Weekend updates

“It is unfair to believe every­thing we hear about lawyers. Some of it might not be true.”

— Ger­ald F. Lieberman

“I can’t do lit­er­ary work for the rest of this year because I’m med­i­tat­ing another law­suit and look­ing around for a defendant.”

— Mark Twain

Legal mat­ters are in a con­stant state of flux. The sta­tus of cases may change from day to day and even when a deci­sion is reached in a case, sub­se­quent appeals can quickly change the out­come. It is a good time, there­fore, to take a look back at some of the issues that have appeared in Case Study over the past few months.

Recess Appoint­ment: Back in Jan­u­ary, Pres­i­dent Obama made a ‘recess appoint­ment’ of Richard Cor­dray to be the new head of the Con­sumer Finan­cial Pro­tec­tion Bureau. The issue wasn’t whether Obama could make recess appoint­ments, but rather whether Con­gress was in a recess at all at the time the appoint­ment was made. Oppo­nents threat­ened to bring legal action to chal­lenge the appoint­ment. Cor­dray has been on the job for four months now, but no legal action was ulti­mately forth­com­ing. The recess appoint­ment lasts until Con­gress’ term ends in December.

Open Hear­ings: In Feb­ru­ary, 17 year-old T.J. Lane brought a gun to Chardon High School in north­east Ohio and shot and killed three fel­low stu­dents. Imme­di­ately upon the fil­ing of his case in the juve­nile court, Geauga County Juve­nile Court judge Tim­o­thy Gren­dell was asked to shield por­tions of the pro­ceed­ings from the media and to pre­vent the release of cer­tain documents.

Gren­del ulti­mately per­mit­ted Lane’s prior juve­nile court record to be released to news out­lets along with some details of Lane’s prior liv­ing arrange­ments. Judge Gren­dell ruled in a hear­ing on Wednes­day of this week that Lane is com­pe­tent to stand trial. On May 12, Gren­dell will con­duct a hear­ing to deter­mine whether Lane’s case should be trans­ferred to adult court.

Cal­i­for­nia Mar­riage: Also in Feb­ru­ary, the 9th U.S. Cir­cuit Court of Appeals ruled that it was a vio­la­tion of due process for a state (Cal­i­for­nia) to grant the right to marry to same sex cou­ples and then remove that right via a ref­er­en­dum. At the time of the deci­sion, oppo­nents of same sex mar­riage promised to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. That appeal remains an option, but as a pre­lim­i­nary step, oppo­nents have asked the 9th Cir­cuit to rehear the case en banc.

The orig­i­nal deci­sion, like all other fed­eral cir­cuit court deci­sions, was heard by a three judge panel. There are 29 judges in total on the 9th Cir­cuit Court of Appeals, which cov­ers all fed­eral appeals from Alaska, Hawaii, Wash­ing­ton, Ore­gon, Cal­i­for­nia, Idaho, Mon­tana, Nevada and Ari­zona. If the Court agrees to hear the case en banc, it will be heard by an 11 judge panel. If the court denies the rehear­ing or reaches the same con­clu­sion on a rehear­ing, then a final appeal can be taken to the U.S. Supreme Court.

NFL Boun­ties: In March, news broke about a scan­dal involv­ing New Orleans Saints defen­sive coaches and play­ers offer­ing finan­cial boun­ties for inten­tion­ally injur­ing oppos­ing play­ers. At the time the scan­dal broke, it appeared pos­si­ble that local law enforce­ment agen­cies might inves­ti­gate whether the activ­ity con­sti­tuted crim­i­nal action by the play­ers — either for inten­tional harm or for tax eva­sion. To this point, those author­i­ties have declined to become involved, in part because of the harsh penal­ties handed down by the NFL. For­mer Saints defen­sive coor­di­na­tor Gregg Williams has been sus­pended indef­i­nitely and Saints head coach Sean Pay­ton has been sus­pended for the year and the com­mis­sioner announced sus­pen­sions against mul­ti­ple play­ers this week.

Space Min­ing: In early April the Space Set­tle­ment Insti­tute pro­posed reward­ing com­pa­nies with land con­tracts on the moon or other plan­ets. Within two weeks an Amer­i­can com­pany, Plan­e­tary Resources Inc., whose investors include James Cameron and Ross Perot, announced plans to begin min­ing aster­oids for water and pre­cious met­als. The com­pany hopes to be min­ing within the decade.

Per­haps the best legal story of the week was the tale of the Cal­i­for­nia man who changed his name to Obi Wan Kenobi. He was arrested over the week­end and charged with flee­ing the scene of an acci­dent. The Force was def­i­nitely not with him.

David Hej­manowski is a mag­is­trate and court admin­is­tra­tor at the Delaware County Juve­nile Court and a for­mer assis­tant pros­e­cut­ing attorney.

Posted by Dave Hejmanowski on May 3 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.