives to choose younger and younger nominees; and the justices themselves appear to delay retirement in the hope of having an ideologically compatible president select their replacements. Moreover, the confirmation process has become increasingly contentious, culminating last year in Senate Republicans refusing to even grant a hearing to President Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland. As a result, many scholars propose a shift to staggered 18-year terms. What are the pros and cons of such a change? Here’s a breakdown.

What would be good about 18-year terms?
First, term limits could make appointments less politically fraught. Our research shows that selecting Supreme Court nominees has always been political. That’s not a bad thing. Having elected officials select Supreme Court justices ensures that, over time, the Supreme Court’s decisions do not get too far out of step with public opinion. Such indirect public accountability probably is essential in a system like ours, where our justices are charged with deciding how words written hundreds of years ago apply to contemporary situations. But when the nation’s politics are polarized, partisan antagonism can shut down the entire system, as happened with Garland’s nomination and may happen now. Staggered 18-year terms could help prevent that, lowering the stakes for each nomination while retaining an appropriate level of democratic accountability. When fully implemented, 18-year terms would evenly distribute appointments so that each president would nominate two justices per term, with a midyear election falling in between. Vacancies would be predictable and evenly paced, draining confirmation hearings of much of the current drama. If a sitting justice dies or needs to step down before his or her expected resignation date, the seat could be temporarily filled by a lower court judge or a retired one, drawn from a pool and thus sitting by designation. Second, by tying appointments more predictably to each election’s results, this system would increase the Supreme Court’s democratic accountability. Studies have found that justices over time “drift” from the ideological preferences of the governing coalition that appointed them. More frequent turnover would reduce this drift. The Supreme Court’s views would better reflect the choices of the American people rather than vagaries of chance and time.

One major problem with life tenure is that justices serve for so long that they can become out of touch with the nation they help lead. Staggered 18-year terms minimize this risk. Finally, term limits could increase the quality of nominees. Like it or not, one of the driving factors behind current presidential appointments is a nominee’s age. Individuals older than about 60 years of age are unlikely to be appointed. (Garland, age 63 at the time of his nomination, was likely picked in part in hopes that his relatively advanced age would reduce opposition to his appointment.) This means presidents are intentionally excluding a sizable number of highly qualified individuals from serving on the Supreme Court. Term limits solve this problem.

And what would be bad about 18-year terms?
First, term limits may hurt judicial independence. One of the chief arguments against term limits is that life tenure frees the justices from political or popular pressure. Justices are not elected officials, and we don’t want them to respond too much to the passing passions of ordinary politics. We also don’t want them to worry too much about post-Supreme Court careers. Shorter terms could prompt justices to think too much about how their votes play in the arena of public opinion or — worse — how they may limit or help future earnings. Second, the Supreme Court’s legitimacy might be threatened by shorter terms. Life tenure enables the justices to interpret and apply the Constitution exactly the way they see fit, without considering pressure or repercussions. This perception of independence may be important to what scholars call the Supreme Court’s “diffuse support” — the perception that people support the Supreme Court regardless of disagreement with particular decisions because they believe the Supreme Court overall is engaged in something other than ordinary politics.

Third, staggered 18-year terms could not eliminate all risk of political gamesmanship. A determined Senate majority could still refuse to act on a nomination or vote down a nominee they found unacceptable. But term limits would change the political calculations and incentives by creating a predictable, fair distribution of seats over time and making each individual vacancy less consequential. The final argument against term limits may be the most important: They may be impossible to implement. Creating legally enforceable Supreme Court term limits would almost certainly require amending the Constitution. That’s unlikely to happen anytime soon. Any solution short of a constitutional amendment would require getting justices and senators to agree to change the norms and customs governing retirement and confirmation. In other words, they would have to voluntarily agree to play by a new set of rules. Given the state of politics today, that may be too much to ask. Lori A. Ringhand is the associate dean for academic affairs and J. Alton Hosch Professor of Law at the University of Georgia School of Law. Paul M. Collins Jr. is a professor of political science and director of legal studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. They are the authors of “Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings and Constitutional Change.”

Read more here: wacotrib.com/opinion/columns/guest_columns/lori-ringhand-paul-collins-jr-washington-post-should-supreme-court/article_8bcfada4-5a57-53ba-a30c-29657d912f56.html

Bail Bonds in Sanford – Crawford Co. woman taking legal action against jail

Source     : Whas 11 News
By             : Renee Murphy
Category : Bail Bonds in Sanford , Seminole County Bail Bonds

Crawford Co. woman taking legal action against jail

It all happened so quick. “I was shocked when I first saw it,” Justin Mills said. It was an instant two southern Indiana attorneys said crossed the line. “You can’t incarcerate people and treat them the way she was treated,” Larry Wilder said.

Larry Wilder and Justin Mills showed WHAS11 News video they said is from June at the Crawford County Jail. In the video, a woman is being taken inside the jail in handcuffs. Authorities said she was intoxicated and then she’s shown spitting at a deputy. The woman in cuffs, identified as Kathi Plaskett, has something placed over her mouth by deputies so she can’t spit again and is placed in a special chair.“When you see the video, you have to ask yourself is it the rule that you are allowed to knock someone to the ground, strike them in the face, take their knee and grind it into their back and grind their head in concrete,” Wilder said. “Was she wrong? Absolutely. Was he wrong? No question about it.”

Attorneys say Plaskett requested medical care in July from injuries sustained, captured by video and wasn’t granted an approval for medical assistance until October. WHAS11 News spoke with the chief deputy at the Crawford County Jail who says the sheriff denies any wrong- doing and said they couldn’t comment any further because Plaskett has pending criminal charges.

Her attorneys have filed a notice of their intent to file a lawsuit against the Sheriff’s Department. “No one should be treated like that and so right is right [and] wrong is wrong.”Plaskett’s attorneys say she first encountered the sheriff’s deputies when they believe she called 911 saying she had been assaulted. In the video, she was brought into the sheriff’s department with her pants inside out. Plaskett is charged with criminal trespass and battery of an officer.

Read more here: whas11.com/news/local/indiana/crawford-co-woman-taking-legal-action-against-jail/381403722

Sanford Bail Bonds – America’s Supreme Court hints it may keep a closer eye on the executive branch

Source      : Economist News
By              : Press Release
Category  : Bail Bond Sanford , Sanford Bail Bonds

America’s Supreme Court hints it may keep a closer eye on the executive branch

In the midst of a fresh crack-down on undocumented migrants and a pending revision of the president’s travel ban, the Supreme Court heard an immigration case with potentially wide-ranging implications. Esquivel-Quintana v Jefferson Sessions is the first Supreme Court case naming Donald Trump’s new attorney general as a party—though it concerns a matter that took place well before he joined the cabinet. Depending on how the justices rule, immigration authorities may soon either enjoy a freer hand to deport non-citizens or find themselves judicially constrained in these efforts. Juan Esquivel-Quintana arrived in America from Mexico with his parents at the age of 12 and became a lawful permanent resident. In 2009, Mr Esquivel-Quintana served 90 days in jail and five years on probation for statutory rape. He was found to have violated California’s penal code by having sex, at the age of 20, with his 16-year-old girlfriend. (The law criminalises sexual relations between an adult and “a minor who is more than three years younger than the perpetrator”.) Later, after moving from California to Michigan, Mr Esquivel-Quintana became subject to removal proceedings by the Department of Homeland Security. The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) provides that “sexual abuse of a minor” is an “aggravated felony” and constitutes grounds for deportation. Mr Esquivel-Quintana’s crime, authorities said, fit that bill. Three rounds of litigation later, Mr Esquivel-Quintana found no relief. An immigration judge, a panel of the Board of Immigration Appeals, and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals all confirmed the decision to send him back to Mexico. In his final appeal to the Supreme Court, however, Mr Esquivel-Quintana seemed to have some hope of staying in America. The case turns on the meaning of the phrase “sexual abuse of a minor”. Jeffrey Fisher, Mr Esquivel-Quintana’s lawyer, told the justices that his client’s actions would not have cost him a day in jail in 43 states. And of the seven remaining states, most construe sex with near-17-year-olds as a misdemeanor, “and only one of those seven states calls that conduct abuse”. On top of that, Mr Esquivel-Quintana’s behaviour would not have been a crime under either the Model Penal Code (a project in the 1960s to standardise state criminal laws) or federal law. In sum, Mr Fisher argued, the justices “could decide this case by saying that the seven states that have laws like California’s…but draw the age of consent at 18, automatically fall outside of sexual abuse of a minor”. Taking in the full “sweep” of state and federal law, Mr Fisher proposed, 16 ought to be accepted as the age of consent for the purposes of the INA.

Speaking for the federal government, Allon Kedem refuted the notion that the definition of “sexual abuse of a minor” is a function of counting up laws in the 50 states and finding an average. This technique (taking a “multijurisdictional survey”, in legalese) has not been the Supreme Court’s strategy in most similar cases, Mr Kedem argued. All but twice, the justices have ignored or “specifically rejected the relevance of those multijurisdictional surveys, saying that they would shed no light on the central inquiry”. There is good reason for eschewing a glance over the nation’s many conflicting sex-crime laws, Mr Kedem claimed. First, there are “very difficult line-drawing problems”. How many states would be needed to pinpoint a common thread? “Is it 50 percent? Two-thirds? Three-quarters? Something else?” Second, there is the complication of widely varying state populations. It “seems somewhat anomalous to treat Wyoming’s statute exactly the same as California’s, even though California’s statute applies to m ore than 50 times the population”. Should the justices conduct a weighted survey based on the number of people subject to various permutations of the law? These are all reasonable objections, yet Mr Kedem had trouble coming up with a justification for his own, quite expansive, definition of child abuse. It seems a few of the justices found it rather unfair to put a consensual relationship that is, in Justice Elena Kagan’s words, “really like a freshman in college going out with a junior in college” into a category of “aggravated felony”. Should a young man face deportation from America for such an act? Ms Kagan seemed to hold her nose at the sources Mr Kedem summoned: “a single dictionary definition and some legislative history that even you indicate is sparse”. And the justices teamed up to ridicule the definition, which held that (only) “a parent, guardian, relative, or acquaintance” could be the perpetrator. “If somebody meets someone at a bar and doesn’t even know them”, Justice Stephen Breyer said, pushing on the “acquaintance” requirement, “and gets the person drunk and they go home and they have sex…that would sound much more like sexual abuse of a minor than a senior in college dating and living with a sophomore”.

Reeling from this exchange, Mr Kedem pivoted in his final minutes by pleading for deference. The INA makes “an explicit delegation of interpretive authority”, providing that “the attorney general not only gets to conduct removal proceedings, but gets to render interpretations in those proceedings that are, quote, ‘controlling’”. Administrative agencies, Mr Kedem continued, “are actually quite good at drawing these sorts of lines”. On the other hand, it’s “sort of problematic for courts to do it”. Better to let a “politically accountabl[e]” agency determine what counts as abuse than to entrust the job to unelected judges. In making this final point, Mr Kedem appealed to the so-called Chevron doctrine developed in the mid-1980s: when a statue is ambiguous, the courts should defer to the relevant administrative agency’s interpretation thereof rather than issue a definitive judgment themselves. The late Justice Antonin Scalia was a fan of Chevron deference. Notably, his probable successor, Neil Gorsuch, is not. In an opinion last summer, Mr Gorsuch wrote that Chevron permits agencies “to swallow huge amounts of core judicial and legislative power” and to “concentrate federal power” against the wishes of the founders. In Monday’s hearing, Justices Kennedy and Breyer both voiced some hesitation about the breadth of Chevron. When it comes to an agency that has “special expertise in regulating the environment or the forest service or fisheries or nuclear power”, Mr Kennedy said, deference makes sense. But “why does the INS have any expertise in determining the meaning of a criminal statute?” Perhaps the justices are better suited to that task. These glimmers of scepticism about the reach of Chevron—and hints that the justices may employ the “rule of lenity” to give the benefit of the doubt to the defendant—suggest that Mr Esquivel-Quintana has a chance of avoiding deportation. They also hold open the possibility that once Mr Gorsuch takes his seat on the bench, the court may begin a move away from bowing to the discretion of the executive branch in close cases. The implications of such an evolution in the law of administrative agencies are complex and vast, but they point in one curious direction: the possibility that at the dawn of the Trump presidency, courts will begin asserting themselves more in keeping an eye on—and checking—the administration.

Read more here: economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2017/02/deportation-and-law

Bail Bond Sanford – U.S. Supreme Court set to hear arguments in decade-old Xbox 360 scratched-disc case

Source      : Geek Wire News
By              : Monica Nickelsburg
Category  : Bail Bond Sanford , Sanford Bail Bond

U.S. Supreme Court set to hear arguments in decade-old Xbox 360 scratched-disc case

The U.S. Supreme Court is planning to hear arguments Tuesday in a lawsuit filed by Xbox 360 users against Microsoft over scratched video game discs. SCOTUS isn’t reviewing the case for nostalgia’s sake. The country’s highest court is using the lawsuit to determine whether a specific legal loophole is permissible in civil proceedings. We’ll get to that momentarily, but first a little background.

Nearly 10 years ago, a group of gamers sued Microsoft, claiming the Xbox 360 console scratched their video games because of a product defect. Those individuals filed for class action status — meaning the plaintiffs would be considered as a group, with bigger legal consequences — but a federal judge in Seattle denied them class certification. After filing another lawsuit in 2011, the plaintiffs tried, unsuccessfully, to get the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to review the decision on their class certification. The problem was, federal appeals courts typically can only review the final decisions of district courts. Although the plaintiffs in the lawsuit were denied class action status, the individual lawsuits, brought by people who said the Xbox 360 scratched their discs, lived on. That meant the appeals court couldn’t review them.

The plaintiffs argued the case only made sense with class action status because the damages to individuals’ games were negligible when compared with the cost of legal proceedings. The district court’s decision not to certify the plaintiffs as a class would have meant the end of the road, as happens with most cases filed as class actions. Still with us? Good, because this is where it gets interesting. In an unusual (but not unprecedented) move, the individual plaintiffs asked the courts to voluntarily “dismiss” their cases which, in legal terms, is a final decision. Of course, legal terms aren’t always common-sense terms. In this case, the plaintiffs dismissed their claims under the condition that they could be revived if the appeals court granted class-action status.

The legal rigmarole resulted in a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision that largely sided with the plaintiffs. Microsoft then asked the Supreme Court to review the case and determine whether the loophole is legally permissible. That brings us to Tuesday’s proceedings, during which SCOTUS will hear arguments in the Microsoft Corp v. Baker case. The precise question they’ll consider is, “Whether a federal court of appeals has jurisdiction under both Article III and 28 U. S. C. §1291 to review an order denying class certification after the named plaintiffs voluntarily dismiss their individual claims with prejudice.”

Read more here: geekwire.com/2017/u-s-supreme-court-set-hear-arguments-decade-old-xbox-360-scratched-disc-case/

Sanford Bail Bond – Mississippi Governor approves new daily fantasy sports law

Source      : Calvinayre News
By              : Leonard Postrado
Category  : Bail Bond Sanford , Sanford Bail Bond

Mississippi Governor approves new daily fantasy sports law

The new fantasy sports law in Mississippi has finally been signed, sealed and delivered. Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant officially signed House Bill 967 on Monday, making the state the first to pass such a law in 2017.

According to Legal Sports Report, Bryant signed the bill, which empowers the Mississippi Gaming Commission to regulate fantasy sports contests online or in a casino, after it was forwarded to his desk by lawmakers on March 2. With the law in effect, state regulators may now issue licenses to daily fantasy sports (DFS) operators. Many expect DFS giants DraftKings, FanDuel, FantasyDraft, and Yahoo to immediately line-up for a license in Mississippi, which will cost an operator $5,000 over three years.

The new law also allows the state regulator to conduct a background checks and annual audits on daily fantasy sports operators. Revenues of DFS firms operating in Mississippi will also now be slapped with an eight percent tax. A ban on employee play at operators and players under 18-years-old will also take effect. Mississippi, which is considered to be one of the many battlegrounds for DFS, now joins other states that have regulated the industry in recent years. The legislation was deemed important after Attorney General Jim Hood determined fantasy sports was a game of chance.

The cash-strapped state is hoping to reap $5 million annually in tax from DFS, although most believe that’s an overly optimistic estimate. But even $5 million, while welcome, would be a modest amount in a budget of more than $6 billion. With the industry now officially legal in Mississippi, DFS proponents are now watching keenly the developments in a much bigger DFS battleground, Texas. Analysts expect the legislative battle over DFS legalization in the Lone Star State will happen this year.

Read more here: calvinayre.com/2017/03/14/business/mississippi-governor-approves-new-daily-fantasy-sports-law/

Bondsman in Seminole County – California justice doesn’t want immigration arrests in court

Source      : NJ Herald News
By              : Press Release
Category  :  Bail Bondsman in Sanford , Bondsman in Seminole County

California justice doesn’t want immigration arrests in court

The chief justice of the California Supreme Court asked federal immigration agents Thursday to stop making arrests at courthouses, saying “stalking undocumented immigrants” at the facilities thwarts people’s access to justice. Chief Justice Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye wrote in a letter to top federal officials that she is concerned about recent reports of immigration agents going to the courts to track down immigrants for arrest, saying the practice will affect the public’s confidence in the court system. “Courthouses should not be used as bait in the necessary enforcement of our country’s immigration laws,” she wrote in the letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, adding that crime and domestic violence victims and witnesses all go to the courts seeking justice and due process of the law. The letter comes amid a series of reports of arrests at courthouses in California, Oregon and Texas as federal immigration agents have been called on to step up deportations under President Donald Trump.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement weighs many factors when deciding where to make an arrest, including whether authorities have a home or work address for the person they are seeking and what is safest for officers and community, said Virginia Kice, an agency spokeswoman. “While ICE does arrest targets at courthouses, generally it’s only after investigating officers have exhausted other options,” she said in a statement. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment on the letter. Last month, immigration agents in Texas arrested a woman at an El Paso courthouse while she was obtaining a protection order against an alleged abuser. The arrest sparked an outcry from victim’s advocates, saying it would dissuade others from coming forward to report abuse for fear of being deported.

ICE said it also has made arrests in recent months at courthouses in Oregon and Southern California. Many of those taken into custody at courthouses have criminal convictions but are no longer turned over to federal agents by local law enforcement as they were some years ago, Kice said. Courthouses can be seen as a relatively safe place for federal immigration agents to make arrests because people pass through metal detectors to enter. But many advocates for immigrants and victims decry the practice, saying immigrants will be afraid to report crime or show up for hearings.

“Enforcement policies that include stalking courthouses and arresting undocumented immigrants, the vast majority of whom pose no risk to public safety, are neither safe nor fair,” Cantil-Sakauye wrote. “They not only compromise our core value of fairness but they undermine the judiciary’s ability to provide equal access to justice.” The practice also can create additional legal problems. Immigration attorney Philippe Martinet said he was recently in court in Arizona when a man identified himself as an immigration officer and arrested his client. Because of the immigration arrest, the client missed his trial date on assault charges and the judge issued a warrant for him.

Martinet said that whatever new policies ICE is implementing, they need to be thought out thoroughly because they can derail criminal trials. “You need to implement it in a way that doesn’t throw a wrench in the system,” he said. The letter from the California chief justice was welcomed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, which several years ago raised concerns about deportation agents making arrests at courthouses in Kern County. At that time, ICE said it would refrain from making such arrests, except in “exigent circumstances.”

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