Rottweilers can be expensive dept.: “A California county will pay nearly $1 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club after police shot and killed three guard dogs during raids of the group’s headquarters and suspected members’ homes.” Santa Clara County supervisors okayed the $990,000 settlement “two months after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the county’s arguments that sheriff’s deputies should be immune from liability in the case.” The city of San Jose has refused to settle and may go to trial as a defendant. “Lower court judges ruled that actions of the deputies and San Jose police officers during the January 1998 were unreasonable, most of the evidence obtained was unnecessary and the officers did nothing to avoid killing the animals. A lawyer for club members says a lot of property was destroyed in the raids and some evidence was kept for more than a year.” (AP/CNN, Feb. 7). “Although they had a week to plan for the raids and knew of the existence of guard dogs, including a Rottweiler, the San Jose police officers failed to do anything to find a non-lethal way of incapacitating the animals, the courts said.” (Barry Witt, “Hells Angels win nearly $1 million from Santa Clara County”, San Jose Mercury News, Feb. 6). More than half the settlement, $530,000, will go to the lawyers representing the club, with the remaining $460,000 to be divided up among victims of the raid.
Posts Tagged ‘crime and punishment’
“Tainted trials, stolen justice”
Criminal prosecutions often go seriously wrong in the Santa Clara County, Calif. courts, according to an investigative series in the San Jose Mercury-News.
Buying press coverage
“Create an e-annoyance, go to jail”
“Annoying someone via the Internet is now a federal crime.” Declan McCullagh at CNET sounds the alarm about a provision quietly tucked into the so-called Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act. Sec. 113 of the bill, entitled “Preventing Cyberstalking,” “rewrites existing telephone harassment law to prohibit anyone from using the Internet ‘without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy.'” The implications for anonymity on the web, in email correspondence, and in other Internet applications could be enormous, McCullagh says. Penalties include stiff fines and jail terms of up to two years (Jan. 9).
More: Orin Kerr at the Volokh Conspiracy says McCullagh is wrong to be so alarmed and that the actual effect of the law would be much narrower (see Ted’s post above). A key question raised in the Volokh comments is whether the bill will apply only to VOIP (internet-based telephone service) or have a broader reach than that. Other discussions worth reading: Concurring Opinions, Boing Boing.
Vermont judge: sixty days for repeated rape of child
“Court decision may frighten fund-raisers”
More on deep-pocket liability for crime, this time from Pennsylvania:
Reversing a lower court, the state Supreme Court ruled 4-2 Wednesday that the parents of a 10-year-old girl assaulted while selling candy for the Punxsutawney Area School District can sue the companies involved in the fund-raiser.
Lawyers on both sides of the case said the decision was likely to have a chilling effect on the wide range of for-profit businesses that help schools and other organizations raise money by sending children door to door.
A lawsuit against the school district was previously dismissed in federal court.
Attorney David Long, who represents the plaintiffs, said school districts “are begging for a lawsuit” if they continue to use such methods to raise funds….
In a dissenting opinion, Chief Justice Ralph Cappy wrote that he believes the girl’s side ultimately won’t prevail. He said that the fund-raising entities did not need to warn that there “exist in the world evil people who could possibly cause intentional harm to minor students.”
(Eleanor Chute, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Dec. 30).
Sovereign immunity, cont’d
Following up on my WSJ piece about the problems that arose for the state of Washington when it came to be exposed to lawsuits alleging that it had failed to prevent some types of crime (see Dec. 24), Mike Tardif of the Washington attorney general’s office (whose co-authored law review article I discuss in the piece) writes in as follows:
I read and enjoyed your article. You have accurately depicted the overall nature of the liability problem caused by creating liability for “governmental” functions and you have accurately summarized the gist of our law review article.
I have one comment on your point concerning why governments do not adjust their behaviors in response to liabilities for broad governmental functions. The primary reason is that what governments do in these areas is determined by the political process, i.e., the basic program, staffing levels, and funding are set by statute and budget. There is little or no ability at the administrative level to change these things in response to jury decisions in liability suits. Ironically, in a suit such as our Joyce case (the $23 million verdict), the Dept. of Corrections has no ability to raise taxes to create the funding for the parole officer positions needed to reach the level of supervision dictated by the broad liability imposed by the Court, but DOC does have the legal responsibility to put money into the risk fund to pay its settlements and judgments, thereby reducing the funds available to hire the parole officers needed to mitigate the risk.
I should also have mentioned that when my piece quoted the interesting comments of Prof. Greg Sisk of St. Thomas University School of Law on sovereign immunity as a species of separation of powers, I was actually quoting from a blog, namely the Catholic group lawblog Mirror of Justice (Oct. 19).
Sleepwalking exonerations for rape spread to UK
Won’t testify on domestic violence? Jail her
In San Mateo, Calif., Katina Britt was nearly jailed a few days ago for her refusal to testify against the ex-boyfriend who allegedly battered her. (He was convicted anyway and the charges were dropped.) Under present California law, sexual assault victims cannot be jailed for refusing to testify against their attackers, but domestic violence victims can. Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said the court order compelling Britt to testify was “for her own protection”. (Malaika Fraley, “Ultimatum in abuse case: Testify or go to jail”, San Mateo County Times, Dec. 10; Michelle Durand, “Assemblyman to back abuse testimony bill”, San Mateo Daily Journal, Dec. 20; more coverage via Google News). Wendy McElroy wonders: “How has the issue of DV drifted from its early roots of empowering ‘victims’ and encouraging their voices toward imprisoning them and coercing their testimony?” (“Don’t jail domestic violence victims”, Enter Stage Right, Dec. 19).
“Andi the Ohio Police Dog Named In Lawsuit”
A lawsuit by a convicted drug dealer in Athens County, Ohio, demanding $450,000, names police investigators, the county sheriff, the trial judge who ruled in the case and also Andi, the police dog who helped in the raid. “That dog could’ve done something to me or one of my attendants,” said Wayne Francis Green, 46, who said “that he felt endangered by Andi’s presence….With a paw print, the dog ‘signed’ the paper indicating he had been formally served with the complaint.” (AP/San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 14).