November 26, 2009.
Update from the Lexis Alert Service,
1. People v Johnson, 1541, 1748/99, SUPREME COURT OF NEW YORK, APPELLATE DIVISION, FIRST DEPARTMENT, 2009 NY Slip Op 8682; 2009 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 8510, November 24, 2009, Decided, November 24, 2009, Entered, THE LEXIS PAGINATION OF THIS DOCUMENT IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE PENDING RELEASE OF THE FINAL PUBLISHED VERSION., THIS OPINION IS UNCORRECTED AND SUBJECT TO REVISION BEFORE PUBLICATION IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS.
Updated to November 25, 2009
Over the past months we have posted a variety of items related to the quest for health care reform in the United States. See our last posting at “Health Care Update as of the Beginning of October 2009. The quest continues. During the last month the House of Representatives passed HR 3962(Affordable Health Care for America Act) on November 7 and the Senate has at least agreed to begin debate on their bill HR3590 (Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act) on November 21.. Given the historical record of attempts at health care reform these are remarkable achievements but we still do not know if the end is in sight.
Rather than engage in extended discussion on this posting we will concentrate identifying selected documents related to the two bills mentioned above and close by mentioning a few recent news articles of interest. First the documents:
November 9-13, 2009.
To view the full-text of cases you must sign in to FindLaw.com. All summaries are produced by Findlaw.
U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, November 12, 2009 Cabral v. US Dep’t of Justice, No. 07-1633 In an appeal arising from an underlying action brought by a nurse practitioner claiming that defendant-sheriff barred plaintiff from a County House of Correction (HOC) for informing the FBI of alleged prisoner abuse at the HOC, denial of defendants’ motions for a new trial and for remittur is affirmed where: 1) there is nothing in the record indicating that the district court abused its discretion in making its pre-trial evidentiary and disclosure rulings; 2) district court’s dismissal of defendants’ action under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) was proper as there was nothing in the record indicating that agency’s denial of the defendants’ Touhy requests was arbitrary and capricious; 3) the evidence was sufficient to establish that the sheriff engaged in the callous and reckless conduct necessary to support an award of punitive damages; and 4) the award of punitive damages of $250,000 against sheriff was not excessive.
U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, November 12, 2009 Wilson v. CIA, No. 07-4244 In a First Amendment action claiming that the CIA was required to allow former employee Valerie Plame Wilson to publish a memoir about her tenure at the agency, summary judgment for defendants is affirmed where: 1) plaintiff, and not the agency, permitted the classified information at issue to be revealed to the public; and 2) further, the public disclosure did not deprive the information of classified status, and the agency demonstrated good reason for adhering to its classification decision. A former CIA agent cannot use her own unauthorized disclosure of classified information to challenge the CIA’s ability to maintain the information as classified.
U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, November 12, 2009 Berg v. Obama, No. 08-4340 In one of the so-called “birther” suits challenging Barack Obama’s eligibility to run for and serve as President of the United States based on claims that Obama was born in Kenya and therefore was not a natural born citizen of the United States, dismissal of the action is affirmed where plaintiff lacked standing to bring the suit because he suffered no injury particularized to him Continue reading
November 9-13, 2009.
To view the full-text of cases you must sign in to FindLaw.com. All summaries are produced by Findlaw.
U.S. Supreme Court, November 09, 2009 Bobby v. Van Hook, No. 09–144 In a capital habeas matter, a circuit court of appeals’ grant of the petition on the basis that petitioner’s lawyers performed deficiently in investigating and presenting mitigating evidence is reversed where: 1) the court of appeals applied 2003 ABA Professional Guidelines to defense counsel’s conduct at a trial that took place in 1985; and 2) counsel’s performance at the trial was not deficient under the standards in place at the time.
U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, November 10, 2009 US v. Villar, No. 08-1154 In proceedings arising after defense counsel in a criminal matter received an e-mail from a juror containing ethnically-biased statements, an order denying defendant’s motion to make an inquiry into the validity of the verdict is reversed and the matter remanded where: 1) although the trial court correctly found that Rule of Evidence 606(b) precludes inquiry into juror prejudice; 2) a court has the discretion to conduct such an inquiry under the Sixth Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the United States Constitution. …
U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, November 12, 2009 Cabral v. US Dep’t of Justice, No. 07-1633 In an appeal arising from an underlying action brought by a nurse practitioner claiming that defendant-sheriff barred plaintiff from a County House of Correction (HOC) for informing the FBI of alleged prisoner abuse at the HOC, denial of defendants’ motions for a new trial and for remittur is affirmed where: 1) there is nothing in the record indicating that the district court abused its discretion in making its pre-trial evidentiary and disclosure rulings; 2) district court’s dismissal of defendants’ action under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) was proper as there was nothing in the record indicating that agency’s denial of the defendants’ Touhy requests was arbitrary and capricious; 3) the evidence was sufficient to establish that the sheriff engaged in the callous and reckless conduct necessary to support an award of punitive damages; and 4) the award of punitive damages of $250,000 against sheriff was not excessive.
Continue reading
November 18-19, 2009.
Update from the Lexis Alert Service,
1. People v Castillo, 1331, 3751/00, SUPREME COURT OF NEW YORK, APPELLATE DIVISION, FIRST DEPARTMENT, 2009 NY Slip Op 7760; 886 N.Y.S.2d 805; 2009 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 7589, October 29, 2009, Decided, October 29, 2009, Entered, THE LEXIS PAGINATION OF THIS DOCUMENT IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE PENDING RELEASE OF THE FINAL PUBLISHED VERSION., THIS OPINION IS UNCORRECTED AND SUBJECT TO REVISION BEFORE PUBLICATION IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS.
For week of November 16-20, 2009.
PREPARED BY: Michael Chernicoff
Weighing Life in Prison of Youths Who Didn’t Kill
TITLE: Gay Families and the Courts SUBTITLE: The Quest for Equal Rights
AUTHOR: Susan Gluck Mezey PUBLICATION DATE: September 2009
PUBLISHER: Bowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Document aims to facilitate library resource sharing* **
November 11, 2009 – Baltimore, MD – The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) Voting Members have approved a new work item to develop a Recommended Practice related to the physical delivery of library materials. NISO is pleased to announce that the Working Group roster for this project is now finalized, and work will be commencing with a kick-off call of the group on November 18, 2009. Building on the efforts of three recent projects–Moving Mountains, Rethinking Resource Sharing’s Physical Delivery Committee, and the American Library Association’s ASCLA ICANS’ Physical Delivery Discussion Group-the recommended practice document is proposed to include recommendations for: packaging, shipping codes, labeling, acceptable turn-around time, lost or damaged materials handling, package tracking, ergonomic considerations, statistics, sorting, a set of elements to be used for comparison purposes to determine costs,linking of regional and local library carriers, and international delivery.
“A recent study found that 77% of academic libraries participate in state or provincial resource sharing networks above and beyond the 10,000,000 interlibrary loan (ILL) transactions that OCLC annually processes,” Valerie Horton, Executive Director, Colorado Library Consortium (CLiC), who proposed the project and will be serving as co-chair, explained. “The increased volume and costs of library delivery is creating a demand for more information about how to run efficient and effective delivery operations.” Diana Sachs-Silveira, Virtual Reference Manager, Tampa Bay Library Consortium, will be co-chairing the group with Ms. Horton.
Volume 2 Number 11 November 2009
Online Holiday Shopping Tips
From the Desk of David Badertscher
Volume 21 Issue 6 November 2009.
Table of Contents
Sex and Race in the Courtroom: Shifting Gender-Role Attitudes in a Changing World
