Source: http://www.fullcourtpass.com/2010/
Timestamp: 2020-08-11 13:23:11
Document Index: 402598638

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 5511', '§ 5511', '§ 137', '§ 5701', '§ 1292', '§ 1292']

Full Court Pass: 2010
The most interesting case for me will be Snyder v. Phelps which addresses protests at military funerals.
After Marine Lance Corporal Matthew A. Snyder was killed in Iraq his family arranged for a private Christian burial at a Catholic Church in Maryland.
Reverend Fred W. Phelps, a pastor of a Baptist Church in Kansas, who has protested at other military funerals, decided to protest at the Snyder funeral. Phelps espouses the view that God hates America because it tolerates homosexuality, particularly in the armed services.
The day of the funeral Phelps, two of his daughters, and four of his grandchildren carried signs at a distance from the funeral with messages such as "Pope in Hell," "God Hates the USA," and "Thank God for dead soldiers." After the funeral, on his website, Phelps accused the Snyder family of teaching their son irreligious beliefs.
The soldier's father sued Phelps and his daughters for intentional infliction of emotional distress, intrusion into their private event, and conspiracy. A jury awarded him $5 million, but the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed the judgment, concluding that funeral protest speech is protected by the First Amendment.
The case raises fascinating issues such as a conflict between the First Amendment's freedom of speech and freedom of religion; whether the protection the Supreme Court has accorded speech directed at "public figures" should apply when, as here, the speech is directed at private individuals at a private funeral; and whether those attending a private funeral are a "captive audience" who should be accorded some protection against unwelcome speech by uninvited individuals.
The case will be argued on Wednesday, October 6.
Posted by norman olch at 1:10 PM 1 comment:
Labels: Free Exercise Clause, Free Speech Clause, Military Funerals, Supreme Court
According to the calendar summer was over a week ago, but for me the summer came to an end yesterday when the United States Supreme Court announced that it had granted writs of certiorari in fourteen cases.
The summer is different for appellate lawyers and appellate court watchers. The Supreme Court takes a three month recess at the end of June, the New York Court of Appeals does not hear oral arguments in July and August, and in New York City the Appellate Divisions for the First and Second Departments also do not sit for oral arguments.
Summer does begin to fade early in September when the Court of Appeals and the Appellate Divisions resume oral arguments, but for me the summer is over when the Supreme Court is back in session. The Court traditionally reconvenes the first Monday in October, but yesterday it jump started the new Term by issuing decisions on the many petitions awaiting its attention.
On Monday, October 4, the Court will hear oral arguments in three cases, followed by three cases on Tuesday, and two on Wednesday. The summer is now officially over.
Posted by norman olch at 9:51 AM No comments:
Labels: Appellate Division, New York Court of Appeals, Supreme Court
Kagan Confirmation Hearings Begin Monday
On Monday, June 28, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary begins hearings into President Obama's nomination of Elena Kagan to sit on the United States Supreme Court.
The run-up to the hearings has brought no surprises or revelations which would derail the nomination, and even the expected Republican opposition has been rather muted.
It certainly appears that Kagan's ascension to the Court would not change voting patterns among the Justices, and if she votes as retiring Justice Stevens voted this year, the outcome of cases would be the same. I suspect the real fight will come when a vacancy among the conservative members of the Court arises, because replacing a conservative with a more liberal vote will change the direction of the Court.
Documentary material related to the nomination has been posted by the Judiciary Committee. It is available here.
Who Can Appeal? Who is "Aggrieved"?
One of the fundamentals of appellate practice is the requirement that only an "aggrieved party" can appeal. CPLR § 5511.
What this has come to mean is that a party who has successfully obtained a judgment or order in his favor cannot appeal although he may disagree with the findings of fact made by the lower court, or with the rationale of the lower court's decision. Parochial Bus Systems, Inc. v. Board of Education of the City of New York, 60 N.Y.2d 539, 544-545 (1983).
There are exceptions to the rule as when, for example, a party secures a favorable judgment or order but the judgment or order does not grant him the "complete relief" he sought.
But when there are multiple parties on each side, or alleged joint tortfeasors, the concept of who is "aggrieved" becomes more complex and uncertain because, for example, relief granted to one party making a motion may adversely affect another party who was not involved in the specific motion.
The Appellate Division, Second Department, in a major opinion, Mixon v. TBV, Inc., has now sought to make sense of the aggrievement requirement and to reconcile various lines of authority addressing the issue. After a detailed review of the case law, the Court formulates this two-pronged definition of aggrievement for appellate purposes:
"First, a person is aggrieved when he or she asks for relief but that relief is denied in whole or in part. Second, a person is aggrieved when someone asks for relief against him or her, which the person opposes, and the relief is granted in whole or in part."
Because aggrievement is fundamental to appellate law, Mixon is essential reading. The ruling also contains a valuable discussion of the limitations imposed on an appellate court in granting relief to a party which has not appealed. The decision can be found here.
Labels: Aggrieved Party, Appeals, Appellate Division, CPLR § 5511
New Technology and the Constitution
The law often must play catch-up with technology, and in constitutional law this is probably no more apparent than in the continuing efforts of the United States Supreme Court to delineate what exactly the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against "unreasonable searches and seizures" is designed to protect.
Technology has enhanced the government's ability to intrude through wiretapping, eavesdropping, and other electronic means. In Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928), the Court, over Justice Brandeis' famous dissent, took the narrow approach that the Fourth Amendment only protects a person against searches or seizures of "material things"--his person, his house, his papers and effects--but not his words overheard on telephone wires outside his home. Eventually in Berger v. New York, 388 U.S. 41 (1967), and Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967), the Court concluded that the Fourth Amendment does protect against the seizure of words by electronic means even when the government does not physically trespass or intrude on a person's private space.
But technology marches on, and in Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001), the Court had to address the Fourth Amendment implications of the government's warrantless use of thermal imaging devices outside a person's home to determine what is occurring inside the person's home.
Last week in City of Ontario, California v. Quon the Court addressed the Fourth Amendment in the context of another technological advance: text messaging. While the case raised the narrow issue of whether a police officer had any rights of privacy in the text messages sent and received on his alphanumeric pager issued by the police department, the Court recognized this new technology was forcing it to enter unchartered territory.
"The judiciary risks error by elaborating too fully on the Fourth Amendment implications of emerging technology before its role in society has become clear." The very ubiquity of cell phone and text messages raises new and serious constitutional questions regarding privacy. Rather than sweeping pronouncements on privacy rights, "prudence counsels caution" by the Court until society's use of rapidly changing communications--and society's privacy expectations regarding those communications--become clearer.
Quon is an important statement on how an appellate court proceeds when it is asked to make policy determinations without knowing what technology will emerge and how society will use that technology. The subtext is that the Court understands new technology will emerge. The case can be found here.
Labels: Fourth Amendment, privacy, Supreme Court
Justice Souter on Constitutional Interpretation
Over the past few decades critics of the United States Supreme Court have complained of its purported "judicial activism"--ignoring the plain words of the Constitution, or established precedent, in order to arrive at decisions which reflect a predetermined policy judgment which is unpalatable to the critics.
The complaint was initially hurled at the Warren Court of the 1960s which not only broadened the reach of the Bill of Rights by imposing its requirements on the states, but which used remedies such as the exclusionary rule of evidence and the Miranda warnings to put teeth into the Court's rulings.
More recently, liberal critics have complained that the Roberts Court is guilty of conservative judicial activism--a complaint publicly echoed by President Obama.
In this context it is valuable to read the Harvard Commencement speech given on May 27 by retired Justice David H. Souter. Without naming Justice Scalia, the speech criticizes Justice Scalia's notion of "originalism"--that in deciding cases judges should simply look to the original intent of the framers of the Constitution. Justice Souter calls this the "fair reading model," and he dismisses it as "simplistic" because, in Justice Souter's view, the Constitution is comprised of often open-ended competing values which must then be accommodated by courts:
"The explicit terms of the Constitution...can create a conflict of approved values, and the explicit terms of the Constitution do not resolve that conflict when it arises. The guarantee of the right to publish is unconditional in its terms, and in its terms the power of the government to govern is plenary. A choice may have to be made, not because language is vague but because the Constitution embodies the desire of the American people, like most people, to have things both ways. We want order and security, and we want liberty. And we want not only liberty but equality as well. These paired desires of ours can clash, and when they do a court is forced to choose between them, between one constitutional good and another one. The court has to decide which of our approved desires has the better claim, right here, right now, and a court has to do more than read fairly when it makes this kind of choice."
Justice Souter's view that the Supreme Court must often choose "between one constitutional good and another one" explains many 5-4 votes on the Court which are often viewed as conservative-liberal splits: the legitimate need of society to gather evidence of criminality versus the right of the suspect to remain silent; the right to bear arms versus the right of society to protect its members from harm. Different "constitutional goods" are in conflict and the plain words of the Constitution do not resolve the conflict--judges must.
Justice Souter's speech reinforces the view that the values, predilections, and background of who sits on the Supreme Court do make an enormous difference in constitutional interpretation. With a Senate confirmation hearing to begin later this month, it is, therefore, fair to try to determine the values and predilections of Elena Kagan, because those values and predilections will make a difference.
The full text of Justice Souter's speech can be found here.
Labels: David Souter, Elena Kagan, Harvard, Supeme Court
The big financial news the past few days has been the civil securities fraud suit filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission against Goldman Sachs in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
The heart of a securities fraud suit is the claim that there was a "material" misstatement of fact or a "material" omission of fact. I have no opinion whether Goldman Sachs is liable, but I do think the press has made a simple situation appear to be oh-so-complicated.
The background is simple. In 2007 a hedge fund Paulson & Co. Inc. wanted to make a bet that the subprime residential mortgage market would collapse. It put together a portfolio of subprime residential mortgage market securities it believed would lose value and it asked Goldman Sachs to, in effect, find investors who would bet that the value of the securities would rise. The bet would be made by using a "synthetic collateralized debt obligation" (CDO)--the sophisticated financial instrument touted in the press.
The SEC claims that in marketing the bet Goldman Sachs did not disclose that Paulson was deeply involved in selecting the securities in the portfolio, and that Goldman took steps to conceal Paulson's involvement by having it appear that an impartial third party had independently selected the securities for the bet. The value of the portfolio did fall. Paulson made about $1 billion while those on the other side of the bet lost that amount.
Paulson's economic interests were, of course, adverse to those who would bet that the value of the securities would rise. In the SEC's view Goldman is guilty of a material omission of fact because it did not disclose to those betting the securities would rise that the portfolio was selected with the deep participation of the party who would bet that the value of the portfolio would decline. Whether Goldman was required to make this disclosure, and whether this failure to disclose is a material omission, will doubtless be the cause of multiple court filings by the SEC and Goldman's attorneys.
It has already been the source of endless press comment by academics and securities attorneys. But all the discussion regarding whether disclosure of the identity of the party on the other side of this "sophisticated" bet was required, has, in my opinion, obscured the SEC's second claim: Goldman affirmatively misled the parties by misstating Paulson's role in the transaction to suggest that Paulson had an economic interest in seeing the portfolio value rise.
Thus, for all the trumpeting in the press about an impenetrable, sophisticated transaction, in the end it boils down to a claim of a garden variety fraud: Goldman misstated the true nature of Paulson's involvement, thereby misleading those who bet the value of the securities would rise. Paragraphs 44 through 51 of the SEC complaint are, in my opinion, the practical heart of the matter. The complaint can be found here.
Goldman will undoubtedly deny it misled anyone. But it is one thing to argue to a jury that a party had no obligation to disclose certain information. It is an altogether different matter to acknowledge that one did say something, but it was not misleading. Juries understand the difference, and if the case goes to trial the outcome will turn on whether a jury believes Goldman affirmatively misled those who lost the bet.
Labels: Goldman Sachs, Securities and Exchange Commission, Securities Fraud
Last month I reported that I had again orally argued an appeal in which I did not draft the briefs. In a serious personal injury matter, the defendant appealed the denial of summary judgment by Supreme Court, New York County.
Plaintiff's counsel asked me to appear for oral argument before the Appellate Division, First Department. I did so, and I am pleased to report that in Tomaino v. 209 East 84th Street Corp. the Appellate Division affirmed the denial of summary judgment. The opinion can be found here.
While there are those who may disagree, I continue to believe that oral argument is important. It is the only opportunity counsel has to answer questions judges may have after reading the briefs and the record. After reading the briefs judges go on the bench inclined to decide a case a particular way. Different appellate judges have told me that oral argument has changed their minds 5% to 15% of the time. This is not an opportunity to pass up.
It is always nice to win an appeal, especially when representing the appellant. It is doubly nice to win two in one day.
First, the morning mail brought the news that I had prevailed in the Appellate Term, Second Department, in an unusual case, Sneddon v. Greene. In April, 2008, the trial judge had granted my motion that he recuse himself on the grounds there was an appearance he was not impartial. Four months later, however, the judge sua sponte vacated the order of recusal, put himself back in the case, and ordered a trial be held before him.
The Appellate Term granted my motion for a stay of the trial, and in the appellant's brief I argued that once the judge had recused himself he had no further jurisdiction or authority to participate in the case. The Appellate Term agreed.
There is little New York case law on the jurisdiction of a judge after he has recused himself. The Appellate Term decision in Sneddon v. Greene is in accord with the views of courts in other states which have addressed the question.
The second appellate success today came in the decision of the Appellate Division, First Department, regarding a fee dispute between attorney and client. I had been waiting for a ruling since I argued the case on March 10, 2009.
At the conclusion of a real estate transaction a law firm held in escrow approximately $310,000 which it claimed was the fee owed by the client. The client disputed the fee, and the matter went to arbitration under the Rules of the Chief Administrator of the Courts. See, 22 NYCRR § 137.0 et seq.
The arbitrators awarded the firm $280,000 without interest. But instead of paying itself the $280,000 from the escrow account and remitting the balance to the client, the firm persuaded Supreme Court, New York County, to grant it two years' interest on the fee award. It then entered judgment for the total amount, and with interest running on the judgment, the client was required to pay even more to satisfy the judgment.
I represented the appealing client, and the Appellate Division agreed that it was improper for a court to award the firm interest denied to it by the arbitrators. The Appellate Division also agreed that after the arbitrators' decision the firm should have paid itself the $280,000 from the funds in the escrow account and promptly remitted the balance to the client. Under the ruling the firm is directed to repay to the client, with interest, all sums received from the client above the $280,000 awarded by the arbitrators.
The Appellate Division ruling is also noteworthy because it cites provisions of the Rules of Professional Conduct to support its conclusion that the law firm acted improperly. The opinion offers useful guidance on the responsibility of attorneys involved in fee disputes with clients. The decision, Levin & Glasser v. Kenmore Property, LLC, can be found here.
It would be nice to say that having won two cases I can take the rest of the day off. But alas, there is always something else to do.
Labels: Appellate Divisiion, Recusal, Rules of Professional Conduct
Interlocutory appeals are a staple of civil appellate practice in the New York State courts. CPLR § 5701(a)(2)(v) gives a party the right to appeal to the Appellate Division from an interlocutory order which "affects a substantial right."
The New York courts have generously interpreted "affects a substantial right," so that there are few interlocutory orders which are not appealable as of right.
In the federal courts, however, there are few interlocutory appeals as of right. See, 28 U.S.C. § 1292(a). They must be authorized by a district judge. 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b). Litigants must, therefore, ordinarily await final judgment before raising on appeal a district judge ruling earlier in the case. There are two recent reminders of the limits on interlocutory appeals in federal courts.
In Mohawk Industries, Inc. v. Carpentier, ___ U.S. ___, 130 S.Ct. 599 (2009), the Supreme Court ruled that an immediate appeal would not be permitted from a disclosure order of a district judge which arguably impinged on the attorney-client privilege. This was the first full opinion written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. The opinion can be found here.
Earlier this week in In re Zyprexa Products Liability Litigation the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit restated the limited availability of interlocutory appeals in the federal courts. The decision can be found here.
Posted by norman olch at 5:10 PM No comments:
Labels: Appeals, Interlocutory Appeals, Second Circuit, Sonia Sotomayor, Supreme Court