Brian Banks served more than five years in prison after an old friend “falsely accused him of attacking her on their high school campus”:
In a strange turn of events, the woman, Wanetta Gibson, friended him on Facebook when he got out of prison.
In an initial meeting with him, she said she had lied; there had been no kidnap and no rape and she offered to help him clear his record, court records state.
But she refused to repeat the story to prosecutors because she feared she would have to return a $1.5 million payment from a civil suit brought by her mother against Long Beach schools….
It was uncertain Thursday whether Gibson will have to return the money.
[AP via Balko, Volokh; & welcome Reddit readers]
Meanwhile, on the opposite coast, high-profile Brooklyn sex crimes prosecutor Lauren Hersh has resigned following a furor over a sex trafficking case in which “prosecutors had held on to documents showing the victim recanted rape allegations one day after making them.” [NY Post, more] P.S. Daniel Fisher reminds us of Hersh’s “starring role in New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof’s expose of Backpage, the Village Voice’s online personals section.”
Tagged as:
NYC,
prosecutorial abuse,
schools,
third party liability for crime
“[An Indiana appeals] court has found that an ever so slightly negligent (2%) business owner needs to pay for 99% of the harm caused by a murderer. Citing the Restatement (Third) of Torts. Section 14, a public policy in favor of adequately compensating the wronged … and the difficulty murderers have in procuring insurance to cover their rampages, the appellate court in Santelli v. Rahmatulla found that the Restatement provides a handy way of escaping Indiana’s reform of its joint and several liability rule.” [David Oliver] More: Point of Law (motel “[adhered] to the non-discriminatory EEOC principle of not performing criminal background checks”).
Tagged as:
hotels,
Indiana,
joint and several liability,
third party liability for crime
Murfreesboro: “A former MTSU student accused of stabbing a Lady Raider basketball player to death at Raiders Crossing Apartments in 2011 is suing the complex and its management company for failing to separate the two despite knowing they had problems with one another. … The attorney [Joe Brandon Jr.] included Twitter postings by Stewart as supporting evidence of a negative and deteriorating relationship between the two women.” [The Tennessean]
Tagged as:
criminals who sue,
Tennessee,
third party liability for crime,
Twitter
Four people were killed when pill addict David Laffer robbed a Medford, N.Y. pharmacy. Now the survivors of victim Jamie Taccetta are suing a variety of defendants including the drugstore whose pharmacist was killed, the Suffolk County police and a former commissioner, “and pharmaceutical companies that make the drug oxycodone.” [CBS New York, Newsday]
Tagged as:
Long Island,
pharmaceuticals,
third party liability for crime
Toronto lawyer Michael Deverett thinks a bad guy must have followed him home from the Apple Store; at least someone smashed his hatchback car window when he stepped away for a couple of minutes and made off with what he said was a well concealed bag of new electronics purchases worth C$2,200. The company — which gave him a store credit plus a small extra for legal fees — is also facing criticism from theft victims who say it should do more to help owners retrieve stolen cellphones. [Toronto Star](& welcome Elie Mystal, Above the Law readers)
Tagged as:
Apple,
Canada,
cellphones,
third party liability for crime
- Manhattan Institute’s “Trial Lawyers Inc.” series looks at cozy relations between state attorneys general and plaintiff’s bar [report, related featured discussion, Copland, Examiner] Report comes down hard on Ohio’s Richard Cordray, nominee to head CFPB [Copland, Gorodetski/PoL] Judge tosses Cordray suit against credit rating agencies [O'Brien/LNL, Krauss/American Thinker] Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller denounces report [IowaPolitics.com]
- “The Tort of Internet Mobbing Is Perfect For Suing The Internet” [Popehat]
- Canada faces challenge to hate speech law [Arthur Bright, Citizen Media Law] Do not put a frog down Her Majesty’s back at the county fair [Lowering the Bar]
- “Markopolos eyes a fortune from BNY whistleblowing” [Felix Salmon] “Bounty hunters in Korea” and closer to home [Alex Tabarrok] “Developments in Whistleblower Laws: Advantage Whistleblower” [Larry Wood & Richard William Diaz, Federalist Society "Engage"]
- As third party liability for crime anecdotes go, the case of Bonilla v. Motel 6 is on the lurid side [Point of Law]
- Prospect of cyberwar: official U.S. response is commando lawyering [Stewart Baker, Foreign Policy]
- Why it’s hard to stimulate manufacturing through product liability reform in one state [Rick Esenberg]
Tagged as:
attorneys general,
free speech in Canada,
Iowa,
Manhattan Institute,
Ohio,
product liability,
third party liability for crime,
whistleblowers
“Two passengers riding in a stolen car that was involved in a wreck sue the car’s 91-year-old owner” The driver of the wreck was a man defendant George Hinnenkamp had sometimes hired to do odd jobs; the passengers claim he had extended permission for the man to take the car that night, but a district attorney who successfully prosecuted the case says that isn’t so, noting that Hinnenkamp had reported the car stolen well before the accident. [Eugene, Oregon, Register-Guard]
Tagged as:
personal responsibility,
third party liability for crime
According to the actor, in an op-ed (co-authored with Stephen DeMaura) in today’s WSJ:
Two women get into a fight in the ladies’ restroom at a restaurant. Afterward, they sue the restaurant owner, claiming someone should have been in there to break up the fight. It costs the small-business owner $2,000 to pay each plaintiff to drop the complaint, which was cheaper than fighting the lawsuit would have been.
This completely ridiculous story is true, and the restaurant owner was one of us, Mr. Norris. …
Tagged as:
restaurants,
third party liability for crime
- Furor as NLRB issues complaint against Boeing for planning to open S.C. plant [Wichita Business Journal, Costa/NR "Corner", Wood/ShopFloor, more, Tom Bevan/RCP, Ira Stoll, Hirsch/Workplace Prof, Megan McArdle, Jonathan Adler]
- Perp meanwhile declared not criminally responsible and awaits release: “Jury orders Nordstrom to pay $1.6 M to Bethesda stabbing victims” [WaPo]
- Not so reliable: how eyewitness and confession testimony can result in convicting the innocent [Brandon Garrett, Slate]
- Trying to pin down who merits label of “patent troll” [Michael Risch, Prawfs, and followup] “Digital Innovators vs. the Patent Trolls” [Peter Huber, WSJ]
- Publishers as targets in pharma suits? Philadelphia product liability case names as defendant the company that put out drug fact sheet [Beck]
- Regulate-Google schemes: “If search neutrality is the answer, what’s the question?” [Manne/Wright, TotM]
- Hey, John Boehner’s tweeting about my blog post [@johnboehner]
Tagged as:
labor unions,
patent trolls,
pharmaceuticals,
prosecution,
third party liability for crime
In Los Angeles, a woman “who wants to remain anonymous” has sued Match.com saying that a man she met on the service raped her on their second date and that it has a legal responsibility to screen participants more carefully. The man in the case, who is awaiting trial, has implied through a lawyer that contact was consensual. [NBC Los Angeles via TortsProf, Amy Alkon]
Tagged as:
third party liability for crime
But suing a variety of “nontraditional defendants,” including the City of New York and the owners of the apartment building where the victim’s body was found, may not be a sure-fire formula for doing that. Among the defendants is Facebook, on which a paramedic improperly posted pictures of the victim’s body; while the pics were quickly taken down, the suit demands that Facebook take further remedial steps such as identifying who may have “downloaded” (i.e. viewed?) the images. [CNN]
Tagged as:
Facebook,
NYC,
third party liability for crime
Crestwood, Mo.: “The Starbucks coffee shop here should have known it was inviting trouble by placing a tip jar on an open counter, according to a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by the estate of a customer who died defending it.” Customer Roger Kreutz saw a teenager grab the jar and gave chase on foot; he was killed when the miscreant backed his car over him. Kreutz’s estate has now filed a suit alleging “that Starbucks ‘did not employ security to prevent the perpetration of such crimes’ and that it ‘invited the act of perpetration of said crime’ by having a tip jar.” [St. Louis Post-Dispatch]
Tagged as:
Missouri,
Starbucks,
third party liability for crime
