Battery Bail Bonds – Gorsuch On Sidelines As Supreme Court Decides Insurance, Legal Sanctions Cases

Source     : Forbes News
By             : Daniel Fisher
Category : Battery Bail Bonds , Assault Bail Bonds Sanford

Gorsuch On Sidelines As Supreme Court Decides Insurance, Legal Sanctions Cases

The U.S. Supreme Court issued a pair of decisions today affecting legal sanctions and the power of states to control insurance contracts, noting in each one the non-participation of the court’s newest Justice, Neil Gorsuch. Gorsuch heard his first oral arguments yesterday and will likely contribute to a few decisions before the end of the session, restoring the court’s 9-0 roster after more than a year of operating with a deadlock-prone eight justices following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. In Coventry Health Care v. Nevils, the nation’s highest court reversed its equivalent in Missouri, ruling that federal law trumps a Missouri statute prohibiting insurance companies from collecting medical expenses from the lawsuit winnings of policyholders.

The 8-0 decision rejected the Missouri Supreme Court’s reasoning that the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, which gives Congress the power to overrule state laws, doesn’t extend to contractual provisions of health insurance policies provided to federal employees. Coventry had demanded that plaintiff Jodie Nevils repay $6,592 in medical expenses from a car accident that he later recovered in a lawsuit against the driver of the other vehicle. Missouri, like several other states, has laws prohibiting insurers from collecting from policyholders in such conditions, a process known as subrogation. But Congress clearly intended federal law governing health policies for government employees to preempt any law regarding the payment of benefits, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in the unanimous opinion.

The court sent the case back to Missouri for reconsideration after the Office of Personnel Management issued an opinion asserting preemption. But the Missouri Supreme Court held its ground, saying the Supremacy Clause only affects “laws,” not contractual terms between the government and private insurers. Ginsburg dismissed the distinction as “semantics” and ordered the case reversed and remanded. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a concurrence agreeing in the judgment but voicing concern that the federal law could give the President unconstitutionally broad powers to dictate the terms of contracts. But since nobody brought up that argument, he said, it should be left to the lower courts to consider on remand. The court also decided unanimously, in Goodyear Tire v. Haeger, that the oft-overturned Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals got it wrong again when it upheld $2.7 million in sanctions against the tire maker for failing to turn over potentially incriminating evidence in a lawsuit over a tire blowout. The lower court approved of the sanctions because Goodyear’s behavior was “truly egregious,” but it should have restricted sanctions to legal fees the plaintiffs incurred directly because of the missing evidence. Justice Elena Kagan wrote the opinion.

Read more here: forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2017/04/18/gorsuch-on-sidelines-as-supreme-court-decides-insurance-legal-sanctions-cases/#408326a73fb2

Assault Bail Bonds Sanford – Lose citizenship for fibbing? Supreme Court justices fume

Source     : USA Today News
By             : Richard Wolf
Category : Battery Bail Bonds , Assault Bail Bonds Sanford

Lose citizenship for fibbing? Supreme Court justices fume

The chief justice of the United States has driven over the speed limit. One of his colleagues related a story about carrying a pocketknife into a government building. Another often fibs about her weight. If a naturalized citizen were to lie about such things, a Justice Department lawyer told the high court Wednesday, he or she could be stripped of citizenship. Perhaps with an eye on the Trump administration’s stepped-up efforts against illegal immigrants, several justices expressed alarm. Sitting for their last scheduled oral argument of the 2016 term, the justices were in a feisty mood when it came to an ethnic Serb’s case against the U.S. government, which revoked her citizenship for lying about her husband’s military record.

Their concerns were not related so much to Divna Maslenjak’s misdeeds more than a decade ago, however, as they were to the government’s interpretation of a law criminalizing misrepresentations in naturalization proceedings. It matters not, assistant solicitor general Robert Parker said, whether the lies are related to the cause of winning citizenship. Chief Justice John Roberts started pushing back on that theory by admitting that — long since the statute of limitations expired, mind you — he drove 60 miles per hour in a 55-mph zone. Told that a naturalized citizen could lose his citizenship if he lied about that, Roberts exploded. “Oh, come on!” he said. “You’re saying that on this form, you expect everyone to list every time in which they drove over the speed limit?”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the requirement could extend to lying about an embarrassing childhood nickname. Justice Stephen Breyer said it could criminalize an unreported pen knife in a pocket. Justice Elena Kagan said she was “horrified” to learn that lying about her weight would be included among the no-no’s — to which Parker replied, “only under oath.” Unless the lies must be relevant to the issue of obtaining citizenship, Roberts said, “the government will have the opportunity to denaturalize anyone they want.” That would be “extraordinary power,” he said. “Your argument is demeaning the priceless value of citizenship,” Justice Anthony Kennedy chimed in.

Lies about husband’s past
The government receives nearly 800,000 petitions for naturalization each year, making it impossible for officials to catch every harmless white lie. But the law is the law, Parker said — and it doesn’t specify that misrepresentations must be material. That argument carried at least some weight for the newest justice, Neil Gorsuch, who has proven to be a stickler for the letter of the law — just as advertised during the months leading up to his confirmation. To say only certain lies are punishable, he said, would require “a lot of linguistic somersaults.”

Even some liberal justices acknowledged that Maslenjak’s lies might have helped her gain citizenship in 2007. Her troubles started six years later, when a federal grand jury indicted her for winning naturalization “contrary to law” by stating that she had not lied during the immigration process. It turned out Maslenjak lied when applying for refugee status in the United States during the 1990s, both about her husband’s service in a Bosnian militia unit implicated in war crimes and other matters. She was convicted, sentenced to two years’ probation and had her naturalization revoked, a conviction upheld by a federal appeals court. She was deported in October while her case was still pending. Her lawyer, Christopher Landau, told the justices that while Maslenjak’s jury was told her lies did not have to be relevant, “Congress recognizes that not all lies are created equal.”

Read more here: usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/04/26/lose-citizenship-fibbing-supreme-court-justices-fume/100935202/

Battery Bail Bonds – Is the Supreme Court acting less like a court?

Source     : The Conversation News
By             : Bob Egelko
Category : Battery Bail Bonds , Assault Bail Bonds Sanford

Is the Supreme Court acting less like a court

As the pinnacle of the judicial branch, the U.S. Supreme Court is necessarily involved in some of the highest-profile, most controversial and most political cases across the country. And it is one of the most widely respected government institutions in the country. Some of its reputation may be because the justices are not seen as mere “politicians in robes.” Research also tells us people respect the Supreme Court in part because it shares traditions and pageantry with the larger judicial system – such as judges in robes wielding gavels. As members of a team of legal scholars and information scientists who use computational methods to study the judicial system, we wondered whether another potential source of the Supreme Court’s public esteem is its use of language. Like other courts, the Supreme Court doesn’t announce its rulings with one-line tweets, for example, the way many politicians declare their intentions to vote for or against legislative bills. Rather, it issues lengthy documents setting out facts and legal precedents and connecting them to each other in ways that both declare an outcome and explain (or object to) how the court reached that decision. The more these written opinions suggest the court is set apart from the political fray, the more they can help its reputation. But how can we know if the Supreme Court is writing like a judicial body rather than a more political institution? One way is to compare its decisions to those issued by the next-highest level of federal courts, the U.S. Courts of Appeals, which are widely perceived to be less politically partisan and more focused on addressing run-of-the-mill legal issues. Our comparison found that from 1951 to 2007, Supreme Court opinions have indeed become increasingly different in their content from opinions issued by lower federal courts, indicating that over time, the court appears to be drifting away from its judicial roots.

Machine reading the law
In other work, our group has studied the evolution of the writing style of the Supreme Court and timescales of influence of opinion as well as ideological expression in judicial opinions. In each project, we applied various kinds of big data text mining tools to collections of tens of thousands of opinions. For our current research, we chose to view judicial opinions as a genre of lawmaking text, akin to legislatures’ statutes, the president’s executive orders (or, these days, tweets) and agencies’ regulations. We analyzed a random sample of 25,000 of the entire corpus of approximately 300,000 opinions issued from the Supreme Court and federal appeals courts between 1951 and 2007. Our analysis included all opinion types, including dissents. We were interested not in whether there were small stylistic differences – such as increased use of footnotes – but whether the actual words of Supreme Court opinions were distinctive from those of the appeals courts, and whether that distinctiveness was changing. Our analysis found that over five decades, the language of the Supreme Court’s opinions became increasingly different from those of the appellate courts. This trend may undermine the court’s popular legitimacy over time, particularly when viewed in concert with other developments indicating the Supreme Court may be becoming increasingly politicized, such as the process of nominating and confirming new justices.

Who wrote that?
The first step in our analysis used a specific type of machine learning, called a “topic model,” which detects groups of words that generally appear near each other with predictable frequency in a given body of texts. For example, it can tell whether a particular opinion is more focused on the equal protection rights under the 14th Amendment as opposed to environmental law because in the former, the words “discrimination” and “race” are more likely to appear together and frequently, while in the latter this is true of the words “pollution” and “water.” For the next step, we used the results of the topic analysis to teach a machine learning program to classify thousands of opinions as either written by the Supreme Court or a federal appeals court. Based on the topic information, the machine was able to pick up on content differences between the two groups of opinions. For example, the Supreme Court’s opinions tend to have more words associated with interpreting laws and constitutional rights, like using the history of Reconstruction to interpret civil rights statutes. The appeals courts’ opinions tended to have more words referring to times, dates, testimony and evidence.

Based on this training, we tested how well the machine was able to guess whether new opinions were written by the Supreme Court. To humanize it a bit, imagine a legal scholar who had read the first set of opinions walking down the street one day and coming across a few pages of a judicial opinion with all identifying information torn away. How good would she be at identifying which court produced it – and does her accuracy vary depending on when the pages were written? Even in the 1950s, the first decade in our sample, the Supreme Court’s opinions were already quite different from appeals court decisions. When presented with opinions written in this period, the machine was able to judge with roughly 80 percent accuracy which opinions were written by the Supreme Court. So its decisions were already fairly easily distinguished from appeals court opinions. But they got even more so as years went by: When presented with opinions written in the 2000s, the algorithm achieved an almost perfect score. An exception that illustrates how this works is the algorithm’s tendency to misclassify the Supreme Court’s 2003 Yarborough v. Gentry ruling. That opinion provides guidance for the lower courts on how to deal with habeas corpus cases, which are a mainstay of their work. It deals with a common issue in the lower courts that does not come up to the Supreme Court as often. As a result, it is not surprising that it might be mistaken for a lower court opinion.

The idiosyncratic court
Over time, by increasingly focusing on an idiosyncratic set of topics and by constructing their arguments in an increasingly unique way, Supreme Court opinions have become more distinctive. That hypothetical random opinion found on the street is easier to identify because the court is expressing itself in a new subgenre of legal writing that is more identifiable. This isn’t just because of differences in the mix of topics the courts rule on. For example, the Supreme Court takes up constitutional issues more commonly than any other type of case. The appeals courts, by contrast, decide the occasional high-profile constitutional cases alongside a large number of unexceptional contract law, administrative law and criminal law matters. Our analysis shows that while the details of these differences shift over the years, the degree of difference didn’t change from 1951 to 2007. What we find, instead, is that the Supreme Court is analyzing and writing about cases in an increasingly idiosyncratic fashion, distinct from the style of the appeals courts. This may contribute to an overall impression within the public that the court is just another political body. If that is true, the Supreme Court’s unique place in American society may be compromised, as the reservoir of prestige and respect that it currently enjoys eventually runs dry.

Read more here: theconversation.com/is-the-supreme-court-acting-less-like-a-court-75910

Battery Bail Bonds – Supreme court declines to hear Vimeo copyright infringement case

Source     : Jurist News
By             : Meena Ansari
Category : Battery Bail Bonds , Assault Bail Bonds Sanford

Supreme court declines to hear Vimeo copyright infringement case

The US Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal from record companies that want to pursue a copyright infringement case against music site Vimeofor hosting music by classic artists. Capitol Records and other record companies had sued Vimeo for hosting 199 unauthorized video recordings from artists such as The Beatles and Elvis Presley. The Supreme court decision lets stand the federal appeals court ruling that websites are protected from liability for music recorded before 1972. According to the federal judge, a federal safe harbor law, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, did not create liability for video-sharing websites as long as they remove the infringing material once they receive notice of it.

File-sharing sites and the sharing of copyrighted materials continues to be a global issue. In February the Swedish Court of Patent Appeals and the Market Court , an appellate court with exclusive jurisdiction over intellectual property cases, ordered an Internet service provider (ISP) to block access to the file-sharing site The Pirate Bay and the streaming site Swefilmer. In December the Federal Court of Australia ordered [JURIST report] an ISP to block five named companies and all their related websites. The same issue was decided by Irish and Dutch courts in 2013 and 2014, where the courts came to different results.

Read more here: jurist.org/paperchase/2017/03/supreme-court-declines-to-hear-vimeo-copyright-infringement-case.php

Assault Bail Bonds Sanford – The Supreme Court Should Bring Sanity to Patent Law

Source     : WIred News
By             : Orrin Hatch
Category :  Battery Bail Bonds , Assault Bail Bonds Sanford

The Supreme Court Should Bring Sanity to Patent Law

Supreme Court will hear argument in TC Heartland v. Kraft Foods. This critically important case involves the meaning of the patent venue statute and where plaintiffs who claim infringement may bring suit. Fighting over where cases can be brought may sound like the sort of thing only lawyers would care about, but I assure you, this case has profound ramifications for all of us.

At issue in the case is whether a plaintiff claiming patent infringement can sue a defendant corporation only where the defendant is incorporated or has an established place of business, or whether a plaintiff can instead sue anywhere the defendant has ever sold the allegedly infringing item, or even just offered the item for sale. In today’s world of internet ecommerce and interlocking distribution chains, that can be literally anywhere. To take TC Heartland as an example, the defendant corporation in the case, an Indiana-based manufacturer of zero-calorie sweeteners, was sued in Delaware even though it has no regular or established place of business in Delaware and is not even registered to do business in the state. Despite the defendant’s lack of connections, the court found that Delaware was a proper venue for the suit because a small percentage of the defendant’s sales—approximately 2 percent—were purchased by a customer in Arkansas and shipped to Delaware.

Savvy plaintiffs know that current rules allow them to bring suits virtually anywhere they want, so they seek out forums where they know judges are likely to give them an easier shake. One federal court in east Texas in particular has become infamous as a magnet for patent litigation because of its plaintiff-friendly rules and sympathetic juries. In 2015, nearly 45 percent of all patent cases nationwide were filed in that one court. Nearly one-third of all patent cases nationwide were handled by a single judge on that court. This is forum-shopping in the extreme. It’s easy to understand why plaintiffs favor the Eastern District of Texas so heavily. According to a 2017 study, the court’s procedures cause defendants to spend more money, earlier on, during a lawsuit. In addition, cases in the court are more likely than cases in other courts to go to a (costly) trial rather than being resolved in chambers. Finally, the court is less likely than other courts to pause litigation while parallel proceedings in the Patent and Trademark Office run their course, again raising costs for defendants. All of these traits make the Eastern District of Texas particularly attractive to plaintiffs seeking to extract settlements.

Small wonder, then, that some defendants have gone to extreme lengths to try to curry favor with the local populace, including by building an ice-skating rink in front of the courthouse and purchasing the champion steer at the local livestock auction. Essentially, plaintiffs are gaming the system by having their cases heard in courts they know will be friendly to their cause, a practice commonly known as “forum shopping.” This would be unseemly enough on its own. But what makes the practice even worse is that many of the plaintiffs in these cases aren’t productive enterprises. They don’t actually invent anything, or make anything, or even sell anything. Rather, their entire business model is to purchase patent licenses and then turn around and sue anyone they can arguably claim may have infringed the patent in some small way. Their goal is not actually to stop the allegedly infringing activity, but to extort a settlement and then move on to the next lawsuit.

These entities, often called “patent trolls,” structure settlement offers to make settling much more advantageous to defendants than litigating, even when the infringement claim is clearly bogus. Litigating even a baseless claim can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Far easier (and cheaper) to settle for $50,000 or $100,000 to make the patent troll go away. The result is a loss to society. Innovators spend millions of dollars defending themselves from wasteful lawsuits that they otherwise could have spent developing new products and services.

Read more here:  wired.com/2017/03/supreme-court-bring-sanity-patent-law/

Battery Bail Bonds – Arizona Supreme Court limits DUI law on taking blood samples

Source     : AZ Central News
By             : Associated Press
Category : Battery Bail Bonds , Assault Bail Bonds Sanford

Arizona Supreme Court limits DUI law on taking blood samples

The Arizona Supreme Court says police can’t have blood samples taken from an unconscious DUI suspect without having a search warrant or facing urgent circumstances beyond the natural dissipation of alcohol in blood.

The Arizona ruling Thursday weighed the constitutionality of a state law allowing warrantless blood draws in suspected DUI cases in which a driver is dead, unconscious or otherwise incapable of refusing to grant permission. The Arizona court says its decision tracks a 2013 U.S. Supreme Court ruling on warrantless blood draws from DUI suspects.

The decision says the law still can apply under so-called “exigent circumstances” but not in the case of a man whose blood was sampled after a 2012 crash. The court sent his case back to trial court to consider another legal issue.

Read More : azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2017/03/09/arizona-supreme-court-rule-dui-blood-draw-issue/98954492/

Assault Bail Bonds Sanford – The Next Legal Challenge To The Federal Sports Betting Ban Could Come This Year

Source     : Legal Sports Report News
By             : Daniel Wallach
Category :  Battery Bail Bonds , Assault Bail Bonds Sanford

The Next Legal Challenge To The Federal Sports Betting Ban Could Come This Year

West Virginia is not the most obvious choice as the next legal battleground for sports betting. It is the 12th least-populous state in the United States and with only four casinos, But for those who have been closely following the New Jersey sports betting saga, West Virginia’s emergence as a potential PASPA challenger should come as no surprise.

The backstory of WV and sports betting
West Virginia has long been a vocal supporter of New Jersey’s right to legalize sports betting. It filed amicus curiae — or “friend of the court” — briefs with the Third Circuit and the United States Supreme Court in both iterations of the New Jersey sports betting case (e.g., Christie I and Christie II). In fact, it is the only state that can claim such a designation. (There has been a virtual “revolving door” of amici states in both cases, with the only constant being West Virginia.) Moreover, the state solicitor general — Elbert Lin (a former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas) — was the principal author of the state amici briefs filed in Christie I and Christie II (even though each brief was joined by several other states). West Virginia has been on the edges of the sports betting legalization debate since 2013. Until now, however, it has only supported New Jersey’s quest for legalized sports betting out of a desire to protect state sovereignty, a core federalism principle, without necessarily taking a position on the wisdom of state-sanctioned sports betting.

Things change with new sports betting bill
But, now, West Virginia appears to be “all in” on sports betting. Last week, eleven West Virginia delegates from the state House of Representatives introduced a bill that would bring legal sports betting to the Mountaineer State. The proposed measure (HB 2751) was introduced on March 1, 2017. It would authorize the State Lottery Commission (which oversees all gambling in West Virginia) to promulgate rules regulating sports wagering at the state’s licensed casinos. (For more analysis of HB 2751, I refer you to Dustin Gouker’s article last week in LSR) Possibly signaling an intent to challenge PASPA in court (a la New Jersey, but in a different federal judicial circuit—the Fourth Circuit), the West Virginia bill contains several legislative “findings” that are quite revealing. The bill declares that PASPA is “unconstitutional” and “in clear violation of the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution,” and, for good measure, adds that the U.S. Congress “has no power to prevent state governments from authorizing sports betting as a form of gaming.” Viewed through this lens, the West Virginia bill “authorizes” the lottery commission to proceed with establishing rules for sports betting “notwithstanding the federal prohibition” against such activity. In other words, West Virginia may not be merely content to “stand by” and await the outcome of Christie II. This measure, if it is passed by the state legislature and signed into law by the aptly named Gov. Jim Justice, sets the table for the next PASPA court challenge, perhaps as early this year.

West Virginia is not like the other ‘stand-by’ measures
West Virginia is the sixth state to introduce sports betting legislation since early January, joining:
New York (which already has two such measures — here and here,)
Michigan (two bills — here and here)
Maryland
Pennsylvania
South Carolina (two bills: here and here)

This is certainly a positive development for proponents of expanded legal sports betting. The flurry of legislative activity is unprecedented. However, it does not mean that the courthouse doors are about to swing open for the next spate of PASPA litigation. The bills preceding West Virginia’s latest measure are what I would characterize as “stand-by” bills in the sense that the timing for the authorization of sports betting in each measure is tied to a specific future event (e.g., an amendment to the state constitution, the repeal or amendment of PASPA, or a court ruling that declares PASPA to be unconstitutional). Those events may or may not come to pass; certainly they will not happen by the end of this year.

WV bill sort of like others, sort of not
Even the West Virginia bill arguably contains such “stand-by” language. To that end, HB 2751 contains the following proviso in proposed Section 29-25A-1 (emphasis added):  By enactment of this law, the Legislature intends to create a mechanism to enable the West Virginia Lottery Commission to authorize and regulate sports betting at our state casino gaming facilities upon removal of federal restrictions prohibiting sports betting in West Virginia.

The words “upon removal of federal restrictions” seemingly tie the lottery commission’s ability to “authorize” and “regulate” sports betting in West Virginia to a future event, such as a repeal of PASPA or a favorable Supreme Court decision. Such language is similar to the verbiage employed in the state bills that tie those states’ ability to authorize sports betting to another future event, such as the amendment of a state constitution (as in the case of New York, Michigan, South Carolina and Maryland) or the repeal of PASPA (as in the case of each of the aforementioned states plus Pennsylvania). In each instance, those states are anticipating that the US Supreme Court may grant certiorari in Christie vs. NCAA and ultimately decide the case in New Jersey’s favor. That raises the specter that the court may declare PASPA unconstitutional as soon as 2018. That would remove the primary federal obstacle to state-sanctioned sports betting. There is now a realistic possibility that this judicial parlay may actually occur. As such, these six states (and likely others in the near future) are ramping up legislative efforts. By doing so, they can be in a prime position to legalize sports betting without undue delay were New Jersey to prevail in court.

Legal obstacles may preclude PASPA litigation for some states
But the conditional nature of these bills — while offering one pathway to legalized sports betting in the not-too-distant future — could present a jurisdictional barrier to those states hoping to advance any PASPA court challenges in 2017.

The case study in New Jersey
This is because of the federal jurisdictional principle known as “standing.” Federal courts only hear “cases or controversies” that are actual, present-day controversies rather than hypothetical disputes that deal with future events. New Jersey ran into this jurisdictional obstacle in in 2011. That’s when it attempted to challenge the constitutionality of PASPA before state lawmakers had even passed a law. It also came before New Jersey voters had approved a referendum amending the state constitution to allow sports betting. In Interactive Media Entertainment & Gaming Ass’n, Inc. v. Holder, 2011 WL 802106 (D.N.J. Mar. 7, 2011), several New Jersey parties (including the New Jersey Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association and state Sen. Raymond Lesniak) challenged the constitutionality of PASPA under:
The Tenth Amendment;
The Due Process Clause of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments;
and the Equal Protection Clause.

What happened in New Jersey
A New Jersey federal district court dismissed that lawsuit. It held holding that the plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the constitutionality of PASPA. At the time of the court’s decision, sports wagering was not permitted under the New Jersey constitution. The state legislature had not yet authorized it, either. Since neither of these critical actions had occurred, the court held that “[a]ny civil enforcement action [to challenge PASPA] would be premature, because New Jersey law does not permit the sports gambling sought by Plaintiffs,” adding that even “[i]f PASPA were found unconstitutional, New Jersey law would still prohibit the sports gambling activities Plaintiffs and their members seek to legalize.” Subsequent to this decision, voters approved a referendum in 2011 to amend the state constitution to permit sports betting. Shortly thereafter, the state legislature enacted legislation authorizing sports betting. That set the stage for Christie I and Christie II.

The playbook for actually challenging PASPA
The takeaway from the Interactive Media case is that a proposed state law that authorizes sports betting if and when a specified future event occurs. (For example, an amendment to the state constitution, a Congressional repeal of PASPA or the Supreme Court invalidating the federal law.) It would not be a trigger for immediate litigation given the conditional nature of the bill. Until the specified future event(s) actually occur, a state plaintiff hoping to challenge PASPA in court would likely not be considered “aggrieved.” A federal court would not review the controversy. Thus, any state law that contains such caveats (by tying it to the occurrence of a future contingent event) would not be sufficiently ripe for federal judicial review under the “case or controversy” requirement of Article III of the US Constitution.

Read More : legalsportsreport.com/13260/wv-sports-betting-paspa-challenge/

Battery Bail Bonds – Florida wins flower sales-tax fight when Supreme Court declines case

Source     : Orlando Sentinel News
By             : News Service of Florida
Category :  Battery Bail Bonds , Assault Bail Bonds Sanford

Florida wins flower sales-tax fight when Supreme Court declines case

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to take up a constitutional challenge to Florida collecting sales taxes on flowers that are ordered online from a Palm Beach County company but are delivered out of state. The Supreme Court, as is common, did not give reasons for turning down the appeal by American Business USA Corp., a Wellington firm. But the move effectively kept in place a ruling last year by the Florida Supreme Court in favor of the state Department of Revenue.

American Business USA argued that it should not be subject to Florida sales taxes, as it did not have an inventory of flowers in the state and used out-of-state florists to fill orders that had been placed online. The state 4th District Court of Appeal in 2014 sided with the firm, finding that Florida “impermissibly burdened interstate commerce” when it tried to collect taxes on flowers and other items delivered out of state. But the Florida Supreme Court overturned that decision.

In asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case, attorneys for American Business USA warned of potentially broad ramifications of the ruling by the Florida high court. “The present case is important because the Florida Supreme Court’s newly announced power has no limiting principle,” the attorneys wrote in an October brief. “If a state may tax flower sales based only on the state’s connection to the internet retailer who accepts the order, then nothing will constrain the spread of this power to all e-commerce transactions. As a category, flowers are indistinguishable from other types of tangible personal property.” But Attorney General Pam Bondi’s office argued the U.S. Supreme Court should turn down the case and described the issues in much-narrower terms.

“As the Florida Supreme Court recognized, Florida’s unremarkable imposition of sales tax liability on a business incorporated in Florida, residing in Florida, headquartered in Florida, and conducting sales operations in Florida fits well within the scope of state taxing authority, regardless whether the goods in question originate in or are delivered out of state,” attorneys in Bondi’s office wrote in a January brief. One of the legal issues in the case involved whether there was a “nexus” between the company’s sales and the state. The Florida Supreme Court found that such a nexus existed. “(The) record shows that American Business does have a physical presence in Florida — it is headquartered in Wellington, Florida, and has been doing business in Florida since 2001,” Florida Chief Justice Jorge Labarga wrote. “From its Florida location, American Business accepts internet orders and arranges for delivery of out-of-state flowers and tangible personal property. Based on the facts of this case, we find that the ‘substantial nexus’ test is met.”

Read More : orlandosentinel.com/business/os-nsf-florida-flower-tax-20170221-story.html

Assault Bail Bonds Sanford – Kentucky Supreme Court strikes down Lexington’s anti-begging law

Source     : Courier Journal News
By             : William Theisen
Category :  Battery Bail Bonds , Assault Bail Bonds Sanford

Kentucky Supreme Court strikes down Lexington’s anti-begging law

The Kentucky Supreme Court struck down Lexington’s anti-panhandling law on Thursday saying the practice is constitutionally protected free speech. It’s a decision that likely kills similar ordinances across the state, including the one in Louisville Metro that imposes a $250 fine, 90 days in jail, or both for those who aggressively beg for money in public.“Despite the societal stigma associated with panhandling, this form of expression is widely considered to be constitutionally protected speech,” Chief Justice John D. Minton Jr. said in the decision.

The case was brought by attorneys for Dennis Champion, 58, who has been cited or arrested more than 550 times for begging, illegal solicitations and disorderly conduct since 2004 in Lexington and Louisville, according to court records. Defending the Lexington ordinance, which carried a maximum penalty of 30 days in jail, a $100 fine, or both, the Fayette County attorney’s office said the city had a compelling interest in “pedestrians not being struck by motorists” and in the “efficient flow of traffic.” But the 14-page ruling said Lexington officials failed to show that panhandlers were responsible for traffic delays or accidents. The landmark ruling also said it is unconstitutional for city officials to treat individuals who carry signs begging for money differently from others, such as those with religious messages such as “Jesus Loves You.”

“The only thing distinguishing these two people is the content of their messages,” Minton said. A decade ago, Louisville’s Metro Council enacted an anti-begging law saying that there was an increase in aggressive solicitation in downtown and throughout the city that had become “extremely disturbing and disruptive to residents and businesses.” The ordinance says certain types of panhandling has “contributed not only to the loss of access and enjoyment of public places, but also to an enhanced fear, intimidation and disorder.” “It was primarily a response to people who (were) getting up in folks’ faces, not leaving them alone and demanding money,” said Democratic caucus spokesman Tony Hyatt.

Louisville has defined aggressive solicitation as repetitively approaching or following pedestrians despite refusals, the use of abusive or profane language to cause fear and intimidation, unwanted physical contact, or the intentional blocking of vehicular and pedestrian traffic. It specifically forbids such behavior within 20 feet of an automated teller machine, an outdoor dining area or a bus stop. The high court’s ruling does provide a legal road map on how cities could regulate beggars that appears to favor Louisville’s ordinance. Minton wrote that Lexington “could prohibit all individuals from approaching stopped motorists,” which he said targets the behavior a city seeks to prohibit rather than why a person steps into traffic. Just before Champion’s case went before the Supreme Court last October, Jefferson District Judge Eric Haner ruled against Louisville’s “aggressive panhandling” ordinance saying that any crime that carries the penalty of incarceration must be crafted by the state legislature.

“We did not appeal that case knowing that the Lexington case was before the Supreme Court and that we would receive guidance from them,” said Josh Abner, a spokesman for Jefferson County Attorney Mike O’Connell. Abner said they are reviewing the Supreme Court’s decision to determine how it will affect Louisville’s ordinance before advising Mayor Greg Fischer or the council on next legal steps.

Read More : courier-journal.com/story/news/local/2017/02/16/kentucky-supreme-court-strikes-down-lexingtons-anti-begging-law/97992698/

Battery Bail Bonds – New legal challenge to California bullet train is filed in Superior Court

Source     : LA Times News
By             : Ralph Vartabedian
Category : Battery Bail Bonds , Assault Bail Bonds Sanford

New legal challenge to California bullet train is filed in Superior Court

Opponents of the California bullet train alleged in legal papers filed Tuesday that the California legislature violated the state constitution when it passed a law last year amending and modifying the $9-billion high speed rail bond act that voters approved in 2008. If the suit further delays access to the bond money, it could slow construction over coming years. But state officials say they do not anticipate any immediate problems as a result of this litigation, though lawsuits have effectively blocked the use of the bond money for years. The papers were an amendment to a suit filed by opponents in December, in Sacramento Superior Court,  which asserted that a funding plan to spend the bond dollars was illegal and should be stopped.

The suit was amended Tuesday to take aim squarely at the legislature’s approval of AB1889, a bill with the specific purpose of clarifying the intent of the bond act. Stuart Flashman, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, who oppose the train, said the bond act never gave the legislature the authority to alter it. The suit was brought by John Tos, a farmer; Kings County; the city of Atherton; and several opposition groups. After AB1889 was passed and signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, the rail authority quickly put together two funding plans to tap the bonds. One plan provided funding for $7.8 billion of rail construction from Merced to Shafter in the Central Valley. The other plan provided $819 million to electrify the Caltrain commuter rail line in the Bay Area, which will eventually be part of the Los Angeles to San Francisco high speed rail system. But neither of those plans is part of an operating high speed rail system, which is what the bond act is supposed to pay for. The legislature amended the bond act to permit the spending so long as the state has a plan to eventually operate high speed trains on the tracks once it finds more money. With the bond money held up by litigation, the California High Speed Rail Authority has been forced to rely on a $2.5-billion stimulus grant and separate revenue from the state’s greenhouse gas auctions.

This supplemental money source has worked so far, but in the final days of the Obama Administration, the Federal Railroad Administration set down new rules in the grant agreement that required the state to start paying a matching share of the stimulus grant money some time in coming months. The project has another nearly $1-billion federal grant, but the administration required that the first grant be covered by matching funds before the state can access the second grant. It may be difficult to fulfill the match requirement without the bond dollars, since the greenhouse gas fees have fallen below expectations in recent auctions. Rail authority spokeswoman Lisa Marie Alley said Wednesday afternoon that the rail authority had not been served with the amended complaint. She added that “it’s important to clarify that access to bond dollars, while important, is not an immediate concern, as the program also uses” greenhouse gas fees.

Read More : latimes.com/local/california/la-me-bullet-train-lawsuit-20170201-story.html