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Category: Law

Legal Humor

Which Federal Rule of Civil Procedure Are You?

YOU ARE RULE 15!

You’re a very helpful rule! You allow the attorney
to amend their complaint once as a matter of
course at any time before the answer is
filed, and also allow amendments in other
cases. If a claim relates back to the
original transaction or occurrence outlined
in the complaint, you can amend the
complaint, even though the statute of
limitations has run. Like a good friend,
you’re always there to help out in a bind.

Which Federal Rule of Civil Procedure Are You?
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Posted in Law

Translating Arabic Into Injustice

Take this scenario: NYU grad student works as a translator. He is hired by a local attorney, and translates numerous conversations between her and her client. While doing so, he does research for his graduate dissertation. She breaks a court order, and releases a statement from her client to the public; the translator was never asked to agree to the order that the lawyer was bound by. The lawyer gets in trouble for breaking the order, and gets a slap-on-the-wrist punishment. The issue, we think, is settled.

A few years later, the Department of Justice re-opens the case, and decides to punish the lawyer again — only this time, they prosecute her on terrorism charges. They additionally decide to prosecute her translator for aiding and abetting terrorism, simply because he did his job and translated the conversations between the lawyer and her client.

Sounds implausible? It isn’t.

Mohammed’s diligence as a translator and an academic researcher would cost him dearly. In April 2002, he was arrested, along with Stewart and one of her paralegals. They were accused of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists. Two years earlier, Stewart had told a reporter that the imprisoned Abdel Rahman opposed a cease-fire that his supporters had negotiated with the Egyptian government. Though no act of violence ever resulted, the U.S. government claimed that Stewart had not only violated government regulations — which she had agreed to follow — restricting communications with Rahman but that she had also abetted terrorism.

Whatever Stewart may have done, however, it is hard to see how Mohammed can be held responsible for her actions. As a government-approved translator, he was never even asked to agree to the regulations Stewart was accused of violating, and he had no reason to question the lawfulness of his employer’s instructions. During the trial, prosecutors made contradictory arguments. They insinuated that Mohammed had knowingly broken the law in order to further his scholarly research, and even that he was an acolyte of Abdel Rahman. But they also acknowledged that Mohammed had never advocated violence or Islamic fundamentalism. My guess is that the real reason they went after Mohammed was to get Stewart: She knew no Arabic, and Abdel Rahman knew very little English, so without including Mohammed in the alleged conspiracy, prosecutors wouldn’t have had much of a case.

Mohammed, shellshocked by what has happened to him, faces sentencing in March, though appeals will surely follow. Many lawyers have rallied to Stewart’s defense because they believe that the government targeted her in order to deter other lawyers from zealously defending clients accused of terrorism, and because they feel that her case raises serious constitutional issues. Mohammed’s prosecution raises somewhat different, though equally disturbing, questions. Should a translator be sent to prison for following his employer’s instructions, especially when the prosecution failed to prove that he intended to break any law? Can a graduate student’s dissertation research reasonably be construed as contributing to a conspiracy to help terrorists?

Read the whole thing. This is outrageous.

Better News From Kansas

The Kansas Supreme Court temporarily stopped AG Phil Kline’s efforts to paw through the private medical records of patients at two Kansas abortion clinics.

In 2004, Anderson issued subpoenas at Kline’s request for the records of clinics operated by Dr. George Tiller in Wichita and Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri in Overland Park, a Kansas City suburb. The records involve 90 women and girls.

The Supreme Court said the subpoenas could infringe on the patients’ rights to maintain privacy about personal and sexual matters, to receive confidential health care and to obtain a lawful abortion without an undue governmental burden.

Writing for the court, Justice Carol Beier agreed with Kline that the state needs to pursue criminal investigations, but said ”the type of information sought by the state here could hardly be more sensitive, or the potential harm to patient privacy posed by disclosure more substantial.”

The Right to Refuse To Treat

How far should conscience clauses be taken?

More than a dozen states are considering new laws to protect health workers who do not want to provide care that conflicts with their personal beliefs, a surge of legislation that reflects the intensifying tension between asserting individual religious values and defending patients’ rights.

About half of the proposals would shield pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control and “morning-after” pills because they believe the drugs cause abortions. But many are far broader measures that would shelter a doctor, nurse, aide, technician or other employee who objects to any therapy. That might include in-vitro fertilization, physician-assisted suicide, embryonic stem cells and perhaps even providing treatment to gays and lesbians.

Read More…Read More…

No Necking in Kansas

Crazy Kansas Attorney General Phil Kline is at it again. First, he was subpoenaing women’s private medical records. Then, he was attempted to ban Medicaid funding of abortion and defined “life” as beginning at conception. But he’s not finished.

But striving for the 2006 pro-life trifecta, Kline is also embroiled in a lawsuit over the mandatory reporting of all teen snogging in Kansas. The trial, which opened on Monday in federal district court, surrounds Kline’s 2003 advisory opinion on the state’s mandatory reporting law. While Kansas is one of 12 states in which sex under a certain age—16, 17, or 18—is always presumed illegal, regardless of consent or the age difference between the partners, Kline’s written interpretation of Kansas’ reporting law makes it the only state requiring that doctors, nurses, counselors, and all other care providers report—as abuse—any sexual interaction between teens under 16. Failure to report is a misdemeanor. Under Kline’s view, professionals must report even when the sex is consensual, committed with partners their age, and where there is no suspicion of injury. The plaintiffs who filed suit—a group of doctors, nurses, and counselors—contend that under Kline’s policy, even evidence of teen necking must be reported.

This could mean finally putting a stop to the wanton actions of such teen harlots as Betty, Veronica, and Sandra Dee.

In their complaint, the health care providers, represented by the Center for Reproductive Rights, urge that while they support the reporting of all suspected sexual abuse of minors, the reporting of all nonabusive consensual sexual activity threatens their confidential relationships and would have a chilling effect on teen efforts to seek healthcare—including lifesaving HIV testing, birth control, and counseling. The attorney general’s office argues that there is a legitimate state interest in stopping child abuse.

This is absolutely ridiculous. Being under 18 doesn’t negate your privacy rights, and doesn’t do away with doctor-patient confidentiality. Obviously abusive situations should be reported, but mandating that doctors file a report because Jane was making out with Steve seems a little over-reaching.

Of course, it’s not really about protecting kids from abuse at all. It’s about going after abortion providers.

Finally, Kline takes the not-illogical position that since all consensual teen sex is criminal, all teen abortion records provide vital evidence of that crime. Why, then, doesn’t he subpoena all hospital records for evidence of all teen births? Is it possible that he is less interested in pursuing the real crime of teen sex than the non-crime of abortion? In two and a half years Kline’s sweeping assertion that all health-care providers must report all teen intimate activity has morphed into demands for reports of consensual teenage sex that result in abortions. Which leads to the conclusion that the Kansas reporting law isn’t intended to increase reports of child abuse, but to increase reports of teen sex—specifically from abortion providers. Which means that this law—along with Kline’s attempts to subpoena state abortion records and force Kansas doctors performing abortions on girls under 14 to preserve fetal tissue—is part of the attorney general’s single-minded use of his vast authority in the sole interest of hassling Kansas’ abortion providers.

Kline has vociferously argued that every abortion is murder, even though the law of the land holds otherwise. That is why he trusts his own judgment about what constitutes criminal activity over the judgment of the health professionals who actually see and treat it. One nevertheless wonders whether he should really be using all of his resources with no law enforcement purpose in sight beyond fishing through the files of state abortion clinics.

If You’re In Porn, You Can’t Be Raped

You can only be raped if you hate sex, apparently. Otherwise, you’re a liar and a whore.

In 2002 two men were given two and a half year sentences each for the rape of a 17-year-old girl, but these convictions may now be overturned, newspaper VG reports.

The girl’s boyfriend, and one of his friends, were convicted on the girl’s testimony, of a rape carried out in 2001. In 2003, just before the case was to be appealed, the girl appeared in a porn magazine.

In the magazine she describes herself as being a fan of rough sex, an exhibitionist and admits to constantly seeking out boys for casual sex.

In the appeal the girl’s testimony was again accepted, and the original verdict was toughened, with the sentence becoming a year longer and with financial damages increased.

The discovery of the magazine – which one of the convicts came across in prison – has now led to a request to reinvestigate the case.

Defense lawyer Arvid Sjødin told VG that the case had been poorly investigated and that the new information could “shed light on the credibility of those involved in this case”.

A few things: First, just because a woman appears in a porn magazine, or because she enjoys rough sex, or because she’s had a lot of sexual partners, or because she’s a sex worker, it doesn’t mean she can’t be raped (hell, sex workers are more likely to be raped that non-sex workers). Telling a porn magazine that you like sex shouldn’t shed doubt on your credibility when it comes to being the victim of a crime.

Second, this demonstrates how little lawyers and the courts still understand about the psychology of rape survivors. One of the more common behaviors post-rape is what some would characterize as “promiscuous” sexual behavior (for the record, I hate that word). Rape survivors have had their right to choose to have sex forcibly taken away from them; many women try and reclaim the power they lost through rape by choosing to have sex with many people afterwards. But because this woman doesn’t play the role of the made-for-tv rape survivor, her attackers might go free. How just.

NYU’s OUTLaw is a “non-credible terrorist threat”

The Pentagon is watching you, NYU LGBT activists.

The Pentagon has classified NYU School of Law’s gay and lesbian advocacy group as “potentially violent” following the surveillance of a February counter-military protest at the university, according to media reports.

NYU’s OUTlaw is one of many “suspicious” civilian groups across the country surveyed by the Department of Defense over a recent 10-month period, according to a 400-page defense department document obtained by NBC News last month.

What were OUTLaw’s heinous, borderline violent activities? Protesting the military’s discriminatory “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. They recently requested to see the information that the Pentagon is keeping on them, and were refused.

Luckily, though, it seems like the university is stepping up to the plate:

NYU spokesman John Beckman said the university is puzzled as to why an NYU group is listed as a possible terrorist threat, regardless of whether the threat is deemed credible.

“It seems very odd that anyone would consider a public protest — a public expression of free speech — a threat of any kind,” Beckman said.

“Particularly given that this very topic, the Solomon Amendment, is a matter before the Supreme Court as we speak.”

Beckman said he university is investigating the matter and has contacted U.S. Sens. Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton and Rep. Jerry Nadler, all New York Democrats.

“[We] asked them to look into this matter and seek answers from the Pentagon,” he said.

I hope they get some.